Welcome to The Prince’s Boy by Cecilia Tan, a tale of a prince and his whipping boy ensnared in a plot of dark erotic magic. Warning: explores themes of dubious consent and situations of sexual jeopardy. NSFW.

A new chapter appears every Wednesday. This week is Chapter Twenty: Jorin

20: Jorin

I woke as Bear was carrying me across the courtyard, cradled in his arms.

“Lie still,” he said.

“I have little other choice,” I replied, “given how you are holding onto me. What happened?”

“You’ll remember in a little while. Or maybe you won’t. Had a bit of Footsoldier’s Ease and it can make you loopy.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” I tensed now, starting to worry. “Am I lame? Have I lost a limb?”

“Hush. Do you remember anything about horses?” He shouldered open an inner door and took me toward the wing of the castle that contained our rooms.

“Ah, yes.” We had been practicing dueling on horseback, fighting with wooden swords which were, I soon learned, used more often to try to knock one’s opponent from the saddle than to strike a blow with. “Did I fall?”

Bear chuckled, and held close to his chest as I was, I could feel it rumble. “Not so much as leap from your saddle to your opponent’s, which worked like a charm until his horse decided to unseat you and attack you himself.”

“Oh.” I had no memory of that at all. “Well, no one told me the horse was allowed to fight, too…”

He laughed again. “Kicked you in the face a mite harder than that soldier a couple of weeks ago, and then stepped on your ankle. It’s only your boot that saved it from being crushed completely. As it is, you won’t be walking on it for a while, I don’t think. They have a good bonesetter down there, and he gave me a decoction for you to take. If you’re lucky, you’ll be walking again in a few days. If you’re not… well, let’s just not think about that.”

“All right,” I said, solemnified by his words. The torches flickering caught my attention. I hadn’t even realized it was nightfall. Kenet would have gone to banquet without me. I hoped he had done nothing to incur his father’s wrath tonight, for I would be unable to stand in front of all assembled if he bade me to.

Bear took me to his own room first, and lay me back on the bed. “Are you sleepy? Hungry? You should be sleepy, but it will be some time before you want food in your stomach again.”

I shook my head. “I am not sleepy. I was asleep long enough under the potion’s powers,” I said. Then I jerked my chin toward the mirror. Bear nodded and closed the cabinet doors over it. Then he sat very close by the bed so that we didn’t have to raise our voices. “Someone has put a spell on him that prevents him from telling me certain things,” I said.

“Someone,” Bear repeated with a significant glance toward the mirror. There was only one someone with that kind of power, now that Sergetten was gone.

I nodded in agreement. “I think… I think Kenet and he…” I could not say it either, but not because of any spell on me. A wave of dizziness seemed to rise up from my stomach and I put a hand over my mouth.

Bear put a hand on my stomach, steadying me. “You’ll feel the aftereffects of the decoction for a while.” And then in the same breath, “Is he a threat?”

“I don’t know. Since he can’t speak to me of it, what can I do but guess?”

Bear gritted his teeth. “They say there are secrets only mages and royalty know…” His face was wrinkled with skepticism. “I overheard the king say that Prince Kenet was practicing for his coming of age ceremony with the Lord High Mage.”

I pondered that. Kenet had all but told me that Seroi touched him and gave him release… could I be wrong about the threat? Was this just some kind of royal manhood rite I was meant to be ignorant of? Surely if it were the case, it would have to be a closely guarded secret. The people, as a matter of course, would not accept a ruler who was a milksucking Frangi-lover. Perhaps that was why the secret was guarded with a spell?

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “You may be right and that is all it is, a bound secret for royalty and mages alone, but I think that is the source of his sickness. The practice. Or the magic itself. I don’t know.” I felt great enmity toward Seroi then, but I did not know if it were that I truly worried he was hurting Kenet, or just that I now saw him as a rival for Kenet’s body, Kenet’s affections.

No, I thought. Surely Kenet was not affectionate with him at all. Surely if they performed some perverse but necessary rite, it meant nothing…

Another wave of dizziness hit me from the decoction. This time I closed my eyes and went off into a dream and did not wake up again until I heard the frits singing. I opened them to find it still dark, and Kenet clinging to me under the coverlet.

I was half undressed, as if that was as much as Bear could stand to do. I could feel Kenet’s bare flesh touching me everywhere, though.

“Sky above,” he swore softly as I stirred. “I was worried you’d never wake.”

I grunted and turned onto my side, pulling him against me. I was still wearing breeches, but my hand slid down his bare leg and then cupped his buttock. “Did Bear tell you a horse attacked me?”

