“Me too. I wish the same for you and Matt, as weird as that is, being you haven’t so much as kissed the dude.”
The flashes of him chopping wood came back into his mind and he squirmed in the driver’s seat. “I gotta admit, yeah, there are feelings there, but the lust factor…”
“He is a slice of pie, isn’t he? With the bruises starting to heal, both eyes open, all the better.”
That made him laugh, though he probably shouldn’t have. “Yeah, and that’s terrible, by the way.”
“Yeah, maybe, but it’s true. He’s handsome, ruggedly so. I mean, he’s kind of a pretty boy, but in a masculine way. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” he said, knowing exactly what she meant. He could be a movie star with his sandy hair and light eyes, perfect skin, when it wasn’t swollen and bruised. He was nearly six foot tall, built nicely, but not overly beefy. And he had calluses on his hands, he had a few scars on his arms from work or rough play. He was perfect.
“Looking all dreamy again. You’re very cute, Steve.”
“Shut up,” he groaned, then laughed with her, knowing she’d been right all through. “So, you think he’d be okay if I made the first move?”
She was quiet for a few moments, making him nervous, but then, with a wistful voice, she said, “I think he’d fall into your arms and never let go.”
“Damn, Stacy, all it took was Charlie screwing you, and you’ve turned into a Hallmark card. I should have gotten him drunk and done him in college.”
That sent her into a laughing spree that had her taking off her seatbelt to double over her knees. The rest of the trip was that great, that fun, and he didn’t feel any longer that things were dire. He felt as if he could try and could succeed in making a step closer to Matt. All he needed to do next was figure out how.
Chapter Twelve
The shower felt good, but not half as good as chopping the wood had. Before he’d worked off some of the tension that had been building in him, he felt like he’d shatter. He’d tried to pass it off as worry for the people in the compound, but he’d been getting calls that everything was fine, that the prophet was easing up on things, even. He wanted to assure the people were on his side, if the law came calling.
It was no big secret in his mind that the tension was from Steve, the fact that every single time they were so much as in the same room, he found himself sweating like a farm hand harvesting chilis in August with no gloves.
He stared at his own face in the mirror, happy he was starting to recognize himself again. The darkness around his eye was fading into a tortuous yellow color, but he could at least see skin. His lip was healed, and the blood saturating the white of his eye was receding.
Threading fingers through his hair to push it from his face, he wondered if Steve thought him handsome. If that face that stared back at him could be a face Steve could look at for a long time and not tire of it.
The men he’d been raised around, in the guise of doing God’s will, got a new face to look at every couple of years. A fresh, new wife to reignite their libido. For a long time, he wondered about monogamous people. How they felt about staying with one person for years and years. Did they tire of it? Having one lover? One love?
Aaron didn’t want other women. The love he felt for Rachel was not likely to change with a new girl strolling by. He’d seen them, the way they were together, envious of them. The envy in the compound relationships stopped there, though. Most of the women were miserable, or they looked that way. The men weren’t even the posters for contentment. Their worry was constant that someone would take what they had.
The towel was falling off his narrow hips, so he tied it as tight as he could and peeked out the bathroom door, making sure no one had come home while he was in the shower.
Steve’s room was two doors down across the hall, and he padded there quickly, feeling like eyes were on him in his nakedness. Another consequence of the compound, extreme modesty.
He knocked despite knowing no one would answer and turned the knob, feeling like an intruder. He’d never been in Steve’s room before, barely catching a glimpse now and then when he’d walk by and the door was open a crack.
Once inside, he stopped, taking in the room, which was as homey as the rest of the house, but more so. The big bed was covered in a bright white comforter which was fluffy and inviting. There was at least a dozen throw pillows, all in the white of the comforter and the deep navy blue of the walls.
The dresser and headboard were light wood, pine by the look, stained in a soothing light green. The long curtains that trailed to the shining wood floor were white with thin lines of the green. Soothing, that was the word.
Well, except for the artwork. That was anything but soothing.
They were drawings in plain black frames, bright white backgrounds. The drawings were of men, exaggerated depictions of men in leather jackets, tight jeans, or leather pants, some shirtless, all with wide, squared jaws, huge muscles.
One across from the foot of the bed was a simple face, and yet, it wasn’t simple. He was handsome, chiseled, mustache, light hair. Not altogether dissimilar from Matt, except Matt’s chin wasn’t cleft, as the man in the picture was. Like most of the men in the pictures were.
It was like this man was real and had blue eyes, though black and white in the image, simply gave the illusion of blue skies he lay under as a young boy. They pierced straight into his soul and came out the other end, providing him with those forbidden feelings he’d been groomed to suppress and destroy.
Then there was one with no faces. Three men were depicted, two standing off in the distance. The black and white again provided a colorful story despite the unmoving print. The two distant men faced one another, tight bodies just like the third who seemed to have been mounting his bike. It was provocative while speaking no words.
The third image caused him to stare the longest. Matt saw a brooding, strong man in leather, a body made for wars and survival, wielding what looked like a whip with many different leather ends while a man of similar stature kneeled for him, a face pleading for the will of a master all in white, almost representing a sense of innocent submission.
