by Joey W. Hill
With the footstool, the hook was just above easy reach, so Ange had to stretch out that incomparable body, showing off the upward tilt of his rib cage, the golden down on his chest that arrowed along his flat belly toward the now lower-hanging sweatpants. Robert’s command had brought his erection back to life beneath them.
As distracting as that was, Robert’s attention was caught by something far less appealing. Gunshot scars, two of them, right in the gut. Six months ago, they hadn’t let him into the exam room at the ER, needing to make sure he wasn’t the one who’d worked the kid over, so he hadn’t seen Ange shirtless. He’d imagined it countless times, but this hadn’t been part of those fantasies.
“What the hell... Ange?” When he put his hand on the scars, the two entry points close enough that his palm could cover them, Ange started to tremble, and not the kind of trembling Robert was trying to inspire. He recognized it, that panic that could grab hold of a grown man, drench him in sickly sweat, and make everything disappear except that moment of horror. “I can’t. Please, Master...don’t.”
“Okay. Shhh. This isn’t about that. Like you said. Another day. Stay with me, Ange. I mean it. Listen to your Master.”
It was the first time he’d referred to himself directly as such. The power of it was enough to bring Ange back to him. He settled, breathing slower, the trembling easing.
From the beginning, Ange had related well to the people in the store, but he’d been hesitant about going out on errands. He tended to get distracted, or even disoriented. Robert had worried he might have sustained a head injury that first night, but over time he’d realized Ange merely lived in a special place in his head, elevated above the practical day-to-day, like an angel in truth. However, Robert had started taking him for supply runs and meets with vendors, encouraging him to do the talking while acting as his backup. It worked—Ange sent him a dazzling smile when he did well, and Robert got a kick out of boosting the man’s confidence. But the question remained of what had pushed him into such a detached state, or put him on the street. Those two wounds, and Ange’s reaction to him asking about it now, gave Robert a clear hint.
He had been fortunate in his military service, getting away with some shrapnel wounds, but in the VA hospital for follow-up care after his discharge, he’d seen soldiers injured far worse, physically and mentally. Some of those who couldn’t shake the trauma lost their connection to everything else, so out of sync with the reality they’d once shared with the rest of the world that the street became home. While Ange’s gunshots weren’t from military action—nothing about him suggested military training—unfortunately a person didn’t always have to travel thousands of miles away to see that level of violence.
However, as he’d said, tonight wasn’t going to be about that, for either of them. If the demons couldn’t be laid to rest on this snow-filled evening, they could at least take the night off.
Robert moved behind Ange to run his hands down his back, broad compared to the nipped waist, tapered hips. The boy was five-foot-ten of lean muscle. Reaching around him to pull the drawstring of his sweats, Robert loosened them so the waistband caught on the upper rise of his buttocks, revealing the dimple between. When he returned to Ange’s front, he saw the pants had fallen low enough to show off the intimate muscles angled to his groin. That pale blond down thickened there, revealing the top line of the pubic pelt still hidden beneath the cloth. Ange’s breath clogged in his throat as Robert traced it.
“Master…”
“Shhh. No more talking unless I give you permission or ask a question.” Robert arched a brow. “Unless you want me to put one of our ball ornaments to creative use?”
He could imagine that vividly, testing which size of the satiny thread-wrapped foam balls would fit Ange’s mouth just right, make him work his jaw hinge hard before it popped in behind the teeth. Robert could picture the gleam of the silvery sapphire curve behind Ange’s stretched lips.
Right now, though, he decided to leave it as a pleasant possibility. Going to the register counter, he looked behind it. Ange kept everything so well organized, Robert found the box he was seeking right where he expected it.
As he straightened, a movement outside the display window caught his eye. A group of women, probably coming from a late show at the independent theater down the street, had paused on their stroll past his shop to look at the lit trees, the toys grouped around them. If any of them chose to strain their gaze to a forty-degree angle, they might make out the stretched, pale silhouette of a mostly naked man on a stool, his arms held on a hook above his head. Ange’s back muscles vibrated, his recognition of possible exposure, but he didn’t move. His Master’s command held him where he was.
The women were laughing, chatting, oohing over the things they saw.
