The Price of Freedom (Heirs of the Empire #2)

17. Lukas

17

LUKAS

W hen Elric’s lips meet his, Lukas freezes for a moment. His upper lip still throbs from Little Lamb’s fists. It isn’t until Elric makes a soft, needy, whining noise that Lukas kisses back, ignoring how tender he feels. He slips the tip of his tongue into Elric’s mouth, exploring gently.

This is different to the other kisses they have shared. It feels more delicate, more genuine. It’s not a game anymore where one of them is trying to demonstrate their superiority over the other by exposing their desire. This is vulnerable and real. They both want. They both want hopelessly. Lukas puts his hand on Elric’s face. Elric gasps and lets his mouth open wider.

They kiss deeply, long and slow. Lukas puts his hook on the back of Elric’s head and lets the metal brush over Elric’s scalp.

Elric pulls back a little. He takes Lukas’s hand and strokes over his fingers. “I want these inside me,” he says. “These, and then your cock. Please. Open me with your fingers before you fuck me hard. I want to be yours.”

Lukas has to bite back a moan at the thought. “Yes,” he says in a husky whisper, “I want to touch you there. I want to feel inside you. Lordling, I want to spread you open and have you scream for me.”

“First though, let me,” Elric kisses Lukas’s chin. Then his neck. He is sliding to his knees between Lukas’s legs. He looks up. “I want this too.” Lukas leans against the rocks at his back. He looks down through lust-lidded eyes as Elric tugs his breeches open with his teeth again, freeing Lukas’s cock without using his hands. It’s as thrilling a sight as it was the first time.

And Elric’s mouth is as hot and tight as it was before, sliding over Lukas’s fast-hardening cock. Sucking it deep into his mouth. Moaning with pleasure. Lukas watches Elric’s cheeks hollow and flush a little pink with arousal. He truly does love to give pleasure, Lukas thinks. That wasn’t a lie. But Lukas doesn't allow Elric to suck for long, After a few moments, he reaches down and pulls Elric back up to kiss him again. “Please,” Lukas says softly. “Please let me see you naked.”

“You saw it all,” Elric says. “At the pool.”

Lukas remembers it. His first proper sight of Elric’s pale, elegant body. His sweet little gasp as he waded into the water. It had driven Lukas half mad with desire. If Inga and Little Lamb hadn’t decided to launch their clumsy attack, he would have taken Elric then, in those glittering waters. “Show me again,” Lukas says. He needs to see Elric’s body. “Strip yourself just for me.”

Elric smiles as he stands and takes a step back before he pulls off his ragged silk shirt. He does it slowly, like a man who has stripped himself for the viewing pleasure of another before.

Lukas reaches out and runs his hand down the centre of Elric’s chest. Then he does the same with the back of his hook. Elric gasps. Lukas brushes the hook over one of Elric’s nipples. He teases the bud of it with the point of the hook and Elric groans, head tipping back with pure pleasure. Lukas looks down and sees Elric’s roused cock twitch. His sand-coloured breeches are already darkening from its dampness. “Now, please, Lordling,” he says, voice thick with arousal. “I would see all of you again. I would have you naked before me.”

Elric nods sweetly. He pulls off his boots, kicking them aside. He places his hands on his belt, unfastening it with his eyes on Lukas, before sliding his breeches down his slender legs with the same breathless elegance, finishing standing naked between Lukas’s spread thighs.

Lukas takes a moment to look at him, almost glowing in the light from the rising moon. Lukas can see why Elric’s father thought he would earn coin from this body. He looked pretty enough naked in the pool but bared to Lukas like this, he is sweeter still. His long limbs are nicely shaped. His shoulders are wide and his waist is small. He has a scattering of orangey hair across his chest and sweet pink nipples. His cock nestles in a tangle of the same fiery hair, slender and pale. He has a delicateness, a strange innocence, that stokes desire. His pale skin demands to be touched, to be licked, even gripped a little too tight, bitten and bruised. He looks like something desperate to be ruined. Lukas wants to own him wholly.

He’s so beautiful Lukas’s breath stutters; his heart beats hard. “My beautiful Lordling,” he says softly.

Elric looks at him shyly, head tipped down so his demure gaze is filtered through pale lashes. It’s all show, Lukas knows. His Lordling is not demure. But it makes Lukas burn with want. He reaches for Elric with hand and hook and pulls him close, presses Elric’s bare chest to Lukas’s own still-clothed one and kisses him, trailing the curve of the hook down Elric’s back.

