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The prince of the Altarez Cities had been bound and gagged in the fountain hall of the Pareshen’s conquered palace for three days.

For him it must have seemed an endless age: having his eyes blindfolded, his ears stuffed with cotton and his mouth gagged, there was no way to mark the passage of time. His body had been bent on all fours over a marble block and bound at every joint, and must have ached constantly from the confinement. He had only known the exploratory fondling of strangers, whenever they were delighted to examine the Pareshen’s unexpected conquest, and the brief relief of servants moving him at dusk and dawn to clean, feed, and stretch him, still in humiliating bonds and unrelenting anonymity.

Meren had also felt these three days as an eternity. He had been by Baruna’s side every moment of every day since they had declared war on the Cities, and for most of the years before then, too. Being separated now— separated while Baruna was in battle, driving off the final desperate sally of Altarez generals frantic to reclaim the capital and its palace— was a nightmare. But someone had to secure the capital now that they had finally claimed it. He and Baruna were no longer simply members of a small Assurite lion band, key in every skirmish. They were…

Baruna was now Pareshen. And he would return victorious this day.

Meren’s footsteps echoed through the bright, cool fountain hall. The handful of warleaders, messengers, and officials gathered within turned and crossed their wrists to him. Meren dismissed them: there were other places they could wait for Baruna to return, and probably more effective things they could do than wait.

In the trickling quiet of the empty hall, the prince’s laboured breathing was the loudest sound.

Meren approached. The prince Ganzabara knelt on hands and knees over the low stone block of a table, naked, bound to it and unable to move an inch. His head, which he had insisted on holding so high for the first day— when he had shouted through the gag and thrashed furiously against his bonds— hung down now, chin to the stone. It would be too painful to lift any longer.

Meren paused to admire the slack bow of the prince’s head. Lustrous, straight brown hair hung down in curtains, pooling all over the floor. And the vulnerability of those long, naked limbs in this position was… exquisite.

Heat curled in the pit of Meren’s stomach as he saw that someone had left a water cup sitting on the prince’s back as if he were no more than another piece of furniture in the fountain hall. He picked up the cup to check that the pattern of erhen salts crusted on Ganzabara’s sinewy back had not been disturbed, and nodded approvingly.

Ganzabara jerked. Awake, then.

“Steady,” Meren said, despite the prince’s cotton-plugged ears. “Let’s see…”

He unwound a length of linen scarf from his wrist and wetted it in the fountain. Careful to keep it wrapped around his fingers, he wiped away the pattern of erhen salts from Ganzabara’s back. Ganzabara flinched as he rubbed off the salt that had been crusted on for days. Beneath his skin was sore indeed, bleached white beneath the crust and raw red at the edges in a way that made the pattern glow.

“Easy,” Meren murmured, as if he were not deliberately rubbing in the sharp grains. Ganzabara’s whimpers were muffled. Oh, Baruna would like the noises this one made. No tolerance for pain at all. “Ah, does that hurt? There. Better. Let’s get you up.”

Meren had taken his new dagger from the head of the palace guard three days ago. It fit in his palm as if it had only been waiting for him to claim it: heavy, balanced, gold-inlaid and hilted with solid lapis. The meteoric iron tip left a fine white line when he traced it down Ganzabara’s wiry, arm, leaving the prince spooked to stillness in its wake. Then Meren chuckled and began to slit the knots binding Ganzabara’s wrists and elbows to the marble block.

At the first hint of freedom, the prince stirred fretfully again. One shaking hand reached out blindly to discover who was touching him, where he was— anything outside of his isolated bondage.

“Ah,” Meren said, acting for the audience of himself alone as if he had forgotten. “One more thing.”

“Nnfh—!” Ganzabara flailed as Meren pushed him by the nape of his neck back down against the block.

It was absurdly easy to hold the prince down with one hand. Prince! Blessed high prince of the conquering Altarez Cities! The whole of Meren’s callused hand nearly spanned his neck. Ganzabara wasn’t too meek to not dig his nails into Meren’s wrist, both panicked and outraged, but he was far from the match it would take to overpower Meren. No holy Altarez prince would ever lead an army. He could not compete with the last seven years that Meren and Baruna had spent slaughtering soldiers from border to capital in order to finally, finally, reach him.

Cruel satisfaction long delayed washed over Meren as his other hand delved between Ganzabara’s buttocks and found the warm iron plug fitted there. A captive bound on display, after all, could not be trusted to control his own release.

“Nnf! Nn!” Frantic, Ganzabara scratched at him but accomplished nothing from his pinioned position except to stir Meren’s loins a bit more. “Stphh!”

Smiling grimly, Meren took the prince’s arm and folded it up behind his back, implacable as stone, and oh, he didn’t twist it much, but Ganzabara gave a high, muffled scream. Ganzabara’s spine arched with pain, trying to relieve the cruel twist. He subsided into shaking stillness, huffing through his gag.

The plug had been in all day; the grease had dried since last the servants had removed and replaced it at dawn. “Steady,” Meren murmured, stroking the tallow still smeared outside of Ganzabara’s clenched entrance.

Ganzabara tensed and panted as Meren pressed on the plug’s heavy base to rock it in and out, working the grease back in around the iron shaft. His whole body shook with restrained tension. “Must feel so big inside you. Never had anything like it, eh?”

Ganzabara strained every time Meren pushed the plug deeper, grunting as if it had been punched up to his navel.

He’d experience that soon, Meren vowed. And wish he had back the plug.

Ganzabara’s hole glistened slick and red now, warmed from friction and the stimulation of the heavy bulb deeper inside. He shook all over. Slowly, Meren pulled the plug from within. Ganzabara scrabbled in renewed distress as the thick iron bulb began to emerge from his hole, pulling wider and wider the tight entrance that had mainly clenched upon the stem, unable to dislodge the bulbous intrusion.

He’d be a pleasure to break open. And Baruna must have him first.

With a final stretch and Ganzabara’s sudden strangled shriek, the slick iron bulb emerged, fat as a fig. Meren admired its obscene width for a moment before casting it to the marble floor with a clang.

He perfunctorily slit the remainder of Ganzabara’s bonds and stepped away.

As soon as the last knot was severed, Ganzabara pushed himself painfully off the block. He fell to his side on the floor, trembling all over. Standing over him, Meren admired the quiver of those fine limbs as he feebly tried to stretch out the stiffness, able only to move in cramped jerks. Beneath the gag and blindfold, Ganzabara’s flushed face went ashen as painful sensation flooded back in.

Finding himself too wracked to move, Ganzabara curled up and cupped a belated hand over his cock. Meren laughed. That was the last dignity of the divine prince, was it? As if for the last three days every ranking warleader and menial messenger of Meren and Baruna’s forces had not seen him displayed before the fountain in his own captured palace.

Not that he knew where he was, or who had seen him. Which was a torment all the more delicious.

Meren walked a few steps away and waited. For a few minutes he let Ganzabara shudder and stretch, searching weakly around himself in his newfound freedom. At last, when the prince had recovered enough dexterity to pull the cotton from his ears and was trying to remove his well-knotted blindfold, Meren stepped up again.

