by A. M. Riley
While Scott tried to look a little guilty but not, Brian said to Joshua, “You can’t tell Freddie.”
Joshua had been Freddie’s shadow the past week. Brian had learned to understand the wholly personal dynamic that every power exchange embraced, but he had never seen one where the dominant partner was so completely in charge of the submissive. Freddie had taken Joshua to get his hair cut. Freddie told Joshua what music to listen to and books to read. Freddie picked out Joshua’s clothes for him.
And they weren’t even a couple.
* * * *
“Isn’t there something strange about it?” he’d asked Paul one night. He lay on his belly, naked and spread legged on a towel while Paul massaged oil into his every crack and crevice.
“Mmmmm. Strange?”
“That they don’t have sex even, and Joshua does whatever Freddie tells him to.”
Paul worked Brian’s glutes with the expertise that only a man with a long-term relationship with those buttocks could have. “The mentoring relationship is an old institution and isn’t always sexual.”
His thumbs worked down and pressed the area just above Brian’s balls. Brian’s legs spread, and his butt pushed toward Paul.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, hon?”
Brian lifted his butt just a little more. “Daaaaddddyyyy.”
Paul smiled and climbed between Brian’s legs. “Coming, Brian.”
* * * *
Now Joshua looked worried and serious. “If Freddie asks me, I have to tell him.”
“See, that’s the thing,” said Scott. “No, you don’t.”
Joshua looked at Scott like he was talking Swahili.
“Well, never mind. Freddie doesn’t pay attention to things like this,” said Brian.
Brian had armfuls of candles, and he was setting them in little groups all over the inside of the rec room. He and Scott and Joshua had arranged the furniture as best they could and draped every ordinary surface with dark towels and sheets. Brian hoped that, by candlelight, the room would look very gothic.
And then they’d lead Jim in here to find Scott waiting for him on his knees with heavy shackles on his ankles and wrists and the new harness snugly fitted on him.
“What do you mean, he doesn’t pay attention?” said Joshua.
Brian and Scott looked at each other, and Scott raised an eyebrow.
“Nothing, Joshua,” said Brian.
“Never mind,” said Scott.
Joshua looked from one to the other. He was at the hero worship stage and couldn’t believe his friends could find any fault with Freddie.
Brian stood back for effect and said, “Hooee, Jim is going to have a heart attack.”
Scott stood surveying the room as well. “Last year, I didn’t remember, and I think the crazy old coot was actually hurt.”
“Remember what?” said Joshua.
“It’s kind of our anniversary.”
“Oh,” said Joshua. “You’ve been a couple for two years?”
Scott and Brian looked at each other, and then they both burst out laughing. “Something like that. It’s been two years since the first time I got a taste of Jim. Brian remembers, don’t ya, Brian?” And then they both were laughing again.
Joshua didn’t like it when the conversations went this direction. “Well, I’m going in. Freddie gave me a book, and I want to read it.”
“’Kay,” said Scott. He and Brian watched Joshua leave.
“Scott?” asked Brian as the door closed behind Joshua.
“Yeah?”
“Is Joshua a virgin?”
Scott considered this. “I didn’t think so when he told me about his boyfriend. But now I wonder. Maybe it never went that far. That might explain things.”
“You think Freddie knows?”
Scott rolled his eyes. “Wouldn’t Mr. Control Freak love that?”
They were silent, thinking about it, and then Brian said, “So, what do I have to tell Jim to get him out here?”
* * * *
Jim was sorting laundry. This was no mean feat. In a household that consisted of four men, all with similar jeans, T-shirts, socks, and underwear needs, and all of different sizes and builds, sorting laundry involved reading each and every tag.
He was standing in front of the folding table with his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose and a pair of white Fruit of the Looms in his hands when Brian came around the corner with wide, worried eyes.
“Um. Jim?”
Jim glanced up and then, seeing Brian’s expression, removed his glasses entirely and set down the undies. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think anything. But. Um, could you come out to the rec room?”
