Rough Canvas (9 page)

43

Joey W. Hill

This was now. He had no right to demand any more, certainly knew it would have

been fair to expect far less than what Marcus had given him already. For now there was just the velvet steel of Marcus’ cock in his mouth, elongated enough to press into the back of his throat and stretch his mouth again as Marcus splayed his knees and took over, pushing down on him harder.

It took a lot longer this time, because they’d both flat-out exhausted each other. But Thomas didn’t mind taking it slow and easy. Marcus’ groan as he released at last was a lullaby to Thomas. He swallowed the thick salty taste of him, thinking of how much of Marcus he had inside him now, both orifices.

He kept his head down, eyes closed, forehead pressed against Marcus’ sticky cock, inhaling the scent of him as Marcus’ palm rested between his shoulder blades, holding him there as Marcus breathed deep, shuddering breaths. Then the thighs shifted

beneath Thomas’ face as Marcus leaned forward to unlock the cuffs.

As Marcus raised him, they faced each other naked, knee to quivering knee. When Marcus brushed hair off his own brow with his forearm, Thomas watched, wishing.

Marcus seemed to understand, because he tilted his head, his attention moving to Thomas’ now free hand. Thomas didn’t pause, afraid Marcus would change his mind.

Reaching out, he threaded his fingers into that dark, thick silk. A lion’s mantle added to the creature’s virile beauty, and so too did Marcus’ dark mane.

Thomas dared to let the heel of his hand caress Marcus’ damp brow, the side of his cheek. When Marcus’ hand closed over his wrist, he could feel Marcus’ desire to remove it, take control of the intimacy. Thomas curled his fingers into his hair more deeply in response, tangling.

“When you were counting, before I came…you skipped a couple numbers, didn’t

you?” He noticed his voice was hoarse from the abrasion of taking Marcus four times down his throat. From the flicker in his Master’s gaze, Thomas suspected Marcus liked hearing it. “You forget how to count?”

“You weren’t going to make it. You were ready to spurt like a twelve-year-old with his first copped Hustler.”

“Asshole.” Thomas made the comment without rancor, for Marcus had let him go,

was running his knuckles lightly along his forearm as he let Thomas keep his fingers in his hair.

“Let’s get some food in you.” Marcus at last pulled Thomas’ hand free, kissed his palm and then set it away from him, rising. While Marcus smiled, Thomas noticed it didn’t quite reach his eyes. So much could be said with the violent power of sex, but it could leave emotions lingering in the air like the sharp, poignant residue of gunpowder.

When Thomas rose, he was forced to catch hold of Marcus’ arm abruptly, causing

them both to sway. As the two men regarded each other, Marcus’ jaw at last relaxed into a rueful grin, easing some of Thomas’ sudden tension.

“Look at us,” Thomas managed. “Like a couple of drunk sailors.”

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Marcus snorted. “You start singing
In the Navy
, you’re sleeping in that junk car of yours.”

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Joey W. Hill

Marcus woke early, for him. Most of his work involved lunch meetings and

nighttime gallery showings, networking parties that might not start until close to midnight. But as if his subconscious knew that every moment with Thomas was

precious and not to be wasted, he stirred when the sun was still in the process of rising.

Not only that, he’d surfaced several times during the night. Once, he’d found

Thomas’ head on his chest. Marcus had his arm resting across his back while Thomas had his arm securely wrapped around Marcus’ side and waist, his leg twined over one of Marcus’. Holding him in sleep as if Thomas was afraid he’d lose him.

”I missed you too, pet.” Marcus had stroked his head, pressing down to increase the weight of that precious skull against his heart. Thinking of how Thomas pressed on the burning spot in his belly so often, he wondered if this gesture was the same thing. A way to assuage the pain.

Fuck, saying he’d missed Thomas didn’t cover it. He thought he’d understood the full extent of it, but when Thomas had pulled into the driveway, it had landed on Marcus like an asteroid.

It pleased him how deeply his farm boy slept. He’d made sure to wear him out

physically. Just thinking of it made him want him again, but for now, Marcus wanted Thomas to sleep like this, shed some of his emotional and physical exhaustion.