His hands were wrapped around the man’s thick thigh, and although he was kneeling, was in a position of prostration, he didn’t look as if he was forced or afraid. That was what possibly drew him to this drawing to strongest.
Matt started to wonder if any man could look at him like that. Like the man that was kneeling. He thought about a man, gazing up at him, love and peace on his face. Pure joy. Could he ever have that, a man that would want him like that, or love him like that?
“Do you like them?”
Matt jumped, grabbing the towel as it started to slip from his sudden movement, holding it in front of his dick just in time, spinning around to see Steve coming into the room. “I was getting some clothes, like you said…”
“It’s okay, Matt. Really. I don’t mind. These are a collection I started maybe fifteen years ago. I discovered Tom of Finland a long time ago, but didn’t start collecting the prints until years later.”
“Tom of Finland? That’s the artist name, or the model?”
“The artist,” he said, staring at the picture in front of them. “His real name is Touko Laaksonen.”
Matt’s brows rose at hearing such that. “Wow, that’s a heck of a name.”
Laughing, he agreed, “Now you know why he changed it. He did that, mainly, for his American audience. He and I, come to find out, had a lot in common. He was born in the 20’s, and wasn’t exposed to gay men at all, and if there were rumors a man was, it was because he was effeminate. Me, same thing, the guys in my school, a couple were out, not like they could hide, ya know? Wearing bright colors while everyone else was in earth tones, swishing while they walked, hanging with the popular girls, all the classic stereotypes those two embraced and ran with.
“He had a type, as you can see. The big, burly men he’d see around his small town in the co
untry. I think I read about the lumberjacks he was enthralled with. I, on the other hand, was raised in the city, seeing cops, firemen, construction workers. Men throwing around bundles of boards, rushing into burning buildings, catching the bad guys. He got his chance at his type of guy during the war, men in strict uniforms, and he had a blast. Me, it took college and parties, clubs. Every shape and size of guy, and I started to realize that my type wasn’t what was outside of the man, it was the inside, the brave, strong, dominant men.”
Matt heard and thought he understood, but he asked anyway, “What do you mean?”
Finally, Steve looked away from the picture with the perfectly built men, and stared into his eyes, like he was describing him, Matt. “A man who knows what he wants and claims it. A man that could grab a man like me into his arms and throw him on the bed, taking his pleasure from my body. Wanting something and going for it. It’s like we were speaking about the other day.”
“You’re still making it sound like you want the type of guy like the men on the compound.”
Instead of screaming denials, Steve let a tender smile curve his lips as he patiently explained, “No, no, Matt. Not someone who takes what isn’t offered, against the will of the one taken. Consensual, a mutual dynamic between two men, one who is dominant, and another who is submissive, giving himself willingly. The real dominant man doesn’t raise his hand in anger, or make his partner feel less than or nonexistent.”
Matt’s heart was thrumming in his chest so fast, it felt like a car engine on high idle. He wasn’t sure he was breathing, the words from Steve washing over him. “And…and you want that?”
Steve took a step toward him, closing an already tight space as he said, “I get the most pleasure and satisfaction by giving myself fully, pleasing a man without asking for anything in return, because that is my return. It gives me freedom and happiness and it arouses me to know that the man I’m with is pleased, or comfortable, or satiated.”
Matt tore his eyes from Steve, which wasn’t easy, and turned them to the picture they were near. The one that had entranced him before Steve walked into the room. “Like that? Him, on his knees?”
“I heard it before I felt it, once I started to explore the lifestyle. It takes a strong man to get on his knees for another in submission.”
Matt saw the face of the man, he’d been remarking that he seemed so at peace. “The lifestyle?”
“It’s called different things, and it’s done different ways. BDSM is the common term, and even those letters stand for different things. Some use bondage and whips, floggers, like the man pictured in this picture, and the men getting flogged, they get off on the pain. I’m…I’m not into that. I want to serve, to pamper and dote on my partner. Serve his every need so he feels like he’s the only man in the world, which to me, he would be.”
Matt couldn’t deny that Steve was speaking to him, and not simply words out of his mouth pointed in Matt’s direction. He was inside of Matt, reading his thoughts and deepest desires, describing what Matt could have never vocalized because he didn’t understand it.
“Steve…”
The small bit of space that had still separated them was gone as Steve moved, tilting his head and keeping his eyes open as he touched his lips to Matt’s; a tender, pleading kiss that drove away any resistant doubt that Steve wanted him.
Hands were on his neck as Steve deepened the kiss, lips parting to give Matt’s lips a brush of his tongue. A sob was caught in Matt’s throat as the kiss was taken from him, with little encouragement, and less participation until he broke, the sob disappearing, swallowed up as he grabbed Steve’s face and smashed their mouths together harder.
The towel fell to the floor, forgotten, as was the fact that he had nothing on except for a new sheen of sweat from the heat that rose between them. All the trauma and the pain, everything washed away from him, and if this was what Steve meant, that he was giving himself so that Matt could be happy, Matt could take him, take what he wanted and be happy for the first time in forever.
