Authors: Anitra Lynn McLeod
Tags: #Romance
“I never should have—”
Ollie cut him off with a kiss and eased him back into the bedroom. The covers were neatly made, making Ollie question him.
“I thought if he came back and saw the disarray and smelled the strong scent of sex he would know. So I made the bed as fast as I could.” Jonas looked down at the covers.
“Let’s mess it back up.”
A quick grin stripped the fear off of Jonas’s handsome face, but only briefly. Worry bled back into his eyes so fast it was becoming his permanent cast of features. “He’ll find me.”
“Eventually.”
“He’ll make me go.”
“Then I will go with you.”
“By law he owns you.”
“Then I will convince him to set me free.” Ollie wasn’t certain he could be so persuasive, but he would try. There was never any harm in asking.
“But I gave up everything to come here.”
Ollie nodded. Jonas had told him the scope of the tale last night. As stunned as Ollie was at the depths Jonas was willing to go to keep them together, he didn’t have the heart to tell him he had probably ruined their chances by his grand act. Still, the gesture was a wide and sweeping one, romantic and powerful, but ultimately doomed. There was nothing either one of them could do to change the class they’d been born into. Once a slammer, always a slammer. And Jonas would always be a landed gentryman no matter how he longed to be Ollie’s thrall.
“All those times with all those men and you never enjoyed it?” Ollie wanted to take the words back as soon as they were out of his mouth. He had no idea what possessed him to ask the man he loved such a pointed and hurtful question.
“Why do you ask me this now?” Jonas turned away, his shoulders slumped. It was clear the question alone wounded him deeply.
“I never had the courage to ask until now. I simply want to know.” Ollie stroked his hand lovingly over Jonas’s back. “That night, when I saw you with that mechanical man, and the gentryman who watched you being violently used, I didn’t understand what I was seeing.”
“And his mark is always on you.” Jonas turned and traced his delicate fingers over the scar across Ollie’s belly. It was a smooth line that rode above his belly button, slightly tilted upward on the right. “I’m sorry that he hurt you.”
“I am more concerned that he hurt you.”
Jonas looked down at the floor and sighed.
“Please tell me the truth of that night. It has always plagued me.”
Clearly reluctant, Jonas nodded, then settled on the edge of the bed. “I had bought the mechanical man for myself. I thought if I had him to do my erotic bidding, I could keep my hands off you.” Jonas looked up and his tortured gaze collided with Ollie’s. “I wanted you from the moment I saw you.”
“You did?” Ollie sat down next to him and held his hand. “I didn’t know. I thought it was just me who was obsessed with you.”
“I was careful to keep my rotations of drinking very strict. I knew if I allowed myself to do as I pleased, I would drink only from you, so I had a calendar to mark off the days and who I would feed from.”
“All but Caleb.”
“All but Caleb.” Jonas shivered. Ollie realized there was another tantalizing tale there, but it would have to wait until he had his own personal curiosity sated.
“So what did the mechanical man have to do with blood?”
“Nothing.” Jonas shook his head, making his gleaming blond curls dance over his features. Ollie had always thought he looked best when he was mussed. “I got him to do to me what I wanted you to do to me.”
Long after bedtime, Ollie remembered following his twin, Gannon, down the stairs and into the parlor. Gannon had been intent on uncovering the truth behind all the furnishings disappearing in the dark of night, while Ollie just wanted to know the reason behind the curious noises. Halfway down the stairs he’d realized that his master, Jonas, was being brutally fucked by a mechanical man while the gentryman who lived next door watched.
What had riveted Ollie’s attention was the look on Jonas’s face. His head was tossed back, sweat plastering some of his curls to his forehead and others to his neck. His eyes gleamed, and his parted lips revealed his strong white teeth. At first, Ollie thought Jonas was in pain, but he quickly realized Jonas was in blissful ecstasy. The harder the robot rammed his cock into his backside, the more pleasure Jonas derived from the encounter. There was a moment where his gaze and Jonas’s had met, and they’d found their affinity. Ollie saw himself doing that to Jonas and loving every moment. He was so distracted by the sudden, shocking realization, Ollie hadn’t realized the landed gentryman was attacking Gannon until the man turned his knife on him. One vicious swipe ripped open Ollie’s belly.
