Ingenious #1

Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

T he way Quiggs’s luck was running, it figured he’d draw the name of the only man alive who never reciprocated. Commander Max Bronn. Big, bad, scary. An owner with no sexual interest in Quiggs’s ordinary body except as a vessel for release between baiting traps.

On the plus side, the commander despised the First Family. They couldn’t negotiate with his owner and force Quiggs to hand over the model of his combustion engine.

He huddled naked in a corner of his solitary cell with his knees drawn up and his arms folded around his knees. He owned nothing, not even clothes. The lottery committee had forcibly stripped him of his cadet uniform. Until new clothing was sewn, they’d left him a used concubine’s uniform returned to the lottery committee by a concubine who’d finished his service today: a pair of worn-on-the-knees cropped black pants, a dingy long-sleeved white shirt with frayed cuffs, scuffed red platform sandals with ragged straps, and a red leather belt with an attached pouch of supplies.

Fresh sobs wracked him. He’d pitied the actives choosing the lottery. Always watching their diets. Their hair styles. Their plucked eyebrows. Their posture. Their walk. With his flat feet, Quiggs would break both ankles before he walked out of his cell in those platforms.

He needed to wipe the snot off his face. He opened the red pouch on the belt for a handkerchief. Yech. Sticky from a farewell fuck. He blew his nose on a sleeve, then put on his service uniform. The government paid for uniforms and sleeping apparel. He’d be measured for them tomorrow along with a formal costume for the claiming ceremony in two weeks.

When eight older members of the military police arrived to escort him to his new quarters, Quiggs was dressed and pacing his cell after a sleepless night. The sergeant handed him a letter from the commander.

Understanding how unprepared Quiggs was, the commander was entrusting him to Stefan, his manservant’s husband, for training in an apartment separate from the other concubines. Once the two weeks of training plus the customary three days of claiming were over, Quiggs would relocate his work to Port Paducah. The letter concluded,

Do not bite your veins and bleed out. It is your brilliant mind I will plunder.

Respectfully yours,

Commander Max Bronn

The words sounded like straightforward sex for three years. Quiggs hated being a concubine, but he kinda was curious about the sex.

When he left the jail, Quiggs understood the reason for the large escort. A throng of heralds waited outside. The soldiers fanned around Quiggs, their batons ready.

“Was the hello sex worth it?”

“How long have you been fucking the breed?”

“Is it true Rosamunde fainted?”

“How do you feel about growing your braid?”

The last question drew a groan from Quiggs .

The soldiers led him to the residential section for married families. Here, balconies had gardens, and the latest trend was cooking on Quiggs’s small outdoor grill using a modified version of Rosamunde’s fuel paste. The smell of roasted meat from last night’s dinner drifted along with the stench of diaper bins. He tottered up six flights of stairs to a floor of coveted penthouses, eight on each side of the hallway.

His escort halted at a door wreathed with white feathers and shells, symbols of fertility.

“For fuck’s sake, is this my marriage suite?” Quiggs tore off the wreath and shook it apart as if it were Beau’s neck. Feathers scattered, and shells pinged off the floor.

The sergeant spoke without inflection, “Stefan subleased the penthouse from the First Family. Nothing else was available.”

“That’s the spirit. Stab me, then poke a salty finger in the wound.”

“Stefan will visit you after he has packed. The commander has ordered you confined in your apartment, away from the heralds. Soldiers will stand guard in the hallway and at the entrance.”

Locked inside alone, Quiggs unfastened the straps of his platforms and flung them across the room. The wobbly shoes had allowed him little dignity. He limped around the plush greeting room. Same beige stone walls, but colorful woven mats covered the polished floor. A pair of L-shaped plaid sofas bracketed a low table holding a basket of fruits and cheeses for his ravenous night of sex with Rosamunde.

Quiggs tested the balcony doors and found them locked also. On a narrow eating bar attached to the small kitchen were trays of heart-shaped crackers and bowls of creamy spreads, as well as a carafe of a pale green beverage with a sweet vinegary smell. The pair of tiny cups beside the carafe indicated it held shrum, a fertility beverage meant to be poured into the cups and sipped slowly between hand-feeding each other crackers. The husband traditionally offered a flowery toast to his wife’s fertile health with each sip. When each was relaxed, they retired to the bedroom .

Quiggs filled a cup and offered a toast to the empty stool beside him.

“Here’s to Rosamunde, my lovely ex-wife. May your piss burn like fire the rest of your life.”

He was done with dieting. Quiggs sat on one of the tall padded stools at the bar and pulled a tray closer. He swiped crackers over different spreads, some sweet, some savory, and stuffed one after another in his mouth, washing them down with the vinegary beverage.

