Two male pets had entered, and were standing off with slight wariness, in the manner of competitors. One was a brunet, with long-lashed almond eyes. The other, to whom Damen’s attention naturally gravitated, was blond, though his hair was not the buttercup yellow of Laurent’s, it was darker, a sandy colour, and his eyes weren’t blue, they were brown.
Damen felt a shift in the constant, low-grade tension that had been with him since the baths—since he woke up in this place on silk cushions.
In the ring, the pets were being stripped of their clothes.
‘Sweetmeat?’ said Laurent. He held the confection delicately, between thumb and forefinger, just far enough out of reach that Damen would have to rise up onto his knees in order to eat it from Laurent’s fingertips. Damen jerked his head back.
‘Stubborn,’ Laurent remarked mildly, bringing the treat to his own lips instead, and eating it.
A range of equipment was on display alongside the ring: long gilt poles, various restraints, a series of golden balls such as a child might play with, a little pile of silver bells, long whips, the handles decorated with ribbons and tassels. It was obvious that the entertainments in the ring were varied, and inventive.
But the one that unfolded in front of him now was simple: rape.
The pets knelt with their arms around one another, and an officiator held a red scarf aloft, then dropped it, fluttering, to the ground.
The pretty picture that the pets made quickly dissolved into a heaving tussle before the sounds of the crowd. Both pets were attractive and both were lightly muscled—neither possessed the build of a wrestler, but they did look marginally stronger than some of the willowy exquisites who curled around their masters in the audience. The brunet was first to gain the advantage, stronger than the blond.
Damen realised what was happening in front of him, as every whisper he had heard in Akielos of the depravities of the Veretian court began unfolding before his eyes.
The brunet was on top, his knee forcing the blond’s thighs open. The blond was trying desperately to throw him off and it wasn’t working. The brunet held the blond’s arms behind his back, and scrabbled, humping ineffectually. And then he was in, smooth as entering a woman, though the blond was struggling. The blond had been—
—prepared—
The blond let out a cry and tried to buck his captor off, but the motion only drove him deeper.
Damen’s eyes swung away, but it was almost worse to look at the audience. Lady Vannes’s pet sat with flushed cheeks, her mistress’s fingers well occupied. To Damen’s left, the red-haired boy was unlacing the front of his master’s garments, and wrapping a hand around what he found there. In Akielos, slaves were discreet, public performances were erotic without being overt, the charms of a slave to be enjoyed in private. The court did not gather to watch two of them fucking. Here, the atmosphere was almost orgiastic. And it was impossible to block out the sounds.
Only Laurent seemed immune. He was probably so jaded that this display did not even cause his pulse to flicker. He sat in a graceful sprawl, one wrist balanced on the armrest of the box seat. At any moment, he might contemplate his nails.
In the ring, the performance was approaching its culmination. And, by now, it was a performance. The pets were adept and playing to their audience. The sounds that the blond was making had changed in quality, and were rhythmic, in time with the thrusts. The brunet was going to ride him to climax. The blond was stubbornly resisting, biting his lip to try and hold himself back, but with every jarring thrust he was driven closer, until his body shivered and gave of itself.
The brunet pulled out and came, messily, all over his back.
Damen knew what was coming, even as the blond’s eyes opened, even as he was helped from the ring by a servant of his master, who fussed over him solicitously, and gifted him with a long diamond earring.
Laurent lifted refined fingers in a prearranged signal to the guard.
Hands clamped down on his shoulders. Damen’s chain was detached from his collar, and when he did not spring into the ring like a dog released to the hunt, he was sent there at sword point.
‘You kept pestering me to put a pet in the ring,’ Laurent was saying to Vannes and the other courtiers who had joined him. ‘I thought it was time I indulged you.’
It was nothing like entering the arena in Akielos, where the fight was a show of excellence and the prize was honour. Damen was released from the last of his bonds and stripped of his garments, which were not many. It was impossible that this was happening. He felt again a strange sort of sick dizziness . . . Shaking his head slightly, needing to clear it, he looked up.
And saw his opponent.
Laurent had threatened to have him raped. And here was the man who was going to do it.
There was no way that this brute was a pet. He outweighed Damen, big-boned and heavy-muscled, with a thick layer of flesh overlying the muscle. He had been chosen for his size, not his looks. His hair was a lank black cap. His chest was a thick pelt of hair that extended all the way down to his exposed groin. His nose was flat and broken; he was clearly no stranger to fights, though
it was actually difficult to imagine anyone suicidal enough to punch this man in the nose. He had probably been dragged out of some mercenary company and told: fight the Akielon, fuck him, and you’ll be well rewarded. His eyes were cold as they passed over Damen’s body.
All right, he was outweighed. Under normal circumstances, that would not be a cause for anxiety. Wrestling was a trained discipline in Akielos, and one Damen excelled at and enjoyed. But he had had days in harsh confinement, and, yesterday, had endured a beating. His body was tender in places, and his olive skin did not hide all of the bruising: here and there were the telltale signs that would show an opponent where to press down.
He thought about that. He thought about the weeks since his capture in Akielos. He thought about the beatings. He thought about the restraints. His pride was lashing its tail. He would not be raped in front of a room full of courtiers. They wanted to see a barbarian in the ring? Well, the barbarian could fight.
It began, a little sickeningly, as it had begun with the two pets: on their knees, with their arms around one another. The presence of two powerful adult men in the ring released something in the crowd that the pets had not, and the shouted insults, bets and ribald speculation filled the room with noise. Closer, Damen could hear the breath of his mercenary opponent, could smell the rank, masculine smell of the man, over the cloying perfumed roses of his own skin. The red scarf lifted.
The first heave had enough force to break an arm. The man was a mountain, and when Damen matched strength to strength, he found, a little worryingly, that his earlier dizziness was with him still. There was something strange in the way that his limbs felt . . . sluggish . . .