Rough Canvas (34 page)

Private guy stuff.” He imagined Marcus laughing at them, but did it anyway.

He was already barefoot. Laying back down on the throw rug, Thomas felt the

rough threads against his tense ass, the bracket of his shoulder blades.

“Keep touching your stomach, slow circles. My hand there. Just above your cock.

You’re getting stiff, aren’t you? Harder and longer, your dick trying to touch the side of my hand, begging for attention.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?” His tone was sharp. Thomas closed his eyes, his heart tripping as his cock jumped.

“Yes, Master.”

“Good. I’m going to keep massaging your stomach. I like the way it feels, the ridges of muscle under my palm, the way they tighten up further, every time I rub lower, get closer. I can see your cum leaking out of the slit, your balls drawn up, wanting me to cup them, squeeze them. You want your Master to touch your cock, don’t you?”

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Thomas groaned, his hand convulsing on his stomach. He wanted more than that.

He wanted Marcus’ touch, rough and brutal, gentle and teasing. He wanted his ass filled. He wanted to be pummeled, hear Marcus growl, his hand gripping Thomas’ hair, yanking it back to grip his throat with his teeth as he thrust and thrust, knocking Thomas’ knees out wider, reaching down and collaring his balls as he slapped against his ass, again and again.

“Are you…touching yourself, Master?”

“Would you like that?”

“Yes.” God, yes.

“Tell me what you’d like. And I’m not touching your cock until I decide it’s time.”

“I want to take off your shirt. Rip it off. One button at a time. Put my mouth on your skin.”
Bite you, suck on it as if I could eat you one bite at a time and finally not be empty,
empty…
“God, I love your body.” But more than that. “I love the way you breathe faster when I touch you, when you’re getting hard and I know you’re going to fuck me, I can see it in your eyes. Not asking me or coaxing me. You’re just going to fuck me, and that’s the end of it.

“I want to get on my knees, watch you open your pants, take down your underwear and force your cock into my mouth. Hold my head so you can thrust in hard, smell your come, wanting you to jet into my throat almost as much as I want it in my ass. I want you everywhere, Master. In every way.”

“I’m touching you now.” Marcus’ voice was rough, thick. “I’m moving my hand

down and fisting your cock. Pumping it in my grip, making your ass come up off the ground. Spread your knees out wide so I can see your balls, finger your ass if I want.”

Thomas obeyed, his hand working himself, Marcus’ hand in his mind, those green

eyes close, his lips, his long, lean body.

“I sent you something. I know you have it there, in your studio where you can lock it up. Have you used it?”

“No. You didn’t—”

“Say that you could. Good slave.”

Though part of it was Thomas not wanting to use it alone. He’d thought often of that box since it had come.

“Get it,” Marcus said.

Reluctantly, Thomas rose again and went to the locked cabinet. His shaking fingers had some trouble with the combination padlock, but then he opened it, removed the box. He’d only taken a brief glance at it, but now he swallowed. It was a vibrating plug of daunting diameter and length with a bottle of warming lubricant. “Pet?”

“I’m here.”

“It’s my size exactly. You can take it.”

“It looks different…detached.”

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“Grease it up. I want you back on that carpet with it up your ass in five minutes.”

“You aren’t moonlighting as one of those porn stars, are you? The ones who make molds of their cocks and sell them in catalogs?” Even as he made the joke, Thomas’

hands were moving over the texture, putting on the viscous liquid. It was about the right size. If he closed his eyes, he could just imagine…

“You imagining it’s my cock you’re lubing up?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought so. Your voice started to get all low and sexy at the end. You practically purr like a tiger when you’re about to get off. Makes me harder. Rub me, Thomas. Let me feel your hands. Am I good and slick? Hard enough for you?”

Thomas nodded. “Yes, Master.”

“Good. Get down on the floor again. Keep that phone near. I want to hear your

groan as you take it. God, you have a fine, tight ass. Best I’ve ever had.”

Thomas didn’t want to touch that, the mixture of jealous and possessive heat the comment evoked in him. He went back to the rug and lowered himself. Putting his feet on the side of the cabinet so his knees were raised, he began to take the greased dildo.

