Trained Read online

  It took him a while, but he found his way down to the ground eventually. There was no point standing around like a damn fool when he could take the chance to sit in the shade, goat droppings or no goat droppings. And after a glance towards the door to make sure Thoros wasn’t about to step through it, he lowered his head and scooped some water into it. The water was cooler than he’d expected and fresh. He drank his fill, then leaned back against the rough planking and considered the point where his tether had been tied.

  It was just a knot, a simple half-hitch around the post. He could have it undone in a moment, but then what? He’d gone to the arena today to compete, not to turn around and go back to whence he’d come, still a bonded servant, always the lesser. Thoros could make him bark like a dog if it would win him this prize.

  “So you’ve decided to work with me.” Thoros appeared from around the side of the barn, his hair damp as though he’d tipped a ladle of water over his head.

  “I’m here to win. If you can help with that …”

  “I can.”

  “Then tell me what to do.”

  “I will. I’m going to tell you exactly what to do, and you, pretty thing, are going to do it.” Thoros crouched down in front of him and traced a hand over the ridges of his abdomen.

  Pretty thing. “So you’re like that, are you?”

  “And you’re not?”

  “That’s not what I’m here for.” Dalin kept his gaze averted, willing himself not to respond to the heft of the man in front of him, not to think about how the rough texture of his beard would feel between his thighs or to wonder at the exact thickness and length of the instrument dangling beneath the hem of his skirt.

  “Consider it a fortunate bonus,” Thoros said. “For me, I mean. It might not be so fortunate for you, but I’ll have my pound of flesh in exchange for the time I put in to training you.” The callouses of his thumb and forefinger pinched roughly at Dalin’s nipple. “More than a pound.”

  “Not interested.” He shifted to stand, aware of how obvious his cross-legged position made the thickening of his cock. He was there to compete, not to dally, not to be anyone’s payment. “If you don’t want to train me—”

  “This is me training you.” Thoros arrested him with rough hands, pressing down firmly on his thighs to settle him back to the ground. “I know what the princess wants. I know how to mold you into what she wants. So what’s it to be, Dalin? Do you work with me, or do I set you free?”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “The first contest will be a chariot race.”

  “I’ve never driven a chariot.” Chariots were for the wealthy, the privileged. Men like him walked.

  “You don’t need to have,” Thoros said with a knowing grin. “You won’t be driving this one either. The King’s charioteers will have the reins.”

  “And I?”

  “And you—” Thoros untied his leash and used it to pull him to his feet “—you will be the horse. Let’s get started.”

  I can train for speed, Thoros had said, but he didn’t set Dalin to running. No, he set him to dragging.

  After fitting Dalin into a harness worthy of a horse and rigging the other end to his own immovable self, Thoros dragged his feet against Dalin’s pull, jeering and taunting, striking him with the tip of a horse whip. For hours, Dalin pulled Thoros’s steady, stubborn weight, cursing the man until he realized the futility of wasting his breath cursing someone who only laughed in response.

  “Again,” Thoros called when they’d made it to the end of the corral. He yanked on the reins, wrestling Dalin hard to the left until he turned and made his trudging way back.

  “Again,” Thoros repeated when Dalin’s legs gave out beneath him, flicking the reins along his back until he rose unsteadily and pulled Thoros the other way, dripping in the full heat of the day, legs beyond aching, struck numb from the drudgery of repetition.

  “Again,” Thoros ordered as the sun dipped behind the stone cottage, casting their shadows long in front of them. Dalin’s legs wavered dizzily with each step.

  “Enough,” Thoros said finally as the gloom settled around them. He brought Dalin to a rain barrel and scrubbed him with a grooming brush, getting up under his arms and between his cheeks, pulling up each foot to scrape roughly over his soles. The water was cold and the bristles harsh, but Dalin was too tired to feel anything except relief. His body kept listing forward, as though he were still in the yoke, still trying to move Thoros’s intractable weight.

  “Not so pretty now,” Thoros said as he brushed Dalin’s hair with the same brush he’d used to scrub his feet. “But I reckon you’ll clean up well enough. I’ve got some ribbon for the race, something to braid through these locks of yours.” He fanned Dalin’s hair out around his shoulders and put down the brush, then led him over to the lean-to.

