Hi. LONG time lurker, and I finally decided to try my hand at something. It’s closer to a tickling-based romantic-erotic novella (a plot! How blasphemous!), but it flies, if you’re into that. Criticism’s welcome, and please tell me if I should post more parts. Thanks.
-Ash
The boy was still bleeding on the floor.
Princess Elana poked her head out from behind her bed again. Nope, he was still there.
She dropped against her bedpost, squeezing her eyes shut. Her stepmother had mentioned the war ending, but not like this.
Elana rolled to a crouch and made her way over to the boy.
The gods weren’t stingy when they built him, that was for sure. His blond tresses, albeit caught in sweat and bloodied, were badly cut almost on purpose. They framed a face still touched by youth, but sharp, intelligent features had grown defined in recent months. His nose had been broken and healed crookedly.
Elana gently wiped a trail of blood from the boy’s lips, glancing at the entrance to her quarters. Of course her stepmother just threw him in here. No precursor, no warning. Elana just had David of Cerces unconscious on her bedroom floor.
She stood, pulling raven hair from her eyes. Blood had already stained her pants. She collected her boots from beside the bed and ducked outside.
Aldien shot straight as she passed and thumped a fist against his chest. “Is everything all right, Highness?”
“No, but there’s nothing you can do about it.” Elana stalked down the halls and threw open the door to the war room.
Taria, her stepmother, leaned back in her chair. The general of the guard paused in her presentation.
“Why is the Prince of Cerces in my bedroom?”
“Come now, darling. Here I was thinking you were celebrating the war’s end.” Taria gestured at General Cilen, who hesitantly jabbed her pointer at the map in front of her.
“With David captured, Cerces will fall apart.” The general drew a ring around the growing territory in the center of their kingdom, Astal. “The rebellion is over without their figurehead.”
Elana pressed a hand to the table. “That requires removing the figurehead.”
“We have, but killing David just leaves him a martyr. We can’t have that.” Taria leaned on the table. “You’re in charge of breaking him.”
“Breaking him?”
Her stepmother smiled, tapping her fingers together. “Your father is trying to pick his heir. If he lives long enough to see the war through, the way we handle our rebel prince will decide that.”
A threat. Elana backed out of the room, fuming. Her stepmother didn’t think she had it in her to take care of David.
She’d make Taria eat her words.
David wasn’t as injured as he looked, but he was also far heavier. Elana struggled to pull him off the ground, and she dumped him onto the bed with little ceremony. He had bitten his tongue, but the blood in his hair was not his. She scrubbed it out with a washcloth, then got around to wiping his face clean.
He really had been blessed.
With a scowl, she threw the washcloth back into its basin and opened his shirt. No wounds, just bruises, but she was still taken aback. She knew he had been orphaned, and that he had sold himself into the gladiator circuit. But she had never seen what came after the gladiator fights. There were scars that were clearly bite marks, and most others were from knives and other blades.
David had made a declaration when he came of age a few months ago. In Cerces, people would be taken care of. No one would have to risk their lives in a gladiator ring to eat at night. She agreed with the sentiment. Taria didn’t have to know that.
Elana would be young to take the throne, only just of age, but anything was better than her elitist stepmother. If anything, Taria would make things worse.
David opened his eyes.
Elana hopped back before he punched her, but he clutched his side and fell back to the bed, gasping.
“Wow.” She came closer, still out of his boots’ range. “You’re exactly as they say.”
He kicked at her. “Shut up.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“Yeah right, royal bitch,” he spat.
She hadn’t expected anything less, but Elana tightened her lips. No one had ever spoken to her like that. She stepped forward, and when David threw another weak kick, she caught his boot and pulled it off.
“What the fuck!”
“You say you’re a royal, too.” She disarmed his other leg, tossing the second boot aside. “Never heard a royal talk like that.”
His face flushed as he tried fruitlessly to pull his shirt back together.
