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He found his anus with a finger. At the brief stimulation, Thomas writhed and

threw a clumsy punch at Marcus’ face. He ducked it as he slid the finger ruthlessly into a well-greased ass. An ass Thomas likely would continue to grease, knowing how

demanding and spontaneous his Master could and would be.

At the next punch, Marcus seized both Thomas’ hands and used his weight to pin

him, holding his thighs up with the weight of his upper body and abdomen pressed hard against him. If Thomas put his whole heart into it, he could likely slip the connection, but the minute Marcus was at the right angle and slid his cock in deep, he knew the fight was over.

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Thomas squeezed his eyes shut.

“No you don’t.” Marcus growled. “Look at me.” He worked himself in, let go of

Thomas’ arms to pull his thighs up to a higher angle, forcing him to lock his legs around Marcus’ back as he rocked, made Thomas feel the penetration as they lay nearly chest to chest, eye to eye. He had a mere two or three inches on Thomas in height, but it came in handy.

Thomas had dropped his hands out to the sides, his hands fisted, but when Marcus feathered a hand over the side of his face, he exploded, wrapping his arms and legs more tightly around Marcus. His fingers grasped Marcus’ shoulders, face buried into his neck as Thomas raised his hips higher for deeper penetration. Marcus responded in kind, pistoning in and out, feeling Thomas’ hunger and knowing as insatiable as he himself was, he might not be able to match the storm of need he felt quivering in Thomas’ every muscle.

“I’ve missed you too, pet. So much.” He whispered it hoarsely, repeating what he’d said to the darkness over Thomas’ sleeping head. “That’s it, love. It all belongs to me.

Not just that fine ass I’m fucking.”

His stomach muscles rubbed hard against Thomas’ turgid cock. With a sudden

groan and convulsive buck that pressed it painfully like a rod of steel into Marcus’

flesh, Thomas released, flooding the narrow area between their bodies with hot fluid. It jetted against Marcus’ belly, his chest, the warmth of it as welcome as mother’s milk.

Thomas’ muscles squeezed on him and Marcus let himself go over, reaming Thomas

hard, knowing he was abusing the privilege, but wanting Thomas to understand his need was just as desperate.

Only when they both shuddered to a halt did Marcus let his lover ease his legs back down, put his feet flat on the patio tile. Marcus kept his full weight resting on Thomas, enjoying the feel of Thomas’ wet cock pressed between their bodies against Marcus’

lower abdomen, the sac of testicles against his upper thigh.

Thomas’ hands were still on his shoulders, but his fingers eased into more of a rhythmic stroke than a clutch. He started to look away, to avoid the intimacy of the close eye contact, but Marcus anticipated him. Cupping his jaw, he bent and kissed him.

Slow and thorough, teasing his mouth with lazy strokes of his tongue until he felt a faint quiver in his slave’s muscles.

Always leave them wanting more. The only problem was that was a double-edged

sword with Thomas.

When Marcus finally drew back, Thomas gave him a shaky half smile, one hand

dropping back to the ground over his head, his other fingers still caressing Marcus’ bare shoulder. “Well, that was a hell of a good morning.”

“It was good coffee.” Marcus kept his voice light, even as he passed his thumb over Thomas’ lips once just to feel the moistness of his mouth, to see those dark eyes go darker. He wanted to roll off Thomas, but only to turn him in his arms, hold him close here on the unyielding patio tile, feel Thomas’ head on his shoulder, his muscular body 50

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sprawled tangled with his, his thigh over Marcus’ leg as his spent genitals pressed against his leg. Marcus wanted to lie here, knowing it was all his.

But it wasn’t. He was determined to get Thomas to change his mind, come back to his life here, but he couldn’t cut himself open fatally to do it. He flat out wouldn’t survive if he failed.

However, before he could move, Thomas drew him down, circled his back with his

strong arms and held, his face pressed into Marcus’ neck, temple against his jaw.

“I’ve missed you, Master,” he said against Marcus’ throat, increasing the size of the jagged lump there. “I know it’s fucking unfair of me to say that, but for what it’s worth…”

Marcus nodded, his eyes closed. He pushed away, rose to his knees and surveyed

the beauty of what lay before him. Thomas went up on his elbows, possibly to roll to his feet, but Marcus shook his head. “Stay just like that.”