  Dalin didn’t hesitate to sink down into the straw this time, nor to lean forward to lap at the water that’d sat all afternoon in the sun.

  “Here now,” Thoros said, returning to him with a tankard. “Have a bit of ale and some food.” He handed over a hunk of meat, and Dalin tore into it appreciatively. He’d have eaten oats if he’d been given some, that was how little pride remained beneath the exhaustion, but the meat was good. Better than oats.

  “Need your body healthy, we do,” Thoros said, stroking over Dalin’s shoulder as Dalin ripped flesh from bone with ravenous enthusiasm. “I’m going to hurt you, but I’m going to heal you too. Sleep now. We go again in the morning.” He took the tankard from Dalin’s unresisting fingers and went back into the house. Dalin found a bit of unoccupied space between Moxie and Loxie and stretched himself out across it, asleep before he could mind how bad they smelled.

  Thoros

  The trainers had been told what the first contest would entail, but if Thoros knew Atalanta, then pulling three or four times a man’s weight through sand would be only half the challenge. Today Dalin’s legs would rest while Thoros tested his mettle. Yesterday had been about winning a race. Today would be about winning Atalanta.

  Dalin was awake when Thoros went out to the barn to collect him. He’d shed his bridle and stood in the cool damp of the rising sun, his vision cast out over the fields that stretched from the edge of town, brown now from a dry summer.

  “Daaaay-lin!” Thoros slapped his thigh as if calling a dog to him, and Dalin turned and gifted him with a look that said he came for his own pleasure, not for Thoros’s, before striding over to him.

  Gods, Thoros loved the pride in this man. How stalwartly he’d toiled yesterday, to the point of collapse, refusing to ask for respite. Thoros loved it because he planned to destroy it, because he would enjoy wiping away Dalin’s prideful certainty all the more for how hard it would be to do.

  He refastened the tether around Dalin’s neck, jerking it tight in reproach for his having slipped it, then gave it a good yank to lead him into the house. They would work away from the gaze of any spies today, no need to give away their secrets.

  Dalin blinked against the cool darkness of the stone interior, his eyes sweeping the room he’d only passed through the day before with an assessing glance, but Thoros didn’t give him time to get his bearings, didn’t allow him to spot the manacles before finding himself restrained by them.

  “What the fuck?” Dalin twisted his head down with a glare as Thoros pulled hard to spread his ankles wide enough to reach the second bolt in the floor. “What kind of training is this?”

  “You’ll thank me for it when you’ve won. Actually,” Thoros said with an inward snicker, “you’ll thank me for it today.” He did love making a man thank him for the very punishment he received.

  Restrained at three points, Dalin couldn’t prevent Thoros from fastening his other ankle to the fourth, but he tried—kicking out hard enough to connect solidly with Thoros’s jaw before Thoros managed to wrestle him into the cuff and slide the linchpin home.

  “Just remember that for every blow you land on me, I’ll land a do
zen on you.” He rubbed his jaw. Dalin’s legs must be weak and achy from his workout yesterday, but they still carried a force strong enough to hurt like hell. There’d be a bruise there. One Dalin would pay for.

  Thoros picked up a bull whip. Not the light and flicky thing he’d used the day before. This one was heavy, coiling down to a tip sharp enough to sting and heavy enough to carry the full impact of his strength. He trailed the length of oiled leather over Dalin’s back, letting him feel its supple weight.

  “But first,” he said, teasingly sadistic, “let’s have breakfast.”

  He ate his own breakfast at the table—a hearty porridge and a hank of cured meat to dip in it—then brought a bowl over to where Dalin glowered, fierce and mad and gorgeous in the glimmer of rising sun that streamed through the shuttered windows. Thoros could get used to scenery like this with his morning meal. He stroked one hand over Dalin’s flank, enjoying the solid flesh quivering with fatigue and anger, as he held the bowl up with the other.

  Dalin turned his head, refusing the food, and Thoros shrugged. “You’ll need it,” he said, “but I won’t force it on you.”

