by Eden Myles
I nodded my head.
“My toy? My courtier?”
I nodded.
“Good boy. You did exceptionally well, and I always reward good behavior.”
I waited expectantly as he withdrew something new from his pocket, fully expecting it to be just as painful as the spanking. But watching him over my shoulder, I saw him lift a fine platinum chain from a velvet jewelry box and lower it so I could see it in front of me, a tiny platinum angel with wings outstretched. “I know you don’t care terribly for gifts, Daniel,” he said in a kind of breathless rush, “but when I visited my jeweler to have my watch repaired last week, he showed me this, and I loved the way it felt in my hand, and it reminded me so much of you that I decided you should have it. I won’t take a refusal.”
He clipped the choker chain around my neck so the pendant rested in the sweating hallow of my throat. Mr. Karenina leaned down and kissed and licked the back of my neck, teeth nipping only very gently. I sighed at the loving attention he was showing me. Then he mounted me from behind, my arms pinned between our two bodies, and his hands sliding beneath me, grasping my cock and pumping me up and down, milking me slowly until his hands were coated in my pre-cum. Then he slid those fingers, wet and slippery, into my ass, widening me with a slow, circular motion until I threw my head back and hissed around the apple in my teeth. The pain and pleasure animated me, and I bucked so fiercely beneath him that he had to hold me down forcefully against the top of the desk for the penetration of his enormous cockhead.
My body reacted to him automatically, and my hips started moving, both trying to take him deep inside me and resist him at the same time. He inched inward, then withdrew, only to thrust more forcefully into my wet hole. I started rocking against him in a primal mating dance, my teeth slicing slowly and steadily through the hard, sweet meat of the apple.
He grunted as he fought his way deeper inside me. I arched my back and fought him off, challenging him to hold me down, to take me, until he was forced to dig his hands into my hips and to rest one of his knees against the edge of the desk just to subdue me long enough to fully seat himself inside me. He was bigger than me, his weight against my back substantial, but I was hardly a weakling. I’d spent enough summers swimming, playing basketball and riding horses to be rangy and stronger than I looked, and I reveled in the challenge I presented him.
He hadn’t expected that, but my challenge excited his lusts all the more. He growled faintly against the back of my neck, then sank his teeth into the soft skin under my ear, not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to tease a long, groaning response out of my throat. I shuddered at the delicious pain and stiffened beneath him, giving myself over to him. Having thus won his challenge, with me as the prize, he started fucking me in earnest, slamming in and out of me, his impacts driving my belly against the desk before dragging my hips back.
I squealed around the apple. My ass tightened around his shaft, squeezing him hard enough to drag a growl of satisfaction out of him. His hands gripped and squeezed my ass before raking over my hips as he fucked me hard, holding me down and forcing me to take all of him fast and deep. He finally dragged my hips up one last time, twitched and convulsed inside me as he came, still pounding me so I screamed and my teeth cut right through the apple, the two halves breaking apart atop the desk.
He cried out with something like pain and relief, the vibration of his voice shivering all along my spine. He stayed inside me for some moments even after he’d spent himself, breathing and snarling lightly against the back of my neck, his teeth still in my flesh. I shivered with a delicious fear and tried to move, to shuffle out from under him, but in seconds he was holding me down again and thrusting once more inside all my soreness, until I felt the second wave of his orgasm break over us both. I came with him the second time, convulsing against the top of the desk, my come jetting over his hand and over the desk.
When he finally withdrew and turned to take me in his arms and kiss me tenderly, I realized we had a roomful of Dollhouse members seated at the desks, watching and nodding their approval at our performance.
***
BOOK 4: ANGEL IN THE DARK
In the dark of his dorm, Simon pushed me back onto his bed and started kissing me. He started on my mouth but quickly worked his way along my jaw to my ear. His mouth was warm and dry, a little hesitant, like his hands, which fumbled along the buttons of my shirt, following them down until he’d reached the front of my jeans. He touched me there lightly, almost like my cock would bite him, then withdrew his hands.
“Keep going,” I breathed. “And can we put the light on?”
Simon stopped kissing my jaw and slid to one side on the bed. “Why do you want to put the light on?”
“I want to see you. I want to see us together.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Why?”
In the shadows of the room, Simon looked stricken. “It’s not right.”
I snorted. “What do you mean?” I sat up on the bed, getting frustrated now. Ever since I’d started tutoring him, we’d had these weird make out sessions. He’d start coming onto me, and we’d move to the bed. We’d fumble around a little in the dark, kissing and touching, and slowly, bit by bit, Simon would get cold feet. It had taken him a week before he would even touch my cock through my pants, and he still hadn’t gone down on me. I couldn’t even get him to take his shirt off. “Do you want to be with me or not?”
He looked surprised by my question. “Yeah, Daniel, I do.”
“Then take your fucking shirt off already.”
He looked surprised by my aggression. “I’m not ready.”
I sighed and sat up. My stomach growled and I realized I hadn’t had anything to eat since a bagel early this morning. “Let’s get something to eat.”
“Where?”
I reached for my jacket. “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”
“We could order in.”
