And then Hektor was dragging him down the hall. The musk of so many men, so many fuckings and claimings perfumed the wet, slick stones, and gave impetus to Lucan’s lust. He was painfully, ragingly hard. Moaning, he rubbed his straining dick against Hektor, clawing at his chest, tugging him down into another kiss.
Hektor broke away. His sky-blue eyes were dark with desire, and in them Lucan glimpsed the man’s internal struggle between what he should do and what he wanted to do.
Lucan saw Hektor fight, and he saw when Hektor broke.
In the next moment, Hektor slammed him against the wall and crushed his mouth to Lucan’s, his tongue demanding entry. Lucan gasped as Hektor pushed inside. The warm wetness of his tongue moving inside Lucan was more than he could bear. The hard press of Hektor’s cock against his thigh, the man jutting up against him, moaning into his mouth…
Lucan’s self-control frayed. And then snapped.
Panting, Lucan scrabbled at the tunic at Hektor’s shoulders. He clawed and tore in his desperation, until, laughing gently, Hektor released him enough to drop the garment to his waist. Lucan ran his hands over the smooth expanse of Hektor’s chest, exploring every scar, every old wound, caressing lovingly. Somehow, all these imperfections simply made his man more beautiful.
My man.
He looked up at Hektor. It felt right.
Mine.
Lucan pulled Hektor into a heated kiss, and the two of them began fumbling desperately in the dark and dismal passageway. The degenerate noises of Remulon rutting Great Scar’s ass grew wild—the novice begging for mercy, for pleasure, for anything, while Remulon’s dirty talk and laughter punctuated the cries.
A wave of envy took hold of Lucan.
“Now,” he panted, grabbing at Hektor’s arms, tugging at him. There had to be empty cells. He took Hektor by the hand and fairly dragged him.
Furtively, they sneaked through the dim halls, avoiding the other guard, looking into each cell as they passed, rewarded with sights of men sucking other men’s cocks, the slurping sounds and gagging hot and heavy in the stifling air, the sight of men taking it up the ass, lubed cheeks glistening, the sight of men loosing their seed on another man’s face and chest.
What waste.
Lucan wanted all that hot cum inside him, fortifying him, making him stronger. He was nearly weeping in need as Hektor whispered to him, “This one.”
Arms around each other, grasping, groping, they pushed through the door and into the darkened cell. Lucan’s gaze darted about—the bench, the chains, the wall. Even the small bowl of oil. Though it was not heated, it would do.
His lust rose, and with it came the itch of the Ebon beneath his flesh. It squirmed and writhed as his desire burgeoned. He scratched at his chest as though he could assuage the feeling.
He needed, he wanted. “Take me.”
The words were barely out of him before Hektor seized his wrists and dragged him to the chains. Shoulders flexing powerfully, Hektor lifted Lucan with ease. The familiar cool bite of steel on Lucan’s wrists made him impossibly harder. If Hektor so much as touched him…
But the gladiator left him hanging and went to the small crock of oil. Swirling his fingers in it, he looked up at Lucan through hooded eyes.
Hektor did not speak, merely closed the distance and claimed Lucan’s mouth roughly as though he had a right to it. Lucan reveled in the bristly scrape of Hektor’s stubble, the forcefulness of Hektor’s hand on his jaw, forcing his mouth wider. With his other hand, the primus palus took hold of Lucan’s thin tunic and tore it from his sweating body. Lucan trembled at the change in temperature, the stifling air on his bare skin, not even the thin cloth as protection against the heat.
“Gods in Oversky,” he groaned, dangling from his chains in delicious agony. “Take me. Take me, Hektor. I am yours. Your Claim.”
“You are.” Hektor’s voice was gravelly, his eyes dark with lust. His skin glistened with a sheen of sweat, muscles rippling as he stepped in. He pressed his chest against Lucan and kissed him.
The hot slickness of skin against skin drove Lucan wild. His longing lit a fire within him, and he cried out, frustrated at being unable to touch Hektor, to caress him. He twisted in his chains, the denial, his need burgeoning into something larger, more intense than he could bear.
Hektor’s tongue was demanding, stroking inside Lucan’s mouth, searing and hot. He ran a calloused hand down the length of Lucan’s body. To his hip, to his thigh— Hektor was parting his legs. Lucan’s cock twitched as the gladiator stroked two fingers down it delicately.
“You have a beautiful cock,” Hektor murmured against Lucan’s mouth. “But first, I want your ass.”