“Nope.” She grabbed his arm. David clawed at her wrist, but she freed him of his shirt. He clutched the bruises on his side, growling as he struggled to twist or roll over. Gods, what a state the guards had left him in.
Elana smiled despite herself. He was powerful. Incredibly so. But his injuries, minor as they were, kept him almost immobile. She could work with this.
She climbed onto the mattress and knelt over him. He glared up at her, his brown eyes brimming with raw hate.
She dug her hands under his arms and dragged his limp form up the silk sheets, all the way onto the mattress. But as she did, he curled into a ball.
“Nah! Don’t touch me!”
He settled with a groan, and Elana raised an eyebrow. That had to have taken so much effort and so much pain. Had she hit a bruise? No, she had touched his underarms, not his side.
Wait.
A malicious grin spread across Elana’s face.
“Shit,” David muttered.
She floated across the room to her closet, scavenging silken belts from dresses she only wore to balls. She came back touting a handful.
“You— what are you doing?” David shoved her, but she sat on his right arm, grabbed his wrist, and bound it to the nearest bedpost. As she stood, he struggled, realizing his predicament with a flash of horror and fury. “I’ll kill you!”
She stepped to his leg, this time pinning it with her weight. As she tied the silk around his ankle, David landed a solid kick on her back with his free leg.
She jerked, turned, and met his gaze. His expression dropped, his bare foot still frozen in midair. She finished tying off his leg, then took hold of that ankle and brought it to the far bedpost. That left just one free hand, clutched to his chest. The rest of him strained in a spread eagle.
She grabbed his wrist.
“No. ” His voice cracked, then he lurched, aiming his elbow at her face. She reeled, and David dropped back to the bed.
Elana pounced on his limp arm, pulling it to the last bedpost. David realized his mistake too late and tore at his bonds, the silk gentle but as unyielding as the chains that once held him at dungeon Dalle. At last he slumped and pouted at the blue canopy above him. “Is this the best you have?”
“Do you really want to know what I can do?” She planted herself on the mattress beside his head. “I thought you were smarter than this, rebel.”
He smirked. “What’s a princess going to do? Spoil me to death?”
“I think… I’ll do something that will just have you tickled.” She ran a fingernail down the side of David’s chest. He jerked, eyes shooting wide as he hissed another curse under his breath.
Any harder and she’d have hit one of his bruises. But the horrified reaction was amazing.
“Oh, what a torture you’ve found,” he snapped, biting his lip. “You’re crazy!”
“It seems like you’re trying to convince yourself of that more than me,” Elana chimed. His face grew red as she ran that nail between his ribs and under his arm. Spirit, he was ticklish. He’d been such a pain to the kingdom, and an ingenious general. He’d survived ten years in the gladiator circuit— by the skin of his teeth, from the look of it. But Elana giggled as David’s flush grew darker.
She glanced at her nails. “You know, I had these done this morning. I didn’t know I’d have a visitor.”
David’s cheeks ballooned. He sucked in a breath. “This isn’t working.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Elana smiled as David buried his face in his collarbone. “It looks like it’s working brilliantly.” She traced up his arm. David lunged, snapping at her fingers.
“Hmph. Maybe I’ll look somewhere else.” She was getting too close to his bruises. If she hurt him, he’d be able to focus on the pain instead of the tickling. She needed a real shot at seeing what this did to him.
She drifted along the mattress, still trailing fingers down his chest. “Hmm.” The fury in his eyes had retreated, replaced by something closer to fear.
She brushed a spot between his nipples and his arms tensed.
David’s biggest scar by far was a gravel burn running across his entire stomach. There were still little pockmarks where the ground had cut into him.
As she reached the edge of the scar, his ego finally cracked. “No. Please.”
She looked up. The fear had warped to terror. “What, this?” She prodded a fingertip against the scar.
“Aiah!” David let out a yelp he couldn’t swallow. The anger was back, first at himself, then redirected at her. “Get off of me, crazy bitch! I will get free of this, and when I do, I will kill you!”
