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 Eighty-Five: Kenet

85: Kenet

I slept in his arms. Yes, I did. I was a fool to waste even a moment grieving over my petty illusions, wasn’t I? A fool to waste even a moment of precious time we could have spent together. We might all be killed in the coming attack on the castle. And my suffering was nothing when weighed against his. Nothing at all. I should have been the one tied to the post and called a fool.

I would waste not a moment more. I slept in his arms, where I had belonged ever since the first time I had clung to him and refused to let go.

I woke gradually, to the scent of him and the warmth of his body pressed against me, to the realization that he was rutting slowly, our two hard lengths against one another, my legs entwined with his. He made a sound that made me think he was still dreaming.

I tilted my head back, tucking his mouth against my neck, need flaring through me. But I would have to wake him. I could not submit to another painful breaching like our first time. Not unless that was what he truly wanted… but I knew he did not.

I encircled our two shafts with my hand, and he gasped as he came awake suddenly.

“Kenet—!”

“Shh. It’s not quite dawn,” I whispered.

He raised his head, trying to see in the gloom of the large command tent around us.

“We’re alone,” I said. Roichal and Marksin had gone elsewhere for the night; back to Marksin’s tent, I think. “Jorin…”

His attention focused on me, then. Though it was too dark to see the expression on his face, I felt his attention as surely as I would have felt the heat from a torch held close. The need surged then, becoming an ache deep in me, a hole that needed to be filled, but only one key would fit that lock.

My fingers trembled against his cock, while I tried to muster the right words.

His lips on mine took away my need to speak, and when he pulled back, he whispered. “I know. I know what you’re feeling. I’m sorry. I’ll control it better with practice.”

He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, and the ache receded from the painful edge, until it was almost pleasurable. But I swept my fingertips up his cock then, and the painful desire in me flared once more and he gasped helplessly.

“Kenet!” His hands were strong around my wrists and he flattened me under him, trapping my hands to either side of my head while he rutted in the crook of my hip. “No wonder Sergetten tied my hands—!”

My heart pounded, unavoidably afraid that I had provoked him into taking me mercilessly, but at least this time I was aroused, too. Aroused and hungry for him. What a difference that made! “I need you,” I whispered, while trying not to tremble. “I didn’t realize touching you would… would…”

“Would make me want to bury my sword in your sheath?” He trembled, too, as he struggled to control his lust. “I promise I shall never deny you my milk, my seed, which I know you need to live. But lightning strike me, do not provoke me needlessly or heedlessly, Kenet! You are my slave, not my slut.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you angry! Is it wrong to want you so much?”

“Hush hush.” He kissed me on the forehead. “No, it is not wrong.” He kissed my mouth briefly. “It is one of the joys I live for, you wanting me. And I am not angry, merely struggling with the part of me that wants to bury myself to the hilt in you again. That did not go so well for you last time. I am new to this side of the magic, Kenet. It has me in as strong a grip as it has you.”

I could not help but moan as I felt the leaking tip of him drag across my belly and then brush my own cock.

“If I am to be the master of you,” he went on, “I must discipline myself, as well. I must be the master of this magic and my own desires as well as yours.” He drew another of those deep breaths, and although my lust for him did not abate, the painful need did. I sighed in relief and he loosened his grip on my wrists somewhat.

He rubbed our cocks together in the dark, then guided one of my hands down to take them both in my grip once more. It was almost like it was in the days before Seroi began “tutoring” me.

Oh. Maybe that was what Jorin meant for it to be like. Returning us to the way we had been in the winter, innocent of any touch but each other’s. His mouth found mine, and his kiss was familiar, and my heart leapt to realize that. I had not forgotten, and the men I had been with could never erase my memory of his mouth, of my first kiss and a thousand kisses after, shared with him night after night under the covers of my bed. Would this have been how he began it, if we had been together that night, the night I had resolved to give myself to him completely? What would he have done next after kissing me?

I did not find out what he would have done next, though, as a bloodcurdling scream seemed to echo through the valley, far too loud to simply be a man.

Before we could move to pull on cloaks and stumble outside, though, the scream was replaced by laughter. Seroi’s laughter.

The mage’s voice seemed to come from all directions. “I know you’re there, little pests. Little ants. Scurrying to hide but waiting to attack. I know you are there. Kenet, I know you are there with your would-be master.”

Another scream split the air and I blinked as the glow of pre-dawn daylight seeped into the world around us.

“Deliver yourself to me, both of you, and I shall let both Korl and Sergetten live. The two of your lives in an even trade for theirs. I shall even leave them intact in body and mind… though I cannot promise that Sergetten is unscathed…”

Another scream, and this time Jorin clapped his hands over his ears, as if he could not bear to hear it.

“After all, he betrayed me and is paying a price for that. But as I say, your king and he shall be intact. That is, if you make it to Maldevar on time. If you would like the torture to cease, you will present yourselves at the Rose Gate when the sun is high. If you are not there by then, I’m afraid the serious maiming shall begin. And if you are not bowing before me by sundown, both of their lives are forfeit. Come to me, my prince. There is no more need for war.”

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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.