Ganzabara jolted at his footsteps, and worse again when Meren touched his head. He might wonder, but he could not know if Meren was the one who had just handled him so harshly, had twisted his arm and violated his hole. He had felt only hands, and these new hands were straightforward and steady on the blindfold.

“Steady,” Meren said, sympathetic and calm now that he could be heard. “Keep your eyes closed.”

Of course Ganzabara tried to look as soon as his blindfold was off. Eyes three days trapped in darkness watered over immediately at the bright light filtering down through the fountain hall’s high windows. They weren’t true tears— not yet— but Meren’s cock jumped in anticipation.

“Come,” he urged, hooking Ganzabara’s arm up. “Let’s go.”

The prince gurgled agony through the gag. Was it a plea too? A demand to be left alone, probably. Ganzabara could not stand yet.

Meren impatiently let him kneel for a while more. Ganzabara was so preoccupied with his pain and freedom from bondage that he did nothing but shiver when Meren caressed his finely-boned shoulder, the nape of his neck.

“Hhh—” The prince pried clumsily at his gag.

Meren caught his wrist. “Not until you’re before the Pareshen.” He held onto Ganzabara’s wrist through weak attempts at resistance. “No. You must leave it.”

The prince became agitated, squinting in an attempt to make out Meren’s face. “P’rshn!” he demanded, amid a stream of garbled speech. Not pleas, none of it, Meren could tell from the tone. But there was desperation there. What did Ganzabara know of the situation around him for the last three days? Nothing. Only captivity unlike anything he had imagined being subjected to.

“You’ll be taken to him,” Meren assured, smiling a smile that he knew the prince could not see. “Yes, the Pareshen. Soon. But you must leave the gag. I know it must chafe.”

Ganzabara panted for breath, trembling hard. “P’rshn,” he repeated.

“Yes,” Meren said. “Soon. Now— come.” And he lifted Ganzabara by the arm again. This time Ganzabara came up— how could he not, when Meren’s biceps were the thickness of the prince’s thigh— and couldn’t help groaning as he was lifted. “You must be washed.”

Ganzabara was still light-blind and weak as a splay-legged foal. He staggered as Meren steered him from the fountain hall into the adjacent bathing chamber, the natural spring of water around which the palace had been built. Meren could still see in it traces of the desert spring this land had been before the Altarez conquered and constructed over it.

Just past the doorway to the humid, echoing chamber, two soldiers and a servant waited to receive the prince. Meren guided Ganzabara to their hands, which did not let the prince flinch from them in shock.

“Bathe him and bring him in,” he ordered, although it was unnecessary. They knew exactly what he wanted. “And have it done before the Pareshen returns.”

“Is he on his way?” one soldier asked, hungry for news of the battle.

“Soon,” Meren said shortly, and felt again that every second was too long. “Soon.”

From the prince’s expansive bed chambers— now the Pareshen’s chambers, whenever Baruna returned to finally claim them— Meren could hear irregular splashing and struggling in the baths. Once, an outraged shout and some period of muffled snarling as Ganzabara was, he assumed, filled and made to hold water. He ignored it, except to think that of course the prince had never seen what lovers and slaves were subjected to before they came sweetly perfumed to his bed. Or perhaps, reckless though it was, the Altarez preferred to fuck the front hole.

Meren paced around the chamber, restlessly touching window sills and tables. The lion hides of victory flapped in the wind that blew in from the balconies, past which he could see the city smutched by soot, the wall hung with bodies of the Altarez palace guard. The plain of the Pantris River beyond.

In the distance, a horn.

Behind him, wet feet slapped on the stone. Ganzabara was thumped heavily to his knees. Meren spared a glance to watch one soldier take the prince’s hands, which had been bound tightly behind him, and secure them to his ankles, likewise hobbled. The tie made Ganzabara lean back sharply, his body tautened and seething with barely controlled rage. He panted harshly through his gag.

The horn wailed again, thin at this distance. Another. Another.

The banner of Assurite warriors returned to the city, blasting their triumph all the way back from the battlefield. Half were on dromedaries and half crowding chariots drawn by captured Altarez horseflesh. Through the distant gates, Meren could see sunlight glint on armour and sword.

He exhaled sharply and embraced the hunger for Baruna’s flesh, which he now knew for sure would come back hot and alive. He palmed the heavy lapis hilt of his dagger and turned to face the door.

Ganzabara shifted, trying pointlessly to find a better position than his knees. There was none. He agitatedly flicked shining curtains of hair back from his face.

Then— a year later— there was Baruna.

Meren grinned a lion’s grin at the sight of him, unable to respond any other way than to bare his teeth and breathe deep. The room contained nothing else but Baruna. His armour was gone, leaving him bare-chested above stained leather and linen— bruised hard down his right side, bloodied on the scalp, but whole. His cropped curls were still dripping from the victory drench on the threshold of the city. He was tall as a mountain. Radiant with fire.

“Baruna,” Meren said, the word like a prayer.

“You’d better be ready to ride me like Eshelar on the wind til I’m broken in good,” Baruna returned, his voice a grate of hard-bridled heat.

Alive with conquest and delight, Meren crossed the room and fell upon him, mouth devouring. Baruna seized him in return. His body radiated heat and was rock hard to touch, all of him wound up with unreleased nerve. His muscles trembled finely under Meren’s seeking hands.

Meren had to break the kiss to inhale when Baruna’s hand found his stitches, a knotted line of horsehair on his back. “Nothing deep,” he breathed, all of a sudden unsteady.

In return, he felt up the deep purple bruising that mapped Baruna’s right ribs, seeking breaks in the bone.

“Nothing bad,” Baruna whispered. There was blood on his teeth, upon Meren’s tongue. Behind his ears the sweat and dust of battle remained.

Meren slid hands around the curve of his skull and kissed him deeply again.

At length, Baruna kissed across his jaw and over his ear, growing more carnal with every shifting grind of their hips together. His heavy leather skirt provided delicious pressure.

“You’ve got me a gift,” Baruna rumbled into his ear. He must have been looking over Meren’s shoulder at the prince.

On the floor. Kneeling. Gagged and bound and forced to wait for their attention.

“We’ll let him watch us tonight,” Baruna murmured, and chewed Meren’s ear. “Watch me fuck you to a wreck. He’ll be sweet and ready to please us then.”

“Tonight,” Meren said, his hands working restlessly on Baruna’s laced belt. “Baruna, now.”

“I want you now. Meren, my sword—”

“We’ve conquered the Cities,” Meren hissed in his ear, holding Baruna close so hard that he stilled. “We’ve taken the land and every bit of it’s yours. There’s nothing left except this. Now... we conquer the prince.”

Baruna’s breath went in an unsteady groan, as if mortally hurt by such sudden desire. His nails dug hard into Meren’s skin.

The prince of the Altarez Cities, before now, had been a feverish dream— an abstracted goal of difficult years, an impossible figure they burned to devour. They had hissed out angry fantasies in the darkness of night as they stroked their cocks and their vengefulness both, almost believing that they would never live to see the gates of the capital city. The idea had been pretend as much as intent.

But they were not there, in the dark, in the desert, the tent. Not back there in the decade of displacement and discontent. The Cities were theirs, and so was…

“The prince,” Baruna whispered, affirming the fact. “You took him alive.”

