The Slave Harem: A Kingdom of Slaves Book Page 21

  He wrapped his arms around Zanti who was now on top, fingertips straying over the rounded tops of his ass. He spread his legs so now Zanti’s hard cock stabbed Ren’s balls. He lifted himself.

  Without any preparation, Zanti was inside him. It should have hurt. Maybe it did. Maybe the pain fed into the pleasure so seamlessly he didn’t notice. Or maybe they just fit. Either way, Zanti was fucking him again, but unlike the first time, that first night they had done the play for Master, this time Zanti was like a graceful dancer in the act, smoothly thrusting in and out, his pre-cum and their sweat making things easy. Zanti did not stab into him. He did not go fast, but undulated like a swimmer underwater, everything flowing without beginning or end.

  Ren had never felt anything like it, not even with the most talented of slaves back at the Palace. He bucked his hips and matched Zanti’s rhythm, holding on tight, and Zanti lifted his head then and looked down at him, eyes like dark stars glimmering.

  Ren breathed in and out, panting, and said, “More.”

  Zanti slowed, stroked his hand down the side of Ren’s face as if Ren were his lover, then brushed their lips together with the barest of touches and thrust with ease in, out, in, sliding over Ren’s prostate, causing his eyes to roll up.

  He felt the increasing heat, the liquid spill deep inside at the same time his own cock swelled and his mind rolled up and up to white beyonds and slipped over into them, his orgasm like lightning throughout his body. A yell. An echoed yell. He made another strangled sound, opened his eyes and became aware of slickness between them and, incredibly, Zanti petting his hair.

  Zanti did not push away from him like all the other times. Instead, he lay over Ren as if he owned him. Head against Ren’s chest, arms loosely grasping Ren’s shoulders, he rested. Or claimed. Or whatever it was he was doing with his cock still inside him, his heart pounding against Ren’s own heaving chest.

  Finally, Zanti sat up between Ren’s legs and his cock slipped out. He gazed down at Ren with dark eyes through tangles of brilliant brown. His lips were slightly parted, flushed. His chest rose and fell with more rapid than usual breath.

  The gaze swept further than Ren’s upper body. It blew through him like rich weather filled with a promise of rain and perhaps some wicked wind. Ren’s cock stayed half hard.

  Ren’s lungs filled with that wild weather promise. He wanted Zanti again. With his whole body. And deeper. He wanted to embrace the boy. Hold on so they could both fly together and maybe, just maybe, never fall.

  Zanti lifted his chin. His chest expanded. He raised his arms, nudging his hair back from his cheek with his shoulder, tossing his head. Not like an actor or even a slave. But as someone proud. Touched but still untouchable. He knew he was beautiful. He wanted to show this. He looked as if he took power from the very air itself. He stood up on his knees and twisted. The curve of his hip was darkly perfect, smooth to the firm thigh that held it. His stomach muscles rippled, the skin taut, rigid. His cock glistened with sweat and his own release, dark pink with the recent fucking.

  Ren held his breath. Zanti was a god.

  Not tied down this time, Ren put his hands over his own head. That half-smile quirked at Zanti’s mouth.

  “So help me, I want you again,” Ren breathed. He told himself it would be a good show for Master. It would highlight his willingness to obey. His stamina and his ability to get along with others, even if one particular other had not welcomed him in a friendly manner at first.

  “Ahhh,” said Zanti. Just a whisper.

  Sounds from Zanti were so rare that Ren felt the shock of it like a tingle throughout his body.

  Zanti opened his mouth and let out a silent laugh.

  Ren reached up and grabbed his preening arms and pulled him down until they were face to face again. “I am Palace trained. What Master wants, Master gets.” But really, this was what Ren wanted. More than anything.

  Zanti shrugged one shoulder and brushed his lips to Ren’s, still openly laughing, puffs of air pushing into Ren’s mouth. Ren arched up and his cock hardened.