“I need to come here…”
“Look at that doll, it reminds me of my aunt’s…”
“I bet Celia would love this…”
“There’s a blond guy working here who is so hot—we should come back at lunch on Monday just to get an eyeful.”
“But that’s all you’ll get,” Robert murmured. Ange’s shoulders twitched, registering the comment. As the women strolled onward, Robert returned to him, putting the box down and then laying his hand on the channel of Ange’s spine, teasing the rise of his buttocks with his knuckles. Then, because he couldn’t resist, he dipped into the cleft, fingers furrowing down to stroke the soft hair between, finding his rim. He savored the noise Ange made, the jerk of his hips as he explored him there.
“They’ll never know what they missed tonight,” he observed, well aware his voice was a satisfied rumble. Gooseflesh rippled across Ange’s skin, his lips parting to let out an uneven breath at Robert’s invasive touch.
Robert skinned Ange’s sweats to his ankles in one fluid movement. As he made Ange step out of them, he kept a steadying hand on his hip. Maybe overprotective, since the boy could twirl on top of the stool, but Robert didn’t cut corners on those kinds of things. From the first time Ange had called him sir, it was as if he’d handed Robert the key to an imaginary collar. Which meant Ange’s well-being became Robert’s top priority, the Master side of him too strong to ignore that responsibility.
Pale hairs dusted Ange’s legs. The quivering, cold ass on display just above them tempted touch, taste, and paddle. Robert took a long, satisfying look at the firm buttocks, the slim, muscled thighs, the tender backs of the knees. When he pressed a kiss to Ange’s hip, Ange vibrated like a musical instrument.
“Beautiful.” Coming around to the front, Robert found him fully erect, the shaft thick and long and already wet at the tip. “Eager for it, aren’t you? Naughty elf.”
Despite the weak joke Ange had made that first night, the description matched. Not the short, cupid-like elves of Santa’s workshop, but the mesmerizing beauty of the Fae.
Pulling the box over with his foot, Robert withdrew the Christmas lights. They were 1950s vintage lights, like those on the shop trees. The bulbs looked like small, lit fruit, rather than stars hiding amid the branches. They had more heat as well. Not enough to catch anything on fire, but they’d warm the skin on contact, enough to make an angel squirm a bit.
He started at the ankles and worked his way up, tying Ange’s legs together. When Robert adorned the trees, he made sure the lights had the proper distribution for that artful random look. For Ange, his focus was on optimal placement of each bulb upon flesh. Ange’s muscles quivered as he reacted to the gradual restraint. Robert paused when he reached his cock, relishing the moment, then closed his fingers around it for the first time. Heated steel and velvet, pulsing with life and need. It made him want to taste, to suck, to grip and pump until he saw come jetting from the slit.
Stretching out his unoccupied fingers, he captured the testicle sac pushed forward by Ange’s closed thighs. He held the entire package in a possessive, sure grip as he wrapped the base of the cock several times, creating a collar. That put a bulb on either side of it, the
smooth glass pressed into the crease between thigh and testicles. He gave the strand an extra cinch when finished, so Ange’s cock was kept bound close to his balls. Robert had done some Japanese rope-tying at one time, enjoyed it. While he couldn’t take advantage of the knots that art form provided right now, the wrap skill helped.
“Keep breathing, Ange. Don’t want you to get dizzy up there.” The kid had gone still as a statue, doing that submissive intense energy build that could absorb Robert’s full attention, make him a little lightheaded himself.
Robert brought a stepladder over to handle Ange’s upper body, using the bottom rungs for better access to his shoulders and arms. He could tell Ange was disappointed when Robert did a wrap over the shoulders and bypassed the throat. Ange’s obvious desire for some type of collar was enough to get Robert even harder. Even though his jeans were killing him, thank God he’d worn them instead of slacks. If he hadn’t, he and Ange would be fencing swords. As it was, the broad head of Ange’s cock was bumping his upper thigh. It took great effort to focus on what he was doing.
He wrapped Ange’s wrists, tying off the strand on the hook. Now Ange was bound to it by the cord, not just his willing handhold. Robert met Ange’s eyes then.
