“Shit… You sound like a poet.”
“I study every evening in my hammock on the barge. I will become a worthy husband with good wages in three years, and we will enjoy bad showers together every night.”
He’d be killed long before Beau was worthy, so why argue? He changed the subject. “How did you sneak past the guards?”
“I do not sneak in here. Max ordered me to guard you while he speaks to the heralds. He trusts me.” Beau puffed out his chest. “I am his best soldier. He knows I will sense danger quicker than he. He knows I will kill for you and give my life for you. If my cock rises with you, I will jerk off into a cup and save it for the vines.”
Quiggs choked on the last swallow of water.
“I jerk off many times a day thinking of us.” He took Quiggs’s cup and traced the rim as if he imagined a welcoming pucker. The look slanted at Quiggs said whose.
“You should think of other men when you jerk off. Find a friendly soldier to hook up with.”
“Soldiers are ashamed to share sex with me, and I am ashamed to visit a pleasure room. I bait the fields fantasizing about you. I dream of the day I call you my husband instead of my good friend Quiggs.”
“Beau…” Quiggs’s voice cracked. “Don’t go there.”
“On my honor, I will wait three years for my good friend Quiggs, who is not ashamed of my blood.”
“Good to hear you’ll wait.” Max banged the door open. Had he stood outside listening? He strode into the room, his lips curled from an instinct to bare nonexistent fangs, his hand on the hilt of his sword. His boots gleamed, his wide cuffs were precisely turned back on his navy jacket, and medals of valor glittered on his sash.
The instant Beau heard movement at the door, he’d assumed a defensive crouch, but he relaxed at the sight of Max. He acknowledged his commander with a curt salute, then sniffed the air. “He brings you the jam muffins you like. The ones I sneaked to you in the library.”
Max glowered at Beau for spoiling the surprise as he pulled the wrapped muffins from the pocket of his jacket.
Beau nodded. “A smart way to arouse my good friend Quiggs.”
Max snapped back, “Your good friend is my concubine. I don’t need to seduce him. He obeys me.”
“You won his body. Not his heart,” Beau reminded him.
Quiggs got off the bed, snatched the muffins during the glare-off, and bit into one. Warm and gooey right out of the oven, the kind of food to get his jiggle back. Out of habit, he held out a fingertip of jam for Beau to lick. Beau had always adored being hand-fed like a pet.
Beau rolled his eyes at the commander as he licked the jam off with three long swipes, even though one was enough.
Quiggs finished the muffin. “No point in you badasses fighting over me. If I’m alive in three years, I’m finding me a nice fat baker to wed.” He bit into a second muffin, squirting jam. When he saw their hungry eyes on his messy mouth, he turned his back to them. “Idiots,” he mumbled.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Three weeks after the stings, Quiggs departed the hospital hunched inside one of three deep laundry bins delivering clean uniforms to the soldiers on Max’s barge.
Naturally, his bin had a rickety left wheel, banging his tailbone with each revolution.
Somewhere out there, Beau followed, keeping in the shadows, his eyes and ears alert for suspicious activity. Quiggs doubted anything would happen with the mist hanging over the city like a tattered veil an hour before dawn. At designated corners, soldiers slumped as if drunk against the walls of the closed pubs, waiting for the military patrol to cart them off. Nothing out of the ordinary to alert the assassin Quiggs was relocating.
Max concluded a group of extremists had planned the attacks with hired assassins tracking Quiggs for an opportunity. Until the guilty parties were caught, Max insisted his barge was the safest hiding place. Quiggs would be disguised as an ordinary soldier.
Max fed the heralds a story of Quiggs confined to the hospital another day before completing his recovery in an undisclosed apartment. The extremists would immediately search for clues to the location. Like baiting ferals, Max was giving them something to sniff by installing Cutty in a two-bedroom apartment in Port Paducah. If Max’s manservant wasn’t accompanying him on the barge, there was a damn good reason. They would assume he was caring for Quiggs. Instead of Quiggs, whoever broke into the apartment would find soldiers waiting inside.
Cutty had volunteered to bait the bastard. If hatched any earlier, the boilers would have stung his husband to death.