“Rub it against your cock and balls first. I want to feel your cock against my cock.”

Thomas grunted huskily as the friction made his cock jump, convulse.

“Yeah, that’s it.” From the cadence of Marcus’ breathing, he knew Marcus’ hand

was working himself. He was probably sprawled on his couch with his paperwork and an open bottle of wine, the lights of New York spread in a panorama before him while Thomas was in a shed in a quiet field in North Carolina, surrounded by the smell of paint, canvas and old lumber, a silver star and black sky domed over it all. It didn’t matter. Thomas’ eyes landed on the last painting.

“It’s…of us.”

“What? The one you just finished?”

“Yeah.” Thomas groaned as he rocked. “It’s always tougher this way, even if it’s the same size.”

“Music to my ears, pet. I want you stretched. Take me deep. Don’t you clench up.

You can take all of me. You did that first night when your hole was practically virgin, when I used my mouth to loosen you up, until you were wiggling and humping up

against my face like an animal.”

When Thomas arched up, the dildo slid home, filling him, stretching him hard, for though a sex toy could be made like flesh, nothing had the miraculous give and yet firmness of a man’s flesh-and-blood cock. Of Marcus’ cock.

“You make me sound…like some schoolkid…on his first fuck…”

“You were, in a lot of ways. And I fucking loved it. Someone taught you where the parts were. I taught you how to fuck. You remember the night I fisted you, at the club?

You trusted me like you never trusted me before. Am I all the way in, pet?”

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In ways he couldn’t express. Thomas breathed out the word on a rasp of air. “Yeah.

God, that’s tight.”

“Ah, Jesus, you had to tell me that, make me imagine the way it feels, as if I don’t already know. You want a little pain with it. It finally blows your mind past that bullshit worrying you. Stomach hurt?”

It didn’t. The power of endorphins. Of Marcus. Thomas closed his eyes. Marcus

knew how to make it stop hurting, and yet was the source of all pain, good and bad.

Thomas didn’t care. He wanted it all.

“Does it have our faces? You don’t usually do faces…”

“No… It’s all the things…” He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t. His entire focus was on his cock.

“Start rocking yourself against the floor. Use your ass muscles to work it, use the floor to put it in deep. And my hands are on your cock again, Thomas. Holding you rough, squeezing you, fisting you…”

“Jesus…”

“The picture,” Marcus commanded. “Tell me more.”

“It’s everything…you’ve ever done to me… Everything I wanted you to do, but was afraid to ask.”

When Marcus swore softly in his ear, Thomas felt the power flood him, knowing

he’d pushed his Master closer to the edge. He wanted Marcus to come, wanted to hear it, wanted it to take him over. “Your mouth…in my ass…but me too. I’m tonguing you, licking your balls while you’re holding my thighs, spreading me, fucking me with your fingers, and you’ve put me in a cock harness so I can’t come, but I’m going to explode. I want to put teeth marks in your ass…

The picture actually didn’t show any sexual aids, just all those positions intertwined in a tree of life, hints in the tapestry of its branches as it stood rooted, the lone focus in a field drenched in a setting sun. Arms and legs were entwined to do one thing but interlocking with the next position, so other couplings could be envisioned. The sky was full of powerful rich reds, casting that faint crimson and violet hue over the two men twined at the base of the tree, sleeping on a blanket. It was as if the shadowy images in the tree above were dreams. There was a goat nearby…

It had been so easy, so flowing, it was no wonder it had pulled him in, immersed him. He’d painted red and brown streaks on his face, bare arms and his stomach, finishing the painting looking like some mad Celtic warrior involved in a sacred ritual, carried by the vision of it.

All the ways he wanted Marcus to touch him, fuck him…all the ways he wanted to

service Marcus, make him come, make him not want anyone else, ever.

Best ass I’ve ever had…

The power of the physical made it all about that, even as Thomas knew it was

goaded to such high limits by what wasn’t the physical. But this was male need, the 179

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emotional inextricably linked with the physical so it was the dominant form of experience. It said it all. Meant it all.

