Bound and Determined (21 page)

bringing the plaintive longing behind the words to life, and it hurt the teacher

in Owen not to acknowledge that, but he couldn't cede even that small a victory

and hope to win the war. “
An eye more bright than theirs
…” Oh, God, yes,

Sterling's eyes shone today, but it was an angry glitter.

“Now, from a modern perspective, the most obvious interpretation of the

theme is…?” Owen raised his eyebrows inquiringly. Shari had mentioned that

this class was reasonably articulate and insightful, and he hoped that habit

and a desire to impress a visitor would mean that they gave him the same

energy and commitment.

The man he'd been going to choose to read the poem raised his hand and,

when Owen nodded at him, said hesitantly, “Uh, because we're like, less hung

up on sexuality being, you know, straight and narrow, we'd go for the idea that

the poet wanted the other guy? But he couldn't just come out and say that, not

back then, so he did all this thing at the end to make out that he was cool with

only having the other guy's friendship when, no way, 'cause he was totally into

him.”

Yes, you sound considerably less hung up on sexuality, Owen thought,

which wasn't fair—there was no reason to think this young man was straight,

even. He just wasn't particularly eloquent.

“That's the most common interpretation, certainly,” Owen agreed aloud,

because there was no point in making any of this more uncomfortable than it

was likely to be unless Sterling chose to keep his mouth shut, which he wasn't

anticipating. “Can anyone offer an alternative?”

A young man wearing shorts—surely inadvisable given the weather—

raised his hand and didn't wait for Owen to call on him. “Why does it have to

mean he was queer?” he asked and, when the dark-haired woman sitting next

to him shifted in her chair and muttered something, tried again. “I mean, gay?

People write about stuff all the time that doesn't have anything to do with their

real life. Like, Stephen King. We wouldn't try to argue that he's some kind of

ghost hunter or whatever just because he writes about monsters, right?”

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“But monsters aren't real,” Miss Bowers argued, turning in her seat to face

the young man in the shorts. “Plus we're talking about Shakespeare. There are

homosexual innuendos all throughout his sonnets. Why would he do that if it

didn't mean anything?”

Sterling looked bored, but he sat up in his seat and looked at Owen.

“What do you think, Professor? Was Shakespeare gay?”

Meeting that hostile gaze sent a frisson of arousal through Owen. Every

instinct he had was screaming at him to handle this as if Sterling was a sub

challenging his Dom, and Owen knew exactly how to deal with
that
. Having an

audience wasn't a problem, either; Owen loved acting out a scene at the club,

with the arousal of those watching spurring him on. The problem, of course,

lay in the fact that he was at work, surrounded by students, and had to rein in

those instincts. Well, some of them, at least; a teacher was owed the same

respect as a Dom, and the students would expect him to deal firmly with

Sterling's insolence once it got to a level that was impossible to pass over. Right

now, Sterling was very skillfully skirting the line.

“That's a question that's been debated, often hotly, for centuries, with no

definitive answer,” Owen replied. He turned to address the class as a whole.

“As I'm sure you're aware, people have several candidates for Shakespeare's

lover—if he had one—including the earls of Southampton and Pembroke. One

can only imagine what the Elizabethan equivalent of the tabloids made of those

rumors.”

“But it doesn't sound, from the sonnet, as if Shakespeare liked women

very much,” Sterling said.

Owen shook his head. “He was a product of his time, but I doubt he could

accurately be referred to as a misogynist. There's enough evidence to suggest

he might have been forced to marry an older woman, which wouldn't help as

far as his feelings toward the 'fairer sex' might go.”

“So he had the fair youth on the side,” Sterling said. “That makes him

dishonest, doesn't it? Not admitting to the public who he really was and just

hinting at it through poetry that most people probably didn't analyze all that

carefully anyway?”

“I think you're wrong there,” Owen said. Around them, the normal sounds

of a full class were dying down to an expectant hush as if the students, several

of whom had seen Owen and Sterling clash before, were anticipating something

out of the ordinary to enliven their day. He gave the page of notes that he held

a brief glance and spotted something that Shari had added an asterisk to,

clearly wanting it to be stressed. “The educated people of the day were very well

used to picking up on levels of meaning and would have torn each sonnet apart

gleefully. No TV, no movies, no computers… This was part of how they

entertained themselves.”

He was warming to his theme now. “It's been suggested that Shakespeare

put clues into his work as to the identity of the youth. The word 'hews' appears

in the poem; the modern spelling is 'hues,' but in the original it's spelled 'hews.'

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Some say that the appearance of those four letters in most lines of this sonnet

refer to the initials of William and either of the earls, though that's possibly

reading too much into it.” He put the notes he'd been shamelessly quoting from

down on the desk he was leaning against. “What is certain is that the great

poets of that time were masters of the art of verse writing. They made words

mean far more than the sum of their parts.” He met Sterling's eyes. “And they

knew that to be open about some matters was to risk everything: their social

standing, their wealth—their life.”

“You mean, like, gay bashing?” The young man wearing shorts seemed a

little too interested in that topic for Owen's comfort.

“There are laws against it now, but in Shakespeare's day there was

nothing to stop people from attacking those they felt were lacking in

appropriate morals,” Owen said blandly.