Inside the rickety bin, Quiggs heard the swish of brooms in front of the shops, the spray of hoses washing the streets of debris, the clack of garbage bins. Skilled cadets without rank were doomed to spend their adult lives performing these mundane jobs unless Quiggs invented new industries and the Triangle expanded its boundaries.
The early morning breeze carried the greasy smoke from hundreds of balconies where residents had fired up grills to cook at home instead of dining out. The attacks could be about money and displaced workers. As more people cooked at home, merchants lost income. His fueled grills had disrupted supply and demand for the dining halls. Jobs were rerouted. New businesses opened as old ones closed.
Water slapped the dock as he was wheeled toward the berth reserved for the commander’s barge. The barge was sixty feet long and twelve feet wide. It carried up to two hundred soldiers who rotated shifts with archers in watchtowers around the canal and with soldiers patrolling the borders and guarding the herders. The canal was thirty feet wide, its steady current powered by the lost engineering room. Six crewmen on each side used poles to shove away from the lip of the bank if the barge drifted too close. A pilot judged distances and barked orders where to pole.
There was a watchtower on the stern and one on the bow. Archers stood inside, scanning the vines for predators and yelling down where the vines infringed too close to the canal. Archers also watched ahead for flags on the mileposts. Blue signaled larger fins were nosing the banks near the herds or had shown aggression toward passing vessels. Red flags signaled possible feral activity. White signaled passenger pickup. Yellow signaled more goats needed nearby. The barge always hauled two flatboats of extra goats to drop off.
It had been this way for centuries, but Quiggs threatened their complacence.
The bin wheeled up the gangplank and to the rear where Max’s cabin was located. A soldier lifted him out, his hands on Quiggs’s waist no longer than necessary. Quiggs found himself at a green door with the sword and skull emblem of the commander’s rank. The deck around the cabin was barely enough for two men to walk abreast. Four steep steps took Quiggs down inside the cabin.
He remembered a tour of the cabin with his future classmates when he was seven. Max’s uncle was the commander then, clean-shaven, tall, and aloof, dedicated to exacting obedience to the rules. The cadets had gazed in awe at the red skulls on his cuffs.
Max’s count had eclipsed his uncle’s when he challenged for leadership a year after enlisting.
Young boys didn’t care about becoming commander and strutting around the barge in a stiff jacket and hat barking orders. Boys aspired to become master archers. Quiggs remembered volunteering first to climb a watchtower.
“You aren’t afraid,” Max’s uncle had asked him when he had descended.
“No, sir. I want to enlist and be an archer when I graduate.”
The commander had laughed and tweaked his piglet braid. “Not the destiny your family plans for you, young Quiggs.”
His family never planned for him to be a concubine hiding in the commander’s cabin either.
With the exception of replacing the bed to accommodate his size, Max had left the wood-paneled cabin unchanged. There was the same carved wooden table with four chairs, the heavy legs locked in sliding grooves in the planked floor. A footlocker, racks, shelves, and pegs held clothes and weapons. A panel of whistles on the back wall connected to various parts of the barge, the code telling soldiers what t
he commander wanted. Quiggs licked his lips, itching to try one.
A hot water reservoir on the right was used to fill the adjacent hipbath and the basin of a washstand. Common soldiers washed up at the water troughs on deck or waited to bathe in the cities’ bathhouses.
Rungs on the back wall led to the top hatch. Quiggs climbed up for a peek out, only to hear Beau’s warning hiss from the watchtower. Max had ordered Quiggs confined inside the cabin the next three days. He locked the hatch, then checked out the built-in bed occupying most of the left wall. The length accommodated Max’s height but was a snug width. Max swore his partners never slept with him, but from the deep fingerprints worn into the leather-padded footboard, he had entertained frequently.
A sliding drawer at the base of the bed contained borrowed military uniforms for Quiggs to wear. He held up a folded brown tee, thrilled to see Patrol on the back. No loose white concubine shirt open to his naval for him—he was a badass member of the Border Patrol! He spread the tee wide and sputtered at the full phrase: Bucket Patrol. The punishment for misdemeanors was cleaning toilet troughs. Hmmmph. Max’s little joke.
