by A. M. Riley
“That was amazing,” whispered Joshua.
Freddie pulled out carefully, rolled Joshua over, gathered him up, and held him as close as he could. He kissed Joshua’s ear. “Was that so terrible?”
“Terrible?” Joshua opened an eye a crack. “No, that was wonderful.”
“I was afraid you only did it to please me,” admitted Freddie.
“You were?” said Joshua wonderingly. “I thought you didn’t want me.”
“Oh, my God,” said Freddie fervently. “I’m dying of wanting you, Joshua. All the time.”
Joshua looked completely amazed. “Oh.”
“You should have told me you were worried,” said Freddie. “And I should have trusted you to say no. I will in the future.”
“I know. It’s just…sometimes, I’m afraid to tell you,” said Joshua sadly. “I try not to be.”
“It takes time,” said Freddie. “And I understand. But you must tell me these worries of yours, Joshua. Whatever they are. Will you do that?”
“Yes, Freddie.”
“Whatever you tell me, it won’t stop me loving you,” said Freddie. And then he heard himself.
And that was when he knew what had been ailing him.
Joshua looked shaken, and Freddie knew exactly how Joshua felt, but still he bent and kissed Joshua and said it again. “I love you.”
* * * *
“Another grape?” said Brian. He sat on Paul’s thighs on their bed in his collar and little slave skirt, decorating Paul’s erect and swollen cock with a fruit salad.
Paul lay there with the expression of a man indulging a beloved child temporarily. “These sheets are going to be a mess,” he said.
“Spoilsport.” Brian pouted. And he laughed at the expression on Paul’s face. If he weren’t sitting on his daddy’s legs and if Paul weren’t inclined to put up with just about anything at the moment, he figured he would have gotten a good swat for that remark.
He leaned over and nibbled some of the fruit, being sure to come into accidental contact with Paul’s cock every nibble or so. A rumbling noise came from Paul’s chest, and when Brian looked up, he had a second of looking into the eyes of a predator, and then he was flat on his back, ankles up and over Paul’s shoulders, fruit squishing between them.
Poised there, Paul’s cock sat just at Brian’s entrance but not penetrating. Brian was pinioned, and Paul had hold of both of his wrists. “You’ll help Jim with the laundry,” Paul said.
“I will?”
Paul smiled. He didn’t move. Brian wriggled, trying to get a little more of what he wanted to sink in just a little, but he was helplessly immobile. Brian glared up at Paul. Paul merely met that glare with a cool, unbearably self-assured gaze.
Ah, heck, why not accept defeat? Brian sighed as best he could in his squished position. “Yes, Sir. Aaaah!” Talk about instantaneous feedback. Paul slid straight home, pushing Brian into the mattress.
Oh, that felt good. Brian moaned and Paul slid back out, hovering just there again. “So,” he said, “what made you and Scott think of this little idea?”
“Me and Scott? Why do you think it was a me-and-Scott plan?” Brian wriggled. And why wasn’t Paul fucking him as he so obviously ought to be doing?
Paul just smiled down at him with that ridiculous toplike arrogance.
Man. “We thought it would be fun. We wanted to help Joshua,” Brian said, hoping somehow to make himself look like the bringer of light and love he surely was and realizing only belatedly that it sounded more like meddling.
Paul slid in and out a couple of times, though, and Brian was just beginning to feel things looking up, so to speak, when Paul just stopped again.
“What are you doing?” said Brian through gritted teeth.
“Why, honey, I thought you knew what we were doing.”
“Well, we’re supposed to be fucking,” spat Brian from the ridiculous position of bent-in-half bottom boy. “But somebody keeps forgetting.”
“Tell me about helping Joshua,” said Paul.
Brian tried to harrumph but found that impossible currently. He settled for a look of righteous indignation. Paul continued with the imperturbable look that was even more annoying because it gave the impression that he wasn’t as utterly desperate as was Brian.
