“I’m going to fuck you with my fingers while I suck your cock, Ramey. You are not to come until I tell you, clear?”
“Yes, Master.” Ramey bent his knees, holding himself open for his Master’s possession.
“You’re so fucking gorgeous. Looking at you like this, I just want to fall on you like a mad-man and fuck you until the sun comes up.”
“Yes, Master.”
Harte laughed again then tilted Ramey’s hips up even farther, licking and sucking on Ramey’s sac before moving his tongue down and wetting Ramey’s asshole. Harte sucked his fingers into his mouth again, then gently pressed against Ramey’s opening, pushing in just to the first knuckle before pulling out and pressing in again. Harte set up a slow rhythm, never entering Ramey fully, just teasing him, even as he started sucking on Ramey’s cock again.
Ramey gripped his knees, holding himself open, groaning his excitement and approval of every move Harte made. He could feel his impending explosion building and forced himself to think of something, anything else. Still, the warmth of Harte’s mouth, the smell of his skin and the feel of his fingers, now going deep inside Ramey’s ass, all combined to pull him closer and closer to the edge.
Opening his eyes, he saw Harte staring at him as he tongued the head of Ramey’s cock.
Harte pushed his fingers even deeper into Ramey’s ass, hitting that sweet spot deep inside, and took his mouth off Ramey long enough to whisper, “Come now,” and Ramey shouted as Harte covered the head of his cock again, swallowing every drop of Ramey’s cum.
Ramey’s spine felt totally loose when Harte lifted his head, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. That was when Ramey realized that Harte’s fingers were still buried in his ass. Harte pulled out slightly then thrust back in, his free hand, the one that had traces of Ramey’s cum on it, went to Harte’s cock, pumping it in the same way he pumped his fingers in and out of Ramey’s ass.
Starting to reach for Harte, Ramey froze as he shook his head. “No, be still, sub. Just take it. I’m going to come all over you and I want you to rub my cum into your chest. I want you to wear my scent until you get home, clear?”
“Yes, Master.” Instead of touching Harte, Ramey grabbed his own knees again, holding himself open for Harte’s strokes.
“Oh yeah, that’s it. That’s it.” Harte’s motion increased, both on his own cock and in Ramey’s ass. “Fuck, yeah.”
With another groan, Harte pumped his cock into his fist, and cum shot out the end, landing right in the middle of Ramey’s chest, another spurt hit his chin, and Ramey remembered what his Master had told him to do. Releasing one leg, Ramey started rubbing the sticky trails into his skin.
Harte’s head fell back and he slowly moved his hand away from Ramey’s ass, leaning back against the back of the couch and staring at Ramey with a grin. Ramey sat up, practically begging for a kiss, and jumped, banging his head on Harte’s chin as someone knocked twice on the door.
“That means our time is up.” Rubbing the spot on his head where he’d bashed into Harte, Ramey looked up.
“We should probably get out of here then.”
“Yes, Master.” Harte grinned at him then, and gave him the kiss he’d been needing.
“Get dressed, sub. We still need to talk.”
They quickly got back into their clothes, the smell of sex hanging in the air and clinging to both of them. Ramey loved the way Harte had branded him. When they left the private room, they left hand in hand. There was no sign of whoever had knocked so Harte assumed it was an early-warning system. They stopped in the dressing room long enough for Ramey to grab his bag, then headed toward the main bar.
Harte found Winters. After a brief conversation, he got the club owner to agree to let Ramey off sooner rather than later.
“I still want to talk with you tonight, Ramey. Can you spare me an hour or so? Winters released you to me for the night.”
The flash of surprise and pleasure thrilled Harte. Ramey’s slightly breathless response also warmed him. He wanted to fuck him senseless again but needed a bit of recovery time.
“There’s a twenty-four-hour place a few blocks away,” Ramey offered.
Harte nodded. “I’ll drive.”
Leading the way out of the bar, he was very aware of Ramey following him. The similarity to the night before hit him and Harte smiled slightly. The satisfaction he’d achieved in the private room equaled the anticipation he’d felt last night but was quickly being replaced with trepidation. How could they make this relationship be about more than hot sex when he couldn’t keep his hands off Ramey?
