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 Sixty: Jorin

60: Jorin

There is a span of time I do not remember. No, I am not speaking of the misty time after I was born and before I could speak. I speak of the hour after the king finished with me. Indeed, I have no memory of his actual finishing, for my mind had fled to some safe corner of my dreams before then.

When at last I surfaced, it was because there was a soft murmuring from somewhere, coaxing me back with a promise of gentle warmth. I gradually became aware that I was lying on my side in a bed somewhere, and that a warm body was wrapped around mine from behind. At the recognition of Sergetten’s scent on the sheets I had the sudden hope that he had transported us back to the keep, far from Maldevar.

“Hold onto it,” he said, quite clearly, into my ear, as if he were aware that I had returned to my body.

He did not say what “it” was, but I knew at the very least he was going to hold onto me until I felt ready to move. It was more of a comfort than I can adequately describe and I was grateful he was there. Had I woken hooded and chained somewhere, I do not know what I would have done nor how I would have borne it.

As my awareness returned, so did my memory. The king using me. Ordering Sergetten to control me magically so that I could neither experience release, nor scream with pain. I shook in his arms as I felt the distinct burn of white-hot anger down my throat and in my gut. “It.” He must have meant hold onto my outrage.

I held it and stoked it, until I wanted little more than to burst from the bedchamber, find Korl, and do something dire. The moment I tried to actually move, though, Sergetten tightened his grip.

“You have a choice to make,” he said.

“I do?”

“Yes. Listen carefully. What you feel inside you, you can bury deep until you have an opportunity to unleash that rage, perhaps on the target you so dearly would like to, or perhaps some other enemy. Or you can give it to me, and I can use it to work a spell.”

“What spell?” I tried to turn in his arms to see his face, and he loosened his hold enough that I could do so. The sheets felt luxurious against my skin and in the dim light of the lantern by the bed I saw we were in what had to be Sergetten’s private rooms in the castle.

“There are two spells we need most now,” he said, shifting so that one of his legs lay across one of mine and he propped his head up on one bent arm. “But before I tell you what they are, understand this. If I burn away your outrage with magic, you will no longer feel toward our king as you do now. You will remember what happened, but you will not feel the same. I will understand if you choose to cling to your hatred and desire for revenge. I find it likely that I would.”

“Am I injured?” I asked. “In… I mean…” I had to close my eyes, trying to escape his penetrating gaze, when I could not bring myself to say what I meant.

I felt a soft brush of his lips against my forehead and opened my eyes again. “You are intact, but fragile. You will heal fully,” he whispered. “If I thought he would have truly ruined you, I would not have allowed it.”

I could not quite bring myself to say thank you for that, but I pressed my cheek against him, drawing a few deep breaths. “All right, then. What are the two spells you might do?”

“One would protect our king’s mind from intrusion by… others,” he said, and I knew he meant from Seroi. “I have worked this spell on him from time to time, but it needs periodic renewal and I fear of late it has been particularly ineffective.”

I said nothing, waiting to hear the other choice.

He laid his palm against my bare chest and I only then realized that he was still fully clothed. “It will be another day or so before I should ride you, Jorin Weltskin,” he said. “However, I could use the energy you have bottled up inside you… to try to locate Kenet.”

I clutched at him as a surge of emotions went through me, nearly as painful as any palsy or spasm. I desperately wanted to see Kenet, to touch him and reassure myself that he was alive. I also did not want him to see me like this. I did not want to kiss him with the taste of hatred on my lips. Oh, except that Sergetten said I would no longer feel toward Korl as I did, once the spell had used up my anger?

“What do you mean, try to find…?” I asked, trying to replace feelings with logic, but not doing very well at it.

“There is no guarantee the spell will work. Far-seeing is difficult and can be unreliable. But I will take what I have seen, and if we can, we will travel to him, as soon as you are able.”

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to sit up.

“You are not,” he said vehemently, pressing me back into the bed. “I would ruin you for certain if I try riding you within a day or two. And that is because it is you, Jorin. Any other boy who withstood what you have I would say not for a week, and even then—” He broke off suddenly, and could not meet my eyes.

“And even then, what?”

I was surprised that his answer was a passionate, yet gentle kiss, one that left me breathless and trembling.

“And even then, some of them might have truly been ruint,” he said. “never fit for Night Magic again. I need to know your mind won’t retreat as it did under Korl, or you will leave us stranded in the wastelands between places, trapped forever.”

“I won’t.”

“You stubborn thing. Just because you say you won’t, does not make it so.” He ran his fingers through my hair. “You know I will be cruel to you and hurt you terribly in order to ride you. So, decide. Keep your feelings bottled up, for they are truly your own and hard earned, or give them to me, and—”

“You cannot seriously believe I would choose to help our king over finding Kenet.”

Sergetten’s eyes flashed with a bit of anger, whether at being interrupted or at my choice, I do not know. “If we hurry to the prince only to leave our enemies stronger, such that our enemies prevail in the end, have we helped the prince at all?”

“This is not your classroom, Sergetten, and you said the choice was mine.”