Lukas kisses Elric’s neck and slides his palm over Elric’s chest again. This time he keeps moving downwards, to the glossy orange hair between Elric’s legs. He curls his fingers around Elric’s hard cock, using the wetness at the tip to stroke him there. At the same time, he uses his teeth to worry at Elric’s neck. Elric almost leaps in his arms, yelping with twisted pleasure. Lukas chuckles, kissing the flesh he’s just nipped. Against his skin, Lukas whispers, “Such a pretty slut.”

Elric groans, “I like it when you call me shameful things,” he says, breathless.

Lukas pulls back. He looks at Elric. He places his hook against Elric’s cheek. “Shameful things, like greedy slut, my sweet little whore.? You like that?”

Elric nods eagerly. “Call me so. It’s the truth, isn’t it? Call me so as you fuck me on the ground like an animal.” He bites his lip. “As you promised me.”

Lukas chuckles. “Very well, my beautiful whore. If that is what pleases you.” Together they slide down onto the ground, bodies tangled together. Lukas spreads Elric on his back and kisses him. Face then neck, where he licks and bites. When he pauses, Elric is panting beneath him. Lukas says, “Let me open my salve.”

“Much as I enjoy seeing you open that tin with your teeth,” Elric says breathily, “don’t waste your salve. I have oil. In my belt…,” Elric’s voice breaks into a moan as he finishes thanks to a twist from Lukas’s hand curled around his cock.

Lukas takes his hand from Elric’s cock and reaches for the abandoned belt. He fumbles with the attached pouch and finds a small bottle of oil inside it. “You came prepared?” Lukas says. “Did you bring this with you on your mission to the Mortingale Mountains?”

Elric says, “I bring it everywhere. One never knows when one might meet a dastardly Bastard Prince intent on having his wicked way.”

Lukas laughs as he settles back down on the ground beside Elric. He kisses him as he spiders his oiled fingers down Elric’s back. They come to rest on Elric’s hole. Lukas lets them play there, slipping around, toying with Elric until he pulls back from the kiss and moans out a desperate, “Please.”

“Ask again,” Lukas says hoarsely. “Beg.”

“Put it inside me,” Elric whines back without hesitation. “Fuck me, please.”

Lukas obliges, letting the tip of his oiled finger breach Elric’s asshole. Elric is breathing heavy, eager for more, but Lukas takes his sweet time working that single finger inside Elric, then drawing it out slowly. Once that’s done, he does it again, only a little faster, kissing Elric again as he fucks him, slow and gentle until Elric is writhing.

Lukas kisses Elric’s chin and says, “You like that do you, Lordling? You want to get fucked?” As he speaks he twists his finger to make space and slides in a second, next to it. He curls them inside Elric’s body, making Elric moan.

Elric stammers out a, “Yes, Zai, yes,” as Lukas slips his two fingers in faster, moving more vigorously and cooing in delight as Elric bucks, whimpering with pleasure.

“That good?” Lukas says, teasing the same spot inside Elric that makes him weak.

Elric moans and says, “You know it is, Bastard.”

Lukas laughs and teases there again. Keeps going, fucking his fingers in and out of Elric’s needy hole until Elric is desperate, cock leaking like Zhilvar falls.

“Please, Bastard, please. Fuck me, please.”

The words are so sweet. Lukas growls with desire as he moves into position between Elric’s spread thighs. He pulls off his shirt. Elric reaches up and runs his hand over the straps of the brace.

Lukas looks at Elric’s hand on his chest. “You want me to take it off?” he whispers.

Elric shakes his head. “Keep it on. I like it.”

Lukas’s fingers find Elric’s slick, open hole again. He uses a little of the oil on his fingers to glaze his cock, which is more eager and ready than it has been for anyone in a long time.

Elric is watching him. Lips parted, breath coming ragged as if he can hardly stand to wait a moment longer.

Lukas moves forward and slides his cock into Elric.

Elric moans as Lukas fucks into him, deep and long with the pleasure of it. Lukas lets himself take Elric fully, in one deep thrust. Elric feels so good inside. Hot and tight, drawing him in.

When he’s taken it all, Elric looks up at Lukas, “You’re a lot,” he says raggedly.

“I’ve heard that,” Lukas says back, moving to draw out. The next thrust is all want as he takes Elric harder.

Elric groans, “Please, like that. I can take it rough, even a giant like you.”

“Rough?” Lukas says, breath catching as he moves. “You want to be fucked hard, Underlia?”

Elric swallows. “As hard as you dare, Bastard.”

