Read Bound and Determined Online
Authors: Jane Davitt,Alexa Snow
bringing the plaintive longing behind the words to life, and it hurt the teacher
in Owen not to acknowledge that, but he couldn't cede even that small a victory
and hope to win the war. “
An eye more bright than theirs
…” Oh, God, yes,
Sterling's eyes shone today, but it was an angry glitter.
“Now, from a modern perspective, the most obvious interpretation of the
theme is…?” Owen raised his eyebrows inquiringly. Shari had mentioned that
this class was reasonably articulate and insightful, and he hoped that habit
and a desire to impress a visitor would mean that they gave him the same
energy and commitment.
The man he'd been going to choose to read the poem raised his hand and,
when Owen nodded at him, said hesitantly, “Uh, because we're like, less hung
up on sexuality being, you know, straight and narrow, we'd go for the idea that
the poet wanted the other guy? But he couldn't just come out and say that, not
back then, so he did all this thing at the end to make out that he was cool with
only having the other guy's friendship when, no way, 'cause he was totally into
him.”
Yes, you sound considerably less hung up on sexuality, Owen thought,
which wasn't fair—there was no reason to think this young man was straight,
even. He just wasn't particularly eloquent.
“That's the most common interpretation, certainly,” Owen agreed aloud,
because there was no point in making any of this more uncomfortable than it
was likely to be unless Sterling chose to keep his mouth shut, which he wasn't
anticipating. “Can anyone offer an alternative?”
A young man wearing shorts—surely inadvisable given the weather—
raised his hand and didn't wait for Owen to call on him. “Why does it have to
mean he was queer?” he asked and, when the dark-haired woman sitting next
to him shifted in her chair and muttered something, tried again. “I mean, gay?
People write about stuff all the time that doesn't have anything to do with their
real life. Like, Stephen King. We wouldn't try to argue that he's some kind of
ghost hunter or whatever just because he writes about monsters, right?”
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“But monsters aren't real,” Miss Bowers argued, turning in her seat to face
the young man in the shorts. “Plus we're talking about Shakespeare. There are
homosexual innuendos all throughout his sonnets. Why would he do that if it
didn't mean anything?”
Sterling looked bored, but he sat up in his seat and looked at Owen.
“What do you think, Professor? Was Shakespeare gay?”
Meeting that hostile gaze sent a frisson of arousal through Owen. Every
instinct he had was screaming at him to handle this as if Sterling was a sub
challenging his Dom, and Owen knew exactly how to deal with
that
. Having an
audience wasn't a problem, either; Owen loved acting out a scene at the club,
with the arousal of those watching spurring him on. The problem, of course,
lay in the fact that he was at work, surrounded by students, and had to rein in
those instincts. Well, some of them, at least; a teacher was owed the same
respect as a Dom, and the students would expect him to deal firmly with
Sterling's insolence once it got to a level that was impossible to pass over. Right
now, Sterling was very skillfully skirting the line.
“That's a question that's been debated, often hotly, for centuries, with no
definitive answer,” Owen replied. He turned to address the class as a whole.
“As I'm sure you're aware, people have several candidates for Shakespeare's
lover—if he had one—including the earls of Southampton and Pembroke. One
can only imagine what the Elizabethan equivalent of the tabloids made of those
rumors.”
“But it doesn't sound, from the sonnet, as if Shakespeare liked women
very much,” Sterling said.
Owen shook his head. “He was a product of his time, but I doubt he could
accurately be referred to as a misogynist. There's enough evidence to suggest
he might have been forced to marry an older woman, which wouldn't help as
far as his feelings toward the 'fairer sex' might go.”
“So he had the fair youth on the side,” Sterling said. “That makes him
dishonest, doesn't it? Not admitting to the public who he really was and just
hinting at it through poetry that most people probably didn't analyze all that
carefully anyway?”
“I think you're wrong there,” Owen said. Around them, the normal sounds
of a full class were dying down to an expectant hush as if the students, several
of whom had seen Owen and Sterling clash before, were anticipating something
out of the ordinary to enliven their day. He gave the page of notes that he held
a brief glance and spotted something that Shari had added an asterisk to,
clearly wanting it to be stressed. “The educated people of the day were very well
used to picking up on levels of meaning and would have torn each sonnet apart
gleefully. No TV, no movies, no computers… This was part of how they
entertained themselves.”
He was warming to his theme now. “It's been suggested that Shakespeare
put clues into his work as to the identity of the youth. The word 'hews' appears
in the poem; the modern spelling is 'hues,' but in the original it's spelled 'hews.'
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Some say that the appearance of those four letters in most lines of this sonnet
refer to the initials of William and either of the earls, though that's possibly
reading too much into it.” He put the notes he'd been shamelessly quoting from
down on the desk he was leaning against. “What is certain is that the great
poets of that time were masters of the art of verse writing. They made words
mean far more than the sum of their parts.” He met Sterling's eyes. “And they
knew that to be open about some matters was to risk everything: their social
standing, their wealth—their life.”
“You mean, like, gay bashing?” The young man wearing shorts seemed a
little too interested in that topic for Owen's comfort.
“There are laws against it now, but in Shakespeare's day there was
nothing to stop people from attacking those they felt were lacking in
appropriate morals,” Owen said blandly.