They reached the car and he hit the button to unlock the doors. The sudden searing pain on the back of his neck caught him by surprise. Ramey’s angry shout ricocheted in his head as his knees hit the ground.
Reaching for the nonexistent gun at the small of his back, Harte tried to focus on what was happening around him. Shouts from his left drew his attention.
“Fucking ass fuckers! Kick their ass, Jimmy.” Two white assailants in their mid-twenties had Ramey backed up to a wall. Harte fought his way to his feet as Ramey shouted again.
His head swam as he clung to the car for support. What he saw surprised the shit out of him.
Ramey fought like a man possessed, or one in the middle of a mixed-martial-arts fight.
Hands and feet flew as he took on the two assailants.
“C’mon, bitches, bring it. You assholes are going down. Nobody fucks with me or mine.”
The ferocity in Ramey’s tone was backed up by the solid connection of his fist with the first perp’s jaw.
Harte got to his feet and waded into the mix. By the time Harte made his first swing, Ramey had the first asshole on the ground and his foot made contact with the left side of the other guy’s face just after Harte’s fist hit the right side. The man dropped like a stone and Harte felt like doing the same. His head pounded and his breath came hard. “Shit, that hurts.”
Ramey practically flew to Harte’s side. He touched the back of his head with gentle care.
When it came away bloody, Ramey went to his knees beside Harte. “Oh my God, you’re bleeding, Harte! Oh fuck!”
Ramey turned white with one hand reaching toward him while the other wrapped around his stomach. Harte remembered Ramey’s aversion to blood. He let himself slide back down to the ground, using his car for support. Harte pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.
“Who are you calling?” Ramey’s voice was hoarse but the color was returning to his face.
Harte grimaced when he spoke. “The station. We need a car out here to pick these guys up.”
“Do you want me to stay?” Ramey still knelt an arm’s length away from him.
“What? Of course I do. You’ll need to give a statement, Ramey. And guess what?”
“What?”
“You haven’t passed out.” Harte added a smile even though the movement hurt like hell.
He was rewarded by Ramey’s soft chuckle.
“No, I haven’t. Wow. I already hear sirens. Someone else must have called the cops.”
Ramey’s tentative look tore through Harte. He looked over his shoulder toward the sound of the approaching cars. Harte watched him tremble before he quietly asked, “What do you want me to say about why I was here? With you?”
“Just tell the truth, Ramey. We were leaving the bar and before we got in the car we got jumped.”
“But won’t they wonder about you?” Ramey gestured back toward the club.
“Maybe, but we still need to talk. I don’t want to lose this chance to talk to you. We might have a break in a case, and I may be out of touch for a few days.”
“I’m not going to cost you your job or your reputation, Harte. I’m not going to do that to you.” Ramey smiled sadly even as he backed up on his knees and looked over his shoulder again. Two uniformed cops got out of their patrol car, drawing their guns as they did so.
“Over here!” Ramey waved at them. “He might need an ambulance. I saw the whole thing, officers. Those two men just came out of nowhere and attacked him. I was just getting off work and heading home.”
Ramey continued to babble, speaking so fast Harte couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He watched the cops and Ramey, letting one of the officers check the back of his head and hearing them call for an ambulance. He’d let the paramedics check him, but no way would he go to the hospital. The two men were handcuffed as a second patrol car pulled up followed by the ambulance.
Though Ramey had moved away from him, Harte saw Jason and some of the other dancers come out of the club. Though none of the cops asked what he was doing in the neighborhood, he could see the question on their faces. Ramey might have thought to spare his reputation, but he didn’t seem to realize that that particular cat was probably already out of the bag and howling his damn stupid lungs out.
Harte watched as Jason walked over to the cops and put his hand on Ramey’s shoulder.
He wanted to get to his feet and stop him. He knew he was too late when Ramey walked away with Winters. Pain unrelated to his head injury lanced through him. Ramey didn’t even look back. It was as though he really was just some random man who’d been mugged.
“Gay bashing’s a hate crime. You don’t have to testify, but it would help if you did.”
Harte slumped back against his car, trying to focus on the paramedic flashing her light in his eye. She glanced over her shoulder at the uniform who was talking to him. The female officer nodded at the paramedic with familiarity.
