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Adam didn’t normally like to go out into the gardens with the rest of King Edward’s concubines, but it had been an unusually pleasant day. With winter coming on, he wanted to savor the sunlight and the warm air for as long as he could, so he’d crept from the little bolt-hole where he usually slept and come to curl in the space between the tower wall and the ornamental hedges in front of it. It was cooler there; he couldn’t help watching a little enviously as Blanche sprawled on the grass in the sun with her head pillowed in Margaret’s lap — but it was better than being inside, and he was glad not to be noticed. There was always a certain awkwardness around him, not quite guilt and not quite anger either, but it was enough that Adam knew he’d be unwelcome among them. So he stayed tucked out of sight, feeling the cool earth and the rough stone of the tower slowly warm against his skin. Just when he was beginning to doze off, the messenger arrived.
“Annie! What’s toward?” Adam heard Phillip call, and peering through the lower branches of the bushes, Adam could see Annie bob a mocking little curtsey to them all, the leaf-cut hems of her page’s coat fluttering as she did.
“His Majesty requests Blanche to attend in his rooms tonight,” Annie said, and Adam heard Blanche groan theatrically. “And… His Majesty also requests that another of you be prepared to attend in the guest quarters, for the pleasure of the Earl of Westmarch.”
Adam heard someone say no, a little louder than they should’ve, and heard someone else hush them — Annie wouldn’t tell tales; she was as friendly with them as any free person could be — but it wasn’t wise to fall into the habit of disagreeing with the king, even when the king wasn’t there to hear it. “Tell His Majesty his humble slaves will be honored to obey,” he heard Blanche say quickly, and Annie gave a flashing little salute and left again in a flutter of long sleeves.
“Who is the Earl of Westmarch?” Adam heard John ask tentatively, and he crawled a little closer under the cover of the bushes to hear the answer. He didn’t know either, except that anyone who made Blanche look like that was probably best avoided, and he was grateful John was a new enough addition to the king’s concubines that he still asked questions like that.
“Lord Thomas Greyling,” Blanche said tightly. “Cousin to the king through their mothers’ lines. He’s a knight and a battle-mage and a butcher and a sadist, and they say he killed a hundred men himself in the last war — Phillip, what are we to do?”
“John can’t go,” Phillip said immediately, stern as steel, and Adam saw John slip his hand into Phillip’s and give it a little squeeze, naked gratitude written all over his face. “He’s too new. It can’t be him.”
“It can’t be Margaret either,” Blanche said, warningly. “She was in the king’s bed last night; the physicians will have all our heads if we send her off to a mage before they know if she’s with child by him, and I’m for His Majesty’s bed tonight.”
“John can’t go,” Phillip only repeated, though Adam could see he was white to the lips. “His Majesty wouldn’t demand any of us be sent to him if he thought Westmarch meant to kill us. Anything short of that, I can take.”
“You don’t know that,” Blanche said, as John looked on the verge of tears, eyes darting between Phillip and Blanche in obvious distress. “Westmarch has been off to the border wars for years now; he might not know how to treat a proper concubine — and he’s a mage — Phillip, you’re not trained to take pain like that, not like what he could do to you.”
“None of us are, so it’s no odds any way,” Phillip retorted, and then he paused, and Adam had only a heartbeat to think about scrambling back out of sight before he heard Phillip call, “Here, boy, I know you’re listening.”
“You can’t seriously —” Blanche started, as Adam mustered up just enough courage to crawl out of the bushes and go to his knees on the grass in front of them. The sun was just as warm as he’d expected, but it did nothing about the lump of ice that was rapidly freezing all the blood in his veins. “With the scars on him? Phillip, you’ll get us all killed.”
“I’ll swear blind it was my idea,” Phillip said sharply, “so you needn’t worry about your own neck — and if Westmarch really is so much of a brute as all that, we’ve every chance that he won’t notice for more than a moment.”
“You want to send a whipping boy to the king’s own cousin?” Blanche demanded, unconvinced, as Adam knelt quietly and shivered.