Neatly folded beside the uniforms was a long-sleeved ruffled white nightshirt and pairs of outrageous boxers with flaps in the crotch and seat. Stefan’s little joke.
Cutty left instructions on the table for using the piss hole, which was a small door on the floor near the steps.
Lift the door by its heavy metal ring.
Squat or piss in the basin.
Use supply of young vine leaves in basket to clean up.
Close the door.
Pull the lever to tip the basin.
Never pull the lever until after you have closed the door.
Fins can lunge several feet up and pull you down the chute by your ass or cock.
Quiggs clenched his buttocks as he reminded himself aloud. “Lift ring. Piss, squat. Close door. Pull lever. Got it.”
Feet tramped on the deck as soldiers returned to duty after a night in the city. Soft light trickled in from beneath the door and around the sides through the shutters over the two portholes, one by the bed, the other by the bath.
Water slapped against the sides of the barge gently rocking the room. Would he struggle with motion sickness during a storm?
He caught his reflection in the mirror over the sink. His hair was growing back, and despite Max’s reassurance, it did look like a coat of mold had sprouted on his melon head.
These were his first minutes of privacy without the worry of medics barging in to examine him or with Max hovering. One minute was all Quiggs needed for his first cleansing ejaculation. He lay on the bed, lowered his pants, and lifted the tee to his chin.
He plumped within a few strokes, then rubbed faster, intent on crossing the finish line. His blood warmed, and his balls drew up. Oh, yeah. Life sucked, but his dick worked. A tingling heat centered in his cock. His vision whited out, and his palm filled with spurt after spurt of cum.
Ugh. Dirty brown cum with yellow speckles and a barnyard smell. He cleaned up with the leaves and flushed them down the piss hole. He cracked open both port holes to air out the cabin, feeling as if he’d cheated on Max.
Soft pleased laughter drifted from the tower. He hadn’t fooled Beau.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Max returned to the barge as the second morning bell sounded for the larger boats to leave their berths, complete the turnaround, and ride the current up the northeast leg of the canal to Port Paducah. The smaller crafts departed earlier to avoid the wake of the larger boats.
Unlike his predecessors who wore a jacket and hat on duty, Max wore a fitted navy tee and dark green pants. The colors, as well as his size, set him apart as the commander but also gave him the freedom to leap into action when needed.
When Max stepped aboard, his men lined up to salute him, their faces betraying no hint to onlookers that Quiggs was hidden in his cabin, and anyone who interrupted without just cause before the commander’s three claiming days were completed would be flogged. He saluted his First Captain, who’d assumed command while he was hospitalized. From their communications Max knew the outbank was quiet.
Max cast a glance at Beau watching him from the archer’s tower. Childishly, he held up a carton of arousing treats from the Canal Street Bakery. An unhappy whine drifted down.
Max found Quiggs sitting with his bare feet on the table and a commander’s logbook propped on his stomach. He’d unlocked the legs of the chair from their grooves on the floor in order to sit tilted back and had dozed off reading, arms loose at his sides.
Max missed the small belly and braid, but Quiggs’s essence attracted him. He’d fucked muscular soldiers, skilled fems, and eager cadets in the academy, yet his sensors always picked up the inner battle between their deference to his rank and their disgust of his odd cock. Max never lowered his guard with other men. With Quiggs, layers of distrust peeled away. The needy sounds his concubine made when Max stroked him were sincere. When Quiggs’s big green eyes lidded with heat or widened with fascination, Max’s sensors shot bolts of heat straight to his cock.
The doctor had warned him against vigorous sex before Quiggs was fully healed and no penetration until his seed ran clear. During their therapy showers, Quiggs appeared ready, while Max experienced only pleasant zings of warmth.
“Good morning, my concubine. Hungry?” Max dropped the carton on the table. Quiggs started, his arms flailing for balance. Max straightened the chair before it fell.
Quiggs sniffed and tore open the carton. “Honey custards!” He cracked the brown glaze, and his face lit up as he licked a spoonful.