There was that word again. And for that, she wasn’t done yet. She stood, and on her way past she pressed a finger into his navel.
“Nayahaha!”
She snickered at the look on his face, then kneeled at the end of the bed and reached for his twitching feet.
She rested a hand against one and pulled a face. The rebel had a prince’s feet.
Well, he did spend all day leading an army. Maybe it was a guilty pleasure.
It had dawned on David that Elana was going to have her way with him, at least for now. He had graduated from aimless cursing to a stone expression as she hovered over his right foot. “You will regret anything you do to me.”
Elana grabbed his toes, prying them back despite his desperate attempts to curl them. “We’ll see about that.”
His feet were the only part of his body that wasn’t bruised. If she had to wait for the rest of his powerful form to heal, this would do for now.
She ran four fingers down his taut sole. She may as well have set him on fire, his back arching as much as it could under his bonds. He settled with a groan.
Elana shrugged, a thin smile on her lips. “Don’t move so much. You might hurt yourself.”
David glowered, then bit his lip as she ran a nail under his toes.
“How long until you laugh?” She lifted her hand away from his big toe, drawing circles on its pad. “When you do, I won’t stop…”
She had to give it to him. He put up a good fight, even when she traced a line down his arch and he jumped a mile. Then she tracked a nail down the center of his foot and he let out a bark. Elana looked up. He slammed his mouth shut, eyes wide, but he knew it. He’d lost.
Elana stood. David tracked her as she once again returned to her closet. The poor sap thought she was giving him a break. Nope. This “royal bitch” was going to make him cry like one.
She unthreaded a few leather straps from the collars of her shirts.
“Okay,” David huffed as she sat back down. “That was fun. Yay. Now please, please untie me. My arms hurt.”
She leaned over his feet. “You’re so banged up you shouldn’t be conscious.” The first knot went nicely around the tie at his ankle. She got to work making a few loops in the leather thread. “Breathing must hurt too.”
He flushed, and not just from the test of will she had run him through. “I’m done. I won’t hurt you, I promise. Just… please.”
“Sweetheart, you lost our game.” In a deft stroke, Elana caught David’s big and fourth toe in a pair of loops and tied them back to the bond at his ankle, leaving his foot immobile. He let out one last curse, then pushed his face against his arm and didn’t bother fighting Elana as she captured his left foot.
A little give already, huh?
She sat back down on the ground, this time midway between his ankles. The color of milk— she couldn’t get hers to look this pretty.
Well, these were hers now, too.
She reached up with both hands and ran her nails down his arches.
“Mmmeeph!” He still had his head turtled into his shoulder.
She’d fix that.
Her next attack was centered on his exposed toes. Another muffled yelp. Elana frowned. He had such a foul mouth. Sure, he was repentant now, but that could change any second.
She dragged her fingers up and down both his feet.
“AAHH!” The bed shook, his soft scream resonating. There. He had given up hiding it. She slid in front of one foot and watched his toes flex against the leather cords. Her nail raced against the pad of his big toe. Above her, the mattress bounced, but David didn’t make a sound. Still fighting. A gladiator through and through.
She hopped from her haunches onto her knees, her head popping over the edge of the bed. At the same time, her nails viciously scraped against his right arch, down, then up, then down again. David had bit his lip, but at the new feeling he screwed up his eyes.
“NAHAHAHA haha hahaha haha…”
It was a pretty thing, almost musical. Elana kept at it, flicking two fingers where the ball of his foot met his arch.
It kept David frantic. But she could do better.
Still flicking the soft skin at the top of his arch, she shot a finger across the rest of David’s soft foot, her eyes sliding shut.
“AHIII! Nah!”
On his heel. But where? There was a specific spot...
In the center of his heel, there was another soft spot. Tears of forced mirth streamed down David’s temples as he shook his head in vain. Sure, it was working, but had gotten boring.
His arch was fun, unexplored territory.