“He’s one of the king’s own concubines, isn’t he?”
“You know there’s a difference! Does he have even the slightest idea how to behave himself in a noble’s bed?”
“I don’t know. Do you, boy?”
Adam started, hanging his head even lower; he hadn’t really expected to be addressed. “No, sir,” he whispered, when the silence had dragged out long enough to be awkward, “but — I’ll do my best, sir; I know a little —”
“Phillip, you’ll have us all hanged —”
“Give him a few doses of that aphrodisiac His Majesty likes; it won’t matter what training he has if he’s sobbing and screaming for a cock in him any way he can get it,” Phillip said, brutally straightforward, and Blanche fell silent. Adam could feel her eyes on his back, probably balancing the whip-scars there against the thought of Phillip just as broken as Adam was now in the earl’s bed.
“Get a few fundamentals through his head before he goes, and make sure he takes every drop of the wretched stuff that we have on hand,” Blanche finally said, and Adam heard John let out a little gasp of relief; saw his shadow move as he clung to Phillip and buried his head in his shoulder. Adam might have had a little room to be pleased on his account; John was awkwardly kind to him sometimes, and had even apologized once, when his thoughtlessness in front of the king had gotten Adam beaten too badly to move for most of the next day. Mostly, though, he was numb with fear.
“As it please you, my lady,” Phillip was saying, only a little sarcastic, and then he clicked his tongue to Adam. “Your kneel needs mending. You’ll wait like that for the earl to come back from dinner, but spread your knees more — even more than that — good. Head down. Back straighter than that, you’re presenting your body for his pleasure. Hands behind your back, crossed at the wrist — higher, your elbows should be level with your bottom ribs.”
Adam obeyed, flushing a little at the sight he knew he made — scarred, bruised, rail-thin from too many nights without supper — but maybe Phillip was right, and none of it would matter so long as he was desperate enough. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt that kind of need before; he’d never been given the same gentle use as the rest of the king’s concubines, and pain had never been as easy for him to bear as the last whipping girl, before she’d been bought by a visiting lady for how prettily she moaned when she was beaten. Phillip taught him a few more — a low grovel, head to the floor, when the earl entered or whenever he was begging; a wide-legged standing position if the earl chose to inspect him further; and finally a lewd sprawl on his back with his knees up and apart, laying all of him bare to anyone who cared to look.
“If you’re allowed in his bed,” Phillip had explained, forcing Adam to pull his knees up even farther until his thighs burned. “I doubt you will be, but you’d best learn it anyway.” Then he’d made Adam run through all of them again and again until he could do them without needing to be corrected, and by that time Adam had them down well enough to satisfy Phillip’s exacting standards, the shadows were growing long in the garden, and Blanche was coming to tell him to prepare himself.
“Hands behind you,” Blanche said, when she’d lined his eyes with kohl and added a little tint to his lips and nipples, and Adam startled a little as he felt a smooth, unyielding cord wrap around his wrists to bind them together. “You can’t touch yourself before he gives you permission. This will help.”
Adam wanted to protest that he’d taken all kinds of beatings without ever moving from where he’d been placed; if he knew one thing, it was how to control himself. He wasn’t in a position to argue, though, and submitted tamely to Blanche tipping three small vials of a foul-tasting liquid down his throat. “It’ll make it easier for you,” she told him, at least pitying if not fully sympathetic, and Adam swallowed obediently despite the bitter aftertaste they left on his tongue, and let her clip a leash to his collar and lead him out with her through the back corridors and narrow stairs that led to the finer parts of the palace. They met a few other slaves along the way, who pointed them in the right direction for the earl’s rooms, and Blanche left him once she was sure he was settled, kneeling quietly in front of the fire.
