by Lee Benoit
Devi remembered part of a story of lovers parted and let himself speak it. "Best way to start is with a kiss," and he tipped his face down and laid a row of kisses along Matti's jaw. With a surprised groan, Matti turned his head and tilted his mouth, his arm coming hard around Devi's waist and levering him onto his knees. Adiún swam across the tub and insinuated himself into the kiss, one hand at Devi's nape and one at Matti's throat. He pressed his lips to Devi's and leaned in hard so Devi had no choice but to open to him. Adiún hunted Devi's tongue and found it, coaxing it into his own mouth, where it followed unresisting. For long moments, the world narrowed to their three mouths, taking and giving kisses.
Devi felt Matti's hands come into play, running up and down his wet back, dipping under the water to stroke and squeeze at the crest of his buttocks, so Devi made bold to imitate him, resting his hands on one each of Adiún's and Matti's. The feel of two different rumps under his hands was fascinating, and he rubbed and pressed with hypnotic abandon.
Were the two mouths before him likewise distinct? He tried them. Matti's was soft, eager, his kisses sweet and skillful. That skill pained Devi, for he knew how it had been won. Adiún's lips were more mobile, his nipping teeth begging something from Devi that was his due and always had been. Devi remembered. In kisses, Devi remembered love.
It was Matti who stopped them, pulled back, and regarded Adiún with tears in his eyes.
"It is enough for tonight. I will come apart if we do more."
"Do you want more, love?" Adiún asked Devi, regarding him with eyes overtaken by blown pupils.
Devi shook his head gently. This accord was so new, so fragile, and their other circumstances so uncertain. Another time, the three of them would explore what was born between them. "Only, please, hold me like you used to?"
The three shared one more kiss to seal their troth, and were just pulling away from it when Kibi leapt up and gave a yip of recognition. Devi turned, expecting to see Sauda, but was greeted by a fully-clothed man towering over the tub, a friendly smirk on his face.
"Can anyone join in this little celebration?"
"Joh!" Matti launched himself out of Devi and Adiún's arms, out of the tub heedless of his modesty, and into the tall man's embrace. Joh staggered back, laughing.
"Figures I'd find you in the bath, chavvie!"
The bathing room erupted into a babble of questions and answers and exclamations. Even Devi, who hadn't known Joh well before he and his brother and sister had departed Keoded in search of Kino's boy, back in a brothel in Dinas, found himself grinning with elation. In a world of strangers, here was a friend.
***
Matti towed Joh up to the large room they'd rented, crowing joyously to Sauda, "Look who's found us! It's Joh!"
"So I see," she replied drily, nodding to Joh and tossing Matti the towel she'd hung to dry by the fire. "Welcome, Joh. Eat with us."
Adiún and Devi soon followed, the new lightness in their steps as apparent as the heat in their gazes. Adiún dropped to sit between Devi's knees and accepted morsels of food from his hand, the exchange so natural Matti's heart squeezed.
They ate, talking over each other and demanding news, until the food was gone. Matti cuddled next to Joh, unwilling to let his friend go. Devi hummed softly as he combed out Adiún's hair and plaited it down his back. Sauda tucked her feet under Kibi's belly and listened with her usual sharp attentiveness when the others started to nod with the weight of the day.
"Where are Kino and Mari?" Matti had hesitated to ask, fearing the answer.
"They're hiding outside the city. Couldn't bring Martiyyo in without a freedman's token."
"So you found him?"
"That was the easy part."
Something darkened Joh's genial face for a moment, but Matti didn't press. "Adiún and I were nearly arrested for selling truffles in the main market."
Joh chuckled and tousled Matti's damp curls for a moment before drawing something out of his shirt.
"Gydha's mummers badge?" Matti had though that gone over the sea with the rest of the Norvanders from their troupe.
"Gate guards warned me I'd not find a market to sell in, so I went to the Mummer's Serry and sold there. Whatever we had, and for better prices than out on the delta."
Matti nodded against Joh's broad chest. "That was our thought, too. You seek transport?"
He felt Joh shrug against his back. "We thought we might leave this land, but with the season so close to changing, all ships take Norvanders first, and charge us triple."