She drew a ring around its boundary, marched soldiers from its center to the edge like the rebels David had led in Cerces. She smiled. He could probably feel it in her words as he lay trapped on the bed. “‘The monarchy will fall, tyrants will die, and heroes shall rise in their place.’ So you’re a hero, David?”
“Ahahaha STAP ahaha PLEHESE STAP naha!”
“I’ve never heard a hero beg.” Elana drew another ring around his arch. “That’s for the wall you built,” another ring, “that’s for the blockade you placed,” another ring, “that’s for the soldiers you stole, and this is for the people you’ve hurt.”
She drew a frantic scribble across his arch, forward, up, down.
“AHIIIIII!” David screeched, laughing long after she stopped. Eventually he choked out a coherent sentence. “I… I haven’t hurt anyone.”
“Of course you have.” She drew dots along his arch to the rest of his foot. “Your Cerces is in the middle of our Astal, surrounded by villages. The war has… burned… down… so… many of them.” She punctuated each word by scratching out the dots, on his heel, instep, and the balls of his feet before finishing on his sensitive arch. “There is war everywhere.” A wide scribble danced across the ball of his foot, around his instep, to his heel. “And you’ve caused it.”
At this, she stood, turned, and planted herself on top of David’s ankles with her back toward him. A glance back made her smile. David’s head had sagged, his eyes wide and rolled back. His bare chest heaved like he had run a dozen miles, dripping with sweat that soaked the sheets half a foot from him. He recognized the moment of quiet and forced himself up, more drained than any fight had ever left him. “Please, Princess, I beg of you. Mercy.”
Elana smiled, something predatory that made David shiver. “Of course. Because Cerces will fall.” She ran her nails across his arches in a wild scrape once more. David fell back, gasping.
“NAH! Nahaha ha… nanaha STAP PLEHEHEHESE… nahaha hahaha STAP…”
There was a weak sob in the garbled sound that made Elana smile.
Finally, she stood, but she spun around the bed toward his left foot rather than up to free his arms. “Princess…?”
“Well, I have to tell the same story on your other foot. Can’t have it feeling left out.”
She watched David’s face fall in horror as she sat down on top of his other leg. She wiggled his toes and got the same result.
“Nah… naha… nana… stap… don’t… haha…”
The laughter grew more and more hoarse. As she reached the burning of villages, it dropped away entirely. Elana stood sharply, finding David’s breathing weak and his eyes shut. She undid the bonds and pulled him into her lap, massaging his bruised arms and chest.
***
David woke a while later, his head pillowed. He pushed himself off a plush bed, then found his left foot weighted. He stumbled as he landed on the ground, the weight clattering after him. It was a silver chain, bound to the left bottommost bedpost. Not a thick one, but not something breakable, either. The cuff around his bare foot was lined with fur, so at least it was comfortable. He could reach a chamberpot, rosewater, and clean water, and a platter of meat and split carrots had been left on the bedside table.
His body no longer felt like it was filled with lead, but he was still bare-chested, bootless, and trapped in the bedroom. Based on his last experience, that wouldn’t change soon. Moreover, his bruises were well on the mend, and his beautiful captor would notice for sure.
He shivered and turned to the bed. He had been sleeping… on top of the princess. It was her breast he had pulled his head off, and he had slid out from under her arm. She was no warrior, yet did not dress like a royal. Leather pants and a loose shirt covered her form. She was soft in sleep, even more so than when she was awake. Her raven hair had scattered across one of the overfilled pillows and her breath came gently.
He may be half-bare in an enemy’s bedchamber, but he still had honor. He had promised, albeit under duress, not to hurt her. Watching the girl, though, he couldn’t so much as clench his fists. Cowardice at its finest… or bravery?
David rolled his shoulders, the bones in his back creaking. It still hurt, but not so much that Elana would spare his torso— and his vulnerable stomach— the next time. Because there was going to be a next time.
His sigh shook his whole frame. He had broken out of dozens of prisons, including the worst dungeon the kingdom had. But he had no clue how to begin with this one.
