The doctor made notes on a chart, shaking his head. “Hell of a way for you and the commander to spend your claiming days.”
Every inch of Quiggs ached: his gums, his scrotum, his toenails. How many hours had passed with him thrashing at the restraints before unconsciousness claimed him?
Someone had removed the mouthpiece. He remembered a cock cage. At the thought, he peeled his lids back to check out the damage below. He looked down his nose and saw a large hand over his chest.
Max rested his forehead on the edge of the bed with his palm light as a butterfly, riding the rise and fall of Quiggs’s bare chest. Tawny sensory hairs on Max’s hairline lifted, as if capturing a movement from Quiggs. He’d never noticed them react until now.
His arms freed, Quiggs placed a swollen hand over Max’s.
Max lifted his head at once, his gray eyes slits in his puffy mottled face. For a long moment, they exchanged the look of comrades who’d engaged in battle with backs to each other as equals.
The moment packed more intimacy than a night of raw sex.
“Welcome back.” Max’s voice was hoarse. He’d done his share of screaming. “I thought I’d lost you. No one survives what you went through. You’re tougher than an old vine.”
When Quiggs struggled to speak, Max shushed him with two gentle fingers over his mouth. “No talking. Your spasms lasted sixteen hours. You’ve slept the last two days. Doctor Knowles said you need liquids first. Any emotional spike up or down will trigger smaller spasms the next few days, so keep calm. I’m not allowed speak of anything to upset you. Don’t try to think, and don’t ask questions. Focus on healing.”
When Max cranked the head of the bed up, Quiggs’s skin felt as if it would split down his spine.
Max propped him up on pillows. “You’ll be sore a few days. A good thing you wore a cock cage. I had a raging erection for a day. Only part of me not sore afterward was the tip of my glans. Still can’t hold my shaft when I piss.”
Quiggs’s lips curved.
Max reached for a sip cup on a cart by the head of the bed. He wore a pair of baggy black boxers as if he couldn’t tolerate anything clinging to his skin. When Max tilted the sip cup to his mouth, Quiggs scrunched his face. The contents reeked like a plugged toilet.
“It’s a mineral slush. Yeah, it’s bad. But it’ll hydrate you and flush the toxins out your pores. Once you’re hydrated, your skin will peel.” Max’s strong nose shone bright pink after peeling. His arms and bare chest looked like a patch-worked quilt of pink, tawny, and muddy brown. Quiggs’s chest was a mottled brown now. A towel covered his privates. He wanted to peek, but he shot Max a worried look.
“Yours is fine. Mine’s the one looking like a burnt sausage.” Max nudged the cup to Quiggs’s clenched mouth. “You’ll feel stronger when you’re hydrated. I drank a bucket before I could get out of bed and walk across the room by myself.”
As he sipped, Quiggs checked out the room. Soft beige walls and bright movable ceiling globes. A toilet, sink, and shower cubicle in one corner. A wall of cabinets filled with medical supplies.
He finished the slush. Max coaxed and bullied him each time he turned away from another sip.
“An aversion worse than kissing,” Max teased. He gently dried the dribble on Quiggs’s chin. “Orders are a cup every half-hour. When you finally get the urge to pee, it’ll be brown. Wish someone had warned me. I thought my dick had rotted.”
Quiggs hadn’t the energy to snicker. Instead, he drifted asleep.
Max or a medic roused Quiggs every half hour for the slush. He drank what he could, then fell back in exhaustion. Max slept on a second bed placed a step away from Quiggs. If Quiggs stirred, he found Max leaning over him. His ruined voice, as thin and fragile as a cracker, frustrated Quiggs, and markers slipped through his limp fingers. He had questions, like who had planted the nest of boilers on the balcony, but the doctors stressed no excitement to his nerves.
“I’ll tell you what I know when you can handle it,” Max promised.
When Quiggs finally felt the urge to piss, Max guided his shaft to the mouth of a long-necked bottle. Quiggs requested a medic, but Max insisted on tending him, disliking others touching his concubine. As if Quiggs had any modesty left.
