Authors: Anitra Lynn McLeod
Tags: #Romance
“I noticed. Already you have your head tilted, baring your neck for my teeth.”
Jonas looked up, noticing that Ollie’s teeth were fully extended.
“I like when you drink from me, too.”
With a trembling hand, Jonas touched the scar he’d made on Ollie’s neck. On one side, McBride had commandeered his old mark, making it his own, but Ollie had moved his head the other direction, offering up his unmarked neck for Jonas’s hunger. He’d tried to go slowly, to not draw too much, but he hadn’t fed in so long he was positively ravenous. “I shouldn’t feed from you again. You’re already too pale. Surely, if we aren’t careful, that is what will tip McBride off to my presence.”
“He thinks I’m ill, so I don’t think it will make him any more worried than he already is.”
“Not today, perhaps, but eventually. You can’t feign illness for the rest of your days.” Jonas stroked the fresh scar and watched as Ollie bared his neck even more. He was always such an eager slammer when it came time for Jonas to feed. His brothers had given up their necks without a struggle, but Ollie had always done so with relish. “You always offered up yourself so easily.”
“I wanted you.”
“But last night, you let McBride feed.”
Ollie moved back a bit so they could look at one another. “I have to let him feed from me.”
“I know. I wasn’t trying to say you should resist.” Jonas wanted Ollie all for himself, but he couldn’t demand that. If he were to become the thrall he so desperately wanted to be, he had no rights at all but for those granted to him by his slammer. Intuitively, he knew Ollie would be a most benevolent master, but that also meant that Jonas would be subject to McBride’s rule as well. Although that wouldn’t be much of an issue, because as soon as McBride realized Jonas was here, he would undoubtedly cast him out.
“You could have had me.” Torment darkened Ollie’s beautiful eyes. “Why didn’t you take me with you when you went?”
“I knew if I did I would get caught out. I couldn’t hide my love for you. I thought if I left—”
“With a thrall!” Ollie cut in accusingly.
“Zeth came to provide me with blood.” That was the one aspect of his class he couldn’t escape no matter what he did. A real thrall, a true thrall, was born without the need to feed on anything but food. Blood cravings would be with Jonas until the day he died. But he thought that if only he drank from Ollie, who was quite big and powerful, he could be completely satisfied.
“I could have done that for you.”
“We would have gotten caught.” Jonas wanted to move away from Ollie and hash everything out, but Ollie refused to release his hold on him.
“Did you love him?”
“He was a boy.” Jonas had sold Zeth to a landed gentryman in order to get passage back to Woven Spire. He had quickly found out that putting distance between himself and Ollie had done nothing to lessen his longings.
“You were the one who brought him here,” Ollie reminded.
“For McBride.”
“McBride’s father?”
“Yes.” Once a landed gentryman passed on, his son took all his possessions and his name. The deceased was then referred to as
father
. It was confusing since clones had the same first and last names as the original. As far back as the original Genetics Board went, there had been a McBride series. “McBride’s father refused to feed from you or your brothers. I thought he might be interested in…” Jonas trailed off. His attempts to get his companion to feed were met with fear and resistance, but what had happened with Zeth was even stranger than Jonas had ever imagined. “The point is I failed to help McBride’s father. He died. I had to flee, or they would have found out what I was having you do to me.”
“I don’t feel any shame in what we do.” Ollie stiffened his spine, which made him seem even bigger than he was.
“Neither do I, but we would be the only two who don’t.”
“Just last night I told McBride how I felt about you.”
“What?” Jonas felt his stomach drop.
“Not like that. I didn’t know you were coming. But one of my brothers, probably Gannon, must have said something to him about you and me because McBride asked about us. I think McBride was worried that I would not be able to take a mate because he thought I was traumatized.”
Jonas felt his heart clutch in his chest at the mere thought of having damaged Ollie psychologically.
