“Dushka, my beloved, not only allows me to fuck around with other men, he encourages it,” I told Appius. “Sometimes he likes to watch other men fucking me.” I didn’t elaborate, because I didn’t think Appius was ready for that yet.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Leander and Darius react to my statement by staring at each other with wide eyes, as though they thought even more of me for the revelation. I was surprised that I hadn’t bragged about my and Dushka’s sensual adventures to them before.
Appius, on the other hand, just looked confused.
“Do you want me to leave?” he asked, lowering his head a little.
I suddenly felt awful. I could have picked a better time to tell Appius that we could fuck around as much as we liked, but I would never fall in love with him. Sometime when we hadn’t just spent the morning standing in lines in the snow while soldiers ransacked our homes, then killed two men in front of us, and when there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.
“I don’t want you to leave if that’s not what you want,” I said, sliding my hand over to take Appius’s. “Like I said, Dushka is fine with me fucking around. And right now, I think it would be a great comfort to have someone to hold close at night. For both of us. If that’s what you want.”
“It…it is,” Appius said, furrowing his brow and looking deeply confused. “I never would have imagined it, but…I…need someone right now.”
I nodded. “You can stay in my bed as long as you’d like, and take whatever comfort you need from me,” I said. “I just need you to understand that my heart belongs to someone else. But I do like you.”
I was convinced I was making a mess of the whole thing. I could fuck around until I was blue in the face—with the men Dushka and I found to play with or with the other Sons—but I felt like I was walking on a precarious ledge to try to take what I needed in the moment from an inexperienced man who might not know how to just give his body and not his heart.
“I don’t want to be alone,” Appius said after a long pause, blowing out a breath, his shoulders slumping. “Not right now.”
“Good,” Leander said, sweeping over to us and throwing an arm around Appius’s shoulders. “We’ll all look out for you. You can be our puppy to take care of.”
I nearly spit out the gulp of water I’d just taken. The idea of Appius being the household pup was bizarre and entertaining, and more appealing than I wanted it to be.
Which made me wonder if that was how the whole institution of pupdom had gotten started in the first place—younger, vulnerable, scared men in the wild places of the frontier placing their trust in a group of older, tougher, stronger men who could protect them, but for a price.
“And who knows?” Darius said, coming up to Appius’s other side—which involved shoving me out of my seat—and ruffling a hand through his hair. “Once Conrad stretches that asshole of yours a bit, maybe we can all play with you.”
“Together or separately?” Mara asked in a deadpan. God only knew what she thought of what was going on around her. Then again, she’d spent a lot of time in the palace.
Leander and Darius exchanged a look, then said, “Yes?” in unison.
I sensed an opportunity to lighten the mood, so I grabbed at it. “Come on now, you two,” I said, straightening and leaning over the table to tidy up. “You haven’t even worked on me to the point where I can take both of you at once, so don’t even think of messing around with Appius that way yet.”
“That’s a good point,” Leander said, pretending to be serious with Darius. “We said we were going to stretch Conrad enough so that he could take both of us at once and we never did.”
“I think we should definitely devote some time to that now,” Darius agreed, as if the two of them were discussing how best to study for an exam. “Seeing as how I predict we will all have more time on our hands going forward.”
“What do you mean?” Appius asked, glancing back and forth between Leander and Darius as they towered over where he sat. “Two at once?”
I sent Leander and Darius a teasing look of warning, but, of course, they didn’t listen to me.
“What we mean, sweetheart, is both my brother and I shoving our cocks up Conrad’s asshole at the same time,” Darius said, imitating Magister Flaccus at his loftiest.
Appius’s mouth dropped open, and he glanced at me across the table, where I was picking up after Lucius and Mara, who had moved to the sofa when Leander and Darius started their salacious suggestions.
“Is that even possible?” Appius squeaked. “I mean…how would two cocks even fit?”
“The human body is a remarkable thing,” Darius said, still imitating Magister Flaccus.
“And the anal sphincter is a surprisingly flexible muscle,” Leander added, even snootier than Darius. “When prepared and trained, it can widen enough to accept all sorts of things.”
“Which implies we should begin training Conrad’s anus with a series of increasingly girthy plugs in preparation,” Darius said with a nod.
I rolled my eyes and chuckled. Though it was a testament to just how anxious and desperate for distraction I was that the idea of having something thick and intrusive up my ass for extended periods of time in order to prepare for two thick and intrusive things up my ass for a short time sounded like a good idea.
“You all can plot whatever you’d like,” I said, grabbing my glass from the table and drinking the last of my water, “but I have a bedroom to put back in order. And once I’m done with that, I’m going to see if we can take our laundry to the bathhouse or if that’s out of bounds until we’re allowed out of our houses.”
“They can’t keep us locked up for long,” Darius said, getting up to return to cleaning the common room. “Otherwise, the house would just be a prison inside a prison inside a prison.”