Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Q uiggs stirred from a dreamless sleep sprawled on his stomach. Someone touched his naked back. Accustomed to Max checking his breathing throughout the night, he huffed a breath to reassure him, then buried his face deeper into the pillow. He would wake up when he smelled breakfast. Something meaty fried with onions. If served another bowl of mushed grains, he’d gag.
The hand touched the tiny scar left by the hook on his shoulder, then glided down his back, slipping under the waistband of his baggy sleep boxers. Thick, ridged fingertips traced the firmer curve of his ass. The touch was hesitant. The therapy showers together aroused Quiggs to half-mast, but Max couldn’t coax a twitch from his own peeled cock.
Was Max finally in the mood and seizing the moment? His eyelids gooey with salve, Quiggs rolled to his back and hooked his hands under the waistband to work down his boxers. His stomach trembled. Eyes closed, he waited for Max to stroke him. He heard ragged breathing, then a heavy step back.
Was Max’s mood slipping away again?
Or was he troubled by Quiggs’s altered looks ?
“Would you like it if I stroked you?” Quiggs shyly offered.
“Yes. Very much. But it is forbidden of us.”
Quiggs pried open his eyes and found Beau’s curious gaze on his exposed cock. He yanked up his pants, then bolted upright. “You fucker!” The shout hurt his throat. He sputtered incoherently before rasping out. “You ruined my life, you cost me everything, y-y-you—”
Beau clamped a hand over Quiggs’s mouth. “Yelling harms your voice.”
Quiggs bit down on the fleshy part of the palm.
Beau wrenched his hand away, nostrils flaring. “You drew blood!” He sounded astonished. He wiped the drops of blood on the front of his brown military tee.
“You horny bastard!” Quiggs swung his foot at Beau’s groin, missing as Beau swiveled his hip.
“I am not here for sex. I touched you to check how you are healing. You are smooth and pink.”
“You ruined my life!” Quiggs lunged off the bed and butted his head into Beau’s stomach. He saw dancing lights. Beau barely grunted. Quiggs stumbled around the room throwing weak punches that Beau dodged without effort. When Beau backed against the closed door reaching around to turn the knob and escape, Quiggs seized his muscular neck in a stranglehold, wrapped his legs around Beau’s waist, and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.
It was like throttling a column of stone.
Quiggs stopped, realizing he’d inadvertently aligned their cocks. Again. One sweet grind would send Beau over the threshold. Again.
Beau read his thoughts. “I have learned control.” He eased down until he sat on the floor, back against the door with Quiggs straddling his lap. Quiggs felt a hard ridge riding his crack and glared until Beau lifted him by the ass and set him atop his thighs.
Beau breathed as steadily as if he were sitting in the shade watching his herd graze, but Quiggs wheezed after days of inactivity.
They stared silently at the changes in each other over the last four weeks .
The untamed tawny sideburns curving Beau’s strong jaw were new. He had more sensory hairs than Max. Plucking one would ache worse than a fingernail pulled from the quick. Quiggs would do it as soon as he caught his breath.
Beau’s transitioned body had bulked up. The angles of his face had sharpened to create a virile beauty. He had probably spent their weeks apart fucking anything on two feet who nodded back. How had his lopsided little friend with the goofish grin and happy wiggle transformed into this dangerous creature whose exotic green eyes regarded him with an eerie intensity?
“I have missed you, my good friend Quiggs.” Beau placed Quiggs’s hand on his cheek and rubbed against the palm.
Oh, fartin’ hell, love poured out of those trusting green eyes. Quiggs rested his forehead on Beau’s shoulder. “I should hate you.” He gave a ragged sigh of defeat. Life was what it was. A complicated series of somersaults over jagged stakes.
“I cannot be sorry for what I did.” Beau spoke slowly, stressing his consonants as if they were stuck on his tongue. “A killer hunts you. Had you married Rosamunde, you would be dead. Max would not have been there to rescue you. It is far better to live.”
“You expect me to thank you?” Quiggs cuffed Beau’s head, the way he had as cadets when Beau misbehaved and Quiggs didn’t know what else to do with him.
Beau chortled, the cadence familiar but deeper, rougher.
“I lost everything I owned, my farm, orchards, inventions, research… my freedom. I’m a concubine. Me—the most courted cadet in the class—a concubine.”
“The most honored man in the territory owns you.” Beau patted Quiggs’s bald head. “He must care for you very much to let you fuck his hole.”
“Pfffft. My hair fell out from the stings. Max’s hair is fine. I could stay bald forever.”
“No. I feel bristle. You are cuter than a baby goat. ”
Quiggs reared back. “Fuck cute. I’m supposed to have hollows and angles and look sexy. I look like a melon.”
“Everyone who sees you will believe Max vowed on his honor to let you fuck him and cut your braid if you fought harder to live. Then he shaved your head, angry at how much you enjoyed his ass.”
