Song of Oestend (30 page)

“Aren!” Deacon cried.

Aren knew the sound for what it was—a warning, an ultimatum, a confession, all in

one—and he stopped, although it took more willpower than he would have thought he had.

He let go of Deacon’s cock and his ass. He leant back to watch Deacon writhe as he used the back of his hand to wipe his face.

“Aren, please,” Deacon begged. “Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop, oh, Saints, don’t stop don’t stop…”

He was breathless, shaking, pleading, and it was the greatest sexual rush Aren had ever felt. All of the times he’d come, he’d been fucked, he’d been used, he’d begged for it himself—none of them matched the thrill of being able to reduce Deacon to a state of such base, primal need.

“Aren, please, Aren, please, Aren, please, please, please…”

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Aren dipped the first two fingers of his right hand in the salve, oiling them well. He moved again into position behind Deacon, sliding his left hand over Deacon’s hip, down his stomach, towards his cock. His slow touch made Deacon squirm. It made his breathless words come even faster than before.

“Arenplease, Arenplease, Arenplease, oh, Saints, pleasepleaseplease…”

Aren gripped Deacon’s cock with his left hand, letting his fingers play over his moist foreskin. The oiled fingers of his right hand slid slowly down Deacon’s crack.

“Yes!” Deacon gasped, arching his back, pushing his hips back against Aren’s hand.

“Yes yes yes please please please…”

Aren’s fingers found Deacon’s rim.

“Yes, Aren, yes, Aren, yes…”

He applied a bit of pressure.

“Yes! Aren, yes, Aren, please, please, please…”

He pushed them inside.

“
Yes!
” Deacon bucked against him, letting Aren’s fingers penetrate deeper. Deacon’s pleas were replaced by a sharp cry of pleasure. He wanted it so much. Aren knew that, and he revelled in it. His own climax was bearing down on him, a pressure that could not be held at bay much longer.

Deacon had stopped begging, but only because he was too far gone to speak. There was

no mistaking the urgency in his breath, the desperation as he strained against his ties, arching his back, pushing his hips back, fucking himself harder and harder onto Aren’s slick fingers. His hips pumped, his cock moved through Aren’s fist. Aren slid a third finger inside, and Deacon nearly screamed. The thrusting of his hips became frenzied.

He was close. There was no way Aren could hold him back now. He ground his own

aching cock against Deacon’s ass, pushing against his firm, tanned skin. Aren leant down against Deacon’s back, letting the ottoman hold the weight of them both as Deacon bucked and arched and panted underneath him. He was wild, lost in pleasure, and Aren put his lips against Deacon’s ear. “Think how good it will feel when I fuck you,” he said.

“Aww!” This time, it really was a scream as Deacon finally came. Aren felt Deacon’s

body spasm around his fingers. He felt Deacon’s warm seed spill over his other hand as SONG OF OESTEND

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Deacon shot again and again, and Aren finally let go. He rubbed against Deacon, allowing his own orgasm to crash down over him, losing all sense of everything else as he did.

He couldn’t believe how good it felt. He was only rubbing against Deacon’s ass—not

fucking him, not being sucked by him, not even feeling his strong hand on him. But the sheer pleasure of teasing Deacon, of making him beg, of taking him to the edge and back, made him dizzy. Already, he wanted to do it again. He wanted to see how much further he could go.

When he opened his eyes, he was draped across Deacon’s back. The wetness of his cum

between them was sticky and growing cold, and Deacon was still trying to catch his breath.

Aren pushed himself to his feet, even though his legs still shook. He found a shirt that was already dirty and used it to wipe off his hands and stomach. He knelt next to Deacon and wiped the cum off his back. The ottoman had cum on it too, no doubt, but he’d have to untie Deacon before he could worry about that. He made a mental note put a rag over it next time.

He untied Deacon’s hands. Once he was free, Deacon sat back on his knees, rubbing his wrists, looking at Aren with a lazy, sated smile.

“Why didn’t you?” Deacon asked.

“Why didn’t I what?” Aren asked as he moved into Deacon’s arms.

“Why didn’t you want to fuck me?”

