Chapter 13
Tête-à-Tête
The sound of the shower’s pattering carried far, echoing down the hall, filling the still air in the living space. Jackson’s hands tented in front of his nose, the fingertips touching, and he stared at the dark entrance of that hallway, wondering about a lot.
“Here.” Adam held out a glass half filled with amber liquid, keeping one of the pair to himself.
“Thanks.”
Jackson anticipated the kiss, tilting his chin up to meet it. Adam’s lips were warm, tasted like honey whiskey.
“Mmm. That’s more like it,” Jackson smiled.
Adam sat beside him with a heavy exhale, drinking, reclining back and spreading his legs. The right one rested comfortably against Jackson. Adam’s hand rubbed idly over Jackson’s back.
“Missed you.”
“But not him?” Jackson smirked behind the rim of his drink.
Adam grunted, laughed. His short nails scratched over Jackson’s spine, sending shivers down his arms, up the back of his neck. He closed his eyes, enjoying it.
“What the sweet fuck was all of that?” Adam asked quietly. “Gimme the short version.”
“Olly’s trying to save him. Rune’s trying to save the world. I don’t know if either of them are going to succeed before they kill themselves trying.”
“Hell of a short version.” Adam held out his glass. Jackson clinked his against it and they both drank. Emptying the glass, Jackson set it down. “Come on,” Adam beckoned. “You know you want to.”
Jackson laughed softly, twisted to lay down with his head in Adam’s lap, his legs draped over the end of the couch. Adam began caressing Jackson’s head and neck, his talented painter’s fingers mapping shapes, sculpting visions on his skin. Humming in pleasure, Jackson tried to let go of some of the stress. It was surprisingly easy to do.
“Missed you too.”
“How are you? I mean, really? You look like you’re carrying a lot. He knows that, right?”
“Oh yeah, he knows. I’m fine,” Jackson assured him. “It’s mainly work. Trying to balance it all. So much goddamned responsibility.”
“Why do you think I went with a career in painting?” Adam shook his head, sipped the last of his whiskey and set his glass down too. His right hand slowly unbuttoned Jackson’s shirt, slipped beneath it to lightly sketch fantasies over his chest. His left brushed the frown lines away on Jackson’s brow. “I saw what law did to people. When you take on that much, it takes over if you’re not careful. But I know you are. What’s the worst of it?”
Jackson sighed, frowned again, but happy to let Adam try to coax it away. “A couple of young patients. Men with families. The prognosis isn’t good, and they’re trying, but you can see them waiting for it to all slip away. The fear of losing people they love.”
“Must be hard to see it coming like that,” Adam admitted, his blue eyes focused on something beyond the room. “And Olly’s been there for you?”
“Of course. But when Olly first took on Rune, we took a break for a few weeks. He needed to relearn ASL. Wanted to ease Rune into it all, because he was in rough shape, mentally. So I took Jo and the kids down to the Dominican Republic.”
“No shit?”
“It was nice,” Jackson smiled, remembering. “A colleague—podiatrist—rents out his villa right on the beach. Turquoise waters. Quiet. White sand. Pool. Kids played on the beach. Kayla was hunting for seashells every day. Jada was making an entire sand kingdom and I was right down there with her, digging out roads between castles.”
“Wish I’d been there. Sounds like heaven.”
“It was. But I was ready to come back. I missed him too much.”
“What’s your take on Rune?”
“Mmm. He’s incredible. Afraid of nothing, you know? But he’s sweet as hell with Olly. Obedient. Most of the time,” he laughed. “He’s a fighter, though. Gets off on it. And Olly gets off on trying to tame him.”
“You don’t?”
“Well…” he chuckled. Adam squeezed Jackson’s pectoral muscle, pinched his nipple, sending a jolt straight to his cock. Pulling one leg up, he adjusted his pants to make room for his swelling erection. Adam pinched again, twisted, and Jackson’s chest pushed into the contact, his neck elongated, his head thrown back even farther. “Yeah. I do,” he said, a little out of breath.
