by Stasia Black
Well all Mack heard when he finally got Torpedo to step out of the damn trailer was a whole lotta pissed off horse. Didn’t seem like Torpedo had enjoyed the ride any better than Mack. He was twitchy, nervous, wouldn’t stand still long enough for Mack to even put his hand near him, much less to touch him.
Meanwhile, in the circular paddock in the distance, he saw Calla up and riding her horse. The first day. Riding. What the fuck type of juju magic did that woman have?
She’d certainly had him under her spell. When he wasn’t cursing his killer hangover, the night he’d shared with Calla and Liam kept coming back to him on endless loop.
The look on her face when he breached that tight little pussy of hers—Christ, there hadn’t been an ounce of fear on her face. How the fuck was he supposed to have guessed she was a virgin?
And then you just fucking left her there.
He cringed every time he thought of how he’d stormed out of there like the world’s biggest asshole.
He felt the shame of it even as he slammed the hotel door behind him and all but ran down the hall. He did shot after shot at the bar in an effort not to feel it. Not to feel anything. And when that dumb redneck got up in his face near closing, well, it was the perfect opportunity to take out some of his fury. Punching the bastard in the face did feel good. At least until two of the guy’s buddies joined in and Mack was dodging fists from all sides. He could have handled three guys back when he was at his prime. But three years of working with his hands instead of his fists plus a shitload of tequila and they got in several hits.
He made them regret it, at least. Until Xavier showed up to pull him off the fuckers and they got out of there right before the cops were called.
Just one more thing he owed to Xavier. It chafed. He didn’t like being in debt to anyone.
After spending the day failing to make any progress with his mustang, he grabbed his dinner and jogged up the stairs to eat in his room. He’d felt Calla’s eyes on him as he went. Liam’s too.
He ignored them and spent the rest of the night in his room. He felt on edge as he got in to bed that night.
Sleep didn’t come.
His ghosts were too restless.
Ben. His mother. His years spent as Bone’s bitch. The feel of Ben’s slim body slipping onto his bunk each night.
Ben was always too skinny. He’d have skipped meals if Mack hadn’t been there ordering him to eat.
Sometimes Mack had resented Ben’s neediness. There were days Ben would go all but catatonic unless Mack was there giving him commands. Near the end, there was a six month stretch where Ben only came alive at night when they were alone together in bed.
“Master,” he’d whisper as he reached for Mack in the darkness. “How do you want your slave tonight?”
It was a game Ben liked to play. Mack balked at first until he felt Ben’s distress when he refused. He didn’t know why Ben liked it that way. His devotion to Mack was probably unhealthy. Then again, they were in a fucking super max prison—healthy wasn’t really an option on the table. So Mack played along.
“On your knees,” Mack ordered, swinging his legs over the side of the bed as he sat up. “Suck my cock.”
Moments later, he felt Ben’s trembling hands reaching to pull his cock from his pants. Then a hot mouth sucking him in.
Mack’s hands went to Ben’s head. He always kept his hair so short it was almost shaved. Mack massaged Ben’s scalp as Ben went to town on his cock.
“Deeper. I want to come down your throat,” Mack growled.
Ben pulled off just long enough to whisper, “Yes, Master. Whatever you say, Master.”
Mack hissed out through his teeth as Ben swallowed his cock. He could deep throat like no one Mack had ever met.
He had to fight from coming right there on the spot.
“Fuck your hand while you suck me off.”
Ben’s head shook back and forth on Mack’s cock. Mack gripped Ben’s head harder.
“Fucking do it. Master will punish you if you don’t.”
Ben moaned and Mack leaned over until he was whispering close to his ear. “You don’t do what I say and I’ll take your ass, little slave. I’ll fuck you so hard you’ll feel me into next week. Now grab your fucking cock.”
Ben lifted both his hands to rest them on Mack’s thighs.
Mack’s cock swelled at his refusal. Some nights Ben was only up for giving him a blow job. More often than not actually, these days.