“All yours, Pareshen,” Meren whispered in heat. “The Altarez prince, now ruling no more.”

Baruna shuddered against him, so rife with desire and victorious joy that he almost trembled in Meren’s arms. “What I would do without my sword,” Baruna breathed, squeezing the nape of Meren’s neck.

“Fuck half as many conquests,” Meren drawled, and recieved the slap on his ass with delight. They shared one last feverish stare of reunion— yes, they were here; yes, it was now— before Baruna released him.

Baruna’s whole aspect transformed as he turned from Meren to the rest of the world. His shoulders were straighter, his smile harder than stone. His black eyes glittered as he looked down on the prince and took in every lithe, naked inch.

Ganzabara thrust his chin up, his glower demanding they remove the humiliating gag that cleaved his lips.

“Let him speak,” Baruna ordered.

Ganzabara spat out the gag almost before Meren had finished slitting the knot. “We are Ganzabara-menid-var-visser and Ezelar Wind-Queen,” he gasped, “prince of the Altarez Cities and god of all lands the Pantris River feeds— we are royal.”

After a moment waiting for something more significant, Baruna shrugged. “We know.”

Ganzabara gaped in outrage. “We have been kept in bondage for a week!” he snarled. “You violate the sanctity of Ezelar’s flesh on earth. Where is your Pareshen, guard? Slave?”

“You speak to Baruna Ner Isla Neresh Mettan Pareshen,” Meren told him. Each successive title was a mark of battle won and authority gained. Baruna gave him an amused glance, but Meren would always insist on formality: they could now demand the respect they had earned.

Ganzabara breathed out heavily. His eyes flicked over Meren, then clearly dismissed him; they lingered on Baruna but did not find what he expected. To the Altarez, Meren knew, they did look like slaves; their hair was cropped too short to be anything but. He could only imagine what their scars and brands said to the prince. If he knew to respect their muscular strength, or if that to him was the mark of a laboring drudge.

“My people will consider this mistreatment in the ransom,” Ganzabara said at last, cold and clipped. "You may not expect to receive enough gold to even last the year.”

“Gold?” Baruna repeated, amused.

“We are royal,” Ganzabara repeated, as if to a child. Or a stupid, barbaric invader laying claim to a crown he could not understand. “You must ransom us back to our court.”

“We must?” Baruna said again, slowly stepping toward the prince.

“And you must treat us as the holy spouse we are while you await the response,” Ganzabara snapped. He flicked a sheet of his silken brown hair over his shoulder, shifting angrily against the rope that bound his wrists and ankles. “You must release us, return to us our own chambers, and grant us your ten finest warriors as our guard against any further desecration, or your death will be bloodier than the torture of whichever misbegotten worm we discover laid his hands on us and—”

A quick as a snake, Baruna seized a hank of the prince’s hair and jerked his head back hard. Over the noise of Ganzabara’s strangled shriek, Baruna flicked out with his knife and severed the hair.

In silence, Baruna examined the hank of lustrous brown silk, fine and glossy and perfectly straight. Even doubled over in his hand it was the length of a camel’s rein: untrimmed even once in the holy prince’s life. He let it drift to the floor.

Ganzabara’s eyes bulged. His face had gone as ashen as if he had seen his own death. “No,” he uttered, his voice a croak.

“I must do nothing you say,” Baruna said, his eyes like flint. “You do not rule us any more. Your city is mine. Your river is mine. And I can kill you if I want. I should hang you from the balcony here and let the whole city see what we do to the tyrant Altarez whelp, arrogant enough to think he rules the sky.”

“You cannot—”

“I am Neresh Mettan Pareshen,” Baruna said, “which I have become with my own two hands. And every time you forget that, I will take a little more of that long royal hair.”

“No,” Ganzabara whispered, staring up at Baruna. “No, no—”

“Should we?” Baruna asked Meren, reaching for Ganzabara’s head again. The prince yelped and jerked back but could not avoid Baruna snatching another lock of his hair. Voice verging on terror, he uttered ‘no no no no no’ as Baruna continued. “Make him look like a slave?”

“If you cut his hair, he becomes a slave,” Meren corrected. “The Altarez say the body is the thing. Remove his crown and the prince is defiled.”

“Maybe then we’ll ransom you back to your court after all,” Baruna smiled. He pulled Ganzabara’s head higher to look in his horrified eyes. “Take the gold for your life and send you back to your men. What will they do when they see they’ve paid a royal price for a slave?”

“No,” Ganzabara whispered. His mouth worked, stricken. “Please.”

Meren’s blood beat hard. He could see Baruna’s lips part in gratified lust.

“Maybe not,” Meren suggested agreeably. “You are both princes now. You can have your negotiations between you and no one else will need to know. Hm?” He saw Baruna toss him a sardonic glance, but addressed Ganzabara. “You can pay your own ransom for the price of your crown, can’t you?”

“Yes,” said Ganzabara immediately, unsteady. He would have agreed to anything. Meren could practically see him scrambling, desperate: the cut hair on the ground wasn’t so much; and from the top of his head, the loss might not be visible. He could remain royal still, if nobody knew.

How easy it was to make the Altarez prince break. Meren’s cock was as hard as stone.

Baruna said, “Then you’ll give us your body and keep your pretty hair. You’ll do as we say and do it well.” He laughed. “You’re the prettiest gift he’s ever brought me yet— it might take a long time before we’re done with you. You’ll take our cocks until you cry to be done. But once we’ve used you up in bed, nobody outside this room will have to hear of it.”

“...What?”

“I want to watch you fuck his mouth,” Baruna said to Meren hoarsely. “See that cock of yours choke his royal throat.”

“We will not!” the prince burst out. “We are Ganzabara-menid-var-visser and Ezelar— NO!”

Even as he screamed, Baruna had already sliced away another lock of hair, his knife as merciless as his demand for obedience. This lock came from the frame of Ganzabara’s face, where no rearrangement of hair would hide the fringe. He dropped the severed coil on Ganzabara’s knees as if confronting a dog with evidence of his wrongdoing.

Ganzabara stared down at it with broken eyes. “Please,” he whimpered, reduced to nothing once again. “Do not.”

“You’re a slave,” Baruna said, sliding his fingers through the prince’s luxurious hair. Ganzabara flinched violently. “Our slave, for now. Until we say you’re done. Until you’ve taken all the cock we have to give. Yes?”

“Yes,” Ganzabara agreed. His voice broke. “Yes.”

“You’ll suck Meren’s cock.”

“Yes...”

“You’ll do as we say. Anything we say.”

“Yes...”

“Drink his seed like your precious river spill,” Meren suggested, coming over and joining Baruna’s hand in his hair. It was sleek, soft, and it made the prince tremble. “Take a cock in both ends and fuck yourself blind. Let us ruin your hole and beg to be stuffed up with a plug so you’ll never, ever close up.”

“Yes,” Ganzabara sobbed. “Yes…please… Instead of… Please... that...”

Panting with triumph, Baruna seized Meren’s neck and devoured him in a kiss. Meren shoved as close as he could. Ganzabara made an indistinct sound as he was trapped between their legs, their surging loins. With his arms bound to his ankles, he could not huddle down; he had to remain as bound, their fists in his hair.

