The Slave (Free Men Book 1)(20)

I covered his hands with my own, lacing our fingers together, and he  smiled a sad, soft smile which said he knew my heart already, knew it  all without me needing to give voice to my desires. The kiss that  followed was slow and sweet, full of aching tenderness which melted me  from the inside out. I cupped his face, his strong, bristled jaw,  welcomed him into my arms and between my legs. We made love in his bed,  face-to-face, just me and him, and I could almost pretend we were both  free men: two lovers doing everything lovers do. Or perhaps we were both  slaves, captivated by one another, and perhaps, for the briefest of  spells, I owned him as thoroughly and completely as he owned me.

He fell asleep with me in his arms, and afterwards I washed cursorily in  the cold water of his stone basin and left, closing the heavy oak door  softly behind myself. I turned into the corridor outside my quarters,  squaring my shoulders, prepared to face down the sneering guard  stationed outside Kai's chamber. I hated having to return at all,  refusing to accept that there was anything shameful in waking beside  Master in the morning if there was no shame in how he used me at night.

Kai's door was open.

I took a hurried step forward, my heart in my mouth, before I made out  the guard's bulky frame in the dim light. He was blocking the doorway,  which reassured me Kai was indeed inside and hadn't made some desperate  bid to escape, but I couldn't understand why he hadn't been locked in.

"Tam? Is that you?"

I drew level with the guard, but it was not he who had spoken.

"Kai? Why are you still awake?"

I couldn't see into the room around the guard's imposing form, but it sounded like Kai was standing on the other side of him.

"Can I get in?" I asked primly, trying to put as much authority into my  voice as I dared. The guards were not slaves, but free Thirskans hired  for their service. This man in particular was fond of sneering at my  position, but he dared not harm me, nor obstruct my free movement around  the compound. We all had our orders to obey.

Grudgingly, he stepped aside, bumping my shoulder and causing me to  stagger as he did so. Refusing to be goaded, I entered Kai's room and  pointedly closed the door in the man's face. Always one to have the last  word, I heard him promptly turn the key in the lock.

Choosing to ignore the guard's show of childishness, I fixed my  attention on Kai. The room was dark, save for what little light spilled  in through the uncovered windows, his face lit in stark black and white,  his eyes two sunken pits in his pale face.

"What's wrong?" I asked immediately.

"You've been hours," he said, more than a trace of accusation in his tone. "What were you doing?"

"Do you really have to ask?"

I flinched as Kai scowled and turned away, flinging himself onto his bed and under the covers.

"What?" I demanded, not in the mood for another of his tantrums. After  sex I was always too vulnerable, my insecurities too near the surface. I  wore my heart on my sleeve for the daws to peck at.

"Nothing," he mumbled sulkily, burrowing deeper under the comforter so  only the top of his shorn head showed in the silvery ringlight pouring  through the window.         

     



 

"No, out with it. You didn't have to stay, you weren't forced to do  anything you didn't want, and I know you're not disgusted by it, so why  are you acting like this? I've done nothing wrong!"

"You're pretty defensive for an innocent man," he said with a sneer.

I made a frustrated sound. "I'm not apologising," I declared. "You can't  make me feel guilty about this, Kai. You can't. I love him."

"‘I love him'," he parroted. "So what? Does he love you?"

I recoiled as though slapped. "That's not fair," I whispered. "You know that's not fair."

"Why isn't it?" he demanded, sitting upright and facing me. "Shouldn't  you want that? Wouldn't you rather go to bed with someone who actually  loves you, Tam? Or have you sold yourself to the first man who'll even  have you?"

I don't remember crossing the room, or throwing the first punch, or what  I said as I did it. I'd never been in a fight before, never exchanged  so much as a cross word with another member of the household, and yet  here I was wrestling Kai on the bed like a seasoned fighter, raining  down blows and screaming for him to take his words back. In that moment I  hated him completely, with a burning intensity I never knew I possessed

I got in maybe four or five decent blows before Kai overcame his shock  and the soldier took over, neatly flipping me onto my back, straddling  my hips and pinning my arms either side of my head. I continued to  thrash and writhe, bucking to throw him off, but Kai was strong, and  he'd been trained to overpower and subdue others. My anger abated as he  patiently held me, subsiding into guilt, remorse, and shame.

