Dark Soul, Vol. 2

by Aleksandr Voinov

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  About Dark Soul Vol. 2

  Dedication

  Dark Whisper

  Dark Night

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Aleksandr Voinov

  About the Author

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 6652

  Hillsborough, NJ 08844

  http://www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Dark Soul (Vol 2)

  Copyright © 2011 by Aleksandr Voinov

  Cover Art by Jordan Taylor, http://jordantaylorbooks.com

  Editor: Rachel Haimowitz

  Layout: L.C. Chase

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at chris@riptidepublishing.com.

  ISBN: 978-1-937551-13-1

  Printed in the United States of America

  First edition

  November, 2011

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  The second volume in the Dark Soul series features the stories “Dark Whisper” and “Dark Night.”

  In “Dark Whisper,” Gianbattista may have broken Silvio’s heart and sent him off to the States, but he’s still just a phone call away. When Silvio returns from a sex shop with a bag full of goodies, Gianbattista can’t resist topping his boy one more time, even if they are 4,000 miles apart.

  In “Dark Night,” the Russian problem comes back to haunt Stefano, and when a dark encounter leaves him bloody and broken, Silvio knows just the right way to ease his pain.

  To Jordan Taylor, who translates what’s in my head into real images. I’m not sure how you do it, but I hope you’ll never stop. Thank you.

  Silvio froze when the phone rang, his blood crystallizing in a split second. He stared at the curtains, sensed the windows behind them. No movement, no hint of danger.

  Billowing curtains. Night outside. Phone ringing in a dark house. Drawing him to the living room. Something striking him over the head.

  Diego Carbone, stepping close with his skull-and-death grin, flicking his mobile shut.

  The phone rang again. Just like then, his blood unfroze, only faster because Diego was dead. He still checked the doors and windows, wishing he had a gun he could pull like a talisman. A lot of people didn’t live to learn from a mistake.

  He exhaled and lifted the receiver, settling his shoulders and back against the nearest wall from which he could keep his eyes on the windows. “Yes.”

  “Silvio.”

  Silvio blinked, then his legs relaxed and he let his head fall back. Gianbattista. “What do you want?”

  “To talk to you.”

  Silvio huffed laughter. Yet another ghost from the past. “No, what do you want?”

  “Hear how you’re doing over there in America. It’s been two weeks now. How are you ‘getting on’?”

  This house has too many windows. “Or—who am I getting it on with?”

  Silence. Bull’s-eye. Or Gianbattista was drawing him out, prodding and provoking until Silvio allowed that cold anger to discharge. As much as Gianbattista enjoyed walking around with long metal rods in a thunderstorm, he never got burned, and why was that?

  Silvio shook his head. “I’m doing well. How are you?”

  “That’s better.” Silvio heard Gianbattista’s smile and it almost warmed him. He remembered the crow’s feet, the silvery hair at the temple he had often brushed aside with his nose or lips when he’d been too lazy to touch Gianbattista with his hands. Remembered being held close against Gianbattista’s shoulder, feeling safe and at home, and willing to pay whatever price it took.

  “Here, it’s the same old, same old,” Gianbattista said. “People call me on the phone, I sit on the veranda and read the newspaper.”

  And in the evening you sit in the office, drinking wine, gently slowing down those million little cogs in your brain that spin and spin, even during sex.

  “Anything interesting?”

  “The world is going to hell, of course.” Gianbattista chuckled. “Luca has scared me enough that even I have bought gold now.”

  Luca, the slimy Milanese banker who laundered the money by running it through three or four offshore accounts and then a number of private Swiss and Italian banks that, he boasted, were direct descendants of the banks that had financed the Crusades. Seemed all money ever did was buy weapons and men, Gianbattista had whispered to Silvio one night.

  “You going to tell me to cut up my credit card?”

  “God, no, Silvio, of course not.” Gianbattista chuckled and leafed through some paper. “Although your credit card statements have arrived.”

  Ah, the reason for the call. Silvio settled in a chair, still somewhat on edge but gradually relaxing into the familiar game. He’d have to do something about the windows. Or the phone. He didn’t need a landline. The mobile phone on silent was distraction enough without being bait in a potential death trap.

  “Let’s see. There’s your new bike.”

  “I left the old one at Fiumicino.”

  “Is it still there?”

  “Who cares?”

  “I gave you that bike.”

  “Yes, for my twenty-second birthday,” Silvio growled. “That was almost a goodbye present, wasn’t it?” So fuck the bike.

  “You loved that bike.”

  “Don’t use that word.” You have no fucking right.

  Silence again. His pulse was pounding up to his throat now, creating that hollow ache just under his jaw. Adrenaline pumping. This stage of their quarrelling wasn’t pleasant, or at least he didn’t enjoy it anymore.

  “The customizations cost more than the bike. At that price, you could have had one built for you.”