That last delivered with the apprehensive urgency of a young man who had just done Something Regrettable.
So, Jim followed Brian across the lawn at a trot, and when Brian stopped at the door and hesitated Jim was prepared for any number of awful scenes.
He was not prepared for what he saw.
The room was pitch-black. Not just dark, but black, the darkness swimming with the flickering light of candles, so many of them that the center of the room seemed almost to swell and undulate with light.
At the very center of that magical aura, head bowed, arms bound, knelt Scott.
Jim forced himself to breathe.
He could see the bindings on Scott’s arms. Not the simple Velcro straps that Jim used most of the time—soft and easily removed by the wearer, if necessary. These were real shackles: thick iron, with the solid links of chains falling to the floor where they were fastened to similar irons around Scott’s ankles.
His pelvis was encircled with leather like a black garter belt, a cock-and-ball ring holding him firmly.
Around his chest was another thick band of black leather, an opening over each nipple, and in place of the nipple ring, Scott wore a shield with a barbell that attached to the leather vest.
The collar around his neck was heavy, and another long link of iron black chain hung from it.
His head was still bowed, the golden hair glowing in the candlelight.
“Scott,” said Jim. “Babe?”
He saw the chains move and the nipple ring glint as Scott took a deep breath. His voice was husky. “Happy anniversary, Jim.”
There was a silence. Jim could hear the candle flames.
“I…wanted you to know,” said Scott slowly, head still bowed. He took a deep breath. “I mean, I know I fight you, but…”
Jim sank to his knees in front of Scott.
“I’m yours, baby,” said Scott. “One hundred percent. Do what you want with me, Jim.”
“Scott.” Jim cupped Scott’s face and raised it so he could look at his lover. Scott’s eyes were bright and fierce, and his face was flushed.
“And this damned harness is making me hard as iron, Jim, so while you’re doing what you want, could you find it in your heart to fuck me?”
Jim couldn’t even speak. He nodded. Then he helped his shackled boyfriend to his feet and took Scott over to the bench where he bent him over. There was a butt plug attached to the harness, which Jim eased out of Scott.
From where his head lay on the bench, Scott said, “Can I hold you in my mouth, baby?”
Jim could barely stumble around to the other side of the bench. He fed his cock into Scott’s mouth and waited until he couldn’t bear it anymore, then went back to the other side. Pulling Scott’s legs apart as far as the leg irons would allow and holding Scott’s wrists against his back, Jim pushed his thick cock into Scott in one firm motion, and his lover cried out his name. The chains clinked, and Jim officially did what he rarely did; he lost control.
He remembered at one point to reach around and release Scott’s prick from its constraints. Scott moaned loudly as he did so. Then Jim just grabbed Scott by the wrists and one leather-clad hip and focused on cramming his entire body into Scott via his hole.
He was crying when he came.
“O
h, baby, oh, God, oh, lover…” Scott was panting and moaning, his cheek against the leather bench, his body quivering with his aftershocks. “I came buckets, baby.”
Jim draped across Scott’s back, sobbing. His breath wheezed.
After a while he heard Scott chuckling. “You all right, Jim?”
“No.” Jim wheezed. “You killed me. I think you broke my dick too.”
“God, no,” said Scott, sounding truly horrified.
“What… I mean why?” Because in two years, Scott had never admitted that he needed or wanted the restraints. He never put them on himself. He never offered that to Jim.
“I can’t say it in words, Jim,” said Scott in a simple, calm way. “So I wanted you to see how I feel about it. About us.”
Jim thought he was going to cry again. He wrapped his arms around Scott and laid his cheek against Scott’s back.
“You getting all womanly on me back there, sugar?” said Scott, a smile in his voice.
“What if I am?” Jim was definitely snuffling as he said it.
“Nothing,” said Scott, closing his eyes and smiling. “Nothing at all, darlin’. Happy anniversary.”
“Happy anniversary, Scott. I love you.”
