Strongman

by Denise Rossetti

  When Fort couldn’t immediately summon a reply, the other man’s face hardened and he shrugged off Fort’s restraining hand. “Fine. I’ll relieve you of my company.” He turned away.

  “No.” Fort spun him around, holding him in place without effort. “I was…” he ground the word out under his breath, “scared.”

  “Twister, why?” Griff’s forehead creased, then his teeth flashed. “Ah,” he said, on a note of discovery. A devilishly slanted brow quirked.

  “How can you do that? Night after night?”

  Griff shrugged, his dark eyes fathomless in the moonlight. “My family’s been in the Fair for generations. I started as a child and never stopped. Scared, huh?” He stepped right into Fort’s body until they were chest to chest. “For me?”

  The iron band cramping Fort’s guts tightened. Very deliberately, he pushed the disturbing memory aside. Griff’s lithe body, somersaulting in the shadows of the Big Top, so very, very high above the unforgiving floor. But the edgy sensation had settled in his gut, the unresolved tension quivering in his muscles. He pulled away and got his feet moving. “No,” he managed. “I was worried you’d puncture Katahaya. Terrible waste, that.”

  “True enough. C’mon, I’m starved.” Griff nudged Fort’s arm with his shoulder. “Ember’s wagon is down here and mine’s just beyond.” After that, he said nothing more, but he hummed under his breath the rest of the way.

  Like Fort’s, Griff’s van was in the outer circle of the Fair, closest to the surrounding trees. Unlike his, it was relatively new and big enough to have a separate sleeping area. Positively spacious in comparison with his own shabby quarters. But Fort wouldn’t have swapped, not for anything. Absently, he changed his stance, easing the weight on his bad leg, while he eyed the width of the bed with some degree of envy.

  “Like it?” Griff pulled a folding table away from the wall and set the steaming dish on it.

  Fort picked up the shirt slung over the back of a chair. “Not very tidy, are you?” he said severely, folding it in a couple of rapid moves. Order was always reassuring, especially military order. His fingers flexed, gripping the fabric, creasing it. Lufra, he knew right now he’d never be able to watch another show, not if it turned him into a gibbering idiot the way this one had done.

  Griff watched his hands, apparently fascinated. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not. Put it on the dresser and let’s eat.”

  Ember’s noodle dish disappeared rapidly while Fort and Griff thrashed out the implications of Valaressa’s latest treaty with the Children of the Mother. Fort stretched his bad leg under the table, trying to get comfortable, as the tumbler kept up the lively banter. Still arguing, Griff cleared the plates, brewed roberry and dug out a squat bottle of Aetherian brandy.

  Fort’s brows rose. “This a special occasion?”

  Griff thunked the bottle down on the table and put his hands on his hips. He was still wearing those gods-be-damned tights. Fort hauled his gaze back to the tumbler’s face, but that was worse, because Griff was smiling and there was something so hot, so tender and teasing in his eyes, that Fort had to set his jaw against the surge of pained arousal.

  But all Griff said was, “I thought it might settle your nerves for the music lesson.”

  “Why, you little—!” Fort rose slowly, deliberately, using his height, looming over the table, over Griff. “My nerves don’t need fucking settling. And to hell with music lessons. I told you I don’t—”

  Griff chuckled. “Does you good, you know.”

  Fort gripped the edge of the table so his hands couldn’t get away from him, grab the tumbler and shake him ‘til his teeth rattled. Hungrily, he eyed the bruises on Griff’s throat. “What does?” he grated.

  “Being teased. No one’s brave enough, are they?”

  No one cares enough.

  He came back to himself to hear Griff calling his name, obviously not for the first time. The other man gripped his arm and Fort realized he must have been staring into space for some minutes. “Here.” A glass of brandy was thrust into his hand and he downed it in two long swallows, gasping as the fiery liquor coursed down his throat. “Better?”

  He nodded. Griff had slid an arm around his waist and snugged himself right under Fort’s shoulder, propping him up. The whole side of his body, from neck to knee, felt overheated.

  Absently, he ruffled the younger man’s hair and disengaged himself. He cleared his throat. “I’m fine. But I…ah…don’t have the harp. I’d better go.” Before I do something you’ll enjoy and I’ll regret.