  “This option was faster. I feel grounded without wheels.”

  “When will it be delivered?”

  “I’ll pick it up in a week or so.”

  “With the leather suit?”

  “Oh yes.” Silvio bared his teeth. “Kevlar-plated, matching the paintjob.” Just replacing what he’d lost when he’d left Italy with nothing but a pair of sunglasses and the suit he’d bought at the airport.

  “Hmm, and then this . . .” Another pause, as if Gianbattista had to find the item on the statement. “A few hundred dollars spent in a place called ‘Pleasure Dom’—is that a spelling mistake?”

  “No.”

  “Not that you’d
necessarily be able to tell . . .” Gianbattista chided.

  “Are we discussing my dyslexia or what I bought? I got the bag right here, in the living room. Let’s see.” Silvio pulled the bag from beside the couch where it had lived. He’d been too busy to use any of it, but he ensured that the plastic rustled as he dug in. “Lube. They had a special three-for-two on that.” He laughed tonelessly; he could have heard a pin drop over in Italy.

  “Dildos. One glass, one steel. I do like them hard.” Silvio lifted one of the boxes out of the bag and opened it. Maybe he liked steel because of the guns. Maybe that was why Stefano’s trick had rattled him so much. Of all the things he’d put up his ass, the Desert Eagle had been a novelty. The only use for that ridiculous gun, too. Who shot with that apart from movie hit men and fucking ugly gangster rappers?

  “Like that time when you put the dildo into cold water first.” Silvio leaned back in the chair, holding that memory for a while, the cold steel breaching him after plenty of preparation . . . to be so cold and so horny at the same time would have seemed impossible.

  “I didn’t get the impression that was one of your favorites.” Gianbattista’s wistfulness hurt somewhere in Silvio’s chest. Way to distract them both from the credit card statement. Which Gianbattista would pay. He wouldn’t even feel that money.

  “Getting off is my favorite.”

  Gianbattista laughed again, softly. “At my age, other things are more urgent.”

  “Don’t say that word.” Not young, not old, not age. Fuck you, Battista.

  “What else is in that bag?”

  “Clamps, a few cock rings. CBT stuff.” Silvio rustled the metal implements just for Gianbattista’s benefit.

  “Did the shop assistant flirt with you?”

  Silvio grinned. “He said he wouldn’t have pegged me as a sub.”

  “How did he guess that?”

  “Apparently, in his experience, the Doms go for the whips and canes first.” Silvio allowed himself to relax enough to switch over to the couch, regarding the tools of pleasure spread out on the coffee table. He dropped one hand to his groin, wondering where Gianbattista’s was. “He gave me some addresses for local clubs.”

  “Will you go?”

  “No.” Being tied up and caned was only fun when he could be one hundred percent sure Diego was dead. But sometimes he forgot that, or it was hard to remember. Gianbattista had gotten him to trust him with his life, even after he’d learned what that meant: being defenseless in a world that birthed men like Diego. Knowing one existed meant knowing there could be others.

  “Who’s going to do that for you now, Silvio?” Silvio’s skin prickled with gooseflesh. The same gentle voice Gianbattista used when hitting him, fucking him, or just making him wait and pant. His body responded immediately, and his hackles rose. He couldn’t believe Gianbattista would do this to him.

  “I don’t need it.”

  But two weeks without hadn’t been easy. There were two kinds of releases in his life. Three, with the killing. Speed and sex. He couldn’t wait to take the bike out for a spin and break in the new wheels, and the other thing—

  “How far are you with Marino?”

  “He’s treating me well. Introduced me to his wife, got me a place to live.”

  “Has he touched you?”

  “Since then? No. He wants to, though.” Silvio opened his belt. “How he’s looking at me. He wants me bad.”

  Gianbattista made a small sound, giving Silvio a fair idea of where his hand was. “I wonder what he wants to do to me. He’s not just gentle; there’s something fierce in him.”

  “He’s a boss, he has to be decisive and strong or he couldn’t hold his position.”

  “I like that.”

  “I know you do.”

  Silvio pulled down his zipper. “So you imagine him and me together?”

  “You don’t?” Gianbattista breathed laughter in his ear. “He’s your type, and he hasn’t yet fallen at your feet, so he should be nigh-irresistible to you.”

  Silvio laughed. “If he were, I’d already have had him.”

  In a way, though, he had. He’d gone to Stefano to see what the man would do. If not for that goon Vince, Stefano would have woken up with his cock down Silvio’s throat; Stefano had wanted him from the first glance. After all, most “straight” men could get their heads around pounding ass, especially in the dark.

  “Maybe you’re more of a stalker and hunter these days than you were . . . and have learned to delay gratification.”

  “Fuck delays.” Silvio pushed his fly apart and pulled down the black briefs underneath. “Found a new guy? There must be some sweet sixteen-year-old boy who wouldn’t mind getting fucked by the local padrone.”

