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Stumbling away following the whipping, Sebastian pulled his pants up, gave one big sob, and dashed into the woods.
Cursing, Lucan gave short chase. Sebastians’ pants weren’t fully properly tied, and he wasn’t practiced in the art of flight. Lucan caught up with him within a few strides, wrapped an arm around his waist and hiked him up and around to face him.
“Is there no way to make you obedient?”
Sebastian hid his face in Lucan’s chest and sobbed even more intensely.
“I’ll take that as a no,” he sighed, putting his hand to the back of Sebastian’s head and stroking his hair. Maybe he should not have been so harsh. Maybe he should have offered some kind of comfort rather than telling Sebastian to get up on his mount. Lucan was not used to handling sensitive young men. His role as knight had been to train squires, but all of them were willing and eager, and chastisement was rarely necessary and very infrequent. They were not wild young princes refusing any and all authority.
“It hurts,” Sebastian whimpered.
“I know,” Lucan murmured, running his hand down Sebastian’s back, giving him a tight embrace. He held Seb until he stopped crying, then ushered him back toward the horses.
He was dealing with a great many conflicting emotions, the desire to comfort Sebastian, the ongoing drive to punish him, and more tender impulses besides.
“I cannot tolerate disobedience,” he said. “But I do not wish to become another tyrant in your life. You are my prince, and one day you will be my king. But you cannot be either if you die.”
Sebastian’s face was almost as red as his ass. He rubbed his eyes on the back of his sleeve and tried to avoid Lucan’s eyes. He had been thoroughly shamed. Perhaps that would work to help curb his rebellion. Perhaps not.
“I’m sorry. I know I am terrible, and I am no king. You are wasting your time with me. I’m not good with any of this. I am…”
Lucan wanted to silence the prince’s self-flagellation. He cupped Sebastian’s face, and before he or Sebastian truly knew what he intended on doing, he pressed his lips to Sebastian’s.
As kisses went, it was very chaste and swift. The prince’s mouth was soft and slightly salty from his tears, and the temptation to kiss him more deeply charged through Lucan. He restrained himself out of respect for the tenderness of the prince, and the many tragedies he had endured. The kiss was effective, however, in that it stopped both Sebastian’s tears and self-recrimination. His eyes went very, very wide.
“You just…”
“If I am going to punish you, I will have to comfort you,” Lucan said. “You have no other source of comfort.”
“That’s… that was very comforting,” Sebastian blushed. “Is that… do all knights kiss other knights?”
Lucan knew what Sebastian was asking.
“Sometimes,” he said, avoiding answering directly. He instantly felt self-recrimination for his cowardice.
Sebastian had almost forgotten about the pain in his hide. Almost. No matter how many electric kisses graced his lips unexpectedly, the memory of being held and whipped by Lucan would never go away. The pain had been intense, but more than that, the power of the knight deployed in the effort to chasten him was overwhelmingly hot.
That was why he’d run. It wasn’t just that he was sore and shamed. It was that he was instantly erect, and he could not deal with the intense embarrassment and horror at having an erection in front of Lucan. The knight would no doubt be disgusted by him and inevitably reject him. He had to keep hiding his desire at all and any costs.
The kiss did confuse him, but it wasn’t a lascivious kind of connection. It was probably just what Lucan said, an attempt to give him some comfort. So many emotions had been warring in Sebastian all day long. They had peaked with the thrashing, and now that kiss.
Sebastian looked into Lucan’s eyes and tried to discern what was behind that gesture. Was it truly innocent? It had not felt innocent in the slightest. It had felt like a connection being formed, a brief but intense meeting of mouths that changed everything.
Lucan was no longer holding his face, but he felt the lingering warmth of the knight’s hands against his skin. He wanted more than anything to lean in and up, lifting his face for another of those kisses, and perhaps a deeper one. Lucan had made him greedy for more.
That greed gave him a sudden, reckless flash of impudent bravery.
“If a thrashing is what it takes to earn your kisses, sir knight, then I think I may be very badly behaved, indeed.”
Lucan’s expression hardened for a moment, and Sebastian was briefly afraid he had indeed earned himself another beating or worse. But almost instantly warmth flooded Lucan’s eyes, and his supple lips spread in a broad grin.
