Clan and Conviction (Clan Beginnings)

by Tracy St. John

  He felt the two men step closer to him, the heat of their bodies radiating against his lifted face and spread thighs. The one behind him came in contact, muscled legs pressing his farther apart. The Nobek’s rhythm with the flogger never wavered as the tip of his hot, moist cock prodded against Krijero’s anus. The Imdiko opened to him, his body eagerly enfolding the hard length that drove inside without mercy. Welcoming groans mixed with the cries of pain spilling from his wide-open lips.

  The spicy sweetness of another cock accepted the warm invitation of his mouth, sliding deep, all the way into his throat and choking off his voice while it filled him. The man’s secondary cock slid past his chin, leaving a wet trail along the outside of Krijero’s throat. Krijero swallowed the thick honey coating the Nobek’s cock, lashing his tongue against the pounding vein on its underside to make it produce more. He heard the Nobek gasp in reaction.

  Meanwhile, the man behind him dove deep into his ass, finding that magic spot that made all the pain of the beating disappear. Carnal delight flared at the roots of Krijero’s rigid cocks, making them swell until it seemed their skin must burst. The prick inside moved hard against that place again, and the Imdiko felt his cock spit a small burst of cum in response. Only a few more thrusts, and he’d be there. Climax beckoned, gifted by the Nobek who had wanted to fuck Krijero’s ass so badly, the one who had a slight likeness to Wynhod.

  Just like that, Krijero imagined Wynhod shoving his cock in deep and fast, taking him ever closer to climax. That sparked the fantasy that Gelan stood in front of him, using his mouth for pleasure, his flavor dancing over the Imdiko’s tongue.

  No. No, he didn’t want to think of them. But the image of being fucked by the two men, men he had no business being attracted to, would not leave his mind. Not when he could imagine those intense eyes looking down on him, those thickly muscled arms wielding the floggers that continued to make his flesh throb. Not when he could see their faces softening, reaching nirvana in the clutch of his bound and open body, ready to spill themselves inside him…

  Brutal ecstasy drew his cocks up tight to Krijero’s belly. Roiling heat burned its way from his smaller prick, flooding into his primary. Nova-bright crescendo burst its way free, his seed shooting with force to make him scream his loudest against the cock working his throat. He came so hard it hurt, a beautiful agony that the flogging had come nowhere near matching.

  The Imdiko regained his senses in time to feel the cock inside his ass pulse, flooding his channel with hot cum. A moment later, the man using his mouth grunted and shoved into Krijero’s throat to pour his release in as well. Applause swelled.

  Krijero remembered where he was. The pleasure club, among strangers he’d probably never see again. A brief stab of sadness assaulted him as his imagined coupling with Wynhod and Gelan spun away. Then the old emptiness returned, almost comforting for its familiarity.

  * * * *

  The next morning, Krijero settled into work, his mind completely riveted on a case of a missing Matara. The investigator in charge of the case declared himself convinced one of her clanmates had killed her, but the Imdiko’s assessment so far had led him to believe she’d run off with another clan. Complicating the matter was Krijero’s discovery that the investigator knew and detested the Dramok he accused of foul play. The psych had decided he needed to send Head Investigator Utta a message suggesting another investigator should be assigned to the case.

  He looked away from the vid report he’d been studying to discover Gelan and Wynhod standing right there next to his chair. He jerked with a startled cry, scattering objects all over his desktop and floor.

  Krijero ignored a burst of fear in his chest at the men’s appearance. He glowered at them instead. “Damn it! How about not sneaking up on me?”

  He turned his back on them to lean way over and pick up fallen file recorders from the floor. He didn’t realize his shirt had ridden halfway up his back until and roughly calloused fingertip traced a line along his bare skin. The contact stung; the finger drew a path over a welt left behind by Krijero’s night out.

  He jumped again and turned to stare furiously at the still-silent pair. Gelan drew back, his eyes narrowed and one corner of his mouth twisting in a lascivious smirk. Wynhod’s gaze was pure heat.