It wasn’t uncomfortable, at first. The floor was hard and a little cold, but the hearth was warm, and he wasn’t being shouted at or beaten. Then the warmth of the hearth began to spread, growing in a muted tingle all across his skin, and Adam felt a slow discomfort beginning to build in his gut. He needed — he was so warm — blinking down at himself, he saw with mingled astonishment and dread that his cock was half-hard, clearly visible where his legs were spread wide to show himself off. Without thinking about it, he found himself pulling a little against the cords binding him — and then, realizing what he was doing, he couldn’t help but be grateful Blanche had tied him after all.
The need only grew from there, until despite his best efforts he was shifting ceaselessly on his knees, choking on little gasps and whimpers as his cock twitched and dripped without relief. He was absolutely desperate for the earl to arrive; whatever he wanted, however badly he would hurt Adam, it would be worth it if the earl would just fuck him even once — any relief, anything at all. It took every ounce of his willpower not to drop flat onto the floor and rut against the floorboards then and there, but the bite of the cords at his wrists was enough of a reminder to keep him upright. His posture was a lost cause, though; Phillip would have had some strong words for him if he had seen how far out of position Adam had drifted. It was hard to care, though; it was all he could do to keep himself from screaming until someone came and fucked him, or until his lungs gave out, whichever came first.
He’d nearly given up hope entirely when the sound of the door opening stirred him from the endless abyss of need inside him. Vaguely, he was aware he was supposed to do something when the earl entered the room — Phillip had shown him all the positions; one of them was important — but he couldn’t remember. There was only the wanting left; everything else was only a distant blur.
“God’s teeth,” Adam heard someone say, sharp and biting, and he shuddered with the strain of not throwing himself at their feet and begging. “What’s the matter with you, you little fool?”
A butcher and a sadist, Adam remembered Blanche saying, in some faraway lifetime, and he choked on a sob of terror and frustration mingled. “Drugged, my lord,” he managed to gasp out, on the principle that however badly he’d be hurt for telling the truth, it would still be better than the penalty for refusing to answer outright. “My lord, please —” another maddening wave of need rolled over him, and Adam heard himself keen like a dying animal, curling over himself as every muscle in his abdomen seemed to tense at once in an agony of frustrated desire.
“Please what — damnation, boy, the scars on you! Oh, I’ll kill Edward for this,” the earl snapped, and that made Adam instantly cold all over. If the earl fell out with the king over this, Adam would be blamed when it was discovered, and he’d be blamed all the more for not having come clean to begin with.
“His Majesty isn’t to blame, my lord,” Adam gasped frantically. It was so hard to put words in their right order, but he forced himself through all the same. “I was —” and there he choked; if he blamed Phillip and Blanche instead, they’d be facing Westmarch’s displeasure alongside him, and better one than all — “I asked to be sent to you, my lord.”
“You asked?” Westmarch’s voice was heavy with mocking disbelief, and Adam flinched as the chill in it cut through the heat racing across his skin just enough for him to feel fear. “A boy covered in lash-marks, given to His Majesty’s executioner, and you expect me to believe you’re anything but a very poor jest at my expense?”
Adam had no words left to answer. He shook his head frantically, but it was so hard to think, it was so hard to focus on anything but the burning need and the emptiness in his hole — “Please, my lord,” he whispered, and then heard his next breath come in a disgraceful little whine.
“Stop that, I know you’re terrified,” Westmarch snarled, and Adam went up with a little cry as a harsh hand knotted itself in his hair and dragged him back on his heels. The earl was crouched before him, the long tippets of his tight-buttoned coat dragging in the rushes that blanketed the floor, and his pale eyes were wild and furious when Adam, stunned and not sure where to look, accidentally met his gaze. “Aren’t you, boy?” The hand not gripping Adam’s hair came up swiftly, sharply, and in a fluid turn of Westmarch’s wrist, a dancing golden flame like that of a torch blossomed in his palm, hovering just above the skin and making the sharp shadows of the earl’s long features even more stark.
