In His Arena 1: Slave Eternal by Nasia Maksima

cells he was passing. How many witnesses. If anyone glimpsed a lack of desire, if anyone informed even one of Hektor’s rich patrons—or, Doomsayer’s Abyss, the odds-makers—Hektor’s reputation would be dashed. A gladiator without a healthy appetite for fighting and fucking was considered a waste of denarii.
    Hektor had worked too hard, given up too much to allow that to happen.
    He fixed a lustful grin to his face just in time to see Remulon bustling through the gloom toward him, as much as a man with one leg could bustle. Captain of the Claim Guard, Remulon had been a champion in his own right, in golden days past. Never a primus palus but still a favorite of the odds-makers and many a lovely amatore.
    As a boy, Hektor remembered him on the ballots. I wanted to be just like him.
    “Hektor, my friend!” Remulon’s beard split to reveal teeth that were startlingly white in his tanned face. He shifted on his crutch and clasped the primus palus’s forearm. “You have come for your Claim, have you?” His laughter boomed in the dingy, low-ceilinged hall.
    Despite his grim mood, Hektor was genuinely glad to see the man. “Remulon.”
    “Come, come.” Remulon jammed the crutch under his arm with a good-natured wince and turned in several short hops. “I made sure to put your Claim in the rear hall. Remembered you like your privacy.”
    Huffing with exertion, he led Hektor through the darkened labyrinth of passages. The smell of man-musk and the bestial sounds of rutting, of men grunting and crying out—in pleasure, in release, in the pain of being taken for the first time—echoed off the humid walls and made Hektor feel too tight, too bound up in his skin.
    His thoughts tumbled back to three years ago. His own first time taking cock. Leander behind him, coaxing him gently, the searing-slick, delicious agony of his rod sliding tight into Hektor’s needy hole. The satisfying burn. He hadn’t been filled up so well since that night. He’d never let another man have him.
    No, Hektor Actaeon was the conqueror, not the conquest.
    And he was no man’s Claim.
    Hektor’s cock stirred again, and he cursed himself. These early morning sojourns to the Claim aroused him, but they could no longer satisfy him. What he truly wanted was to take a lover, and to allow a lover to take him in return. But this was Arena. This was the Empress’s Theatre. Love was scarce here.
    The jingling of rusted keys brought him back around.
    Remulon popped the lock on the cell and peeled back the heavy oaken door. With a smile at Hektor, he clapped him on the arm. “He’s a handsome one. Not a retiarius but still…not bad either.” His grin was leeringly white in the gloom. “Go, eh? Have fun, my friend. It looks like you need it.”
    “Yes.” Hektor forced the word out of a dry throat. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Leaning against it, he waited for his eyes to adjust, for the clump-clomp of Remulon’s crutch to echo away down the hall.
    At least these back halls had no exterior grates or windows. Yes, Hektor Actaeon preferred his privacy. He preferred no one knew how he disgraced Leander’s memory.
    Shoving away from the door, he moved into the small cell.
    Two greasy torches guttered on the far wall, and in the center of the chamber, doused in shadow, was a half-naked man chained to the ceiling. His arms had been dragged up over his head so his feet barely reached the ground. His struggles ceased when he saw Hektor, but the momentum caused him to revolve at the end of his chains, as though displaying himself for Hektor’s approval.
    Like all gladiators, the man was well formed—muscular and broad, his skin tanned, his hair a dark mop around his face. He had been stripped of his tunic, and his loincloth barely hid his erection. He had been waiting.
    Waiting for the great Hektor Actaeon to come and plow him.
    Despite himself, Hektor came to half-hardness at the sight of an eager man. Licking his lips, he tore