  The second time took longer and was far sweeter even with Zanti’s intermittent penchant for roughness. Ren wanted it, wanted that force that could not be held down, that bratty, standoffish creature that writhed so very enticingly in his arms as he fucked. He wanted to hold the broken boy and the healed boy, one in each hand, and fold them together as a single force.

  In the afterglow, both still dazed, they lay side by side. Ren’s hand lay on Zanti’s upper arm, then slid down to his chest to feel the surging heartbeat. He had him in that half embrace, quiet and still on the white bed, for about thirty seconds. Thirty blissful seconds.

  Then Zanti pushed his hand away, got up and went to the bathroom.

  When he came out, the hall door opened. A groom took Zanti away. But not before Zanti looked back at him surrounded by an aura of pale blueness, his dark eyes open with longing.

  The door closed. Ren was left alone sitting up. He closed his eyes wanting to remember the stormy scent of Zanti, the smooth feel of their bodies pressed together. The new blue aura.

  A slight hiss preceded Master’s voice filling the room.

  “You are worth every penny,” Master said.

  Ren’s eyes shot open. He tipped his head back.

  “Palace trained, yes, but so much more.”

  “Thank you, Master.” He had done well. He had performed and obeyed. And he had loved every moment. But now he wondered about himself. For within he held a secret he had only just realized. He had done this for Zanti, not for Master. And he had taken for his own pleasure, which was not against slave rules, but the entire role was defined by giving first. Giving and taking might become entwined, but the best slaves never forgot their place.

  He must have shown his inner concerns through a frown and a tightening of his muscles, for Master said, “What is it? Are you unhappy?”

  Ren shook his head.

  “Are you still resentful and angry with Zanti?”

  “No, Master. I have come to… to crave him, in fact. I don’t know that he feels the same, however. I hope.”

  “You don’t know? But my dear boy, that is why you were purchased. Can you not tell from his aura?”

  “It changed. Yes.”

  “To what color?”

  “Blue. But Zanti’s different. I’m not sure what to make of it.”

  “What does that color tell you in others?”

  Ren swallowed hard. “Love.”

  A chuckle. “Money is no object for me. I buy as I like. This compound. The statues you saw on your drive in to the compound, my staff, this house and all the things I like to collect. Including the harem.”

  Ren nodded.

  “I am also a generous master. I spread my wealth. As Cam has told you, you may put in requests for things you might like to have and I will consider those requests. Some requests are very small. Jewelry. Hair ornaments. Fragrances. Special foods. Others are larger, such as Aaron’s grand piano. It took me weeks to find just the right one for him. Weeks longer to have it delivered.”

  “I know. And I was purchased for Zanti.”

  “You are rare and beautiful, to be sure. And Zanti did not request you specifically. But throughout my relationship with him, there is one thing he has always wanted even though he did not have the words to say. A lover. And that is what I wanted to give him. But it would not be me. That is not what I do. You are here for more than to give Zanti pleasure, or to make him potent again. He had a companion in Cam, but never more. Cam was not equipped for more with such a broken man. But you… you’re special.”

  Stunned, Ren sat very still.

  “You were purchased as a gift. A gift Zanti may not have outright requested, but that I knew he needed. You have exceeded my every wish and expectation in that regard.”

  “Thank you, Master.” Tears started as if from nowhere. Then a new understanding dawned and he knew why he was crying. He was Zanti’s. Zanti was his master. And this w
as more than just a gift for Zanti. It was a gift to Ren as well. The very thing he’d always dreamed of, always wanted.

  “Now that you understand more about why you are here, I am still your Master in the end. Should Zanti grow tired of you, you will not lose your place here. I run the harem. You all abide by my commands. But my command for you is simply this: I wish for you to give to Zanti all you thought you were saving for me.”

  “You want me to love him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And for him to love in return.”

  “I have always wanted that for Zanti. So, yes.”

  It was both a relief and a strange pressure he felt under his skin. “It’s already happening, Master. I want him. I crave him. The rest will follow. And his aura was blue. If I can trust that color for him to mean what it means for others, he is feeling what you wished for him to feel.” To be wanted. To be loved. No one ever said it would be easy. “I can continue to do this.”

