The prince had grown reckless. There was no gentler word for it.
What had begun as a thrilling, forbidden game behind bolted doors had become a ravenous hunger that devoured every scrap of caution. Edward’s need for Piers for the intoxicating blend of raw dominance and tender sanctuary the Gascon offered had turned blinding. Dangerous.
It started with small betrayals of sense, a hand lingering too long on Piers’ shoulder in the corridor while they spoke of hawks and visiting barons. A shared glance across the crowded hall, carrying the weight of private sins and knowing smiles. Then came bolder indiscretions. Edward began summoning Piers to his chambers by day, under the flimsiest of pretexts, a missing gauntlet, a question about Gascon wine shipments. The guards admitted the squire with carefully blank faces, but the sounds that soon spilled from within were unmistakable: the sharp slap of flesh, the prince’s low, commanding growls, and Piers’ broken, choked-off cries. They were not the sounds of statecraft.
The court began to whisper.
Nobles who had been present at court banquets, watching their interactions, smirked into their wine. “The prince has developed quite the appetite for Gascon fare,” one murmured, “and it isn’t the vintage.” They noted the extravagant gifts, the white stallion worth a minor barony, the jewelled daggers, the fine clothes. They saw how the prince’s piercing blue eyes tracked the slender squire with naked possession.
Below stairs, servants gossiped about the state of the prince’s linens. Guards stationed outside Edward’s door became a source of crude entertainment for passing knights, who slowed their steps to catch the rhythmic proof of their future king’s forbidden appetites.
The gossip slithered through the palace like venom, climbing stone staircases until it reached the royal apartments.
King Edward I, the Hammer of the Scots, was not a man accustomed to being defied. At sixty-one, he remained formidable, tall, iron-grey, his face a map of wars and losses. The deaths of his beloved Eleanor and so many of his children had scoured all softness from him, leaving only granite will and an obsessive need to secure his dynasty. His last surviving son was the final, fragile piece of that legacy.
When his spies confirmed the whispers, cold rage settled in the old king’s chest. His heir was not merely dallying with a pretty page. He was utterly, publicly, recklessly enamoured of his Gascon squire fucking him like a common whore and keeping him like a favoured mistress.
One night, the mockery grew too loud. A group of drunken barons turned the scandal into a bawdy song in the lower hall. The king heard every verse.
His fury was silent, and therefore terrifying.
He seized his heavy walking staff and strode through the palace, boots ringing like judgment on the flagstones.
Inside the prince’s chamber, the world had narrowed to sweat-slick skin and desperate rhythm.
Edward had Piers bent over the heavy oak table, powerful body pinning the smaller man down. One broad hand was fisted in strawberry-blonde hair, yanking his head back, while the other gripped his hip hard enough to leave bruises. He drove into him with brutal, possessive strokes, thick cock stretching him open again and again.