In his right senses, Adam might have been a little afraid — he knew what a burn felt like, and couldn’t say he enjoyed it — but he was so desperate. Even the scalding touch of the earl’s magic would be better than the simmering need in his gut; maybe enough pain might even kill the want entirely. He felt his scalp ache as he tugged against the hand holding him by the head, keeping him from pressing in to that burning touch. Westmarch jerked his other hand back, and the fire vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving Adam blinking and panting against the spots in his vision where the flames had been.
“Not afraid, my lord,” he managed to gasp, as Westmarch finally let go of his head. “I’m not afraid, please, you can do anything you want with me, I’ll be good, I’ll be so good for you, please, my lord —”
“Enough,” Westmarch said, quietly. “If you want to be good for me, hold still.”
That was one of the harder things the earl could have asked of him, but Adam did his best to obey, despite the trembling and the small rocking of his hips that he couldn’t make himself stop. Westmarch didn’t immediately punish him for it, though; he only shifted around behind Adam and unpicked the cords binding his wrists. “Into the bed with you,” Westmarch said, when the last loops of cord had fallen away, and then he caught Adam with a curse as Adam’s legs, stiff from the long hours of kneeling, buckled under him as he tried to stand. “Slower, slower. I know you’re eager, but you’ll break your head like that.” He pushed Adam lightly in the direction of the bed, and nudged him fully up when Adam paused, expecting mostly to be bent over the edge and used there.
When Adam was settled on top of the embroidered coverlet, still shaking a little with more than cold, Westmarch put a knee on the bed beside him and bent over him. Adam was braced for the first spark of pain — a burn, maybe, or a blade if the earl was less inclined to waste his magic on Adam — so when Westmarch’s hand wrapped around Adam’s straining cock and began to pump it in a swift, businesslike way, he almost couldn’t tell the difference between the idea of pain and the pure, blinding relief that swept through him. His cock was already slick from the long hours of waiting, and it only took a few firm strokes before Adam’s entire world dissolved into a white-hot, seemingly endless burst of feeling.
When he came down from it, blinking and gasping, Westmarch was standing by the clothes-chest, already halfway through stripping himself down. Mantle and hood and belt were already tossed carelessly aside, and the earl was working through the endless buttons of the coat now; the long rows at the wrists that held the sleeves tightly in place, and the close-set line of them down the front. It was a little easier for Adam to think, in the wake of his release, though the heat under his skin was building again already. “May I be of service to you, my lord?” he dared to ask, and the earl glanced up from his work without pausing.
“Lie still and catch your breath,” he ordered curtly. The last of the buttons came free, and the coat joined the heap on the clothes-chest. Westmarch’s doublet was made of the same dark stuff as his mantle, and he slipped out of it with a few pulls at the short ties holding it closed. Then he was pulling off his long hose one after the other, and the shirt and smallclothes joined them in short order, and Adam realized, with a little lurch of mingled delight and fear, that he was only moments away from the earl fucking him.
The Earl of Westmarch was a tall, lean man, with short-cropped flax-pale hair that only made him look more ghostly, but when he crossed the room back to the bed and climbed up beside Adam in the sheets, he was still pleasantly warm to the touch. Adam heard himself groan helplessly as the earl palmed his still-sensitive cock yet again, and then a probing finger trailed down to Adam’s hole. He’d prepared himself before leaving the concubines’ quarters that afternoon, but that had been before he’d taken the doses of the aphrodisiac. When Westmarch pressed a finger inside, Adam heard himself wail in a way he certainly hadn’t earlier that day, and as a second finger joined it, he wailed even louder.
“Desperate little thing,” Westmarch said roughly, fingering Adam briskly open, and Adam couldn’t find it in himself to disagree. At the first press of Westmarch’s cock against his aching, burning hole, Adam thought he might have screamed — but it was hard to tell, when he went tumbling away down yet another unbearable peak with Westmarch’s first thrust inside him. It was almost painful, coming again so soon after the first, but not coming was almost as bad, and at least in the depths of pleasure it was hard to be aware of anything else, or to be afraid.