“Don’t you dare ask me if I was because you know I wasn’t. Or at least you should know that.” Ollie pulled Jonas tight and covered his face in kisses. “I wanted you desperately. That night, when you came up to check on me, long after the wound across my belly had healed, I wanted you to drink from me, but you wouldn’t. You kept insisting I wasn’t recovered fully. In my determination to prove that I was, I attacked you.”
“If we are to be brutally honest with one another, you must recall that it was I who threw myself on the bed and encouraged you to mount me.”
“Is that how it went?” Ollie asked, sliding his hand over Jonas’s thigh.
Jonas tossed himself face down on the bed and lifted his bottom up. “Just like this.”
A low, hungry growl filled the small bedroom. Ollie yanked Jonas’s legs apart, knelt between them, but didn’t penetrate him.
“Please,” Jonas begged. Ollie had such amazing self-control and staying power. If Jonas had even a tenth of his strength, he would have been able to resist Ollie’s powerful allure, but he didn’t, so he hadn’t. “Fuck me.”
Ollie teased his finger around the tight entrance of Jonas’s hole. He did this with methodical precision while Jonas squirmed and pleaded with Ollie to give him more. Slowly, Ollie eased one thick finger in and out, making Jonas hungry for completion.
“You really want me, don’t you, my lusty thrall.”
Jonas almost found his release right then. He loved when Ollie called him his thrall, mainly because he said it with aggressive possession. It had been Jonas’s lifelong fantasy to reject his role as entitled landed gentryman and become a slave owned by a slammer for blood and sex. Ollie was his perfect master. He could play at being cold and brutal, but it never went too far because Ollie was not truly of that mindset.
“I want you almost painfully.”
“You want me to inflict pain upon you?” Ollie teased. “I don’t know if I want to hurt you.”
“But your cock is so big.” Gloriously thick and long enough to touch all the secret spots inside Jonas’s body, Ollie’s cock was the most perfect one Jonas had ever encountered. He’d had his fair share of liaisons where he offered himself for penetration, but only Ollie had been able to make him climax hands-free with only the thrusting power of his prick. But Jonas didn’t think that was the key to his infatuation with him. No, he thought the fact that he loved and trusted Ollie was what made him fully receptive to his powerful strokes.
“It isn’t the size of my prick, but the tightness of your sweet hole.” Ollie slid another finger in beside the first, making Jonas tilt his hips. Each thrust caused him to lift his bottom higher, making a grander offer to his true master.
“Will you put the collar on me after?”
“Don’t ruin this, Jonas.”
Ollie’s resistance to take the last step was strange to Jonas. Everything else he had embraced fully, but that show of ownership he rejected outright.
“It matters to me.”
“It’s symbolic of me owning you.” Ollie removed his plunging fingers and eased Jonas onto his back. Rising over him, he kissed him deeply. “I don’t want to own you.”
“But that’s what I’ve done all of this for.” Jonas didn’t want to play at being a thrall. He wanted to become one in as many ways as he could.
“I know what you said you did. Even with that, I don’t think that makes you a thrall in the eyes of the law.” Ollie lowered himself down until the tip of his cock took the place of his talented fingers. Rather than fill him with one hard thrust, Ollie took his time and sank into Jonas.
The slow-filling bliss made Jonas’s eyes water so he closed them, uttering a sigh.
“That is the sound I most love to hear you make.”
“A sigh?”
“A sigh of contentment.” Ollie made one right in Jonas’s ear, and then lowered his mouth to the scar on his neck. While teasing that mark, he built his rhythm. “Tell me the truth, Jonas.”
“The truth to what?”
“Tell me that you didn’t give away all your worldly possessions to try to make a life with me here as my thrall.”
Jonas looked up and met Ollie’s gaze. “I sold everything I had and put the money in your account.”
“Oh, Jonas.” Ollie shook his head. “You may have doomed both of us.”
“But I didn’t know what else to do.” Jonas gripped Ollie’s powerful shoulders so that he wouldn’t pull away until they were finished.
“I will have to find a way to get what money I can, and then we will run.” Ollie rocked faster and harder until his breath was ragged and sweat covered his chest. Right at the peak of his climax, he pushed Jonas’s head to the side, placed his mouth against the scar, and bit down, sucking hard enough to make Jonas buck below his body.