Without warning, Hektor stepped behind Lucan and bent him over, kicking his legs into a wide stance so he wouldn’t fall. The chains groaned and clanked, dragging hard against Lucan’s wrists, but down he went. The feel of Hektor’s slick chest against his bare back, his hand on Lucan’s nape, holding him in place.
Lucan felt his cheeks parted—Hektor nosing at his hole—and then a hot tongue swiped across his anal star. Lucan jerked in his chains, a moan ripped from his mouth.
Sudden agony seared through Lucan’s chest, reminding him of Alession’s ebon blade, his sorcery, the dark mark carved there, and he searched his skin in a panic. What if Hektor saw? Would he know? Would he care? Sorcery and slavecraft were against the laws of the arena. It was one thing to take a man. It was another to enslave him entirely.
Chained, Lucan could not dig at his chest to allay the pain. But though the agony of the spell burned him, the Ebon was only a faint black glimmer there beneath the skin. Like a smear of dirt.
Yet it hadn’t been there before. Was the Ebon rising?
Lucan barely had time to think on it. He twisted and cried out as Hektor rimmed him again and again. His cock swayed, its slender curve bobbing before him, its tip weeping precum. Another laving, Hektor delving in, eating him with lusty abandon.
Spread open, Lucan could only sob and beg for more, writhing upon the wetness of Hektor’s devouring mouth. The tip of Hektor’s tongue breached him, and he gasped.
In the next breath, the Ebon seared him, a burning pulse shooting through his chest, and Lucan cried out, squirming, pushing back and seeking the pleasure that would dull his pain.
Hektor licked and lapped at his hole, and there was no succor for Lucan. He twisted writhing, rearing back. “Please,” he gasped out. “Please, fuck me. I can’t… I just can’t.”
Slowly, Hektor rose up behind him, running teasing caresses along Lucan’s hips. The first prod of his thick head at Lucan’s hole tore a tormented moan from Lucan.
“Please…oh, please.”
Hektor took him by the shoulder with one hand. Lucan could imagine him lining up his thick cock. He flexed his hips backward.
The first burning breach of Hektor’s cock-tip pushed Lucan forward. A stab of pain lanced him. He forced himself to relax.
“That’s a good boy.” Hektor soothed him as he tunneled his hard cock into Lucan’s ass.
Panting, wanting it all, Lucan pushed out as inch by inch his mentor penetrated him. In one slick thrust, Hektor pumped past the outer ring of muscle and slid deep inside Lucan. For long, ragged breaths, he stayed seated there, sheathed hard and to the hilt.
Stuffed full, Lucan whimpered. He wanted, needed so much more. He strained at his fetters, making the chains jangle in agitation. “Fuck me.” His voice was rough, desperate, his thighs quivering, his cock aching.
A rumble of pleasure from Hektor. His hands came down onto Lucan’s hips. He pulled out, a slow burn of friction, and then rammed back in hard. The chains jangled from the force of it. Once more, he pulled out to the tip and then plowed back in to the root.
Great, tearing grunts escaped Lucan. He moaned like a whore as Hektor rode him, pumping that thick pole inside Lucan’s tight ass, stretching him, splitting him, claiming him the way he needed to be claimed.
Sweat dripped from Lucan’s chest, from his chin, from the tips of his hair as Hektor had his way with him. His own shaft swung hard and heavy, weeping with neglect, throbbing in an agony of unreleased pleasure.
“Gods…gods…” With every thrust, Lucan babbled, begging for an end to his delicious torment.
Hektor seemed to understand him. He bent over Lucan’s back and reached around to grab his shaft. With long, languid pulls, he jerked Lucan’s dick, pumping him in time with his own thrusts. Crying out, lost to pleasure, Lucan humped his mentor’s hand wildly. The pleasure building inside him—his cock, his balls, his ass—threatened to rend him asunder.
And all around them the scents and sounds of men fucking, rutting, pleasing each other was rife—champion gladiators, the vanquished, even the Unnamed and Unskilled—they all raised their voices in unison, in the pleasure only a man could give another man.
Shamelessly, Hektor and Lucan added their own voices to the din, shouting their triumph to the darkness of the Claim.
Lucan burned—he burned with lust, with pleasure, with every rising throb of the Ebon. It seared through him, lancing his chest, then his entire side with fiery knives. It bled across his skin like a malefic brand.
But he could not stop fucking his man. He would not.
Wantonly, he rocked back, riding that huge cock, taking it in his ass, clenching and flexing as though he would never let Hektor go.