But holy God, he was a beautiful kid. Broken down, the individual features didn’t seem like much. At a glance, his nose appeared small, precise. But when the light hit his profile, it was a sharp blade sharing the same angle with the jaw and cheekbone, perfectly aligned.

Dark eyes, large to balance that small nose. Thomas’ ears were larger, but again, somehow it worked. He had heavy brows that Marcus at first thought should be

trimmed, plucked down, but very quickly he’d realized they were the perfect accent for the dark eyes and all the emotions that moved behind them, like silken streaks of clouds over a stormy sky. One dropped lower over the eye than the other, giving Thomas’ face further intensity.

Though it was starting to curl, Thomas’ hair was soft and short under Marcus’

stroking fingertips, a conservative cut appropriate for a man raised in a rural county all his life. Shaved short sideburns, the hairline sculpted up and over the ears and trimmed properly above the collar. Marcus could almost imagine Thomas sitting in his mother’s kitchen getting the cut, his eyes closed, nearly asleep after a hard day as her hands, those working woman’s hands, touched his man’s neck, the nape.

As she did it, Marcus was sure Elaine would be remembering the vulnerable shape of it as a boy. Isolated, that part of the body never lost the ability to project innocence.

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He knew she loved Thomas. He’d never doubted that. The love was in Thomas’

eyes as well when he spoke of her, protected her. It didn’t make any of it easier. If anything, it made it harder.

His mother wasn’t completely wrong. Marcus was well aware Thomas would never

be an urbanite. He was at heart what he’d been raised. Modest, quiet. Not flamboyant in the least. Shy even, at times. He had a bashful tendency to look away when he smiled, but the smile was sexy, black Irish. Except when painting or at ease with Marcus, he typically had nervous gestures while he was talking with strangers.

Thomas was the type of person to hold a door for a woman, no matter what. He’d

avert his eyes, uncomfortable and yet a gentleman if a woman’s breast was exposed when she leaned over in the grocery line, or if he saw one nursing a baby in public.

Then, just as Marcus would decide Thomas was
too
gentle and boyish, something would raise his ire. That brow would lower, the eyes sharpening, all those straight lines of his face hardening, such that you were looking at the face of a man who wouldn’t back down, wouldn’t think of it, no matter the odds.

A man as irresistible as a hearth fire in winter. His proximity was heat and comfort at once.

Marcus had drifted off to sleep again reluctantly, only because he knew he’d need rest to enjoy Thomas fully. Now he found himself alone with the rising sun. He made himself lie there, pushing down panic. Glancing toward the half-open door of the bathroom, he located Thomas’ shaving kit, along with a hairbrush with bristles so thinned out it looked as if Thomas had possessed it since puberty. Marcus suppressed a smile.

Rising, he slid on a pair of sweatpants and followed intuition out to the main room.

Coffee was brewing. Thomas didn’t drink it often, but he knew Marcus did. Getting a cup, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, he padded out to the back deck.

And there Thomas was, as welcome as the sunrise Marcus was rarely up to see.

Marcus leaned on the rail, looked down at the lower patio. Thomas had set up three easels with pads and there were two more sketchbooks on the ground, held open to the desired place with rocks he’d found from the surrounding natural area. He was doing a combination of pencil and charcoal renderings.

Thomas had always been fascinating to watch work, and Marcus knew he was one

of the few who’d gotten the privilege. He compared it to the chance glimpse by a hiker of a rarely seen wild creature. Some part of his subconscious realized what a gift it was to be trusted to stand this close.

Knowing the creature might disappear any second made every moment it lingered

that much more precious. Impossible to compare this to seeing its facsimile inside the manufactured environment of a zoo. Because of that, this was what Marcus wished Thomas’ mother could see.

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Joey W. Hill

Had he given Thomas any room to think last night, Marcus was sure he would have started to worry. What if the muse didn’t come? If she was truly dead? A worry Marcus had known to his marrow was completely without merit.

She’d obviously dragged Thomas out of bed sometime in the early hours before

dawn. Marcus would have liked to have seen it, but he would enjoy this and not regret the missed moment.

Thomas would take the three or four concepts he was developing and bring them

together into one layered image before he was done. Marcus knew he should be

studying what Thomas was doing from a marketing standpoint. Start planning how

he’d present it, reach the target buyer. But all he wanted to do was look at the artist. As incredible as Thomas’ work was, it was nothing next to the work of art the artist himself was.