Lukas takes this as a challenge, which he is sure is why Elric said it. He shifts his body over Elric’s, balancing his weight on his hand and his hook and puts all he has into the next few thrusts, taking Elric’s hole as viciously as he can, slamming in deep again and again with no care for Elric’s comfort or his ability to walk the next morning.

Elric cries out in response, opening his legs wider. He lifts them and wraps them around Lukas’s back, drawing him in to fuck him even harder and deeper.

Lukas cries out too, overwhelmed by the pleasure of it. He shifts his hook on the ground, trying to relieve the pressure on the stump of his arm holding half of his body weight, but then decides to ignore it. It’ll be sore tomorrow, but so will Elric. They will both have some sweet pain to remember this night. He holds himself over Elric and fucks into him again and again, again and again, with all the savagery he has in him. Fucks him like the bastard he is.

After a few moments of this Elric cries out, the loudest cry yet and his whole body tenses and shakes under Lukas. Lukas feels Elric’s hard cock — trapped between their bellies — jolt and spend, thick and warm against his skin.

Lukas looks at Elric. His beautiful face, broken with pleasure. The sight is so exquisite that it drives Lukas into his own spend, waves crashing over him, like nothing he’s ever felt before.

Still breathless, Lukas gathers Elric back into his arms and holds him, kissing his hair. Elric is mewling, making incoherent noises. He nestles Elric close and raises his hook. He pulls off the sleeve, beneath it the blunt end of his arm is reddened and tender. He explores it with his fingers. Checking for any splits in the skin. Elric looks up, noticing what Lukas is doing.

Softly, Elric says, “Did you hurt yourself?”

“I’m probably not as sore as you,” Lukas says.

Elric chuckles. He touches the skin on the end of Lukas’s arm. Lukas sucks in a breath. “That bad?” Elric asks, concerned.

“No,” says Lukas. “No. It’s just…” He takes another sharp breath as Elric’s fingers move on his skin. Move on his skin there. “No one touches that. I don’t let anyone… No one has touched me there since the ignorant healers of Lunatum gaol sewed it back together.”

“Oh.” Elric stills his fingers but he doesn’t remove them. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” says Lukas, surprised that he doesn’t.

“Then let me…” Elric keeps his fingers on Lukas’s stump while he uses his other hand to rummage through Lukas’s clothes. He finds Lukas’s belt pouch and pulls out the tin of salve. He shows it to Lukas. “This will help, won’t it?”

Lukas nods, still barely able to cope with the feel of another person’s touch on the place where he is so broken.

Elric brings the tin to his mouth and opens it with his teeth. Something Lukas has done many times before. Although he has never seen anyone else do it. Now he does, he understands why it bewitches Elric so much.

Elric takes his fingers from Lukas’s sore stump, dabs them in the salve and brings them back, rubbing it cool and slippery over Lukas’s most private skin.

Lukas gasps at the sensation. He rests his head against Elric’s shoulder and closes his eyes. Just letting himself feel it, like waves of soothing calm. Elric takes his time, rubbing the salve into Lukas’s sore skin. When he finishes, he bends his head and kisses Lukas, right on the blunt end of his right arm. Lukas gasps, a pulse of sensation shoots through his body, pleasurable but twisted with shame.

“You really don’t mind it?” Lukas says as Elric lifts his head, looking at Lukas with bright green eyes.

“I told you,” Elric whispers back, lips still pressed to Lukas’s skin. “It makes you beautiful.”

“You said the hook made me beautiful. Not that.”

Elric gives him a soft look. He presses out his tongue and licks over Lukas’s sore skin where it’s glossy from the salve. “I’m not denying I like the hook,” Elric says, with his mouth still close to Lukas’s blunt arm. “How could I? But this is beautiful too. The hook is like the part of you that you show the world. Spiky and dangerous. The Bastard Prince. And this,” — he leans back, setting Lukas’s arm down gently and shifting — “this is what’s underneath. The real you. Lukas. Vulnerable and damaged. Just as beautiful.”

Lukas swallows. His voice comes out heavy, throaty, “Those are sweet words, Lordling. But the Bastard Prince is also me. I am the man with the hook and the man with the bare stump of a ruined arm.”

Elric laughs lightly. “And both are beautiful,” he says leaning in and kissing Lukas’s lips before turning, stowing the tin of salve and nestling himself in Lukas’s lap, his back pressed to Lukas’s chest. As he settles, trying to get comfortable, he shifts awkwardly muttering, “What is that?”