Shortly after injuring them, the man had fled, and Jonas had been at Ollie’s side, comforting him until the medical personnel came. Ollie wasn’t sure what happened with the neighbor, but he’d never seen him again. Injuring two slammers wouldn’t have gotten him in much trouble, especially not if he claimed self-defense, but there was something about what he’d been doing with Jonas that he didn’t want revealed. Ollie thought the gentryman hadn’t wanted his extremely sensitive and emotional companion to know he’d been doing untoward things with Jonas.
“Why was he watching you?” That was the part that Ollie hadn’t understood. “That you should wish to fornicate with a mechanical man is one thing, but why would you have another watch?”
“To degrade me.”
“What?”
“Oh, Ollie. None of this matters now. He’s back in Curve Port.”
“Please tell me.” Ollie squeezed his hand. “I have wondered over it for so long now.”
“He was a nosey man.” Jonas made a face of pure fury, which caused his eyes to practically spark. “He came over on one pretext or another, and while I was out of the parlor, he looked at the papers in my desk. Among them was my journal.”
“You kept a record of your thoughts?”
“Foolish, I know, but I thought if I could write about you, I could distance myself from my inappropriate lust. I knew it was wrong to even have the feelings toward you, much less write them down and acknowledge them in any way, but I simply couldn’t help myself.” Jonas met Ollie’s gaze. “I swear, I did everything I could to stop myself from going any further than the wayward longings in my mind.”
“I know you did. I’m not angry with you.”
“I took advantage of you.”
“No.” Ollie cupped his chin and turned his face so they were again eye to eye. “It was I who couldn’t resist you, not the other way around.”
“I should have stopped you!” Jonas tried to stand, but Ollie held him back.
“Finish this tale before we argue that one.” Ollie tried to sound comforting, but he wasn’t so sure he had made the situation any easier for his true love by making him dredge up painful memories. As cruel as it seemed, Ollie wanted to know. They had to clear the air between them before they lost everything in their effort to be together.
“He read how I felt about you.”
“Your neighbor?”
“Yes. He was careful to tuck the journal back so I didn’t know what he was doing for the longest time. But eventually I did because he knew exactly how I felt about you. That vulgar man described back to me in detail all the things that I longed to have you do to me. The games I wished to play.”
“Oh, Jonas.” Ollie held him, determined to protect him even though the danger was long past.
“He threatened to tell the authorities.”
“But you and I hadn’t done anything.”
“He said he would say that he caught us in the act. Since I had imagined it so vividly, I knew I wouldn’t be able to pass a truth test. In my mind, I
had
been with you. The fact that I had yet to do so in reality was meaningless.” Jonas took a deep breath. “I was terrified of what would happen if my truth were exposed. I didn’t care about losing all my possessions since those things never matter much to me, but just the
thought
of losing you made me positively ill. I couldn’t bear the idea of them taking you away.”
“So you paid the neighbor off?”
“At first he just wanted a few of the finer things in my home, things that I had no attachment to. As long as I had you, I didn’t care about anything else.” And now Ollie understood the mystery of why the household items had been disappearing. It was Gannon who was obsessed with the case, not Ollie, but he realized he could never tell Gannon. In so doing, Ollie would reveal the truth of Jonas’s secret love for him. “But then those things no longer satisfied him.”
“No?”
“No.” Jonas drew a deep breath and slowly let it out. “He demanded that I act out my lusts for him.”
“He made you perform perversions for his titillation?”
“I resisted, but he had the journal.”
“I thought he was just reading it?”
“By that time he had taken it.”