  The Dramok finally spoke in a low, intimate voice. “Someone has been playing rough. Why didn’t you say you were involved with someone when I asked you out yesterday?”

  “Because I’m not.” Krijero snapped his mouth shut and inwardly cursed himself. He wished he hadn’t blurted that out. If the two men thought he was seeing someone, they would perhaps back off and leave him alone.

  “It’s none of your business,” he grouched. “What do you want?”

  Gelan and Wynhod looked at each other. They simultaneously grabbed a couple of chairs and sat down next to Krijero’s desk, much to the Imdiko’s dismay.

  Gelan said, “We want to discuss the Frenzy issue.”

  Krijero relaxed a little. But only a little. The avid eyes on him held way too much interest to make him comfortable. He had the distinct impression that fascination was more personal than professional.

  He tugged his shirt down as far as he could to keep the marks from last night’s flogging covered. Moving carefully, he went back to picking up his belongings. Keeping his tone cool, he asked, “You went over my findings?”

  “I did, and I am convinced you’re on to something. Something big, just like you suspected.”

  Krijero dumped his things back on top of the desk. The pit of his stomach warmed to hear Gelan put credence into his research. “Are you going to approach your supervisor with it?”

  “I already did. The reaction is mixed, but better than I hoped.”

  Wynhod grinned at his partner. “He didn’t get reamed out for suggesting Delir isn’t a dead issue after all.”

  Better and better. Krijero said with sincerity, “I’m glad to hear that. So what did your supervisor say?”

  Gelan leaned comfortably in the chair. “He agrees the men in our territory incarcerated for sudden psychotic illness may be users of Frenzy. He’s asked the other precincts to order organ tissue samples from them to find out if the drug has entered Southwest Mountain Territory.”

  “But?”

  The investigator grimaced. “He’s not buying into the idea that we’re ground zero for the proliferation for Frenzy. We need hard evidence. We need someone to connect it to.”

  Krijero sighed, but he wasn’t surprised. “Unfortunately, that issue is just as murky as it was with Delir. I’ll have to keep working on that angle on my own time.”

  Wynhod smirked. “When you’re not playing discipline games. Nice flog work. Almost as good as mine.”

  As Krijero felt his face heat, Gelan’s evil grin reappeared. “We’d be happy to help you in your endeavors. Both in researching Frenzy and pursuits of a personal, intimate nature.”

  The Imdiko couldn’t help but take in the well-muscled bodies only inches from his own. These were strong, determined men, no doubt fully capable of delivering all the kinds of pleasures and torments Krijero liked to receive. His dicks twitched in interest. Then they began to fill.

  Damn it, he had to make them leave him alone. Gelan and Wynhod were known to be actively looking for an Imdiko to add to their clan, and there was no way he would be that man.

  Glad he’d pulled his shirt so low that it disguised the arousal he fought, Krijero turned his tone frosty again. “I’m not interested in clanning. With you or anyone. If that’s what you’re looking for, forget it.”

  They looked at each other, and Krijero sensed them doing that almost telepathic communication again. He wondered if it resulted from being clanned for ten years, then he recalled they’d done it back when the first Delir case had been ongoing. It was fascinating to watch. Or it would have been if he’d not been so eager for them to leave.

  Gelan said to his Nobek, “You were right.”

  Wynhod nodded, his lips pursed
with a small show of temper. “I wish I knew who messed with his head so badly.” He turned his gaze back to Krijero. “If you ever want retribution for your pain, just let me know.”

  Gelan added, “We’re very good at hunting things and people down. Tell me it wasn’t an abusive situation at least.”

  Krijero fought the warm feeling of safety and security that their concern tried to project onto him. It felt too much like belonging, and that feeling was the worst lie of all.

  He said, “My life is none of your business. I’ll work on Frenzy by myself and let you know what I find out. Otherwise, please leave me alone.”

  They looked at him for a few minutes more, their gazes unreadable. Then Gelan stood and Wynhod followed suit.

  The Dramok smiled at him. “For now, Imdiko. If you change your mind, we’ll be around.”