He reaches back and grabs the mirror, which is trapped between their bodies.

Elric tips his head back to look at it. “Oh. It’s your pendant.” He pauses. “The mirror. You always wear this. What is it for? It’s not really for vanity, is it? Is it special?”

Lukas takes it out of Elric’s hand and pulls it off his neck, letting the chain coil around the mirror in his hand. He holds it up. Both their faces are reflected. Lukas’s bruised cheek and bloody mouth, the lower half of his face dark with stubble, and Elric, sweet and pretty beside him, hair like rubies. They look like the demon and the fae maid from the old song.

“When I was starving in Lunatum,” Lukas says, leaning close behind Elric and kissing his cheek. “This was the one thing I never sold. It’s just a mirror. Perhaps I should have sold it. It was the only thing of value I had. But I never did.” Lukas holds the mirror higher. It flashes, capturing the moonlight. “It was my mother’s. It’s silver although it has grown a little tarnished, I suppose.”

Elric leans closer. Raises a hand to take the mirror. Slowly, cautiously as if he knows he’s touching a personal, intimate piece of metal. But Lukas lets him. Elric has touched so many of his secret places, secret things.

Elric holds the mirror delicately in his long pale fingers. “It’s beautiful,” he says.

“My father, Prince Rafus, gave it to my mother,” Lukas says. “It was the only thing of value she owned. She told me he gave it to her because, he said, he wanted her to be able to see her beauty whenever she wished. And she was beautiful. My father is very fond of pretty women. When she died of the summer sickness it was quick. I woke one morning and she was cold in her bed.” Lukas pauses. There is a tightness in his throat.

Elric says, “You don’t have to…”

But Lukas keeps going. “I used the mirror to check for her breath,” he says, not hiding the way his voice cracks to say it. “The way she had shown me how with other servants in the palace who had caught the same sickness. She was too kind, my mother, tending them, of course, she ended up being taken by it?—”

His voice breaks. He cannot say more.

When was the last time Lukas cried in front of another person? The answer comes in a sickening rush. In that cell in Lunatum gaol. In that cell when they…

He refuses to complete the thought. But he cannot stop the tears.

Elric turns around in Lukas’s lap and pulls him close. Lukas puts his face on Elric’s shoulder and lets tears keep coming.

Elric holds him there, long fingers in Lukas’s hair. The forest seems to go quiet all around them. The only sound is Lukas’s broken breathing, his rough sobs onto Elric’s shoulder.

Eventually, he says, “I’m sorry. Fuck. I don’t do that. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” says Elric. “Don’t be sorry.”

Lukas lifts his head. “Your mother’s gone too, I…” Lukas stops. He hasn’t cried for his mother in a long time. Not since he was a boy. A boy crying on Damon’s shoulder.

“I was not a boy of seven when I lost my mother,” Elric says softly.

“I try not to think of her,” Lukas croaks.

Elric nods. He waits and Lukas slowly composes himself. Until he can say, “So, to answer your question, that is what this mirror is. I sold my body in Lunatum, but I never sold this fucking thing. Rafus’s stupid trinket. Even though, after she died, and he took me in and I was raised with his children, I saw how rich he was. I realised this stupid mirror my mother treasured was nothing to him. He probably had a whole box of them he gave out to the meaningless women he bedded. Told them all it was because they were beautiful.” He meets Elric’s eye. “But she liked it. It meant something to her. She said she loved it because Rafus gave it to her and Rafus gave her me. And it’s all I really have of her.”

Elric exhales and turns his head to take Lukas’s mouth in a kiss.

It’s soft, sweet and slow. Lukas fancies Elric can taste all of it. His deep-buried grief for his mother. And all the losses that followed losing her. Along with his frustration at showing this part of himself to Elric.

Elric has peeled back so many of Lukas’s layers of protection. Left him raw and defenceless.

“Bastard Prince,” Elric whispers, putting a hand on Lukas’s cheek. “Runaway boy. Run from the palace, run from the Mortingales, run from Lunatum. You always run away.”

“So do you,” says Lukas.

“I haven’t run from you,” Elric says.

“Not yet, Lordling,” Lukas says. And he wonders if that is what Elric intends to do when they reach Lunatum. Does Elric really mean to simply allow himself to be handed to the Plumians?

Elric will be nothing to the Plumians but the son of their greatest enemy. They will surely kill him. Elric must have a plan.

If Elric tries to run in Lunatum, Lukas cannot blame him. And he isn’t sure if he would truly be able to stand in his way.