  “You’ll force this on me.” Dalin pulled at his bonds, as if he could rip metal from stone. The corded muscles of his neck strained, his hair rippling as he rocked himself back and forth the short distance his chains allowed him to move.

  “Say the word and I’ll have you down.”

  “Which word?”

  “Please.”

  Doubt and pride warred on Dalin’s face. “Only that?”

  “Sure.” He trailed his fingers over the cleft of Dalin’s ass and felt it clench around the intrusion. “Beg me to release you and I will.”

  “I’ll not beg.”

  “I thought not.” He’d known not. That was why he’d chosen this gloriously wild specimen of manhood in the first place. “Then eat.” He raised the bowl again and this time Dalin lowered his face into it, getting messy and sticky, digging in without hesitation now that he’d made the choice to do it.

  “There’s my pretty thing.” He held Dalin’s hair back to keep it from dipping into the porridge. “So obedient for me.”

  Dalin raised his head and bared his teeth, then went back to his meal without a word, finishing it all, even swiping his tongue around the pottery to catch every drop.

  “Yes, yes,” Thoros urged. “It’s a wise choice. You’ll need the strength. I’ll have some meat for you when we finish, but I’ve no desire to mop up your vomit.”

  “I won’t vomit.” When Dalin shook his head, bits of porridge flew from the corners of his mouth.

  “We’ll see.” Thoros leaned forward to lick the porridge that remained from Dalin’s face, but Dalin jerked his head away. “Be still so I can clean you. Or would you rather wear your breakfast on your face?”

  Dalin stilled, angry but controlled, and allowed Thoros to nibble along the contours of his strong jaw, stubbled now with the beginnings of a beard, and to lick around his mouth to catch every lingering sticky bit. Thoros thought he felt Dalin soften under his ministrations, but when he pinched Dalin’s jaw to open his mouth and forced his tongue inside it, Dalin jerked away again.

  This time, Thoros let him go with a laugh. “You’ll wish it was my mouth kissing you in a moment.” He put down the bowl and shook out the whip and kissed Dalin’s back with the snap of leather.

  Dalin

  Dalin had been whipped before. A bondservant as rebellious as he was couldn’t escape the lash, and he didn’t even try—would never beg for leniency, not from his owners and not from Thoros either. But he’d never been whipped by someone as strong, as determined, or as thorough as Thoros.

  The leather caressed his skin like a thousand nettles, stinging its way across his shoulders, over his ass, and down the lengths of his thighs. All the while, Thoros chuckled and taunted, stopping briefly to grope and stroke at the flesh he flayed, to test the wounds he’d made, to trail his fingers along the lines Dalin could feel carved into his skin which burned all the hotter from the salty traces of Thoros’s sweat.

  Thoros was sweaty, and so was he, though the stones beneath his feet and against his face remained cool. A line of sunlight crept across the floor, attesting to the passage of time. How long had he been strung up, he wondered as Thoros returned to his position and shook the whip out again.

  His skin screamed, nerve endings awakened to a sensation that flickered somewhere between pain and pleasure. His cock thickened from the gruff rasp of Thoros’s voice taunting him to either take more or beg for it to stop. He wouldn’t beg, wouldn’t say even the single word—please—that Thoros had told him would end this torture, wasn’t even sure he wanted it to end as his cock rose long and hard and insistent between his legs.

  The whip was like a lover—stroking, inflaming—and Thoros’s taunts summoned something feral inside him to which he could only surrender, becoming an animal, an object, no more than a collection of dueling sensations. Pleasure, pain, the sticky dampness of sweat rolling down his back mixing with trails of blood, the throb of Thoros’s fingerprints where he dug and tested and claimed.

  “More?” Thoros taunted as he flicked the whip in a targeted stripe that landed from buttock to shoulder across the already flayed flesh of his back.

  “More,” he gritted out, not sure whether he said it from stubbornness or desire, only knowing that he couldn’t bear to end this game as the loser. Win. He would win.

  Adrenalin surged through him. His cock lurched, begging for release. He gave in to its demands, thrusting it against the cool, abrasive stone, grinding forward even as he arched his back to meet the lashes that came ever faster, ever harder.