“Come inside me,” he whispered—that would quench the burn of his pleasure, the sear of the Ebon beneath his skin—and it became a chant. “Come inside me. Come insi—”
Hektor plowed him one final time, touching him so deep Lucan’s back bowed beneath the force of it. A sharp cry, Hektor’s fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and the hot jetting of his seed burst inside Lucan, filling him.
Lucan sighed. Claimed at last.
And when Hektor pulled out, Lucan felt the loss of him.
A trickle of cum ran down Lucan’s thigh, and Hektor chased it with his tongue, licking it lustily. The swipe of his mentor’s hot tongue was so close to Lucan’s cock he cried out. Smiling widely, Hektor took a knee before him and lapped the jism from his student’s thighs, groaning with each lick.
Gritting his teeth, Lucan nearly shot in his lover’s face. The idea of Hektor dripping with his cum inflamed him, and then Hektor pursed his lips around Lucan’s cock-tip. Lucan met his gaze as Hektor began sliding up his pole, taking every inch.
Lucan jutted his hips forward, trying to spear that wet hole, but Hektor held him back.
The burning in his chest wound him up tight. It would not stop until he came inside Hektor—in his mouth, in his ass. The Ebon did not seem to care, as long as Lucan branded the man with his cum. The pounding in his head, the soreness in his ass, the need in him told him it would be so.
Only Hektor could burn the need from him. And then the Ebon would fade and be Lucan’s secret once more.
With deep strokes, Hektor took him, tasting the length of his shaft, taking him deep into his mouth, pausing to swirl his tongue across the sensitive head. Lucan jerked in his chains.
He could not hold back.
At the next swallow, Lucan was soaring. He came, pouring his load down Hektor’s throat. Hektor moaned. Some of the pearly liquid spilled from his lips, spattering his chest.
“Kiss me,” Lucan begged. His voice seemed to break the lust between them, and Hektor looked up. He met Lucan’s eyes, and there was tenderness there—the beginnings of something more. And then his gaze fell to Lucan’s chest.
The Ebon was still there, fading now that he had been sated, but Hektor seemed to know the brand for what it truly was. His face turned white, and he grabbed Lucan, his fingers digging into his pectoral muscles as though he could carve the dark mark from his flesh, terror contorting his face.
“No…” It came, torn from Hektor and leaving his throat raw. “No.”
He backed away—no longer seeing Lucan, only seeing the Ebon. When he reached the door, he fumbled it open and vanished into the dim hall.
And Lucan was left, hanging, bereft, the Ebon mark fading on his chest, Hektor’s cum trickling down his thigh.
HEKTOR STORMED DOWN the hall, shock and disgust making mockery of all his feelings, destroying his calm demeanor. He knew horror showed on his face, in his every move, every step. He fought the urge to vomit, forcing ragged breaths in through clenched teeth. His fingers still tingled where he had touched the mark on Lucan’s pectorals.
The dark mark. The Ebon. The horrible thing that—
He stopped. Rage swept through him and brought the terrible urge to go back and beat Lucan. Squeezing his eyes shut, Hektor cast the notion away sickly.
This is Stratos’s fault, not the boy’s.
And yet the boy had been a pawn, a complicit pawn. He hadn’t stopped Hektor from kissing him, from taking him, from wanting him.
Hektor stalked toward the stairs, avoiding the sounds of his fellow gladiators. With luck, he could be free of the Claim without meeting another soul. Lucan. Complicit? Stratos’s willing pawn? It seemed so unlikely. Confusion reigned within Hektor. He slapped his hand to the back of his neck, where the spent mark was still raised beneath the flesh.
I wasn’t complicit when it happened to me.
He was not proud of what he had done. He had broken the only man he ever loved, destroyed him for the novelty of cheers and the blood thirst of a cold, blind Empress who could not see past her own perverse desires.
Hektor still remembered the sting of the sand and sun that day, the agony that had him clenching his chest as though he could tear his heart out. That day he murdered his own lover.
At the behest of a Vulpinius slaver-priest.
Everything had changed. He could no longer see Lucan. He had no choice. The boy was bound to him to train, to foster in the fight.
Fine, then. I will do that. And no more.
He thought of Lucan sliding wet and needy into the tight clasp of his throat, thought of the clenching muscles of his warm hole, the way he grunted and writhed and called Hektor’s name. The gentle brush of his hand on Hektor’s as Hektor had held him during fellatio.
Like he meant it. Like he loved him.