The Prince's Boy: 35

(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)
Part 35: Kenet
The next day, the general was still not recovered enough to ride. The leg which had been stiff to the point of agony, was now too weak to support his weight. He instead moved to sitting on the fallen tree and various commanders came to report to him. Now that my charade of ignorance was over, I took on the duties of an actual page, and recorded names and made notes as I was bade to. The only thing he did not let me see was an envoy’s package with the royal seal on it. I noted he did not let Marksin see it either. In the afternoon, when I was not looking, he limped into the tent and read it, and then, I assume either hid it or burned it as I did not see it anywhere.
That evening, the general had a large half-barrel filled with steaming water from kettle after kettle and then eased his leg into it. He looked supremely uncomfortable to be just sitting still, though. Restless.
I put my hands onto his shoulders. He still wore his breeches and a loose white shirt. I kneaded his shoulders like the kitchen girls did bread and he grunted in approval.
It was only enough to stave off his impatience for a few minutes, and he pulled his leg from the water while it was still hot and dried it off with a cloth.
“Page,” he said then, and there was a curious tone in his voice. “Come here.”

“Sir?”
He gestured in front of him. He was seated on a folding stool with the barrel just to one side of him.
“I would like to look at you.”
“Of course, sir.” I bowed my head. So, I thought, the time had come at last? I began to undo the uniform jacket. It felt like it took me a long time to remove all of my clothes, and unless he said to stop, I assumed I should remove everything. Soon I was standing on the canvas in nothing at all.
He gestured me closer and dipped the cloth into the warm water. I stood close enough to touch, and he reached up and scrubbed gently at my chest. He proceeded to work over every inch of me, including my face and all the way down my legs, turning me around and doing my back and the globes of my arse.
“Lean forward and pull them apart,” he said, but there was nothing wanton in his voice, only a kind of fondness. He scrubbed the tender pucker I exposed, and my balls, then turned me one last time to wash my prick.
The blood which had rushed to my cheeks at stripping in front of him, now rushed somewhere else.
“You are still a mystery to me, Page,” he said, “though I know you better and better.”
I could only nod.
“There is not a mark on you at all. You can’t have been a whoreslave unless you had an unusually lenient master. Marksin believes you may be under a compulsion not to speak of your master? All I can say is, if a Night Mage was your master… well, you would bear the scars of his practice, except you have none. But who else could have bespelled you to live off a man’s milk and nothing else? As I say, a mystery.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, as he rubbed the wet cloth up and down my shaft as if washing it still, but his purpose was clearly different. He pulled me down to sit on his good knee.
“You haven’t come in how long?” he asked. “That cannot be healthy, even for a whoreslave who needn’t eat. I plan to see if you can come tonight, though, if we are patient.” He tossed the cloth aside. “I’ll use an unguent to be sure you do not get sore. You’ll need to retrieve it from the small chest inside the larger one there.” He pointed across the tent.
The top of the large chest was being used as a kind of table, and I moved the sheafs of reports aside, then opened the lid. A smaller and much more ornate chest was nestled there and I lifted it out. There was no key, just a fancy-looking latch. I popped the latch and the lid sprang open.
Inside was a single feather, a gold coin, and a strip of leather. Nothing that looked like a jar or bottle of unguent. “Sir? I don’t see it.” I carried the chest to him to show it.
“Ah, I must have misplaced it,” he muttered, looking around as if it might appear in his sight. “Well, no matter, put the chest away. Perhaps it’s just at the bottom of the larger one.”
Something about the way he said it made me think he had known the jar wasn’t there. For some reason he had wanted me to see what was in the chest? As I shut it and latched it, I wondered if I should have taken a closer look at the contents. I found the jar and returned to him.
He had shifted to the pallet and sat back with his legs wide, gesturing for me to come sit between them. There was no bulge in his breeches and I again wondered why he did not desire me, when it seemed damn near everyone else I met did.
He nestled my back against his chest, and then greased his palms, taking hold of me firmly and stroking upwards. Up and up and up, each hand following the other, always in the same direction. It was beyond arousing and I was soon writhing against him, on edge but unable to spill over.
He slowed then, and teased me the way Jorin used to, touching me so lightly I thought I might go mad, giving just enough pressure to move my foreskin up and down. Then the firm upward stroke returned.
Just when I was about to beg him to stop, though, he whispered into my ear. “Come for me, Page. Spill into my fingers.”
And as if his order could not be disobeyed, I found myself doing just that. That and crying out with relief. Spurt after spurt after spurt shot from my prick, eventually settling to a steady ooze. I took a long time to go soft. When I did, he held me cupped in the warmth of his hand, his other around my chest, holding me close.
“How…” I could barely speak, not from any compulsion this time, but merely from being out of breath and my throat raw. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t,” he said, kissing me on the temple. “I made a guess. I was either correct, or that was entirely coincidental.”
“But… but the field marshal told me to come, that night… that night in the stable. But I still could not.”
Roichal chuckled. “Then perhaps I am better at it than he? More likely, Page, it is that I made it an order. I feel sure the field marshal did not.”
Perhaps he hadn’t. Most of what I remembered of that night now was that Marksin had tried to soothe my tears.
“Perhaps,” I allowed.
“You sound unsure. Is there more I should know, that you are able to tell?”
I turned in his arms, putting mine around his neck. I expected again to feel his eager cock poking me in the belly, but I did not. His face was close to mine and in the lanterns his eyes looked like tiny fires burned in them. “Maybe… maybe not everyone can grant that permission. Maybe only you can.”
He stroked my hair. “Is that the way it feels?”
I nodded.
“Then you must tell me when you feel the need to spill, Page. Just as you must tell me when you are hungry, or if you have other needs.”
I nodded again, wondering if I dared to ask. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something, though, so I did. “Will you… will you kiss me like you did last night?” I wasn’t even sure if saying so would explain how I felt.
But I think he knew. He caressed one of my cheeks with his thumb, and then tilted my head with his fingers at the back of my neck. “You are a mystery,” he said in a low voice. “But Fate has sent you to me. That I believe.” And with that he leaned in and pressed a soft but lingering kiss against my forehead, every bit as searing as the previous one, marking me as his in my soul.
(Continue reading in Chapter 36!)