Rough Canvas (22 page)

Since Thomas never came to bed, Marcus suspected he’d fallen asleep on the couch.

It wasn’t what Marcus wanted, but he hadn’t wanted to push. He knew he’d done way too much of that for one night. He still wasn’t sure what had gotten into him.

Marcus opened his eyes once more to find ten minutes had passed during his half-doze, half-thought. Squatting by the edge of the bed, Thomas still held the coffee cup in one hand, keeping the aroma temptingly close while stroking Marcus’ hair. When he saw Marcus’ eyes open, Thomas gave it a tug. A smile grew on his face like lazy morning sunshine. “I almost wanted you to keep sleeping so I could keep looking at you.”

“So what’s the plan today?” Marcus asked, forcing himself to shift and sit up, take the coffee. Closing his eyes, he let the steam curl up toward his face to wake him in that gentle narcotic fashion that only coffee beans could accomplish.

“I’d like to drive around the hills some. Just wander, see what looks inspiring, set up somewhere. I’ve made up a lunch, some snacks, a cooler of beer and wine. Packed some of your books. Hid your briefcase and cell phone where it will take you much too long to find them.”

“You know I run a very lucrative side career as a phone operator for Talk Dirty To Me. Someone might have an emergency.”

“I can tip that cup and take your voice up a couple octaves. Permanently. Your

career as a sex operator would be over.”

Marcus smiled. “You sound in a different mood today.”

“I am.” When he opened his eyes, Thomas was regarding him with an odd

expression. For some reason, Marcus didn’t want to pursue what was going on behind the dark eyes studying him.

”I’ll get dressed,” he said.

* * * * *

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They put the top down on the Maserati. It handled well on the small winding roads that took them deeper into the Berkshires, where leaves danced as they passed and wildflowers on the road side nodded. Marcus found there was a soothing greenness to it all, like the clasp of something familiar, important in its vitality in a way that couldn’t be described, that he found vaguely disturbing.

Thomas finally had him stop on a rise, where a sloped expanse of field provided a rolling panoramic glimpse of the forest backdrop, followed by a layering of blue-green hills. Marcus followed him over a fence with the basket, blanket and book. In short order he had the blanket spread out, the basket serving as a side table for his glass of wine. Putting a book in his lap and tree at his back, Marcus set his music player at his side to softly play the programmed selections he’d downloaded for this trip.

While Thomas had packed all those things for his comfort, he paid little attention to Marcus’ use of them now, moving about fifty feet away into the field, dropping several sketch pads around him. There he stood now. Staring into space. Shifting.

It was like watching a bloodhound, Marcus reflected. Thomas turning, making

slight, erratic shifts that couldn’t necessarily be predicted, seeking something no one else could detect. Abruptly he settled, dropping to a cross-legged position in the long grass, opening the sketch pad and letting his pencil take him to whatever place he tangled with his muse.

Marcus had heard of family members of artists who felt excluded, isolated during these times. Maybe he felt differently because of his reverence for what happened in these moments. When the end result captivated someone on a gallery wall, he knew he’d been present for creation, a fly on the wall.

That applied to Josh and some of his other artists. But with Thomas, it was as if his lover’s creative awareness expanded and cloaked Marcus the same way the greenness of the trees did. The cool comfort of it was a buffer against the world, as if it guarded something sacred, untouchable in this field. He was a part of this, not just an observer.

Pushing away that thought and the other unsettling thoughts it raised, Marcus

focused on his book and wine, letting the breeze and the quiet of the place close in on his mind, fill the troubled spots for awhile. That quietness had substance, for while it was present it seemed to have no room for uneasy ruminations.

Three glasses of wine later, he stretched out on his back, ankles crossed, one arm behind his head as a pillow, holding the paperback up to read. Until it slowly

descended and he dozed.

Wheat-colored grass, flowing, rippling like a lover’s muscles. Green flowing into the gold like interlocking fingers. Every part different, but all part of the whole. Birds spiraling and speaking in musical tongues, warbling, chirping, trebling, the piercing shriek of a hawk. The occasional rasping calls of the crows, or the surprise of an owl’s hoot as the sun rose, giving warmth, a dying god’s gift, the promise of renewal as it moved inexorably toward the autumn cycle.