“Not around the throat,” he said. “I know you want that, but it’s not safe. If you start moving, it could constrict.”
Ange gave him a look that would’ve melted the toughest Master’s resolve. “I’d only move if you told me to move.”
“If I work you up so hard you can’t control your own body, you’d break that promise. All control, all decisions, your safety—it’s all in my court. Got it?”
Ange nodded, lowering his gaze again. “Yes, Master.”
Stepping off the ladder, Robert moved it out of the way, then found an outlet. “If this string has a bad bulb, I’m going to enjoy the hell out of testing each one.”
The strand worked, however. Robert rested his ass on the top of the step ladder, enjoying what he’d created, the treasure the oblivious women had missed.
The multicolored lights threw red, green, and blue hues over Ange’s fair skin, as reflective as a screen. Every muscle layer was tense, pronounced. He’d kept his eyes down, his mouth pressed closed, but Robert could see the pulse dancing in his throat. His cock, highlighted by that triple wrap and those two bulbs, was stiff and straight as an arrow. The cinch to his balls kept his cock away from his belly, but it was turgid enough to be pointing north.
“Fuck,” Robert muttered. He wanted to touch, but the time wasn’t yet right. Watching Ange get more aroused by his detached appraisal made the self-denial worth it. “I should put you in the window. Every wealthy gay man in the Charlotte area would be here tomorrow. We’d make our annual profit goal in one day.”
Except they’d be ogling what was his. And that wasn’t going to happen. The women maybe seeing Ange had been titillation. The reality was something far different.
The kid was starting to feel the burn of those bulbs. Robert could see it in the slight twitches of his body, the uncertain stretch of the fingers. “You feeling that, Ange?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Too hot?”
“No... Feels...right.”
“I like to give out pain to my subs, Ange. Do you have a problem with that? As long as you answer me honestly, you won’t disappoint me. You lie, we’ll have a problem.”
Ange shook his head, a jerky motion. “When you’ve corrected me about things, in the store…” His voice was a thick rasp. “I’ve dreamed of you...tying me over the manger in the nativity scene. Pulling my jeans to my knees and using your belt to punish me until my ass is black and blue.”
“But I wear suspenders, not a belt.”
Ange gave a strangled half-chuckle. “It’s a dream, Master.” His voice got very soft. “And you’re wearing a belt tonight.”
So he was. He didn’t need the suspenders to hold up his pants, but they went well with the bowtie, and the customers enjoyed the antique pins he tacked to them.
Robert liked Ange’s low tone, making it clear it was a desire, not a demand. He wasn’t a topper, not in any way. Robert had no use for the independent, smart-mouthed fuckers who didn’t have a clue what he was seeking in a submissive. Yeah, he liked a fighter, but the kind of fighter Ange was, his breath elevating from the burn of the bulbs, his muscles bunching, proving to his Master he had a capacity for turning pain into pleasure and only asking for more.
Robert moved back to Ange’s perch. Sliding his fingers under the strands of lights wrapped around Ange’s waist, Robert let him feel the resulting constriction around his balls.
Ange moaned, rocking into him. Robert gave him a rough tug, enough to pinch, and the man went still again, though he became like a bowstring, everything straining toward Robert without actually doing so. Robert bent, propping his knee on the stool in the small space between Ange’s feet. Gripping those lean hips, he went down on the jutting cock with a hot, demanding mouth.
Another noise from above, a suppressed shudder of motion, made Robert’s blood heat like the bulbs. Ange had a sweet-salty taste, reminding him of those pretzel M&M snack combinations. Ange liked them so much that Robert bought them for him by the one-pound bags.
The kid never looked like he ate enough, but then he was never still, either. Like a restless squirrel, Robert told him. Since Ange didn’t like going out for lunch without Robert, and the art district’s food prices were too high for Robert to indulge every day, Robert had started bringing enough homemade lunch to feed both of them. He wasn’t a great cook, but apparently Ange was, because he’d suggest things, a little more paprika in this dish, some cilantro for that one. He’d started an herb garden in a sunny spot in the back alley, introducing Robert to different flavors.
