Strain

by Amelia C. Gormley

  Blushing, Rhys turned his attention away, trying not to hear the retort someone made about how Kaleo was doing the recruitment thing wrong if Rhys was choking. Across the bar, Darius was in conversation with Toby and Joe near the pool table while Bailey and Jamie played.

  “Is this a party? What’s going on?”

  Kaleo shrugged. “When we make camp in a bar, if we can secure the location well enough, we usually get to drink a little and have some fun.”

  Titus grinned as Xolani used his lap as a pillow, his hand drawing small circles on her abdomen. He kept his voice low. “Wait ’til you see what happens when a patrol gets back to base. Makes this look like a tea party.”

  Xolani rolled her head on Titus’s thigh to look at Rhys. “That’s the thing about this life. There’s fuck-all to be hopeful about, so we take what good we can out of it. We fight to stay alive and we fuck to feel alive because there’s nothing else left.”

  “How can you live that way?” Rhys gave her a troubled look, but Xolani just shrugged.

  Glancing back toward Darius, Rhys realized for the first time that Toby and Joe were together. Though Toby was shorter than Joe by nearly a foot, there was something almost protective about the way he had his arm around Joe, the way Joe leaned against him with that dazed look on his face. Rhys wondered if Joe was drunk. He watched as Toby nodded to Darius, left Joe’s side with a stroke of his hand down Joe’s arm, and crossed the bar, headed straight for Rhys.

  “Wanna play some Delta Company pool, recruit?” he asked. Rhys blinked in surprise at the invitation. He’d only had a chance to talk with Toby a few times since that day with the colony. He seemed nice enough. He had a bouncy sort of intensity, and his features were delicate, pretty in an almost feminine way. His gestures and mannerisms were sweeping and flamboyant.

  Rhys looked over to Xolani. “Go on. It’s okay,” she urged. Across the bar, his eyes found Darius. His attention was fixed on Rhys, and he gave a tight nod.

  “Sure, Toby.” Rhys forced a smile, forgetting the plug until he rose. He bit back a groan as standing reminded him.

  “Great!” Toby grinned and slapped Rhys on the back, his hand dropping to brush Rhys’s ass. “We could use someone to be the side pocket.”

  Rhys jerked back, and Toby’s smile faltered. “Sorry, did I—?” he began, with an uncertain look at Rhys.

  A hard hand landed on Rhys’s shoulder, squeezing, and Darius’s scent surrounded him.

  “Good to see you making friends, boy.” Rhys imagined he heard a slight growl to the last word. “Don’t mind if I watch your game, do you, Toby?”

  Toby’s ready grin flashed. “Sure you don’t want to play, Big D?”

  Darius chuckled, though Rhys felt tension in the hand that still lingered on his shoulder. “You’d lose, son. I don’t play by your rules. But you enjoy yourself with our recruit.”

  Toby snorted. “Oh, I think you play a close enough variant, but spectators are always welcome.”

  Darius stepped away, leaning against the wall nearest the pool table, with his arms folded across his chest and his eyes on Rhys. His stare was a physical weight, holding Rhys rooted in place. Rhys didn’t know what sort of consequences there might be if he refused. It was tempting to push back, to see what would happen, but he didn’t dare.

  Toby stepped nearer. “Don’t worry.” His eyes traveled down Rhys’s front, to the undeniable bulge under Rhys’s sweats. “Joe and I just like a little variety now and then. You can trust us. We’ll take care of you, and we’ll show you a good time.”

  Darius’s presence nearby kept the questions on Rhys’s tongue from escaping. Toby and Joe had never approached him before. He’d begun to assume that, like Titus, they wouldn’t do so. What had Darius said that made them come to him now?

  “Okay.” Rhys met Darius’s gaze over Toby’s shoulder as Toby pressed even closer, settling his hands on Rhys’s waist and drawing him forward. Rhys turned his head to dodge the kiss Toby would have landed, but Toby didn’t seem to mind. His lips went to Rhys’s neck instead, sucking and nuzzling below his beard.

  He smelled like sweat and the alcohol being passed around, just like the rest of them. Despite Rhys’s nerves, the brush of Toby’s lips on the sensitive skin of his throat felt good. He had no idea why it should when it had been so easy to remain unmoved by everyone but Darius until now. Toby moved up to Rhys’s ear, catching the lobe between his teeth before murmuring, “It drives Joe wild to watch me make the boys melt.”