But Brian was utterly desperate, wasn’t he? “Scott said Joshua and Freddie haven’t, you know, so we thought we’d help them.”
Uh-oh. Even as he said it, Brian knew that his chances of getting fucked in the next half hour had just gone from fifty-fifty to about nil. Sure enough, Paul completely withdrew, sat up, and before Brian could say topsy-turvy, he was facedown on an inked lap.
“Brian, we’ve talked about gossip and meddling, haven’t we?”
Brian was still hard. He could feel Paul pressing against him. “This is ridiculous,” said Brian.
Smack.
Brian hadn’t deserved a real spanking in a long time. He yelped with surprise at the sting.
“Haven’t we?”
Brian moved uncomfortably, trying to get his prick just there against Paul’s thigh.
Smack.
“Hey!” said Brian. “I was still thinking.”
Paul’s hand just lay on his stinging butt. And he said very calmly. “It may seem like innocent fun Brian, but people can be hurt by it.”
“I’d never do anything to hurt Joshua,” protested Brian.
“That’s the problem with it. It may seem to begin with the best of intentions, but it’s still meddling with other people’s lives, and it’s wrong.”
When Paul was right, dang it, he was right. Brian sighed. “Yes, Sir.”
“We’ve talked about this many times, Brian. You know the issues. You know the consequences.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Brian gave up and hung onto the bed and Paul’s leg. He flinched at the first few and was fighting the need to cry by the end. It had been so long since Brian had needed a spanking, he’d forgotten what a relief it was when it was finally over, when Paul was holding him and he knew he was forgiven.
“Hon?” said Paul after a long while.
“Yes, Daddy?” sighed Brian from where he was cradled against Paul’s neck.
“Are you too sore now?”
Brian smiled. “No, Daddy. I mean, Master.”
Paul chuckled. “Guess I’d better put you on your knees this time.”
“Yes, please.”
* * * *
There was whipped cream in his beard and cantaloupe juice down his thighs, and Scott was sobbing and begging for more and harder when Jim started thinking.
He stopped moving.
“Oh, God. Oh, Jim, Lord, why are you stopping?” said Scott, looking around behind himself where Jim knelt with both hands on his rucked-up slave skirt and his cock half-in and half-out.
“Did I see Joshua in a toga?” asked Jim.
“Huh?”
“When I came in.” Jim, looking puzzled, gazed around the room as if seeing it for the first time. “And where’s the table?”
“Against the window, Jim. Lord, man, I’m dying here.”
Absently, and really, thought Scott, not putting a lot of heart into it, Jim began rocking in and out.
Okay, well then, that was all right, right there, and again. Scott bowed his head and moaned.
“But I know I saw Joshua,” said Jim. And he stopped. And pulled out. And stood up.
Scott whimpered. He put his head right down on his hands and made a sound like a puppy left out in the yard.
“Scott? Why was Joshua dressed up like a slave boy?”
“He didn’t want to be left out,” said Scott. Okay, it wasn’t exactly the truth, but it wasn’t exactly not the truth.
Jim stood there, hands on his hips, and looked down upon Scott in a way that made him cringe. “That doesn’t sound like Joshua.”
“We thought he might think it was fun.”
“We? Who is this we?” asked Jim. Like he couldn’t guess.
“Scott, I’ve told you to leave Joshua alone.”
“I was…”
Jim pointed to the bedroom. Scott tried one more pathetic, eyelash-blinking pleading look, but Jim was intractable.
Scott rolled to his feet and trudged into their room.
“How long?” he said as Jim tightened the straps.
“You haven’t told me everything,” said Jim.
“You can’t keep me tied up indefinitely!” said Scott.
“Can’t I?” And the son of a bitch walked out of the room.
* * * *
“And that’s all we did,” said Brian. “I really didn’t think it was a bad idea, Jim.”
Jim pulled meditatively at his beard.
“And the toga thing was my idea, not Scott’s. Paul reminded me about meddling and gossip,” said Brian ruefully. “I do have a problem with it.”
