Rough Canvas (19 page)

The redhead gave him a weary wink and winced as he was immediately rutted

upon by a new occupant of the chair who’d donned a condom before plunging into his ass with an enthusiasm bordering on violence. Apparently their show had stirred things up.

“He was auctioned to submit to whoever his Master deemed appropriate,” Marcus

observed. “Either because it pleasures and excites his Master and his slave to be shared, or because he’s being punished and he consents to allow his Master to punish him this way.” His hands wiped at Thomas’ genitals and Thomas noticed the man was watching the tenderness. No, devouring it with his gaze. Was it watching a man’s hands on another man’s cock? Or like Thomas was he enthralled with the contrast of punishing demand with gentle care?

“Straighten up and turn toward me. Keep hands and eyes down.”

Thomas obeyed, turning to find Marcus had apparently cleaned himself and

rearranged his trousers so everything was in place. Marcus’ long-fingered, beautiful hands rose with another wet paper cloth to clean Thomas’ face where saliva had

escaped his mouth.

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“What are you thinking?” His voice was low, velvet.

That I can’t tell if you hate or love me in this place, or if it even matters.
Thomas couldn’t say that, though. Despite the fact they seemed to have reached a higher plane of intensity, a bond that seemed to make other words unnecessary, some essential

component of the intimacy that could exist between them so easily was missing. He just couldn’t put his finger on what was off.

“What’s going to happen next?” he asked instead.

“Whatever I want to happen,” Marcus said mildly, tossing the wad of tissues in

another discreetly placed steel can.

“How…” Thomas swept his downward glance toward the other slave, whose eyes

were now closed. “How do they stay safe?”

“His Master is standing about ten feet away, watching it all. Making sure every man he’s given the privilege of fucking his slave is appropriately protected.”

“Will you…”

“Share you? Let another man fuck you, for pleasure or punishment?”

Marcus touched his face. Whereas before he’d wanted to raise his gaze, now

Thomas resisted. But Marcus slid his fingers in the strap of the collar, knuckles pressing on Thomas’ windpipe to force his head back to meet his cold green eyes.

“Is that what would turn you on, pet? To have your Master whore you out? There’s some women here. I could let one barter for some cunt-eating time with my slave. You could practice for that doe-eyed fiancée of yours.”

The reassurance that Marcus’ tenderness had evoked vanished. “Don’t.” One word, spoken through stiff lips, was all Thomas could manage.
Don’t do this.

“Why? Is she that precious to you?”

“She’s a friend. And you’re just doing this to get me to take a swing at you. Which I will if you don’t shut up about her. It’s not about her. It’s about you and me.”

“Really? That’s news to me. My understanding is it’s never been about you and me, to the point I often wonder if there
is
a you and me in your mind.”

* * * * *

Marcus told himself he didn’t know where the anger had come from. But that was

bullshit. He’d been overwhelmed by Thomas’ response to him, not just here, but since they’d stepped into the club. He’d expected Thomas’ resistance. Instead, his shy lover had surrendered to things that far exceeded what he’d been asked to give Marcus before. Going down on him in this setting, letting himself be spread out and fucked the way he just had. He submitted to Marcus, belonged to him fully, in so many ways. And at the end of the week it wouldn’t mean a damn thing.

Coming to a club like this, where emotions could be brought rocketing to the

surface so easily, was a mistake. As he’d just demonstrated with the below-the-belt shot 96

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that roused the side of Thomas he so rarely saw. When the dark eyes became sharp and direct, the body shifting into a Southern boy kick-your-ass forwardness posture, nothing would back him down.

A muscle flexed in Thomas’ jaw. “Would whoring me out turn
you
on? It’s not okay for me to let someone else fuck me, but it’s okay if it’s you doing the letting? Is that what my Master wants?”

Marcus couldn’t bring himself to be dishonest about what he wanted from Thomas.

Never. He’d made that oath to himself when he went to North Carolina to find him.