That was a good question. Aren wasn’t sure he knew himself. Being able to fuck

another man was something he’d wanted for a long time, and yet now, when it was offered, he found he liked the teasing so much more. It was something unexpected, and he smiled at the realisation that it was yet another thing about him that had been changed by the BarChi.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to,” he told Deacon. “But I
really
like hearing you beg.”

Deacon smiled as he pulled him close and kissed him. “Any time you want me to beg,”

he said, “I will.”

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Their days remained unchanged—breakfast and supper together, evenings in front of

the fire—but their nights began to take on a whole new meaning.

For the first time in his life, Aren found himself with a partner who not only gave him free rein, but who longed to surrender himself to Aren’s control. Deacon loved submitting.

He loved to be tied down, to be forced to beg, to be driven to the point where his need eclipsed all else. And Aren loved being the one who could take him there.

He liked exploring which pleasures Deacon could handle while holding his orgasm at

bay, and which things drove him over the brink. The most exciting thing of all was the way small amounts of pain fed in to it. In general, Aren didn’t think of Deacon as a masochist.

Pain in and of itself meant nothing to him. But when he was aroused, it was different. As his need grew and he lost himself in the pleasure Aren gave him, his response to the pain became more intense. Deacon told him the pain lasted only a second, but behind it would come a rush of pleasure that was almost unbearable in its intensity.

What Aren liked best was to tease Deacon, to make him beg, to give him only as much

as he could handle without exploding. He would take Deacon to the edge, ordering him as he did not to come. He would demand that Deacon hold his orgasm at bay. And when he knew that every ounce of Deacon’s concentration was centred on holding back, he would use pain to give him that final nudge—his teeth on Deacon’s nipple, his fingernails raking his flesh, or a sudden smack with the crop. There would be a mere heartbeat when the pain would hit Deacon, distracting him, making him gasp, drawing his attention away from his impending climax, and in the very next second, the rush of pleasure that always followed would push him over the edge, demolishing his self-control, exploding out of him with a force that often made him scream.

Aren loved making Deacon lose control. He loved watching him come undone. He

found that making his lover squirm, reducing him to such a state of primal need, was the greatest aphrodisiac in the world. Knowing he had the power to give so much pleasure was the most intensely erotic thing he’d ever known.

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Afterwards, Deacon would pull Aren into his arms. He would kiss him and hold him

and whisper in his ear, and sometimes the intensity of his emotions would leave them both as breathless as the sex.

On Deacon’s fifth night home, Aren awoke in the night. Next to him, Deacon lay wide

awake and staring at the ceiling. In the cellar, the ghost was crying, great heart-wrenching sobs. Aren had long since grown used to the ghost, but he knew Deacon still found her unsettling.

There were two ways Aren could distract his lover from the sounds in the cellar, and

since he was still heavy with the sated contentment of their earlier lovemaking, he opted for the second option.

“If I ask you something, will you answer?”

Deacon jumped a bit, obviously having thought Aren asleep, but then he smiled. “If I

say ‘no’, will it stop you?”

“The first time we…” Aren stumbled, feeling his cheeks turn red, trying to decide how to finish his statement.

“Yeah, the
first time
,” Deacon laughed. “I know what you mean.”

“Well, you said you’d never been with another man—”

“Oh, Saints,” Deacon moaned, covering his eyes with his hand, but Aren kept talking.

“You were so upset. I guess I’m surprised you got over being bothered by it so easily.”

“You caught me off guard, that’s all.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It ain’t?” Deacon asked. “Felt like one to me.”

Aren slid his hand across the bed and found Deacon’s thigh with his fingers.

“Ouch!” Deacon yelled as Aren pinched him. “What the hell?”

“Should I get the crop?” Aren asked.

“Definitely,” Deacon said, smiling. “But that won’t make me answer.” He was

relenting, though. Aren knew him well enough by now to recognise the signs. Deacon

sighed. “I wasn’t freaked out so much about you being a man as about you being
you
. You’re the only friend I got on this Saints-forsaken ranch, and I was sure I’d just ruined everything.”

“So you’ve always liked men?”

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“Always.” He stopped for a minute, seemingly debating his next words. “I told you

how when I was a boy, I lived out in the barn? And how Old Man Pane hated me?”

