The Muscle Read online

  “Let me start this again,” he said. “Take off your underwear and then hold your hands over your head.”

  Grace gave him a dreamy smile, as if this was all he’d wanted in a lover, ever, and followed Hunter’s directions.

  For his part, Hunter walked to his jacket and pulled out about eight feet of nylon cord, the soft kind that wouldn’t abrade Grace’s tender skin, a clean handkerchief he carried for all sorts of uses, and a condom and lube, because every good boy carried them, whether they had a series of negative tests or not. He returned to where Grace lay, eyes alight and ready, perfectly lean, defined body sprawled out for Hunter’s use. His cock, still stiff, was also wet from the orgasm he’d had while sucking Hunter off.

  Hunter stood over him and stroked gentle fingers down his face, down his jaw, along his throat, stopping to let Grace suck on his thumb.

  “Safeword is ‘Stop, Hunter, I don’t like this.’ I’m not tying the gag in. You can spit it out whenever you want.” With that, he waited until Grace looked him in the eyes. “You consent to this?”

  Grace nodded soberly, his entire face open with anticipation.

  Carefully, Hunter bound Grace’s hands together over his head and then ran the rope down under one knee and back to his hands. He’d prefer more rope, but this splayed Grace out and cut down on his mobility, and the knots were basic sailor’s knots, the kind that could be released with one tug. He put the end of the rope in Grace’s hand. “Just pull,” he said gently. “This is for you, not me.”

  “Good, because my cock is super hard, and I’m gonna jump out of the bed and start humping the door or something if you don’t get a move on, okay?”

  Hunter smiled and put the gag in his mouth, giving him plenty of play.

  Grace’s eyes sheened over, apparently with joy, and Hunter gave in to what he’d wanted from the first and began a slow seduction.

  He started on Grace’s nipples, and he spent as long on them as he damn well pleased—teasing, tormenting, nipping, until Grace’s cock bounced and splatted on his abdomen. Hunter’s own nipples tingled, his cock, even his taint and asshole, and he swore softly to himself.

  He could take the rest of the night and most of the morning worshipping Dylan Li’s body, but he was going to come from anticipation if he didn’t get busy.

  He grabbed the lube from where he’d left it on the bed and dribbled some on his fingers before toying with Grace’s entrance, fiddling really, drawing little patterns on the smooth, hairless pucker while Grace made sounds behind the gag and pressed his free foot hard into the mattress.

  Hunter upped his game, running his lips along the length of Grace’s cock, allowing his tongue out to taste. Ah! His come was sweet, even cold, and he licked harder, down along the harp string, under the bell. Grace made a muffled scream of frustration, and Hunter looked up his long body, meeting his eyes.

  “Are you ready for me to fuck you now?” he asked, almost clinically, and Grace nodded, arching his hips as best he could.

  “Too bad.” And with that, Hunter thrust two fingers into his backside and took his cock down his throat.

  Grace’s scream grew higher pitched, and he spurted precome, but he wasn’t quite ready to blow. Not yet.

  Then, through the handkerchief, Hunter heard “Please!” and his own cock gave a spurt of its own.

  “I can’t say no to you,” he confessed, standing and grabbing the condom. He made quick work of it and added more lubricant, oiling himself and squeezing, hoping that someday they could go skin on skin. “I’m going to thrust in, and when you’re ready we can get rid of the gag so I can kiss you. Is that okay?”

  Grace nodded. Hunter could see that the sheen of tears in his eyes had leaked some, and his heart wrenched even as he notched his cock in the stretched indentation of Grace’s asshole and shoved slowly in.

  Grace moaned, the sound throaty and low, hardly muffled by the gag at all. His head fell back, his eyes closed, and all of his struggles against his bonds ceased. He went completely limp, everything except his asshole, which was clenched so tightly around Hunter’s cock, he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to move.

  Slowly, he pulled back and then rocked forward again, and he could feel Grace’s throaty moan in his balls. Again, and again, and faster, and a little harder, and a little faster and a little harder, until Grace’s steady keen under the gag was punctuated only by Hunter slamming against his ass.