After finishing the crackers, he carried the carafe into the bedroom leading off the right of the entry. A white quilt and mounds of plump pillows covered the bed, big enough for three people. He wondered at the mechanics of a wife bringing a second husband into the marriage. Or three husbands sharing one bed.

The lavender and gray bedroom was designed for a wife’s comfort, with a closet for her wardrobe and a dressing table with mirror. He remembered his mother’s bedroom: his first father brushing her long brown hair each evening, their chatting comforting Quiggs as he played with building sticks on the floor. He’d assumed all women were like his mother—loving, intelligent, fiercely loyal, dedicated to the good of the Triangle. The truth was a jolt. Like swigging water to quench a terrible thirst and discovering worms sliding down your throat.

Behind a folding screen painted with fanciful birds and flowers was a ceramic tub large enough for two with a long handheld showerhead. Would Rosamunde have stepped into the tub with him? Carefully settling between his legs and leaning back for him to fondle her breasts? Now he’d be the one stepping into the tub and leaning back into a muscled chest with strong arms surrounding him and assertive hands fondling him. Or would the commander bother with warming him up?

It is your brilliant mind I will plunder.

Bleh.

Quiggs filled the tub and threw in a handful of pale lavender salts which fizzed on contact with the steamy water. He inhaled, and a delicious buzz filled him, so he tossed in another handful, then another. He drank more shrum, then fumbled off his clothes and sat on the rim to soak his sore feet before sliding into the steaming water. Gradually, the steam soaked into his muscles. He wriggled lower, hooking his ankles over the foot of the tub. Though he’d heard the public baths were popular, he’d never taken a tub bath. His eyes drifted closed.

Someone screeched at him. “Breathe! Come on, breathe!”

Quiggs coughed up lungfuls of water. When he finally took a ragged breath, he heaved the contents of his stomach. He lay on his side, certain he’d puked a couple of ribs. He tried to sit and figure out if this was real or a nightmare, but the motion made him puke the rest of his ribcage.

Whoever was screeching at him propped Quiggs up against what he slowly recognized was the side of the cold tub. He sat in a pool of filth. He wriggled up and tried to slide back into the tub to wash himself off.

“You will not drown yourself!”

“I shhhtink,” he explained reasonably.

Hands pulled him away by his ankles. He flopped over on his back and gazed up at the ceiling, where hundreds of spotted purple sucker-toes chased each other. He passed out again.

Quiggs awoke naked in a strange bed with his hands folded atop a sheet tucked around his waist. When he moved, his ribs ached, his head throbbed, and his mouth tasted like he’d bitten into the rotten carcass of a canal rat.

He tried to grasp what had happened. The pieces swirled like glass shards in his mind before settling into place to form the cracked picture.

Well, fuck, he’d gotten drunk and nearly drowned himself taking a bath with fizzy salts meant to be added sparingly. He’d overdosed on the combination. Who’d saved him?

Sitting on a stool by the dressing table, snipping thorns off a rose stem, was a tall, slender man with hair dyed red as the rose and styled in sideswept curls. He wore a bright yellow tunic belted tight around the waist and reaching mid-thigh.

The bright yellow stabbed Quiggs’s eyes. “Who… are… you?” he rasped. It came out like “woo-errrrr-oooo?”

The stranger uncurled from the stool like a bud opening. As he came forward to introduce himself, his swaying walk challenged known mathematics.

A breathless voice informed him, “Good afternoon, Quiggs. I am Stefan, your fashion fem, service felicitator, and confidante. Max hired me to train you.” The soft voice hardened. No mistaking: if angered, the voice carried the power to rupture eardrums. “Now tell me why you tried to kill yourself.”

“Wuzznt.”

Stefan placed a pillow to prop him up against the headboard, then offered him a sip from a polished silver flask. “It’s brandy. Take a swallow. Hair of the dog, as an ancient proverb says.”

The brandy flowed like a smoky tickle down Quiggs’s throat and exploded like a fuel stick when it hit his stomach. His eyes watered. He refused another swallow. “Like thuther shttuff.”

“Get used to the brandy. It’s the commander’s favorite.” Stefan took a healthy swallow after Quiggs. He delicately licked his lips and checked his lip paint in the reflection of the flask. Satisfied, he flipped back a wave of hair and fixed his light brown eyes, emphasized with black liner, on Quiggs’s face. “You’ll need to get used to many changes in your life. Which is why I am here. And not a second too soon. ”

Quiggs had a frightening glimpse of himself with his braid dyed to match his red lips.

Stefan clapped his hands together. “You slept into the next afternoon. A whole day of my skills wasted. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up so I can get started.”

He’d slept that long?

Stefan peered down at him. “You aren’t pretty or cute.”