“Please, my lord,” Adam heard himself gasping, over and over, as Westmarch settled himself more firmly between Adam’s legs and began to fuck him in firm, smooth strokes, never faltering or giving him a moment’s rest. It took a little longer, but Adam was panting with need again before long, in time with Westmarch’s steady thrusts. His cock was already stiff again, dripping furiously over his stomach, and when the earl pushed Adam’s leg up and out to give himself room to fuck into Adam’s hole even deeper, Adam felt himself arch up off the bed with a broken, gasping cry as a third aching peak ripped through him.
“Breathe,” the earl was saying as Adam came back to himself again, nearly crying with the overwhelming degree of sensation in every inch of his body. It hurt, where Westmarch was still pressed inside him, a strange sort of over-sensitivity that was almost as painful as the need before it had been, but at least he wasn’t moving yet, only holding himself still and letting Adam come down from the height of sensation before it. “Breathe. Take it at your own pace now.” Before Adam could even work up the nerve to ask what he meant by that, the earl had rolled them both over, settling Adam astride him. The movement shifted the thick, heavy length of Westmarch’s cock inside him, and Adam heard himself whimper as bright, unsteady pleasure rippled through him. The need was banked to a quiet roar inside him now, and when he cautiously rolled his hips, the answering rush of arousal was a little more gentle, a little easier to bear.
He managed to set up a comfortable rhythm, enough that the earl was grunting agreeably under him, and his long-fingered hands were settled easily on Adam’s hips without digging in or clawing or otherwise punishing his boldness. “Thank you, my lord,” he managed to gasp, in between one roll and the next, and under him Westmarch grunted again and patted his waist. “Thank you, thank you —” it was almost entirely pleasant when he rose slowly to a fourth peak, and this one lingered, seeming to stretch on and on in an endless wave of easy pleasure. The burning need of the drugs was finally abating, and when it was over and his spent cock was limp and soft again, the low pulse of heat in his gut was almost bearable.
“Keep breathing,” the earl reminded him, and Adam groaned and did his best to obey as Westmarch tipped him over again and began to fuck him again, a little faster than before. They were both gasping with pleasure before long, and when the earl stiffened with a bitten-off cry and a final, punishingly deep thrust, Adam was a little surprised to find that it only took a few more haphazard strokes of the earl’s hand before he was coming again as well, wrung entirely dry and aching all over, but still catching some of that first incandescent relief through the soreness and exhaustion.
For a long while they lay there, panting a little in the dim light of the embers and the few guttering candles, until with a faint, low groan Westmarch rolled to his back beside Adam, still breathing a little heavily. Adam, taking that as a clear enough dismissal, was therefore a little surprised when a firm, long-fingered hand caught his arm as he made to slide down from the bed, stopping him in his tracks.
“Where are you going?” the earl asked, his voice a bit thick with exhaustion and what Adam dearly hoped was pleasure.
“If… if my lord has finished with me, I meant to clean us both, and… and, if my lord permits it, to take the rug at your feet for the night?” Adam dared to suggest, though privately he hoped the earl would be too weary to notice that he’d be doing most of that slowly and on his knees. He wasn’t sure, after being so thoroughly fucked-out, that he would be able to stand for some time, though he supposed he’d find a way if the alternative was a beating or worse from the king’s soldier-mage.
“Ridiculous,” the earl said, through a stifled yawn, and Adam flinched where he hoped the earl wouldn’t be able to see it.
“Yes, my lord,” he agreed, because that was a slave’s place, and went to pull away again — but the earl only tightened his grip, dragging him back.
“Lie down,” the earl ordered, and Adam, bewildered, did as he was told. A warm arm draped across his chest, pulling him closer, and then the earl was dragging the coverlet over them both. “See to the rest of it in… in the morning. Unless you’re afraid to sleep beside the king’s butcher,” he added, with a bit of a bite behind the words that, to Adam’s ears, had very few teeth in it at all.
“I’m not afraid, my lord,” he said, letting his head drop back against the pillows at last. “I’m not afraid at all.”