  And again and again, and Hunter was so close to coming, and so was Grace. “Pull the rope, baby, and touch yourself,” Hunter ordered, needing to come more than he needed Grace restrained. The rope was for Grace, not him.

  Grace did what he commanded, his bonds untwisting from his wrists, from under his leg, getting lost in the tangle of their bodies as his hand came forward to grasp his cock. Hunter fell to his hands, one placed on either side of Grace’s head, and fucked as hard and as fast as he could.

  Grace spit out the gag and breathed, “Yes! Yes, now!”

  And Hunter felt it all. Felt Grace’s asshole clench around him, felt Grace’s come spurting between them, and felt, almost like the crack of a glass plate, the breaking of Grace’s sense of self that came with the thing—the ginormous, sexy, kinky, necessary thing they’d done.

  His next sound was more of a harsh breath. Grace’s eyes closed, and his body strained, and his cock spurted, and Hunter thrust inside one final time and came, filling the condom, hot and silky and sending him into aftershocks before the wave had even finished with him.

  He fell forward, his body pressing Grace’s into the mattress, his cock still inside, and Grace tried to catch his breath.

  It wasn’t working.

  In fact, every inhale felt increasingly like a sob, and Hunter took his mouth then, not savagely like he wanted to, but gently, oh-so-gently, kissing Grace down from wherever he’d been in his head, kissing him into gentle tears instead of sobs, kissing him back to sanity when they’d both hit the ceiling of crazy while they’d been lost in each other’s sex.

  Finally, Hunter pulled out and disposed of the condom, wiping down with tissues before coming back to bed and pulling Grace’s sweaty body against his own.

  “How you doing, Dylan?” he asked tenderly.

  “I don’t know,” Grace said, his voice small and lost. “That wasn’t the sex I’ve been having all my life.”

  “Yeah?”

  “No.” Grace pulled in another breath. “Just… just don’t go anywhere, okay? Even if I talk too much or get weird in my sleep or—”

  Hunter kissed him again, and he calmed. “I’m right here,” he murmured. “You can’t shake me. When we go back home, we pretty much live in the same house, okay?”

  Grace nodded, seemingly out of words, which was good. Hunter was exhausted. Hunter kept stroking him, his back, his upper arm, keeping him close.

  “I’m going to pull the covers over us and we’re going to sleep now,” he said softly. “We’ll have all day tomorrow to talk about this. Deal?”

  “What if I don’t want to?” Grace asked plaintively. “Talk about this? What if I just want to sleep and then wake up with you and not think about this until it happens again?”

  Hunter sighed. “We’ll have to talk about it sometime,” he argued, but Grace stared up at him with pleading red-rimmed eyes.

  “Please?” he whispered. “Not now.”

  “Sure,” Hunter whispered back. Then he buried his face in the hollow of Grace’s shoulder. “But I care for you, Dylan Li. And someday, we’re going to have to put words to that.”

  “But not now,” Grace said, sounding wretched.

  “Sure, baby. Not now.”

  It was nearly five in the morning, and he should have been well and truly sated and ready for sleep. Grace had no problem—he dropped off almost immediately, his head buried against Hunter’s shoulder, his mouth slightly open. It was almost like watching a sleek golden Siamese cat snore—something so elegant and sure-footed, vulnerable and unguarded.

 
; Not unguarded enough to make love, though—not without the traps and whistles. Not without talking nervously until being forced to be silent. Not without trusting that if he let go, Hunter would be there to catch him.

  Sighing, Hunter kissed his temple. Ah, baby. It should have been such a simple thing. Sexual human meets sexual human, and sex ensues. But when it was more than sex, when emotion and attachment were involved, things got… tricky.

  The sheen of tears in Grace’s eyes when forced to lie there and accept physical pleasure was not going to go away soon.

  For all Grace’s much-vaunted sexual experience, Hunter didn’t think he’d ever let anybody touch him. It was as though he didn’t know how.

  Since he was sleeping, Hunter practiced, smoothing his rough hand up and down Grace’s back, along his backside, under the covers. He found himself resenting the stiff sheets and formal cleanliness of the hotel room; he wanted to hold Grace somewhere that smelled like the two of them, not only from this one moment of intimacy.