  It’s working. Rhys bit his lip from saying it aloud, and his eyes drifted shut. He moaned in spite of himself. Somehow it was harder to remember the lack of privacy when Darius was there with him, compelling him to go along with this. His nerves awakened in ways that were different from what Darius did to him. Toby’s slow, sensual approach was like liquid heat flowing through his veins, instead of the violent electricity that charged him with Darius’s displays of raw power or the cold apathy that came from the perfunctory awkwardness of the others.

  He could still feel Darius watching him as Toby’s hands crept up to his chest, thumbing his nipples through his T-shirt. Toby’s erection brushed his own, and Rhys gritted his teeth, pulling his hips back.

  He didn’t want that arousal.

  Toby didn’t seem to mind that, either. He merely resumed his attention to Rhys’s ears and throat. Then he drew away and spoke over his shoulder. “Joe, come on over here.”

  Another pair of hands landed on Rhys’s shoulders, massive paws that felt like leaden weights. He opened his eyes to see the towering giant of a man pressing against Toby from behind. There was no way around it: Joe was huge. He was also quiet. In over a week, Rhys didn’t think he’d heard more than two sentences from the enormous man.

  Joe’s hands rubbed almost soothingly along Rhys’s upper arms. He still looked a little dazed. Toby pushed back against Joe, and his hands gripped Rhys’s ass and pulled his hips forward. Rhys allowed it this time, tightening his jaw against a groan.

  Joe smiled almost sweetly. Toby was all flamboyant sass and slow, deliberate sizzle, but there was something guileless about Joe.

  “Darius tells us we might have something in common,” Toby said conversationally. His hands roamed from Rhys’s ribs to thighs.

  Rhys blinked, frowning in confusion. “W-we do?”

  “Mmhm.” Toby grinned. “Darius says you like someone else in control, being a little rough, giving orders.”

  Rhys tried to jerk back, flushing with humiliation. Darius had told him that? “What? No—”

  Toby’s eyebrow lifted. “Really? That’s a shame. Joe’s very good at taking orders. Aren’t you, Joe?”

  Joe’s eyes brightened, and he nodded eagerly. Around them, everyone but the guards was drinking. No one was paying any attention, not even Jacob, who was pinned beneath Bailey in the far corner.

  “Lift up your shirt, Joe. Show Rhys just how well you take orders.”

  Joe stepped away and peeled up his tight, Army-green T-shirt revealing his barrel of a chest. Though his arms were covered with thick hair, his chest was devoid of even the slightest smattering. Instead, shiny, white lines of knotted scars traced across his skin, and after a moment of staring without comprehension, Rhys realized they were words.

  Slut.

  Whore.

  Pig.

  Slave.

  Thick metal rings were looped through his nipples, and other, smaller, round scars occasionally dotted his skin. A fresh one was red enough for Rhys to understand, after a moment, that they were burns.

  Joe watched Rhys take this all in, his eyes calm.

  Rhys’s alarmed gaze flew to Toby, whose smile had taken on a sharper, more dangerous edge. He no longer seemed so innocuous. “Now you see why Darius won’t play with me. You’re okay. I only hurt the ones who beg for it, like Joe here. If that’s not your thing, fine. I just wanna toy with you for a while.”

  Rhys’s mouth felt dry, and his heart was racing too fast with a horrible, terri
fied fascination and arousal. His eyes flew to Darius, who was still leaning against the wall, apparently unconcerned.

  Darius wouldn’t let them harm him. Would he?

  “What—” He swallowed hard and tried again. He had to do this. He had to. Darius had made it clear he wouldn’t brook any refusal.

  I own your ass. And I mean to share what’s mine.

  “What do you want me to do?” Rhys asked tremulously.

  “I want you to do what you’re supposed to, sweet thing: follow orders.” Toby smiled, all charming menace, and gestured Joe forward. “Bend him over the table, and get him ready for me.”

  “Yes, Toby.” Joe caught Rhys by the back of the neck and pushed him down over the pool table, his strength undeniable even in his relative gentleness. As he started working down the waistband of Rhys’s sweats, he murmured, “You should feel honored, recruit. Only place I get Toby’s cum is on my face.”