Quiggs scraped his tongue across his teeth to clean off the fuzz. “Tell me something I don’t know. When someone finally throws me a boner… it’s Beau in front of an audience.”

A throaty laugh greeted his quip. “Perfection is boring.” Stefan tipped Quiggs’s chin up. He gripped tighter when Quiggs tried to twist away. “Hmmm. Nothing a strict regimen of diet and exercise can’t improve. I’m putting you on greens and vinegar for two weeks.”

“Then I’m not eating.”

“You’ll last a day before you eat what I dish out. Hmmm. Nose a bit longish and tipped up at the end. With a little paint and less scowl, I can make you look… interesting.”

“No paint.” Quiggs’s scowl deepened, earning another laugh. He had a sick feeling Stefan was immune to whining.

“Except for the dark blue rim, your eyes are a pure green without a fleck of gold. And those long lashes—learn to work them. Your lips are plump, shaped well. Nibbly.”

“Bleh.”

“Ah, one of those men who believe kissing is a perversion unless with a wife. Never stole a kiss from Rosamunde?”

“Rosamunde would have whacked my balls with her parasol.” He rolled his shoulders, waking up fully to his fate.

“I remember when her third father Palmer married the governor. I was hired to groom him. How he cried and swore vengeance for his family’s betrayal. He had planned to marry Rosamunde the day of his graduation. Cyrus and William were wild for him. Poor Palmer waddled for days.”

Quiggs sniggered .

“Oooooh, nice when you smile. It transforms you. Smile more often. Now stand up and off with the sheet. I need to measure you.”

Quiggs fluttered his lashes like a bug flew under one eyelid. “Eight inches.”

“Shame on you.” Stefan fluttered his lashes like a pair of shy butterflies had landed. “I mean your height, chest, waist, hips, feet. For your claiming costume.” He pulled Quiggs to his feet. The sheet fell aside. “Eight inches?”

Quiggs shrugged. “A grower.” He shielded himself when Stefan reached to inspect.

“My dear, think of me as a doctor who has handled hundreds of pricks.”

“Uh-uh. The last doctor inspecting my prick cut off my foreskin.”

Stefan shuddered at the memory of his rite of passage. “Thought I would die. They never warned me. No one ever talked about it.”

“Everyone’s supposed to face their rite of passage.” Quiggs voice darkened. “But Beau hasn’t. He’s sprung wood. Now it’s his turn to get cut. I hope they gouge out his ring and he bleeds out and it’s so putrid it—”

Stefan silenced the rest by clapping a hand over Quiggs’s mouth. “When he finished his sexual transition, the ring changed. It’s not a spongy foreskin. Which you’d know if you’d had real sex with him as often as the First Family has the news heralds believing you did.”

“We were saying hello!”

“The heralds love quoting your explanation.” Stefan tittered, then continued assessing Quiggs. “Flawless skin. Hairless chest. Except for this sweet little treasure trail.” Fingers tiptoed from sternum to navel.

Quiggs eeked like a baby bird.

“Two weeks? Psssh. I need two months. Where are your abs? Gym is mandatory. I wouldn’t call what you have a gut, but all cadets graduate with bumpy abs and lovely v-shapes.”

“And stretched holes,” Quiggs muttered.

“I brought plugs for training. ”

Quiggs’s temper snapped. “The life of a concubine isn’t what I trained for. A stranger going up my ass my first time isn’t what I anticipated. I was married two years and exempt from the lottery and military. I have advanced studies and three extra degrees to devote to the Triangle. I was supposed to cut my braid today.” His arms swept the room as he shouted, “This was supposed to be my marriage retreat! How is this happening to me?”

“Calm down. You’ll get the chance to cut your braid.”

“I will?” Quiggs’s eyes rounded. “But the commander never—”

“In a pleasure house.”

“But my service—”

“Max won’t file a complaint. He wants your cooperation.” Stefan’s hand caressed his hip. “Turn around.”

“No.” Quiggs wanted to talk about cutting his braid. He covered his ass with his hands, then sat on them. “Tell me more about the pleasure house.”

Stefan brushed a delicate red fingernail up and down the outside of each thigh. “What a light dusting of hair, and yet such furry balls. You need to trim. Bushy isn’t attractive on a concubine.”

Oh, damn, oh, damn, oh damn, his contrary cock twitched at his first bare-fingered contact with another man. His thighs opened on their own.

Stefan gave Quiggs’s balls a teasing squeeze. “Oh my, you really are a grower.”

Quiggs had spent years coaxing his cock to life, never practicing restraint. The light impersonal squeeze tipped the scales. He doubled over, cupping himself, as he fell into his orgasm. His only warning to Stefan was a cough like a bit of crust had caught in his throat.

Goddammit, not again. Quiggs was mortified.

Stefan said, “Hmmm. Explains a lot.”