The rest of the day's journey was uneventful. Leighton had even quieted to admire the scenery as they passed through fields of flowers and over a lovely stream.

     As they entered their room at the inn, Leighton yawned and stretched as he fell onto the only bed in the room.

     "I claim it!" he called out as Thane dropped their bags onto the floor. "Unless, of course, you'd like to share."

     He turned on his side and patted the mattress, making small circles with his hand.

     "You'll sleep on the floor like always," Thane replied and grabbed him by the arm to pull him up. "Tend to our things while I take a nap. We'll eat dinner when I awaken."

     Leighton frowned when Thane kicked off his boots and stretched across the bed where he had been.

     "I'm your prisoner, not your servant, you know," he grumbled as he went through their belongings.

     By "tend to our things," Leighton knew Thane meant to scrub their dirty clothes in a tub of cold water sitting off to the side of the room. Since they had left his bloodied set at the lake, he only had to wash Thane's this time.

     "What exactly did you do to earn the ire of those bandits?" Thane asked as he watched Leighton toss his clothes into the water.

     Leighton glanced over and grinned mischievously. "I might have deflowered their leader's daughter. His son, too."

     Thane stared at him in awe. "Crazy bastard!"

     "They were of consenting age and quite willing," Leighton defended himself.

     He lifted the clothes and dunked them again before scrubbing them with a bar of soap.

     "Not at the same time, of course!" he quickly clarified with a wide-eyed glance at Thane. "I'm not that perverse."

     "I didn't ask for details," Thane answered as though he weren't interested, but he kept his eyes on Leighton in wait for him to continue.

     He always embellished.

     "Mmm ... she was a lovely young thing," Leighton reminisced. "Seventeen, as I recall. It was my first time with a girl. Her brother chased after me when he saw me climb over the wall the next morning. He threatened to bring me to his father if I didn't pleasure him like I had her."

     He twisted the shirt he had been washing until it was squeezed nearly dry, then started on a pair of trousers.

     "He was nineteen," Leighton continued. "I think he was the youngest I've bedded. Being twenty-three must have made him think I was well-versed in the ways of sexual gratification. Flirting with him earlier that day had only encouraged that thinking. I was only after a handout from their father's granary. Maybe a chicken or two. He wasn't there," he said of their father as he turned to see if Thane was still listening.

     He grinned when he saw him hanging onto every word.

     "I remember brushing the hair from the young man's face and giving him a tender kiss," he said. "I was testing if he was lying. I was surprised when he responded and held onto me.

     Not wanting to disappoint a man in his hour of need, I quickly dispatched with his trousers and bent him over a barrel at the back of the house. It was a fine ass," he breathed as he looked ahead through a fog of memories.

     "I had just made it ready so I wouldn't go in dry when I heard the sound of horses near the gate of the homestead," he continued. "I was hard and so was he. He begged me to keep going, stating his father never went back there and swearing we wouldn't get caught. I slowly slid my cock into him and got lost in the heat and tightness.

     I was so lost that I didn't hear the approach of boots around the corner of the house. Just as I filled him with my cum, I felt a painful hit at the back of my head.

     When I awoke, it was to the boy untying me from a stake in their barn. He said his father was going to skin me alive as he and his sister watched. It would be a lesson to them both for their behavior."

     He rung out the trousers and hung them and the shirt across a string tied from wall to wall in the center of the room. He plopped down onto the edge of the bed to finish his story.

     "The boy helped me escape and I never looked back," he said as he leaned against the headboard and pulled off his boots. "I learned a few weeks later that the bandits had discovered my identity and were looking for me.

     When you caught me, I was afraid I had put you in danger. When the soldiers showed up to escort us, I became hopeful I could get out of the area without the bandits finding out. I'm sorry for getting you caught up in all of that," he said sincerely as he looked down at Thane.

     Thane stared up at him as Leighton brushed a lock of hair from Thane's face. He felt his heartbeat quicken and had to swallow the confusion boiling up in his mind and his blood.

     A man's touch had never affected him in the ways Leighton's did. Not just then but times in the past when they had brushed against each other or mistakenly touched hands when reaching for the same piece of food. He wondered as Leighton began to stroke his cheek if those had all really been accidents or if Leighton had been seducing him that whole time.

     He slapped away Leighton's hand and turned to face the other direction. He clutched his heart in an effort to figure out if he was imagining things. The throbbing in his groin was no hallucination, and as he felt Leighton lay behind him, he wanted nothing more than to strip him and fuck him like a panting woman.