Max brushed aside his weak attempt to hold the bottle by himself. “Hands off. I don’t want an eyeful of piss should you lose your aim.”
Quiggs strained but couldn’t produce a stream with Max watching.
“Prude.” Max looked up at ceiling and recited the prime laws in a loud, boring voice.
Quiggs sighed as a vigorous stream flowed. The stuff smelled as if it could wipe out an acre of vines.
Six days after the straps came off, Doctor Knowles pronounced Quiggs out of danger from spasms, though he couldn’t leave the bed without assistance. Complete recovery required another week of rest and special physical therapy. Quiggs was ready to hear the truth without his body contorting through a finger ring.
“Quit stalling,” he rasped when Max sat on the bed evading questions. “I know the wind didn’t carry those boilers to the balcony.”
“No. Someone planted them.” When his words didn’t trigger spasms, Max shared what he knew.
In all the commotion of banners and torches celebrating the claiming festival, stray workers around the apartment roof went unnoticed. The sticky eggs were speckled gray and blended into the shadow beneath the eave. Whoever planted them needed experience in the far outlands as well as a strong motive.
What disturbed Max’s zoological expert was the timing. Hatching should have occurred days earlier, but the shady eave had slowed the process, meaning Max was not the target. Quiggs was the target, meant to die days earlier, even before he was tossed over the rampart. Stefan would have died with Quiggs had the eggs hatched on time. Instead, a good soldier assigned to the roof to guard Quiggs and Max had died.
Why the boilers and not an arrow? Or poisoned food? Or his throat slit in bed at night from an intruder?
Max had a speculation. With Quiggs confined to the apartment and heralds watching his every move from the ground, the killer couldn’t get near without witnesses foiling his escape. He wasn’t suicidal. He had planted the nest as a back-up plan, then watched and waited. When Quiggs escaped for the bakery, the killer seized the opportunity.
“Why?” Quiggs rasped. His ruined voice hurt from interrupting Max with questions.
“The consensus is you’re the target of extremists scared of the changes your steam invention will bring to transportation. The attack has outraged the people. Even Rosamunde. She’s offered a hefty reward for information on those involved. The First Family believes the extremists may target her next, so she’s in hiding. Unfortunately, her reward has resulted in a flood of information leading to dead ends, wasting time and manpower.”
“All this began after I drew your name.”
“Our business partnership for weaponry isn’t secret. Extremists fear we’ll use them to overthrow the government.”
“They’ll strike again,” Quiggs whispered.
“You’ll stay in the safest place in the territory after leaving the hospital—my barge, guarded by soldiers angered at the loss of one of their own. Accessed by a single ramp. Equipped with a tower on each end and with an archer in each monitoring all directions. You can design weapons on board but take the testing to the fields. I don’t want you sinking my barge.”
Quiggs garbled a laugh. He stared down at himself. “Heh… Lost weight.” Placing his hands on his flatter belly, he walked his fingers down to his loose silky boxers and picked at a piece of peeling skin. “Itches all over.”
“How about a shower and shampoo? You can sit on a stool beneath the spray.” Max dropped his voice to a low, sexy rumble. “Remember the therapy the doctor prescribed for us?”
A blush crept up Quiggs’s ears. The doctor recommended hand jobs in the shower until their ejaculate was clear.
Max stripped, his skin glowing after its peel and
his body leaner. Quiggs’s body looked like a molting lizard. He helped Quiggs to the shower, easing him onto the stool. After wetting him down, he applied soap and followed with a scrub brush over every inch of skin.
Quiggs groaned as the brush circled the middle of his back. “Yeah. Yeah. To the right. There. Feels good.”
Max rinsed him off. “Now your hair.” He unraveled the filthy braid.
“Fucking braid,” Quiggs muttered as Max raked his fingers through the long spirals. “I swear if I had the weapons, outlawing braids is the first change I’d enforce.” How often had he cursed that particular law? The attacks started after he drew Max’s name. Everyone knew the commander never submitted and how deeply Quiggs hated his braid. “Max, maybe it’s about my braid. Once I cut it off, the attacks should cease.”