  But as he turned, a vise of pain gripped the back of his thigh. Grunting a curse, he reached out blindly, gripping the doorframe so hard the wood creaked.

  “Fort, you don’t—” Griff broke off. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “Cramp,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Old wound.”

  “Twister’s balls! Here, lean on me.”

  Somehow, Griff maneuvered him to the bed, where he fell facedown like a toppled tree. The tumbler grabbed one boot and wrestled it off.

  Fort clamped a hand over the back of his bad thigh, feeling the muscles standing proud, hard as iron. “What the hell…do you think…you’re doing?” he growled.

  “Helping you,” panted Griff, hauling off the second boot. “Roll over.”

  “It…passes…eventually. Leave it.”

  “No. Roll over!” Hard hands pushed at his good hip and he rolled enough for Griff to tug at the laces of his trews.

  “Don’t.” He gripped Griff’s wrist and saw the tumbler flinch. Carefully, he loosened his fingers, breathing heavily through his nose.

  “Gods, man, your precious virtue’s safe! Acrobats get muscle cramps all the time. I know what to do, all right?” Griff grabbed the waistband of Fort’s trews and paused. “But if you don’t trust me…”

  Chapter Six

  Hssrda (sing. Hssrdan):

  Hybrid race, saurian-human. Most authorities believe the Hssrda were created as slave-soldiers by the Firsters, using the magical craft referred to in the ancient texts as “gene-splicing”. (See Firsters—Magic) However, popular legend recalls a single individual, the so-called “Mad Mage”. (See Ballads, Traditional).

  Excerpt from the Great Encyclopedia, compiled by Miriliel the Burnished.

  By way of an answer, Fort rolled onto his stomach and raised his hips, biting his lip against the pain. Griff ripped his trews off and tossed them aside.

  The silence was absolute.

  “Fuck,” whispered Griff, almost reverentially. “How did—?”

  Well, he hadn’t thought the sight of his beautiful ass would be the thing to render the other man speechless. “Hssrdan claw.”

  Griff ran hard, warm palms up his calf and Fort tensed. “Relax if you can,” said the tumbler, and Fort would have laughed if he didn’t hurt so much.

  “Filthy,” he mumbled. “Got…infected.” Griff climbed off the bed. A drawer slid open and shut and the mattress dipped as he returned, positioning himself between Fort’s legs. His fingers now slick with oil, the tumbler dug in with strong thumbs, under the curve of Fort’s buttocks, where the scar began. Agony rang bright, merciless bells down every nerve. “Fuck!”

  “Sorry, love,” said Griff, and Fort did laugh then.

  The next twenty minutes were exceedingly unpleasant. Griff was skilled, absolutely merciless and much, much stronger than Fort had imagined. As he probed and worked the scar tissue, the iron-hard ball of pain unraveled until it was no more than a trembling in the muscles, a residual weakness.

  Griff climbed off the bed and returned to kneel by Fort’s head.

  Fort opened one eye and grunted.

  “Drink up.” Griff shoved a full glass of brandy in his hand. “You deserve it. Do you know you didn’t make a sound?”

  “Should go,” mumbled Fort, the brandy warming his stomach.

  Griff’s hands skimmed up the calf of his good leg. And Lufra, he’d oiled his fingers again! They slid, strong
and sure, the thumbs tracing the muscle all the way from ankle to knee.

  Fort opened his mouth to protest, but Griff forestalled him. “Shut up,” he said savagely. “Just…shut up and let me take care of you. I’ll only touch your back, I swear.”

  He followed the long muscles up to Fort’s buttocks, pushing hard against their resilience. “You’re so tense. You’re pulled tighter than the high wire.” Expertly, he began to pummel, pound and stroke, pausing every now and then to push Fort’s shirt out of the way so he could dribble more oil onto his spine. With a snort of impatience, Fort reared up and ripped it off himself.

  He heard a sharply indrawn breath. “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “Scars.” A pause, then Griff’s voice came again, tightly controlled. “I saw them that day in the ablutions tent. I shouldn’t be so… Gods, when I think… So many…”

  Fort chuckled painfully. “More on the front.”

  The ensuing silence grew so thick he could almost hear Griff thinking. Firm fingertips traced the path of the Hssrdan halberd that had skidded off his ribs. Another pause and the tumbler grunted with effort as he dug into the hard muscle next to Fort’s spine.