“You ready to come, pet?” Marcus’ breath was ragged. Thomas could imagine his

long frame, fingers working up and down his cock.
His
cock as well, an overpowering dual image that had his lower body seizing, his bowels cramping, ass muscles tight on the plug, on Marcus’ cock…

“You…first…” He managed through clenched teeth. “I want you to come in my

ass…” He focused on those two figures locked together in dreams beneath the tree, two men in an embrace that could be combat. What would it be like to fuck Marcus…hold him in his arms, feel him strain against his hold the way Thomas did, a delicious wrestling that wasn’t an attempt to get away but to get more, to allow the thrusts to be more powerful?

Hold him so he wouldn’t get away… Was that what it was for him, restraining

Thomas, doing everything to him, knowing he couldn’t run away from the power of the feeling? Was Dominating Thomas one of the keys to Marcus’ inner gates? The most powerful one of all? Was that the key to the rest?

And should Thomas be looking for a way in, knowing he couldn’t offer him

anything if he got there? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t even kind or equitable, no matter what the poems said. It just was.

He loved Marcus.

For the first time in his life, Thomas said it in his mind consciously. He
loved
him, and the bitch of it was, being sure of it at last, when they were so far apart, sure of it down to the bottom of his worthless soul, meant he shouldn’t say it… But love wasn’t fair.

Julie’s voice.
Tell him… You think it’s kinder not to, but it isn’t.

“I love you, Master. Love you… Come for me. Please.”

There was a groan, a more vicious curse, the sound of the phone hitting something, and he heard Marcus begin to release, that quick rush of breath mixed with animal grunts that spurred his own. Hearing it, he could hold out no longer…

“Come—”

That was all Marcus could manage or Thomas needed. He grabbed another paint

cloth he’d been using, held it over himself as he jerked off with his hand, his ass stretched and burning, as full of Marcus as every other part of him was in his mind.

Love you…
God, finally accepting it was as bad as dying.

As they slowed and the radio came back into his consciousness, Thomas became

aware of Lonestar’s heartwrenching,
I’m Already There
, a song which had entirely too much meaning for this moment. He focused blearily on the Coleman lantern, the dim light it threw on his finished paintings. He held the phone tight in his hand, gasping. If he could, he’d imagine Marcus turning him, still inside him, curved against the back of his body as he slept, his breath and touch on Thomas’ throat.

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“You bastard,” Marcus said at last. And hung up, leaving Thomas aching anew.

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“Whenever we drive this route, we love to stop here,” Mrs. Preston was saying. “I worry every year you won’t be here. John says there are just no hardware stores like this anymore. Not like when he was growing up. I tell him you’re even more than that.

You’re like the general store on those old Michael Landon shows.”

Celeste gave Mrs. Preston the change for the bag of taffy she’d selected from the oak barrels of various candies in front of the register. “We’re always glad to have you back, Mrs. Preston. Careful, now. I think Mr. Preston’s wandered into the power tool section.

If he and Rory get together to debate those, you’ll never make lunch at Rosa’s Deli before the crowd gets there.”

“Oh, goodness.” Mrs. Preston chuckled and headed in that direction.

Celeste turned her attention to her oldest brother, who was checking an inventory list against the wrench section on aisle one. She’d gotten in last night for her semester break. This morning she’d had to mask her shock at the sight of him. He’d lost the few pounds he’d put on in New York and she was afraid he’d dropped even more.

She had no clue how much sleep he was getting, but she suspected it wasn’t much.

He’d been working on those paintings every night, according to Rory. As she watched, her brow furrowing, he did that nervous habit he was doing more and more often, pressing two fingers to his side, as if he was holding something in. As if he was in pain.

When she’d mentioned her concerns to her mother, Elaine had kept her back to her, slicing scallops at the counter. “Christ had to suffer to find faith, Les,” she said.

“Fasting, depriving himself of creature comforts. Your brother is in a crisis of faith. We have to help him.”

But her voice had broken a little, and Celeste wondered who her mother was trying to convince. She was the youngest child and a girl, and therefore her opinion counted the least. It was something a younger sibling accepted for what it was, but Celeste was starting to get angry at all of them, Thomas included. But especially her mother and Rory.