Strain

by Amelia C. Gormley

  “Shit!” Xolani sprang up from her crouch. “Find a way into that building, now! Go! Go! Go!”

  As a single body, the rest of the squad dashed forward, heedless of their own safety. Darius grabbed Rhys to keep him from charging with them. The boy looked alarmed, and even Houtman seemed bewildered. Only instinct-deep habit kept Darius’s attention on his scanner and searching their exposed rear for threats. He needed to be in that dormitory with his people, though he already knew what they’d find in there.

  Heat signatures approached from the right, and then Gina and Jamie dropped down from the roof nearly on top of them. They both looked ill.

  “Well. There aren’t any shooters in the windows now.” Jamie dragged a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide and his lips bloodless.

  “What happened?” Rhys was so pale Darius wondered if the boy would faint. He could see in the appalled hazel eyes that Rhys had put it together already. He just didn’t want to believe it.

  “They killed themselves,” Darius said starkly, and looked away.

  The vermilion glow of a funeral pyre danced on the wall in red and gold flickers as night fell. From the corner of his eye, Darius watched Rhys stare at them. He’d been silent since the colonists had begun shooting themselves, and Darius wondered if the massacre was reminding the boy of his own losses just days before. His expression had gotten more and more pinched with each body they’d carried out of the dorm. Especially the small ones.

  “Final count: Seventeen adults. Four adolescents. Five children young enough to have been born after the plague, including two infants.” Toby’s voice was nearly inflectionless as he reported to Xolani. Darius saw the scar on her cheek twitch, but she just nodded.

  Hard-ass though she was, Xolani always took it a bit rougher than the rest of them each time they were reminded that they couldn’t save everyone.

  “Any clue what their ideology was?”

  Toby shook his head. “No, but it looks like maybe not all the women and boys were with the colony willingly.”

  Xolani hissed a curse between bared teeth, and Darius felt the almost imperceptible ripple of anger that ran through them all. It wasn’t the first time Delta Company had come across that sort of situation, but it was guaranteed to piss them off every time. They all sat with food in their laps, but no one seemed to have an appetite, tense and unhappy to a person. Xolani’d had to harangue Rhys to get even a few bites down his throat.

  “The second dormitory was uninhabited?” Xolani asked. Darius picked up on her train of thought and nodded in agreement. No one wanted to sleep in this building, with the splatters of blood and brains so fresh in the common room.

  Kaleo nodded. “Yeah. They’d sealed it off the way they did all the other surrounding buildings, to prevent anything approaching from that direction, but they weren’t living in it. The roof’s still sound for the time being, though the moss is eating away at it. They hadn’t been clearing it off like the dorm they were using.”

  “Then that’s where we’ll camp tonight. This town’s clear, and we can seal off the floor we stay on. No reason we can’t have our own rooms, sleep in beds for a change.”

  They all nodded, but no one looked as jubilant as such good news normally would have made them. Only the smallest flicker of relief brightened Rhys’s shadowed eyes, though the boy had to be grateful after days of sleeping rough. Mostly he just looked miserable as his eyes flicked from one person to another from beneath lowered lids.

  The only thing more troubling than the reluctant resignation with which the boy waited to see who would claim his company that evening, was the fact that none of Darius’s people were looking at Rhys. Darius couldn’t blame them. After a day like today, they either wanted to be alone to process what had happened, or they wanted willing company for solace and reassurance. Darius had watched morning and night when his people approached Rhys. The kid was miserable, and there were rumbles that the men were getting increasingly less comfortable with his obvious unwillingness.

  Darius couldn’t make sense of how the boy could be so responsive with him—albeit grudgingly so—but not with the other men. If Rhys could just relax and enjoy himself, the whole business could be accomplished easily. His men were more than willing—they’d had only the company of other Jugs for nearly a decade, and the boy was definitely a sweet piece of ass. But Rhys seemed determined to hate it, and Darius couldn’t understand why.

  Gradually, the Jugs were learning to stop asking if he wanted them to get him off as well.

  “I don’t get it,” Darius had heard Kaleo say the second time Rhys had pushed his hand away. “You know, it feels a lot better if you’re into it. Why not try to enjoy it?”