Now I knew something was up. I turned and looked at him in the dark, the only light coming from some moody campus lights filtering through the curtains of his window and illuminating the framed football collage hanging above his bed. “You haven’t told them, have you?”
He looked angry. “I will.”
“But you haven’t.”
“I said I will!” He sat up, getting defensive now. He’d promised me last week he’d come out to his teammates so we wouldn’t have to do all this sneaking around like a couple of criminals, but I had a feeling that was never going to happen. “Jesus, Daniel, you don’t have anyone in your life who’s going to freak.”
I laughed at that. I thought about my dad, a hardworking, Midwestern, blue-collar construction worker, a man who went to church, paid his taxes, loved basketball, and who had raised two kids with his wife of thirty years. He was the kind of man who would stop to help a woman whose car had broken down on the side of the road. The kind of man you’d feel totally comfortable sharing a couple beers with down at the local watering hole. Except if you were queer. Then he’d probably break your face.
And I had to see him this weekend.
I just knew how that was going to go. I was going home for my sister’s wedding—going alone because Sheri refused to rescue me—and while I was there, my ex Melissa was going to hunt me down, haunt me until she got me alone, and then make her move. I was going to have to tell her the truth, and knowing Melissa, she was going to run straight to my dad and tell him everything. My hometown would know by nightfall. My mom might understand, and my sister Chloe, but my dad was going to pitch a fit and disown me.
“Tell you what, Simon,” I said, feeling endlessly depressed about my situation, and more than a little cranky with Simon’s indecision. “When you figure out what the hell you want, come see me, okay?”
Simon looked at me funny. “You know, Daniel, somehow I never pegged you for the bossy alpha type.”
I shrugged and stepped outside his dorm and pulled the door closed behind me.
***
I hadn’t expected to like La Boheme. It was opera, and I used to think…opera, ugh. But in the Fourth Act, when Musetta and Marcello leave the garret to sell Musetta’s earrings in order to buy medicine for the failing Mimi, I had tears in my eyes. And when Mimi finally died, I found myself clutching Mr. Karenina’s arm and resting my head on his shoulder, trying desperately not to cry along with Rodolfo. How stupid was that? But it was dark, and we had a private box, so there was no way anyone could see us.
The thought made me ashamed. I realized I was no better than Simon, scuttling around the city with my lover, afraid to show him off to anyone, my friends or my family, for fear of what they might say and think. That was stupid, too, and by the time we were back in the Lincoln, the city flashing by unseen beyond the tinted windows, I was feeling worse than ever. And I had finally made a decision.
I was going to ask Mr. Karenina to fly home with me, be with me, for my sister’s wedding. I wasn’t going to be like Simon, who didn’t know what the hell he wanted, who cared more about what some bunch of jocks thought of him than with being with the guy he liked. I lay cuddled against Mr. Karenina’s arm and said, “Can I ask you something, sir?”
“Only if I may ask something in return.”
“Sure,” I said, suddenly a little nervous, and a lot more excited. I reached up and played with the angel pendant around my neck, the one he had given me. I wondered if he was going to ask me to try some new kink with him at the Dollhouse, not that I would mind so much. I trusted him. I tried twice to ask him to go with me to Kansas, then finally gave up and said, “You go first.”
“Who is the young man you’ve been seeing?”
I stiffened at his words. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been with someone. I can smell him on your skin.”
I sat up and looked at Mr. Karenina, but he was facing forward, not looking at me at all. I knew there was no point in lying to him. You can’t lie to someone when they can small another man on your body, but my voice was small and weak. “His name is Simon. He’s a student, like me. I’m tutoring him in economics.”
“And how long have you been seeing Simon?” Mr. Karenina asked, his voice so cold I thought I could hear it crack like a piece of arctic ice.
“Not long. A couple weeks.” And then I added in a rush, “But we haven’t done anything. I haven’t slept with him at all…”
“But you want to.”
I was silent a long moment. The truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted.
No, that wasn’t entirely true. I knew what I wanted—I wanted a partner, a family—but I also knew that was something Mr. Karenina couldn’t give me.
“No,” I answered after a long, uncomfortable silence. “It’s not like that. I mean, that’s not all of it. I just don’t want to be alone anymore.”
Finally, Mr. Karenina turned to look at me. His face, and his eyes behind his dark glasses, were unreadable. “You agreed to cut any romantic ties you have with anyone else when you decided to became my courtier,” he said. “You agreed to obey me, Daniel. You know the rules, yet it’s painfully obvious you have no real desire to please your gentleman.”
“But that isn’t fair!” I suddenly cried. “You can’t expect me to be alone for the rest of my life just to please you!”
He stared at me long and hard. And when he finally spoke, his voice was a low, insinuating hiss. “And how, exactly, are you alone, Daniel?”
“How, exactly, are we together?” I retorted. I knew it was wrong to break the rules, but I also knew he had no right to make such demands on my life. “I’m your courtier, but do you love me?” I asked him. “Or am I just a hole to fuck whenever you feel the itch?”
He watched me in stoic silence, not even blinking in response to my question.