  He wanted Grace to know where he belonged.

  He found himself running through the floor plan of the Salinger family mansion, remembering that there was an extra bedroom suite, for a total of three, in addition to the other individual rooms with adjoining baths. Maybe, if he asked nicely, he could move him and Grace into the suite. Maybe he could bring Grace to his apartment, where Grace could scream and talk and gibber all he wanted. Maybe they could find a way to work together and be lovers, and Grace could sleep in his arms every night.

  He knew it wouldn’t be easy. Grace was an indoor/outdoor cat. But even indoor/outdoor cats came inside at regular times for food, for affection, to sleep on their humans’ faces at precise times of the night.

  He might, possibly, have to let Grace sniff around other yards to make sure this was the one he wanted to stay in. But maybe if he was careful and affectionate and consistent, he could convince Grace to come back home to him.

  Grace started to mutter in his sleep, ending with a little mewl and curling hard into Hunter’s body.

  Well, maybe Grace knew this was where he belonged already. He just wasn’t ready to admit it.

  That was a comforting thought… one that finally let Hunter close his eyes to sleep.

  No Room on the Fence

  GRACE WOKE up slowly, unused to having another person in his bed.

  Hunter slept sprawled out, one arm over Grace’s chest possessively. As Grace tried to wriggle out, that arm grew tighter, and Hunter turned his head and scowled, eyes still closed.

  “Don’t go,” he rumbled.

  “Bathroom,” Grace told him truthfully. “Shower.” There was a knock at the door. “Josh.”

  Hunter cracked one eye. “Fine.”

  Grace grimaced as he stood up, took two strides to the bathroom, grabbed a towel, then cinched it around his waist. He opened the door about two inches and peered out.

  Josh peered back in. “Is he still there?” he asked bluntly.

  “Yes. Why? Are you stealing him? Do you have to go do something dangerous? Are there bombs? Is he beating up a football team? What?”

  “Breakfast as a group,” Josh said. “Then we get to go do whatever we want. Before we breakfast as a group, let me know if we can hang out with you guys or if you want us to fuck off and leave you alone. I’m game going to Grouse Mountain with Molly and my mother if you’re going to fuck off about it.”

  Dylan frowned and looked behind him, not wanting Josh to fuck off. He liked going places with Josh and his mother. He liked being part of the secret club. Yesterday with Hunter had been really lovely, but he felt strange and alien in his own skin now and—

  “Stop overthinking, Grace,” Hunter said on a yawn. “Sure, we’ll go to the damned mountain. What’s Stirling doing?”

  And like his voice was some sort of key, Josh shouldered his way in.

  “Oh my God!” Grace whined. “Boundaries!”

  “You have actually interrupted me when I was in my room jerking off. More than once. With food. Your boundaries are meaningless,” Josh said. “How you doin’, Hunter?”

  “I’m naked,” Hunter said dryly. “You’re freaking Grace out.”

  “And it’s a day ending in Y. Grace, were you going somewhere?”

  “The shower,” Grace told him, looking suspiciously from one man to the other. “Are you going to talk about me when I’m in there?”

  Josh looked bored. “Yes. Because we always talk about you, because the world has never been about anybody else. So, Hunter, the Grace rose in the sky today and it’s looking like a Dylan Li sort of morning. How you doing?”

  Hunter—the rat—smirked. “Well, after a hot cup of Grace, I’m thinking about having some breakfast and maybe putting on some Grace, and then we can all go up to Grace Mountain—which isn’t very tall, by the way—and me and Grace can—”

  “Fuck you both!” Grace announced, but inwardly he was relieved. “I’m going to go shower.” And with that, he grabbed a pair of clean briefs and a T-shirt from his suitcase and stalked to the door.

  He took his time—used the facilities, brushed his teeth, then showered and soaped his pits and creases. His asshole was a little stretched, and very well used, he thought as he fingered it in the shower. Touching himself made the tingle of arousal start up again, and he was transported back to the night before, when Hunter had… well, mastered him.