  “Excellent. Now, the groom will assist you back to the harem. That is all. You may go.”

  *

  It was the middle of the night. Everyone was asleep. When Ren exited the shower and went to his cubicle, hair still dripping, he slowed by Zanti’s cubicle and saw him curled on his side in shadow. But something told him Zanti was not asleep. He almost entered the cubicle, a force pulling toward the young man, but he lost his nerve.

  He moved on to his own bed and settled into clean sheets, exhausted.

  His mind spun. Images of Zanti posing over him kept haunting him. He was aroused again just thinking of him. Wanting him. And now to learn that Zanti, who had no brand mark on his chest, who was not a real slave, was his true Master? He tossed about on his mattress for a while, letting himself become used to the concept.

  All his life he’d wanted this. To be the slave of a master who wanted and needed him. And here he was falling in love with a boy he had disliked at first, only to find he was the boy’s purchased gift, as if given to him by a benevolent father who only wanted what was best for his son.

  Master had rescued Zanti. Now Master gave Zanti a slave to keep, to have, to own. A slave of his own.

  Ren wanted to belong to Master. And Master had assured him Ren was owned by him first and foremost. But this new concept was not unwelcome. To be Zanti’s special gift. A thrill raced through him. He liked the idea that Zanti could come to him at any time, claim him and he’d have to go with him, follow through without question.

  He finally fell asleep with a smile on his face.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Three Long Nights

  For three long nights, Master did not call upon anyone to go upstairs. There were no plays. And no requests for Ren and Zanti to enter the white bedroom.

  Ren spent his days with Li Po and a few others. Sometimes Li Po and the others had sex together, but Ren could not focus and so he did not join them. He kept thinking of Zanti, looking about the room for him, finding him reading or napping or not finding him at all. Zanti made no moves toward him. Did not even seem to notice him. It hurt.

  He missed Zanti. He wanted Zanti.

  Ren sat beside him on the couch and Zanti ignored him.

  He ached deep inside that Zanti wished to treat him this way.

  On the third day, he sat beside Zanti one night after dinner and read while Zanti read. Then, when Zanti got up Ren said softly, “I miss you.”

  Zanti paused but did not turn. They both went to bed again alone.

  Ren read in his bed until he could not see, then closed his eyes and slept.

  Something woke him. He could not tell if he’d been asleep minutes or hours. He started to sit up but felt the body beside him, curled in, forehead pressed to Ren’s upper arm. Ren turned his head and his breath fell across Zanti’s fine, dark hair on the top of his head.

  He could see the edge of Zanti’s shoulder and part way down his naked back and side. Colors swirled in the darkness: plum, azure, red. The wounded colors. Cam had said Zanti sought companionship only when he could not sleep. When he was restless, afraid to be alone. The colors of Zanti confirmed that was happening now.

  Ren had come to realize, over time, that healthy bodies were made of whites, golds, blues and greens with flickers of the other colors. Zanti was black, then gray, and then that rare white purity with a lavender iridescence of arousal, then that last final night, Zanti’s aura pulsed with the pale blues of love.

  But tonight the colors meant Zanti was hurting or lonely, just like Ren, and did not show the lavender or the blue.

  That was fine with Ren. He did not need to make love right now, or even all the time. Just the fact that Zanti had come to him to sleep brought new feelings washing over him, the best of them all: that he was wanted.

  Ren had a master now who wanted him. It had been his goal from the beginning.

  Everything fell into place inside him, like pieces of a puzzle finding their true match, fitting just right.

  Back in the day his high school teacher had told him: You choose how you want to walk through this world. How you want to experience it.

  As hard as it was for Ren, he had believed those words. And they had brought him here. To a place and a man he hadn’t chosen to love at first but now loved nonetheless. If he had it to do over again, he wouldn’t change a thing.

  He moved an inch closer to Zanti and, barely breathing, kissed the top of his head. A soft blue light began to flicker, there.