Maybe him wanting more meant that he was coming out of whatever funk he’d been in lately. Mack hoped so. He hated seeing him so listless.
Mack grabbed Ben’s shoulders and pushed him back. Ben’s mouth made a loud pop noise as his lips slid off Mack’s cock.
Mack didn’t hesitate. He dragged Ben up onto his bunk bed, shoving him face down into the mattress.
“On your knees.”
“No, Master. Don’t. I swear I’ll be good. Don’t fuck my ass.”
“I told you the consequences if you didn’t suck my dick.” Mack gripped Ben’s hips as he positioned himself behind him.
“No, don’t,” Ben said, getting on his knees and shoving down his pants in the same motion. “Don’t, Master. I can’t take your big cock.” He leaned back, brushing his ass back and forth against Mack’s dick. “You’re too big and hard.”
“Spit,” Mack said, shoving his hand in Ben’s face. Ben obeyed and Mack rubbed it up and down his cock. Then he positioned his crown at the entrance of Ben’s anus. He paused there a moment, listening in the dark for the sound of Ben whispering his safe word or snapping his fingers. But there were only Ben’s heaving breaths.
Mack pushed inside Ben’s ass and Jesus, it felt good. Ben’s little whimpers only drove him forward. But not too fast. Or too hard. No matter how riled up he got, he never lost himself so much that he didn’t remember he always had to be careful with his little Ben.
Mack pushed in inch by inch until he was finally seated all the way up Ben’s ass. He leaned over his back and kissed the nape of his neck. “Look at you gripping my cock like such a good little slave. Are you hard yet? Admit it. You love being fucked by Master.”
Ben shook his head back and forth but the more Mack kissed along his neck, the softer Ben’s body went.
“You dream about it all day long, don’t you? You were hard at dinner, weren’t you? Thinking about how Master was going to bury himself inside you.”
“I’m your slave,” Ben whispered, his back moving up and down with each heaving breath. “I have to do whatever Master says.”
Mack pulled out and then shoved slowly in again. Ben trembled underneath him. “Don’t lie,” he whispered, his voice harsh. “If I grab your cock, I’d feel just how much you love it. Your eyes have been begging for me to fuck you all day long.”
“No,” Ben started but Mack reached around and grabbed his cock, rubbing his thumb across the precum that was beaded on the tip and massaging it up and down Ben’s shaft.
Ben’s breath hitched and he bucked back against Mack, driving Mack’s cock further up his ass.
“That’s too bad.” Mack let go of Ben’s dick and he immediately whimpered. “Slave boys who don’t do what they’re told don’t get treats.”
“No, Master. I’ll be good, I swear.”
“Too late. Fuck your hand. Show me how much you want to please me. Make me believe it.”
Mack dropped his lips back to Ben’s neck, kissing around to the side and then sucking hard enough to leave a mark. Ben loved being marked. He said it showed everyone who he belonged to.
“You’re mine and you’ll do whatever I say,” Mack rasped into Ben’s ear before latching onto his neck again.
“Yes, Master,” Ben gasped, his voice reedy with need. “I belong to you.”
Mack felt the moment Ben gave in. This was the moment every night built toward—Ben resisting until he finally consented out loud. Only then would he see to his own pleasure. For whatever reason, Ben needed it that way.
Every time. Mack suspected it had everything to do with that fucking bastard, Bone, but he never said that out loud.
“Then show me,” Mack said. “Fist your cock. And tell me who you belong to.”
“I’m yours,” Ben gasped, and even though Mack couldn’t see, he knew Ben was jacking himself off. “Forever.”
Mack’s cock surged and he grabbed Ben’s hips while he tried his damndest not to fuck Ben as hard and quick as he wanted.
Especially when Ben moaned his name. “Mackenzie.” Not Master. In the last moments it was always Mackenzie.
Mack felt it hit his balls.
“Come,” he ordered harshly. Ben squeezed on Mack’s cock and bucked before letting out an agonized gasp. Mack forced himself to keep fucking Ben slowly.
