Strongman (9 page)

Strong fingers speared into his hair. “A little to the left,” murmured Griff, his voice no more than a husky rasp. When Fort jerked up, his bristly jaw brushed the side of Griff’s bobbing shaft.

“Twister!” hissed Griff, his hips arching off the mattress.

Fort held him down, glaring into his face. “Who did this?” he rasped.

“Careful.” Griff reached down and gripped Fort’s wrist. “I bruise easy.”

With a muttered oath, Fort relaxed the hard fingers he’d sunk into Griff’s smooth thigh. “
Who was it
?”

“Me.” Griff grinned, then sobered. “I made a mistake. The blades don’t forgive.”

Unable to resist, Fort touched a forefinger to the pulse of the big artery there. “You came mighty close.”

Griff hissed and his cock bobbed, growing even rosier as hot blood surged beneath the skin. “You are too,” he panted.

Fort reared up and the sheet slithered right off his hips and slipped to the floor. He froze.

Griff’s dark eyes heated and his tongue crept out to moisten his lips. He nodded at the most brutal erection Fort had ever experienced, jutting up over his belly, so proud and fat and long it ached with wanting. A brow arched. “All for me?”

“Don’t—” The words strangled in Fort’s throat.
Don
’
t tease
,
don
’
t flirt
.
I can
’
t bear it
.

Griff smiled, slow and lazy. “Fine.” He slid an open palm over his chest, rasped the small peak of one nipple with his thumb. “I’ll just lie here and…” The hand slipped down, over his ribs, his stomach. Fort ceased breathing. “Do what I’ve done every morning since you walked into the Big Top.”

Without taking his eyes from Fort’s, he took his cock in a firm, sure grip and pulled.

His hips came off the bed with the drawn-out pleasure of the stroke and his eyelids drooped, though he didn’t free the other man from the tether of his gaze. “Gods, that’s good.” A pause while his chest rose and fell. “And you don’t have to do a thing, except—ah, fuck!—watch.”

He compressed his foreskin between thumb and forefinger, working it up and over the glans, shining with oily secretions. When he threw his head back, his eyes slitting with pleasure, the fading bruises on his throat caught Fort’s eye and something dark and powerful surged inside him. He hesitated, torn between the enticing action in Griff’s groin and the need to touch the marks he’d left.
His marks
.

But the decision was taken from him. “C’mere.” Griff paused at the top of a stroke and snagged Fort’s arm above the elbow with his free hand, tugging him down onto the 47

Denise Rossetti

pillows beside him. “Show me…” a rasping inhalation, “how
you
do it. What you like best.”

Involuntarily, Fort’s fingers clenched and a wave of pleasure streaked from his balls and up his spine, buzzing deep in his ass. Ruler God, he hadn’t even realized he’d grabbed hold of himself again!

“Gods, yes!” Griff’s head rolled toward his on the pillow, his breath warm and sweet against Fort’s neck. “Keep going!”

Fort blinked and a firestorm of sheer need tore through his defenses as if they’d been paper, sending him to the edge of madness. And beyond.

With a guttural roar, he lunged, gripping Griff’s chin in ruthless fingers to hold him still. He plastered his mouth to the tumbler’s, kissing him so ferociously their teeth clinked. With his other hand, he grabbed Griff’s wrist and jerked it away, replacing the squeezing fingers on the other man’s cock with his own hard, desperate grip.

Griff huffed out a laugh that was more a moan, right into Fort’s mouth. Both hands came up to grasp Fort’s biceps, the strong fingers digging in. His hips rolled, pushing his engorged shaft flush into the big man’s palm, while he sucked hard on Fort’s tongue.

Ruler God
!

The sensations were nothing short of amazing—the living column of slippery satin-steel in his grasp, the musky smell of aroused male, the lithe strength of the body pinned beneath him. Everything hard, muscular, brutal. The other man’s pleasure completely under his control. No need to hold back, to gentle or coax. No need to guess what would feel good. He
knew
.

Ruler God, everything he wanted, there for the taking!

Fort took. He more than took. Growling continuously under his breath, he

plundered, he ravaged, he devoured.

And Griff gave as good as he got.