  “Maybe someday our recruit’ll get that, too.” Toby waved his hand loftily, leaning on the pool table near Rhys’s shoulder, watching Joe work. There was a surprised pause when Joe encountered the plug, then he began wriggling it out. “But if I came on his face this time, he wouldn’t get to see just what a whore you are, Joe. You’re such a pig, sloppy seconds don’t even faze you. You’ll just wallow in someone else’s spooge, won’t you?”

  A shudder passed through the hand on Rhys’s ass, and Joe’s voice became quieter, so much softer than anyone his size should be able to speak. “Yes, Toby.”

  “Speak up, cumslut. I didn’t hear that.”

  “Yes, Toby!” Nearby conversation stopped, and heads began to turn.

  Rhys groaned, wretched with humiliation. Toby admired the lube-slick plug that Joe set on the pool table. “So courteous of Big D to make sure you’re ready for action.” He pushed himself away from the edge of the table and brushed Joe aside. “Saves us both a lot of time.”

  Rhys felt a few jerky movements behind him, and the tail of Toby’s belt tapped against his buttock as he unbuckled. It seemed to take forever while Rhys bent over the table, his twitching hole exposed to the whole bar. Only Darius’s intent presence across from him kept him from wanting to die.

  “Spread that sweet ass for me, Joe.” Joe reached over from where he stood to Rhys’s side, his massive hands closing on Rhys’s cheeks, and pushed them apart. “Look at that.” Toby plunged a finger inside, then withdrew it. “Practically gaping. This kid may be a sloppier slut than you, Joe.”

  Rhys tried to stand straight, an outraged protest on his lips, but someone—Joe or Toby, he couldn’t tell—shoved him back down. Toby drove into him without delay, setting a quick, hard pace almost before Rhys’s first loud groan faded. Toby angled himself to run firmly past Rhys’s prostate on every stroke.

  “Wonder just how much it’ll take to make you come.” Toby’s dark chuckle spoke of wicked amusement. “We’re gonna find out. Maybe after my pig stuffs you full of his fat dick. I bet we can make you scream.”

  Rhys clenched his hands, fighting to hold back and not respond. Insensible, caught up in the struggle between pleasure and self-control, he buried his face against the felt of the pool table. The utter abandon of those hard, savage times Darius had fucked him hadn’t prepared him for Toby’s skilled onslaught. He didn’t dare cry out a refusal, even if he could’ve found the breath for it. Darius had commanded him to do this.

  The fear and uncertainty helped keep him from the brink, at least until Toby was finished. He barely paused to catch his breath before he patted Rhys’s ass and pulled out. Rhys shivered at the obscene feel of the air on his wet, exposed asshole. It was even worse when Toby plunged two fingers into him and drew them back out quickly.

  “Time for some slops, piggy,” Toby crooned, and then there was a vulgar, lapping sound. Rhys whimpered, fascinated and revolted, and Toby added, “If he didn’t need that load I just dumped in him so badly, I’d make you suck it out of his ass, you filthy cumdump.”

  Joe groaned, and the lapping got more enthusiastic. “Yes. Please, Toby. Let me eat your cum out of him.” His voice was breathless, transported.

  A sharp, hollow thwack made Rhys jump, as though Toby had cuffed Joe sharply upside the head. “I said no, pig. Now get to work, or I won’t even let you play in my mess.”

  They were insane, Rhys thought. All of them. Especially Darius and Xolani if they thought he was okay with these two lunatics. It was too much. He pushed himself up off the pool table as he heard Joe frantically unbuckling behind him.

  Darius’s severe gaze stopped him. His brow drew down in a frown, and he gave a subtle shake of his head.

  Toby’s hand landed on his shoulder in an amicable clap, and he leaned in close to Rhys’s ear. “It’s just a game. This is how Joe and I get our kicks. He’s got a humiliation kink a mile wide, so I’m just taking the opportunity to work him up. You’re safe. Relax and enjoy it, recruit.”

  Toby’s other hand slipped down to grasp Rhys’s cock, which was still hard despite his nervous revulsion. The stroking felt good, and Rhys made a noise somewhere between a distressed whimper and a pleasured moan as Toby pushed him back down.

  And then Joe shoved enthusiastically into his wet ass, and there was no more chance for protest, for thought, for fear. There was only the incredible stretch, the pounding impact, the slick, sloppy noises, the bruising grip of Joe’s mighty hands on his hips. Rhys groaned, slumping onto the pool table as he fought to cope with the attack on his senses.