Each draw he made pushed another shudder through Jonas, making him release against Ollie’s strong belly, while his benevolent master found his release deep inside Jonas’s body. Even as he clung to him, Jonas knew that if they decided to run or not, their time together was very short.
“It’s fine, really.” McBride pushed the food around his plate so that it looked like he had eaten more than a bite of everything.
“I
thought
I could cook.” Easton ducked his head, but he didn’t cringe away, making McBride see he had quite a bit of self-esteem, which was a good thing in his opinion. Easton was a marked contrast to Alden, the last thrall he’d bought. Although, to be fair, Alden had been beaten for being different while Easton had been praised for being clever. McBride hoped that with Gannon’s love and attention, Alden would bloom into a more confident young man. McBride still wasn’t certain which brother to give Easton to. Ollie seemed logical in that he could teach Easton how to cook, but then again, he might do better with the older and more reserved Jared. Not that he had to decide everything tonight. Tomorrow, if Ollie were better, McBride would give Easton to him.
“Please don’t worry about the food. Whether or not Ollie becomes your mate, he can teach you to cook if you wish to learn.” McBride thought it would be wise to have more than one cook on the farm. Having more than one man capable of each chore meant that things were covered during illness or injury.
Easton’s head came up. “Would he really?”
“Ollie is very talented with food.” As the gagging sweet sauce that Easton had made continued to commandeer McBride’s mouth, he thought of the gravy Ollie created for dinner last night. It had been so perfect McBride could eat buckets of it. A dose of it right now would remove the foul taste in his mouth, but he had no intention of entering Ollie’s house again until he knew he was better. “And I do have a serviceable cookbot, so we won’t starve.”
McBride instructed the butler to have the bot make something quick and simple so he and Easton could eat and retire. All day, McBride had run his tongue over the tips of his teeth to soothe the itch of blood hunger. He couldn’t decide if it was a normal appetite or perhaps the start of what had ailed Larsden. How would he know that his bloodlust was insatiable? His gaze was drawn to the picture window in the dining room, and his attention went right to Caleb’s house. Triple hunger washed over McBride, making his hand shake, so he took it from the table and put it in his lap. He wanted food, blood, and sex. Moreover, he wanted all three of those things from the same man. To have Caleb’s body welcome him within while his neck was bared for his bite, and then share a full meal with him afterward…there, the dream fell apart. Just what would he and Caleb talk about? They had nothing in common. Or so McBride kept telling himself. He’d never bothered to ask Caleb about his interests, so he didn’t really know if they had commonalities or not. He didn’t want to know. McBride was going to leave him alone, and that was that.
“I fear I need a good milking.”
McBride jerked his attention back to Easton. “What?” Had he missed an entire portion of their conversation? He had no idea what Easton was talking about, but he didn’t want to admit he’d been lost in another daydream about one of his slammers. No one needed to know he had little self-control when it came to Caleb.
“In the thrall house, we were milked at least once a day, if not twice. It has now been a week, and my balls ache.”
That comment caused McBride to suddenly grasp exactly what Easton was talking about. “They forced you to ejaculate?” It was possibly the last thing that should be discussed over a meal, but since their food hadn’t come out of the kitchen, McBride didn’t see the harm. The needs of his men and their mates were important to him. Since Easton wasn’t going to be able to find release with his rightful mate anytime soon, McBride would have to find another way to tend to him.
“They didn’t force us. It was a device.”
In clear terms without one shred of embarrassment, Easton described how all the thralls in the house were lined up with their hands upon a metal bar. A slender metallic probe was inserted into their bottoms by the thrall master. Gentle electrical impulses were sent into the probe until the thralls climaxed. McBride had a most astonishing visual of a row of young men all spilling on the floor at the same time. For some reason, the very idea of it aroused him, but he had no clue why. Perhaps it was the notion of having that kind of control over another, or the ability to give pleasure to so many at the same time.