To my surprise, he chuckled. “But you should make an informed choice. And who says this is not my classroom? There is much I could teach you in this bed, had we time.”

“Very well. I acquiesce to thinking about it further. How likely is it that our enemies will prevail if we do not protect Korl? And is there not someone else you could work a spell like this with if not me?”

He gave another of those answering kisses before speaking. “Even were there to be someone willing easily available to us, I am as bound to you as you are to me, sura’an.”

There was that word. He had used it once before, and I had taken it to mean “my very own slave.” This time it sounded more like “my dearest.”

I sighed. “I can make no other choice. We must find Kenet.”

He sighed in return. “I knew you would say that, and yet I had to ask.” Then there was silence for a long while, as he looked at me, and stroked my hair, his own eyes flickering with thoughts like the surface of a pond full of fish.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I am thinking that blond hair does not suit you at all, and that I may regret keeping something from you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“There is one other choice I did not offer you. I could…” His voice faltered and I found his palm, warm and dry against my cheek. “I could heal you more quickly, both body and mind. I could… take away all the pain and hurt. I make you forget it had happened, if you wanted.”

I shook my head slowly. “You knew I would never choose that over Kenet, so you did not even bring it up.”

He shook his own head in return. “I kept it to myself because it would leave the entire burden of retribution, if there is ever to be any, on me alone. And I do not think I will ever be able to truly raise a hand against him.”

I tried to sit up and this time he let me. “Are you saying I should hold onto my rage because I may need it in the future?”

His breath caught. “I had not been thinking of it in those terms. But… you may have a point.”

I met his gaze. “What would you have to do to me yourself to do the far-seeing and then ride me to wherever Kenet is?”

His shoulders slumped. “You cannot withstand that so soon. And time is short.”

“I can. I can take anything you can dish out, Sergetten.”

His hand gripped me by the hair, pulling me close, his own anger surging up to meet mine. “And if I said what I would have to do would be worse than what Korl did to you? Or even the same? Take your voice, shrivel your sacks, and plough into the least willing hole I can find? Ah, but I do not have the royal flesh, which has a potent magic of its own. For me to achieve the same effect, I’d probably have to fuck you with a knife first. Perhaps you’d enjoy that more, since your blood would make your channel slick for my c—”

He broke off his tirade, and I saw as he closed his eyes how ill the very thought made him. A moment later he thrust me away from him, as if he could barely stand to touch me now.

No. That wasn’t what I wanted at all, and wasn’t what I was trying to do by provoking him. “Sergetten,” I whispered, stricken.

He climbed slowly from the bed, as if he were in great pain.

I scrambled after him and threw myself at his feet, my forehead and palms on the carpeting where he was about to step. “Please. I’m sorry. I… that was wrong. I didn’t mean to provoke you. No, wait, that’s a lie. I’m sorry that I did try to provoke you. You’re right. I’m stupid. I know Night Magic doesn’t work if I… if you aren’t the one in charge. Forgive me. Please.”

The only sound for a few moments was my thundering heartbeat. Then cloth rustled against carpet as he genuflected beside me. A moment after that, I felt relief as his hand came to a gentle rest on my head. “Not so stupid after all,” he said, and I could hear a note of amusement, or maybe even affection in his quiet voice.

“Please, sir,” I tried again. “Please tell me what to do now.”

“Do not make any decisions just now. You need to rest a bit more first, and to consider your options in a clearer frame of mind.”

“Yes, sir.” I shivered.

“You will pay for your transgression later.” His thumb stroked me behind my ear and I hummed under the kindness I was not sure I deserved. “For now, I think you need to experience something that will bring you into better balance.”

“Sir?”

“Like for example, the pleasure that you were denied earlier. Come back to bed.”

His hand lifted, and when I looked up, he was standing by the side of the bed, with the covers drawn back.

I got to my feet. “Well, if there is to be balance,” I said, “then surely my pleasure should not be singular?”

He raised an eyebrow as if to question, but said, “Not so stupid after all.”

“Please, sir,” I said, running my hands down his shirt, waiting for permission to help him remove it.

“Call me by my name,” he said then, his eyes shining in the lantern light. “I am no less your Master for it.”

“Sergetten,” I said, helping him out of his shirt.

He pushed me onto the bed and shucked the rest of his clothes as he followed me, flattening me against the linens and rubbing his cock in the hollow of my hip. One of his hands knocked something from the table beside the bed, but my attention was on him, on the lips nibbling up a tendon in my neck, and the hot flesh sliding against my skin.

I sucked in a breath as a greasy hand wrapped around my cock, and then he shifted position so that our two cocks rubbed together in his grip.

“We’ll come together,” Sergetten rasped as he rubbed against me. “And not because of any spell.”

“Then how?” I asked, breathless.

“Because I can hold back, and my cock is not going to stop this—” He squeezed the flesh in his grip as he thrust again. “—until I’ve wrung your milk from you.”

“Use my name, Sergetten,” I whispered, my breath shortening as my arousal deepened, “I am no less yours for it.”

And he did. He cried it aloud as we both came.

* * *

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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.