“What was that tonight? The blood? The wound?”
“Rune chased off some white supremacist pricks. Caught the edge of a knife for his efforts. Saved some black kids downtown.”
“Damn.”
“I know.”
“But… why? Was he just in the neighborhood?”
“No. He hunted them down. He thinks they’re the same guys who ran him off the road, destroyed his hearing.”
“So it’s not just a one-time thing, is it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Which is why Olly’s losing his mind.”
“Yep.”
“And you? What’s your take?”
“I think… he inspires me. Gives me hope.”
Footsteps approached, Oliver rounded the end of the hall, came right for them. He was wearing a towel around his waist and nothing else. His bare chest was covered in soft brown hair, his nipples dark. His wet, tousled hair hung in his eyes. He was an irresistible sight.
He wrapped a hand around Jackson’s jaw, caressed the pad of his thumb over Jackson’s lower lip.
“I’m putting him to bed, making sure he falls asleep. You’ll stay? Please?”
“Of course.”
Oliver’s gaze rose to catch Adam’s.
“You too?”
Adam nodded.
“Take good care of him.”
Adam’s hand pulled out of Jackson’s shirt, rubbed down to his crotch and rolled the hardened flesh there. Jackson moaned and spread, wanton and desperate. Oliver leaned down and licked into Jackson’s mouth, sucked on his lips.
“Tonight, you’re his. Okay?”
“Yes, sir.” Jackson’s breath caught as Adam squeezed his cockhead. “Thank you.”
Leaving Oliver behind, they went to the master bedroom. Adam closed the door, turned on all of the lights, and opened the wardrobe tucked in the corner of the room, throwing the doors wide and surveying the contents.
“Strip,” Adam commanded without turning, then glanced back and caught Jackson’s eye, seeing his expression. “What?”
“You’re gonna take your time, right?”
“Of course,” Adam scoffed.
“Good,” Jackson smiled.
“What do you think this is? My first time?”
“No, sir.”
It had been half a year at least since the last time Adam had been there during a scene, and Jackson couldn’t even remember the last time they’d been alone. But he knew Adam’s focus was intense, sharper sometimes than Oliver’s. Adam was even more a voyeur. Where Oliver wanted to feel a man break and submit, Adam wanted mostly to see it, capture the moment for study and scrutiny. Oliver got swept up in the emotion and passion, but Adam never did. There never seemed to be a distraction great enough to break him from his goal of taking his submissives apart, piece by piece.
Jackson had peeled off the mostly unbuttoned shirt. Bare-chested, he opened his pants, stepped out of his shoes, pulled off his socks. He shucked off his pants, pushed down his boxers. His gaze stayed lowered, respectfully, though he sensed Adam studying him already—looking hard at Jackson’s body as he decided what he’d like to do to it. There was a cold detachment in it that Jackson craved. Adam’s clinical curiosity felt a perfect match to Jackson’s mental, emotional chaos. More than anything, he wanted someone to take over, sort his mess, clear the clutter, make him feel, make him yell and give over, completely.
Adam’s shirt fell to the floor. His boots clunked against the wooden floorboards, one after the other, as he toed them off. His bare feet padded over, around Jackson.
A blindfold was pulled over his eyes, tied tightly behind his head.
“I want silence. No speaking, other than to say your safeword. No yelling. Nod if you understand.”
Jackson nodded.
“Have your preferences changed?”
Jackson thought back to the last scene with him submitting to both Oliver and Adam. It had gone on for hours and he’d needed two days off from work afterward to recuperate. It had produced several indescribably kinky paintings. One of which hung in David Davenport’s dungeon. Another hung over the bed in the room in which they stood.
He shook his head.
“Perfect. Hands behind your back.”
