by J P Barnaby
“Damn it,” Jude muttered and propped him against the wall again just in time to whirl on the little bundle of fur hurling itself toward Ben. He’d almost forgotten Jude had brought Max home. “No, Max! Down!” The tiny dog slid to a stop, his nails attempting to find purchase on the hardwood floor as he cowered before his masters. Jude had never yelled at Max before—even when they were training him, he always kept his patience. Ben had no idea how, especially when Max peed in his bed or chewed up his favorite pair of running shoes. His snap in temper showed his stress even more clearly than the lines on his face, and his mood gnawed at Ben.
“Hey,” Ben said softly as he shifted his weight onto his good leg and balanced against the wall. “It’s going to be okay. I’m tougher than I look.” A mirthless chuckle burst from Jude as he picked Max up and cradled the little guy in his arms. Rubbing absently at the dog’s head, his eyes met Ben’s. He looked so tired. The bags under his eyes made Ben’s stomach tighten against the waves of guilt. Was being near Kage really worth putting Jude through the pain and effort of caring for him? It had to be. Kage had to make it better—everything had spun so fucking far out of control. If he didn’t have Kage to tell him what to do, to control him, to ground him—he couldn’t function. His hands shook like a junkie waiting to score.
“What?” Jude asked, his head cocked to the side as he rubbed Max’s flank and continued to stare at him. His eyes narrowed like he was trying to figure out a particularly complex puzzle.
“What what?” Ben asked, a little confused.
“You left for a minute there, where did you go?”
To Kage’s playroom, to the ropes and the rafters and the sting of the flogger against my skin. To the only place I’m safe, the only place her dead eyes can’t find me.
“I’m just tired,” Ben admitted, trying to keep the need for Kage from his face. Jude didn’t understand their relationship. He didn’t understand just how much Ben needed Kage in order to keep a tight handle on his emotions. Without Kage he’d go back to that black place in his head and he might not come back. The doctors tried to tease him out of it with expensive-sounding pills and talk therapy, but the only thing that ever helped was the sting of leather against his skin and the sound of his Dom’s voice in his ear.
“Okay, I don’t want Max to hit your leg so I’m going to shut him up in my room and then come back to help you to yours. I can’t carry you both. Are you going to be okay here by yourself for just a minute?” he asked, still absently stroking Max. Ben recognized the mindless movement of hands. He’d done it countless times over the last few years. Max was his safe place. Apparently, he was Jude’s safe place too. A flash of something in his long-dead heart told him that the shared connection made him happy.
Then it was gone.
“Yes, I’ll be fine for two seconds while you put the dog away.” His voice sounded tired and exasperated even in his own head. Jude retrieved the crutches from the sidewalk so Ben would have more support, turned quickly, and dashed up the hall. He turned left around the kitchen, headed for the bedrooms. It took less than sixty seconds for Ben to hear the door close and see Jude reappear in the hall.
“You do know I’m not exactly an invalid, right?” Ben asked with a small smirk, and Jude hoisted an arm back over his broad shoulders. The smell of dog, damp leaves, and autumn hung on Jude’s clothes. Ben thought it rather smelled like home.
It didn’t take Jude long to get Ben settled into bed with his leg elevated on a pillow. Ben sat half propped on the boyfriend pillow he used to work on his laptop in bed. Most nights when he wasn’t working he researched different aspects of motorcycle and car repair, finding the new and interesting fixes other guys came up with and wrote about online. He’d never admit it to Jude, but he also took business courses on iTunes U. Lacking the time, money, or desire for a full four-year degree, he figured he’d just hit the highlights online. How hard could it be, really? He’d spent the better part of his adolescence helping his dad out in the shop. Mostly, what he needed to get a handle on was the business side of things. If his boss, Rufus, could figure it out, Ben sure as hell could.
“Are you good? Do you have everything you—” a knock on the front door stopped Jude midsentence. His eyes widened, and though it was subtle, his breathing accelerated. “I’m starting to really fucking hate surprise visitors.” The mutter was thrown casually over his shoulder as Jude stalked out of the room to answer the door. Though Ben didn’t understand, he waited to see who appeared.
