by Joey W. Hill
Adults often don’t say what they mean, but they feel the important things the same way a child does.
Once they’d agreed on the quotes, Ange wanted Robert to do the recording, but Robert told him he was the only one who could do it right. After hearing his reading to Mr. Oglesby, it was obvious to Robert that Ange’s voice was best suited to conveying an angel’s message of joy and wonder. That, and the genuine emotion he put into the other passages he’d chosen, made the nativity room a favorite with new and return customers. Mrs. Fitzgerald sat through the full recording at least once a week, her eyes often moistening as she cupped her cider to warm her hands, Horatio dozing in the nest of her purse.
Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. The least of these shall have my love…
Ange added little improvs like that to the original quotes, adding to the spirit of the recording. Now Robert put his hand on Ange’s shoulder, gazing at the nativity scene. “You did a great job with this.”
When Ange fairly glowed, Robert felt an answering warmth spread through his chest. The boy treated every compliment like gold. It could make a Master ridiculously devoted to him in no time. Hell, he was already there, wasn’t he? The collar proved it.
“You did, too.” Moving forward in just the collar and angel feathers, beautiful in his nakedness, Ange knelt at the manger, studying the occupant. “It’s nearly two hundred years old, but that’s not why you arranged the hay just so, with the blanket over it. You made it soft and comfortable, the way Joseph and Mary would have done.” He ran a long finger over the blanket. “You believe in the spirit of things. You understand what things to care for, and you care for them well, Master.”
Emotion swelled to a painful pressure in Robert’s chest. “Stay there,” he said. “Kneeling in front of the manger is right where I want you.”
It was a solid thing, bolted to the floor because, as Ange had noted, the doll was quite valuable. Robert didn’t want a shopper accidentally knocking it over. But as Ange had also noted, that wasn’t why Robert lifted the babe out so gently now, under Ange’s close regard. He moved it to the extra cradle tucked to the side, used when Ange needed to rearrange the hay or shake dust out of the blanket. As Robert lowered his burden, he automatically said a simple prayer, like his mother had when she’d assembled and disassembled the nativity scene each Christmas.
He checked the carafe of hot cider. There was about a cup left in it from earlier today. After he plugged it in, he turned. Ange was watching him still, but now there was a pensive look on his face. He glanced down at the manger with serious green eyes. “This is okay, right, Master? It’s not...blasphemy to you?”
“No. Not if we respect what’s here, and if what we do, we do in love.” When Ange’s expression transformed to astonishment, Robert came to him, put a hand on his face. “Religion murdered Jesus, but faith kept his message alive for those who care to hear it. Do unto others... Love one another... Cast no stones…”
“Love one another.” Ange touched Robert’s thigh. “I’ve wanted you to love me for a long time.”
“I’ve been in love with you for quite a while.” There, he’d said it. The look on Ange’s face made it worth hurtling over every fear to form the words. “But I lacked the courage to say it aloud.”
“No, Master.” Ange’s expression revealed that streak of determination, the one that intrigued and aroused Robert at once. “You just needed time to hurt, to grieve. Everybody deserves that.”
He paused so long that Robert could tell he was struggling with something. Robert tapped a gentle finger on his cheek. “It’s all right. What is it?”
Ange looked up at him again, hope and desire wrapped up together in an expression so mesmerizing Robert couldn’t look away. “When we were talking about The Littlest Angel, this store and you…you’re that box for me. The star over the stable, guiding me home. Do I have a home here, Master?”
Robert gripped the side of Ange’s face, fingers biting into his neck. “Yes, Ange. You made it a home for me again. When I thought I’d lost what home was.”
Ange had said the world was ugly, and it could be, but he’d made it beautiful again to Robert. Love could do that.
Hooking a finger under Ange’s collar, Robert brought him up on his knees. The kisses he’d taken before had been rough, demanding. This time it was tender and excruciating, like drawing a knife gently across flesh begging to bleed for him. He caressed with lips and tongue, held Ange’s head still so he could tease and stroke, savor every single reaction. When he was done, Ange was holding onto his arms for balance, breathless with pleasure.