Robert remembered the day he’d been checking it out, squatting next to the garden while Ange explained what he was doing. Ange had gripped the stalks of the basil, directing the leaves to Robert’s nose. When Robert laid his hand over Ange’s forearm to steady his grip as he sniffed, he felt the current between them again. Just like that first day, Ange held his gaze for a blink, then swept his down, which had tied Robert’s gut in knots. And sent him into full retreat.
He wasn’t retreating now. No way in hell. He had his own hunger to sate. He filled his mouth with Ange, closing his eyes at the sheer pleasure of tasting him, sucking him. The organ jumped in his mouth in response, Ange making panting breaths above him. The femoral pulse thundered beneath the press of Robert’s thumb. He took Ange deep, then slid back up, working the suction on him like he would one of the everlasting suckers they sold in the old candy shops, the kind that seemed to last forever and tasted as vibrant with the last suck as the first one.
“Master….” Ange had his fingers clenched around that hook, making it obvious the support beam had been a good idea. The lights cast from the bulbs were dancing over Robert’s vision, thanks to the force of his captive’s trembling. There was something about seeing a strong man in bonds like this, all his muscles working against the instinct to bust free, that never failed to stir Robert. The conflict. The desire to surrender warring with the desire to fight.
“Sshh.” Robert went back down on him, working him in his mouth, flicking the head with his tongue, the pulsing vein beneath. He wrapped his hands over Ange’s thighs and buttocks, digging into that choice area to ensure he stayed steady on the stool.
When he pulled off him at last, Ange had his head thrown back, his eyes shut. The bulbs on either side of his cock were heating Robert’s knuckles from proximity, telling him it was time to turn them off. “Steady now,” he warned, letting Ange know he was stepping back. He waited until Ange lifted his head, tightened his grip on the hook. When he went to the wall, he unplugged the lights, but he also hit the switch, turning off all the Christmas trees. The shop went dark, except for the dim glow provided by the streetlights outside.
Robert came back to Ange and pulled the stepladder closer, using it to get h
igh enough to free Ange’s hands from the hook, though he left his wrists wrapped in the lights. Ange had behaved when Robert was focused on the wrapping, but now his cheek brushed Robert’s chest, his rigid cock alongside Robert’s hip. Robert tangled his fingers in his thick hair, gave it an affectionate tug, then stepped down, bringing Ange’s bound arms down before his body. He adjusted the lights along his shoulders as necessary to accomplish it and keep circulation flowing.
Wrapping an arm around his back and ass, Robert lifted and brought Ange safely to the floor, since his legs were wrapped too close to allow mobility. When Robert straightened, they were almost eye to eye, since he was six feet.
“You’re strong,” Ange whispered. “I felt it in your hands, that first time you touched me. That’s why I won’t tell you who hurt me. Because I don’t want you to go fight them. I don’t want you hurt.”
He couldn’t resist the call of that mistletoe any longer. Robert caught Ange by the nape, brought him close to his mouth. Sugar cookies. Ange had a weakness for them, such that they flavored his breath now. “Stay still,” he reiterated, not knowing if it was a deliberate move of a Master, or the desperate plea of a man in too deep. Either way, Ange obeyed, trembling as Robert put his lips fully over that sugar cookie sweetness.
The kid sighed into his mouth, a sound of pleasure, and Robert plundered, tracing Ange’s tongue, his teeth, coming back out to his lips, holding Ange’s naked body against his clothed one. He could feel Ange reacting to that, all the evidence of a Dominant gathering up the reins, taking full control. As his sub became more pleasurably frenetic, making sexy little noises under the manipulation of Robert’s mouth, he himself growled like a territorial animal. He wanted to wrap Ange up in his embrace and hold him there for a few decades. All the need he’d sat on these past months was ready to explode, take over everything. It wasn’t Ange he needed to restrain, but himself.
Taking a firm hold of one buttock, he squeezed and explored. As he pushed his cock hard against Ange’s hip, the other man’s body rippled, Ange clearly struggling with the desire to hump against him. It told Robert that Ange had paid close enough attention to know his Master appreciated self-restraint until he ordered otherwise. Of course, with a submissive this delicious, Robert might welcome Ange losing control so he’d have an even greater excuse to bind and punish. To enjoy.