He’d learned how to come this way. Slow and steady. Feeling the moment of Ben’s pleasure and his cock inevitably responding. He felt the cum lighting up his cock and he grunted as he shoved to the hilt again. Then it hit and he pumped in and out. Once. Twice.
Ben all but collapsed beneath him and Mack rolled them so they were on their sides, spooning.
Mack yanked the sheet over them. Nothing made him sleep better than coming hard. He was almost asleep when he heard Ben’s voice.
“I’d die in here without you.”
Mack stiffened. “Don’t fucking say that.”
“It’s true,” Ben said. And then quieter. “I love you. More than I’ve ever loved anyone. I’ll love you to my dying day.”
Mack’s stomach clenched. “Stop talking about dying.”
Ben went quiet after that.
Mack felt the words left unsaid. He knew Ben did too, though he never complained that Mack never told him he loved him back.
Mack snaked his arm around Ben’s stomach and pulled him close.
Not knowing how much he’d come to regret not telling Ben he loved him that night.
Because the very next day, Ben was shanked in the yard.
By Bone’s newest cellmate. Mack had been inside on assigned kitchen duty. He had to hear secondhand about how Ben had bled out right where he fell in the dirt. All alone in his last moments. He was dead before the medic even got on the scene.
The day following, Bone grinned at Mack from across the room. It was then Mack decided that if it was the last thing he ever did on earth, he’d put that motherfucker in the ground.
17
LIAM
“Come here, horsey horse.” Liam held out his hand and approached his mare for what felt like the hundredth time in the past few hours. “Come on. You can do it.”
Just like every other time, the horse watched him sideways as he came toward her. Then, right before he got within touching distance, she bolted to the opposite side of the circle pen.
“Fecking Christ!” Liam took off his hat and hurled it at the fence.
And immediately his da’s voice was ringing through his head.
“How is a son of mine so goddamned worthless?” his da shouted, storming into his bedroom with some shite gossip magazine in his hand.
Liam had been nursing a hangover and grabbed his pounding head. “Can you keep it down, da? I’m still langered somethin’ awful.”
Well that just seemed to set his da off. “I will not keep it down. You’re a twenty-four-year-old man still living with his father. You barely graduated and only because I donated an extremely generous endowment to the university your senior year. You have no skills, no ambitions, and are an embarrassment to the O’Neill name! Look at this.” His father pointed at the headline on the front page above the picture of Liam being hauled away in cuffs by the Garda. “Playboy Billionaire Arrested for Brawling…Again.” Then he opened the magazine and began reading. “Liam O’Neill, son of Prism Media Group mogul Ciarán O’Neill was yet again caught brawling in the streets of Dublin, this time outside a pub in the—”
Liam flopped back on his bed and pulled his pillow over his head to muffle the sound of his father’s voice.
The next second his da had ripped the pillow away. “You listen to me when I’m speaking to ya, ya useless, poxy little shite. I pulled meself up from nothin’ to give you everythin’ you could ever want—
“Don’t give me that shite,” Liam said, launching off the bed and getting in his da’s face. “Everything you’ve ever done in your life has been for yourself. Not for me or ma. Christ knows you scraped her off quick enough so you could go scuttle women half your age. Not that I imagine havin’ a ring on your finger stopped ya from gettin’ your knob polished by skanks all around the world on those business trips you took all the time even when ya were married.”
That was when his da punched him so hard he was knocked to the floor.
“Hey there.”
Liam spun around and put his hand to the back of his neck as he saw Calla standing just outside the fence behind him. Shite. The only thing worse than failing so bad at this was having a witness. Especially Calla.
“Xavier mentioned you were having a little trouble with her.” She gestured behind him in the direction of his mare.
“It’s been two days and she won’t even let me touch her.” Liam shook his head, squinting in the setting sun at the mustang. “She’s banjaxed, I’m telling ya. The organizers have to recognize that some horses are just too far gone. If I had meself a nice foal from a reputable breeder, well, I know I’d really be getting somewhere. But this one—” He shook his head again. And realized that, shite, he was rambling. Like an insecure idiot. He was never insecure around women.