"As we feared," Sauda said.
Another blow to their plans, then.
"Is there nowhere for us to go?" Devi asked, pausing in his task with Adiún's hair. "We can't stay here, now we know we'll always be slaves to these people."
"I've heard rumors," said Joh, "of hideouts your people have made in the inland hills."
"Alperai villages?"
Joh shrugged. "Folks on the road mention them. The Norvanders can't touch them, try as they might."
"They'll need warriors," Sauda speculated.
"We'd be welcome," Adiún mumbled from between Devi's legs, barely opening his eyes to speak. Devi smiled and ran his hand over his lover's sleek head.
"What if we aren't?" Matti felt obliged to ask. These Alperai might be very like his own people, but they were still strangers to him after more than a year in their land.
"Let's sleep on it," Joh said. "Is there a bed for me?"
Matti giggled. "Since when have you had to beg a place in anyone's bed?"
Joh dug his fingers into Matti's ribs, making him yelp. "Never when you're around, little minx."
It took little doing to share out the blankets so that Sauda and Kibi had a warm place by the fire, Adiún and Devi one low-slung bed, and Joh and Matti the other.
Something like a plan in place, Matti let the stress of the day seep into the creaking ropes of the bed as Joh fitted his big, warm body around Matti and snugged him close. As if they'd not been apart for more than a few hours, he pressed chaste kisses along Joh's brow and cheek. The memory of his kisses with Devi and Adiún in the bath and lips inspirited him enough to reach between them to free their two shafts from their leggings and lay them together for slumber.
The last thing he heard before sleep covered him was Joh's rich chuckle. "I intend to hold you to that promise, chavvie!"
Chapter 4
The Road
"He reminds you of Jürn, doesn't he?" Devi tried to keep the accusatory note out of his voice, but the resemblance of Kino's golden whore to Adiún's not-quite-lover, the juggler from Gydha's troupe, was too obvious to ignore.
"He's a Norvander, and has their look, that's all," Adiún said, but he wouldn't meet Devi's eyes.
"You miss him," Devi stated baldly.
"He was my friend. I wish him well." And that was all Adiún would say on the matter.
Aside from that small jealousy, the atmosphere in the small camp was celebratory. Matti and Mari, Kino and Joh's sister, laid out all their supplies, dividing them for easier travel and setting aside any duplicate items for sale or trade to other travelers. Among them, they now had two bows and six knives; thus, the bare assurance of feeding and defending themselves.
Martiyyo kept close to Kino's side, only venturing away to approach Devi. "Your Adiún came to see me in Dinas, looking for you. I'm glad he found you."
Feeling chastened after his earlier outburst, Devi nodded and summoned a smile. "I'm glad Kino liberated you."
"You have pale hair, but you're not of my people."
"Not a Norvander, no," Devi said, comparing Martiyyo's golden hair to his almost colorless cropped locks.
"I've never seen an Alperai with pale hair."
"You've never seen a story-father, then."
"You were wasted as a whore."
High praise, and it cemented their tentative friendship.
They decided to set out that afternoon, to put some distance between them and Keoded -- and Keoded's g
uards, who couldn't be counted on to miss a Norvander in a clutch of "strangers" even outside the city's walls. Traveling against the traffic was slow going until Matti pulled out the hardan. People were happier to make way in exchange for a moment's music as the player passed.
Information about the Alperai mountain fastnesses was thin on the ground; their only direction a vague "north." Devi kept close to Adiún, seeking reassurance that they weren't sailing blind into worse seas than those they'd left behind. Throughout the day, Adiún reassured him in the best way he could, with warm looks and hot ones, and those brief touches that said, "We are together."
It was two days before their march bore any fruit. The foothills of the mountains -- those same mountains Devi had thought so very distant before he left his seaside village -- rose gently before them. Behind them were slavery and corrupted cities and empty villages.
Everyone, even Kibi, stopped a moment to savor the sense of freedom.
Sauda put voice to it. "Who'd have thought I'd feel free in so hemmed in a place?" Devi squeezed her hand and they walked onward.