“I’m your Master, Ange. When we’re done tonight, you’re not going to doubt for a moment where you belong. Or to whom. Now, bend over the manger.”
To his satisfaction, Ange looked a little dazed, but Robert helped him, guiding him to hold onto either corner of the manger. He thought about tying him there, but decided against it. Ange would stay still if Robert ordered him to do it. Robert switched on the decorative light that made it look like stars were swimming across the walls and ceilings. He also turned on the spotlight that framed the angel and Mary’s gentle face. Ange’s playlist was still going, and he could hear the bittersweet strains of Sarah McLachlan’s “River.” When he’d heard the song last Christmas, he’d wanted to skate away on that river as well. Now he just wanted to be on it with Ange, gliding through those white snowflakes, silent and perfect, like first kisses.
He checked the cider. It was warming fast. Ange usually rinsed the carafe out at night, so Robert expected he’d gotten distracted with his paper chains and dancing and hadn’t had a chance to do it yet.
“Do you ever sleep?” Robert asked, coming back to Ange. Trailing a finger through those feathers, he made Ange’s skin draw up with gooseflesh, his thighs shift out wider. Robert knelt behind him, putting his hands on his waist, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. Ange let out a soft sigh, fingers tightening on the manger, while Robert put his knee in between the spread legs, pushing his hip bone firmly against the seam of Ange’s buttocks as he held him.
“Sometimes. I don’t sleep that well. Haven’t for a long time. On the street...you stay alert.”
Robert brushed his jaw against Ange’s neck, the cool press of the collar buckle against his chin. “You’ll tell me how that happened one day. You’ll trust me with all of it. It won’t make me love you less.”
Studying the hickey he’d put high on Ange’s throat, Robert laid his mouth on the joining point between Ange’s throat and shoulder and bit down to give him another. The hard, suckling pressure took away the tension his casual statement had caused his sub. Ange groaned, his ass pushing back against Robert.
“Un-unh.” He backed off, gave him a smack for that, making those whip marks sing, he was sure. “You stay easy and still. Think about what’s coming.”
Ange let out a huff, a half-chuckle that said what he thought of the likelihood of those two ideas going together. Robert found himself smiling. He rose to pour the cider in a paper cup, picked up a plastic spoon, came back to him. “Put your forehead on the manger. I want your back like a sloped table.”
When Ange obeyed, Robert stirred the cider, took a sip. Just hot enough. When he dipped the spoon, dripped some on the small of Ange’s back, below the feathers, the boy shuddered, fingers gripping the manger harder. It was hot enough to burn, but too little of it to do damage, just roll that feeling down his spine, to his crack.
“Master... Oh God…”
The starlight fell on his skin as well, like snow itself. Robert did it again, loving the way Ange jumped from the burn, but then wiggled at the residual sensations. His hips lifted, lowered. He was trying hard not to get into a coital rhythm, but Robert could see it developing anyway, and his own cock pulsed with the same composition. “Lift your ass up to me, Ange. Take the burn.”
He did, several more times, until he was making small, needy grunts. Robert knelt,
putting the cider aside to reach between Ange’s spread thighs. When he took hold of his balls, Ange made an animal sound of lust. “God... Master…”
“Don’t you move. Don’t you be bad and thrust into your Master’s hand. Be still.” Robert let his touch move up to Ange’s cock. As Robert bent lower to follow the cider’s track with his mouth, Ange shuddered with the effort to obey. Robert took his time with it, pumping his grip on Ange’s cock as the kid fought with all he had not to fuck that teasing hold. When he ran his tongue down between Ange’s buttocks, lapping at that spiced sweetness, Ange made a strangled noise of torment. His cock pulsed alarmingly under Robert’s grip, but he squeezed the base, making it clear his sub wouldn’t come until it was okay with him.
“I told you I could be ruthless, Ange. I want my subs to beg.”
“I want to please you, Master... I want you. Please...please... I want you inside me. Please.”
His eyes never leaving Ange, Robert stood. He unbuttoned his shirt, shrugged out of it, then pulled the white undershirt over his head. When he started to unbuckle his belt, he could tell Ange was listening intently.
“Imagining me undressing?”