“Oh, Jonas.” Ollie wrapped his arm around him, holding him tightly. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was foolish for writing it down and leaving it in a place where it could be found. It simply never occurred to me that anyone would care what I thought.”
“And given how trusting you are, you didn’t think a neighbor would violate your privacy so thoroughly.”
“It was still idiotic.” Jonas looked through the doorway. His eyes weren’t focused on the here and now, but almost as if he were looking back at that sequence of events. “Repeatedly, he had the mechanical man assault me in the parlor while he watched. He had me bent over the desk, then up against the wall, and then—”
“Please, those are the details I do not need.” Even though the man was a robot, he still didn’t like the idea of his mate with anyone but him.
“But I need to speak of them because I enjoyed it.” Jonas winced. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, but it’s probably best to get this all out now.”
Ollie felt a pang of regret at hearing how much Jonas had enjoyed not only what the robot had done, but that another watched. He had seen the pleasure on Jonas’s face, but to have him speak of it somehow made it far more real. “I don’t understand how you could enjoy being demeaned.”
“That is the saddest truth of them all.” Jonas let out a long sigh. “I thought if I were thoroughly humiliated, I would be somehow cleansed of my cravings for you.”
Ollie was silent after Jonas’s shocking confession. He opened his mouth to explain more, but there wasn’t anything else to say. He’d allowed the neighbor to brutalize him to punish himself for his inappropriate longings for Ollie.
“It didn’t work.” Jonas looked up and met Ollie’s beautiful brown eyes. Those eyes had always looked at him with nothing but love and longing. Jonas expected horror or shame, but Ollie still looked at him with deep and abiding love. For the first time, probably the only time, Jonas knew what it was to experience unconditional love.
“I’m sorry you were so tormented.” Ollie took Jonas’s hand in his. “If I could have done something to ease your pain, I would have.”
“I know.” Jonas kissed him softly. “That night, I think I was loud on purpose. I think I wanted to be discovered and perhaps forced to stop. I knew it wasn’t healthy for me to do what I was doing. It was reinforcing my longings because I imagined you were the mechanical man.”
“I would never hurt you so.”
“I know.” Jonas had enjoyed the raw passion of Ollie, but he never brutalized him. “You made me realize the difference between rough, meaningless sex, and passionate lovemaking.”
“I do love you.” Ollie kissed his shoulder.
“I love you, too.” Jonas lifted his head, and Ollie was there, his lips covering Jonas’s perfectly. He surged into him, loving the way Ollie groaned low and deep. No matter how many times they found release, they always wanted more. No one could ever replace what he had with Ollie. The robot had been able to act out the physicality of the need, but the emotions behind the harsh and hungry touches were utterly absent.
Ollie maneuvered Jonas up off the bed then had him straddle his lap so their hard cocks rubbed together. As soon as they touched, Jonas whimpered, which made Ollie growl and pull him closer by cupping his big hands to Jonas’s buttocks. Ollie took control of him with a gentle, almost thoughtful, command. His hands were strong and sure, his need clear but not vulgar. Rocking him up and down made friction along the sensitive skin of their pricks. Jonas felt his rectum quivering in anticipation of having Ollie’s cock plunging into him again. Three times they’d come together last night, but it hadn’t been enough. Jonas didn’t think a million times would be enough.
“You are so quick to try to get me inside you.” Ollie grinned as he moved Jonas back.
“You feel good filling me.” Jonas rose up and tried again to center himself over Ollie’s cock.
“That is why I will make you wait.” Ollie lifted Jonas while rising so that they were both standing. “I like to hear the frustration and longing in your voice.” With one finger, Ollie almost brought Jonas to his knees when he stroked over the scar he’d made on his neck. One side was hopelessly chewed from repeated attacks by unskilled and uncaring lovers, but the mark Ollie made was clean and precise. His touch there, or even his breath, made Jonas weak in the knees. “I love when you bite me.”