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Marcus opened sleepy eyes to find his lover’s face very, very close. Thomas was leaning over him, one hand braced on the other side of Marcus’ hip, his dark chocolate brown eyes studying Marcus’ face intently. Leaning in further, he kissed him.

Marcus raised his hand, intending to cup his head, feel the short hair layered over his knuckles, but Thomas’ hand closed over his wrist, held it in the air, his fingers straightening to meet him palm to palm. Then, slowly, Thomas eased both their hands back to the blanket as he shifted and laid his body fully on Marcus’.

Marcus felt a stirring in his lower belly, a need to change their positions, but he was too drugged by sun and the tranquility of their surroundings. He could lie here, for just another moment. One more. And one more.

“Christ, you’re going to kill me,” he muttered.

As Thomas’ lips coaxed his open, his tongue was seduced into erotic play that had his vitals coiling. When Thomas increased the pressure behind the kisses, the passion behind them, his hand dropped to Marcus’ throat, squeezing. Marcus responded

somewhere between a groan and a feral growl of warning. Even as he did his body was lifting up, back arching to bump Thomas’ chest. When he would have freed his hand, Thomas’ grip slid to his other wrist, just caressing the pulse.

“Let me,” Thomas murmured. “Just let me.”

Marcus wondered if it was only incidental that John Mayer’s languorous
Gravity
was playing, the words and tone so appropriate.

Thomas’ hand cupped the side of Marcus’ head, fingers sliding into his thick hair, caressing his scalp, capturing strands and stroking, his body rubbing Marcus’ in the slow blues rhythm of the song, chest to chest. Groin to groin, hard, urgent need grinding against the same.

“Wait…” Thomas’ whisper held Marcus where he was. When Thomas moved his

hand, thumb tracing his ribs, then shifting between them to open Marcus’ shirt, Marcus left his hand lying on the grass. Fingers half curled, but palm up, suggesting surrender.

He’d never let a lover make love to him like this, but this was Thomas, his pet. His slave. Thomas could do anything he wanted to him, because Thomas was his. And yet, Thomas had never been as bold, as confident as he was at this moment, taking the lead.

Thomas moved his mouth to go for the throat, the sweet pocket of Marcus’

collarbone, loosening his hold on Marcus’ other hand as he cupped his jaw to trace vulnerable arteries with his tongue. He caressed the smooth muscle of Marcus’ chest.

The flat hard nipples, the silken hair that formed a thin line down the distinct aisle between the washboard abs.

He kissed, not down, but along Marcus’ shoulder, teasing the line of bone and

muscle there, rubbed his cheek along it. Raised his head enough to study it, trace it before he turned to stare into Marcus’ eyes, peer there intently as he caressed that part of his anatomy. He moved his hips, a slow, dragging stroke, rubbing his turgid cock against Marcus’.

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That was all Marcus could handle. His control broke. Seizing the back of Thomas’

head, he rolled them, crushing his mouth to Thomas’ as he reversed their positions.

Thomas’ hands clamped down on his ass and squeezed with bruising force, fingers teasing the crease. Marcus pulled at Thomas’ waistband, wanting to tear his clothes from him, right now, now,
now
. Goading him to a sexual frenzy with those sexy touches and slumberous eyes, touching him as if he owned him, as if…

When Marcus rose to his knees, Thomas reached for his pants, opening them and

reaching in, his eyes now dark and dangerous. It was the unexpected version of

Thomas, the one who knew what he wanted and could have it, who closed his hand on the heated steel of Marcus’ cock. Marcus let his head fall back on his shoulders at that touch and then he caught the hand that was threatening to make him spew at any

moment.

“Take off your jeans, pet,” he managed hoarsely. “Down on your side on the

blankets.” He caressed Thomas’ throat, squeezing it deliberately, making it clear who belonged to whom. “I want to see the marks I left on you.”

“You could see them long before last night,” Thomas responded.

“Off,” Marcus growled. “Now.”

Thomas stood up on his knees, unbuckled his belt, slid it free and opened the jeans, shoving them down his thighs. Keeping his gaze on Marcus’ face, he went down on his side. Marcus wondered if the extent of his own need, the dangerous power of it, was in his expression.

“The shirt.”