  “No. And I don’t anticipate finding any, either.” Gianbattista inhaled deeply. “If I did find somebody, he’d have to have your kind of maturity . . . and few boys do.”

  The two-hundred-year-old soul. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought it up again. Just petty vengeance for Gianbattista dumping him, when they’d been headed toward separation for months—well, okay, a year. All Gianbattista had done was finally sever the last thread, much like slowly prying open the fingers of a man dangling from a cliff. Agonizing struggle with an inevitable outcome. “But right now . . . you miss me.”

  “Of course I do. I’ve always missed you, whether you went to fight a war or fuck a stranger in some back alley.”

  Silvio closed his eyes, imagined the villa, the darkness so soothing there, nights that were never fully dark because of the stars in the sky. He’d never been able to get over the fact that there were so many stars out there. “I miss you, too, Battista.”

  “I’m right here.” The conspirator’s voice, the lover’s voice that whispered all the dirty things he craved to hear. Gianbattista could find a replacement so easily. Hell, thousands of underage-looking twinks were ready to do whatever it took—for the money, or because Gianbattista was gorgeous and the most attentive lover any man could want—charming, extremely educated, and often very funny.

  “Yeah, so am I.” Silvio ran a hand over his belly up to his chest, willing it to increase his arousal. “That’s why you called?”

  “Many reasons. But mostly to hear your voice.”

  Fucking bastard. Silvio pressed his lips together.

  “I can lose your body, but I don’t want to lose the rest. Not all of it, at least. I want to stay close to you.”

  You are. Silvio lifted a leg up, then pulled off his shoes and dropped them. He could still make the most of a fucked-up situation. The tinge of arousal in Gianbattista’s voice fired up his own imagination. For all his talk of old age—and fuck him for that, fuck him twice and three times for going on and on about it—Battista was patient and controlled as a lover, with plenty of stamina where it counted.

  “What else is there to me?”

  “Your bravery and your loyalty, your passion for the moment.” Gianbattista’s voice wrapped him in love and grace and safety when all those were tenuous and illusionary. He didn’t often like to be fooled or played, but with Battista it didn’t matter what was real and fake.

  I don’t care as long as you love me.

  He’d been just barely eighteen when Battista had warned him that people would always see him as the lesser of them if they appeared anywhere together. He’d either be a killer or a toy, but never a man in his own right—not as long as Battista was close.

  “What’s on your mind?” Gianbattista asked.

  “Right now I think you still want me.”

  “I want to see you happy, Silvio. What are you doing?”

  “Trying not to jerk off.”

  “Oh, not on my account. Please, go ahead.”

  Silvio laughed. “You gonna talk me through it?”

  “Get undressed.” The voice, so sensuous, now held that edge of command that made Silvio’s heart constrict with pleasant shock.

  “Already got rid of my pants.”

  “The shirt
, too.”

  Silvio straightened long enough to pull his shirt over his head and change hands on the handset. The plastic was sweaty in his fingers. “Done.”

  “Take the glass dildo.”

  “Do I get lube this time?”

  “Just take it.”

  Silvio unwrapped it from its package, ran his fingers along the bulbous head and the thick base. Not exactly a beginner’s tool, but if he’d ever been a beginner, that was so long ago even the memory had faded. “Got it. It’s . . . big.”

  “Place it somewhere close you can see it. You have two minutes to get ready.”

  Silvio grinned and lay back on the couch, pushed his shirt under his ass and lifted his legs. Now comfortable, one hand playing with his balls, the other stroking himself, all gentle and soft, which failed to really get him going. It felt nice, but he’d need more to get off. He reached over and took a dollop of the lube. He could still make this good for himself. Pain wasn’t the same when he was on his own.

  “What are you doing over there?” Silvio asked to break the silence.

  “I’m imagining you, listening to how nervous you are.”

  “I’m not. Very.” Silvio pushed two slick fingers into himself, canted his hips just so, pushed deeper, and exhaled on the jolt of pleasure. “Shit, that’s good.”

  “We’ve barely started.” Gianbattista breathed close to his ear. “Did you say nipple clamps?”

  “I did. Shit.”

  “Put them on.”

  Silvio reached into the bag, found two of them, and cupped his pec in one hand, pulled on the nipple and rolled it, the sharp pleasure tightening his body. Reluctantly, he opened the teeth of that thing, and even more reluctantly allowed it to close around his nipple. It hurt, but the sensation went right to his cock. “One.”

  Gianbattista had often bit him in the nipples when he’d fucked him face to face, and Silvio opened his legs wider before he twisted his free nipple. The first clamp had already heightened the sensitivity on the other side. One wire in his body clearly connected these two—and his lungs and cock. Grimacing, he released the clamp around the second nipple, and arched with the discomfort. “I want you inside . . . Battista.”