Marcus watched Thomas balance himself on his heels as he studied the work he’d

done thus far. He had the unconscious grace of a dancer when he moved. It wasn’t obvious, but with the dropped weight, it was even more enhanced.

His skin was brown from the Southern sun, the muscles on the rawboned physique

nevertheless rolling beneath it like the powerful curve of a waterfall at the break point.

He ran a hand through his hair, back and forth, a gesture he made when he was

thinking. It amazed Marcus, how he remembered every detail about him. It was as if he’d reviewed every gesture and feature in a photo album daily since he’d left, but he had no pictures of Thomas, except the painting he’d bought.

Now Marcus wondered why he hadn’t gone after him sooner. But he’d always told

Thomas when he wanted out, he wouldn’t hold him, wouldn’t make it uncomfortable.

That was the way it had always worked in his relationships. But he’d discovered he didn’t want it to be that way with Thomas.

Maybe Thomas was thinking this week was all they had. To hell with that.

Quietly Marcus took the side stairs off the deck and leaned against one of the

support posts. He wanted to be close enough to smell Thomas, to see the faint gleam of the sun on his shoulders, the slightly paler strip where the jeans he’d pulled on were a little loose.

God, he felt like a teenager. Even his heart pounded a little faster as he got closer.

Marcus couldn’t help it. He didn’t want to disturb Thomas’ concentration, but he reached out anyway, caressed his nape. Thomas didn’t start at all, telling him either he’d been aware of his presence all along or Marcus’ touch was so integrated into what he was doing it didn’t disrupt him.

It had been like that once between them. Marcus could let himself into Thomas’

dingy warehouse space he rented as a combination studio and apartment and ten

minutes later, Thomas would start talking to him as if they’d been conversing all along.

Sliding his arm around Thomas’ waist from behind, Marcus let his hand drift up to a nipple and pinch. Putting his hips firmly against his denim-covered ass, he let Thomas feel how his cock was already semirigid.

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“Insatiable bastard,” Thomas murmured. Marcus smiled.

“Did I abuse you, pet? Leave you too sore?” Though he was darkly thrilled to know his lover’s muscles might be sore, his ass tender from being taken so brutally and often.

In answer, Thomas turned and sought his mouth, urgent. His arousal pressed

against Marcus’ thigh. Marcus muttered a curse at his own lack of control and cupped the back of Thomas’ neck, delving deep, tongue and teeth clashing in wet invitation.

God, Thomas had the most delectable tongue. He couldn’t have it in his mouth

without wanting it other places. As if Thomas was reading his mind, he moved to Marcus’ throat, biting him sharply. He caught hold of the sides of Marcus’ open shirt and yanked it down his arms, pushing forward so Marcus found himself shoved back against one of the deck pillars, his upper body under the provocative suggestion of restraint.

Thomas ducked his head and nipped at his chest, tasted his flesh while he licked, suckling his skin, kissing him as fire roared through Marcus’ blood.

“So fucking hungry for you,” Thomas muttered, and the words seared through

Marcus’ mind down to the root of his cock. “Want to eat you alive. So fucking perfect.

Too perfect.”

Marcus shattered, overwhelmed by Thomas’ sudden surge of passion, the

desperation of it so at odds with his almost shy submission last night. There was pain and longing under this urgency. The elephant was still in the room, the specters of anger and regret circling. Forgiveness couldn’t be asked, because Thomas still held the knife that would likely stab Marcus again at the end of the week.

Family. Duty.

Marcus tightened his grip on Thomas and swept his legs, taking them both to the patio tile, managing to cushion somewhat the fall of both their weights. He pulled at Thomas’ jeans with a grunt. He’d left the top button unfastened, the fricking tease, and there was no underwear beneath. Even with Thomas’ struggles it wasn’t so hard to get them off and end up back on top, Thomas flat on his back.

“No.” Thomas tried to shove him off, but Marcus was solidly between his thighs, his stomach pressed against Thomas’ hard cock. At the friction, Thomas groaned, his resistance turning into a slow rub of movement. Marcus lifted up enough to seize both of Thomas’ thighs, raise them and make Thomas clasp his hips with his muscular limbs.