  Joe didn’t have Toby’s skill, but he had size and power. Rhys clung to the ledge of too much with Toby’s obscene taunts in his ear.

  “You’re so fucking hard. Look at you. Look how horny it makes you, being fucked by a pig in front of all these people. Does it hurt? Is that chubby of his hurting you?”

  Rhys shook his head, rolling his face on the felt even as a whimper hinted at just how close the gesture verged on a lie. Between sobbing gasps, he groaned, biting back the urge to beg for mercy.

  “Maybe you like it that way.” Toby’s sounded almost conversational, twisting his fingers in Rhys’s hair and pulling hard. “Maybe you’re just a little baby pain slut, too green to know it yet. Darius should try spanking you. Use a belt and leave welts all over that pretty white ass of yours. How about a nice switch, turn your back black and blue? Maybe he’ll even draw blood.”

  As a spasm of fear shot through Rhys, coupled with an image of the other morning when Darius had leaned in and licked the cut on his neck, tasting his blood. With a desperate cry, he came—for the first time with someone other than Darius—spurting onto the dusty floor. An insensible moment later, he realized Joe had followed him, going still and pulsing deep in his ass. Rhys lay over the table panting, too depleted even to be self-conscious about the display he must be making in the moment before Toby handed the plug back to Joe. Joe pulled out and slipped it easily inside his dripping hole, before easing Rhys’s sweats back up. His hands were oddly polite and gentle.

  Toby rubbed Rhys’s back, the gesture at odds with his wicked menace from just a moment before, and hummed softly. “You’re okay. Take your time. Getting boned by Joe can be an experience.”

  When Rhys dared rise and show his crimson face again, Joe had sidled up to Toby and was snuggled against him, ducking down to lean against Toby’s shoulder as Toby wrapped an arm around him. “You did good, baby. We’ll get Cooper back to Darius and go lie down, okay?”

  A pang of envy awoke underneath the fear and mortification at what he’d just done, what he’d allowed them to do to him. Seeing the sudden shift to tender solicitude made something ache in Rhys’s chest. Their intimacy emphasized how alone he was. It made him want what they had.

  For a crazy moment, the yearning made it seem as though everything Father Maurice had ever told him was right. He was a pervert, and now everyone knew it. If he were any sort of decent human being he would have opted to let the virus kill him.

  He was sick, and he was alone, without anyone to offe
r him even the twisted sort of comfort Joe seemed to take in Toby’s petting and murmured words. Jacob had surely heard the whole thing, and he’d make Rhys’s life hell. No one would understand.

  Then Darius stood beside him, stern and hard as always, with none of the reassurance Rhys craved. Toby smiled good-naturedly. “Take care of him, Big D. I got into his head a bit.”

  Darius would never soothe him the way Toby was soothing Joe. Darius would never hold him or pet him like that. Rhys didn’t know just what Darius had in mind after this, but it wouldn’t be good.

  Or rather, it would. Which made it even worse.

  Rhys followed Darius’s gaze to the puddle of milky fluid on the floor at the base of the table and cringed. Darius looked pleased, but for Rhys, those streaks were a sign of defeat.

  “Come on, boy.” Darius’s warm tone didn’t offer much reassurance. Rather it seemed to gloat. Wretched and ashamed, Rhys followed him to their space behind the bar.

  Darius was ready to punch something—possibly himself—at the sight of Rhys’s hangdog expression. He’d thought Toby would strike the notes Rhys needed, boss him around a bit, add that kinky edge the kid seemed to react to, but Toby and Joe played too hard. Yeah, Rhys had responded, but seeing what they did had scared him. Or maybe he felt like nutting there against the pool table was some sort of defeat. Whatever it was, now the boy looked as if he’d committed some horrible crime.

  But then, of course, there was the fact that Toby had taunted Rhys into coming with conjecture about Darius hurting him. That was . . . interesting.

  Way too fucking interesting.

  What had the kid so fucking miserable? Clearly he’d enjoyed himself, at least on some level. Why did he keep trying to resist that?

  It would be easier if he didn’t have to strong-arm Rhys into all this, if he could just respect Rhys’s ambivalence and leave him alone. But taking no for an answer might mean Rhys’s death, and that wasn’t acceptable. Not now. It might have been possible once, if Darius had refused from the beginning. He could have written Rhys off then. But now he was in it. No turning back.