"If you finish that sentence I will dump what's left of this tea on you," Bakhtiar hissed.
"It's not even hot anymore, so that's not much of a threat."
Farrokh did not laugh, instead looking concerned. "I do not understand why you are always surprised to learn that people want you."
All of Bakhtiar's tenuous good mood vanished. "You two don't even want me anymore, why would anyone else?"
Hurt and dismay filled their faces. Kurosh shoved the entire table aside and gently pushed him to the floor to lean over him. "Why on earth would you think that?"
"Because you don't touch me anymore," Bakhtiar said. "You kiss me and put me to bed like a child you want out of your way and donothing."
Kurosh sighed. Farrokh closed his eyes, muttering several curses. "My prince, we have beenworriedabout you. Every night you get up and leave, you barely get three hours of sleep at a time. You rarely smile, you laugh even less. The first time I saw you light up in weeks was when you saw that pretty little thing in the garden reading a book. We wanted you to get rest, not exhaust you further."
"Let me up."
Kurosh ignored him, instead leaning down to kiss him in a way he hadn't in weeks, biting and hungry. "You cannot truly believe we do not want you every hour of every day, Bakhti. The very moment you're healed up enough I'm going to remind all of us just how much of a hungry cock slut you are by using you accordingly."
Bakhtiar swore, tried to move, but between pain and Kurosh's expert hold, he wasn't going anywhere. "You can't say things like and then not do something, you reprobate."
"Oh, I'm going to do something," Kurosh said in that silky, wicked tone that never failed to make Bakhtiar shiver and ache. He shifted slowly down Bakhtiar's body, mindful of his wounds, and pulled his cock from his loose pants, licking a stripe from base to tip, running a thumb over his slit and then dragging it across his own mouth. "I've missed the taste of you, my prince."
Bakhtiar tried to reply, but then Kurosh swallowed him down and he couldn't even think, let alone speak. Everything was better and worse by the way Kurosh wouldn't let himmove, pinning his hips tightly, leaving him with no choice but to simply lie there and take it. "Kurosh—"
Hands landed heavy on his shoulders, pinning him there too, and he looked up at Farrokh, who smirked down at him. "I know you like to be good for us, my prince, so be a good boy and hold still."
"I hate you both," Bakhtiar gasped out, but he obeyed, didn't he? As they held him fast and Farrokh kissed and caressed him and Kurosh sucked his cock with the same intense focus he hunted his kills. He swore he blacked out momentarily when he finally came, the first in weeks, and afterward he was so lethargic he couldn't move.
When he woke yet again, after still more sleeping, it was still dark, or dark again, and they sat at the table quietly conversing. "What time is it? What day is it for that matter?"
"Salday, a little after three in the morning, your favorite time for sneaking away," Kurosh said.
"You could have come with me," Bakhtiar said. "I just go to my office to get more work done, since it's easier for me to do so then."
Farrokh stared at him, eyes sharp and focused, a tutor determined to pin down his student. "Easier how?"
"It's nothing," Bakhtiar said. "It doesn't matter."
"It matters when you don't sleep," Kurosh said. "It matters that you don't trust us to help you, when that is all we want to do."
"Does this have to do with how you read aloud to yourself? And always prefer to have something to toy with while you do it? I've had students like that before, I just don't know why I never noticed you were one of them. What do youprefer, Bakhti. Tell us."
Their faces said they wouldn't be letting the matter rest, so he may as well just get the humiliation over with. "It's hard to focus when I read, I don't retain anything well, the knowledge just slides away instead of sticking. I do better when I canhearthings, but I'm already told what a child I am a hundred times a day." He could too easily imagine what people, what his siblings, would say to see him being read to like a child. Not to mention that it would take longer to do things, as reading aloud was so much slower.
Farrokh sighed and rose from the table, crossing the room to slide into bed next to him, grasping his face and forcing him to meet his gaze. "Bakhti, I am sorry. I don't know what I did that you thought you could not tell me these things."
"I'm already considered hopeless," Bakhti said. "Stupid. Reckless. Careless. Childish. Spoiled. Doesn't think. Doesn't care about consequences. I know what everyone thinks of me."
Farrokh kissed him softly. "We have all failed you quite badly, Bakhti. Nobody thinks so poorly of you. We can be vexed by some of your decisions, yes. Like when you tried to save a baby bird by climbing a crumbling wall instead of simply calling for a ladder. Like walking around alone at night instead of taking even just a guard with you. Like keeping what youneedto yourself instead of knocking us upside the head and making us listen."
"You're smart, you're beautiful, above all you arekind, Bakhti," Kurosh said, joining them. "You are the kindest person I've ever known. Those flowers and tokens are not taking up half this room because people think badly of you. Quite the opposite, they think the world of you." Kurosh's mouth curved faintly. "You should see the anger of the staff as they turn on those who helped to hurt you. They are far more terrifying than I will ever be."
Bakhtiar gave a bare nod. "That's not terribly comforting when Kashi was apparently so smitten he decided to help kill me."
"Mmm, from what I've gathered so far, he didn't know the plan was to kill you. He thought the plan was to hurt you,teach you a lesson. Inhishead, he would be the one to oh so conveniently find you first and rescue you."
"And I'd be ever so grateful to him," Bakhtiar finished, feeling sick. "I didn't know. How could I not realize?"
Farrokh replied, "Beloved, you didn't even realize that Reza was half in love with you. The difference is that Reza sees you as a person and respects boundaries. Kashi saw… what he wanted. A dream, a delusion. A prize to be won. More an object than a person. He was clearly operating with a diseased mind. Do not let him dwell in yours, he is not worth your thoughts."