***
Sleeping arrangements on the road and soon, off of it, were a shifting sea of pairs and piles. The second night in the foothills, Kino and Martiyyo retired alone, away from the group, hidden by a stand of thick brush. The others readied the camp for the night, discussing their lack of success in finding where the Alperai were hidden. Adiún wanted to split up, the better to find them quickly.
"Summer is well and truly over. We must find them quickly, before the cold sweeps in."
Matti understood the urgency. Winter had come suddenly and with surprising force last year, his first in this land. "I think we should stay together, though," he said. "We are stronger this way, and if we don't find them..."
Sauda nodded. "We'll need all of us to build shelters."
Mari looked alarmed. "You think we'll be living rough all winter? Out here?"
Sauda, in a gesture that surprised Matti, moved next to Mari and wrapped an arm around the other woman's shoulders. "Plan for the worst," she said simply.
Devi, more vocal since leaving the city behind, said, "But hope for the best, yes? Do our best to find our people."
"Your people, tiba," Sauda muttered.
Matti held his tongue, for this was becoming an old argument. He shared Sauda's skepticism that all would be welcome among the beleaguered Alperai.
A sound reached them from behind the copse. "Aa-aah!"
"That didn't sound like Kino," Matti mused. But it had sounded like a man deep in his pleasure.
Joh smirked and bumped his shoulder against Matti's. "You thought a boy like Martiyyo lost all pleasure?"
Joh didn't add, because he didn't have to, a boy like you, a castrated piglet. Matti felt his face heat, and, grateful for the concealing darkness, made a noncommittal sound.
"You're saying he hasn't?" Adiún sounded curious, and Matti had a hard time meeting his eyes over the campfire's flames. He waited to hear what Joh would say.
"Cutting is common in our home land. Good lovers learn how to please in..." he seemed, for once, at a loss for words.
Mari rescued him. "A variety of ways." She smiled over at Matti. "You didn't know?"
Matti's strove to hide his squirming discomfort. He wasn't used to his mutilated state being discussed.
Devi said softly, "Surely you exaggerate." But his eyes, like Adiún's, slid to Matti and away.
Matti couldn't bear the looks, least of all from Devi, so compassionate, so troubled himself.
He stood and headed outside the circle of firelight, just as another of Martiyyo's ecstatic moans reached them.
"Let him go," someone said.
"Don't be stupid," said someone else. Matti walked faster. His castration was not -- not -- something he wanted discussed like a hunting trip or a supper menu. If it was to be, he wouldn't listen.
A hand fell on his arm, and he jerked it away, perhaps more angrily than he'd intended.
"Ah, chavvie, I'm sorry. My mouth runs on, eh?" Joh dropped his hand and hung his head, and Matti felt his shame and anger dissipate like mist before sun.
"It does," Matti said, letting a gentle teasing into the rebuke. "It's true, then?" If Devi and Adiún were curious, Matti was intensely so.
"You've not had pleasure since the deed was done?"
Matti took his time to answer. "There's been pleasure in touching and kissing. But that?" He waved his hand toward the clump of trees where Martiyyo's cries had finally subsided. "No."
"But you were with Gydha," Joh prompted.
"For her pleasure, and my safety," Matti said shortly. He supposed that was a bit unfair. Gydha had been good to him, and he had come to care for her despite her treating him like a fragile flower.
Matti hadn't realized he'd spoken his thoughts aloud until Joh said, "The stem may be delicate, but the roots run deep."
"What do you mean?"
"What I mean is, I want to show you what Kino's showing Martiyyo. Will you let me?"
Joh sounded so tentative, so hopeful, that Matti had to laugh. "You were never interested before." He gave Joh a little shove. He'd always found the bigger man beautiful.
"You were the kept boy of the leader of my troupe. Mari says I'm impetuous, but give me credit for a few brains, chavvie."
"You know I'm... exploring... with Adiún and Devi," he hedged.
"What happened to you is something they never imagined. In my home, it is common, even voluntary." At Matti's skeptical look, Joh waved his hand and added, "But that's not the important thing now. Adiún and Devi, they can't show you what I can. Let me, Matti. Please? Then if you want to take what we do and gift it to them, you can. I can't bear for you to stay buried."