He examined the bedpost his shackle was wrapped around. It was no thicker than a sizable lance.
Well, he knew now.
Part 2 (F/M)
-Ash
The boy was still bleeding on the floor.
Princess Elana poked her head out from behind her bed again. Nope, he was still there.
She dropped against her bedpost, squeezing her eyes shut. Her stepmother had mentioned the war ending, but not like this.
Elana rolled to a crouch and made her way over to the boy.
The gods weren’t stingy when they built him, that was for sure. His blond tresses, albeit caught in sweat and bloodied, were badly cut almost on purpose. They framed a face still touched by youth, but sharp, intelligent features had grown defined in recent months. His nose had been broken and healed crookedly.
Elana gently wiped a trail of blood from the boy’s lips, glancing at the entrance to her quarters. Of course her stepmother just threw him in here. No precursor, no warning. Elana just had David of Cerces unconscious on her bedroom floor.
She stood, pulling raven hair from her eyes. Blood had already stained her pants. She collected her boots from beside the bed and ducked outside.
Aldien shot straight as she passed and thumped a fist against his chest. “Is everything all right, Highness?”
“No, but there’s nothing you can do about it.” Elana stalked down the halls and threw open the door to the war room.
Taria, her stepmother, leaned back in her chair. The general of the guard paused in her presentation.
“Why is the Prince of Cerces in my bedroom?”
“Come now, darling. Here I was thinking you were celebrating the war’s end.” Taria gestured at General Cilen, who hesitantly jabbed her pointer at the map in front of her.
“With David captured, Cerces will fall apart.” The general drew a ring around the growing territory in the center of their kingdom, Astal. “The rebellion is over without their figurehead.”
Elana pressed a hand to the table. “That requires removing the figurehead.”
“We have, but killing David just leaves him a martyr. We can’t have that.” Taria leaned on the table. “You’re in charge of breaking him.”
“Breaking him?”
Her stepmother smiled, tapping her fingers together. “Your father is trying to pick his heir. If he lives long enough to see the war through, the way we handle our rebel prince will decide that.”
A threat. Elana backed out of the room, fuming. Her stepmother didn’t think she had it in her to take care of David.
She’d make Taria eat her words.
David wasn’t as injured as he looked, but he was also far heavier. Elana struggled to pull him off the ground, and she dumped him onto the bed with little ceremony. He had bitten his tongue, but the blood in his hair was not his. She scrubbed it out with a washcloth, then got around to wiping his face clean.
He really had been blessed.
With a scowl, she threw the washcloth back into its basin and opened his shirt. No wounds, just bruises, but she was still taken aback. She knew he had been orphaned, and that he had sold himself into the gladiator circuit. But she had never seen what came after the gladiator fights. There were scars that were clearly bite marks, and most others were from knives and other blades.
David had made a declaration when he came of age a few months ago. In Cerces, people would be taken care of. No one would have to risk their lives in a gladiator ring to eat at night. She agreed with the sentiment. Taria didn’t have to know that.
Elana would be young to take the throne, only just of age, but anything was better than her elitist stepmother. If anything, Taria would make things worse.
David opened his eyes.
Elana hopped back before he punched her, but he clutched his side and fell back to the bed, gasping.
“Wow.” She came closer, still out of his boots’ range. “You’re exactly as they say.”
He kicked at her. “Shut up.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“Yeah right, royal bitch,” he spat.
She hadn’t expected anything less, but Elana tightened her lips. No one had ever spoken to her like that. She stepped forward, and when David threw another weak kick, she caught his boot and pulled it off.
“What the fuck!”
“You say you’re a royal, too.” She disarmed his other leg, tossing the second boot aside. “Never heard a royal talk like that.”
His face flushed as he tried fruitlessly to pull his shirt back together.
“Nope.” She grabbed his arm. David clawed at her wrist, but she freed him of his shirt. He clutched the bruises on his side, growling as he struggled to twist or roll over. Gods, what a state the guards had left him in.
