Deliver Us (63 page)

There is still an expectant look in Darrek’s eyes, though. They sit in their seats and begin the last drive of the day, wiped out and emotionally exhausted.

When they are finally standing inside their own house, what seems like lifetimes later instead of mere hours, they go upstairs and pull clothes off of travel-weary bodies. Darrek isn’t sleepy because he slept again in the car as well as on the plane. Gabriel isn’t sleepy for other, subtler reasons.

Knowing instinctively and without a doubt what comes next, Darrek slips on some loose pants and watches Gabriel root through his gear.

He comes back with a thick leather collar connected to a leash and a set of wrist cuffs.

“Here,” he says, holding Darrek’s gaze and handing them over. “I need this from you. Just for tonight. Don’t go easy on me, and don’t hold back. Got it?”

There is want in his beseeching gray-blue eyes—so raw and exposed that it’s hard for Darrek to bear to look at—and a childlike defiance as well. Darrek knows the look. It used to be his. He knows what Gabriel needs—for that defiance to be taken from him through rough sex and pleasurable pain dealt with nothing but love and care. And Darrek is the only one that can do it for him, the only one he trusts that much. He’s the only one that could possibly understand.

The collar is a tight fit around Gabriel’s neck. When it’s locked, Darrek pulls on the leash leading from the metal loop in the back of the leather band, testing the give. It constricts Gabriel’s windpipe and he grunts softly. Eyes slipping shut in relief, he wheezes and thin trickles of oxygen slip through his lips. He holds his wrists in place behind his back, waiting for Darrek to shackle them there. Darrek pulls even harder on the leash and grabs both of Gabriel’s wrists in one hand, twisting them up to his middle back. Darrek kisses tenderly behind Gabriel’s ear as he strains and makes soft strangled moans.

One hour later, Gabriel is face down on their bed, his shoulders braced on the mattress, bearing his weight, his knees planted wide under him, and ass in the air. Following Gabriel’s directions, Darrek hadn’t added any more restraints, not even a blindfold since Gabriel was so specific with what he chose to wear when they’d started. But Darrek had been free to select the toys he wanted to use. There is an extra-long dildo stuffed up Gabriel’s well-lubed hole, the pink, delicate skin stretched smooth around the flared base of the toy. It took Darrek a good half an hour to get it all the way inside. Dripping sweat pours from Gabriel’s skin, slicking his hair, matting it in black curls to his forehead, temples and the nape of his neck. The moisture catches on his long, naturally curled eyelashes and soaks the sheet under him. There is a thick, weighted metal ring locked around his scrotum. It’s circled with small holes into which metal spikes have been screwed. Right now the spikes have been tightened just enough that they are beginning to be driven into his sack. At first they had barely touched him, but slowly Darrek had tightened the screws and pierced him with the spikes more and more. As if this wasn’t enough pain, metal clamps have also been fastened to his nipples and Darrek’s index finger and thumb are currently circled around the base of Gabriel’s shaft, holding him by the cock ring secured there.

Darrek touches the violet wand in his right hand to the dripping head of Gabriel’s penis, and the stinging shock it gives him makes the muscles contract in spasms throughout his thighs and stomach. Gabriel tries to force himself to be still and just let it happen. Releasing his hold on Gabriel’s dick, Darrek watches it jump and twitch at the next brush of the wand to the underside. Instead he takes hold of the dildo, pulling it slowly out of his captive before driving it ruthlessly right back inside with a snap of his wrist.

Gabriel is so hugely erect, so desperate with the need to climax that he thinks he might soon pass out from lack of blood-flow to his brain. Heavy and swollen nearly purple, his dick is so sensitive he cries a little even when Darrek simply drags the edge of a fingernail along it. Darrek rubs the wand over the tip, spreading the sharp shock over the area. A guttural moan bellows from Gabriel’s chest.

With two fingers pressed to the base, Darrek keeps the enormous phallus where it is, impaling Gabriel and not allowing it be expelled by the inner muscles of Gabriel’s rectum like it wants to whenever he lets go. Dropping the wand, he picks up a towel and mops the sweat from Gabriel’s face. Then he feels for a pulse and listens to his lover’s fluttery, shallow breaths.