I swallowed against the knot of tears in my throat. Sheri had been right all along about him. I should have been more careful. “If you don’t love me, then you’re my employer, not my boyfriend, not my lover, and you have no right to dictate to me how to live my life.”
The silence ticked away between us, and Mr. Karenina stared down sightlessly at the floor. “You said you loved me,” he said after some time.
I felt a surge of anger. I wanted to hurt him as much as he was hurting me. “You paid me to say that.” Yet the moment the words were out of my mouth I regretted them.
He stiffened as if I had struck him, then raised his chin a little in that dignified way he had. I waited for him to say something, to tell me that wasn’t so, that he truly did love me, but he said instead, “You broke our agreement.”
The anger, the fear, just broke over me. “You have no idea how alone I am!” I nearly sobbed. “You don’t know what it’s like!”
“Yes, because, quite obviously, I’ve lived a privileged life. I’ve never lost anyone,” he answered, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’ve never known loneliness in my entire life.”
I knew I was going to cry. “I want to go home.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I think that would be a good idea.”
We sat in silence for the next ten minutes, until the driver pulled up to the campus parking lot. Then Mr. Karenina reached for my throat. I had a bad moment when I almost panicked. But he grabbed the pendant around my neck and wrenched it off. “Get out,” he said.
And I did.
***
On Saturday night, I got a knock on my dorm door. I pulled myself from my bed and let Sheri in. She was dressed for a rave in one of her sparkly micro dresses and heels, but she took one long look at my bathrobe-clad self, the Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream I was eating, and the movie I was watching on cable, Titanic, and said, “Oh Christ, what happened?”
I stuck the spoon in my mouth and said, “I cheated on Mr. Karenina with Simon, I fucked up my relationship with my gentleman, and I’m going home next weekend to get my ass handed to me by my dad. In that order.”
She looked at me good and hard, sighed, and then said, “I’ll be right back.”
Twenty minutes later she returned, dressed in pajamas and a robe, armed with Chinese takeout, a bottle of cheap red wine, and more Ben & Jerry’s. We climbed into my bed together, pulled the covers around ourselves, started pigging out, and generally feeling sorry for ourselves.
“So what are you going to do about Simon?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said around the ice cream in my mouth.
“What are you going to do about Mr. Karenina?”
“Nothing.”
“Your dad?”
“Nothing.”
She gave me a doleful look. “You’re just going to lay down and die?”
“Yes, I’m going to lay down and die,” I agreed. “In fact, I might even throw myself a funeral in the process. And take out an obituary, while I’m at it.”
“Daniel…”
“Don’t make me feel better. I don’t want to feel better,” I told her as I tried to focus on the movie and on my ice cream. “I want to wallow in my self-pity, guilt and remorse. And possibly more chocolate.”
“Jesus, Daniel,” Sheri said, rolling her eyes. “You’re such a girl.”
We watched the movie in silence for a while, then Sheri said, “Can I ask you one question?”
“Yes, but only one.”
“Do you love Mr. Karenina?”
I picked over the chocolate chunks in my ice cream. “Yes,” I answered. I didn’t even have to think about it. I loved him. Given a choice, I would spend the rest of my life with him, either as his partner or just as his courtier.
“Then why did you cheat with Simon?”
“That’s two questions.”
“Daniel…”
“He doesn’t love me,” I said. I sounded bitter even to me. “You’re right. I’m his rent boy, Sheri. An on-call prostitute. That’s all I am. That’s all I’ll ever be. And there’s no future in that.”
“He called you that. He called you his rent boy.”
I
squirmed under the covers. “Not exactly.”
“Okay. Another question. Did you ask him to go with you to your sister’s wedding?”
“No.”
“Is he still talking about it?”
“He always talks about that.”
Sheri gave me a hard look. “So let me get this straight…you cheated on him because you believe he doesn’t love you, but he’s constantly after you about the wedding—which, by the way, you won’t invite him to as your date because you’re ashamed of looking queer in front of your family.”
I set my empty carton of ice cream aside and said, “I’d like that second pint now.”
Sheri jumped out of bed, picked it up, and threw it at me. “Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, you are the stupidest smart guy I have ever seen, Daniel Collins! How do you men survive, being so fucking stubborn all the time?” She grabbed her Chinese takeout and stalked out of my dorm, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the pictures on the wall.
***
I spent a miserable night thinking about what Sheri had said. The two pints of ice cream hadn’t helped my belly much either. I finally resorted to taking a sleeping pill. So on Sunday morning, when my cell rang, I found myself groggy and disoriented. I dug my way out of the covers and looked at the number, couldn’t see it through my bleary eyes, and answered it anyway.
I figured it was my mom or Chloe, calling to tell me some last-minute detail about the wedding.
It wasn’t. It was Kate. And she was livid.
“Daniel, where the hell are you?” she shouted at me, which made me sit bolt upright in bed and immediately washed the sleep from my brain.
“Kate?”
“Yesterday was Saturday. You were supposed to walk the house for Da! Why didn’t you walk the house?”
I didn’t know how to tell her that her dad had fired me—or broken up with me, or whatever. But I also didn’t like the angry sound of her voice. I pushed the covers away and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. “Kate, what’s happened?”