"I'm sorry," I said immediately, going lax under him so he'd know I'd stopped resisting. "Did I hurt you?"

Kai shook his head with a smirk. "You'll have to try harder than that."

I laughed despite myself, and after a moment Kai chuckled with me, the  throaty sound resonating through me. Just like that, I was conscious of  our proximity and position, the way his weight rested on my abdomen, our  groins separated by only the thinnest scraps of cloth. I found myself  growing serious as I studied the outline of his lips in the half-light.

Kai, too, stilled, although his breathing picked up a notch: light,  shallow breaths, hardly daring to make a sound for fear, perhaps, of  breaking the trance we were falling into. Unconsciously I moved my hips,  swiped my tongue across my lower lip, damp with anticipation.

Kai recoiled, swift and decisively. "No," he muttered. "You can't get around me like that."

"Get around you?" I sat upright, genuinely curious. "I wasn't trying to get around you, Kai."

"Well, what were you doing?" he demanded.

"Nothing! You were on top of me, remember?"

Even in the darkness, I could tell he was blushing.

"Not for that," he grumbled.

I smiled and crept closer. "No?" I asked quietly.

"N-no."

"But you thought about it." On my hands and knees, I approached the  nervous ball Kai had become. "How long has it been, Kai? When was the  last time hands other than your own touched you? The last time someone  took you to bed and made love with you?"

He was trembling, I could feel the ripples through the thin mattress,  but I continued my approach, emboldened by the darkness and Kai's  reticence. He might be stronger than me, more worldly and experienced,  but in matters of the bedroom, I definitely had the upper hand.

Maybe I was being cruel, but I didn't care. Not right then. Master used  my body on a regular basis without needing to love me, and I wanted,  just once, to know what that felt like. To enjoy the pleasure and  release of sex without the accompanying heartache, the dirty feeling of  having been used; the hollow sensation of loving and giving my all  without hope of being loved in return. If neither of us loved the other,  perhaps sex would be different, fun.

Kai unfurled as I crept forward, until I was over him on my hands and  knees. I tipped my head, contemplating his mouth, and the long strands  of my hair brushed over his torso. I heard him swallow.

Slowly, with my eyes open to watch him the whole time, I lowered my head  to taste his mouth. He made a small, panicked sound as I kissed him,  but didn't pull away. Indeed, he followed as I withdrew, a soft moan  floating between us. I licked my lips, savouring the residual sensation.

I was still contemplating my next move when Kai grabbed me, his slim  fingers sliding over my scalp as he pulled my head down, crushing our  mouths together.         

     



 

The kiss was clumsy, all teeth and tongues, a far cry from the gentle,  measured kisses Master regularly bestowed, or even the urgent, demanding  ones when he was lost in his lust enough to devour me alive. Kai clung  to me with something akin to desperation. He made animal noises deep in  his throat, little half-moans and sighs and grunts I couldn't have  interpreted if I tried.

I let him kiss me, remaining calm and placid in his arms until we found a  rhythm, the kiss slowing and deepening from its initial urgency to a  more leisurely exploration of each other's mouths.

I settled across Kai's body, flexing against him, fully aligned from  head to hips. He was hard in his loincloth: painfully hard. The thin  material stretched over the damp tip of his sex, and I ground against  him, the sensation making us both groan. I reared off him only for the  space of time it took to tear the material free, stripping myself at the  same time. The moment our bodies touched, he let out a strangled gasp  and clawed my shoulders, wrapping his legs around mine, desperately  humping against me. I could tell it wasn't going to take him long to  reach his climax, but I wanted this moment to mean something to him,  give him the barest understanding of what I felt when I was with Master.  I wanted him to know, in the very bones of his soul, that he was with  another man. There would be no denying what we had done come morning.