“We just walked in the fucking door!” Jude’s shout rang through the small apartment. Angry, heavy footsteps marched closer—one heavy with a strong, confident stride, the other lighter and stilted, almost like a basketball player defending the hoop. “He’s not up to your brand of visitation.”
“I won’t be here long.”
Kage.
Ben sat up higher in the bed on instinct and tried to look less like a broken china doll in front of his Dom. He couldn’t stand Kage seeing him so helpless and vulnerable. Ben was supposed to be a well-trained, solid submissive, not a marionette with his strings cut, lying limply on the bed waiting to be cared for. God, he couldn’t stand that. He’d been helpless for so long before Kage came into his life.
And then he was there, filling the doorway with his huge muscled frame. Despite the pain radiating through his body after the extremely long walk from the car, or maybe because of the combination of pain and Kage, his cock started to harden. He shifted a bit to hide his reaction under the light blanket Jude had placed over him.
“Hello, boy,” Kage said as he stepped over the threshold of the bedroom, cautiously, like he wasn’t sure he should be in Ben’s bedroom. Jude hovered in the hallway, but neither Kage nor Ben invited him in. Ben’s attention was completely focused on the Dom taking up an impressive amount of space in his bedroom. It felt wrong, though. Something felt off. Maybe it was because they should be in the playroom, not a bedroom. Ben couldn’t quite put a finger on it. He invited Kage to sit with a wave at the desk chair, which seemed ridiculously small for him, or the edge of the bed. Kage did neither; he just stood above Ben, looking down at him.
“Hello, Sir,” Ben answered cautiously, his voice full of respect and reverence as always for his Dom. For the first time, Kage broke his role and rubbed the back of his neck with one beefy hand. His eyes closed, and he seemed almost reluctant to continue.
“How are you?”
“I’m better. Everything is healing,” Ben replied, deliberately evasive. He didn’t want to tell Kage that he might never regain full motion in his knee, or that he was still getting dizzy from the head injury. He couldn’t admit those weaknesses and take that kind of chance with their relationship. No Dom wanted a broken toy he couldn’t play with.
“How long, and don’t lie to me, boy,” Kage demanded harshly. Ben had been treated with kid gloves by everyone since he’d woken up in the hospital. His parents, Jude, the nurses, even the doctors had been exceedingly nice to him. Kage’s attitude was like cold water in his face.
“Three months, if the doctor’s estimates are right. It’s mostly my knee.” Ben watched the changes come over Kage’s face, the resignation, the exasperation. Ben’s chest tightened, and he wished, not for the first time in recent years, that he could pull the pillow over his head and hide. Kage took a deep breath, swelling beneath the tight black T-shirt, growing before Ben’s eyes into the monster that would take everything from him in an instant.
He didn’t want to hear Kage’s next words, but the choice was taken from him.
“Ben, I don’t want to wait three, or four, or six months to have another session. It’s something I enjoy, and while I feel bad about your accident, I can’t just put my life on hold. We need to terminate our contract.” There it was. Kage had just discarded him like a defective toaster. His lifeline, his sanity, the one person who could make the monsters go back into the dark, had deserted him. A burning crept up his throat, but he refused to let Kage see him cry. T
hat would put the nail in his coffin for good. Crying in front of his Dom because he’d been broken up with like some kind of teenage girl.
Fuck him.
“No one wants a broken toy, I get it, man,” Ben said, but what he really wanted was to beg. Please don’t do this. Please keep me. Please make me better.
“You’re not just a broken toy, but it’s not like we were going to go pick out curtains or anything. It worked for you, it worked for me. It doesn’t work anymore. Maybe down the line if neither of us is contracted, we can play again. We’ll have to see where shit takes us, kid.” Kid. Fuck you, you condescending prick.
“I said I get it. You can leave the same way you came in,” Ben said with a jerk of his head indicating the door.