  He knew it must be a particularly insidious form of madness, but it was beyond good to be the focus of so much concentrated attention. Griff was still hurting him, but in a good way, a way that both tortured and relieved. Fort rolled his shoulders under the talented fingers, hoping he hadn’t moaned aloud.

  But the best part was that Griff’s touch was so direct, so purposeful—so matter-of-fact—that his gods-be-damned cock was behaving itself. His lashes fluttered and he yawned, his mind all muffled and muddled by the dragging pull of sleep and brandy, the comfort of it all.

  Griff ran his fingers up over Fort’s nape and into his hair. He rubbed soothingly over his scalp. “Sleep if you want,” he whispered. “It’s a big bed.”

  Fort drifted away, feeling pleasantly loose and cosseted.

  He woke in the cool, gray light of predawn, lying on his side, utterly relaxed. Stretching, he enjoyed the feel of smooth sheets against bare skin, the lifting sensation of a healthy morning erection. Someone was curled into his back, a firm, smooth, breathing warmth all along his spine.

  Fort’s smile congealed. Instantly, he was fully awake. Battle-ready.

  Ah, fuck! Ruler God, it wasn’t true, he wasn’t—

  Hardly daring to breathe, he shifted carefully to his back. Griffid Ringman snorted in his sleep and slid onto his stomach. He burrowed closer, his gold-brown curls tousled, his face hidden. When Fort tried to move aside, Griff followed, pressing his stubbled cheek to Fort’s biceps.

  His heart began to thump, uncomfortably hard, the edgy beat echoed by the pulse beating low in his belly. He knew he was naked. And with absolute clarity, he could recall the sensation of Griff’s chest pressed into his back. And lower… His breath hitched as he remembered a half-hard cock, wedged happily between his buttocks, knees tucked in behind his.

  Fort shot upright. Clearly a healthy sleeper, Griff didn’t stir.

  He couldn’t stop looking.

  No one would know.

  His abrupt movement dislodged the sheet, baring Griff to the hips. The fabric clung precariously, draping the taut curve of his muscular ass. Please Lufra, just a few moments of guilty, shameful pleasure and then he’d slip away and leave the other man to sleep.

  Moving cautiously, he seized a pillow and jammed it between his back and the wall, his brain a riot of conflicting thoughts. Griff nuzzled into his hip, his breath hot and moist, and Fort froze, sensation rippling through him, but the tumbler slumbered on.

  Ruler God, the man was finely made! The pale light loved him, caressing his shoulders, his biceps, pooling in the small of his back, just above the hem of the sheet. Never in his wildest dreams had Fort thought he’d call a man beautiful and mean it, but there was no other word to describe the indented sweep of Griff’s spine, the smooth roll of strong, healthy muscle under glowing, tawny skin, the symmetry of his shoulders, the mouthwatering curves of—

  Fort swallowed and nudged the sheet down a scant inch with one foot. It slid, gathered momentum and subsided around the tumbler’s thighs, exposing the globes of his buttocks, dusted lightly with downy golden hair.

  Ah, shit! Fort found he’d grabbed the pulsing heaviness of his cock in one hand. When had that happened? He gripped it, brutally hard. All he could feel and hear was the regular rhythm of Griff’s breath, a counterpoint to the thundering in his ears. His heart was trying to knock itself loose from under his ribs.

  Now he became acutely conscious of the heat of the other man’s body, of the clean, male smell of his sleep-warmed flesh. The throbbing sensation intensified, as though a temple gong was ringing right through his body, the sound gathering in his aching balls and leaking out of the cock he gripped with desperate, slippery fingers.

  One stroke, just one. That was all it would take, Lufra help him. And because of the way the tumbler was lying, he couldn’t even see Griff’s genitals.

  Griff grunted something into Fort’s hip. Then, as if he’d heard the big man’s thought, he rolled over with a grumbling sigh and was still again, one arm flung up above his head on the pillows.

  Fort bit his lip so hard, he tasted blood. Why? Lufra, damn You, why are You doing this to me, You Holy Bitch? What have I done?