As destroyed as Gabriel is in that moment—eyes rolling loosely back, mouth slack, skin blotchy, both pale and flushed—he is more at peace than Darrek has ever seen him. Part of it is the finality of his confrontations earlier that day, putting the demons of the past firmly back where they belong, and healing his broken heart. The other part of it is finding the strength to be weak—to let his lover take him apart and then be there to put him back together.

The instructions were specific. They were delivered when Darrek positioned Gabriel on the mattress and was selecting the things to use on him. Darrek is not to stop or relent until Gabriel either passes out or uses his safeword, whichever comes first.

Gabriel peers back at Darrek through heavy-lidded eyes and licks over parched lips between shallow gasps. He flexes his hands inside the cuffs and tries to stretch and rotate his shoulder muscles to work out a sharp kink that is forming there. They stare at each other.

The defiance is still there, though it has diminished quite a lot. He lets Darrek see it, challenges him to take it completely away, somehow.

Darrek cups his free hand under Gabriel’s abused cock, straining up almost flush to his belly. Cradling it, he feels the heat baking off of it, the slickness of the pre-come oozing down its length. He lets his palm squeeze around it once, quickly, painfully, before relaxing again. Gabriel grunts and turns his face away.

“What do you want?” Darrek asks in a low, throaty growl.

“Doesn’t matter.”

He gives Gabriel’s purple-red flesh a hard slap, causing Gabriel to whimper and buck, and then twists each of the thick metal screws further, driving them deeper into his balls. Then he slaps Gabriel’s dick again and feels his own body ache with need at the shattered, muffled sob Gabriel makes into the bedding.

“What do you want?” he asks again, even lower, even harsher.

“
Fuck me
,” Gabriel rasps. “Fuck me like you hate me. Like I’m worthless piece of shit that deserves to be hurt. Do it!”

“No.”

Getting a good grip on the plastic cock, Darrek pulls it completely out of Gabriel, eliciting a shuddering moan, leaving his hole gaping wide. Then he kneels between Gabriel’s spread legs, and loops an arm under Gabriel’s chest. In a swift movement, Darrek pulls him upright and back, sitting him right down on his dick. Giving a startled gasp, Gabriel writhes. Darrek made him take him all at once. Thicker in circumference that the toy, Darrek knows Gabriel can feel the added stretch and burn.

For a second Gabriel fights Darrek’s hold and whines, his sphincter contracting against the new violation. A few tears slip from his weary eyes.

“Never,” Darrek whispers to him. “I love you, Gabriel.”

“
God
. Don’t.
Don’t
,” he whimpers. His bound hands press against Darrek’s abs. A warm palm cups over his chest, over his jack-rabbiting heartbeat.

“I’m
so
proud of you. You are so precious to me. I would never do that to you. Ever. Not for anything. Not even if you begged me.”

Guiding his legs farther apart though he’s already straddling Darrek’s thighs, the metal spikes in the weight encircling his balls get removed one by one with careful work of Darrek’s hand, encased in latex. Gabriel’s head bows.

“Don’t move,” Darrek warns when Gabriel shifts in discomfort. When the six spikes are all free, Darrek rubs some disinfectant under the ring. “Should I take it off?” he asks, working a single finger under the metal, over the delicate flesh.

Gabriel purses his lips. Defiance.

“Okay then.” Darrek leans back, bracing his hands on the bed, leaving both rings locked around Gabriel’s genitals. “Fuck me. Fuck me like you love me more than anyone else in the world.”

He can’t see the expression on Gabriel’s face, but he can see the way his shoulders tense up, the way his head bows even more as if out of shame and hears the small, hitching cry he makes. Hate and anger are easy. Defiance is
easy
. Those things are all Gabriel has had since he was nothing but a child. Love? Love is so much harder.

At first he can’t do it. He can’t let go of the polluting negativity and bitterness. He just sits there.

So Darrek makes it easier. He takes off the weighted ring around his scrotum. He even takes off the wrist cuffs. Gabriel stares, unseeing, out into the darkness of the room and feels Darrek kissing over his shoulder as he reaches to remove the cock ring too.

“
Don’t
,” Gabriel whines, trying to push away Darrek’s hands. He’s too quick, too determined. Darrek hugs Gabriel’s back to his chest and throws the ring away. Then he fingers over the cigarette burn, the scar left by Gabriel’s abuser.