Marcus sank back on his haunches, the same position Thomas had when surveying

his paintings, only he studied Thomas. The splayed thighs, the cock lying in an inviting curve on his balls. Marcus moved his attention leisurely up the six-foot frame, over Thomas’ pubic area, his flat stomach, then to his chest and shoulders, back to his face.

There was a yearning need there, and the Master in him couldn’t help but respond to it. Reaching for the coffee mug he’d put down on a patio table, he took a sip. Still hot, but not scalding. He dropped back to one knee, pushed Thomas flat on his back again and tipped the mug over his chest, enough to splash a generous flow of the hot liquid over a sensitive nipple.

Thomas quivered, jerked, but otherwise stayed still, his eyes fastened on Marcus’

face. His lips parted to handle the explosion of breath, his reaction to the stimulation of the pain. His cock started to harden again. With a curve of his lips, Marcus bent and sampled the good coffee, only now with a bite of that taut nub, a lick of the uneven texture of areola, and out to the muscular flesh.

“Arms to the ground, pet,” he murmured, a second before Thomas’ palm would

have touched his hair.

The proximity hovered, a sense of air movement between two objects, but then

Thomas’ chest heaved under Marcus’ mouth as he shifted, both arms falling back above his head, which arched his chest closer to Marcus’ lips.

At length, Marcus sat back on his heels and resumed his enjoyment of the coffee from his cup. He lifted his gaze to survey the artwork arranged in a semicircle around them, acutely aware of the man who obeyed his Master’s Will by lying open and accessible to his desires.

There was some roughness in what he suspected were Thomas’ first two attempts

of the morning, when Marcus assumed he’d still been struggling to reach his muse behind an army of doubts, insecurities. But as the dawn burgeoned, the pencil had moved more freely, because Thomas had a hands-down kick-ass muse. One that

couldn’t be denied except under the most extreme circumstances.

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Which was perhaps why, of all the things he’d seen in North Carolina that

concerned him, what had concerned Marcus most was Thomas’ admission that he

couldn’t reach his muse.

Folds of bed covers. When Thomas painted it, he would turn the linens into the

suggestion of water on canvas, sensual, undulating, like the movement of the bodies on the bed that had created the impressions in the fabric. The curve of buttock, tangle of leg.

He was doing it as a series. Another canvas showed a hand gripping the covers as if in the throes of some passion, stimulated by an unseen lover, seeking an anchor amid a storm. Then the third rendering. After the storm was over, that hand again, lying flat on the coverlet seeking the lingering body warmth of the lover who’d left.

Scribblings for free forms, expert pencil pressure and contour lines for shading.

Even with it in draft form, Marcus could visualize it finished, the way Thomas would create it, that oddly disjointed layered style of his that always hinted at meanings beneath meanings.

Because of his family’s needs and a resulting shortage of cash, Thomas hadn’t been able to complete his MFA. But Marcus had spent nearly his whole life ferreting out talent, not only from graduating classes and shows but places other gallery owners wouldn’t look, and he knew Thomas would stand toe-to-toe with the best, with or without the degree.

Never overt or overly sentimental, but something that teased the senses as well as the emotions. Thomas’ work could compel people visiting Marcus’ gallery to walk back and study it five, six, even ten times in the same visit. They felt the pull of it even when they couldn’t put their finger on the why.

It was much what Marcus had done in his mind countless times over the past

eighteen months. Coming back again and again to what it was about a North Carolina farm boy that wouldn’t let him go. The promise of something he wanted so deeply it was impossible to give a name to it, but it could be sensed like the instinctual need to survive. It didn’t need to be nurtured—it simply was, a primitive fact of life.

In some ways, he carried a gallery in his mind, all paintings of Thomas that Marcus had created, looking at him in a hundred different ways. This moment was a new

addition to that priceless gallery of mental images he would be no more willing to part with than any masterpiece in the Smithsonian.

His lover, now on his elbows again but still at his command. Naked, legs spread, upper body slightly red around the nipple area with the heat of the coffee, some dark drops caught in the crease of his stomach muscles. His nape damp with perspiration, beautiful eyes watching Marcus’ face. His paintings waited in a half crescent behind him, a testament to the layers of meaning behind the man.