“But we're more civilized now,” Sterling said, voice loud enough to

command attention. “Especially in New England. We've legalized gay marriage,

and there's legislation against hate crimes. This isn't the Dark Ages—people

don't lose their social standing over something like being gay.”

“A relatively recent development and certainly not the case in every state,”

Owen said. He pointedly turned away from Sterling, who was frowning at him,

his mouth set in mutinous lines. “I think we need to bring the focus back to

the sonnet, and I'd like to hear from some of the less vocal of you.” He pointed

at a young woman slumped in her seat, examining her nails, who only looked

up when her more alert neighbor nudged her. “What would you say is the

general feel of this? Happy? Sad? Romantic? What was your first impression of

it and why?”

He listened to her stumbling efforts to answer with most of his attention

on Sterling, visible out of the corner of his eye, but Sterling seemed to have

decided that he'd pushed it as far as he wanted to—or dared. Owen was torn

between annoyance and a reluctant admiration for Sterling's nerve. Which

meant that things between them hadn't changed; it was that exact mix of

emotions that had led to him accepting Sterling's proposal in the first place.

For the rest of the class, Sterling sat silently, appearing to listen as Owen

asked questions and some of his classmates answered them. He even seemed

to be taking notes occasionally, a few words here and there in the neat,

somewhat blocky handwriting that Owen had become familiar with. In the end,

Owen wound down the discussion with a mention of a few of the related

sonnets.

“I'm sure Professor Temple will be back for your next class,” he said after

relaying their next assignment. “So don't disappoint her by being unprepared.

Thank you—that's all.”

Most of the students left immediately; a few lingered, talking to each

other, before finally heading out the door and leaving only Sterling still in the

room with him.

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“I'm sorry,” Sterling said after the last student had crossed the threshold,

the door swinging closed behind her.

Owen picked up the book of sonnets and the thin sheaf of notes, fully

intending to walk out, and then put them back down on the desk. He looked at

Sterling, still in his seat, and sighed. “It doesn't matter. I know why you did it,

and I can't say that you didn't have a right to make the points you did. It

wasn't the best place to do it, though.”

“It does matter,” Sterling told him. “I know it's no excuse, but I was so

surprised to see you here—it kind of threw me for a loop. Still. I'm sorry. I won't

let it happen again.” He smiled sadly and stood up. “Not that the opportunity

will present itself anyway. Are you… How've you been? Okay?”

“I've missed you,” Owen said, going directly to the cause of his irritability

for the last week. “I didn't like the way it ended between us and I feel…” He

shook his head. He'd spoken to Michael midweek, and the conversation hadn't

gone all that well. Boneheaded, stubborn, and several other epithets had

sizzled across the miles, leaving him to slam out of the house and go to the

club, where his bad mood hadn't been improved by an encounter with Carol,

all leather harness, studded collar, and adoring eyes as she stared up at her

new Dom—and she
still
hadn't learned how to kneel properly, damn it. She'd

looked graceless, but that had just made him reflect on how perfectly Sterling

knelt, and that hadn't helped at all.

He'd ended up brushing off some offers that would normally have gotten

his automatic approval and had gotten home very late, stone-cold sober and

depressed.

“I've missed you,” he repeated.

That earned him a wistful look as Sterling came closer, now-closed

notebook in his hand the only thing he had with him despite the fact that

Owen knew he had another class immediately after this one. “I missed you too,

and—do you think maybe we could try again? I mean, I know I put way too

much pressure on you—even though I don't think I was wrong for wanting you

to explain—but I was definitely wrong for not listening when you tried. And I

know I'm kind of a screw-up as far as, you know, everything is concerned. I

know I wasn't living up to your expectations, and that you wanted more from

me, and maybe I'm not even capable of giving it, which I shouldn't be admitting

because yeah, way to sound appealing… It's just, I really, really miss you a lot,

and I've been going kind of crazy, like I forgot how to release tension or

something, and—”

He was close enough to touch now and that was just what Owen did,

placing the tips of his fingers against still-moving lips, shaping words that

Owen wasn't really listening to because this close, the need to claim Sterling as

his again was overwhelming.

“You never failed me,” he said. “You just asked for something that I

didn't—and don't—want to give you. Two months more to wait, Sterling, that's

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all. Give me those months and after that I'll fuck you raw every single night I

can, but you need to wait. Can you do that?”

His unspoken
please
seemed loud enough to be heard. God, wouldn't

Michael snicker to see him reduced to this state of want and need? But he was

addicted to Sterling, and it had been a week or more since he'd kissed him, felt

Sterling's mouth part under his, the sweet, hesitant flick of Sterling's tongue

against his, the bitten-off moan Sterling made when the kiss ended, his eyes

closed.

“I don't know,” Sterling whispered, so close now Owen could feel warm

breath against his lips. “With the way I've been dreaming about you—every

night, about you fucking me, Owen, pushing your cock into my ass and

fucking me—but I promise I'll try. Okay? I'll try. That's the best I can do.”

And then their lips were together, Sterling whimpering desperately into his

mouth, erection pressed to Owen's thigh and hands eager on his shirt. Sterling

was good, so good, letting Owen control the kiss despite his need.

Owen realized that they were frantically kissing in a classroom that

anyone could walk into at any time and pulled back, though he couldn't resist