Max tugged a handful of hair pulling Quiggs’s head back to meet his steely gaze. “Your braid is hardly a motive to kill you. Are you hinting to visit a pleasure house?”
“I don’t need to invent an excuse. You promised I could.”
“I promised before I met you. I don’t think I can share you without… without seeking vengeance against the man you choose.”
Pleased at the admission, Quiggs waggled his brows up at Max. “No rule says I can’t lose my braid in an accident. It would be your word with no witnesses at an inquiry, right?”
The suggestion seemed to upset Max. He pulled back, shaking his hands as if his claws tingled. “Uh, Quiggs… I don’t think—”
“Hear me out. I could burn off my braid in an explosion. You could say you accidentally swiped your sword over it while clearing a path through the vines. Or you could say a fin lunged at my dangling braid, forcing you to slice it off before I was dragged into the canal. You pick.”
Max sounded dazed as he dragged his fingers down Quiggs’s itchy scalp. “There’s no point in staging an accident.”
“I’m telling you it’s all about my braid.”
Max held out a clump of hair. “About your braid...”
Chapter Twenty-One
Quiggs stirred from a dreamless sleep sprawled on his stomach. Someone touched his naked back. Accustomed to Max checking his breathing throughout the night, he huffed a breath to reassure him, then buried his face deeper into the pillow. He would wake up when he smelled breakfast. Something meaty fried with onions. If served another bowl of mushed grains, he’d gag.
The hand touched the tiny scar left by the hook on his shoulder, then glided down his back, slipping under the waistband of his baggy sleep boxers. Thick, ridged fingertips traced the firmer curve of his ass. The touch was hesitant. The therapy showers together aroused Quiggs to half-mast, but Max couldn’t coax a twitch from his own peeled cock.
Was Max finally in the mood and seizing the moment? His eyelids gooey with salve, Quiggs rolled to his back and hooked his hands under the waistband to work down his boxers. His stomach trembled. Eyes closed, he waited for Max to stroke him. He heard ragged breathing, then a heavy step back.
Was Max’s mood slipping away again?
Or was he troubled by Quiggs’s altered looks?
“Would you like it if I stroked you?” Quiggs shyly offered.
“Yes. Very much. But it is forbidden of us.”
Quiggs pried open his eyes and found Beau’s curious gaze on his exposed cock. He yanked up his pants, then bolted upright. “You fucker!” The shout hurt his throat. He sputtered incoherently before rasping out. “You ruined my life, you cost me everything, y-y-you—”
Beau clamped a hand over Quiggs’s mouth. “Yelling harms your voice.”
Quiggs bit down on the fleshy part of the palm.
Beau wrenched his hand away, nostrils flaring. “You drew blood!” He sounded astonished. He wiped the drops of blood on the front of his brown military tee.
“You horny bastard!” Quiggs swung his foot at Beau’s groin, missing as Beau swiveled his hip.
“I am not here for sex. I touched you to check how you are healing. You are smooth and pink.”
“You ruined my life!” Quiggs lunged off the bed and butted his head into Beau’s stomach. He saw dancing lights. Beau barely grunted. Quiggs stumbled around the room throwing weak punches that Beau dodged without effort. When Beau backed against the closed door reaching around to turn the knob and escape, Quiggs seized his muscular neck in a stranglehold, wrapped his legs around Beau’s waist, and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.
It was like throttling a column of stone.
Quiggs stopped, realizing he’d inadvertently aligned their cocks. Again. One sweet grind would send Beau over the threshold. Again.
Beau read his thoughts. “I have learned control.” He eased down until he sat on the floor, back against the door with Quiggs straddling his lap. Quiggs felt a hard ridge riding his crack and glared until Beau lifted him by the ass and set him atop his thighs.
Beau breathed as steadily as if he were sitting in the shade watching his herd graze, but Quiggs wheezed after days of inactivity.
They stared silently at the changes in each other over the last four weeks.
The untamed tawny sideburns curving Beau’s strong jaw were new. He had more sensory hairs than Max. Plucking one would ache worse than a fingernail pulled from the quick. Quiggs would do it as soon as he caught his breath.