Kage nodded and his shoulders slumped, which surprised Ben. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to see it. It didn’t matter; his life had just ended. The quiet sound of the door closing behind his former Master rang in his head like the sealing of a tomb.
He closed his eyes and pushed the little button on the morphine drip they’d installed at the hospital. It was no bigger than the size of an old Walkman radio and stayed concealed in a pouch around his waist. His eyes got heavy as he watched the little doll on the shelf. Finally after a moment, they started to close. Mercifully, he stopped thinking and closed his eyes against the pain—not only in his limbs, but in his heart.
On his knees, he could see only naked, hairy legs and feet around him. Dim lighting and pounding music, dulled by walls and doors, made him think that he was in a club, but maybe in one of the back rooms where Doms took their boys for a little private time. There were few invitation-only clubs left, so he figured it was either The Spreader Bar or Spinners. It didn’t matter, and he focused all of his concentration on the men in front of him. He needed to make Kage proud. Four guys—God, what kind of things they would do to him as he knelt in quiet supplication on the floor. He was anxious to find out.
Two of the men picked him up off the floor, repositioning him, and he chanced a glance around. He didn’t dare look at their faces, but the hard cocks all around him made him dizzy. Big, beefy, hairy men—just like he’d wanted, like he’d begged for. They bound him, as he knew they would, on his knees with his legs spread wide. His back arched as he tried to make his ass more accessible. They would make him beg for it, and God he wanted them to degrade him, debase him, and force him to burn for them.
The crack of a flogger across his skin registered in his ears first, and then across his ass. Too hard for a warm-up, it scorched his skin and forced a cry from between gritted teeth. Another blow came, delivered by the hands of a sadist, and fingers pulled his chin up, exposing every emotion. He kept his eyes on the floor, as he’d learned painfully at Kage’s hand, but they could see him—every bit of him.
“Open, boy,” Kage said harshly, and Ben’s mouth opened without hesitation. He’d been gagged by any number of his Master’s toys, but he knew this time it would be the dental gag. With four cocks around him, his mouth needed to be accessible. He hated the taste of the metal but loved the way it held him open. He couldn’t close his lips even if he wanted to. They could use him for hours, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Blow after blow landed on his ass and his legs even as the first cock forced its way through the gag. Salty musk, like sweat, but more bitter, filled his senses. The taste, the smell, even the feel of the cock in his mouth made him hard. It didn’t take long for his jaw to start to ache or spit to run down his chin, but the groans of the guy in his mouth made them worth it. Ben loved to please.
The snaps of leather on his ass stopped just short of his skin actually bursting into flame. It stung… like a bitch, but the hands that rubbed it took some of the sting and turned it into pleasure. Fingers probed his ass, and the guy in his mouth started a steady rhythm fucking him through the gag.
Ben jerked awake, the dream still clinging to his mind and filling his cock. He remembered that night so well. The men had used his body in myriad ways, filling his ass and his mouth, jerking him off until he lost count of the number of times he’d come, and then starting all over again. It went on for hours, and when it ended, he lay crumpled and spent on the floor waiting for Kage to put the pieces back together again. Only Kage didn’t want to put Humpty Dumpty back together ever again. He wanted to set Ben on fire and watch his life smolder around his leather boots. It was the first time he’d gotten hard since the accident, and Ben wasn’t remotely in the mood to jack off, but he hated to waste a good hard-on. He pulled down his sweats and briefs. With his right hand in a cast, it took him several minutes to get the material low enough to take out his dick.
His sigh was nearly inaudible when he started to stroke.
THE SLOW quiet grunts and slapping of skin crept down the hall like a thief in the night, stealing the remnants of Jude’s sanity as he listened to Ben pleasuring himself. Their bedroom doors were open so that Jude could hear Ben if he needed help. Heat flashed down his body, tenting his blue plaid pajama pants as he wondered if Ben could use his assistance then. Jude watched himself get out of bed, pad barefoot down the hall, and replace Ben’s hand with his mouth. Only, he couldn’t move. The harsh breaths got louder, and Jude closed his eyes to imagine how Ben must look—flushed with excitement and exertion, beads of sweat on his brow, and his thick beautiful cock in his hand. Would he twist his fist around the head like Jude did? With a huff of impatience, Jude lifted his ass off the mattress and jerked his sleep pants down to his knees. The waistband stretched around his spread legs as he spit in his palm and reached for his dick.