Elana smiled despite herself. He was powerful. Incredibly so. But his injuries, minor as they were, kept him almost immobile. She could work with this.
She climbed onto the mattress and knelt over him. He glared up at her, his brown eyes brimming with raw hate.
She dug her hands under his arms and dragged his limp form up the silk sheets, all the way onto the mattress. But as she did, he curled into a ball.
“Nah! Don’t touch me!”
He settled with a groan, and Elana raised an eyebrow. That had to have taken so much effort and so much pain. Had she hit a bruise? No, she had touched his underarms, not his side.
Wait.
A malicious grin spread across Elana’s face.
“Shit,” David muttered.
She floated across the room to her closet, scavenging silken belts from dresses she only wore to balls. She came back touting a handful.
“You— what are you doing?” David shoved her, but she sat on his right arm, grabbed his wrist, and bound it to the nearest bedpost. As she stood, he struggled, realizing his predicament with a flash of horror and fury. “I’ll kill you!”
She stepped to his leg, this time pinning it with her weight. As she tied the silk around his ankle, David landed a solid kick on her back with his free leg.
She jerked, turned, and met his gaze. His expression dropped, his bare foot still frozen in midair. She finished tying off his leg, then took hold of that ankle and brought it to the far bedpost. That left just one free hand, clutched to his chest. The rest of him strained in a spread eagle.
She grabbed his wrist.
“No. ” His voice cracked, then he lurched, aiming his elbow at her face. She reeled, and David dropped back to the bed.
Elana pounced on his limp arm, pulling it to the last bedpost. David realized his mistake too late and tore at his bonds, the silk gentle but as unyielding as the chains that once held him at dungeon Dalle. At last he slumped and pouted at the blue canopy above him. “Is this the best you have?”
“Do you really want to know what I can do?” She planted herself on the mattress beside his head. “I thought you were smarter than this, rebel.”
He smirked. “What’s a princess going to do? Spoil me to death?”
“I think… I’ll do something that will just have you tickled.” She ran a fingernail down the side of David’s chest. He jerked, eyes shooting wide as he hissed another curse under his breath.
Any harder and she’d have hit one of his bruises. But the horrified reaction was amazing.
“Oh, what a torture you’ve found,” he snapped, biting his lip. “You’re crazy!”
“It seems like you’re trying to convince yourself of that more than me,” Elana chimed. His face grew red as she ran that nail between his ribs and under his arm. Spirit, he was ticklish. He’d been such a pain to the kingdom, and an ingenious general. He’d survived ten years in the gladiator circuit— by the skin of his teeth, from the look of it. But Elana giggled as David’s flush grew darker.
She glanced at her nails. “You know, I had these done this morning. I didn’t know I’d have a visitor.”
David’s cheeks ballooned. He sucked in a breath. “This isn’t working.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Elana smiled as David buried his face in his collarbone. “It looks like it’s working brilliantly.” She traced up his arm. David lunged, snapping at her fingers.
“Hmph. Maybe I’ll look somewhere else.” She was getting too close to his bruises. If she hurt him, he’d be able to focus on the pain instead of the tickling. She needed a real shot at seeing what this did to him.
She drifted along the mattress, still trailing fingers down his chest. “Hmm.” The fury in his eyes had retreated, replaced by something closer to fear.
She brushed a spot between his nipples and his arms tensed.
David’s biggest scar by far was a gravel burn running across his entire stomach. There were still little pockmarks where the ground had cut into him.
As she reached the edge of the scar, his ego finally cracked. “No. Please.”
She looked up. The fear had warped to terror. “What, this?” She prodded a fingertip against the scar.
“Aiah!” David let out a yelp he couldn’t swallow. The anger was back, first at himself, then redirected at her. “Get off of me, crazy bitch! I will get free of this, and when I do, I will kill you!”
There was that word again. And for that, she wasn’t done yet. She stood, and on her way past she pressed a finger into his navel.
“Nayahaha!”
