Chapter 1 #2
I like to think I know something of the Warlord after all the time we’ve spent living in close quarters and behind his anger is pain of a kind he isn’t used to feeling.
I dare to reach and move his hair behind a tall, Elven ear.
He starts but lets me, moving his ear in a pleased fashion.
He won’t look at me. “I loved you before the oath, Baya. Do you doubt me?”
His eyes glisten when he looks at me; my palm rests on his cheek. “I do not doubt you.”
“Then stop this nonsense. Or your breakfast will get cold and I’m not taking the blame for that.”
He smirks. “You’ll take the blame all right. You are to blame, kicking all other thought but you out of my head and monopolizing the space.”
I lean in to kiss him. “Apologize.”
“For what?”
“You were mean to my cock, Baya, and for no good reason.”
He smiles. “Don’t need one.”
“At least finish the job.”
He has a wry expression on his face and pulls me toward the table seating me on his lap. “Can’t. You said so yourself, the breakfast will get cold.”
Arse.
“Besides, I have something for you.”
I nuzzle into his neck and feel him sink into the closeness.
I love our banter, but I don’t like fighting with him that way.
It reminds me too much of the beginning and while our beginning has some comical highlights, I’d rather what we have now.
“If it’s another hairbrush, I decline. My arse is spanked enough thank you. ”
He laughs. “It’s not a hairbrush, but thanks for reminding me. I haven’t taken that to your backside in too long.”
I groan. “What’s my present?”
“After breakfast,” he says, forking a sausage, taking a bite and then feeding me the other half. “But I shall give you a hint.”
He lifts my hand the one the ring on it that was given to me by Papa at my coming-of-age ceremony. “It was in a bag with this.”
I think about that bag. A bag with three contents, stolen from my room the day after my wedding. Ring. Dagger. Tunic.
Sharp pain slices through my heart. It’s quick though, so quick I’m able to carry on as nothing happened.
I doubt he’ll return my dagger to me. “Is it my tunic?”
He smiles wide. “Don’t worry little human, it is safe. Eat your breakfast and then you shall find out.”
I breathe in relief, but at the same time, a thousand sensations make their way to the surface, feelings, and thoughts stir, ones that haven’t stirred in a long time. I don’t allow myself to think about him. I won’t say his name.
But the thought creeps in about what he would have done if he’d found that tunic.
I bet he’d have done to it what I did to Bayaden’s shirt earlier.
I resented him for taking me from my family.
It was his fault I had my title stripped, he never heard me, he did what he wanted when he wanted. He was selfish. Arrogant. Pig-headed.
And yet, I loved him.
I love him.
I wipe a tear from my eye.
I can barely eat my breakfast, but I do since Bayaden has this weird thing about me eating. He leaves me to finish, and heads to the back of his closets, returning with something on a hanger. “Is that my…? But it’s got …”
“Pants.” He holds out both my Markaytian battle tunic and a new, matching pair of pants, proud. “I couldn’t let you wear such a nice battle tunic with those hideous things you wear. I had them made in the same color as like you would have had at home.”
It is burgundy.
Home. I know this sounds fucking sappy, but these days home isn’t a place like it was when I was a kid, it’s when the end of the day comes and I lay with Bayaden in his bed, looking at the stars out his window.
You had another home once, Tristan.
But why? Why was he home too? None of it makes any sense. Corrik cared about Corrik.
You just said his name.
Ugh, stop it brain. Besides, I didn’t say it. I thought it, there’s a difference.
“I wear these ‘hideous pants’ because you won’t allow me anything else,” I say.
These pants are my only article of clothing and I’m lucky to have them at all.
Receiving another article of clothing is a big deal.
Not to mention, Bayaden’s never given me a gift before; I had to steal the pants I’m wearing, with the only other thing on my body—the black collar bearing his insignia.
I don’t know what to say. I stand and rush over to him, he hands me the outfit.
I hug it, and can still smell home on the tunic, a smell that will never leave it no matter how much it's washed: blood, mud, and sweat.
It reminds me of Father. I miss my father.
What would he have to say about you? You didn’t even try to escape. You didn’t want to. Aldrien was a convenient place to hide.
Things with Corrik were so hard though. Things with Bayaden are easy.
“Thank you, Bayaden. I have no words. This is the nicest thing someone’s done for me in a long while.
” This tugs at the threads of me and I’m a loosely sewn cloth at best these days.
“Does this mean we’re boyfriends? Are we going together?
What do you Elves call it?” I love teasing the giant Warlord.
“You’re a hair away from a spanking,” he says.
I smile and press my lips to his. “Thank you,” I murmur. “This is most precious.”
He inhales as I kiss him, gathers me into his arms and then tosses me onto the bed. Most slaves don’t wear clothes in the palace. Being given clothes is meaningful; I’ve just gained a bit of status for myself.
Bayaden begins to ravage me like a madman after that.
He nips and bites at my neck, sucking his way along my thigh where his mouth clamps down and I moan at the lovely pain.
I release my new prize, the clothes, in favor of his dark hair, which I cling to by the root and he lets go my thigh in favor of my cock.
He’s only teasing me though; I know he wants to fuck me.
Before long, he’s readied my entrance for him, though there’s seldom a time anymore that my entrance needs much readying—we fuck a lot. He slams into me with wild abandon pouring the feelings he cannot say into each thrust.
We kiss. “I love kissing you, Tristan.” His tongue weaves with mine, he thrusts some more, his hands are all over my body, he thrusts again and we’re both breathing as if we’ll never get air.
He comes, releasing his seed into me, and without any more urging from my cock, I come just after him.
Without stopping to clean ourselves, he flips me over and we begin again.
I don’t worry over Corrik for the rest of the morning, but he’s entered my sphere again and like Corrik does, his energy barges in and takes over everything.