The guards enclosed them in a makeshift circle, swords drawn to deter any notion about breaking through the living wall to escape.
The empress clapped her hands together. “Begin!”
Azarion dropped into a crouch, forgetting Dalvila, forgetting the guards, and especially forgetting the agacin waiting in his cell. All that mattered now was the man facing him, as intent on winning this fight as Azarion was.
The gladiator charged him, his strategy obvious. Brute strength to conquer his adversary. Azarion’s counter was just as straightforward: keep away from those grasping hands and stay on his feet long enough to wear his opponent out, then go for the death blow.
He spun out of the way, but not fast enough. The man’s shoulder caught him high in the chest, throwing him off balance. He stumbled but kept his feet, pivoting in time to take a direct blow from a head-butt. The hit took him to the floor, knocking the breath out of him as his adversary landed on top of him. His hands wrapped around Azarion’s neck and squeezed.
Neither as heavy nor as muscular, Azarion used the leverage of his long legs to break free, swinging one over his opponent’s shoulder and wedging it against his throat, pushing back until the other man was forced to loosen his suffocating hold to keep from falling backward.
They clashed again, wrestling and grasping in a tangle of sweating limbs. The man went for Azarion’s neck a second time. Again, Azarion dodged him, repeating the move several times. His plan was working until the empress added an unexpected challenge. The crack of a whip sounded close to his ear before a hot pain tore down his back in a scorching line. He flinched away from it, directly into the gladiator’s deadly embrace.
The fighter whooped in triumph, only to shout his surprise when the whip kissed the back of his thighs, bringing him to his knees, Azarion still in his grip.
“Stop boring me,” the empress snarled, and struck again, this time catching Azarion across one shoulder with the lash. He glimpsed her face, pink with fury, spittle glossing her full lips.
The fighter wrapped himself around Azarion, his bulk belying his ability to act like a constrictor squeezing its prey. Azarion writhed in his grip, managing to free one arm. He curled his fingers into a tight fist and clubbed his adversary on the side of the head, hard enough that he rocked sideways. It wasn’t enough to dislodge him, and Azarion struck him again, this time full in the face.
There was a crunch of bone, and the other man jerked back as blood gushed from his nose and split lip. He let go to take a swing, his knuckles plowing into the underside of Azarion’s jaw.
Both men tore into each other, exchanging blows and crashing together like two bulls caught in the mating rut. The empress followed their movements, calling out encouragement or curses, and inflicting pain with the arbitrary flick of her whip.
The marble floor within the makeshift arena was slippery with sweat, blood, and saliva. Tired from a day battling for his survival in the Pit, Azarion’s muscles screamed for rest. He staggered from a brutal blow and felt a vague pop in his left side. The agony that followed turned the breath in his chest into a wash of fire. If he didn’t end it now, he’d lose this combat.
A surge of power, fueled by desperation and sharpened by pain, pumped through his battered frame. He broke free of his opponent’s persistent grip, twisted behind him, and caught him around the neck with one leg. His position and the hard grip of his thigh defeated the fighter’s efforts to break free.
Azarion tightened his hold, squeezing until he thought the veins in his leg would burst. He stared down at his captive, who thrashed in his hold, arms grasping uselessly at Azarion’s elbows. His eyes bulged even as his sweating face darkened to a dusky red, then purple, and his mouth opened and closed in a futile effort to breathe.
The empress lowered her whip and crept closer, her gaze avid as she watched Azarion choke his opponent to death.
He stared at her even as the fighter’s struggles weakened until they halted altogether, and he slumped lifeless in Azarion’s grip.
They stayed that way a few moments longer, until Dalvila smiled her approval. “Well done, my pet! I do believe you’re the winner tonight.” She gestured for him to rise.
A pair of soldiers pried the dead fighter out of his hold and dragged the body out of the room while two more hauled Azarion to his feet. The moment they let go, he fell, clutching his thigh as the muscles there knotted into an unholy cramp. The pain was as bad as the one in his side, and he groaned between clenched teeth, uncaring that he might have incurred Dalvila’s wrath over his inability to stand at her command.
“Bring him to the bed and strip him,” the empress ordered.
The guards lifted him to his feet a second time, their aid ungentle and unforgiving. The earlier agony in his leg was now overshadowed by that in his side. He’d cracked a rib; he was certain of it. And if he was lucky, it was only a crack. He pulled his arm free from one guard to tuck it against his side as he staggered to the massive bed.
Silken sheets shrouded him as he collapsed onto the mattress. Every breath was a knife between the ribs, and he didn’t move when rough hands ripped away his loincloth, leaving him naked. Perfume mixed with the scent of gore filled the bed’s draped interior, accented by the smell of beeswax from candles nearby.
Dalvila crawled onto the bed, bare from the waist down. She straddled him, slim legs spread wide to nestle his cock between them. Her eyes looked black in the half-light, her nostrils flared wide like a wild horse’s.
She braced a hand on his chest, laughing in delight at the tortured hiss that escaped his lips. “You performed well for me tonight, bull.” Her delicate hand slipped down to grip his cock. “Keep doing so, and you might live to see the morning.”
The pain was making him light-headed, and still his erection surged in her hand, ready to sink into the empress’s wet heat. He’d learned.
Her hand glided up and down his engorged shaft until, impatient with her own teasing, she rose, positioned herself above him, and sank down hard, taking him to the hilt.
Azarion’s back arched, and he groaned, both from the agony in his side and the hard ride of the empress’s passions. Each gasp was a torture, every thrust a lash that tore up his torso and blasted into his skull until he thought he might exhale a gout of flame. The black stars exploding across his vision were as much from his injury as from the sudden shock of his climax.
Caught in the throes of her own orgasm, Dalvila rocked hard atop him, carving bloody crescent moons into his collarbones with her nails.
He slipped out of her as she tumbled off him and onto the rumpled sheets. Her raspy breathing echoed his as she sprawled beside him.
“Get him out of here,” she called to her waiting guards. “He’s destroyed the bedding, and I need a bath.”
They jumped to do her bidding, and Azarion found himself dragged once more, out of the bed and into the hallway outside the royal bedchamber. The guards waited impatiently while he stood on trembling legs to dress before shackling him for the march through the palace corridors.