Ange nodded, a quick twitch. “I always wanted... I could tell you were in shape...fit, but you always wear so many clothes.” The frustration in his voice surprised, amused, and flattered Robert all at once. “That day the air conditioning broke, you rolled up your sleeves and pulled off your bowtie, opening the top button of your shirt. Then you took it all the way off to work on the shelving in the back. You were wearing a white T-shirt beneath, and I came back to give you something. You were standing on the ladder, your biceps flexing with the hammering, your ass at eye level. You had your knee pressed to the inside of the ladder’s frame, one step up from the other foot. God, I went into the bathroom and came like a fucking wet dream, not able to stop myself. It was like a striptease.”
Robert had stopped undressing, stunned by the stream of words, the images Ange painted. He didn’t think much about his body. He did keep it in shape, but he’d never thought of himself the way he thought about Ange: flawless, something any man or woman would crave to touch. Ange made Robert’s body sound like that and more. He was almost afraid to let him look now. But he wouldn’t be a coward. Ange deserved to see what he was getting.
“Look at me,” he growled.
Ange lifted his head. Robert stepped to the right so Ange didn’t have to remove his hands from the manger, making it clear he wanted him to stay in the subservient position. However, now he was the one who felt most vulnerable. His upper body was bare, his belt unbuckled, the top button of the jeans undone. As Ange watched, he toed off his shoes, stepped on his socks to pull them off, then removed the jeans and boxers beneath, leaving himself even more bare than the man kneeling before him.
Ange looked like he was holding his breath. His gaze moved from Robert’s face down over his chest, lingering over the shrapnel scars he had, then down to thighs and cock. It was a decent length, thicker than most. He’d never had any complaints about its size or how he used it, but under Ange’s attention, it seemed as if it was trying to outdo itself. Fuck, the kid affected him.
Ange did that lip moistening thing that could make Robert lose his mind. “Eyes down now. You’ve looked.”
“Never enough,” his sub murmured, though he obeyed, those white-gold lashes sweeping down in a way that was almost coquettish. “You’re beautiful, Master.”
“Yeah, right.” But he couldn’t help the curve of his own lips, the warmth he felt from the sincerity in Ange’s words. “You’re the beautiful one.”
It hit him then, the immenseness of all of this, of the past, present, and future rolled together. He moved forward, putting a hand on Ange’s shoulder. However, when he slid his thumb under the collar, he found he couldn’t go any further. His grip tightened, that feeling rising in his chest, overwhelming him.
Ange stilled. “Master?”
“I’m all right.”
Ange knew him too well. The kid straightened, a gentle, insistent push against his hold. Robert had been standing between his spread knees, but he gave way as the young man turned, looked up at him. Then Ange lowered his chin and pressed a reverent kiss against Robert’s lower abdomen, just above his pubic area. His cock jutted over Ange’s shoulder, but his sub didn’t break the inviolate rule about not touching a Master there directly, bare skin to bare skin, without express permission, even though he was breaking some lesser rules by touching him elsewhere. Ange ran his hands up the back of Robert’s legs, learning the musculature, tugging on the short hairs, then glided them up to his ass, molding over him.
“You’re perfect, Master,” he hummed against Robert’s flesh. “A fighter, so strong and hard everywhere. Except your heart.”
Robert dug his fingers into Ange’s hair, held there as Ange worked his mouth across that pubic line. “Hell with it,” he groaned, and angled his cock. “Suck on me.”
Ange took him all the way to the base, a skill so impressive Robert might have come right then, except he knew exactly how and where he intended to do that. “Stop. Keep it in your mouth and look up at me.”
He loved that image, a sub gazing up from that position of service. Ange’s green eyes glittered beneath the fall of hair, his mouth stretched over Robert’s girth, his own cock hard and ready, dripping pre-come on the floor below. It was the best Christmas card ever.
“Lean back over that manger. Now.”
Ange complied, sliding off him slow and teasing, but not in a bratty way. Just savoring his cock in a way that made Robert think his inappropriate under-the-counter fantasy might become way too tempting. When Ange resumed his position, Robert pulled his jeans up off the floor. He’d slipped a tube of lubricant into his pocket from the case, so now he uncapped the lube and worked it over himself. He found he had to be careful about it, in danger of going off like a rocket.
