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Keilusa watched quietly as the gladiator dragged his defeated opponent in front of the imperial terrace, his back turned to the cheering masses behind him. From any other fighter, Keilusa would expect boasting, exaggerated entertainment to win the favor of an even greater patron.
The gladiator beneath his feet had no need for such actions, having already won the highest possible favor he could. Though, and only now did Keilusa allow his lips to curl into a smile, he supposed in all the years in the arena, the young man had never shown any such inclinations in the first place, defeating his opponents as quickly as possible, never once struggling with the collar around his neck.
He did not deliver particularly kind deaths, only efficient ones.
“Another win for Duke Peletta,” Keilusa acknowledged fondly.
Next to him, his brother smiled self-satisfied, and leaned back in his chair. “All praise belongs to the Sun God and those he chooses to bless.”
A silly sentiment to express as Keilusa was well aware his brother did not put much stock into the Sun God’s might influencing their every action, but it quickly had the surrounding nobles agree with him. After all, who could boast about possessing a fighter who had yet to lose a single battle?
As Keilusa rose from his chair, the masses in the arena quieted, a simple spell ensuring the noise was contained.
“Forty-nine victories you have dedicated to the throne,” Keilusa addressed the still kneeling man. “Not a single loss, not even a draw. Should we grant mercy to the man who decided to fight you anyway?”
Around them, the world exploded in chants again, demands for more blood echoing through the air. Even without such bolt cheers, the loser’s life had already been forfeited before he stepped into the arena.
Glancing at the Crown Prince’s terrace, Keilusa could make out Katchian’s displeased expression. The boy should’ve known better than to send his assassin into a place entirely in Kishiar’s hand.
“My decision is His Grace’s,” his brother’s gladiator answered, speaking the same words as always.
One would expect his frugality would bore the masses, but they were much too fascinated with his abilities.
“The decision is yours, brother,” Keilusa decided.
“Your Majesty is too kind,” Kishiar replied and raised his hand, sealing the loser’s fate to the cheers of the masses.
The arena was cleared of the corpses and the gladiators returned to their rooms as magicians were brought forth to prepare the next spectacle.
“Are we to be given a reward for our excellent work, Your Majesty?” Kishiar asked cheekily, his tone mild-mannered as though he hadn’t orchestrated the execution of another before and they were simply amicably chatting about the games.
“I believe your reward is already waiting for you,” Keilusa replied drily.
Kishiar’s eyes flashed, an expression Keilusa had become annoyingly familiar with during the last year.
“He is neither free nor a citizen, Duke Peletta,” Keilusa saw himself obliged to remind his brother before his passion went too far. There were only so many scandals the imperial name could tolerate.
“Yuder has won more matches than anyone else, Your Majesty. Winning many more might appear like an attempt at reaching glory akin to that of the gods.”
“I need not look at your beneficiary to know he receives enough worship.”
Keilusa wished he knew less about his brother’s choice of relationship, but Kishiar hardly left his residency without taking his favored along.
“One more match,” Keilusa promised as the mage’s show came to a close. “Have him win one more match and he is yours to do with as you desire.”
Satisfied, Kishiar remained quiet for the rest of the game.
Yuder had just stripped out of his clothes and roughly washed up when he was embraced from behind. He twitched before melting into the contact, a familiar scent filling the air of the bathhouse. Kishiar buried his face in the crook of Yuder’s neck, inhaling the sweet scent.
“You are near your heat,” Kishiar noted and ran his fingers across the exposed skin.
“A week or two still,” Yuder replied, somewhat hazy from Kishiar’s attention and the long day.
He’s meant to head to bed after washing up, certain that Kishiar would remain entangled in the dinners following the arena fights and would not return until late in the night.
“His Majesty desires one final fight,” Kishiar said, his arms tightening around Yuder as though he feared him leaving his embrace.
Just one more fight, the idea seemed strange to Yuder, who’d gotten so used to spending his days in the arena. “When?”
“At the end of the month. They’re planning a reenactment of the battle for Charloin.”
It was one of the most famous naval battles of Orr’s history, famously won by the grace the Sun God bestowed upon one of the rowers, who went on to be granted many honors by the Emperor. Yuder did not have to guess which flag his ship would bear.
“One last grand spectacle then.” Yuder wondered if they were going to put any Awakeners at all on his crew or were just trusting his abilities to be enough to win the match. He was sure that he’d be summoned to fill the arena with water anyway.