Beau’s transitioned body had bulked up. The angles of his face had sharpened to create a virile beauty. He had probably spent their weeks apart fucking anything on two feet who nodded back. How had his lopsided little friend with the goofish grin and happy wiggle transformed into this dangerous creature whose exotic green eyes regarded him with an eerie intensity?
“I have missed you, my good friend Quiggs.” Beau placed Quiggs’s hand on his cheek and rubbed against the palm.
Oh, fartin’ hell, love poured out of those trusting green eyes. Quiggs rested his forehead on Beau’s shoulder. “I should hate you.” He gave a ragged sigh of defeat. Life was what it was. A complicated series of somersaults over jagged stakes.
“I cannot be sorry for what I did.” Beau spoke slowly, stressing his consonants as if they were stuck on his tongue. “A killer hunts you. Had you married Rosamunde, you would be dead. Max would not have been there to rescue you. It is far better to live.”
“You expect me to thank you?” Quiggs cuffed Beau’s head, the way he had as cadets when Beau misbehaved and Quiggs didn’t know what else to do with him.
Beau chortled, the cadence familiar but deeper, rougher.
“I lost everything I owned, my farm, orchards, inventions, research… my freedom. I’m a concubine. Me—the most courted cadet in the class—a concubine.”
“The most honored man in the territory owns you.” Beau patted Quiggs’s bald head. “He must care for you very much to let you fuck his hole.”
“Pfffft. My hair fell out from the stings. Max’s hair is fine. I could stay bald forever.”
“No. I feel bristle. You are cuter than a baby goat.”
Quiggs reared back. “Fuck cute. I’m supposed to have hollows and angles and look sexy. I look like a melon.”
“Everyone who sees you will believe Max vowed on his honor to let you fuck him and cut your braid if you fought harder to live. Then he shaved your head, angry at how much you enjoyed his ass.”
Quiggs snickered. “Dr. Knowles thought I’d lost my virginity when he saw my hair gone. He asked if Max needed cream for his sore hole before he examined him. Max was so angry his claws displayed. He made the doctor prepare a five-page statement for the Assembly explaining my hair loss. Max dressed in his formal uniform to speak to the heralds today, making sure there is no shred of doubt he did not reciprocate.”
Beau trilled his delight and kicked his boot heels on the floor at Max’s predicament. Quiggs’s shoulders shook as he slapped Beau’s chest. For a minute they were inactive cadets again, their friendship unburdened with inconvenient sexual stirrings.
Quiggs wiped his streaming eyes on Beau’s tee. Within three
months, his transitioned runt wore the stripes of a master archer on each short sleeve. The truth was Quiggs couldn’t hate Beau. They were innocent victims of archaic laws. Changes were needed, yet some feared the idea. Hence the vicious attacks.
“Did your first time hurt?” Beau asked. “Max promised me he would be kind your claiming night.”
“First times always hurt. I had fun before he put it in. He’s not as selfish as I was led to believe. I think I might have enjoyed it after a few more times, only the boilers stopped the fun. We haven’t had sex since then. We’ve tried in the shower for three days now but can’t.” Quiggs couldn’t believe what he was admitting to Beau. “I don’t look so good naked and bald. He can’t… um… seem to get hard with me.”
“And you, my Quiggs?”
“I almost get there. Then I see him frowning at my bald head, and I lose it. He wants jiggle and hair.” Quiggs rubbed his flat belly and patted his melon head.
“You show good muscular coordination,” Beau observed.
“Shit, Beau. I can’t get over your vocabulary. Since when did you start stringing sentences together? And you use proper grammar.” The changes rattled Quiggs. Where was his lopsided little friend?
Beau beamed at him. “I have always understood language, but my tongue and voice did not do what my mind asked.” He carried Quiggs back to bed and poured him a cup of water from the pitcher on the nightstand. “Drink all of it. Hydration flushes out the toxins.”
Quiggs gawked. “You said hydration. What’s happened to your mind? Or am I hallucinating?”
“I remember many lessons from the academy. They are like musical notes playing in my mind waiting for my new voice to sing them.”
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