“No,” Marcus said it fiercely. Then, more softly, his hand gentling on Thomas’ neck, thumb stroking over the pulse, a quick pass over the flushed jaw. When Thomas tried to push him away, Marcus turned his hand, gripped his wrist, kept it pinned to his shoulder. “I don’t want any other man to fuck you. Ever. The idea of it makes me physically sick, and so furious I can’t…” He stopped, shook his head. “No.”

“It’s not what I want, either.” Thomas swallowed and suddenly there wasn’t a club, pounding noise and flashing lights. There was just his face, close, his eyes meeting Marcus’. His sensual mouth was held in a line taut with the power of his emotions, spun up and to the surface, so Marcus knew his words were brutally honest. “No

matter what happens, Marcus. With Daralyn, with any of it, you’re the only man I want.

Now or forever. The only man I’ll ever let inside me again.”

Words of devotion could cut like rusty saw blades. Marcus wanted to quip, wanted to make some dig at how young Thomas was to be making such a rash statement. He was only twenty-seven, for Chrissakes, but Marcus knew Thomas had the soul-deep understanding of himself to make the utterance with the certainty of an oath.

Indeed, it was Thomas’ very spiritual sense of himself, his responsibility to those he loved, the wisdom to perceive who needed him the most, that drove Marcus to insanity.

Even as it made him want to be with him with a hunger that made him worry he might blurt out the same foolish promise.

The only man I’ll ever let inside me again…

When Thomas reached out to touch his face, Marcus stepped back, shook his head.

Thomas stopped midair, waited a pregnant second, then slowly lowered his arm.

Marcus lifted the Velcro cuffs and gestured to Thomas to turn. When he did, he

wrapped the cuffs around Thomas’ wrists, trying to keep his mind on what he was doing and not the back of Thomas’ neck, so tender and exposed with his head bowed, his eyes cut down again.

Marcus wanted to bury his face there, his nose in the soft line of hair and skin, smell deodorant and aftershave, warmth.

Instead, he latched the cuffs together. Thomas’ knuckles rested on the curves of his bare ass, so that Marcus couldn’t resist caressing him there. Thomas’ fingers twitched but didn’t seek to entwine, his shoulders rising and falling, the elevated breathing pattern showing he was fighting a frisson of panic at experiencing the restraints in such an environment.

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“Come on.” Marcus took his arm. He was crazy to be here, but he couldn’t leave.

There was too much he wanted to do to his slave. Needed to do to him.

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As Marcus led him down to a second level of the Club, Thomas couldn’t get a sense of his Master’s thoughts. Arousal, for certain. The flash of anger, almost vicious resentment, had unsettled him. In these surroundings, Thomas was already unsettled.

He needed to be sure of his Master, and he wasn’t at all sure of Marcus’ mind at the moment.

This area of the club was a circular lounge, where those taking a break could relax with a drink, talk. In the center of the room was…well, he wasn’t sure what to call it. He was starting to know what Alice in Wonderland must have felt. Or any character who found himself in a world fantastically, temptingly different from his own.

It appeared to be a large oval-shaped fountain with water pouring over stepped

layers of flat slate from a top round disk into the pool. On top of the disk was an excellent reproduction of Michelangelo’s David.

There were men kneeling, manacled in a circle around the wall of the pool. The line of the wall was scalloped, so each convex or concave curve formed a separate space for the man placed there. The men’s positions were also arranged to form an aesthetic design. Where one man was bent over the wall in the concave space, the ivory rough stucco side pressing against his pelvis as he stared down into the water, the man next to him sat on the convex top of the scallop, facing outward and sitting upright.

Their arms were chained, one man’s arm under or over the man’s next to him. The ankles were likewise done, legs spread, so the sitting man’s jutting cock and balls were exposed from the front as the bent-over man’s was from the back, hanging free between his legs.

The floor beneath the fountain and the men was a rotating disk, and they were

moving slowly, being displayed from all angles. As Thomas studied the carousel, the rigid faces of the men on their knees or the jerking hips of the men facing forward, he understood.

