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He looks to Exeinil. “This is a test of his devotion to me, Grand Majesty.”

“And what better test than for it to service the table at your command?” Exeinil says plainly.

Perl takes a breath. He knows what Exeinil wants. She is bored. She wants entertainment. All he must do is offer her something she will enjoy more than Kerik being passed along under the high table. “But that is not truly what I want. I have explained I am quite besotted with him. Surely his obedience to me must be according to my desires, not Prince Vane’s?”

“Your desires,” Vane says, with a note of idle cruelty in his voice. “What are your desires, Perlash?”

Perl pushes back from the table, letting his chair scrape over the black wood of the platform. He leaves enough space so that there is a good view of his body to anyone who turns around to watch. He can see both Exeinil and Vane looking on with interest. Although Diamanda is busy with her own thrall between her thighs and is paying him no attention at all.

“Come closer, thrall,” Perl says, beckoning Kerik out from under the table to kneel before him.

Kerik crawls. It’s only a couple of paces.

“Down.”

Kerik prostrates himself flawlessly, a perfect echo of how Perl demonstrated the move.

“Kiss my boot.”

Kerik obeys once again, elegant and perfect.

Perl looks at the faces watching him. Exeinil’s bright eyes on his. This isn’t enough and he knows it. They have seen this before. Kerik has knelt before Perl, lowered himself to the ground and kissed Perl’s boots. He is going to have to give them something more or Exeinil is going to insist Kerik service them all.

Softly Kerik whispers, “May I pleasure you, Master?” as if he has been thinking the exact same thing. Kerik’s voice drops to a low hiss. “Do it. I’ll be good. Just as you showed me.”

Perl’s cock thuds at the thought of that, Kerik showing him how sweetly he performed himself in their chambers.

But it was not sweet. No, Kerik took him savagely. Could he do that? He does not think he has it in him to use Kerik the way that Kerik had used him, but he could do some of it, mimic the look of it. Just as he showed Kerik how to behave, Kerik showed him.

He takes hold of a handful of Kerik’s hair. It’s soft, ebony silk. He twists hard and growls out, "Keep still, thrall. Let your Master use you.”

Kerik’s eyes meet Perl’s, dark and rich, dancing with amusement although everything else about Kerik’s expression and posture conveys nothing but sweet submission.

Kerik’s mouth opens as Perl unfastens his breeches one-handed and slides his roused cock into Kerik's mouth. Perl gasps. The heat of Kerik’s mouth is blinding, quite extraordinary. He tries to control his reaction. He can show pleasure, yes, but not shocked surprise. No one else at the table can know he has never taken Kerik’s mouth before.

Kerik makes a strange sound. It confuses Perl a moment before he realises Kerik has made a soft chuckle of amusement around his cock, although not loud enough that anyone else could hear. Nevertheless, Perl twists his hand tight in Kerik’s hair.

He snarls as he shoves his cock in deep, caring nothing for Kerik’s discomfort, and thinking only of how it had been in his chamber. Of how he had felt on his knees, taking Kerik this way, overwhelmed with the sweet good feeling of being used for the pleasure of another. Feeling whole as Kerik had taken his throat so deep he choked.

Perl imagines himself Kerik, as he takes Kerik’s mouth, forgetting that he is being watched, that this is a display for an audience of high fae. He thinks of nothing but the searing heat of Kerik’s mouth and how soon he can once more be the one kneeling to be used this way.

As Kerik teases him, a skilled tongue working against the underside of his cock, tantalising Perl with sensation, even as Perl takes him so deep that spittle leaks from Kerik’s lips and down his chest.

Kerik is impressively skilled on his knees for one who prefers to be in control.

Perl thinks about how he ought not to have kept Kerik in enchanted sleep for those five years he had him at the Starlight Tower.

Five years of lonely toil and struggle while his prince slept upstairs. Perl had barely even allowed himself to enter that chamber and watch Kerik slumber.

When they could have spent all that time doing this.

No, not this, what they did earlier. With Perl on his knees as Kerik’s thrall. Perl could have knelt for him and begged, let Kerik control his pleasure or deny it completely, take the lash to him if he chose, ignore him or use him. Own him.

He could have been used like this nightly. Kneeling with his mouth open and Kerik’s fist in his hair.

Perl spends with a cry.

The pleasure is rich, although, he thinks, not as rich as the twisted delicious shame of spending on himself while Kerik’s cock was thrust down his throat.