Carrick had been fully intending to take the boy - strip him of his clothes and spread his legs and push inside him without care or regard for the slave's own desires. He was, after all, only a slave. He existed to give pleasure.
Looking at the hopelessness and empty surrender in the boy's eyes, he stopped. He remembered what it had been like as a youth in those of long ago days as a mortal boy in Sparta, returning to his barracks almost fainting with exhaustion, body aching and bruised from endless drilling and training under the merciless Spartan midsummer sun, trying desperately to take a snatched hour of rest knowing that as soon as darkness fell, his masters would be coming for him, and a wholly different kind of pain and endurance would begin. Some had been gentle with him, true, but more were brutal, taking him with a vicious carelessness as tore into his throat and body alike.
He looked into the wounded, wet blue eyes and sighed to himself. He had been so young back then.Far, far too young. So much younger than this boy lying pliant and submissive beneath him.
Slowly but decisively, Carrick took the slave's hand and held it gently but firmly down on the arm of the couch.
"Your pleasure," he answered quietly. He took Samandriel's hardness in his hand once more and began to caress it in long, smooth strokes, squeezing it rhythmically.