  “Because I don’t have a choice.” Rhys hadn’t volunteered any more, pulling his pants up and fastening his belt tightly, as if girding himself. Kaleo had returned to his bedroll, still looking confused.

  Somehow Darius didn’t think it was just prudery. Rhys had made it pretty clear that one morning in the shower that he didn’t mind the idea of sex; he just didn’t like being forced into the situation by circumstances. Darius could respect that, even if the kid was carrying it to an irritating extreme. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more keeping Rhys stubbornly unenthusiastic. The boy couldn’t bring himself to meet their eyes after one of the men had fucked him. He looked ashamed, humiliated, but why would he if he didn’t have trouble with the concept of sex?

  Frowning, Darius glanced at Houtman. Rhys often slid furtive, fearful looks toward him once he’d pulled his clothes back on. Like he was worried about how Houtman was going to react or what he was going to say. Which didn’t make a lot of sense, since Houtman was in the same boat as Rhys. It wasn’t like he had grounds to criticize anyone. So why did Rhys always look like he was waiting for someone to point the finger of condemnation at him?

  Hell, maybe it was just the ghost of the old preacher the revs had killed.

  When they sealed off the third floor of the abandoned dormitory, Darius saw Rhys look around again, but his men were still avoiding eye contact with the boy. They weren’t looking at Houtman either.

  Shit. At this rate, no one was going to attempt to infect either of them tonight. Darius watched Rhys as the others began to filter away, reciting to himself one last time the list of all the reasons why he needed to keep some distance from the boy, trying to determine whether any of them were worth taking the chance that Rhys might miss an opportunity for exposure to the Alpha strain. Then Darius crumpled the list and tossed it into the wastepaper basket of his mind. He wanted to be reluctant, but he couldn’t quite manage to regret the failure of his intentions to keep away from the kid. He took Rhys’s arm and pulled him toward one of the empty rooms. Breaking the lock on the door, he gestured Rhys inside. The tattered remnants of posters for bands and athletic teams long gone clung to the walls, and dust coated the furniture and piles of laundry strewn about. The covers of the twin beds were in a heap on the floor, and the mattresses were propped against the walls. The bed frames had probably been claimed by the colonists for building the barricades or for firewood at some point.

  “Lay the mattresses down and spread out the bedrolls, boy. Try not to stir up too much dust. I’ll be back when I’ve seen to setting up watch shifts for the night.”

  When Darius returned, Rhys had laid the mattresses side by side and covered them with the bedrolls. The boy was pacing restlessly about the small room as if unwilling to settle on the makeshift pallet. His look at Darius was fretful, but there was heat in his eyes, Darius would swear it, and a noticeable bulge under the fly of his jeans.

  “Rhys.” Darius shut the door, and the boy flinched as if the dull thud had exploded like a gunshot. The smell of dust and decaying fabric filled the room, as though something foul lurked in the shadows beyond the glow cast by the single flickering candle Rhys had lit. Darius’s hand rose without any deliberate intent to touch the boy, instinctively reaching out to try to soothe Rhys’s
jumpiness away. He made himself lower it again. “How have you been feeling?”

  “Fine.” Rhys wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Really.” Darius crossed his arms over his chest, his lips twitching. “How’s your ass? Heard you were sore as hell for a while.”

  Rhys groaned, closing his eyes for a moment. “Yeah, okay, but—” He shrugged, opening them again to stare past Darius. “It’s better now.”

  Darius sighed, leaning a shoulder against the cinderblock wall. “When I ask you how you’re doing, I’m looking for a status report, boy. There’s a time and a place for toughing it out, and there’ll be plenty of times you’ll be expected to handle your own problems. When I’m trying to assess the state of my people isn’t one of them. I can’t fix what I don’t know is broken. You hear me?”

  Rhys gave him a resentful look. “Yes, sir.”

  “Take a load off before your legs collapse.” Darius gestured to the pallet. “I’m guessing you’re not used to the sort of marches we’ve been doing the past few days.”

  Rhys shook his head, though he didn’t move. It looked like his limbs were frozen, his muscles locking him in place, as if he couldn’t make himself take those steps toward the mattresses.

  Enough was fucking enough.