They’d barely had time to spend more than ten minutes together alone since driving home from Denver. The last two days, Calla had spent almost all her time not doing morning chores with her mustang. Yesterday he’d hoped to have some time with her after dinner, but when he got downstairs after cleaning up, Mel told him she’d borrowed their truck to go visit her dad in a nursing home.
He hadn’t known her dad was even sick. Then he realized exactly how little he actually knew about her. Which made him feel like a selfish scumbag. It was an uncomfortable sensation. He wasn’t used to all these… feelings.
Wanting to shag a girl, sure. But, like, comforting someone with a sick da? He’d considered staying up to see Calla when she got back. But then he tried to imagine how that would go.
Sucks about your da… So, wanna go up to my room and let me make you feel better?
That was something the old Liam might have done. And now that he was trying to be a better version of himself?
Staring at Calla now, trucker’s hat on her head, in a loose tank-top and jeans—obviously not concerned with primping or showing off her figure to its best advantage to lure him in—well, he still didn’t have any fucking idea what to say to her. In the circles he’d lived in most his life, appearance and status were everything. Calla broke every rule he’d always lived by.
Calla just smiled and leaned over to slide through the fence posts and into the pen with him and the mustang. “I’ve been watching a little while. You’ve been really patient.”
“Oh.” He lifted his hand to the back of his neck again. The last thing he’d expected was a compliment. He felt like a huge fuck up. “Thanks.” And then he blurted, “I heard about your dad yesterday. I’m really sorry.”
The smile faded from Calla’s mouth and she looked into the distance. “Yeah.” She was quiet a moment and then seemed to shake herself out of it. “So. About the mare. What’d you name her?”
“Satan’s Mistress.”
Calla laughed. “Aw, poor baby.”
Liam didn’t know if she was talking about him or the horse.
She came a little closer. “You’re doing good but maybe I can share a little technique that will help.”
Liam held out his hands. “Please. Anything.” Then his eyes narrowed as he looked across the pen at the mustang. “Not that it will do anything.” He hadn’t been joking about her being defective.
Calla just laughed and shook her head. “Come on,” she gestu
red for him to come with her. She walked slowly toward the horse.
“Make sure you always stay on her left side so she can keep an eye on you as you approach.”
Satan’s Mistress was looking in their direction as they made it halfway across the pen. Liam was about to take another step when Calla held out her arm to his chest.
“Now back.”
Liam looked at her in surprise. They weren’t anywhere near the horse.
But when Calla backed up, her front still toward the horse, Liam mirrored her movements. “Just keep taking deep, calming breaths.”
Again, Liam wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or the horse. But he stayed quiet and did as Calla did.
Once they got back to the fence-line, Calla stood there a second before heading back in the horse’s direction. This time they took a step or two past the center of the paddock before backing up again.
“Like boiling a frog,” Calla said. “You gotta go slow. By small degrees or she’ll bolt.”
Liam nodded even though he wasn’t sure about it. Calla didn’t know this horse. The only time he’d gotten close in the past couple days after getting her home, she’d almost taken off his fingers. And she had big damn teeth.
It took another fifteen minutes before they came within five feet of the horse. “See how she’s tensing up? Watch her ears.” Calla said, nodding at the mare. Liam observed her ears flicking back and forth.
“She’s telling us back up, she’s not comfortable. Horses have a herd mentality. They want to be dominated. You just have to show them who’s boss, but at the same time you can’t force it.” She took several steps backward and Liam followed suit. “It’s a dance between you and her to establish your dominance.”
Calla held one hand out as she started approaching the horse again. “You find the line…” They reached the same spot they’d been in a moment before, about five feet away. “Then you take one or two steps over it.” Calla took another step closer. Now that Liam was watching more closely, he saw Satan’s Mistress’s ears twitching and the way she shuffled back and forth at their nearness.