“You don’t always know what’s best for people,” said Jim.
“You do,” said Brian.
Jim looked at him in honest surprise. Then he looked up at Paul, who stood leaning in the doorway with an equal look of astonishment on his face.
“The difference is, I hope,” said Paul, “that we know when people need to let themselves know what’s best for them.”
Brian’s eyebrows did a he’s crazy twist on his forehead. “Huh?”
“That didn’t even make sense to me, Paul,” said Jim.
“Me neither,” said Freddie from the hall doorway. “Even though I think I agree with him.”
Freddie looked, Paul thought, like a man who had had all his engine parts oiled and cleaned. “Joshua says thank you to Brian and Scott. Though I would have preferred he’d found a way to talk to me in his own time.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“He looks up to you,” said Freddie.
Brian cringed. “I know, Sir.”
Freddie looked around. “Where is Scott?”
“He’s waiting,” said Jim. He waved toward a baby monitor that sat on the kitchen counter. Jim used the monitor to keep an ear on Scott when he was bound and out of earshot. Jim pushed back his chair. “And now I should go take care of him.”
“It was my idea,” said Brian.
“Thank you, Brian,” said Jim. “But that’s not the issue.”
* * * *
Scott still lay supine, arms and legs spread and bound, counting the dots on the ceiling. He’d lain in this position so many times he almost felt like he knew some of those dots. Personally.
Jim came strolling in. Scott still felt hopeful until Jim closed the door. Then he just closed his eyes in grimly fatalistic acceptance. Well, fine. He’d just lie here and take it like a man.
Jim sat in his beanbag chair. He was silent for a long time. Sometimes, when Scott had really messed up, Jim would sit there and wait until Scott couldn’t stand it anymore and would just start babbling confessions. Well, it wasn’t going to work this time. Scott clenched his jaw.
Jim sighed. “This is troubling me,” he said. And then he said nothing else.
On the dresser, the old clock that Jim wound every morning with a key ticked off the seconds.
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
“What is troubling you?” Scott asked of the ceiling.
“I think we’ve had this issue hanging over us like the sword of Damocles for some time,” said Jim.
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
Argh. Jim was going to make him participate in the conversation just by dropping comments like that and then not explaining himself. “What issue?” snapped Scott.
“What issue do you think?” asked Jim.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
“I don’t know,” snarled Scott. “You’re the one who sees it dangling like a fucking sword.”
He felt Jim’s eyes snap at the swear word.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
“Why us?” said Scott. “We’re fine. Aren’t we, Jim?”
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
Jim didn’t answer him, and tied spread-eagle on the bed, Scott suddenly wanted to curl around himself. Suddenly he wanted to hide, and he couldn’t. “Jim?”
“I’m here, baby.”
But that wasn’t enough. He needed to feel Jim there. He needed to know Jim would be there. “I need you,” said Scott, and he hated like hell how his voice sounded.
And Jim was there in a second, warm and present, lying next to him, almost on him, and those warm brown eyes were looking into Scott’s. “I’m here, baby.”
Scott exhaled with relief. The panic he’d felt a moment ago completely gone. “Let me up?”
Jim’s eyes read him. “But we haven’t talked about it.”
“Is this about Joshua? Because it’s just that he’s so…so…”
“Submissive.”
“Yeah.”
“Like you?”
“No! Christ, no.”
“Then why does it bother you?”
God. What did Jim do? What was it about his voice or the way he looked at Scott that made the breath start to huff in his chest and that choky feeling start in his throat? His eyes prickled. “I’m a man, Jim.”
“Thank Christ,” said Jim, smiling a little. “So’m I.”
“But I respect you.”
“You think I don’t respect you?” said Jim, looking honestly shocked.
Scott was silent.
“Scott, I…I…” Jim realized that everything he was about to say merely emphasized his physical attraction to Scott. I worship you. I can’t stand to be without you. Scott was just lying there, and Jim suddenly felt that what he said next was going to be so important that it would define their relationship for years.