  Without another word, they walked out. Krijero watched them go, his head aching with worry. He prayed to the ancestors they would get bored or frustrated and let their pursuit of him go. The Imdiko felt the weight of his interest and knew if they kept after him, he might be in trouble. The last thing he needed was temptation to try for what he knew he couldn’t have.

  * * * *

  Wynhod battled his body, trying to stave off the massive erection that wanted to rise and show itself off to everyone walking past him in the well-lit corridor. The spicy scent of his arousal made his nostrils twitch. Fuck. All those gorgeous welts on Krijero’s back had him imagining that long, lovely body stretched naked and bound over his punishment bench. He could see all too well in his mind’s eye Krijero trembling as he waited for the first lash from one of Wynhod’s disciplining tools. Maybe with the Imdiko’s hair tied back, so Wynhod could see the nervous but yearning anticipation on the man’s sweet face, his eyes rolled up to watch as the Nobek approached with a handful of stiff leather…

  Wynhod took a deep breath and made the fantasy disappear from his mind. He traded lust for a sense of irritation. It was utterly insane that Krijero had been under his nose for the last ten years. An Imdiko that gave himself up to the harsher pleasures Wynhod enjoyed meting out. He’d known Krijero all this time, and Wynhod had never given him a passing thought! He had even resisted considering him as anything but somewhat comical and pitiful.

  Scowling bad-tempered at nothing in particular, the Nobek burst out, “Where the hell have I been?” His voice broke loud over the low hum of conversation of passing officers.

  Gelan chuckled. As usual, he knew where Wynhod’s thoughts were. “It’s awful to realize there’s been a likely Imdiko near all along. Those marks on him are amazing, aren’t they? It didn’t look like he bothered to have any healed either.” The Dramok sighed with a note of pleasure. “He likes pain. You don’t always get that with their breed.”

  Wynhod felt a shiver down his spine. “I keep thinking about that long body under my strap … damn, Gelan. His need for close relationships seems utterly screwed. How do we get him to consider us?”

  Gelan’s smile faded. His lips pursed as he thought, and his steps slowed as they neared their own department. “Someone fucked with his head at some point. I’m guessing he usually does impersonal encounters. Didn’t I see him go into a pleasure club some time back? Seems to me I did.”

  Their conversation paused as they entered the investigation department. The first desks they passed belonged to Investigator Dexel and his enforcer Panow, who looked Gelan and Wynhod over. His brow lifted as he stared blatantly at their slightly bulging crotches.

  “Been kicking some ass already this morning?” the hook-nosed Nobek asked.

  “Every chance I get for as little reason as possible,” Wynhod answered coldly and with more than a small threat in his tone. He headed to his desk without another word.

  Wynhod didn’t care for the man or his partner. He’d caught them eavesdropping on a private conversation he and Gelan were having one day. It had nearly resulted in a fist fight between all four men. After the Delir case ten years ago, Gelan and Wynhod had become the team to envy. Dexel and Panow were relatively new to the department and apparently wanted to make their mark as well. Wynhod didn’t mind ambition as long as success came as a result of personal hard work. This business of spying on others pissed him off, however.

  He and Gelan sat down at their desks across from each other. Now that they were in their own space, Wynhod picked up their conversation. “Back to Krijero. He’s an Imdiko who doesn’t want involvement. Not what you usually find with the caregiver breed. I wonder who messed him up so badly.”

  Gelan tapped a finger on the surface of his desk, his gaze far away. “Well, the damage is already done, whatever it was. And now Krijero’s on alert, worried we’re going to chase him.”

  Wynhod agreed. That was a problem. Neither he nor Gelan did subtle particularly well. Gelan had some pretty good negotiating skills when it came to getting witnesses and suspects to open up, but in matters of seduction he was ‘as restrained as a starving zibger’ as one of their past Imdiko prospects had put it. Wynhod was even worse. He never tiptoed around the issue of sex with a lover, baldly announcing he wanted it when he wanted it. If the subject of that affection showed signs of agreement, the Nobek put them on their backs or bellies and worked to assure them both of mutual pleasure.

