by Qeturah Edli
He did not put his tongue inside, because James had not earned that, but Domingo licked James’s outside, spitting wax, until he was almost raw. He must have been down there for an hour, his thoughts off over some blissful horizon, brought back to the inn in Nassau only when James finally gave in and started pumping himself in his hand. Domingo paused and looked up at him.
“Did I say you could do that?”
James froze, red-cheeked and sweating, his streaked chest heaving, the tip of his dick dripping beads of precum.
“Please, sir…” he whispered past trembling lips as he gazed down at Domingo.
“Not yet.”
Domingo resumed his activity, bringing James to the edge of sanity. He loved how James clutched the sheets in his fists, tossed his head, and moaned over and over, his vocalizations getting louder the longer Domingo drew out his punishment.
“Please,” James cried. He slammed the mattress with his palms. “Please, for the love of God, let me do it! Please, sir!”
“Sit up,” Domingo ordered, and James, panting, obeyed. Domingo spit into his hand, grasped James’s dick, and began to stroke it slowly. “Now, what are you going to do at least four times every week when you’re back on the Royal Sovereign?”
“Four times?” James exclaimed, sounding horrified. Domingo saw his hands twitch toward his groin and then away.
“Clearly my assignment of three times wasn’t challenging enough for you.”
“Do you even know how hard it is to find lubricant on a ship?” Again with that saucy tone. Domingo wondered if James had any idea what it did to Domingo to hear him talk back.
“Are you a resourceful man, James?”
“But—”
“These are my requirements. I won’t fuck you if you can’t bear it.”
“I can bear it,” James muttered darkly.
Domingo stopped stroking him. “What did you say, James?”
James shifted his weight, almost as if he was about to thrust into Domingo’s hand, but stopped. He needed to come, badly.
“Fine. Yes. Four times weekly. Sir,” James agreed. Domingo resumed stroking him, a little faster this time.
“And what will you be doing four times weekly?”
“Putting my fingers up my ass, sir.”
“Fingers?” Domingo stressed the plural.
“I’ll start with none for a few weeks, just teasing, then work up to one, then two, then three, graduating to phallus-shaped objects or real cocks over a five-month period, sir,” James recited diligently.
This customized regime was excessive, and Domingo knew it. An achingly slow build was part of the fun.
“Good.” Domingo increased the speed of his strokes further.
“But I don’t want anyone else’s cock, I want yours, sir,” James murmured.
Domingo knew James preferred a dominant role with all other men. It was a point of pride for Domingo that he was the only one who could bring Naval Lieutenant James Richardson Flint, admiral’s son and promised eventual post-captain, to his knees. “Do as you like, just treat your body right.”
James bit his lip and gazed at Domingo. Sweat glistened on every inch of his body. “I’m going to come, sir,” he whispered. He looked on the verge of tears again.
“Not yet,” Domingo said, slowing his hand.
“You are a cruel man,” James whined, giving a strangled laugh. “Sir.”
“You like it. Say you like it.”
James bared his teeth. “I like it, sir…”
Domingo continued at a slow pace for another minute or two. Then, without warning, he pumped James hard and fast. It took less than fifteen seconds for James to come, and he thrust up into Domingo’s hand, breathless as he cried out in relief, body shuddering.
The experience of half a dozen encounters with James meant Domingo knew he would come harder the longer Domingo delayed his orgasm. James did not disappoint today, curling his toes and staring at the ceiling as he emitted a protracted cry before he collapsed onto the bed and lay still at Domingo’s side for almost a minute.
“Christ,” James said weakly, his voice shivering as he gazed at Domingo. “I’ve never known anyone as good as you. I think I went blind for a few seconds.” He sighed and licked his lips. “We need more coconut water, I think. I’m drained.”
Domingo could not contain his self-satisfied smile.
* * * *
They avoided the other Sovereigns for the rest of James’s leave, but caught up with Domingo’s old mates with James in plainclothes. Domingo was between ships, but it was only a matter of time before another worthy pirate vessel passed through Nassau. Tortuga might have had the most pirates per capita, but Nassau was not far behind, despite recent reform attempts. It was half the reason the Royal Sovereign was around.
No one among Domingo’s friends and acquaintances cared that he and James brushed shoulders and touched hands like lovers. A surprising number of them openly enjoyed the company of men, and they all knew Domingo had his own tastes, with no pattern to the men, women, and others he invited to his bed. Domingo wondered how many would be so tolerant if they knew James was a Naval Lieutenant.
“This a new beau?” Skip, Domingo’s closest friend from his days under Captain Black, asked when they met him for drinks. They had already shared the obligatory exchange of complaints about the unreasonably balmy weather, though Skip did not mind it as much as some.
Domingo glanced at James. “Not new. Pretty sure you met back in Port Royal. From a distance.”
Skip squinted at James. His gaze roamed from James’s face to his ass, then back. Skip grinned. “Oh, the Fort Charles arsonist, right.” Skip’s accent had an unmistakeable Cockney twang, and James had an unmistakeable ass. “You sit awful pretty,” he said, eyeing James’s impeccable posture.