“Yes.” His lips found mine and I kissed him deeply, pulling back suddenly in the dark. “What’s wrong?”

“You taste bitter,” I said, reaching up to cup his face. There was a little light from a single candle above the bed. Would this hair, fair enough to almost mark him a Frangi, turn dark like his father’s after his coming of age ceremony? I didn’t care what color his hair was, but I was worried about the taste of his tongue. “Is this more of Seroi’s doing? Just stay silent if the answer is yes.”

He was perfectly silent, making not a sound.

I tried to move my foot and found I still could not feel it. It was immobilized with bandages; I had seen them, but I could not feel them.

A thought came to me then.

“Pinch me if by your silence you mean yes.” My heart leapt as he squeezed my arm gently. “So. You cannot speak of your secrets, but you would tell me if you could.” Another squeeze. “And apparently you can pinch me, but not say the words.” A more emphatic squeeze.

“Have you been practicing something secret related to your coming of age?” Yes. “Something that is secret because it involves… this?” I slid my hand over his skin until I reached his prick, and was gratified to feel it come to life quickly in my grip. Yes.

I was dying to ask what Seroi did, but I couldn’t even fathom what ritual magic might require. I knew he touched him like this, that he milked Kenet, and I also knew he didn’t penetrate him, not in the way the men in the barracks said the Frangi did their boywhores. I didn’t know what else to ask.

Instead, as I felt the head of his cock grow slippery with his eagerness, I turned the questions to other things. “Do you like it when I touch you like this, Kenet?”

A more emphatic squeeze yes.

“Do you like it slow?”

Yes.

“But…” I teased, tugging quickly and lightly with a ring of my fingers just under the cleft of the head, something I did to myself when I wanted to reach release quickly before going to train with the guard. “You like it fast, too.”

Yes.

“Hm. I want to kiss you as you come,” I said, “but you taste too bitter. Would you suck my milk, Kenet?”

Yes!

“Be careful of the bandages…” I let go his cock and he dove under the blanket, finding the opening of my breeches in the dark and pulling them off me. A few moments later, the wet bliss of his mouth found its target.

The decoction was still running through my system, and I know it was supposed to make me feel everything less. But with his mouth on me I felt all the more. I pulled the covers up, over my own head, hiding us both in the dark.

Now he could not speak because his mouth was full of my flesh. No reason not to keep talking to him though, now that he had a way to answer. “Squeeze twice for no,” I said.

He squeezed once to acknowledge.

“Do you like the taste of my milk, my prince?” One squeeze, yes.

“I like the taste of yours usually, too, but lately it has been bitter. Did you know that?”

No, he didn’t.

“I wonder if it will run sweet again after your coming of age ceremony? Do you think it will?” No answer. He didn’t know what to think, then.

“But you know, my prince, if you wanted me to suckle your prick, I would, no matter what poison might run through your veins,” I said, my voice low. He squeezed my thighs emphatically then, and I thrust into his mouth, reminding him to pay attention. “I would,” I repeated. “You need only ask.”

He started to lift his head and I don’t know what came over me, but I put my hand on the back of his head and kept him there, my prick driving between his lips. “If you asked it, I would give it to you,” I continued. “Any desire of the flesh, Kenet, no matter how…” I broke off then, unable to even say that what we shared might be wrong. It didn’t feel wrong when we were in bed together. It all felt right. “Any desire you have,” I repeated. “I would do anything for you, Kenet. Anything at all. And I have a feeling you would do the same for me.”

Another emphatic yes, but again I did not let him lift his mouth free to speak it. Instead I tightened my grip in his hair and thrust up harder into his mouth, spilling directly into him. He made satisfied sounds as he swallowed, then licked as I softened. When I let go, he surged up and kissed me, and I tasted the tang of my own milk as we emerged from the covers.

“Your turn,” I said.

Now he spoke, at last. “Just use your hand, Jorin, if it tastes like poison. I… I worry it could be harmful to you.”

“Harmful?”

“I worry,” he repeated.

I reached down and stroked him. “Are you sure…” I whispered in his ear, “that you do not want me to take your prick into me like a Frangi boywhore would?”

Just the idea was enough to send him over the edge, spilling into my fingers. I held up my hand then for him to lick clean, and in the wan light I could see the face he made. “Bitter like ash,” he said with a frown.

I rubbed my dry thumb along his cheek. “Your skin has had an ashen look of late, too.”

He hugged me tightly then. “I hope it will end with the ceremony.”

“Me, too, my prince. Me, too.”

* * *

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About the author: Cecilia Tan is the award-winning author of many erotic books and stories and the founder of Circlet Press.