“Hey, Jill.” She turned back to Harte. “Look. I know who you are, okay? The other unit is questioning bystanders. Are you going to testify or not? I can leak this out to the community and they will raise holy hell over another bashing down here.”
Harte blinked away the intensity of the light and the surprise. “I don’t know, Officer. I need to think about it.”
She nodded as she stood up. “Do you want one of us to drive you and your car home?”
The paramedic hissed at that. Harte knew she was going to insist that he take a ride in the box to the hospital. He threw cold water on that immediately. “No doctors. I’m fine. Clean me up and, yes, I’ll take you up on that ride home.”
Luckily the other uniform drove him home. The ride back was quiet and fast—just what he needed. He had to sort out what had happened back in that alley.
Entering his house, he threw his keys across the room. He’d blown it, totally blown it. It had all been so out of control with everything happening way too fast. He should have told Ramey that he was ready to come out, to take the chance on losing his job. He should have…
No. Ramey wouldn’t have believed that, just as Harte wasn’t sure he meant it. He grabbed one of the reusable ice packs he kept in the freezer. Might as well go to sleep for now. He had a feeling tomorrow was going to be a hell of a long day.
Ramey sipped at the glass of wine Jason had poured for him and leaned back. “Well, one good thing came out of all of this. I didn’t faint at the sight of Harte’s blood.”
“Stop it.” Jason leaned over Ramey, glaring at him. “This thing, whatever it is between you and Harte, is not over.”
“I don’t know about that. He’s probably busy with work. Plus, he probably won’t want to see me for a while, since all those cops know I work at Pulse.”
“Bullshit. Harte’s not going to get rid of you that quickly. He’ll figure something out.”
“But that’s just it. I don’t want him to figure something out. I don’t want him to have to try. If we can’t be open with even one part of our relationship, how can we ever get further with anything else? Harte can’t tell anyone he’s gay and if that’s true, how can he be honest with me or with himself about any other aspect of our lifestyle?”
Jason flopped down on the couch beside Ramey. “I never thought about it that way. Damn it, Ramey, do you have to prove how fucking intelligent you are right now?”
Ramey huffed out a laugh. “Jason, I know what it means to hide who you are for more than one reason. My parents dealt just fine with me being gay. They had a lot of gay friends in their artsy little circle. What they couldn’t deal with was my need to be controlled during sex.
See, to them that made no sense.
“They couldn’t have cared less about me being into men. It took them catching me in the barn with one of our neighbors while he used a riding crop on my ass. That totally twisted them up. That’s when they kicked me out.”
“Jesus, Ramey, how old were you?”
“Sixteen. He was my first Master and my first lover. A much older man, all of twenty-six.”
Ramey laughed then sobered as he remembered that time in his life.
“I resolved right then that I wouldn’t hide who I was. In the gay community, I didn’t have to because there were a lot weirder things out there than me being a sub. Though I want to be with Harte, I can’t live in the darkness. I can’t hide from my own community, and I won’t. But I also can’t force Harte not to hide his preferences.
“Hell, if I tried that with you or any other Master, you’d keep me from sitting down for a week with the thrashing you’d give me. Why should Harte be any different?”
Jason hummed a long deep sound. “You are right. I don’t think Harte is any different. And I don’t think he is any good for you. In fact, I’m going to tell him you’re off limits.”
Ramey’s response kicked in so hard he didn’t have time to filter. “Like hell you will.”
At Jason’s cocked eyebrow response, Ramey screwed up his face and added, “Um…Sir.”
The bellow of laughter was not what he expected. Nor did he prepare for the bear hug Jason wrapped him into. “That tells me everything I need to know, Ramey. Everything. Be ready to go to Unfettered tonight. You and Master Harte need to have a long talk. I am going to do something incredibly cruel to you, Ramey. Worse than telling Harte to leave you alone.”
“What’s that, Sir?” Ramey couldn’t think of anything worse than not being able to see Harte again. But when Jason answered him, he realized he hadn’t thought of everything.
“I’m going to give you both the gift of honesty. Balls-to-the-walls honesty, Ramey.”
“Do you think he’s being honest with you, Detective? Right now the lover is the leading suspect, but we’ve got nothing on him.”