Domingo could not remember if he told Skip that James was in the navy. He might have. Skip was small and twiggy, but Domingo would trust Skip with his life. “It’s an accident,” James said carelessly. If possible, he appeared to sweat a little more. He glanced at the door.
“Woah, Westminster!” Skip said, his freckly face lighting up at the sound of James’s accent. “What’s your name?”
“Jim,” James muttered. Domingo knew no one called James Jim, just like no one called Domingo Dom. “Yours?”
“Skip. It’s the same sort of name Jim, you know?”
“No.”
James was prone to snobbishness, and it came out more when he was uncomfortable. Domingo nudged his foot under the table. “Skip is my best friend,” Domingo prompted. He saw Skip’s chest swell with pride.
“Oh,” James said, looking at Skip with renewed interest. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Skip.” He extended his hand.
“Listen to this one,” Skip said, staring openly at James’s mouth. He did not notice James’s hand. “‘Mr. Skip’. God. Where did you say you picked him up first, Domingo?”
“The Abudante raid. He got me sentenced to death.”
“Right,” Skip said, nodding. “For all those crimes you committed. Wasn’t he the one who walked in on you murdering that rum baron?”
James retracted his hand and took a long sip from his tankard as he traced his throat above his cravat absently. No doubt the memory of the only time he was ever bested in a fight weighed heavily on him.
“Relax,” Skip said, apparently feeling the chill in the air. “If Domingo trusts you, I do too. God knows we all have enough dirt on each other it’s stalemate anyway.”
“Jolly good.”
Domingo put a grounding hand on James’s wrist. “He’s trying to make an honest man of me,” Domingo said to Skip.
“How’s that going?” Skip asked.
“Poorly,” James cut in dryly. “He’s an incorrigible sodomite.”
Domingo gave a low chuckle. “Your fault.”
“You two are going to rot my last good tooth,” Skip complained, grinning broadly.
The conversation flowed easier
after that.
* * * *
“Is Skip like us?” James asked later that evening in their inn room. He was lazing on the bed clad only in his distractingly snug breeches, watching Domingo as he washed.
Domingo, who always washed in the morning and evening, patted his face dry. Once, he was too self-conscious to be shirtless in front of James, but now he did not care. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Does he enjoy the company of men?”
Domingo snorted. He had never seen Skip with anyone but the most beautiful women in any given port on his arm. “Skip is the most notorious philanderer this side of the Atlantic.”
James cast him a look. “I thought that was you?”
“They used to call me Don Juan.” Domingo glided across the room and kissed James’s temple. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that name.”
“My fault?” James asked, sitting up and tracing the anchor tattoo over Domingo’s heart.
“Entirely.”
James next caressed the Chinese dragon inked into Domingo’s left forearm. His touch was whisper-soft.
“Are you going to tell me about how you got this?”
Domingo took hold of James’s finger and drew it to his mouth. He did not know if James was asking after the dragon, or the long scar it covered. “Not today.” He kissed James’s hand and sat next to him.
“Are you going to let me make you come?”
“Yes.”
Their encounters were not always rigid and structured, and Domingo did not always dominate them. That night, James took the lead, sucking Domingo dry and then a little more. He was good at whatever he put his mind to. Sex under James’s direction was less organized and more impulsive than Domingo’s natural tendency, but no less enjoyable. Domingo still smiled to recall the time they had woken, a two-tone tangle of limbs, behind a cart of pineapples in a market in Paramaribo wearing nothing but cocked hats and half a coconut shell each, the stranger they had shared the night previous nowhere to be found.
Even with the shutters open, it was too hot to sleep entwined, so they began the night at opposite sides of the bed. Sometime in the early morning, Domingo, dripping sweat, woke to find James spooning him. He did not have the heart to push him away.
Later that morning, Domingo met a freedman looking for able seamen at the docks. In a spontaneous decision, he signed onto a privateer. It was the same sort of work as piracy, but permissible under a letter of marque from the king. Domingo’s tattoos and motley assortment of unconcealed weaponry strapped to his person did most of the talking.
“Well, at least you’re on the right side of the law now,” James grumbled when Domingo told him that night. “Are you staying in the Caribbean?”
“I’d never sign onto a ship that would take me more than three hundred leagues from you,” Domingo said. Anything wider than the Gulf of Mexico was too much. He uncoiled a length of rope from his sea bag. It would be their last night together for a while, so Domingo had decided to treat them. James loved being tied up. “Now take off your clothes, kneel in the middle of the floor, and put your hands behind your back. Don’t say a word. I want to leave you with something to remember me by.”
He bruised James with his softest kisses.
Loose Id Titles by Qeturah Edeli
Pirate’s Spoils
The Highwayman Came Riding
* * * *
The HEARTWOOD Series
Prick of the Thistle
Sword Dance
Qeturah Edeli
Qeturah is an incorrigible recluse. She lived in Europe before she came to North America, but has never lived somewhere people can pronounce her name properly. She enjoys fencing, beekeeping, and caffeine. Her family is pleased she is putting her classical Swiss education to good use with her naughty novels.
Visit http://qeturahedeli.strikingly.com/ to find out more about the author, or join her GoogleGroup at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/qeturahedeli