She snickered at the look on his face, then kneeled at the end of the bed and reached for his twitching feet.
She rested a hand against one and pulled a face. The rebel had a prince’s feet.
Well, he did spend all day leading an army. Maybe it was a guilty pleasure.
It had dawned on David that Elana was going to have her way with him, at least for now. He had graduated from aimless cursing to a stone expression as she hovered over his right foot. “You will regret anything you do to me.”
Elana grabbed his toes, prying them back despite his desperate attempts to curl them. “We’ll see about that.”
His feet were the only part of his body that wasn’t bruised. If she had to wait for the rest of his powerful form to heal, this would do for now.
She ran four fingers down his taut sole. She may as well have set him on fire, his back arching as much as it could under his bonds. He settled with a groan.
Elana shrugged, a thin smile on her lips. “Don’t move so much. You might hurt yourself.”
David glowered, then bit his lip as she ran a nail under his toes.
“How long until you laugh?” She lifted her hand away from his big toe, drawing circles on its pad. “When you do, I won’t stop…”
She had to give it to him. He put up a good fight, even when she traced a line down his arch and he jumped a mile. Then she tracked a nail down the center of his foot and he let out a bark. Elana looked up. He slammed his mouth shut, eyes wide, but he knew it. He’d lost.
Elana stood. David tracked her as she once again returned to her closet. The poor sap thought she was giving him a break. Nope. This “royal bitch” was going to make him cry like one.
She unthreaded a few leather straps from the collars of her shirts.
“Okay,” David huffed as she sat back down. “That was fun. Yay. Now please, please untie me. My arms hurt.”
She leaned over his feet. “You’re so banged up you shouldn’t be conscious.” The first knot went nicely around the tie at his ankle. She got to work making a few loops in the leather thread. “Breathing must hurt too.”
He flushed, and not just from the test of will she had run him through. “I’m done. I won’t hurt you, I promise. Just… please.”
“Sweetheart, you lost our game.” In a deft stroke, Elana caught David’s big and fourth toe in a pair of loops and tied them back to the bond at his ankle, leaving his foot immobile. He let out one last curse, then pushed his face against his arm and didn’t bother fighting Elana as she captured his left foot.
A little give already, huh?
She sat back down on the ground, this time midway between his ankles. The color of milk— she couldn’t get hers to look this pretty.
Well, these were hers now, too.
She reached up with both hands and ran her nails down his arches.
“Mmmeeph!” He still had his head turtled into his shoulder.
She’d fix that.
Her next attack was centered on his exposed toes. Another muffled yelp. Elana frowned. He had such a foul mouth. Sure, he was repentant now, but that could change any second.
She dragged her fingers up and down both his feet.
“AAHH!” The bed shook, his soft scream resonating. There. He had given up hiding it. She slid in front of one foot and watched his toes flex against the leather cords. Her nail raced against the pad of his big toe. Above her, the mattress bounced, but David didn’t make a sound. Still fighting. A gladiator through and through.
She hopped from her haunches onto her knees, her head popping over the edge of the bed. At the same time, her nails viciously scraped against his right arch, down, then up, then down again. David had bit his lip, but at the new feeling he screwed up his eyes.
“NAHAHAHA haha hahaha haha…”
It was a pretty thing, almost musical. Elana kept at it, flicking two fingers where the ball of his foot met his arch.
It kept David frantic. But she could do better.
Still flicking the soft skin at the top of his arch, she shot a finger across the rest of David’s soft foot, her eyes sliding shut.
“AHIII! Nah!”
On his heel. But where? There was a specific spot...
In the center of his heel, there was another soft spot. Tears of forced mirth streamed down David’s temples as he shook his head in vain. Sure, it was working, but had gotten boring.
His arch was fun, unexplored territory.
She drew a ring around its boundary, marched soldiers from its center to the edge like the rebels David had led in Cerces. She smiled. He could probably feel it in her words as he lay trapped on the bed. “‘The monarchy will fall, tyrants will die, and heroes shall rise in their place.’ So you’re a hero, David?”