Scott’s smile broadened. “Yeah.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Aww, it’s so cute.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“You’re just grumpy ’cause you don’t have your puppy dog following you around anymore.”
Scott laughed, stretching a leg across the waterbed and pushing the tip of his big toe, gently, against Brian’s hole.
Brian wriggled. “Tease.”
Scott grinned. And poked. Poked. His cock seemed to feel a certain empathy for his toe and started growing. So, Scott changed the rhythm of his poking. Now he poked, rubbed, poked, rubbed.
Brian rolled over. “Want some help there?”
Molten gold eyes half-closed, Scott had slid down onto the waterbed and was stroking in earnest. It having been really only a hypothetical question, Brian crawled over and slurped Scott’s cock down, and Scott just threw his arms out to either side and said, “Yeahohyeah.”
There was a knock at the door then, a chuckle, and Brian felt a very familiar presence just behind his thighs.
He slid up to the end of Scott’s penis, and between flickering licks, he said, “It fell on the floor, I think.”
“Thanks,” said Paul. His warmth disappeared from behind Brian for a minute, and then slick fingers plunged in and out of Brian’s hole, followed, almost immediately, by a long firm presence.
Brian swallowed Scott as far down as he could, feeling his cock swell.
“Kiss me,” he heard Scott say, and Paul’s body pressed down on Brian as he stretched over him, and Brian could hear them kissing each other.
Scott’s cock swelled again, and this time warm come filled Brian’s throat. He swallowed eagerly, his own cock swaying, hardening, between his legs. Every slide of Paul’s against his prostate pumped him up like a tire until suddenly Paul had gone back onto his heels, pulling Brian back with him, and Brian was sitting on Paul’s long prick, which seemed to somehow reach as far as his spine. Brian was exclaiming about this quite loudly when Scott’s mouth closed around his cock and somebody’s hands started tugging at one of his nipple rings, and then he just died and went to heaven.
“Ah, there you all are,” said Jim at the door. “I thought we were going to put the water tub up together.”
“I needed a shower first,” said Scott. “Remember? You sent me in.”
“And I came in to give him a clean towel,” said Brian.
“And when they didn’t come back, I had to go fetch them,” said Paul.
Jim looked over his bed, which had six arms and six legs thrown helter-skelter across it like a man-sized game of pick-up sticks. “Thanks for doing that, Paul.”
From under Brian, Paul waved, a weak smile on his face.
“Okay, then,” he said. “Alley-oop, all. Let’s get cracking.”
Brian rolled his eyes. “Yes, Sir.”
“Watch your tone, young man.” Paul smacked Brian’s behind as said behind scrambled off the bed.
“Why don’t we get Freddie and Joshua to help us?” said Scott in that innocent voice that made Jim’s eyes narrow.
“Leave those two alone.”
“Brian said they’re on the front porch reading poetry to each other,” said Scott, pulling up a pair of shorts with a wiggle and jump that made three sets of eyes blink.
“Scott, leave them alone,” said Jim.
Scott slid a T-shirt over his head. “It’s disgusting,” he said when his golden head had popped through the neck hole. “He’s making the rest of us look bad.”
Brian sat on the bed, tying his sneakers. “Joshua’s a normal person with Scott and me. He only acts creepy around you two.”
“I could only wish a little of that creepiness would rub off,” said Paul drily.
“See? That’s what I mean,” said Scott.
“Leave them alone,” said Jim. “And I mean it.”
Scott picked lint from his shirt, lips pursed.
“Scott?” said Jim, and Scott had to sigh.
“Yes, Sir.”
* * * *
“What are they doing?”
“They’re going to install a hot tub and a gazebo in the backyard,” said Freddie. He turned a page in the book. He was sitting in the porch swing with Joshua lying back under his arm so they could read the book together.
“Should we be helping them?” asked Joshua, sounding worried.
Joshua, Freddie had noticed, always seemed to think he should be helping. “Earning his keep,” as he’d once called it.
