A lovers’ bench nestled inside the bower, creating two curved semi-circles. The courtiers made themselves at ease on it, occupying one side. Vannes suggested wine and a servant was fetched with a tray. One or two other courtiers wandered over, and Vannes struck up a conversation with one of them about the embassy from Patras, due to arrive in a few days.
Damen was lashed to the seat on the other side, facing them.
There was an air of unreality about what was happening. Ancel’s master was delineating the encounter. The slave would be tied up, and Ancel would use his mouth. Vannes protested that it was so rare for the Prince to agree to a performance, they should make the most of it. Ancel’s master would not be swayed.
This was really going to happen. Damen gripped the metalwork of the bower, his wrists cuffed to it above his head. He was going to be pleasured for a Veretian audience. He was probably just one of a dozen discreet entertainments that would unfold in this garden.
Damen’s eyes fixed on Ancel. He almost told himself that this was not the pet’s fault, except that, in a large part, it was.
Ancel dropped to his knees and found his way into Damen’s slave garments. Damen looked down at him and could not have felt less aroused. Even under the best of circumstances, green-eyed, red-haired Ancel was not his type. He looked about nineteen, and though his was not the obscene youth of Nicaise, his body was delicately boyish. His beauty was in fact polished, self-conscious prettiness.
Pet, thought Damen. The word fit. Ancel pushed his long hair to one side, and began without any formality. He was practised, and manipulated Damen expertly with mouth and hands. Damen wondered if he should feel sympathetic or pleased that Ancel was not going to have his moment of triumph: not even half hard under Ancel’s ministrations, Damen doubted he would be able to come for the pleasure of an audience. If there was anything explicit on view, it must be the absence of all desire to be where he was.
There was a faint rustle, and, cool as the water beneath the lily, Laurent came to sit beside him.
‘I wonder if we can do better than this,’ Laurent said. ‘Stop.’
Ancel detached himself from his endeavours and looked up, lips wet.
‘You’re more likely to win a game if you don’t play your whole hand at once,’ said Laurent. ‘Start more slowly.’
Damen reacted to Laurent’s words with inevitable tension. Ancel was close enough for Damen to feel his breath, a hot, focused cloud of heat that rolled in place, a susurration over sensitive skin. ‘Like this?’ Ancel asked. His mouth was an inch from its destination, and his hands slid softly up Damen’s thighs. His wet lips parted slightly. Damen, against his will, reacted.
‘Like that,’ said Laurent.
‘Shall I . . . ?’ said Ancel, leaning forward.
‘Don’t use your mouth yet,’ said Laurent. ‘Just your tongue.’
Ancel obeyed. He tongued the head, an elusive touch, barely the suggestion of itself. Not enough pressure. Laurent was watching Damen’s face with the same cerebral attention that he might apply to a strategic problem. Ancel’s tongue pressed into the slit.
‘He likes that. Do it harder,’ said Laurent.
Damen swore, a single Akielon word. Unable to resist the flickering lures being played across its flesh, his body was awakening, and beginning to crave rhythm. Ancel’s tongue curled lazily around the head.
‘Now lick him. The whole length.’
Cool words preceded a long, hot lick, wet from base to tip. Damen could feel his thighs tighten, then, minutely, spread, his breath quickening in his chest. He wanted out of the restraints. There was a metallic sound as he pulled against the cuffs, his hands fists. He turned towards Laurent.
It was a mistake to look at him. Even in the shadows of evening, Damen could see the relaxed arrangement of Laurent’s body, the marmoreal perfection of his features, and the detached unconcern with which he gazed at Damen, not bothering to so much as glance down at Ancel’s moving head.
If you believed the Prince’s Guard, Laurent was the impregnable citadel, and took no lovers at all. Right now Laurent gave the impression of a mind somewhat engaged, and a body wholly aloof, untouched by ardour. The ribald fancy of the Prince’s Guard held a kernel of plausibility.
On the other hand, the aloof, untouched Laurent was at this moment delivering a precise treatise on cocksucking.
And Ancel obeyed instruction, his mouth doing what it was told. Laurent’s commands were leisurely, unhurried, and he had the refined practice of suspending his engagements at the very moment they began to get interesting. Damen was used to taking pleasure where he wished, touching where he wanted, coaxing responses from his partners as he pleased. Frustration peaked as gratification was stymied, relentlessly. Every part of him suffused with thwarted sensation, the cool air over his hot skin, the head in his lap just one part of a whole that included the awareness of where he was and who was sitting beside him.
‘Push down on it,’ Laurent said.
Damen felt the breath release shatteringly from his chest at the first long wet slide, down onto his cock. Ancel couldn’t quite take it all, though his throat was exquisitely trained, lacking a gag reflex. Laurent’s next order came like a tap on the shoulder, and Ancel drew obediently back up to do no more than suckle the head.
Damen could hear the sound of his own breathing now, even over the clamouring of his flesh. Even without rhythmical attention, diffuse pleasure was beginning to coalesce into something more urgent; he could feel the shift, the orientation of his body towards climax.
Laurent uncrossed his legs, and rose.
‘Finish him off,’ said Laurent, incidentally and without a backwards glance, returning to the other courtiers to make a few remarks about the subject currently under discussion, as though he had no particular need to see out the conclusion now that it was inevitable.
The image of Ancel absorbing his erection was joined in his fragmenting thoughts by the sudden harsh desire to get his hands on Laurent’s body and exact revenge—both for his actions and for his airy absence. Orgasm rolled up like flame over a hot surface, striping out seed that was, professionally, swallowed.