  All of him. The bondage wasn’t something he’d ever done before, but ah, God! He’d wanted Hunter so bad. He wasn’t even used to beds. Walls, couches, back rooms, maybe, but beds? No. Being stretched out in front of those heated gray eyes, on display, helpless to do anything but accept touch—that had been as safe as Grace had felt in his entire life.

  He’d seriously been thinking about escaping from the bathroom through the ventilation duct in the ceiling before Josh had crashed through the door.

  Grace didn’t trust feeling safe. He didn’t trust a warm body in his bed in the morning. He didn’t trust that Hunter would even want to stay with him, although Grace had all but volunteered them for the whole family outing thing.

  Because now that he’d been alone with Hunter and Hunter had been inside his body, he felt seen, as if Hunter had peered into his soul, and he was afraid to be alone with him again in case he’d noticed something he didn’t like.

  Grace saw that shit all the time, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it.

  He groaned and leaned his head against the shower wall, trying hard to shut his eyes against all the nameless guys and the drugs in high school and his way of sneaking into the homes of douchebags and walking out with things that would irritate them the most. Not emotional things. Practical things. He’d heard a girl make a shitty comment about Josh once and had stolen all of her stupid scrunchies and banana clips and her ceramic hot rollers. Watching her deal with her hair for the next week until her mom could get to the grocery store had been the only thing that kept him in school that month.

  He heard the rattling of the locked doorknob and scowled, sticking his head out of the shower long enough to snap, “It’s locked for a reason, dildo. You cannot come in here and take a pi—oh.”

  The jiggling stopped and Hunter walked in, completely naked, and set a serviceable lockpick on the counter. “I assume I can come in and take a piss?” he said mildly.

  Grace tucked his head back into the shower and turned his back. “Piss away.”

  He pretended he couldn’t hear it over the sound of the shower. A moment later, he pretended he couldn’t feel the curtain pull back and Hunter’s sleek, muscular body behind his.

  Hunter wrapped his arms around Grace’s middle and rumbled in his ear. “Breakfast and then a family outing, like we’re a television family. You okay with that?”

  Grace huffed. “Sure. Fine. Whatever.”

  Hunter chuckled and rocked him back and forth in a way that was strangely soothing. “Good. I’m looking forward to this. Think of it like a team-building exercise for a company or something
.”

  That made Grace snort water. “We just did a team-building exercise. I had to steal and return the same rock in one night, and then there were electronics and stakeouts and whatever. We’re a team. We got exercise. Whatever.”

  “This is different, and you know it,” Hunter said. He let out a sigh and made himself comfortable along Grace’s back again. “I don’t get to do these sorts of things with my boyfriends, you know.”

  Augh! Guilt! “Why not?” Grace asked suspiciously.

  “I’m a bodyguard, Grace. If I had girlfriends, they’d have to be tougher than I am, or I’d be putting them in danger. But I’ve got boyfriends, and if they’re not tougher than I am, that still puts them in danger. And if they are, I still can’t be seen in public with them. I won’t get any jobs because stupid people stereotype.”

  Grace frowned. “But… but what if this doesn’t pan out? What if somebody sees you? What if… I don’t know, Felix and Danny split up again? What if Josh decides he wants to get laid and doesn’t want to help people anymore? What if—” Oh my God, oh my God, he couldn’t breathe! “—what if I ruin your life!”

  He half expected Hunter to laugh him off, but he didn’t. Instead, he kept up that rocking motion, which, combined with the hot water, didn’t quite make Grace sleepy, but held him inside himself, with his feet on the ground.

  “Grace, I don’t want to go back to mercenary gigs. If this doesn’t work, I’ll start a security agency or, I don’t know, teach history in an inner-city school or… hell, even coach football or something. I….”

  Grace heard him swallow and almost wanted to shout, “Stop! No! I don’t want to hear this,” but then he remembered how he’d let this man tie him up the night before, and how he’d trusted Hunter to not leave him there, eyes bulging, cock flopping, while Hunter pissed off and had a beer or something.

  This was the same thing, right?

  The least Grace could do was listen, right?

  “What?” he prompted, taking hold of the two hands clasped at his abdomen.