Unlike My Enemy ( MxM )

26. The New Arrangement

"An eye for an eye," I say, clenching the iron fire poker.

Hadrian looks up from the floor, his handsome features distorted by anger. Then, a spark of understanding appears in his eyes. He tries to crawl away, but I grab him and force him over to his stomach. As he tries to resist, his hand brushes the hot decorative iron screen by the fireplace, and he gasps in pain. I use this distraction to straddle his back, and catch him by the neck, pressing his face to the floor.

"Let...go." His voice comes out muffled. I grasp him by the hair, pull his head back with one hand and bring the sharp end of the iron poker to his face with the other. He jerks violently away and nearly pushes me off, but I pin him down with my weight, using my elbows, legs, my whole body to keep him in place. We writhe on the floor, entangled like lovers. My left hand holds his head down, while the right one with the iron poker gets closer to his face, despite him clenching my wrist to keep it away.

There's more similarity to lovemaking than just the proximity. His wriggling underneath me has an unexpected effect, and I'm so hard inside my pants that it seems a few more rubs will get me off. Perhaps I will come when I stick the iron poker into his eye. Perhaps I will fuck him afterwards. He's the Whore Prince, after all. Taking a man couldn't be too different from taking a woman from behind, and I had my share of experiments with the harbor whores. Perhaps this will put out the fire of anger and frustration that's been consuming me all these years, and then --

"Stop it," he gasps.

I become aware that the quality of his struggling has changed. His hand is still grasping my wrist, but it's not pushing anymore and his body is shaking underneath me in what it takes me a few seconds to identify as sobs. My hand with the poker is hovering inches from his face, but there's no resistance anymore. I could stick it in if I wanted to.

Do I want to?

"Please." His body is completely limp now, except for his hard breathing intermittent with sobs. "Let go. Please."

We remain unmoving for a few seconds and then I become aware of the clanging sound the poker makes as it drops from my fingers. I roll off him and sit on the floor, breathing hard.

The moment he's free, Hadrian flips to his back and pushes himself away from me, using his heels and elbows. He gets as far as the niche in the wall. Once his back is pressed to the stones, he gathers his knees to his chest and covers his face with his hands.

I get up to my feet.

"No!" he shouts, removing his hands, so that his wet, panicked face becomes visible. "Get away from me! You're not allowed to touch me! You're not allowed to look at me!"

He's clearly hysterical. He looks like he did when Oliver approached him with a sword, way younger that his years, like a scared child, and, like it did in the throne room, it makes me sick. So does the memory of the thoughts that I've been having just moments ago. I wanted to wound him, possibly mortally, and then to rape him. Regardless of who he is or what he did, am I the kind of person to do something like that?

Fuck him or beat him up, Oliver said. Easy for him to say. He should have finished it all back there in the throne room, instead of leaving me to deal with...this. It doesn't feel like revenge. It just feels pointless and wrong.

I look around until my eyes stop on the armchair by the fire. I walk over to it and sink into its soft padded embrace, stretching out my tired feet. Then, I just look at the fire, gathering my thoughts. Red and yellow reflections play on my new leather boots. That brings the idea about. Perhaps there's only one way to make Hadrian understand.

I look at his figure still cowering by the fireplace. His sobs have subsided but I can hear his labored breathing, and his hands are still hiding his face.

"Slave," I say. The word feels strange on my tongue—I have never addressed anyone with it, and now I do a prince. "Come here and take my boots off."

For a moment, there's no reaction. Then he looks at me through his fingers.

"You heard me," I say.

He lowers his hands slowly. I can see the anger and disbelief flare in his gaze and then, just as quickly, subside, as he realizes there's no way out for him.

"I shouldn't have knelt," he whispers. "I should have let you kill me. Death would have been better than this."

"I can still do it," I say. "Or you can do it yourself." I kick the iron poker with my foot and it rolls to him with loud clanging. "Come on, stab yourself, and finish it all. The window is open, too."

He glances at the poker but makes no movement to pick it up.

"That's what I thought," I say. "You love yourself too much. Come on. The boots." I nod down. "Serve me and live or refuse and die. It's that simple."

There's a pause as we stare at each other. Then I shift in my chair and that gets him going. Jerkily, he makes it up to his feet, helping himself on the wall. Then, slowly, he comes closer and stops by the armchair. There's another moment of hesitation before he lowers himself to the floor by my feet, bowing his head deliberately so that his hair conceals his face.

I lean back and watch in disbelief as his fingers begin to untangle the laces on by left boot.

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