“Was it similar in the last game?”
Kishiar’s question tore Yuder out of his contemplative musing. Sensing him tense in his embrace, Kishiar simply opted to pick Yuder up and carry him back into the bath he’d just risen from. He quickly discarded his now wet clothes on the tiled floor and had Yuder settle on his lap. Yuder had not spoken in depth about the last game, his last life, as there were hardly any kind moments to linger on.
“No,” Yuder finally answered. “Considering the circumstances of my second gender manifestation, I was pulled from the arena under different circumstances.”
He still remembered the jeers from the other gladiators for that single day and night he’d been returned to his cell. Despite his state of mind, the insults hurled at him had internalized and the new suppression collar he’d been presented with by Kishiar the next morning, gold and delicate as opposed to a gladiator's heavy metal, had seemed like an insult. From a promising fighter, who might achieve his freedom someday, to a duke’s pleasure slave – Yuder had resented Kishiar as much as his own fate, even if Kishiar had mostly left him to his own devices within his mansion. The few exceptions, it was simply what their natures had driven them to.
When the Emperor had approached him promising freedom for the cost of a single life—Yuder had wondered if Kishiar had known. If he’d guessed why Yuder, who had avoided his bedroom like the plague, was waiting for him there.
He’d made his choice, a wrong one, exchanging one kind of servitude for another.
“I feel as though I should apologize,” Kishiar spoke softly. “For the way you were treated, how even now I cannot hasten your release from the arena.”
“Just one more fight,” Yuder said. After a decade of serving in the Emperor’s legion, the gladiatorial games were truly nothing more than that to Yuder, games to win, not wars. “I can bear this much. I’d rather you linger on other matters.”
Kishiar smiled at Yuder and gently squeezed his waist. “I forgot, I have yet to praise my favored for another honorable victory. How should I express my gratitude?”
Yuder raised his arms to wrap them around Kishiar’s neck. Like this, their faces were unbearably close. In some ways, speaking off such crude matters was still too shameless for Yuder, but Kishiar had no such issues. Tilting Yuder’s head down with one hand, he drew him in for a deep kiss. The sensation immediately sent shivers down Yuder’s spine, his legs falling to either side of Kishiar’s on instinct.
Releasing his scent, Kishiar’s drowned out the artificial aroma of the perfumes and soaps of the bath. The collection had steadily grown since Kishiar started taking Yuder home after his matches. At the start Yuder hardly cared, only quickly scrubbing away the blood and grime of the arena, but the invitation to linger was more than clear.
“You are exhausted from the fight,” Kishiar whispered against his lips.
Burning desire settled in the pit of Yuder’s stomach. “There is not a single mark on my skin.”
Yuder’s neck had been bruised before his last fight, love bites carefully hidden away beneath his suppression collar.
“And,” Yuder added as though an afterthought ignorant of the fever burning within him already. “I am near my heat.”
Kishiar had more patience than Yuder, but even he had his limits. With the hand still settled at Yuder’s he pressed Yuder flush against him, the contact of their hardened lengths rubbing against each other near maddening. Yuder moaned at the slightest touch, all too aware of how sensitive he was now. While nothing compared to the burning during his heat, being so close to it made him all the more aware of how much he desired Kishiar’s presence deep within him.
Instead of fulfilling that desire, Kishiar continued to kiss his lips until they had to be swollen, and even then, he was not satisfied, moving on to kiss a trace from Yuder’s chin down to his bare neck. As if enticed by the scent lingering there, Kishiar paid specific attention to the sensitive spot, though his adoration did not break skin.
Yuder was sure that by tomorrow his entire neck would be bruised, but as he’d have no reason to leave the mansion until his next fight, he saw no issue in giving himself to Kishiar so wholly.
“Please,” Yuder muttered as his own nails surely dug into Kishiar’s.
Kishiar let go of him just enough to look at Yuder through his lashes. “What do you desire?”
Hadn’t Yuder made it obvious already by how closely he was pressed against Kishiar, physically wishing to become one? Yuder’s expression must have shown his complaint as Kishiar laughed lightly.
Soon after, Yuder felt a finger probing at his hole before easily slipping inside. Clenching around the single digit, Yuder soon desired more, not at all content. Having been filled entirely by Kishiar before, he wished for the same sensation, being so full he could not come to a coherent thought.