  “More!” he screamed as his release came. His cock blew gashes of come against the wall, over his belly, and down his cramping thighs into the dirt of the floor.

  He rested his head against the stone, allowing its coolness to chill his cheek as he shuddered through the aftershocks, no longer feeling the whip, only a wash of blinding pleasure. A sob rose up in his chest—a sob of gratitude or pity or relief or pain—but he suppressed it, swallowed it. He was the victor. He’d taken everything Thoros could give him and had found his own reward.

  But if he’d thought Thoros would be sore about having lost, he’d been wrong, for Thoros came to him and wrapped a gentle hand around his damp, softening cock. “Good boy,” he murmured. “So gorgeous, so fierce.” And he sounded proud.

  A thick finger probed his sphincter, greasy but not gentle.

  “No.” Dalin shook his head. This, he’d never done. This part of him, he’d never surrendered. Men had whipped him in anger and groped him in pleasure, but this? “No.”

  “I’ll stop if you say please, pretty thing.”

  And so he set himself to endure this too, refusing to flinch as the blunter, heavier weight of Thoros’s cock entered him.

  “Ah.” He rose up on his toes in an attempt to escape its strange burrowing, so filled and owned by the breadth of it.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Scream for me. It makes me so fucking hard to hear you scream.” Thoros, now fully seated inside him, reached around to twist Dalin’s nipples in his strong fingers and Dalin didn’t scream. He set his teeth so hard they might crack and allowed Thoros to torture him, to rub against the ragged flesh of his back and smear the salt of his sweat into the tender stripes that crisscrossed him, to drive deep into his ass and plunder every empty place as he steered Dalin by the points of his nipples.

  Over and over Thoros thrust, deeper and deeper, until Dalin’s cock rose again and Thoros laughed, delighted. “You want it. You want me to fuck you.”

  Dalin shook his head, drops of sweat flinging from the tips of his hair, but his cock gave his gesture the lie. It grew long and thick and urgent. He couldn’t love this. He couldn’t. He was only … fuck. Everything hurt so bad, so good. Everything was so real, so immediate and intense, and the hate he felt towards the man at his back made him want to wrestle, to grapple, to have the strong
warmth of the flesh of a man under his hands.

  He twisted his hands in the manacles, desperate to get them on Thoros’s body or on his own cock, desperate for release again but Thoros kept him snug against his chest, no way to grind forward into the wall now, no way to chase his climax except to surrender to the rush of heat Thoros’s cock stirred—a magic, frenzied blossom of overwhelming pleasure glowing inside him, stoked ever higher with each harsh thrust.

  “Oh, fuck. Pl—” He caught himself before the word burst from his lips. He wouldn’t say it. What would he ask for anyway? Release, yes. But release from Thoros or the release of sexual climax?

  It was the latter he found as Thoros growled into his ear and buried himself, the warmth of his seed in Dalin’s channel triggering his own orgasm. His cock spurted again, the stream weaker but the contractions stronger, as if his body tried to force a few last drops of semen from the twitching column of his spending cock.

  Thoros

  Thoros had expected to enjoy fucking Dalin, had expected to enjoy whipping him too—watching him writhe, hearing him scream, seeing the red stripes crisscross his back, before plunging his cock into the heat of a thoroughly-beaten ass. But he hadn’t expected this. This … tenderness.

  Dalin hadn’t caved, hadn’t begged, had screamed only in anger, never in surrender, had held his feet and kept his chin raised high. He’d even found his own pleasure in it, releasing himself against the stone wall with an exhalation of pure triumph, as though knowing that Thoros wouldn’t be able to resist his siren call.

  Thoros had dropped the whip when he’d seen that first jet of come spurt free, drawn forward to press himself against the back he’d bloodied, to sink himself into the ass he’d warmed, and then, somehow, Dalin had risen again, fucking back on Thoros’s cock with a wild abandon even as he rejected it verbally, even as he struggled to free himself from it. It’d been like riding a wild horse—the bucking frenzy of a shared challenge, the two of them locked in a duel of mental and physical strength reaching for a common goal even as they fought each other for it.