I Was Sent as Tribute to the Prince I Shot novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: One Bed

Jiang slept on the floor for an hour, dressed the shoulder he ruined, and learned they were both untouched before Lin kissed him and the night turned on news of Du Heng's hanging.

Jiang took the floor by the door and refused the quilt.

The prince took the bed, and neither of them said a word for as long as it takes to boil rice.

The brazier ticked.

Snow sifted against the paper window.

Jiang lay with his arms crossed and counted the rafters, because that is what a man does in enemy country.

"General," Lin said into the dark.

"You breathe like you're marching."

"I'm lying down."

"Your breath doesn't know that."

A door opened at the back of the room, and a slender young man in pale blue scholar's robes came in with a lacquer tray.

He had a round sleepy face, ink on two fingers, and a bag of candied hawthorn tucked under one arm.

"Wen Lanxi," he said to Jiang, with a nod.

"Secretary, apothecary, and the person who tells His Highness when he's being stupid.

The dressing for the shoulder, Highness."

"Put it down," said Lin.

"Someone has to unwrap it."

"Yes," said Lin, and he looked across the room at Jiang.

Wen Lanxi's eyebrows went up.

He set the tray on the desk, ate one hawthorn, and left them with the brazier.

Jiang got up off the floor.

He did not know why he did.

He told himself that a man who had cost another man the use of his arm owed him a dressing.

Lin sat on the edge of the bed with his robe pushed off his left shoulder and the scar showing white and ridged.

The candle caught the hollow of his collarbone.

Jiang peeled the old linen back with his fingertips, and his hands were shaking.

He had held a bow steady in a gale.

"You're trembling," Lin said.

"It's cold."

"The brazier is hot."

"I'm not used to touching someone who isn't dying."

Lin didn't laugh at that.

He was quiet while Jiang smoothed the salve over the scar in slow circles, and the muscle under it jumped once and went still.

"Neither am I," Lin said.

"Used to being touched by anyone who isn't a physician.

I've had seven attendants in my room since I was ten years old.

Not one of them was ever allowed to be anything else."

Jiang's hand stopped on his skin.

"A prince," he said.

"A watched prince.

You'd be surprised how few people want to risk it."

"I haven't either," Jiang said, to the wall.

Jiang was twenty-nine years old, and he was a virgin.

The Ninth Army had never left room for anything else.

He had never told a living soul, not even his adjutant.

"So we're both..." Lin said.

"Yes."

Jiang wound clean linen around the shoulder and tucked the end in, slowly.

Lin's skin was warm and smooth under his wrists.

"How did it happen?" Jiang asked.

He meant the arrow.

It was a coward's way into the question.

"I turned to shout an order to the rowers," Lin said.

"It took me in the back.

I never saw it coming."

"Men turn."

"Yes."

Lin looked up at him.

"Listen to me, General.

You're tribute.

The treaty says held.

It does not say used, and nothing in this room is for sale.

If you ever come to my bed, you will come because you want to, and you will ask.

I don't take payment for this.

Not from a man in a cage, and not from a man who thinks he owes me."

His voice was very soft, and it was the hardest thing anyone had said to Jiang in months.

"Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Then go to sleep."

Jiang should have gone back to the floor.

He stood with his hands still on the bandage, looking at the mole under Lin's lip.

His whole life up to that moment felt like standing in a cold place.

"I don't ask," he said.

"I know."

"I'm asking."

Lin's breath caught.

"Say it properly, General."

"Kiss me, Your Highness."

Lin rose off the bed with his good hand fisted in Jiang's robe and kissed him.

It was a clumsy kiss, mostly teeth and wanting, and Jiang made a sound against his mouth that he would have denied under torture.

Lin's lips were soft.

His hair fell around them both and smelled of orchid oil.

Jiang got his hands into it, and when Lin's tongue touched his, his knees almost gave out.

"Zhanyuan," Lin said, a breath against his jaw.

It was the first time Lin had used his name.

Jiang pushed him back onto the quilts and followed him down.

Lin pulled Jiang's robe open and spread his palm flat on his chest.

"Look at you," he said, low and rough.

"All this, and you shake when I touch you.

You're beautiful."

Nobody had ever said that to Jiang.

Nobody had said anything to him but "adequate" for eleven years.

He pushed his face into Lin's neck and swore.

Lin's hand slid down and closed around his hard cock through his trousers, and Jiang ached so badly it hurt.

"There," Lin whispered.

"Good.

Look how hard you are for me.

Give it to me."

He tugged the trousers loose and wrapped his warm, sure fingers around Jiang's bare cock, thumb smearing the slick bead at the tip.

Jiang gasped Lin's name and bucked into his fist.

He shoved his own hand inside Lin's robes, gripped Lin's hot, leaking cock, and stroked him back.

Lin made a high broken sound and rutted into his palm, his ass shifting on the quilt.

They fucked into each other's fists, awkward and fast, knuckles bumping and slick skin sliding, Lin's forehead pressed hard against his.

"Zhanyuan, I'm going to cum..."

"Cum for me," Jiang growled.

"I want to feel it."

Lin shuddered with his mouth open and his eyes shut, spilling hot cum across their joined hands, and the sight of it dragged Jiang over the edge to cum hard against Lin's belly a heartbeat later.

Afterward they lay breathing, tangled in the quilts.

Lin was laughing silently against his collarbone.

"That was terrible," he said.

"Wonderful.

Terrible.

Do it again tomorrow."

Jiang was still grinning when someone knocked on the inner door.

"Highness."

It was Wen Lanxi, and he sounded wide awake.

He came in with his eyes carefully on the ceiling.

"The Marshal has taken one of the Ninth Army out of the prisoner camp.

An adjutant, freckled, very loud.

The charge is stealing a temple bell."

Jiang was horrified.

Du Heng had been joking about his own hanging for a week.

"When?" Jiang said.

"The Hanging Yard, General.

At dawn."

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