  He dug a thumb viciously into the base of his cock, gripped his testicles and squeezed. Greedily, he devoured the tumbler with his eyes, such a feast laid out before him he scarcely knew where to begin. Though…

  Griff’s morning erection reared out of a neat thatch of sparse, gingery curls, a satiny column roped with a tracery of blue veins. The head had emerged completely, the collar soft and wrinkled because Griff wasn’t cut, unlike Fort. The smooth, pink dome of it was bisected by a slit that dribbled a bead of fluid. Gods, it looked so lickable, like a shy, ripe fruit, the summer’s first off the gaeta vine, the sweet ones you gobbled by the handful.

  Fort’s tongue felt too big for his mouth. The tumbler’s balls were drawn up close to his body, plump and high, so lightly furred as to be almost bare, so he could see how rosy and round they were.

  He bit back the fellwolf roar of rage and confusion that rose in his throat. Ruler God, what did I do to deserve this torture?

  His gaze ranged over Griff’s torso, over the saddle of muscle that was his abdomen, the diagonal notches of his hips, to the flat nipples nestled in the light, silky mat on his chest. They were broader than Fort’s, not as dark, more a rosy-gold shade of brown.

  What was that?

  A white line straggled over one hipbone and down into the delectable crease that led to— Frowning, Fort leaned forward, his nose three inches from Griff’s skin. Fortunately, he’d stopped breathing some time ago, so he wasn’t going to wake the tumbler. And it didn’t seem to make any difference to the way the musky scent of the other man’s genitals addled his wits.

  It looked like— It was! The mark of a blade. Someone had knifed Griff, dangerously close to a large artery. The bastard had hurt him, made him bleed, cry out. Nearly killed him.

  The room went dark, the walls pressing in. Fort had walked with death every day of his life as a mercenary. It was the coin he dealt, too easily sometimes when the cold dark sucked him in. He’d stared into so many startled eyes as he jerked his blade free, watching the life force drain away, the anger, the shock, the protest—shit, this can’t be happening to me! He thought he’d become inured to the shocking fragility of life.

  But a world without Griff! The concept rocked him to his foundations. Even though he knew there could be nothing between them, somehow, the knowledge that Griff existed, living his life at the Fair, with his dark heated gaze, his quick intelligence, his acerbic sense of humor—somehow, it had come to anchor everything that was.

  His flashing grin, the crooked tooth.

  His kindness, his care.

  Because that’s what he’d done last night, o
ffered his concern to Fort as a gift of, a gift of… The thought stuttered to a halt, resumed.

  More than lust and more than friendship.

  Go on, do it. Distinctly, he felt the warm, pressing sensation at the base of his spine, just as he had the first night in his little wagon. Lufra, I— The automatic protest collapsed as the heat increased. Shoved.

  Time and space seemed to compress for a single heartbeat, then two. When Fort came back to himself, he was leaning right into Griff’s body to brush the scar with his lips, his nose pressed into the tender pocket between hipbone and sectioned stomach muscles.

  Strong fingers speared into his hair. “A little to the left,” murmured Griff, his voice no more than a husky rasp. When Fort jerked up, his bristly jaw brushed the side of Griff’s bobbing shaft.

  “Twister!” hissed Griff, his hips arching off the mattress.

  Fort held him down, glaring into his face. “Who did this?” he rasped.

  “Careful.” Griff reached down and gripped Fort’s wrist. “I bruise easy.”

  With a muttered oath, Fort relaxed the hard fingers he’d sunk into Griff’s smooth thigh. “Who was it?”

  “Me.” Griff grinned, then sobered. “I made a mistake. The blades don’t forgive.”

  Unable to resist, Fort touched a forefinger to the pulse of the big artery there. “You came mighty close.”

  Griff hissed and his cock bobbed, growing even rosier as hot blood surged beneath the skin. “You are too,” he panted.

  Fort reared up and the sheet slithered right off his hips and slipped to the floor. He froze.

  Griff’s dark eyes heated and his tongue crept out to moisten his lips. He nodded at the most brutal erection Fort had ever experienced, jutting up over his belly, so proud and fat and long it ached with wanting. A brow arched. “All for me?”

  “Don’t—” The words strangled in Fort’s throat. Don’t tease, don’t flirt. I can’t bear it.

  Griff smiled, slow and lazy. “Fine.” He slid an open palm over his chest, rasped the small peak of one nipple with his thumb. “I’ll just lie here and…” The hand slipped down, over his ribs, his stomach. Fort ceased breathing. “Do what I’ve done every morning since you walked into the Big Top.”