“Ahahaha STAP ahaha PLEHESE STAP naha!”
“I’ve never heard a hero beg.” Elana drew another ring around his arch. “That’s for the wall you built,” another ring, “that’s for the blockade you placed,” another ring, “that’s for the soldiers you stole, and this is for the people you’ve hurt.”
She drew a frantic scribble across his arch, forward, up, down.
“AHIIIIII!” David screeched, laughing long after she stopped. Eventually he choked out a coherent sentence. “I… I haven’t hurt anyone.”
“Of course you have.” She drew dots along his arch to the rest of his foot. “Your Cerces is in the middle of our Astal, surrounded by villages. The war has… burned… down… so… many of them.” She punctuated each word by scratching out the dots, on his heel, instep, and the balls of his feet before finishing on his sensitive arch. “There is war everywhere.” A wide scribble danced across the ball of his foot, around his instep, to his heel. “And you’ve caused it.”
At this, she stood, turned, and planted herself on top of David’s ankles with her back toward him. A glance back made her smile. David’s head had sagged, his eyes wide and rolled back. His bare chest heaved like he had run a dozen miles, dripping with sweat that soaked the sheets half a foot from him. He recognized the moment of quiet and forced himself up, more drained than any fight had ever left him. “Please, Princess, I beg of you. Mercy.”
Elana smiled, something predatory that made David shiver. “Of course. Because Cerces will fall.” She ran her nails across his arches in a wild scrape once more. David fell back, gasping.
“NAH! Nahaha ha… nanaha STAP PLEHEHEHESE… nahaha hahaha STAP…”
There was a weak sob in the garbled sound that made Elana smile.
Finally, she stood, but she spun around the bed toward his left foot rather than up to free his arms. “Princess…?”
“Well, I have to tell the same story on your other foot. Can’t have it feeling left out.”
She watched David’s face fall in horror as she sat down on top of his other leg. She wiggled his toes and got the same result.
“Nah… naha… nana… stap… don’t… haha…”
The laughter grew more and more hoarse. As she reached the burning of villages, it dropped away entirely. Elana stood sharply, finding David’s breathing weak and his eyes shut. She undid the bonds and pulled him into her lap, massaging his bruised arms and chest.
***
David woke a while later, his head pillowed. He pushed himself off a plush bed, then found his left foot weighted. He stumbled as he landed on the ground, the weight clattering after him. It was a silver chain, bound to the left bottommost bedpost. Not a thick one, but not something breakable, either. The cuff around his bare foot was lined with fur, so at least it was comfortable. He could reach a chamberpot, rosewater, and clean water, and a platter of meat and split carrots had been left on the bedside table.
His body no longer felt like it was filled with lead, but he was still bare-chested, bootless, and trapped in the bedroom. Based on his last experience, that wouldn’t change soon. Moreover, his bruises were well on the mend, and his beautiful captor would notice for sure.
He shivered and turned to the bed. He had been sleeping… on top of the princess. It was her breast he had pulled his head off, and he had slid out from under her arm. She was no warrior, yet did not dress like a royal. Leather pants and a loose shirt covered her form. She was soft in sleep, even more so than when she was awake. Her raven hair had scattered across one of the overfilled pillows and her breath came gently.
He may be half-bare in an enemy’s bedchamber, but he still had honor. He had promised, albeit under duress, not to hurt her. Watching the girl, though, he couldn’t so much as clench his fists. Cowardice at its finest… or bravery?
David rolled his shoulders, the bones in his back creaking. It still hurt, but not so much that Elana would spare his torso— and his vulnerable stomach— the next time. Because there was going to be a next time.
His sigh shook his whole frame. He had broken out of dozens of prisons, including the worst dungeon the kingdom had. But he had no clue how to begin with this one.
He examined the bedpost his shackle was wrapped around. It was no thicker than a sizable lance.
Well, he knew now.
Part 2 (F/M)
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