“Perhaps we should meet like this more often, let your body soak in warmth first.”
Yuder doubted that the ease by which Kishiar fucked him with his fingers had anything to do with the warm water; it was simply his heightened arousal, sweet slick already drenching his thighs. Once he deemed him suitably stretched, Kishiar held Yuder up by his hips. Kishiar might not think of praying to the Sun God, but Yuder considered the sight beneath him worthy of worship more so than any painted sculpture in the temple district.
Yuder sunk down on Kishiar’s cock with one hiss, familiar pain quickly wiped away by the pleasure of feeling Kishiar move in him. Despite his earlier remark, Kishiar showed no signs of restraint, fucking Yuder hard enough that he needed to hold on to the other’s shoulders to stabilize himself and keep himself from falling forward like a doll with its strings cut. His fingers dug into Kishiar’s skin, sure to leave matching bruises to the bruises on Yuder. He wanted to sink even deeper into Kishiar, bit the same place Kishiar kissed so tenderly on his skin.
Soon, Yuder thought, holding onto the welcomed heat. Soon he’d be able to claim Kishiar as he wanted.
Unable to bite his neck, Yuder instead settled for Kishiar’s lips, mouth-open kisses that spoke of the need to devour another. With one hand at the back of Kishiar’s neck, the other on his back, Yuder urged Kishiar to fuck him harder, give him more, more, more, until he was satisfied, his scent no longer his own.
The sound of the water being stirred by their actions seemed obscene in Yuder’s ears and yet like the sweetest melody possible. If anyone were to come into the vicinity of the bathhouse now, they’d not be able to mistake the sounds of their coupling for anything but the near animalistic mating it was.
As Yuder felt himself reach his climax, Kishiar used one of his hands to stroke over his already sensitive cock. With his thighs trembling, Yuder came between their stomachs, thick slick surely coating Kishiar’s cock within him too. Feeling almost feverish, Yuder slumped against Kishiar, leaning his head against his broad shoulders.
Kishiar wrapped his arms around Yuder, holding him tight as he came closer to reaching his own climax.
“Don’t,” Yuder bit out as he felt Kishiar pull out of him, the thought of separation unbearable. “Come inside.”
“The risk—”
“It’s not my heat yet,” Yuder protested, though he feverishly wished it were already, that the desire would steal all rational thought from him and drown him in a world of passion. “A month hardly matters at that stage and even if, who could reach me in the arena without my permission?”
Kishiar’s concern was no unfound thing, but Yuder sensed the spike in his scent all the same at his words, betraying the words Kishiar spoke.
Yuder kept on babbling, some nonsense explanation until, finally, Kishiar snapped and slammed right back into him. The intensity punched a moan out of him as Kishiar’s cock pressed against his innermost wall, which was much more sensitive now that Yuder had already come.
“Is this what you desire?” Kishiar asked, eyes wide in almost childish wonder. “For me to fuck you until you are full of my seed? Until your stomach swells with my child? Give your heat some purpose?”
Hearing his words, Yuder let out a whimper, indulging in the fantasy Kishiar provided him with. It was not that he had considered the notion before, but surrounded by Kishiar’s warmth, he considered it for the first time not as a simple want, but a need, to keep holding a tangible piece of Kishiar’s love for him. Thus, Yuder answered each of Kishiar’s questions with renewed enthusiasm, refusing to let the fire burning between go out.
Each of Kishiar’s thrusts sent Yuder closer to the edge again until he finally felt Kishiar spill within him.
Panting heavily, they clung to each other, heated kisses turning more chaste again until they were simply content being next to each other. It took some time before Yuder’s mind recovered from their intense coupling, returning from a dazed state of mind to clarity.
Under other circumstances, he would have felt embarrassed about his begging, a rare occurrence outside of his heat, but right now he could not think about taking a single word back. When Kishiar finally pulled out of him to settle Yuder on his lap properly, Yuder was struck by a sense of loss. He preferred remaining intimately connected with Kishiar when they were like that, but the day had been long enough already.
Quite sated and content, Yuder considered this reward better than any other.
After cleaning up, for a second time in Yuder’s case, Kishiar carried him out of the bath. Allowing no protest, he wrapped Yuder in a silken towel, the quality much too grand to be used to clean up water.
One last fight in the arena.
And then, to war.