  Darius’s gaze slid over him, sizing Rhys up. He pushed himself away from the wall. “Just what is it you’re afraid of, boy?” He prowled toward Rhys. “Think if you sit on that bed I’m gonna throw you down and pound you into the mattress?”

  Rhys’s eyes darted to meet his and then raced away like frightened rabbits. The bulge under his jeans hadn’t gone away, though, and he looked miserable and confused, as though his own impulses made no sense even to him. Darius was reasonably certain he hadn’t imagined the expectant looks Rhys had been giving him for days, waiting for Darius to take him again, so why was the boy so anxious?

  Darius’s deliberate perusal dropped to the kid’s groin. “Or maybe it’s not that you’re afraid of it, but that you’re just dying for it? Is that it?”

  “Please don’t.” Rhys closed his eyes, shutting Darius out, and turned away.

  “There’s no shame here.” Darius ignored the pointed rejection, pressing against Rhys’s back. His cock nestled against the crack of Rhys’s soft ass as if it had been waiting for the opportunity to rest there again. Which wasn’t far from the truth, however good Darius’s intentions had been. Pushing against that scrawny, fragile body felt good in ways logic didn’t account for, and he was damned if he was going to let Rhys pretend he didn’t feel the same. “I don’t care what your preacher or anyone else said. You can just let it happen. Enjoy it. Trust me. Let me make it good for you.”

  Rhys swayed, as though his body yearned for Darius to embrace him in spite of himself. But Darius merely reached around, making quick work of Rhys’s belt and fly and drawing his cock out of his underwear.

  Rhys bit off a strangled moan as Darius’s wrapped a hand around him.

  “Let it go, boy.” Darius’s whisper brushed Rhys’s ear. “Just let it go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Would you prefer I hurt you? Force you? Is that what you want?” Darius drew his hand up Rhys’s cock, rolling the foreskin over the flaring ridge. His breath dampened the skin of Rhys’s neck, and Darius caught himself wanting to suck and nibble, to taste the boy. “I could do it. You know I could. You want to blame it all on me? Go ahead.”

  “Please, I don’t know . . .” Rhys’s ass tensed as his hips nudged forward, pushing his cock into Darius’s fist.

  Darius’s other hand crawled under Rhys’s shirt and across his chest to tweak his nipple, and he felt Rhys’s knees melt. The boy sagged until Darius tightened an arm around him, catching his weight. Darius scraped his teeth along Rhys’s neck.

  “Give it up, boy.” Darius pumped his hand faster, pinched his nipple harder, until Rhys moaned, and not in a way that sounded pained. “Give it up to me. Don’t make me take it.”

  Rhys whimpered. “Please. Please.”

  Darius didn’t have a clue what he was begging for, but Rhys didn’t seem to, either. Darius growled softly and bit the back of Rhys’s shoulder, using pain to pull the boy back from the edge of orgasm. It wouldn’t do for him to come too soon. He bucked between Darius’s hands and his body, crying out before Darius released him.

  “Strip.”

  Rhys looked dazed and bereft once Darius let go of him, but he obeyed. A battle was being waged in his eyes, though, and Darius wished he could figure out just what the kid was fighting against. His hands shook as he stripped out of the clothes Darius’s people had scavenged for him. While he worked, the look of stunned arousal began to fade, and shame started to creep back over his expression, though his dick was still stiff when he pushed down his jeans and shorts.

  He wanted it, but he didn’t seem to want to want it.

  Dismissing his own musings, Darius stripped off his fatigues, still watching Rhys. It was alarming how skinny the boy was. Darius could break him easily, and it was an effort to remind himself to be gentle. Something about Rhys made him want to cut loose and fuck the kid with everything he had, but the boy was ambivalent enough without Darius adding roughness to the mix.

  Nude, Rhys watched Darius, transfixed, his eyes locked on Darius’s cock with a look somewhere between fear and hunger. If the boy kept looking at him that way, Darius wasn’t going to be able to restrain himself.

  “Down. On your hands and knees,” Darius commanded.

  Rhys tore his eyes away, wetting his lips with a swipe of his tongue, and complied with gratifying haste. He looked even smaller and frailer there on the mattresses, and that made self-restraint a little easier. The boy was just skittish. If Darius could just be gentle, patient, show him how good it could be, he’d catch on. Darius seized the kid’s ass cheeks and pulled them apart. Rhys jolted at the first touch of Darius’s tongue like he’d been zapped. His spine arched as he moved into the caress.

