In His Arena 1: Slave Eternal by Nasia Maksima

Vulpinius boy was doing in House Actaeon, they clearly could not guess.
    Lucan fumbled for Hektor’s hand. If it was a childish gesture, Hektor did not let on. He grasped Lucan’s fingers in return and soothed him with that smooth baritone. “There you are. Just lie back now.” Lucan relaxed. He didn’t care what the healers did to him as long as Hektor held his hand.
    Hektor directed the healers. He told them what to do, what herbs to mix, what unguent to make and with what consistency. They followed his orders and did nothing else. Lucan was poked and prodded, his robe pulled aside. A sweet-smelling, pungent odor filled the room as they smeared a cool paste on his wounds. The bleeding stopped, but the chill struck through Lucan, and made him arch his back and cry out.
    “Shhh… It will be well. The coldness will take the pain.” Hektor held Lucan’s hand and quieted him.
    That hand. Just that hand on Lucan made him feel like he was soaring.
    Soon, he discovered Hektor was right. The coldness numbed the pain as the healers worked. After a time, they backed away, putting aside their unguents, bandages, and bone needles. They left him with ten stitches in his side and a bandage wound round his middle.
    “Drink.” Hektor offered the clay jug again.
    Lucan drank more carefully this time and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
    Hektor also took a draught, and when he lowered the jug, the droplets of water clung to his lips and the slight stubble he always sported. One droplet fell to his collarbone and carved a path down over his pectoral before evaporating in the heat.
    Regret seized Lucan, for he’d wanted to tongue the droplet from Hektor’s glorious skin. His cock twitched beneath his tunic, and he pulled the covers over him, lest he start making a visible tent.
    Hektor chuckled, not unkindly, and Lucan had to look down, lest the desire in his eyes betray him.
    When Hektor took his hand away, Lucan was abruptly afraid the primus palus would leave him here, in a strange house, in a strange haven. “You know how to heal,” he blurted, hoping to engage Hektor so he would stay.
    Hektor’s smile was self-deprecating. “Yes, a little.”
    “Why?” Lucan was truly curious. “We have plenty of healers.” He gestured. “Even House Pineus had half a dozen.”
    Now it was Hektor’s turn to blush, a handsome scald that traveled up his neck to his ears. “Well,” he said, folding his hands atop the white sheets. “There comes a time when fighting isn’t everything, when the sound of glory and the rush of the crowd are not enough. And when we retire—”
    Lucan snorted. “If we retire.”
    Hektor laid his hand on Lucan’s arm, his blue eyes clear and direct. “When we retire, it is good to have a useful occupation.” He smiled, and those eyes lit up like the morning sky. “People do tend to get tired of old gladiators.”
    Lucan stared. “Old? You?”
    Hektor laughed again. “Yes, me.”
    “No.”
    “Rest. I must go for a time.”
    “No!” Lucan tugged down on Hektor’s hand until the man bowed his head. Suddenly, Lucan was gazing longingly into Hektor’s eyes, and Hektor was gazing into his.
    He almost saw the spark as it jumped between them.
    And then Hektor broke away.
    “Rest, Lucan.” He pressed his hand on Lucan’s chest and laid him back gently. He looked once more at Lucan, and Lucan knew it was not his imagination that Hektor let his hand linger.
    HEKTOR STRODE FROM Healers’ Haven. What was he thinking? Lucan was his charge, his novice, a hired job. Nothing more. And he was a Vulpinius. New or not, Stratos had to have gotten his claws into the boy. There was no way he wasn’t tainted by the slaver-priests of that fell house.
    Hektor shook his head, ran his fingers back along the silkiness of his ponytail. He tugged to shake loose any remaining sand from the Theatre. The boy had to be a decoy, some wicked diversion devised by Stratos to see that Hektor’s attention was