Baruna put his hand on Meren’s buttocks and fondled him. The light linen of his skirt did nothing to dull that pressure nor resist his surging cock. Within moments Baruna had unlaced him and let the skirt fall. The belt with its sheathed dagger clinked on the stone— a handspan from Ganzabara’s knees, but far beyond the reach of his bound hands.

Soon after, Meren removed the last of Baruna’s armour: the heavy leather skirt and the wide copper-plated belt that protected his belly. Beneath he was musky, sticky with sweat. Meren took hold of both buttocks and pulled Baruna close against him— against the prince. Meren’s cock slid over the silk of Ganzabara’s hair, making him groan. He looked down to watch Baruna pushing his half-erect cock against Ganzabara’s fine face, which was contorted with hate.

Abrupt fury surged through Meren. He stepped back, put his bare foot on Ganzabara’s shoulder and forced him to the floor. Unable to bend forward, the prince fell onto his side. Meren slid his foot onto that yelping face and held it down to the marble tile.

“Behold the feet that trampled your soldiers,” he said. “Behold the legs that stand astride your land. Behold the Pareshen and show him respect.”

Ganzabara made a stifled grunt. His face was screwed up but at least now there was pain.

“You know what a slave does to humble himself,” Meren said, still savage. “My shield is weary from battle and blood. Make yourself useful and kiss your lord’s feet.”

Flushed, Baruna put his foot before Ganzabara’s face. They both watched, holding each other, as the prince’s mouth puckered up. Grimacing, Ganzabara pressed his dry lips to the top of Baruna’s foot. After a moment, he stretched and kissed the other.

“Lick,” Meren said, pressing on the side of Ganzabara’s throat. “Kiss the way you’ll kiss his cock.”

“You,” Baruna groaned, and kissed Meren hard. He did not relent for a long time, so Meren could only tell what Ganzabara did by Baruna’s shuddering glee and the occasional wet noise of lips and tongue.

“Enough,” Baruna growled at last, pushing Meren back. He reached down and lifted Ganzabara by the hair, pulling up a face that was flushed red and shiny with spit smeared all over. “I want you in bed, and I want you there now.”

“Anything the Pareshen commands,” Meren said, and laughed to be pushed backward again.

He retreated to the broad wood-framed bed and reclined across it, elbows dimpling the thick woolen mattress. A waft of perfume rose up. Hungrily, he watched Baruna drag Ganzabara by the hair, on his knees, to kneel between Meren’s legs.

“His feet,” Baruna ordered. Meren propped one foot obligingly on the edge of the mattress. Baruna pushed Ganzabara’s lips bluntly against it, then held him in place until he opened his mouth and, with a ragged gasp, began to lick and lip up the arch.

Baruna let him reach Meren’s ankle— his lust-dark eyes watching Meren’s cock twitch repeatedly against his thigh— and then guided Ganzabara’s mouth to Meren’s bent knee. Meren groaned loudly. A smile curled across Baruna’s face as he forced the prince’s mouth higher and higher along Meren’s inner thigh until hot breath puffed across his cock.

“Please,” Ganzabara said, with what sounded like the last shreds of helpless refusal. His neck strained not to be pushed.

“I see.” Baruna’s hand tightened in his hair.

“No!” the prince sobbed, and lurched forward to engulf Meren’s cock with his mouth. It was desperate and sloppy, and Ganzabara choked immediately on the length he was inexpertly shoving against his throat.

Meren hissed. “What do we do with a slave who bites?”

Baruna struck his hand across Ganzabara’s buttocks with a brutal crack. “Bridle him with iron and ride him until he breaks.”

“Plss,” Ganzabara gurgled around Meren’s cock. Clearly ignorant of what to do beyond the terror of catching Meren with his teeth, he held his jaws open and slid his tongue against the shaft, pushed his throat against the head and gagged on it again. Drool streamed down Meren’s shaft. The contorted crease in his forehead suggested that although his mouth was full of cock, he wanted desperately to touch none of it.

Meren cupped his hands under Ganzabara’s chin and closed his jaw. “Tighten up the lips,” he said. “Move your tongue… Suck, damn you.” He bobbed the prince’s head up and down slowly. “Harder… yes. Like that.”

Ganzabara choked again, dribbling saliva. Baruna kept his palm across the back of his skull to keep his head down.

“How is it?”

“Perfect,” Meren breathed, though it was anything but. The prince on his knees and Baruna looming above them both made his cock harder than stone. “Worth the wait.”

“Perfect,” Baruna repeated. He pushed Ganzabara’s head down. Meren groaned and jerked his hips at the choking flex around the head of his cock.

Panting harshly, Baruna leaned over, put his other hand against the mattress to hold himself above Meren and caught his mouth in a searing kiss. Trapped beneath Baruna’s knees, Ganzabara continued to cough and struggle around Meren’s cock. Meren worked his hips heedlessly and moaned his pleasure for Baruna to hear as he was kissed on his mouth, his neck, his chest.

Minutes later, shaking all over, Meren pulled Baruna up from sucking his nipple. Below them Ganzabara finally dragged his mouth free and coughed pathetically for a full breath of air.

“I want to see you fuck him,” Meren whispered between panting kisses. “Split him open like a fig. He makes… incredible noise. You’ll be the first.”

“Yes?” Baruna said shakily, as Meren bit his ear.

“Who fucks the husband of the Queen of the Wind? Nobody but his conqueror.”

Baruna clutched Meren so hard that his nails left marks. “Conquerors,” he rasped, then stepped back.

Ganzabara flinched at the hiss of Baruna’s unsheathing knife. “We haven’t— you cannot—”

Baruna snapped through the rope connecting Ganzabara’s wrists and ankles. “Don’t tell me what I can't do,” he warned. “Put that cock back in your mouth and keep silent, whelp.”

Meren hissed pleasure at the vibration of Ganzabara’s unhappy whimpers as Baruna rearranged him. He snarled his hands through Ganzabara’s glorious hair to keep his head moving while Baruna lifted his hips and made him kneel up. With hands still tied behind his back, Ganzabara had no support in front save what Meren gave his head, sliding unsteadily up and down the length of his cock.

Baruna’s fingers delved between those narrow buttocks, evoking a jolt. Meren tightened his hands and canted his hips, transfixed by the lust in Baruna’s dark eyes. One of Baruna’s hands greedily spanned Ganzabara’s taut cheek, thumb circling the hole; his other hand stroked his own cock, urging his erection to its fullest. Its magnificent head stood out ruddy and broad from its cowl at the crown of his thick shaft; veins pulsed down its length. Meren’s cock throbbed in accord.

“Already oiled,” Baruna rumbled. “Worked him like a slave, did they?”

“For the Pareshen’s use.”

Around Meren’s cock, the prince gave a sob. Meren pulled his mouth free so they would hear every anguished noise as Baruna broke him in.

It was as sweet a success as Meren could have ever dreamed. The prince trembled between them, trapped by hands on his hips and in his glorious hair. His flushed face contorted in pain and distress, eyes clenched tightly shut to block out the one thing he could. But his mouth wouldn’t close— couldn’t close— on the noise, the wordless distress that was all he had left.