  The Nobek had the idea such practices wouldn’t work with someone like Krijero. However, short of snatching the reluctant Imdiko off the street and tying him up in their sleeping room, he can’t see how they can get him in a compromising position; one in which he and Gelan could make their case that Krijero should get to know them better.

  Gelan huffed an unhappy breath. “I think we’re going to have to keep our distance for a little while. Let him turn it over in his mind. Maybe curiosity will do the work for us.”

  Wynhod mused out loud. “We can stay close enough that he knows we’re still interested, but not so close that he starts throwing things to keep us away.”

  “Exactly. Meanwhile, maybe we can do a little digging around in his history and see if we can find out why he’s anti-clan.” The Dramok grimaced. “Of course, there is the other option.”

  “Which is?”

  “We could just write him off. Leave him alone.”

  Wynhod thought of the marks on the Imdiko’s back. Of the gentle face behind that unruly mop of hair. Of the half-hopeful, half-dreading look he’d glimpsed in Krijero’s expression. Of the exciting mix of fear and want.

  He snorted. “Fuck that. I want to know what’s going on with that man.”

  Gelan grinned. “I knew you’d say that.”

  With that agreement made, they got to work. Wynhod loathed desk work. He found it hard to concentrate on stupid shit like who was trying to blackmail the territorial mayor. The political leader had received still pics of himself in compromising situations with men who were not his clanmates, along with the missive that he funnel funds into an account to keep the affairs quiet. It was the worst kind of investigation, one that would not end up with Wynhod punching or shooting someone who deserved it.

  Wynhod found it doubly hard to concentrate on such a boring case when his head kept summoning the image of those lovely welts striping Krijero’s back.

  Chapter 4

  Nine months later:

  Krijero looked over his private research files and sighed. He kicked the floor with a badly scuffed traction-soled shoe, leaned back in his chair, and stared up at the smooth, unmarked ceiling.

  He had the psych department to himself right now. He’d come in early as he often did to work on the Frenzy case – or, more accurately, the Frenzy non-case.

  As promised, Investigation had done a check of the men he had pinpointed as possible Frenzy users, the ones who had been locked up in mental facilities. To a man, the results had been positive for the drug. Half of them, once they were sane enough to talk, had sworn they never used Frenzy. Investigators thought they’d taken less harmful, though still illicit drugs laced with the powerful hallucinogen.


  More users were being brought in all the time, often leaving destruction in their wake before being discovered. In the last nine months, it had become apparent that Frenzy was making inroads into the Southwest Mountain Territory, just as it had the rest of Kalquor. Yet the incursion proceeded slowly. Head Investigator Utta still ran his department with the belief that it came from somewhere outside the territory. Krijero could appreciate the man’s desperate need to not have another Delir-type epidemic traced to his jurisdiction. He still thought the willful blindness was akin to covering one’s eyes in the hopes that the monster standing right in front of him would simply cease to exist.

  It was easy to pretend, especially when no one was ever seen dealing Frenzy to its growing cesspool of users. It seemed no gangs were involved this time. If the dealers who’d sold Delir had been ghosts, Frenzy’s distributors were absolutely invisible. Not one person had been caught that could be traced back to an active supply line. People caught in possession of Frenzy, the ones able to still string a few sentences together, said payment was made to accounts that disappeared after one deposit. After that, they were messaged where their hit had been hidden for them to claim.

  The addicts never saw the providers. Sometimes they were given twice what they paid for with the instruction to share it with someone else. Then when they were invited to purchase more Frenzy, they were to provide contact information for the person they’d turned on to the drug. Failure to do so resulted in not being able to get their next fix. And so it went. It was an evil but ingenious system that brought in new customers without ever endangering whoever dealt the drug.

  Finding the barrier impossible to surmount, Krijero had begun investigating a new angle, one he thought might actually lead to whoever was ultimately behind Frenzy. Unfortunately, he now had a new problem to face, one he did not look forward to.

  Gelan and Wynhod.

  He kicked the floor again. It was time … hell, past time … to have a discussion with the pair. Where his research was taking him meant he needed help, help only they could give since they were the only ones who believed his theory. Damn it.