Matti looked up, directly into Joh's sloe eyes. "That's exactly it," he said. "I'm buried. I was... cut... before I ever really knew how to be with a lover. It all happened so fast." He didn't mean the brutal surgery, though that had been a lightning flash followed by a red thunder of pain and confusion. The slave market, the brothel, then Gydha and her troupe. "I barely understand how I came to be here."
Joh's hand, heavy and warm, wrapped around the back of his neck. Matti didn't suppress his shiver. It was fear, and delight, and a pushing, clawing need. He stretched up, feeling that hand hold him more firmly, and kissed Joh's mouth. Suddenly there was a second hand, grasping his hip and pulling him close, pinning him to Joh's lean, hard leg. Matti might have humped, just a little, a vestigial seeking for something he thought he'd lost forever.
"See, chavvie?" Joh chuckled. "Part of you remembers."
There wasn't any more talking for a while, just dizzying, maddening kisses. Stroking shadowy thrills of breath and caress swirled around his scarred places, calling tears to his eyes and stopping his breath.
Joh had brought a blanket, and he lay Matti down and covered him with his large, warm body.
There was a smile in his voice, though Matti couldn't see his eyes to verify it, when he murmured, "Chavvie, you're getting tenser and tenser. How about we slow down and you wind me up a little, eh?"
Matti's breath whooshed out on a laugh, leaving him as breathless as before but easier in his skin. Easier in a way he hadn't felt since his mutilation, nearly two years before. When he got his breath back, he chuckled again, remembering Adiún's wide-eyed wonder at the strange beauty of Joh's shorn cockhead. He relaxed a little, free of the pressure to be pleased when he wasn't sure he could be, and turned his attention to something that he knew and that pleased him more than a little: giving pleasure to a desired lover.
"Come up here, then," he said, proud of the teasing challenge in his voice.
Joh pivoted on the blanket, getting one knee under him to turn and straddle Matti on his way, during which maneuver Matti caught a breathtaking glimpse of Joh's butt and high-riding balls.
He had his mouth open even before Joh was settled beside him.
Instead of grasping the cock immediately, he slid his hand under Joh
's balls and used them to raise Joh's cock, the better to study the marvel before him in what ambient light there was. It was still soft, but thickening, and Matti was mesmerized. He had left his village barely a man, barely old enough to have begun his sexual explorations. Everything that had followed had been quick, and for someone else. He relished taking his time. He squeezed the balls gently and watched the cock twitch in response. It looked so exposed and vulnerable, even as it hardened, that Matti couldn't stop himself from leaning forward and kissing the tender tip. The cock shed a little tear and Joh gasped sharply.
"Wonder of wonders indeed." Matti strove to keep the teasing note in his voice, but the truth was his own breath was starting to come in gasps as well. He leaned in again and engulfed the head of Joh's cock, sucking it deeply into his mouth. He slid it out again, then in, keeping his tongue pressed against the ridge along its underside. He wrapped his thumb and forefinger gently around the base of Joh's balls and tugged, not so gently. Joh moaned raggedly, and Matti smiled around his slick mouthful. He pulled off again to look. The brown skin was stretched tight and shiny with Matti's spit, and the glow of blood under the skin made the shaft and head resemble some strange night-blooming flower. He tunneled the fingers of his free hand into the thick black hair at the root of Joh's cock and tightened them there. He pulled both hands toward his mouth and swiveled his tongue forcefully in the little glistening hole, tasting the salt-silver of Joh's excitement.
He turned his eyes up to see Joh's face, but it was flung back, and Joh had wound one hand into the blanket. Matti went to work in earnest. Hands still anchoring his quarry above and below, he sent his tongue exploring every inch of Joh's cock, delighting to find that the little groove underneath the head was as sensitive as his own, and delighting even further to discover the tiny pale scar around the head was a pleasure-center. He played with Joh's cock in this way, massaging the mound and balls, until he felt Joh's balls draw up and his cock begin to buck. He would come soon.
Matti drove his mouth onto Joh's cock, pushing hard past the resistance at the back of his throat.