“No more pain,” he whispers in promise. Winding his hand in the end of the leash, Darrek pulls it snug and lets Gabriel feel the tension. Moaning, he arches his back and reaches up and behind his head to run his hands through Darrek’s hair. Rearing up, he feels Darrek tug out through his rim. Slowly Gabriel pushes back down on him, taking him back inside.

“I wanna see you. Wanna see you holding the leash while I fuck you. Please? Let me see who I belong to.”

Darrek gives him some slack, and Gabriel pivots without pulling off, turning in a circle. He twists to the side then gets his leg over Darrek’s chest. Darrek moans at the friction, at the sight of Gabriel’s blown-wide pupils and desire. Shifting to stretch out his legs, Darrek lies back against the bed and yanks on the leash playfully. Laughing, Gabriel leans down and catches his lips in a kiss. He breathes out over Darrek’s mouth and starts to move in tight rotations of his hips, slapping his ass down in a building rhythm firmly onto Darrek’s lap as they make love. Too far gone to hold back, it’s desperate and rough and fast. Gabriel works himself on Darrek and stares fixatedly at the leash leading to Darrek’s fist.

Knowing he’s not going to last, Darrek reaches to give Gabriel some much-needed relief as well.

“
Don’t
,” Gabriel begs, still moving, kissing Darrek’s mouth and tongue-fucking him as he bounces on his dick. He bats Darrek’s hand away. “You promised.”

“No I didn’t.” He gets a good grip around the throbbing member and pumps it once, twice, and a third time. Gabriel makes a wrecked, keening sigh and unloads, splattering hot over Darrek’s chest. Riding out the orgasm, he lets Darrek’s hands lock on to his hips and hold him up as Darrek fucks up into his clenching opening, fluttering with the pulses of his heart and the spasms of his pleasure. They go until they’re both spent, and then Gabriel collapses down onto Darrek’s chest.

“We’re not done.”

Darrek laughs. “You’re too hard on yourself, baby. And you know I’m not as much of a hard-ass as you.”

“But I wanted....”

Darrek sighs and hugs Gabriel to him. “You wanted oblivion. Right? And torture. Or both. How about instead I hold you while you take a nap and then we’ll get washed up and take Sierra for a walk. We can watch the sun come up.”

There’s no response, nothing more than caresses of Gabriel’s fingertips in figure-eights over his nipple.

“I can’t believe I really did it. I can’t believe I stood up to them and got away, and that I get to... let them go, and... stop being so afraid and be here. With you. Makes me feel... lucky.”

“Me too,” Darrek smiles.

A few moments later, the fingers dancing over him go still, Gabriel’s breathing evens out in a regular, deep rhythm. His body relaxes and he melts into Darrek’s arms, safe and utterly content.

Ben, Trace and Micah return from Texas and get right back to work at Diadem. Ben’s appearance beside Kyle the next morning is all the reassurance Kyle needs. They get back into a routine and nothing more is said about what happened. Monitoring the news, mysteriously, Harry’s story never appears.

The call was made to 9-1-1 a few hours after they left him, bandaged and bound in the basement of his law firm. But despite this fact, no story is printed in the newspapers, or reported on the television stations. Whether he paid off the reporters, or managed to slip between everyone’s fingers and into anonymity, they are not sure. A call is made to his office the following week and they are told he no longer is employed there. They call his apartment and find the number has been disconnected. He is simply gone.

Nothing is ever said to Gabriel about their trip, and Gabriel doesn’t say anything to suggest he has any inkling about what they did or that they were ever involved to begin with. Sometimes, when they catch him staring at one of them when they are hanging out in someone’s backyard during a barbeque or when they go out for drinks on a Friday night, and Gabriel’s sharp gaze is fixed to Ben or Kyle or Trace or Micah, they suspect that maybe, on some level, he knows what they did to Harry. Or maybe that’s just their imaginations getting the best of them. Maybe Gabriel has never had any idea. They would rather not know. So they keep it to themselves. All that matters is the way Gabriel’s eyes light up when he’s with Darrek, the way his laughter, unfettered, fills the air around them, contagious and infecting them all with his happiness. Every trace of his guarded defensiveness is gone. He’s nearly unrecognizable. A devoted and loving partner, a diligent and focused businessman as he begins the process of establishing his fledgling videography and tech support company, a grateful, forgiving and attentive friend, Gabriel is reborn from the ashes of his past.