His mouth still working its fierce magic on Fort’s, he shoved a fist into the big man’s belly so that reflex had him moving back, putting a few inches of space between them. Immediately, Griff snaked a hand down and grabbed. Wrapping his fingers as far around Fort’s weeping erection as they’d go, he pulled up strongly, dragging the skin over the aching hardness beneath, pushing over the crown in a searing, mind-numbing caress.

Gritting his teeth, Fort pumped Griff ruthlessly, waiting until he went completely rigid and his moans took on a desperate quality. Then he stopped, tearing his mouth away from the other man’s and clamping a big hand over the tumbler’s busy fingers, stilling them despite Griff’s murmur of complaint. His cock throbbed in protest, but he ignored the sensation, intent on Griff’s face.

For an instant, neither man moved. Or breathed.

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Strongman

Griff’s sloe eyes snapped open, glaring into his. “Bastard!” he hissed. “Do it.” His buttocks flexed, pushing him into Fort’s hand. “Twister, finish me!” A hectic flush covered his neck and cheeks.

“Ask.”

Griff bared his teeth. He tried to clench his fingers on Fort’s cock, but the big man had his hand in an iron grip. The tumbler’s hips jerked. “Kiss me,” he grated.

“No. I want to see your face.” Slowly, Fort squeezed, rasped a deliberate thumb over the head. “Ask.”

“I swear I will make your life a living hell.
Ah
!” Griff made a small keening noise in his throat and Fort’s heart soared with greedy, lip-smacking pleasure.

“You already have. Ask me, Griff.
Ask me
!”

“Bastard.” Griff’s eyes burned into his. “
Please
!”

Fort smiled, slow and evil. “Yes.” Without preliminary, he milked and pulled, long, insistent strokes that had Griff arching off the mattress, crying out, swearing. “Offer for me.” He increased the pace, watching the younger man’s beautiful body shudder with the onset of climax, his eyes half closing with the luxury of his pleasure.

His balls were going to explode any minute and blow the top of his head off, but it was worth it to have this. He’d never seen anything as erotic in his life as Griff straining beneath his touch, his cock dancing as Fort willed. He leaned forward. “Look at me,” he demanded. “You wanted this.
Look at me
,
Griff
!”

The tumbler’s golden-brown lashes lifted. His soul looked out of his eyes, straight into Fort’s, his mouth open, gasping.

“Now,” whispered Fort, his lips gone numb. “Now!”

Beneath his fingers, Griff’s shaft hardened impossibly. The younger man made the most extraordinary noise, half scream, half groan, but he kept his eyes on Fort’s, fighting the natural desire to slam them shut in the extremity of his passion. His cock rippled and scalding fluid spurted over Fort’s hand, dripped onto Griff’s stomach.

The smells, the sounds, the sight of Griff’s agonized face, the feel of the tumbler’s frantic fingers clutching his cock, sent the seed boiling out of Fort’s balls to surge up his shaft in an excruciating flood, so thick and hot his vision grayed out. With a strangled grunt, he lurched forward, collapsing over Griff, their bellies sealed together with warm, sticky juices.

A few minutes or a lifetime later, he felt Griff’s fingers moving in his hair. He didn’t think he’d ever felt so sated, so drained. So stunned.

“Next time.” The tumbler’s breath gusted warm against the top of his head. Griff rose up on one elbow, his lower lip trembling as he gasped for breath. “Next time, you come down my throat, in my ass. Twister, on my face! Wherever you want.”

Fort’s tired brain reeled with lascivious visions. His hands tormenting the other man’s shaft, orchestrating his pleasure, controlling, dominating. Lufra’s tits, Griff with 49

Denise Rossetti

his wrists bound, completely helpless, unable to stop him from doing as he willed.

Griff, groaning, begging for release, promising anything,
anything
.

His. All his to fuck, to master.

His mind seized up with the delicious force of it. And as if it had been waiting for the hiatus in his thoughts, memory swept over him like an ice storm from the frozen depths of hell, all slashing edges and freezing breath.

50

Strongman

Herewith is the judgment of the Ecclesiastical Court of the Straight Church
.
You shall be
taken from this place and hung by the neck until you are dead
.
Sodomy is abhorrent in the eyes of
Ruler God
,
an evil Crookedness that pollutes the Straight Way and a grievous offense to your
Brethren
.
Before execution
,
you shall be whipped upon the obscene parts so that others shall
witness your agony and know
—

Guards
,
he
’
s fainting
!
Quick
!

