<span style="font-family: 'Arial'"><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#b3b300">A good thing his back was turned, his sights elsewhere, or else Mischa would see the dark scowl that swept his brow low and pursed his lips flat in disdain. This was a petulant boy that spoke to him in the dark. Viktor had to remind himself of this as he leaned forward to brace himself against the window’s ledge. The muscles in his back bunched with the motion, his head bowing slightly with the stoop of his shoulders so that the thick wave of dark hair tossed shadows across the chiseled make of his face.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
Soon, the scowl turned itself, begetting a grim smirk, its ironies not lost on the warlord. Vicktor chose not to spoke until he had pushed himself away from the window to turn back to face this boy that stared at him with every ounce of his misplaced pride shining up at the warlord like two dark pools. His pursed lips shifted, the upwards tug at the corners of his mouth taking on a new, more seductive shape as his own gaze, like two pieces of chipped obsidian, fell down to the pair of lush lips that were pulled taut with the boy’s frustration. With the sheet tugged up close to Mischa’s chest, he was the picture of angry vulnerability.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
It would be too easy to take advantage of that. To truly show this boy how his life could be at the House of the Obsidian Sun. In a much different way than the reason he had been brought there in the first place. Against his steadfast self-control, his cock twitched between his legs as he entertained the thought of crawling into the bed with the boy, for no better reason than to wipe that look off his face. Instead, he angled himself at the foot of the bed, looking over Mischa. And he spoke.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
“Are your kind all so naive to not understand the ways of the world? Entitlement does not sit well on you, boy. The world does not revolve around your ways and desires, just as it does not mine, or any other man’s on it. I will forgive you your ignorance; you are angry. So I will offer you another proposition.”<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
Vicktor paused, taking in the young man once more huddled in the bed. A slow smile crept across his features, then, without warning, he reached forward and yanked the sheet down and away from Mischa’s frame.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
“Get up,” he challenged. “We will fight for the right to entitlement. You may pick the method, since you are so sure you are deserving of something other than this-” He gestured around the room, toward the bed that Mischa occupied. “If you succeed in striking me down, you will have your wish of freedom. You may return to your homeland, which is not so destroyed as you claim it to be. What use is land if it is destroyed?”<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
He hesitated, his dark eyes burning cold. Now that the sheet had been torn away, Vicktor moved again, this time digging his fingers into the boy’s shoulder to haul him forward. Mischa would have two choices: fall forward or catch himself on his own two feet. “You will be returned to your family, you will receive the House’s blessing to start your own trade… But if you lose? You will learn the ways of the House, either as something you know or as something you do not. The choice is still yours, boy. You serve the House or you do not; you hate what you perceive as having befallen you or you accept your future. By all means, you may live your life out consumed with nothing but foolishness. Either way, you are coming with me. Now.”<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
Vicktor moved up behind the young man, but did not lay his hands on him again. But he was going to make sure that he was going to walk out of the room.</span></span>