Baruna’s thick cock sank in like a spear through his gut, splitting his virgin hole wide apart. Ganzabara screamed through the whole thing, anguished as much in his soul as his flesh. And Meren, who had helped Baruna break countless lovers in both punishment and reward, thought he had never seen a better thing than this: Baruna’s face, his eyes ablaze with ascendant triumph, as he impaled the Altarez prince to the hilt and fucked him like his divine wife-queen never had.

“God! Stop!”

“Yes,” Baruna groaned, over Ganzabara’s wail. He slowly withdrew and forced it back in again. He and Meren both tightened their grips to keep the struggling prince held in place. “Meren. Fuck. Meren, yes.”

“Tell me,” Meren said, hardly able to breathe.

“Tight. Hot. Ah— scream for me, yes—”

“Stop!” howled Ganzabara, straining against them. “No— stop— you cannot do this to— ohh, please, stop—”

Resist as he might, he was begging, not commanding, and Baruna and Meren both loved the sound. It made him more a slave than any amount of cut hair could.

Over his head, Meren made eye contact with Baruna and nodded hard. Baruna cursed, tightened his grip on those narrow hips and began fucking him in earnest.

It was a poor match of strength, the holy prince against two Assurite warriors. Baruna rode him easily, hips slapping together with rough vigor. The urgency of battle was still upon him— the need to satiate his blood— and he had no patience left. He grunted and panted freely as he thrust. All the while his eyes were fixed on Meren.

They were doing this together. As they had done all things.

Soon enough Ganzabara was crying uncontrollably, head pillowed down on Meren’s thigh. His wet breath sobbed over Meren’s engorged cock. He was too far gone in torment to flinch when Meren’s hardness twitched or rubbed over his face.

Unable to bear the ache of neglect, Meren forced his cock back between Ganzabara’s gasping lips. The prince choked. His miserable sobbing climbed to a higher pitch. At the sight, Baruna’s thrusts grew more zealous yet, driving Ganzabara’s mouth back and forth on Meren’s hard length.

Tears, snot and drool streamed down Meren’s cock. He snarled his fingers tighter in Ganzabara’s hair and wordlessly urged Baruna to thrust him harder, deeper down.

“Ohh fuck... Oh... yes...”

At last, Meren had to drag Ganzabara’s head off lest he spilled his seed too soon. Trembling, he lay flat on his back and let the imperative drain from his loins, his thighs.

The heavy slap of Baruna’s continued fucking filled the room to its high mosaic ceiling. Without a grip to hold him back, Ganzabara crumpled forward onto Meren’s belly.

Baruna's rhythmic thrusting slowed— went brusque and blunt and brutally deep. Yelping in fresh pain, Ganzabara tried to wriggle forward. He slid across Meren’s reclining form. Baruna followed, of course. His cock continued to hammer the prince hard.

Meren stirred with a fresh idea. He ran his fingers through Ganzabara’s hair more tenderly now, urging him on. Thrust by thrust, Ganzabara squirmed atop Meren, trying weakly to escape Baruna’s brutal pounding.

“Shh,” Meren said, gathering Ganzabara’s head to the crook of his neck. Pretending at gentle firmness, he prevented the prince from writhing any farther. “There now, don’t run.”

“Please,” Ganzabara moaned, unable to articulate anything more.

“Oh, I was too harsh before,” Meren murmured, nuzzled close to Ganzabara’s ear. “Pushing you down on the floor... You must understand— he’s the Pareshen. You must show respect.”

Above them, Baruna shook his head and gave a slight smile. He settled on a steadier churn of his hips.

“Poor thing,” Meren whispered. “Oh, prince. You’ve never felt this before.”

“Hurts,” Ganzabara said in the barest cracked rasp.

“Yes,” Meren said, hiding his glee. “Shh, you can take it. No need to cry.” He cradled Ganzabara’s head and kissed the prince’s tear-stained cheek. Ignoring the flinch— pretending he didn’t mean to provoke just that— he licked the delicate tear trail away.

Fresh tears squeezed out of Ganzabara’s clenched eyes. Meren murmured his pity and licked them as well.

Baruna’s hips jerked and he grunted and swore. He watched open-mouthed as if tormented by love.

“Poor thing,” Meren whispered, stroking his hair. He held Baruna’s gaze all the while. “Poor prince— oh, he’s big, it’s a terrible cock. Gods, your poor hole. You must be tearing apart.”

Whether it was him or Baruna’s increasing thrusts, Ganzabara dissolved into a fresh weeping flood. Meren clutched him close, hampering the desperate squirming of pain.

“Don’t cry,” Meren said over the agonized noise. “You can take it. You must. Pareshen— please— you’re hurting the man. You’ll split him in two!”

“You,” Baruna gasped. He redoubling his speed. Sweat streamed down his chest, over the stark white of his brands and the fibrous twists of scar.

“Stop— please, we cannot— we can’t—”

“Pareshen, please, spill in him, please!”

Meren had to wrap his arms and legs around Ganzabara now to brace against Baruna’s violent thrusts. Baruna lay heavily on top both of them, crushing Ganzabara down as if he meant to fuck through him and into Meren. His eyes were wild with need.

“Ask him,” Meren ordered the prince, frantic in his ear. “Ask him to spill in you. Beg him to spill. Poor thing, it must hurt—”

“Spill— stop!— s-spill in us! Please!”

Baruna slammed over top of them and roared his release, louder in passion than a bull in full rut. He was never— not ever— more magnificent than this.

After the gasping of ebb-tide and his final few thrusts, Baruna finally slid off them and fell to the bed. The perfume of the mattress mingled with sweat.

Still beneath the prince, Meren tingled all over so hard that he was eventually surprised he hadn’t spilled himself. With the friction of Ganzabara’s violation above him, he easily could have.

Eventually, vaguely annoyed with Ganzabara’s continuing cries, Meren tipped the prince off him and stretched out his limbs. He left one hand on Ganzabara’s head to stroke his hair as his other hand sought out the muscle of Baruna’s thigh.

Side by side on their backs, they panted together. But when Baruna turned his head, there was still heat in his eyes.

“Now you,” he rumbled, tracing down Meren’s chest. “This I’ve waited years to see.”

His hand reached over Meren and yanked Ganzabara by the hair. The rhythm of weeping broke into a shout.

“Now you,” Baruna repeated, and sat back on the pillows like a lord on his throne. “I promised him a fucking from all the cock we had to give.”

Meren grinned like a panther and stretched out for the prince. Before Ganzabara could wiggle weakly from the bed, Meren had caught his bound wrists and pulled him flat on his back.

“No more,” Ganzabara wheezed, between hiccuping breaths. “It hurts… We cannot…”

“You promised us anything,” Meren reminded him. He straddled Ganzabara’s waist and smoothed back a tangle of sweat-soaked brown hair. “Isn’t it worth it? To keep all your beautiful hair?”

Ganzabara shook with a long series of sobs before he was able to catch his breath. Meren could practically see him searching out the tattered threads of control.

“Yes,” Ganzabara croaked, his eyes clenched shut. It sounded fatal. “Yes. We… must.”

His raw, broken voice made Meren’s cock throb. It was painfully difficult not to fuck him at once.

Over the years, he had imagined many ways he would break the Altarez prince. He hadn’t imagined that, if he had the man pinned on his back on the royal bed, Ganzabara would weakly assist in spreading his legs. But so it was: Meren untied his ankles and knelt between his legs, lifting one to his shoulder, and Ganzabara helped him splay the other knee wide.