Jackson brought his hands to his lower back, fists clenched. Something soft and firm wrapped his wrists, yanking them close together. A band wrapped his throat, just loose enough to allow him to breathe freely. Then tension pulled the band tighter, the same tension pulling at his bound wrists. When he flexed his arms to force his arms higher up his back, the pressure on his collar released, and he knew a chain must connect them.
Maybe he should have hated the chains, given cultural history and what they implied. It was another war he fought with himself. The struggle to overcome the world’s systemic, overwhelming racism but to also find men he trusted so much that he could be made powerless before them and get lost in decadent sensation, forgetting his troubles and relinquishing all responsibilities for a few precious hours. It was the greatest high to need to do nothing but give in, endure pleasure, foregoing identity, labels and expectation. There was more peace in it than anything else he’d found.
Already his breathing eased. He forgot the look that was on Mr. Thornton’s face when Jackson delivered the test results promising little hope and a shortened life. He forgot the blood splashed on granite and the way Rune hadn’t flinched with each stitch through his sliced skin, like he’d been in so much agony for so long that something like being sewn back together was nothing. He forgot the eager way Jo had asked if he’d be heading to Oliver’s that night, and the relief in her voice when he’d told her he was.
“Widen your stance. Don’t move.”
He shifted his feet farther apart, past the width of his shoulders. He tensed up, bracing for anything.
His erection was taken in hand. Fluid was swiped over and around the head, then worked into his slit. He swallowed a moan, felt his skin prickle and tighten from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.
“Remember. Silence.”
Something cool, hard, thin and blunt touched his cockhead, found the small opening of his urethra, parting it gently. After an involuntary flinch, he got control of himself and practiced deep breathing exercises, inhaling through his nose, holding the breath, then blowing it out through his mouth.
The pain was a spike and full, expansive ache that radiated into his gut, down through his thighs, as whatever Adam held was fed through the small hole in his dick and gradually, slowly impaled it. Right away, it pushed Jackson into a vulnerable mindset, forced him to surrender in the best of ways, and had him savoring a private thrill at the prospect of what Adam might do before they were done.
It seemed to take forever, which Jackson loved. He wanted it drawn out. He needed every feeling to be magnified and strengthened. Soon, Jackson was trembling uncontrollably. He let his bound arms hang down, which strained the muscles in his neck and choked off his breaths whenever he felt a shout might break free. The sharp, maddening discomfort in his cock contrasted blissfully with the gentle fondling caresses Adam gave Jackson’s balls. Coping took all of Jackson’s strength. There was no room for anything else.
The instrument was different than the sounding rods Oliver usually used on him, or any of the plugs he’d recently worn, but Jackson didn’t dare guess why or how. His heart pounded as he fantasized about the possibilities.
Once it felt like twelve inches of metal was buried in his dick, the movement stopped. By then, Jackson was covered in sweat and his breathing was ragged. The need to lay down, to steady himself somehow, was overpowering. Because he had nothing to lean on. He could only try to stay balanced on his feet and not sway in any direction. The spike in his penis was his only other anchor.
Adam had stopped touching him. The sensation of being stared at, his privacy obliterated, his vulnerability studied, kept the prickling sensation going over his skin and the heat blooming in his face. It also kept him hard.
Then a hand cupped under his balls again, fingers playing with the sensitive skin. The weight of his sac was tested, the shape of his testicles mapped with careful, firm, rolling strokes. His breaths were shaky, uneven.
“You enjoy the way that feels? The pain? The humiliation?”
Jackson felt a wash of cool air over him as a vent kicked on, and nearly swayed. He tensed, catching himself. He nodded.
“Would you like me to photograph it?”
He nodded again, then whimpered softly as Adam stopped fondling him and walked away. His cock twitched, rising more, and he shuddered with need, his eyes rolling up, his head falling back on his shoulders.
He heard Adam over by the wardrobe. Heard a soft whirr and some clicks, then footsteps again. Down low, from directly in front of him, then off to the side, he heard the snap of a camera’s shutter.