Thomas slid it from his shoulders, rising a bit. Reaching forward, Marcus caught the collar, damp with sweat from Thomas’ nape, and pulled it all the way free. As he let it fall to the ground, the breeze folding it over, he traced the marks on Thomas’ back and ass left from the flogger.

A still, heavy moment. As he touched him, Marcus wasn’t sure of Thomas’ thoughts about last night. But Thomas was looking up at the clouds shifting, his hand opening and closing on the grass next to him. “My back is sore this morning,” he said, low. “I liked it. Liked knowing it was you who made it that way. It turned me on to remember it. And though you’ve been trying to keep your distance, you couldn’t keep yourself from running your hands over them this morning, pressing down so I’d feel it. You liked it.”

“I needed to mark you. Fuck you. Always feel like you’re mine.”

“I am. I’ve already told you that.” Thomas curled his fingers around the belt he’d pulled loose, held it up to him, extending an arm whose the muscles were bunched with tension. “Mark me again.”

God, Marcus didn’t think he could get harder, but he did, just from those three words.

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Thomas saw his reaction. He shrugged out of his clothes fully and then rolled to his stomach naked. Rising on all fours, he deliberately and provocatively adjusted his thighs open, raising his ass for whatever Marcus wanted to do to him.

Pure lean muscles, a farmer’s tan, his head bent down, waiting for Marcus’ bidding.

Lust could burn, Marcus knew that, but he’d never felt it threaten to incinerate every rational part of him, all the careful, civilized shields he had that made him a functioning member of society, leaving this savage, rutting Neanderthal. Whatever propelled his next actions, thought had been pushed away in favor of sheer response, reaction. He needed, wanted, couldn’t hardly breathe with the power of it.

Doubling the belt over in his hand, he brought it down on Thomas’ tight muscular ass, the left buttock. It clenched further. He put his hand on the heat of the mark, the heat of the man beneath, and his own hand trembled. He strapped him again, both cheeks, several strikes on the upper back, layering the marks still sensitive from the flogging.

When Thomas drew in a breath through his teeth, it pierced straight to Marcus’

heart. Bending down, he laid his lips on one of the marks as Thomas’ shoulders flexed under the caress, his head turning to see him, to brush his forehead with his jaw.

Marcus threaded the belt under him and wound both ends over his knuckles. Bringing the strap in tight across the flat expanse of Thomas’ lower abdomen, he trapped his cock against his belly and made Thomas groan from the punishing friction.

Then he wrenched a deeper groan from him when Marcus thrust in, using the hold

on the belt to hold Thomas rigid as he rammed in hard and fast, pistoning, taking them both up.

Marcus needed it, needed it like air, needed some outlet for the emotion that

clogged in his throat and made his heart want to explode every time he touched

Thomas, kissed him, saw his smile and knew he would go. Leaving a growing

emptiness that might dull in time but would kill Marcus in the end nonetheless, because one simply couldn’t exist without the other half of one’s own body.

Marcus let go of the belt and dropped, covering him and taking hold of Thomas’

cock, gripping the pulsing weight of it. A second later Thomas was coming, falling to one elbow. Marcus followed him down, face pressed to his neck as he worked him, felt his seed make his own hand slick, his knuckles wet. Thomas’ ass muscles clenched him like a fist as well, making Marcus wish he could stay hard forever, make Thomas come like this forever.

“Don’t you hold back on me,” Thomas rasped. “Let go.”

Marcus tightened his fist, his other hand on Thomas’ hip, clutching as his hips slammed against his ass, making Thomas feel the full size of him, pushing against his thighs, driving him to both elbows now. Marcus rolled them to their sides on the blanket so he could keep pumping him, moving Thomas with the force of it, his hand dipping to grip his buttock and open him up further.

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“God…” As Thomas gasped it, Marcus set his teeth into his shoulder, letting go, jetting into him.

Sometimes when it was like this, Marcus felt every sensation as if his senses were completely open. A space of total spiritual clarity, no shields against the detailed sensations of earth, air, fire and water moving around him. Of flesh, Thomas’ thighs against his own, the quiver of his buttocks, the beautiful way his shoulders and chest lifted and expanded from his breath, reminding Marcus of a butterfly slowly opening and closing his wings. He could almost imagine the patterns and markings on Thomas’