  Darius moaned his approval, and his hands kneaded Rhys’s butt. The boy’s responses were so sweet and genuine, it wasn’t an effort to try to seduce more out of him. “Could eat this tight ass all night.” His voice was muffled against Rhys’s flesh, and he swept his tongue more energetically over the tense pucker, urging it to relax. He soothed with broad, firm strokes and tickled with teasing flicks. Rhys groaned and rocked, probably in spite of himself if Darius knew anything about the boy yet.

  Words tumbled from Rhys’s mouth, seemingly of their own accord, as Darius worked his tongue into him, probing ever more firmly.

  “Please . . . I don’t . . . I can’t . . . oh God . . . God, please . . .”

  He was nearly insensible by the time Darius rumbled, “Reach back, boy. Give me your hand.”

  He startled and immediately tensed, as if the bubble of pleasure had burst at the reminder that Darius was still there and still had plans for him. It took him a moment to obey. He dropped his shoulders to the blankets and reached back. Darius opened the bottle of lube and drizzled it over the boy’s fingers and crack.

  “Get yourself ready.” He kneaded Rhys’s hip but didn’t touch him otherwise. “Go slow. Don’t rush it. Get to know how much you can take, how fast.”

  Rhys’s dripping fingers shrank away, and Darius’s smacked his butt with a sharp crack, drawing a yelp that sounded more surprised than pained. “Do it. Just like I did the other morning.”

  Rhys groaned and slipped a finger into his own ass, his reactions fascinating. His movements were slow and hesitant, and the reach awkward, but he added a second finger without instruction. His fingers couldn’t go very deep, but still he stretched and twisted, trying to go as deep as he could. As if he couldn’t not obey Darius.

  Or maybe as if he was too aroused to stop himself, even if he wanted to.

  Darius rubbed a palm over his own swollen fly, watching those thin fingers sliding in and out. The sight alone had him almost ready to come. “This is your job—to keep yourself ready. You’ll lea
rn to fight, and you’ll help wherever you’re needed; we all pull our weight in this unit. But until we know you’re in the clear, this is your first responsibility. Some days I won’t have time to do any more than just bend you over and do my business before I go about my work, so you’ll be ready whenever I’ve got time for you.”

  When Rhys’s preparations stuttered to a pause and the boy looked back at Darius with confusion and questions in his eyes, Darius realized what he’d just done. He’d all but committed to not avoiding and ignoring Rhys as he had these past few days.

  Shit.

  Well, he’d been losing that battle for days, anyway. Probably time to surrender gracefully.

  “Keep going.” Darius smacked him again, the pink outline of a handprint blossoming on his pale skin. Rhys cried out, burying his face against the bedding.

  Rhys’s fingers resumed their movements. Darius watched the boy move his fingers, moaning as the stretch became pleasurable, and wondered if gratefully wasn’t a more appropriate word to describe his yielding the battle to keep away from Rhys.

  “That’s it, boy. Open your ass. Get it good and relaxed. You’ve had some time to get used to it now. You should be figuring out it won’t hurt if you relax. Here.” Darius’s finger worked in beside Rhys’s, drawing an alarmed whimper from him. Darius didn’t stop. “That’s it. Stretch that ass. Lift your head, boy. Let me have that pretty mouth.”

  Darius shifted, moving to kneel beside Rhys’s head. He drew his fist up the length of his cock, a bead of pre-cum welling at the tip. Rhys lifted his head and stared at it, transfixed, and Darius took a moment to enjoy the sight of the boy’s face, waiting for his mouth. The only thing that could make it a hotter picture would be if Rhys didn’t have all that scraggly hair covering his jaw.

  “Lick it.”

  Rhys licked it.

  The boy forgot to be reluctant as their fingers worked together to open his ass. He gave a breathy cry when Darius sought out and brushed against the knot inside him. His mouth wrapped around the head of Darius’s cock, again without instruction. It muffled his groan as Darius took over, pushing Rhys’s hand away and sliding another large finger into him.