Anything, Meren supposed, to make the torment end.

With one leg lifted high, Ganzabara’s brutalized hole was revealed. Meren made sure Baruna could see from where he watched in repose. It was raw red and sloppy, slick with oil and seed. Meren traced a finger around it and Ganzabara clenched. A rivulet of seed trickled out of his hole.

“Spilling like the Pantris River in flood,” Baruna drawled. Ganzabara shuddered and turned his face away.

“Oil?” Meren asked, glancing around. Baruna gave him an incredulous look. “Please. The prince is in pain.”

As Baruna slipped off to hunt around the luxurious sprawl of the royal bedchamber, Meren continued circling Ganzabara’s hole. He gathered the slickness that oozed out and spread it on his cock. It was worth his patience to watch Ganzabara squirm at the persistent caress.

Despite the screaming and Baruna’s brutal best, his delicate pucker was intact. The prince’s deflowering had been a bloodless affair. The thick iron plug had done its work well.

It meant he would stretch. They could ravage him worse.

A jar of fragrant salve landed on the mattress beside Meren’s knee. As Baruna reclined imperiously once more, Meren scooped out a portion and stroked his thick cock. The scent of cedar rose like steam.

“Shh,” he crooned at the terrified near-panic on Ganzabara’s face. He slid his slickened thumb over Ganzabara’s lip, pretending at tenderness and intimate care. “This doesn’t have to hurt.”

And he pressed his cock in.

The long, slow penetration made Ganzabara go rigid, his whole body stiffening in denial and pain. Meren kept hold of the leg on his shoulder and didn’t stop pushing until there was nowhere to go.

Pleasure swept him so hard that his breathing choked up. Ganzabara’s hole was a vice, clenched and burning around his cock, but it was the knowledge of who this was that made his balls draw up hard.

“Like that,” Baruna rasped, affected by the sight. “It’s... good, eh? Inside.”

“It’s good,” Meren agreed, knowing they were talking about more than the hole. “Ah. Fuck. He’s still so tight.”

“Keep breathing,” he added, to Ganzabara’s ash-grey face. “Let me in. Let me take you like this.”

Ganzabara’s mouth moved soundlessly in the shape of ‘please.’ Meren groaned and slowly rocked his hips, gliding out and into that hot, dripping hole.

His peak had almost come now twice, and both times he had backed away without release. The tension in his loins was unbearably fierce. At the same time, he wanted this to last forever. If there was one thing Baruna enjoyed more than fucking Meren, it was watching Meren fuck someone else. For his Pareshan, on this day— Meren could have denied himself forever.

And there was something else he had wanted to do to the prince.

It took long, endless minutes for Ganzabara to relax. Meren struck a slow rhythm and kept it, his hips rolling like waves. He had to stop thinking about the pleasure to prevent himself from spending. Eyes closed, he listened to the whimpering on every shallow thrust. Even the slightest movement made Ganzabara mew.

Eventually, the sound changed: the whimpering stopped. Ganzabara’s breathing grew deeper, ragged and strained. Meren opened his eyes to find Ganzabara staring up at the ceiling, his mouth open wide and eyes blank with shock. Something terrible, they said, was happening within. Something he hadn’t expected to feel.

“There,” Meren murmured, breaking the sultry hush. “Doesn’t hurt any more, does it. Your poor tender hole.”

“Does,” Ganzabara mouthed. His hands clenched in the sheets.

“Don’t lie,” rumbled Baruna. “He fucks like a god. Your Eshelar never fucked you as sweetly as this.”

“Stop…”

“Carry on,” Baruna said. “I could watch you all day.”

Meren groaned, forcing himself to keep the rhythm. “How simple for you. Your river’s already run dry.”

“I’m damming up again already,” Baruna retorted. “Give me a little more. I’ll stuff him full again before I’m done with that tight hole.”

Meren had to abruptly withdraw and bite his lip to keep himself from spending then and there.

When he shoved his cock back in and began to thrust again, there was no stopping his hips from jerking faster.

“Do it,” Baruna told him, an edge of urgency in his voice. He knew exactly what Meren wanted with this gentle, grueling fuck.

Meren shifted position on his knees and abruptly grabbed Ganzabara’s other leg. He arranged both over his shoulders, raising the prince’s hips higher up. Ganzabara gasped and clawed at the sheets. A high red flush had risen in his cheeks— not tears but tension. A pressurized burn.

As Meren carried on thrusting, he reached out for the salve pot again. His hand freshly slick, he stroked down Ganzabara’s belly— the prince cringed like an animal on his vulnerable back— and took up his cock in a luxuriant grip.

Ganzabara was soft, had been soft all along. But to Meren that meant nothing, the same as any other refusal.

“It hurts,” Ganzabara gasped, as if that mattered at all. He stirred fretfully but didn’t quite resist: too worn out to fight if the pain wasn’t dire. “You cannot… we don’t...”

“You keep saying we can’t.” Meren varied his thrusts. “You forget— yes, we can. The Pareshen wants this. You’ll give it to him.”

And there was the moment: the flash of a spark. It ripped through the prince like flames licking through oil.

In Meren’s hand, Ganzabara’s cock jerked to life. He carried on stroking it in time with his thrusts.

The noise Ganzabara made overlapped with Baruna’s. There was the slick, urgent sound of another palm stroking cock. Meren had to control himself again at the reminder of how Baruna got off on watching him ravage others.

“No!” Ganzabara said abruptly, unable to bear it. He thrashed against Meren in sudden violence. One knee struck Meren’s ear so hard he saw stars. “We will not—”

Baruna seized his shoulders and slammed him back down. "Whelp!"

Savagely pleased despite the pain in his head, Meren re-secured his legs. He leaned down over Ganzabara, folding him in half, and fucked him as hard as he wanted to now that he had no reason for restraint.

Baruna’s hand took over the relentless stroking of Ganzabara’s cock. Meren bared his teeth in satisfaction as it grew, and grew, and grew.

The prince, he was reluctantly impressed to see, had the manhood expected of the spouse of a god. Its length filled Baruna’s fist and stretched fully again that span. It jutted like a spear from his merciless grip.

“Spill for us, mewling prince,” Baruna ordered, mocking and harsh. “Spend yourself on his cock like the slave that you are. Nothing but a vessel that spurts seed when you’re pierced.”

When it became apparent he couldn’t stop what was coming, Ganzabara began to curse them and scream at the top of his voice. He screamed as loudly when they pleasured him as he had when they’d punished. The hatred and rage that he’d held back for fear of reprisal flooded out uncontrollably, uncaring of consequence. Writhing against their restraint with every ounce of strength he had— not enough— never enough— Ganzabara fought the inevitable pleasure to its bitterest end.

It was the closest thing he’d shown to bravery, and the closest Meren came to respecting the man as a prince.

“Spill as your Pareshen commands,” he rasped as he saw the moment rise up.

Ganzabara spasmed like the pleasure was death. Meren was battering him so brutally that he wouldn’t have been surprised if the orgasm actually did hurt— if it punched through Ganzabara as hard as his scream suggested it did. He went from bucking as he spilled his seed directly into thrashing to break free, driven from ‘too much’ to ‘too long’ in a heartbeat. Meren had felt that once before— a pleasure so intense he could not endure— and he hoped Ganzabara would pass out like he had.