Marcus laid his hand on Thomas’ inner thigh, his thumb passing over the damp ball sac. “A series of five?”

“I think so. That’s what it feels like right now.”

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“Just remember it only counts as one, since it has to be sold as one. Joyner will want the whole group. I’ll suggest he hang them together along a wall, but spotlight them individually.”

“Mercenary.” A slow grin eased its way over Thomas’ face, even as his eyes lit with quiet pleasure at the implied praise.

“You forgot the bastard part.” Marcus rose and tugged him to his feet. “It’s still there, Thomas. Just waiting for you to tap into it. It never went anywhere. It’s you who shut the door on it.”

Before Thomas could react to that, Marcus let him go, turned away. “Let’s get some breakfast. I’ll let you get back to it after that.”

“I don’t really need—”

“You’re eating,” Marcus said bluntly. He picked up Thomas’ jeans, tossed them at him. “You look like a scarecrow. I don’t care for bony lovers.”

He saw with satisfaction the flash of temper, the abused ego. Gay men didn’t like to have their appearance criticized. If it got food into Thomas’ stomach, he didn’t mind taking advantage of that fact. His lover was going to need a lot of energy.

* * * * *

Thomas helped him cut the tomatoes. They both liked to cook, but Marcus decided to keep it simple today, scrambled eggs and wheat toast, some chopped up fruit from the fridge he’d already prepared for himself.

As they ate at a bistro set on the deck, Marcus also tried to keep the conversation light. He knew he’d taken a low shot with his barbed remark about Thomas shutting the door on his muse. He also knew the emotional intensity of what they’d done before that still had Thomas’ mind reeling. He felt a little raw from it himself.

“I have a friend with a pet elephant.”

Thomas forked up a small piece of egg, chewed carefully and paused before he

swallowed. “In New York? That must be some house.”

“No, he lives on a private island. But it makes it easy to make old jokes. You know the one about the elephant in the room?”

“If I recall, that’s not really a joke.” Thomas glanced toward him.

“I want this to be a good week for you,” Marcus said casually, gauging Thomas’

wary look. “So let’s just deal with it. You left me and your art because you felt your family needed you more, and you’ve been raised that your first duty is to your family.

You’re the first son, and now considered the head of the family. I accept that they needed you. All right?” When Thomas nodded, Marcus reached out briefly, squeezed his hand.

Okay. That seemed to go passably well. Thomas appeared to be more relaxed.

Enough that he fell into an old habit, which pulled at Marcus’ gut even as it provoked a familiar amused frustration.

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When Marcus sat back, picked up his fork and reached for the salt, Thomas slid it out of reach with barely a pause in his own eating. “What was your last blood pressure reading?”

“So low they thought I was dead.”

“You already salted the eggs when you cooked them. That’s plenty. And you’re

such a liar.” Thomas nudged it further behind his elbow, where Marcus would have to stand up to grab it. He took a swallow of his juice. “I can always tell when you’re lying.”

“Oh, yeah?” Marcus made a feint for the salt and Thomas sent it over his shoulder in one economical move that took it off the deck. The fortunately plastic shaker bounced off the patio, rolling under one of the easels. Thomas didn’t even glance back, as if hurling condiments fifty feet through the air was a routine breakfast practice for him.

Marcus sat back, lips twitching. “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to throw a pinch of salt over your shoulder for good luck, not the whole fucking thing. How can you tell I’m lying?”

“If I tell you that, you’ll stop doing it.”

“A little salt isn’t going to kill me. Asshole.” Marcus picked up his coffee as Thomas made a noncommittal grunt. Marcus shifted his attention to studying the strands of Thomas’ hair in front, which were just long enough to be ruffling over his forehead with the morning breeze. Reaching out, Marcus threaded his fingers over Thomas’ ear.

“I bet your Mom thinks you need a haircut.”

“Yeah, I do. Anyone around here?”

“I’m sure we can find a barber to hack it off with a buzz saw in the best rural South fashion.” When Thomas had stayed in the city, Marcus had talked him into growing it out long enough that soft dark curls tangled along the top and over his forehead, the natural curl making itself known with the length, giving Marcus a lot more to tug on.