“You did.”

“Well, when I was younger, I started fooling around with another boy. We never did

much, but one day Old Man Pane caught us at it in the barn. It hadn’t ever occurred to me I was doing anything unusual, but he went nuts. Tanned my ass good. Told me it was unnatural and wrong. See, he’d been alive back when the missionaries were around, talking about the Saints and the sins and what it meant to be holy. ‘Course their Saints couldn’t do nothing about the wraiths, so people here didn’t listen much, and by the time I was growing up, the holy men had given up and gone back to the continent. But Old Man Pane believed that stuff, and he told me no damned boy was going to ruin his ranch with sin.” Deacon laughed, a harsh, bitter laugh. “As if I were the only man here ever sinned.” He sighed.

“Anyway, after that, I started realising most men didn’t do what I’d done. And Old Man Pane told me on more than one occasion that if he ever heard about me doing it again, he’d throw me to the wraiths, and I tell you what, he meant it, too.” He shook his head. “Well, I guess I liked girls well enough, too, and it didn’t seem to be nothing worth dying over. It wasn’t like I ever
stopped
liking men, but the older I got, the easier it seemed to ignore them.”

He laughed. “But I sure couldn’t ignore you. Half of me was thinking how getting involved with anybody on the BarChi was a bad idea, and the other half of me couldn’t stop wondering what you looked like naked. I was still trying to decide which half to go with and you were already ripping my clothes off and getting down on your knees.” He looked over at Aren with a smile. “Dirty way to win an argument, if you ask me.”

“Saints, I hadn’t had sex in months!” Aren said, laughing.

“You were damn determined.”

“I guess I should have given you a chance to say yes or no before I pulled your pants down.”

Deacon smiled. “No. I’m glad you didn’t wait.”

“But there was never anybody else?” Aren asked. “The years I was in boarding school,

there was always some boy I was fucking. You lived in the barracks with all those men, and you never had a relationship with any of them?”

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He knew immediately it was the question Deacon hadn’t wanted him to ask. Deacon

closed his eyes, wincing as if the question caused him pain. He covered his face with one hand. “Why you got to know this?” he asked.

They’d gone from laughing to serious so quickly, and Aren found he didn’t really want to leave the laughter behind. “I don’t,” he said. He’d been curious, but he hadn’t actually expected the answer to be something so upsetting to Deacon. “You don’t have to answer.”

Deacon scrubbed his hands over his face, but then went back to looking up at the

ceiling. “There was someone,” he said, his voice very quiet. “But not like you’re thinking. I’d just turned twenty. Old Man Pane had died during the winter before, and Jeremiah’d taken over. He put me in charge of the hands, even though I was only a boy.” He laughed sadly.

“‘Course, I didn’t think I was a boy at the time. I thought I was man enough.” He shook his head. “There was another boy there.” He stopped, and it was a moment before he managed to say the next word. It was only a name.

“Cody.”

It was strange how hearing it told Aren so much. On one hand, it seemed to take all of Deacon’s strength to say it. He seemed to have to force it out. But at the same time, once it was spoken, there was a sense of relief about him, as if he’d cleared the highest hurdle in his memory.

“He was younger. Only eighteen. And we were young and shy and too nervous to do

much.” He turned to look at Aren, and Aren was pleased to see that he was smiling. “Not like you,” he said, and Aren laughed. “We just kept circling each other, you know?” he said, looking again up at the dark ceiling above. “We both knew what we wanted, and we both knew we’d get there. But there was something so…fun, I guess, about playing the game.” He shook his head. “I still remember how it felt to see him walk in the door—like my heart might jump out of me. Like I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t stop smiling like a blessed fool.

“Back then, every look meant something. It took so much nerve just to touch him. I

remember we were playing cards one time with some of the other hands, and Cody and I’d been watching each other and getting bolder. Just the way he kept smiling at me had me hard and squirming in my chair. When the others weren’t looking, he reached over underneath the table and touched my leg.” He shook his head again. “That’s all it was, but I thought I was going to shoot my load right there at the table.” He was still smiling when he SONG OF OESTEND