“If I were to be stuck someplace,” he said, “without anything but the bare essentials for survival. And the powers that be said, you can have one other person there to help you get through this, I’d pick you.”
Scott was looking down, his golden lashes flickering. “You would?”
“Absolutely.”
“And not just for the mind-blowing sex?”
Jim paused. “Well, that would have been factored in. Of course.”
Scott gave him the barest smile. “Of course.”
“But it wouldn’t be the main consideration. You’re the man who’s got my back. I know that.”
Scott looked up at him. His eyes had gone that deep golden color that made him look like a lusty tiger. “I love you.”
“Yeah, I love you too.”
“You gonna untie me now?”
Jim peered at the clock on the dresser. “I figure another ten minutes should be enough for what you did to Joshua.”
“Jim!”
Jim chuckled. “Then I’m gonna come back in here and finish fucking that pretty ass.”
Scott grinned, wriggling his butt happily into the waterbed mattress. “Yes, Sir.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Go out long!” cried Scott, taking three hopping steps back, throwing arm retracted.
Wearing a muddy, flapping Giants jersey emblazoned with the number 56, Brian ran into the officially-marked end zone and raised his arms for the pass that was never completed.
A Browns jersey with a mud streak down the back and a pair of holey jeans sticking out hit Scott smack in the chest and brought him down.
“Wah!” yelled Joshua, jumping up and pouncing after the ball as it bounced across the lawn.
Scott just lay there. Halfway down the field, Joshua turned around and looked back at Scott, who still lay on the ground, as if stunned.
Joshua came trotting back. He’d filled out a little in the past few months. Freddie encouraged him to eat properly and had him working weights to deal with the stress that ate away at him. But he was still tall and rangy, the thick hair sticking out at a weird angle from the sweat and the game. “You okay, Scott?” he said worriedly.
Scott howled, got ahold of one of Joshua’s legs, and brought him down.
“Hey!” Joshua yelled, getting tickled and screaming at the outrage of it.
And “Ooomph,” he said, when Brian leaped on him as well.
“No Browns player sacks my quarterback!” yelled Brian, rolling Joshua and grabbing him in inappropriate places.
Joshua screamed and laughed.
“He doesn’t even seem like the same young man,” said Jim, watching them from the window.
“Oh, he is,” said Freddie. “He’s less anxious with you all, but it’s still a struggle for him with strangers.”
“Brian said he’s seen him on campus talking to other students. So he’s making friends.”
“He is learning to interact. Slowly.” Freddie set down his coffee. “A colleague of mine from the literature department mentioned him the other day. Raved about his poetry.”
“Really?”
“Of course, I knew he was brilliant,” said Freddie, smiling, “but it was nice to hear it from somebody else.”
Jim sat back, stirring his coffee.
“It would be a scandal if it got out that we are lovers,” said Freddie. “But it doesn’t seem to bother anyone that we are roommates.”
Freddie and Joshua would be moving into their own place this weekend. Joshua had seemed quite calm about it. Where Scott and Brian might have reacted to impending change with fretting and stubbornness, Joshua seemed to be content to go wherever Freddie led.
Freddie, however, was looking apprehensive and like he wanted to talk.
“Have you met any of your new neighbors?” asked Jim.
“I have. A young couple next door. Totally cool. Of course, Joshua is still nervous about them. I’m glad your lot are so close by. He’ll have someone to talk to. It’s hard enough being shy. It’s…different for him,” said Freddie, “because of the way we are.”
“You think your relationship makes things more difficult for him?”
“No,” said Freddie, but the way he was pulling at his ear, staring at the coffee table, said maybe to Jim. Jim set down his coffee cup.
“Freddie, the young man that followed Scott home was a victim just looking for another predator to hurt him. The young man out there in that yard is healthy and happy and learning to take care of himself. Do you think he’d be that way without your relationship?”
