Sovereign's Gladiator by Jez Morrow

home for gods, with huge buildings, marble fountains and water tamed into channels. Raenthe soldiers carried weapons that hurled bolts and balls and darts past the farthest dreams of the best desert archers. Xan used to look up from his death pit at that beautiful Sovereign in his cushioned box and dream about fucking him blind. And he would ask the gods why they had gone deaf to him.
    Fate turned, as fate will. Now Xan was now assigned to the Sovereign’s person and ordered to take him to the wild lands .
    The gods listened after all.
    And the chance to fuck him had come even sooner than that. Not the way Xan had imagined it. That fuck had not been the humiliation he dreamed of.
    Xan had been gentle. He needed to be gentle to get here. He’d taken Devon with great restraint. It was his chance to bring that crowned head under his control. Xan had put his cock into the Sovereign’s mouth. And Devon loved it. Xan had put his sex inside the Sovereign’s tight ass and had him sobbing for joy. Devon was really beautifully built, with that splendid hard body, that taut, narrow ass. He was extraordinarily sensual and touchingly innocent.
    Xan thought he may even have been Devon’s first.
    Devon had the smooth bronze skin of the Raenthe kind. He smelled good, and not just because of the spices and oils he used on his body. Devon’s musky essence was enticing. His tongue was exceptional. He must have learned the art from some very costly whores. Devon was the finest thing Xan had ever had.
    Devon wore no paint. Jewelry, yes, and fine clothes, but no other art. Out here on the march with the army, Xan could see how very little the ornament added to Devon’s beauty. He was youthfully slender and beautifully muscular. A few flecks of scars on his skin were but flaws in the diamond. His nails were short, neat and blunt-honed.
    Xan watched Devon ride. There was an elegant subtle curve to Devon’s back. Devon rode as he stood—tall, never rigid. He moved with a natural grace.
    There had been no mistaking that look of stunned lust on Devon’s face when the regent Marcus first presented Xan to Devon as first guardsman. Devon had paced away from him like an agitated mare with her nostrils full of stallion. Devon’s desire had been so hot that Xan was surprised the chamber did not ignite. It was so obvious what no one else seemed to notice.
    Devon wanted Xan. Xan knew he could make use of that desire.
    The gods were very strange.
    The Sovereign was turning out to be complicated, surprising. And now unnerving.
    Xan had thought the pretty dictator ordered the burial of the mountain dead out of disdain for the barbarian kind. Xan had wanted to kill the Sovereign right there. The tyrant was putting desert men into the dirt!
    But no. It hadn’t been intended as insult. It had been an ignorant blunder. Devon had thought he was respecting the enemy dead, treating them as he would his own, even if it meant laboring to dig holes.
    So the Sovereign wasn’t evil.
    He was, however, ignorant. Not someone you want ruling your kind. Devon was trying to lord over people he knew nothing about.
    To his credit, Devon was trying to correct that ignorance with this journey.
    It was too late. Xan reminded himself he was on a mission of vengeance and liberation.
    He had the tyrant by the cock. Things were going better than he’d ever expected.
    They were.
    Truly.
    Here Xan was on the very threshold of the wild lands and he’d almost squandered everything over a word, a Raenthe insinuation that he was doing exactly what he was doing—delivering the Sovereign to his enemy.
    Devon had questioned Xan’s loyalty. As well Devon should.
    The Raenthe tyrant who moaned in Xan’s arms was keeping a firm grip on his duty.
    It was Xan who was losing his grip.
    Xan felt the war within.
    I like him.
    Xan could not allow that feeling to continue.
    Xan had a duty to deliver the tyrant into the hands of the desert people for judgment.
    Still, he was going to feel it