His mind took them back to their night together, almost three years before.
They’d gone to a club to celebrate Jude’s birthday. Lonely, drunk, and lamenting turning twenty-five, he’d finally acted on the attraction he had felt for Ben since the day Ben moved into the apartment. He’d taken advantage of Ben. Of course, it didn’t feel that way at the time. At the time, it felt like he’d hit the lottery. Sexy, sweet, adorable Ben in his bed—it was everything he’d ever wanted. They fucked all night long, sleeping just long enough for the alcoholic haze to burn off in the harsh light of dawn.
But Jude didn’t want to think about that, to remember the awkward weeks of tiptoeing around the eggshells scattered through their apartment like shrapnel. He wanted to think about how it had felt to be under Ben, to have Ben’s sweet, hot skin stroking his. With his eyes closed, Jude could almost feel Ben’s cock on his tongue. The sweaty arousal of Ben’s body filled his senses as Jude’s nose pressed just behind Ben’s tender sac. He bit his lips to contain the moan that threatened to alert Ben he was getting off while listening to his best friend masturbate. It went beyond stalking, but he couldn’t make himself care when Ben let out another deep, breathless groan. Pulling his knees up, he wet his fingers in his mouth and wasted no time fingering his hole. In his head, they were Ben’s fingers, getting him ready so he could ride Ben’s gorgeous thick cock, something he fantasized about almost constantly.
“Fuck,” the curse came loud and frustrated, not the sexy utterance of someone on the edge of orgasm, but irritated, angry. With a frown, Jude waited, but didn’t hear anything else from the bedroom next door. In fact, silence filled the apartment with the loss of Ben’s sexual soundtrack. As quietly as he could, Jude pulled his sleep pants back over his hips and climbed out of bed. His dick tented the front of the pants as he padded barefoot down the hall, like in his fantasy. Only he didn’t find Ben stroking himself. Instead, his uninjured hand covered his eyes as his hard dick poked out above the blankets.
“Are you okay?” Jude tried not to startle Ben, but he jumped anyway. Jerking the sheet up to his waist, he flushed in the soft light coming in through his bedroom window. Careful of Ben’s injuries, Jude sat on the bed next to him and put a hand on his sheet-covered thigh, hating the material between their skin. God, what he wouldn’t give to be able to touch Ben like that again.
“I just… I can’t…,�
�� Ben stuttered, his normally confident demeanor gone. Jude watched him for a long moment and waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. Jude traced the fading pattern on the sheet with his finger, and Ben’s eyes closed.
“You can’t make yourself finish?” Jude’s voice, barely a whisper, made Ben nod. Jude took several deep breaths to gather his courage.
Ben’s eyes flew open as Jude pulled the sheet down.
“What are you—” Ben’s voice cut off abruptly when Jude’s mouth enclosed his still half-hard cock. He exhaled in a barely audible “oh.” Jude expected him to protest, but he made no other sound. The tension in Ben’s body had him strung tight across the moonlit sheets, but Jude wanted to make it melt away. Nudging Ben’s thighs apart, he licked his palm and stroked Ben even as he took the tender sac between his lips. A slow, harsh moan tore from Ben and made Jude’s dick strain against the thin sleep pants as he ground his hips against the sheets.
Ben in his mouth was better than he remembered. The weight of him, the scent, the inarticulate sounds—Jude thought he could easily become addicted to loving Ben like that. When Ben’s hand rested on the back of his head, gently, affectionately, Jude nearly came undone. Scooting up in the bed just a bit, he took Ben’s cock back into his mouth and sucked in earnest. He didn’t want to tease; he wanted to make Ben fall apart under him. He wanted to show Ben just how good they could be together, and he tried to ignore the ache battling the joy in his heart.