  Ren’s heart rate picked up. Zanti would never have to tell him his feelings. Ren already knew.

  Zanti’s hand moved up and fingers stretched over Ren’s hip, then curled. His bent knee bucked Ren in the thigh.

  Ren shifted closer. “I am for you always,” Ren said, the whisper falling over them like a cloak, like a beginning of a new story, one that embraced lost boys and re-started their broken hearts.

  Epilogue

  Trust and Love

  When Ren woke, Zanti was still with him, curled tight against Ren’s side with the covers loose about his smooth waist.

  Groggy at first, Ren had to remind himself of his new reality. He was Master’s gift to Zanti. Zanti fought not to accept the gift, but now things were different.

  Zanti had come to Ren’s bed willingly for the first time. Just to sleep, but it was a start.

  Ren did not want to move away from that wiry, taut warmth but he had to use the bathroom.

  Deftly, he slid out from under the sheets, the air cool against his warm skin. As he exited his alcove, Cam came up to him, his face scrunched up, eyes narrowed. “Is he okay?”

  Ren nodded. “Yes.”

  Cam stared over his shoulder at Zanti still asleep in Ren’s bed. “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Because this is odd behavior. Zanti doesn’t do that. He doesn’t climb into bed with anyone but me and only very rarely now.”

  “It’s fine.”

  By now, others had come up to listen in on the conversation.

  Cam bounced on his toes, nervous. “Because I worry about him. I care about him. We all do even if he’s different.”

  “I would never hurt him,” Ren said.

  “I know. But you didn’t like him. And he’s been rejecting you. Do you now? Do you care?”

  None of these men knew the whole story. Even Ren was still trying to fit it all together, like a puzzle of auras sorting themselves out to paint his life.

  As he thought about his answer to Cam’s question, for of course he did care, but it was more than that, a strange feeling came over Ren, like anticipation and nausea and longing and hope all in one. He’d only ever felt this way when pursuing his dream, when trying to please others because pleasure slavery meant everything to him. Now this was not about trying to please anyone. It was about something more. Enfolding Zanti in his arms. Holding onto him. Wanting him to belong to Ren as much as Ren belonged to Zanti.

  That seemed to be happening, but it was still too early to say. To put it all into words.

>   He opened his mouth. He tried to speak.

  Cam’s eyes widened.

  Ren did not have to turn around to see that Zanti had come into the atrium. He felt the body heat behind him. A soft palm brushed over his wrist and a hand folded over his own.

  That broken boy. That bewitching man.

  Ren’s throat closed for a moment. All he could see were the recessed lights on the ceiling. Slowly, all the men’s auras slowly came into focus. They were a pretty blue-green this morning, peppered with the grayish-mauve of curiosity.

  Ren pushed the air from his lungs. Tried to find a voice. What came out was steady, still gruff with sleep. “I care about him. Yes. I care.”

  Zanti’s hand on his squeezed. That one squeeze spoke trust and acceptance. Everything was first steps, but they were finally on the road.

  “Zanti?” Cam started to reach out, then backed away. He tapped his tablet. “Anything you need, you still come to me, okay?”

  “We both will. Always,” Ren said.

  Besides, that was Cam’s job.

  *

  At breakfast, lunch and dinner, Zanti sat next to Ren.

  During the day, they were never far apart.

  Ren watched Zanti’s aura shimmer from gray to blue. On anyone else it would mean they were unsure to love. Zanti was not that different. Ren could read the signs in his demeanor and actions. He was not holding back his feelings as much. His feelings for Ren. He wanted love and he wanted to trust more. But he was still unsure.

  But in cases of lovers, wasn’t everyone unsure?

  Ren thought about Wulf and Locke. Their story—their love—what he’d heard of it, still had to be worked through, worked out until the blue tree of light rose from the tops of their heads.

  Was this happening here? To Ren? To Zanti?

  No blue tree. Yet. But Ren hoped with all his heart.

  Ren waited all day to be called by Master. He could sense Zanti’s anticipation as well.