“STOP! I can't— Ezelar— please! Stop! Stoooop—”

“Fuck him, Meren— make him cry—”

But Meren couldn’t continue fucking him long enough to drive him over the edge. Before Ganzabara had screamed himself from red-faced airlessness to unconscious collapse, Meren had to withdraw and squeeze the base of his cock. He wasn’t done yet— couldn’t finish—

For a fourth time he trembled on the edge of release, then agonizingly fell back into frustrated need.

“Tell me to spend,” he grated out, almost unable to speak. His cock throbbed so hard that he thought he might tip over the edge into release at any second without any actual pleasure. “Baruna— I need— only tell me to spend.”

Baruna shoved his hand over Ganzabara’s face to hold him down— inelegant and painful, from the cry of complaint— and took Meren by the nape to kiss him with open-mouthed need.

“Perfect,” Baruna whispered against his mouth. “How the fuck you endure me I’ll never know.”

“I need,” Meren repeated, even knowing it wouldn’t help. He was almost whining. “I need to.”

“You will,” Baruna promised, stroking fingers through his hair. “In a moment. Take a breath. I need one more thing from you before we finish with this whelp.”

Shaking all over, Meren lay down and covered his eyes and tried to breathe. He pinched the thin skin of his inner thigh until the pain burned white-hot.

Beside him, the mattress shifted and Baruna scuffled with Ganzabara, who was sobbing once again. The crack of a deliberate, hard slap rang out. Then another, and a third.

“You hit him in the head,” Baruna said, his voice as hard as stone. Slap, and Ganzabara yelped again. “You said you’d obey— but you fought— and you hit my Meren in the head.”

“Not our hair,” Ganzabara sobbed, his voice all but indistinct. “Please— not our hair— we didn’t mean to— to do…”

“You hit him.”

“We’ll do anything! Anything! Please!”

Baruna slapped him so hard it echoed. “Say ‘I,’” he snarled. “You’re no god, little man. You’re a whelp and a coward, and you couldn’t take back an inch of the land I conquered. Say ‘I’ and beg me to let you keep a single strand of hair.”

For a moment Ganzabara was crying too hard to form words. “...I,” he quavered, and coughed on snot. “I’ll do anything— please. Don’t… cut my hair… don’t tell them I… please...”

“Tell me what you are.”

“A— slave. I’m your slave. I’ll… do what you want… I’ll clean your feet. Your— cock. I’ll— suck on your cock and I— want you to fuck me, I— whatever you want, I’ll do it, I will. Fuck me, please, or hurt me, or…” He dissolved into sobs again. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Just please, I’ll do anything if you don’t cut my hair.”

Dizzy with lust, Meren opened his eyes to see Baruna take Ganzabara by the throat, jerking him up an inch to stare closer into his face. “You did this to yourself,” Baruna whispered. “Remember you begged for this.”

“Y-yes… anything… anything, please…”

Baruna took a breath, resettling himself. “Can you manage, Meren?”

“If you command it of me,” Meren rasped, and propped himself up on his elbows. His cock throbbed insistently like a brand on his thigh. “If you don’t ask too much.”

Still kneeling above Ganzabara, Baruna leaned over and kissed him. It was delicate and carried a world of intent. “You’ll like this,” he promised. “Every second it’s worth.”

Breathing slowly, Meren lay back as Baruna moved Ganzabara around. He made the prince straddle Meren’s stomach, high enough that he didn’t brush Meren’s rigid cock. Baruna knelt behind him over Meren’s upper thighs.

Baruna ran his hands possessively over Ganzabara’s torso, groping nipples and groin. Meren watched hungrily as the prince tried not to cringe. He was shaking all over, red-eyed and raw.

“You’re dripping,” Meren observed. He smeared his hand through the seed trickling down Ganzabara’s inner thigh.

“Feel inside.”

Meren thrust two fingers in. Ganzabara’s hole opened like a bruised fruit, hot and easily split. The noise he made was strangled, abrupt. He threw his eyes upward and tried to stare far away. They were brown, Meren saw. Brown as a cow’s sweet eyes and shiny with tears.

“Fucked like a heifer,” Meren said. “You can tell he came. He’s so soft.”

“How many fingers?”

“Two.”

“Make it three.”

Meren bunched them together and forced three fingertips in. Even pressed together, his fingers widened at their bases so much that there was resistance now, an involuntary resistance to being spread open so far. Spent seed dribbled from Ganzabara’s hole and down Meren’s wrist.

“Tell me what you want,” Baruna ordered harshly.

“To be… fucked.” Ganzabara shuddered. “To be filled up with— spend…”

“As the prince wishes,” Baruna muttered, stroking his cock. Meren withdrew his fingers. When he lifted Ganzabara’s balls out of the way, he could just see Baruna line up his erection with Ganzabara’s glistening hole.

The fat ruddy head smeared obscenely into the pucker. Then Baruna pushed— Ganzabara whined— and the cock slowly impaled him.

“See if you like it any better this time,” Baruna said. He took hold of Ganzabara’s hips and began to fuck him in bruising thrusts.

It was as pretty the second time as it had been the first. Better, even, now Meren could see the penetration.

“Feel how hot he is, Meren.”

Meren gave an involuntary grunt. He slid two fingers around the girth of Baruna’s cock. Ganzabara’s hole quivered at the touch.

“Feel inside,” Baruna rumbled, staring over Ganzabara’s shoulder with smoldering eyes. He shoved his cock in deep and held Ganzabara impaled on it, quivering.

“Fuck,” Meren whispered, his loins in a vise. “Oh, fuck, Baruna—”

He grabbed Ganzabara’s thigh to keep him in place, as if Baruna’s grip on his hips weren’t nearly enough. Suddenly ruthless, he pressed a finger against that stretched rim. All he wanted in the world right now was this idea, this impossible brutality.

Slicked by more oil and seed than Ganzabara could hold, Meren’s finger slid in beside Baruna’s thick shaft.

“Oh,” the prince whimpered, jolting in place. His hole tried to tighten, then pushed back as if to expel them. It only helped Meren’s finger press in more. “Oh!”

“Another,” Baruna said, but Meren was already working at it, panting with need.

Two fingers made Ganzabara whine in pain, his hole stuffed so full it felt virginal again. Meren hooked his fingers against the tight rim and stretched. Ganzabara’s ragged cry only made him want to make it hurt more.

“Can’t,” Baruna muttered, and abruptly pulled out. In the absence of his cock, Ganzabara’s hole swallowed Meren’s fingers easily. Meren wanted to hollow him out.

Then Baruna’s fingers were pushing in too, sliding in alongside, and together they suddenly had five digits stretching open that trembling hole.

“Please! We— I—”

Meren shivered. “What?”

“It’s so much,” Ganzabara quavered. His face was grey with pain; his thighs shook uncontrollably. “I… don’t know if I can…”

The rest of it was lost when Meren forced in another finger. He was sure he’d never felt anything so tight.