Skidding his hands, moving them roughly from Steve’s face to his shoulders, the image of the drawing was in his mind, his wish came back to him, that longing to see a man with his eyes risen to him, the emotion and lack of all but bliss on his face…
Their lips parted and at first, he thought Steve had pulled away, but when he let himself look, so afraid of what he would see, the realization of what he was doing came to him. Watching, as if outside of himself, like he was one of Tom of Finland’s drawings come to life, he saw his own hands pushing Steve to his knees.
Steve’s upturned face, his glistening eyes, his triumphant smile that graced Matt’s entire world…
He wanted this. He wanted this and craved it like a drowning man needed air. But his guilt crashed in on him the moment he noticed how close his dick, his bare dick, was to Steve’s face and in came the warnings of his childhood, modesty and chastity, and how dirty sex was without the commitment of marriage.
The thoughts of the groping with the one guy he’d experienced sex with, the way he’d felt so hollow and alone, like he’d been warned he’d feel. He pushed Steve to the side and ran, ran like he was running from his own soul, the mocking, tearing it from him.
He made it down the few feet of hall to his room. His room. That was a joke, it was Steve’s room, in Steve’s home, and he was there, and why?
He sat on the sofa, then stood, tears running down his face from the frustration, that he’d never have that, because he’d been taught to be afraid of those feelings, that they were nothing but sinful.
It tore him, the half of him that wanted Steve so badly, he’d do anything to have him, take him when he wanted, roughly loving him so there would be no doubt in Steve’s mind he was desired. Then there was the half that thought that kind of love was wrong, selfish, and cruel. That one man’s needs didn’t take precedent over another’s free will.
The door opened, and Matt was ready to scream for whoever it was to leave, that he had to punish himself for his thoughts, but it was Steve. He couldn’t scream at Steve.
“I put the clothes I bought for you into the washer, so I brought some things for you to wear for now.”
He wasn’t shrunken in, wasn’t avoiding Matt’s eyes. In fact, he was smiling, seeming content. “Thanks,” he finally responded, not sure of what else there possibly was to say.
Steve set the clothes on the arm of the sofa, taking the folded pair of black briefs from the top of the neat stack and shook them out as he lowered himself to his knees again in front of Matt.
After taking one of Matt’s feet into one hand, he started placing it through the leg hole of the briefs. “There is a lot you don’t know, of course, about the things a submissive does for his dominant. It’s not all about sex, you see, and in fact, sex is only a part of it. A nice part, sure, but a small part.”
His other foot went into the briefs and they were pulled slowly up Matt’s calves, over his knees until they wouldn’t go any further with Matt seated. As he took Matt’s hands into his, coaxing Matt to stand, which he did, Steve said, “A submissive takes the mundane chores from the dominant man so the dominant can better concentrate on his job.”
As he felt the briefs covering his genitals, Steve reaching behind Matt to cover his naked ass, he asked, “And what’s that?”
“To cherish, love, and protect the submissive. To allow the submissive to live his desires by serving.” Steve stood, staring into Matt’s eyes, pleading, “Be my everything, Matt. Let me show you how much I want to please you.”
He wanted that and wanted Steve more than he’d ever wanted anything. To be his everything, to have this man would lift Matt up from a place he never thought he could climb out of, and it was offered so willingly. “I…I don’t know how to do this, Steve. I…I want…”
“First, let me show you. I’ll dress you, so you know that sex isn’t the only part of this for me. Not by a long shot. I want all of you, to please all of you, Matt. I’ll tel
l you anything you want to know, and we’ll learn this together, what’s right for both of us.”
Steve’s hands were on his chest, laid there with little pressure. A tender touch like that was so foreign and needed. He’d seen so few loving embraces, true love between partners, he wasn’t sure he could recognize it, but there it was, being shown to him by a man that was amazing him more and more by the second.
“I don’t want to ever hurt you, Steve. It would kill me inside to be like those men.”
“The first thing you need to know about this lifestyle, and about the way I want to be with you is trust. Trust is the most important thing, and I trust you, Matt. I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted another soul. I know you’d rather cut off your own arm than to hurt me, so I trust I can give myself to you and be sure I’m in safe hands.”
He pulled from Steve’s arms to sit while that sunk in, and instead of watching him, Steve got back down on the floor, grabbing the sweatpants he’d brought in with him and rolling up one leg.
Someone trusted him. No one had trusted him. Even when he was given the job of leaving the compound to pick up supplies, his father had told him outright he didn’t trust him. The only reason he wasn’t given more hell was his father suspected he was fooling around with girls, so he’d be fine waiting for his first wife.
Both pantlegs were around his ankles and Steve gazed up at him, patiently waiting for him to stand so he could finish getting them on him. Instead, He grabbed Steve’s hands from the waistband and brought him closer, leaning over him. “I’m not good enough for you, Steve. I’m messed up in so many ways.”
“I can deal with all of them as they come along, Matt. I’m not fragile. I’m submissive. I’m not a glutton for pain or humiliation. I don’t think I deserve to be someone’s doormat. I’m simply submissive and I simply want to take care of you in all the ways that I know in my heart and in my mind you deserve.”
The Principle (Legacy Book 2) Page 11