Ange had his forehead pressed to the rough wood again. “I love you, Master.”
Robert knelt behind him, put his palm on those angel feathers. Quite a few of them had fallen off now, the cracked wax making patterns over Ange’s flesh. He looked forward to sponging that off afterward. With pleasure, he remembered he’d also brushed it over Ange’s balls. At his place, he had a huge cast iron tub, big enough for two men. He’d clean him there, fuck him again.
“You’ll sleep tonight, Ange. With me, in my bed. And that’s where you’ll wake up Christmas morning, too. We’ll help each other sleep.”
When Ange briefly turned his head, Robert thought he saw tears in those eyes again. He couldn’t bear to wait another moment. Gripping Ange’s hips, he put the head of his cock to that puckered hole, began to ease in. The kid knew the way of it, sphincter muscles pushing back against him, but Robert still took his time, wanting to feel it, wanting it to be right for both of them. For the first time, Robert was glad he’d been celibate for so long, so he didn’t have to worry about a condom. He knew Ange was clean. Ange had given him his blood test results to file with the ER bill Robert had paid that first night. It was a move he now figured had been as deliberate as Ange blowing off those two dates he’d set up for him.
Thank God.
As Ange’s muscles gave way, sucked him in, he let out a reverent expletive. Holy mother of all that’s good...
When he glanced at the Mary statue, she was as serene as ever, which was reassuring. Though he’d said this wasn’t blasphemy, he was pretty sure his own mom might say differently.
Yet sex had never felt so sacred to him as it did right now. What had Ange said? This wasn’t fucking. This was loving.
He stretched out his arms, aligning them with Ange’s, and overlapped their fingers, putting them in the spaces between the white knuckles. The action pressed his body closer against Ange and he pushed in deeper, earning a grunt, a longing sound from Ange’s throat. The stems of the feathers scratched Robert’s chest, a pleasant friction contrasting with the tease of their soft fronds. “
Tell me what you’re thinking, Ange. All of it. No filter.”
“I’m thinking... I knew you’d feel like this...thick and hard. You take care. You’re so rough, so mean, but so gentle, too. I love it. The hard and the soft. The way you whipped my ass, but how you made sure the collar wasn’t too tight, how you kissed me, hard and rough, but you also took your time pushing your cock into me, making sure I was okay every inch of the way. Every blessed, fucking inch.” Ange groaned as Robert withdrew, thrust back in. “Make it hurt, but make it feel good, too, Master. Please.”
Like love itself. Pain and pleasure, sorrow and remembrance, joy and memory-making. Robert slid his arm around Ange’s waist, his hand pressed to his chest to hold Ange against him, the scattering of angel feathers between their bodies. Putting his face back against Ange’s neck, against the collar, he set his teeth into Ange’s shoulder. Mine. Always.
“You don’t come until I say,” he demanded. “Hold it back.”
“Yes...Master.” Ange’s ass and shoulders were rippling in rhythm with their movements. The lights passing over them both became the streaks of shooting stars as Robert went faster, harder, testing the bolts on the manger. He was a strong bastard when he wanted to be, and Ange had told him he wanted it, wanted the power and demand with the pleasure. Ange grunted in exertion, telling him he’d hit the right note. “Yeah, you feel me,” Robert muttered. “You take all of me.”
He was channeling all those things he’d felt, every day he’d gone home wanting and aching, thinking about Ange’s lean body, the watching green eyes, the sinful mouth, the gorgeous ass, and sweet smile. The generous and pure heart.
“Come now. Come for me.”
Though he catapulted over that same delicious edge, Robert managed to reach beneath Ange to work him hard in his fist. The two of them moved in tandem, that instinctive rhythm that had their knees pressing hard into the wood floor. Robert’s arm was a band of steel around Ange. The kid let go of one corner of the manger to clutch it. When Robert shifted so their hands became a knot high against Ange’s chest, Ange set his teeth to Robert’s knuckles, groaning out his release. His seed fountained over Robert’s grip and wet the straw on the floor beneath the manger.