They fingered him without mercy, roughly thrusting and pushing, until Meren thought they must have stretched him out beyond belief. Ganzabara cried out the whole while but Meren only had ears for Baruna’s rough breathing, his harsh, hungry pant.

“Now,” he uttered. “Baruna, now.”

“God. Ezelar— please—”

“Pray if you want to,” Baruna dismissed, adjusting Ganzabara’s position on top of Meren. Meren lifted his cock by the base— squeezed as tight as he could— and held it erect.

Baruna forced the prince lower with hard hands on his hips. Ganzabara’s eyes fluttered as his hole met Meren’s cock.

The prince didn’t quite pass out as Baruna forced him full-length to the root of Meren’s cock, but it was a near thing, Meren thought. The terror of what came next had him fully in its clutches. It was the sweetest expression Meren had ever seen.

Ganzabara swayed forward, unable to balance. Baruna caught him by the throat with a palm that spanned his neck. Despite his promises to obey, the prince was involuntarily straining upward, trying to escape. His breath came in panicked gasps. It was all Meren could do to hold down his hips and let Baruna crowd in close.

Baruna’s cock pressed against the base of his shaft. Slickness trickled around his balls from Ganzabara’s leaking hole.

And the pressure and heat of that glorious hole became ten times as much. There was nothing but tension and then suddenly something gave—

“AAAAHHHHHHH!”

—and he could feel Baruna’s cock slide in the heat against his. They were in. They had broken Ganzabara, broken him together. No man on earth had as much girth as what they’d forced into his hole.

Ganzabara continued to scream as if his mind had snapped from the sheer agony and horror of being so distended. His eyes were wild, bulging, and streamed with tears. He couldn’t breathe right, couldn’t speak, only screamed and strained for freedom from the overwhelming pain.

He jerked sharply upward and Meren forced him back down. They gave identical cries for opposite reasons.

Between the three of them, Baruna was the only one who could move. The first thrust was a slow one, a dragging push that nearly unseated them all. Baruna grunted and resettled himself.

The head of his cock punched hard into Ganzabara, and it could barely have moved but it made the prince shriek again. Meren groaned. He’d felt the hot slide of hard flesh against the underside of his cock.

“Ahhhhh! Ahhh! Stop! STOP!”

Those hard little shoves went on, jolting Ganzabara on top of Meren. Tears dripped from his eyes onto Meren’s face. He licked the salt from his lips and bared his teeth. It took so little effort to be absolutely brutal because of how full they had stuffed him.

Baruna withdrew his cock fully and Meren’s cock suddenly slid deep into a hole now quiveringly loose. He thought he must be hilted all the way through Ganzabara’s guts.

“Please,” Ganzabara wept, “no—”

When Baruna forced himself back in again, the thrust was slicker. Deeper. Like they’d rearranged space inside. Baruna had to wrap a hand over Ganzabara’s mouth to stifle his shriek.

Little by little, their cocks stretched him out until that tight, clutching hole had become a hot glove.

“Yes,” Baruna hissed, a feverish light in his eyes that Meren had rarely seen. “Ours.”

Then it was all Meren could do to dig in his nails and hold Ganzabara’s hips down as Baruna drove the rhythm along, faster and faster. Their bodies slapped and jostled in the heaviest pounding he’d ever felt. If this was what it was like to fuck a god…

Baruna’s cock slid back and forth along Meren’s, and it felt as if he was fucking Meren in some newly invented way. They were masturbating inside Ganzabara— using his body as a sheath. They’d taken out the human and made him nothing but a sleeve, a weeping leaking vessel into which they could spill and spill and spill.

And he was spilling— almost—

“Tell me!”

“Yes!” Baruna shouted.

Meren burst into release. The entire white-hot Pantris flooded through him and out his cock, an endless pulsing spill of seed that went on and on and on. He could barely hear the screaming as Baruna pounded faster and faster alongside his cock, forcing in what Meren spurted out, until Baruna too was overcome and filled the rest of Ganzabara's guts to the brim.

It was a slow, sticky shift with which Baruna eventually withdrew. Heat flooded out immediately, coating Meren’s balls and thighs.

Ganzabara tipped aside— collapsed as he was released— and fortunately fell on the mattress, leaving Meren to gasp for breath alone.

He was, he decided, finding Baruna’s hand beside him, going to close his eyes.

He woke with Baruna curled around him, his own broad shoulders nestled to Barua’s broader chest. Baruna was being his filthy self, it seemed, luxuriating in the stickiness of mingled seed clinging to their skins.

“You never clean me off,” he muttered, and reached back to rub knuckles through Baruna’s short-cropped curls.

“I thought you might have died,” Baruna said lightly, thumb stroking his arm.

“I saw heaven, at least.”

“Fuck, I think I saw the River-Queen.”

“She said you have to wash,” Meren slurred.

Baruna’s deep laugh made him remember at last that they were not alone. Their triumph had been wrung from the losses of…

Ganzabara had dragged himself from the bed, wrists still bound, and was lying on his side on the slick marble floor. His eyes were dull slits watching them move without reaction. Long shafts of sunlight stretched over his body, shifting only barely with the rise of his chest.

Meren gathered his composure and slowly sat up.

“He did all right, don’t you think?” Baruna said behind him. He rolled over elaborately in the sheets, rubbing the linen across his stickiness.

“He did,” Meren agreed. “I believe that means he gets to keep his hair.”

Ganzabara shuddered violently and closed his eyes. His shoulders shook with what would have been a sob, if he’d had any tears left.

Meren got to his feet and padded over to where they’d abandoned their clothes. His lapis-handled dagger slit the rest of Ganzabara’s bonds without a whisper.

“There you are, prince,” Baruna declared. “Royal as the day you wed the fucking sky.”

A long moment later, Ganzabara painfully sat up. He moved like it cost unbelievable effort, like every joint of him had been pulled apart and hung loosely by threads.

“You’ll ransom me to my court,” he said, voice scratchy and raw.

“Yes.”

“And this… won’t…”

“Won’t happen again,” Baruna said. “You paid what we asked.”

“Then they’ll never know.”

Meren said, “I don’t know about that.”

Ganzabara stared at him as if Meren had thrust the knife into his chest. One hand came up with trembling slowness to touch his tangled silken hair.

“I think they’ll look at the brands on your back and see you’ve been made a slave after all,” Meren said, his eyebrow askew. “The ones I marked you with in erhen salt the moment I had you bound and on your knees.”

The final twist of conquest, which he’d been waiting so long to release, unfurled through his body like a second, slower climax. It made him smile with leonine satiation as Ganzabara struggled to force himself to understand.

The prince’s hand reached unsteadily over his own shoulder. He flinched when his fingers brushed the raw lines of a freshly bleached brand.

When he twisted his neck to look, he could just barely see the white lines and raw edging of the brand across his back, striating his skin from buttocks to neck. There was no hiding the fact that he’d been owned— body and soul— by an Assurite barbarian.

Meren had slid back onto the bed and rolled over to face Baruna when Ganzabara first raggedly howled. It tore through the room like an animal’s cry, devoid of all knowledge but overwhelming pain. It was a scream from a world that was falling apart.

“You,” Baruna murmured, his smile crooked and fond. “You really have to wreck them, don’t you?”

Meren kissed his mouth sweetly. “How else do you win?”