Max’s cock stirred. His breath hitched. His attention focused on the zinging. Come on… come on… Then the swelling. Getting there. Then the throbbing ache at full mast. Don’t think. Use it or lose it.
Max growled, “I want you naked. On the bed. Now!”
Max pulled off his boots and wrestled off his uniform before he remembered the restraint on vigorous fucking. He turned to Quiggs to apologize, expecting to find him huddled over his custard, afraid Max would hurt him. A puddle of clothes lay on the vacated chair. Quiggs was already naked in bed, slicking his trembling thighs with oil.
“Dr. Knowles said no penetration or sucking until our seed runs clear,” Quiggs said. “I think we should start with thigh fucking. What’s your preference? Me on top facing you, riding reverse, or lying on my side? The taint is a very erogenous zone for me. Any which way you’re long enough to rub your cock right under my ass and in between my thighs.”
Scared baby cadet, my ass. “You’ve given this some thought.”
“Or you can lie down, and I’ll sit alongside and rub you. Maybe put one finger in your ass for extra—no? Stefan said to ask anyway.”
At the mention of a curious finger near his crack, Max’s sensory hairs stopped zinging and fired warning shots. His instinct screamed to ravish, discipline, win, but he wrestled for control. No vigorous sex. No penetration. He concentrated on images of Quiggs’s painful recovery. The breathing tube… the cock cage… the peeling skin… the seizures.
Max sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, ashamed. “You’re too frail for sex. I should take the edge off alone.”
Quiggs’s bark of laughter triggered a coughing fit. When he caught his breath, Quiggs knelt behind him and squeezed his shoulders. “Pfft. I jerked off twice before you arrived.”
“Twice? You couldn’t wait an hour for me to come aboard?” Max clapped a hand over Quiggs’s mouth when he started to explain. “Save your voice. Allow me to answer. Because you are twenty, right?”
Quiggs nodded, then licked Max’s palm. The wet tongue reminded Max how wonderful his concubine’s mouth felt surrounding his cock their claiming night.
His voice deepened. “You were curious how your cum looked.”
Lick. Lick.
“And the dick wants what it wants whenever, wherever.”
Lick-lick-lick-lick.
“Was twice enough to clear your semen for oral?”
Quiggs dragged Max’s hand away by the wrist. “A trace of yellow speckles remains, but the stench is gone.”
“Stench?”
“Nasty stuff. Had to open the port holes before I suffocated myself.”
Max laughed until his sides ached. He fell on the bed, hugging Quiggs to his chest. He couldn’t remember hugging anyone here in his bed. Gripping, grinding, clasping, yes. Affectionate hugging demeaned a man unless it was with a spouse or concubine. He stroked Quiggs’s bristly head.
Quiggs squirmed from his embrace and straddled Max’s waist. “You always touched me in the shower. I want to touch your body.”
Max folded his hands behind his head and flexed his muscles. “Help yourself.”
Quiggs rubbed his hands together, getting them warm, then worked them down Max’s jawline to his shoulders. He tickled his pits, commenting on the sparse tufts and the musky scent. He smoothed his hands down to Max’s chest, tracing each defined pec. “Holy, shit,” he breathed. “Like slabs of warm stone. Hardly any give.” His fingers lazily circled flat brown nipples. “Bosoms scare me. Witters told me to spend time playing with Rosamunde’s bosoms before sucking them. I dreaded it.”
The blunt comment amused Max.
Quiggs stroked a path back up to Max’s ears. “Your tawny hairs cling to my fingers when I touch them. Like they’re tactile.” He rolled one between his thumb and forefinger. “Feels like a nubby strand of fur.”
Max groaned. The nubs were receptors, and Quiggs’s touch ignited them, sending flashes of heat down Max’s spine. With other men, the hairs disliked the feelings detected. With Quiggs, the hairs behaved like wanton bosoms, demanding attention.
Quiggs leaned down, utterly preoccupied with the discovery. With a slight turn of his face, Max could press a kiss on the corner of Quiggs’s mouth. “I know what you’re thinking. Kiss me and I’ll pull a hair!” Quiggs tugged on one, then immediately squealed, jerking his hand back. “The little bastard shocked me!” He fanned his hand, scowling at Max.
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