Quiggs snickered. “Dr. Knowles thought I’d lost my virginity when he saw my hair gone. He asked if Max needed cream for his sore hole before he examined him. Max was so angry his claws displayed. He made the doctor prepare a five-page statement for the Assembly explaining my hair loss. Max dressed in his formal uniform to speak to the heralds today, making sure there is no shred of doubt he did not reciprocate.”
Beau trilled his delight and kicked his boot heels on the floor at Max’s predicament. Quiggs’s shoulders shook as he slapped Beau’s chest. For a minute they were inactive cadets again, their friendship unburdened with inconvenient sexual stirrings.
Quiggs wiped his streaming eyes on Beau’s tee. Within three months, his transitioned runt wore the stripes of a master archer on each short sleeve. The truth was Quiggs couldn’t hate Beau. They were innocent victims of archaic laws. Changes were needed, yet some feared the idea. Hence the vicious attacks.
“Did your first time hurt?” Beau asked. “Max promised me he would be kind your claiming night.”
“First times always hurt. I had fun before he put it in. He’s not as selfish as I was led to believe. I think I might have enjoyed it after a few more times, only the boilers stopped the fun. We haven’t had sex since then. We’ve tried in the shower for three days now but can’t.” Quiggs couldn’t believe what he was admitting to Beau. “I don’t look so good naked and bald. He can’t… um… seem to get hard with me.”
“And you, my Quiggs?”
“I almost get there. Then I see him frowning at my bald head, and I lose it. He wants jiggle and hair.” Quiggs rubbed his flat belly and patted his melon head.
“You show good muscular coordination,” Beau observed .
“Shit, Beau. I can’t get over your vocabulary. Since when did you start stringing sentences together? And you use proper grammar.” The changes rattled Quiggs. Where was his lopsided little friend?
Beau beamed at him. “I have always understood language, but my tongue and voice did not do what my mind asked.” He carried Quiggs back to bed and poured him a cup of water from the pitcher on the nightstand. “Drink all of it. Hydration flushes out the toxins.”
Quiggs gawked. “You said hydration. What’s happened to your mind? Or am I hallucinating?”
“I remember many lessons from the academy. They are like musical notes playing in my mind waiting for my new voice to sing them.”
“Shit… You sound like a poet.”
“I study every evening in my hammock on the barge. I will become a worthy husband with good wages in three years, and we will enjoy bad showers together every night.”
He’d be killed long before Beau was worthy, so why argue? He changed the subject. “How did you sneak past the guards?”
“I do not sneak in here. Max ordered me to guard you while he speaks to the heralds. He trusts me.” Beau puffed out his chest. “I am his best soldier. He knows I will sense danger quicker than he. He knows I will kill for you and give my life for you. If my cock rises with you, I will jerk off into a cup and save it for the vines.”
Quiggs choked on the last swallow of water.
“I jerk off many times a day thinking of us.” He took Quiggs’s cup and traced the rim as if he imagined a welcoming pucker. The look slanted at Quiggs said whose.
“You should think of other men when you jerk off. Find a friendly soldier to hook up with.”
“Soldiers are ashamed to share sex with me, and I am ashamed to visit a pleasure room. I bait the fields fantasizing about you. I dream of the day I call you my husband instead of my good friend Quiggs.”
“Beau…” Quiggs’s voice cracked. “Don’t go there. ”
“On my honor, I will wait three years for my good friend Quiggs, who is not ashamed of my blood.”
“Good to hear you’ll wait.” Max banged the door open. Had he stood outside listening? He strode into the room, his lips curled from an instinct to bare nonexistent fangs, his hand on the hilt of his sword. His boots gleamed, his wide cuffs were precisely turned back on his navy jacket, and medals of valor glittered on his sash.
The instant Beau heard movement at the door, he’d assumed a defensive crouch, but he relaxed at the sight of Max. He acknowledged his commander with a curt salute, then sniffed the air. “He brings you the jam muffins you like. The ones I sneaked to you in the library.”
Max glowered at Beau for spoiling the surprise as he pulled the wrapped muffins from the pocket of his jacket.
Beau nodded. “A smart way to arouse my good friend Quiggs.”
Max snapped back, “Your good friend is my concubine. I don’t need to seduce him. He obeys me.”
“You won his body. Not his heart,” Beau reminded him.
Quiggs got off the bed, snatched the muffins during the glare-off, and bit into one. Warm and gooey right out of the oven, the kind of food to get his jiggle back. Out of habit, he held out a fingertip of jam for Beau to lick. Beau had always adored being hand-fed like a pet.
Beau rolled his eyes at the commander as he licked the jam off with three long swipes, even though one was enough.
Quiggs finished the muffin. “No point in you badasses fighting over me. If I’m alive in three years, I’m finding me a nice fat baker to wed.” He bit into a second muffin, squirting jam. When he saw their hungry eyes on his messy mouth, he turned his back to them. “Idiots,” he mumbled.