“I’m going to open you as wide as I can. Take a look inside. Take more photos. It’s going to hurt, and if you whimper again, you’ll be punished. Nod if you understand.”
Jackson shivered, shifted his feet ever so slightly, then nodded. His cock jumped, begging.
More footsteps. A low clunk and a clatter. Footsteps again.
Hands moved him, turned him, guided him forward. A hand held his hip steady. Another hand pushed at his back, bending him slowly over at a ninety-degree angle. He shifted forward again and his knees touched something soft.
“Up. Slowly.”
He brought his bent leg up, resting the knee on the soft surface of what he supposed was the bed. Then he brought up his other leg and crawled forward as much as the hand on his hip allowed, which wasn’t much. The hand pushed at his back, bending him forward even more, until his shoulders rested on the bed, his head turned to one side, his ass in the air, and the metal stick shifted inside him with all of the movement. His cock throbbed with pressure, pain and the stiffness of arousal.
His sac was gathered in a hand, pulled on and fed through something hard. Pressure closed on the root of his sac, squeezing. He felt something touching him, extended side-to-side across the backs of his thighs, right under his ass. He shifted experimentally, and when he did, it pulled hard on his sac, stretching it even farther from his body.
He pictured the toy—a wide band called The Humbler, meant to keep a submissive bent sharply over. Any struggle or attempts to straighten would yank on their balls, trapped in a hole in the center of the band, its curved ends formed to hug the tops of the thighs.
Sinking into his helplessness, Jackson felt his heart racing, the cool air on his skin drawing more goosebumps. The ache in his balls was no match for the one in his cock.
A wet finger plunged swiftly, eagerly, through his sphincter, going in deep and twisting to rub him. The surprise drew a muffled grunt.
“You’re tighter than I remember. Must be all of that time off you had. We’ll have to work on that.”
The finger kept rubbing at him from the inside. It twisted around again and quickly found his gland, pressing at it.
He couldn’t stop the louder grunt, or the flinch that yanked at his sac hard enough to round the grunt into a lower tone, filled with ache.
The finger withdrew.
Unexplained, sudden fire erupted inside Jackson’s cock, shooting down the core of it and deep into his gut, and he screamed as it bloomed into a full-bodied pain that cramped him up and strangled the air from his lungs.
The burning sensation stopped abruptly, and he gasped, then panted. A hand tenderly rubbed the back of his neck.
“The sound is wired. If you can’t be silent, I turn it on. Longer for louder cries. Nod if you understand.”
Jackson fought for control, until he was only breathing hard through his nose, and nodded.
Two wet fingers pushed back through his rim, spread apart. He pushed back onto them, wanting more, wanting Adam to fuck him, unsure if that was something he’d get that night or not.
“Good?”
He nodded.
Adam gave him a third finger and Jackson convulsed with pleasure to be so full, rocking against them ever so subtly.
“No, be still. You get what I give you. No more.”
The three slippery fingers rode him with deep strokes, all the way in, all the way out to rub in a circle over his rim, then delved back in once more. It felt so nice, his head spun. The urge to beg, to moan, was maddening.
He’d forgotten how patient Adam could be.
Adam fingered him for what felt like hours, until Jackson’s rim was so engorged with blood and oversensitive, he felt his heartbeat there, all of his focus on each touch, and how good it was. He stayed open, welcoming each push, hearing each loud squelch as Adam added more and more lube, until it dripped down Jackson’s thighs and was smeared all over his cheeks.
Finally, Adam asked, “Would you like more?”
Jackson keened.
Adam pulled out, flipped a switch.
Jackson stiffened from head to toe, biting back the scream, thrumming, convulsing, then panting hard as the surge stopped.
“I said, would you like more?”
He nodded, the room spinning around him, his body aching in places he didn’t know he had.
He barely remembered his name let alone anything else. The world had ceased to exist.
And he only wanted more.