Transcript from the archives of the Ecclesiastical Court of the Straight Church
,
Prelate
-

Judge Bishop Honor Denison presiding
.
9995 ATF (After the Firsters)
Sobriety McLaren had wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, pushed his chair back and risen, filling the small kitchen with his presence. “We’d better get going.” He’d pinned Fort, stacking firewood by the door, with the flick of a bloodshot glance. “Come, boy.”

He could still recall his mother’s instinctive motion of protest, quickly controlled, her chapped fingers twisting in her apron. “The hanging?” she’d murmured. “But he’s just a boy…” He’d been nine, ten at the most. The Straight Church didn’t celebrate natal days, so he couldn’t be sure.

“Don’t be foolish, woman,” said Sobriety. “No son of mine shall remain in ignorance of the traps of the Crooked.”

His mother had closed her mouth and turned away.

And so they’d stood in the first row of the all-male crowd, his father’s fingers digging into Fort’s skinny shoulders. He’d been bored by the Prelate-Judge’s rambling speech, but impressed by his magnificent cowled robe with the four parallel lines running up the front. Nonetheless, something about the press of bodies, the smell of sweat and fear and sick excitement, made his stomach heave and pitch with formless anxiety.

Even now, he could hardly bear to think of it, the two men trussed naked to the whipping bar, the cane falling with a meaty swish on their tender genitals, again and again, until the parts that made them men were a bloody ruin and they had passed beyond screaming into unconsciousness.

The hanging had come as a mercy.

Halfway home, he’d stumbled to the side of the track and thrown up his supper.

His father had scoffed and called him a girl, but the satisfied gleam in his eye told Fort he was well pleased with the effect of the lesson.

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Denise Rossetti

“Sir?” he’d asked, his voice reedy with the effort of control. “What did they do?

What’s s-sodomy?”

Sobriety had tilted the jug he carried to his lips and sent Fort a narrow-eyed glance.

“Unnatural,” he grunted. “A Crookedness.”

“But what—?”

His father cuffed him around the ear with casual brutality. “Filthy.” Another slap.

“Degenerate.” Fort swayed back, riding the next blow, knowing from experience that dodging would only enrage the man. Sobriety’s voice rose. “I’d kill you with my own hands, boy!” A big hand clamped on his shoulder and shook him ‘til his teeth rattled.

“Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

In the end, one of his cousins had told him, as crudely as possible. Living and working on a farm, Fort knew all about mating, but this—! He hadn’t been sure he believed it at first, but those men had done
something
. Not even the Ecclesiastical Court meted out such extreme punishments on a whim.

* * * * *

“Fort?” Powerful fingers gripped his knee. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

With a shudder, he opened his eyes. Pale bars of early morning sunlight streamed into Griff’s wagon, striping the floor like a cheerful mat. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring sightlessly at the door, while Griff kneeled on the floor, peering up into his face with knitted brows.

“Where did you go?” asked the tumbler.

Fort simply shook his head.

“It wasn’t good, was it?”

The sweat chilled between his shoulder blades. “No.” Brushing Griff aside, he rose and grabbed his trews. “Have to go.”

“Not yet.” Griff uncoiled in a single, graceful move. “I’ll put the water on for roberry.” He grinned, completely comfortable in his skin. “And we can wash. I’m all sticky.”

Speech was beyond him. Fort’s belly roiled as he bent to tug on his boots. That accomplished, he pushed past the other man, his head down. If he didn’t get out of there in the next five seconds, he was going to vomit. Griff was still speaking, but his words were no more than a distant buzz in the background.

Fort reeled out into the cool, bright quiet of the fairground at dawn. Moving at an awkward jog-trot, he lurched toward the sanctuary of his own small wagon, his long legs rapidly taking him out of earshot of Griff’s voice, first puzzled, then angry. By the time he stumbled in the door, his racing heart had slowed. He braced his hands against the wall next to the worship niche and sucked in deep breaths. Thank Lufra, he hadn’t been seen, he was almost sure of it.

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Strongman

He couldn’t seem to process a coherent thought. Numbly, he wet a cloth in the water bucket and pressed it to his face. Then he dropped his trews and wiped his chest and belly, around his genitals. Clean clothes, a mug of roberry and he was ready to face the Ten Nations Fair.