“Jim seems to feel it’s some sort of family bonding experience,” said Freddie. “I imagine that means it will involve a lot of arguing and tantrums, so I really don’t mind missing out.”
He could feel Joshua fretting.
“What’s bothering you?”
The long worried pause came first. In the past couple of weeks, Joshua had become only a little more willing to talk. And he always chose his words carefully. “Do you think Scott needs his bedroom back?”
Freddie parsed the question in his own mind, drew some conclusions based on previous conversations with Joshua, and asked back, “Don’t you think Scott would tell you if he did?”
Joshua pondered this. Freddie knew from experience that Joshua might mull over his question for some time, maybe hours. Maybe days. So he turned a page and read out loud. “‘While I am I and you are you, so long as the world contains us both…’”
Joshua followed the words with him, just a whisper. And Freddie wondered if Joshua had any idea why Freddie was reading Browning and Byron of late. Why Freddie, whose taste generally ran to the modernists and postmodernists, should suddenly have a taste for the romantics. If Joshua had any clue at all of what was happening to Freddie.
Because Freddie hadn’t any clue himself.
He recognized some things. Joshua naturally asked for direction, and Freddie was a natural director. He’d had this sort of mutually fulfilling relationship with people before: students, interns, and lovers. He recognized the lust factor also. Joshua seemed so hesitant that Freddie hadn’t acted on it yet. He expected that that was why it seemed so present all the time. But the depth of longing was surprising.
Freddie ached for Joshua.
“What’s wrong?” Joshua was looking up at him. And Freddie realized he’d stopped reading and was just drifting, swinging back and forth with Joshua pressed up against him, under his arm, silky hair brushing his neck.
“Nothing’s wrong. I was just daydreaming.”
“Oh.”
My God, Joshua had to know, at least the physical part. Freddie had been half-hard for two weeks. Pressed up against him like this, Joshua had to at least be aware.
Maybe he was, and he wasn’t interested. Maybe he was just a very insecure young man in need of a domina
nt friend. After all, he’d been attracted to Scott, and Freddie was nothing like Scott.
The thought plunged Freddie into a despair that surprised him.
“Freddie?”
Joshua was looking up at him with real worry on his face. Freddie forced a smile, but of course, that only made it worse. Joshua intuitively knew something was being hidden from him, and he assumed the worst. Well, this was ridiculous. Freddie owed it to himself and to the man in his arms to clear the air.
“We need to talk, Joshua. I hope you won’t mind.”
* * * *
He hated the drama of it, because it only heightened Joshua’s anxiety, but Freddie took him to the bedroom and closed the door. It seemed too private a thing to talk about in public.
Joshua’s brows were creased. He kept nervously pushing his hair out of his eyes. He looked like he might burst, so Freddie decided to just say it.
“You must know I’m attracted to you.”
Well, that had probably not been the thing to say. Joshua didn’t blink. That wine-colored blush did rise up his neck though.
“I’m sorry. What…what I meant to say was…” Listen to him, fumbling and stuttering like a teenager.
“I didn’t know,” said Joshua. “I thought you felt sorry for me.”
What?
“You’re so smart,” said Joshua. “And I’m so stupid. I thought you felt sorry for me.”
“You’re not stupid, Joshua,” said Freddie, a little sharply. “And I don’t want to hear you say that about yourself again.”
A spot of pink appeared on each of Joshua’s cheeks. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” said Freddie, grasping Joshua’s arm. He found himself unable to resist and touched the back of his hand to that blush. Joshua’s cheek pushed just slightly against Freddie’s hand, and before he could think, Freddie had gathered Joshua up and kissed him.
“Oh,” breathed Joshua against Freddie’s lips. So Freddie kissed him again. He felt Joshua’s arms come around his back and pressed him down onto the mattress.
Joshua’s mouth opened under his, and Freddie’s hands wandered from his arms to the buttons of his shirt, plucking at them and moving from Joshua’s mouth to his chin to his neck, pushing aside the fabric and laving one nipple roughly with his tongue.