“But we're more civilized now,” Sterling said, voice loud enough to
command attention. “Especially in New England. We've legalized gay marriage,
and there's legislation against hate crimes. This isn't the Dark Ages—people
don't lose their social standing over something like being gay.”
“A relatively recent development and certainly not the case in every state,”
Owen said. He pointedly turned away from Sterling, who was frowning at him,
his mouth set in mutinous lines. “I think we need to bring the focus back to
the sonnet, and I'd like to hear from some of the less vocal of you.” He pointed
at a young woman slumped in her seat, examining her nails, who only looked
up when her more alert neighbor nudged her. “What would you say is the
general feel of this? Happy? Sad? Romantic? What was your first impression of
it and why?”
He listened to her stumbling efforts to answer with most of his attention
on Sterling, visible out of the corner of his eye, but Sterling seemed to have
decided that he'd pushed it as far as he wanted to—or dared. Owen was torn
between annoyance and a reluctant admiration for Sterling's nerve. Which
meant that things between them hadn't changed; it was that exact mix of
emotions that had led to him accepting Sterling's proposal in the first place.
For the rest of the class, Sterling sat silently, appearing to listen as Owen
asked questions and some of his classmates answered them. He even seemed
to be taking notes occasionally, a few words here and there in the neat,
somewhat blocky handwriting that Owen had become familiar with. In the end,
Owen wound down the discussion with a mention of a few of the related
sonnets.
“I'm sure Professor Temple will be back for your next class,” he said after
relaying their next assignment. “So don't disappoint her by being unprepared.
Thank you—that's all.”
Most of the students left immediately; a few lingered, talking to each
other, before finally heading out the door and leaving only Sterling still in the
room with him.
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“I'm sorry,” Sterling said after the last student had crossed the threshold,
the door swinging closed behind her.
Owen picked up the book of sonnets and the thin sheaf of notes, fully
intending to walk out, and then put them back down on the desk. He looked at
Sterling, still in his seat, and sighed. “It doesn't matter. I know why you did it,
and I can't say that you didn't have a right to make the points you did. It
wasn't the best place to do it, though.”
“It does matter,” Sterling told him. “I know it's no excuse, but I was so
surprised to see you here—it kind of threw me for a loop. Still. I'm sorry. I won't
let it happen again.” He smiled sadly and stood up. “Not that the opportunity
will present itself anyway. Are you… How've you been? Okay?”
“I've missed you,” Owen said, going directly to the cause of his irritability
for the last week. “I didn't like the way it ended between us and I feel…” He
shook his head. He'd spoken to Michael midweek, and the conversation hadn't
gone all that well. Boneheaded, stubborn, and several other epithets had
sizzled across the miles, leaving him to slam out of the house and go to the
club, where his bad mood hadn't been improved by an encounter with Carol,
all leather harness, studded collar, and adoring eyes as she stared up at her
new Dom—and she
still
hadn't learned how to kneel properly, damn it. She'd
looked graceless, but that had just made him reflect on how perfectly Sterling
knelt, and that hadn't helped at all.
He'd ended up brushing off some offers that would normally have gotten
his automatic approval and had gotten home very late, stone-cold sober and
depressed.
“I've missed you,” he repeated.
That earned him a wistful look as Sterling came closer, now-closed
notebook in his hand the only thing he had with him despite the fact that
Owen knew he had another class immediately after this one. “I missed you too,
and—do you think maybe we could try again? I mean, I know I put way too
much pressure on you—even though I don't think I was wrong for wanting you
to explain—but I was definitely wrong for not listening when you tried. And I
know I'm kind of a screw-up as far as, you know, everything is concerned. I
know I wasn't living up to your expectations, and that you wanted more from
me, and maybe I'm not even capable of giving it, which I shouldn't be admitting
because yeah, way to sound appealing… It's just, I really, really miss you a lot,
and I've been going kind of crazy, like I forgot how to release tension or
something, and—”
He was close enough to touch now and that was just what Owen did,
placing the tips of his fingers against still-moving lips, shaping words that
Owen wasn't really listening to because this close, the need to claim Sterling as
his again was overwhelming.
“You never failed me,” he said. “You just asked for something that I
didn't—and don't—want to give you. Two months more to wait, Sterling, that's
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all. Give me those months and after that I'll fuck you raw every single night I
can, but you need to wait. Can you do that?”
His unspoken
please
seemed loud enough to be heard. God, wouldn't
Michael snicker to see him reduced to this state of want and need? But he was
addicted to Sterling, and it had been a week or more since he'd kissed him, felt
Sterling's mouth part under his, the sweet, hesitant flick of Sterling's tongue
against his, the bitten-off moan Sterling made when the kiss ended, his eyes
closed.
“I don't know,” Sterling whispered, so close now Owen could feel warm
breath against his lips. “With the way I've been dreaming about you—every
night, about you fucking me, Owen, pushing your cock into my ass and
fucking me—but I promise I'll try. Okay? I'll try. That's the best I can do.”
And then their lips were together, Sterling whimpering desperately into his
mouth, erection pressed to Owen's thigh and hands eager on his shirt. Sterling
was good, so good, letting Owen control the kiss despite his need.
Owen realized that they were frantically kissing in a classroom that
anyone could walk into at any time and pulled back, though he couldn't resist