The cocks of the men bent forward were threaded through holes in the fountain

wall, their hips and thighs anchored with straps so they couldn’t move back to free themselves. Something in that hole was stimulating them like a man’s mouth. Whereas the sitting men were obviously sitting on automated phalluses to fuck their asses. All for the watching pleasure of the wine drinkers in the room.

“Chocolate sauce, sir?” A waiter stepped up to Marcus. Thomas managed to tear

his gaze away to see Marcus hand over the required tip before dipping his fingers into the metal chalice offered. Thomas noted all the men on the carousel were marked in some way on chest or back, depending on which direction they were situated, with letters or symbols he didn’t understand.

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Marcus brought the sauce-covered fingers to Thomas’ back. As he stayed still and felt the slow glide over his spine, the caress as Marcus made a symbol of his own, Thomas digested the fact that Marcus was going to put him here. Restrain him, let others watch him get fucked or jerked off by inanimate electronic devices.

This imprisonment of his body, displaying it for the pleasure of others, was

unthinkable, and yet he was fascinated by it. He was unable to resist the pressure of Marcus’ hand as he was guided to the fountain and Marcus removed the cock harness.

“On your knees, pet,” Marcus ordered. “Put this new condom on and then guide

your cock into the hole.”

Thomas sank down on a knee cushion apparently provided to help the sub hold his position. As he leaned forward, obeying, he felt as if everyone’s eyes were on him, but particularly Marcus’. He guided himself into a warm, moist canal and jumped as it automatically closed on him, adjusting for his girth. Then it cinched in a little tighter to hold him.

“Holy Christ.” He swallowed. It felt too snug to remove himself without tearing off something he might need.

Marcus fitted the straps over the backs of his thighs and his waist, spreading out his arms to either side, under the braced arms of the two sitting men on either side of him so their forearms touched. There was another vulnerability to this position, for his cheek now pressed on the upper curve of the well wall, mist from the fountain bathing his face as Marcus bound his neck against it with a strap, holding him completely in place.

His knees were nudged further apart and the ankles of the men on either side were briefly released so Thomas’ legs could be guided to the inside of their feet. When they were all rebound, he was firmly manacled, their heels pressing against the inside of his calves, almost as if they were holding him spread open. They did not speak, at least one of them gagged, but he could feel the warmth of their unfamiliar flesh, the flex of their muscles.

“This will keep you occupied for a time. I’m going to go set up a room I want to use.” Marcus fiddled with a dial and Thomas clenched his jaw as the simulation of a wet mouth began to work him, making his body tense with the artificial stimulation.

“Master…” Don’t go, he wanted to say. Don’t leave. But there was an element of

punishment here he had to endure for the pleasure of his Master. One part of him wanted to tear free, be back home with Marcus where play was between them. Another part of him wanted to be here, showing the world he belonged to Marcus. Which made no sense at all. But what had ever made sense with Marcus?

Marcus was standing where he could partially see him, and he was aroused.

Looking at Thomas and nowhere else, and Thomas knew him so well, he knew Marcus was so turned on he could barely speak. It made his own reaction leap, not a wise idea with the stimulation he was already experiencing. He groaned.

Marcus passed his hand over his hair, clenching and tugging to the point of pain.

“You’re going to make every dick in the place rock hard. I changed my mind on one 100

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thing, because you seem to be having trouble remembering to keep your eyes down.

You
can
be touched, pet, but the symbol I left on your back says you’re mine, that you’re not to be fucked.”

Thomas bit his lips as Marcus called a staff member to attend him. The oiled-down muscular man in painted-on Latex black pants and black tie carried a shallow crate supported with a strap around his neck like one of the vintage cigarette girls, only he was providing a selection of plugs in sealed packaging. Marcus chose one very thick dildo, paid and tipped him well, then lubricated it for insertion.

Thomas watched him, his mouth dry, unable to speak. When Marcus eased it into

him, his fingers gripping his buttock, Thomas’ testicles drew up, his cock flexing inside the tight cavern of that automated mouth.

“If you should sweat it off, that’s to protect your virtue until I return. Don’t let it slide out, pet. Keep that ass tight.”

Marcus’ fingers whispered down his back and then he was gone where Thomas