9. Beast
NINE
Beast
After a few hours of resting on the bed with Lucas, I’m feeling better, so I start nibbling at his neck. My cock is hard and I want sex, but there’s something I need to do first.
As Lucas stirs from his doze, I roll him onto his back. He blinks at me sleepily. Then his lips part on a sharp inhale and he tilts his chin to let me nibble at his throat. I’m lying partway over him with my leg between his and my hard cock angled across his groin. My shaft rubs against him as I work at his throat, licking and sucking.
I love his breathy little sounds. I love the way he starts shifting under me as his body awakens. I love how his cock starts to harden against mine.
He belongs to me. His body is mine to touch, to hold, to fuck. It’s mine to mark, and that’s what I’m doing.
He instinctively accepts it, baring his throat to me. He’s so beautifully submissive.
It’s such a relief that I don’t have to fight him. I’m not sure I can be gentle all the time, but it’s so fucking nice to be with someone that I don’t have to hurt in order to survive.
I’ll hurt others though. Anyone who tries to touch him. Anyone who tries to take him from me.
He’s mine.
Mine.
Speaking that word ripped something open inside me. It feels like a wound. I’m not ready to look at it though. I’m not ready to think about it. So I just keep suckling at his throat.
When I’m sure the pink marks will darken, I move to his ear. His breath hitches when I nibble at his earlobe. I’m sure he’s remembering that I bit off part of someone’s ear only a few hours ago. At first, I think he’s scared, but then he shudders and his cock twitches against my abdomen.
Interesting. Maybe he liked my violence?
I wish I could ask him.
The impulse upsets me. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t like that I want to talk. I don’t like that I feel, maybe, a little bit scared to try.
Angry, I find my hand on Lucas’s throat. I squeeze.
I expect him to cry out, maybe claw at my wrist. If he did, I’d probably squeeze harder. But he doesn’t. He stays still, waiting it out as though he trusts me.
Jesus. What’s wrong with him?
I take my hand away from his throat. I drag it down his torso and slide it under him to squeeze his ass instead. He pushes up against me.
I draw back so I can see his body. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten to actually enjoy the sight of another man’s body, and his is perfect. Lightly toned. Distinctly male with his lean hips and beautiful cock.
I curl my hand around it, loving that it’s hard for me, loving that he’s so responsive and sexual. For a second, there’s a jealous twinge in my mind as I wonder how many men have touched him, fucked him, made him come. But the past doesn’t exist here, so I push the thought away.
This is a separate reality, and in this reality, Lucas is mine and mine alone.
I revel in the soft little sounds he makes as I stroke his cock. It’s thick, stiff, hot. Veins thread the underside, and his tip flares enticingly.
Mouth watering, I scoot down. I’ve already shown him that his hole is mine. He needs to understand that his cock is too.
He cries out in pleasure as I drag my tongue along the underside of it, slowly stroking to his tip, where I suckle, feeding on the sweet precum he leaks for me.
“Oh god,” he gasps. “Ohhhh— fuck .”
His hands fist at his sides as he lifts his hips. I push him down, holding him in place while I lick again. I start at his balls this time, lathing them with my tongue until he’s trembling and incoherent then licking upward to capture the fresh precum beading at his slit.
His hands are over his face now. His balls are drawn up full and firm like he’s going to come, so I squeeze the head of his cock to tell him no.
I keep my fingers there, gently pinching, as I start sucking at the delicate skin along his groin. He’s out of his head, moaning and writhing as I mark him. I take my time, breathing in his scent and learning how he responds.
I’m lightheaded with my own arousal by the time I relent. He’s completely loose and compliant as I lift one of his legs, pulling it up and across to scissor him. I crawl up and reach for the mineral oil. It’s not as good as lube, but at least we have something.
Really though, I’m leaking so much I could almost fuck him without it. I stare down at myself, still shocked that I’m having this kind of sexual response. My erection is almost a foreign thing to me, jutting out huge and stiff from my body.
Experimentally, I touch it. It feels good, so I do it again, stroking the stiff length. I reach under to grip and tug my swollen balls. I have to close my eyes at the flood of sensation. It’s still strange to me to feel pleasure.
I open my eyes to find Lucas watching me over his shoulder. His blue eyes are dark with arousal. His lips are parted like he’s enjoying watching me touch myself. He’s still scissored for me. Waiting.
I gaze down at his plump ass as I drip oil into my hand. He makes a soft sound as I slick my cock, then he moans for me as I slip my oiled fingers between his ass cheeks to massage his hole and push inside.
He opens more easily this time. He’s more relaxed as I stroke inside him, more willing. When I lower myself over him and guide my cock to his hole, he pushes back against me eagerly.
I like that so much that I get my arms around him in a firm grip, clamp my teeth on his shoulder, and push inside him in a firm, relentless glide. He makes delicious little sounds as I do it. Pleasure. Pain. Acceptance.
When I’m fully seated, straining to get as deep as possible, I pause to really feel the joining. Lucas pants and trembles under me. I release my bite and start rubbing the side of my nose against him. He takes a deep breath, relaxing, then I start to fuck him.
It feels so damn good. His ass grips my cock perfectly as I thrust into him. I push his leg higher to get deeper.
I love how erotically his body is tangled under me, but I want to see him, so I pull out and turn him onto his back. He cries out in surprise but doesn’t fight me as I lift his legs and spear into him again.
I like this even better. I can see his face as he moans and pants through the deep pounding. His body is bent, his stomach contracted. His hard cock is flushed and leaking. He reaches for it, but I knock his hand away. I want to watch. I want to see him come.
I know when I start hitting his prostate because his cries get louder and sharper and his cock leaks so heavily, so fucking beautifully, that have to grit my teeth to hold back my orgasm.
His hand dances toward his cock again, but I growl a warning and he fists the blankets instead. He starts writhing and twisting, throwing his head back. I fuck him harder and deeper, pounding his ass until he starts screaming and his cock starts shooting creamy strands of cum all over his torso and neck.
The sight triggers my own release, and it takes me completely out of myself to be ejaculating inside him while I watch his balls pulsing and tightening as his cock kicks and spurts. As my orgasm fades, I roll my hips against him to chase the sensation. He moans, and so do I.
I pull out slowly, lower him slowly. He’s whimpering softly, still out of his head. He startles when I bend over him and start licking up his cum. He cries out when my tongue strokes his overly sensitized cock, then he moans as I work my way up his torso. I end at his throat, cleaning him, trying to show him how pleased I am with him, how good he was to come for me like that.
It frustrates me that the actions don’t feel like enough. I want to tell him.
But it would change everything if I started speaking again. It would change me .
I’m a little bit afraid, though, that maybe it already has.
***
An hour later, I’m sure of it.
The guardroom door opens and O’Neil walks through with the shock collar in his hand.
I’m lying on the mattress with Lucas. Normally, I’m more active. I have my punching bag and pull up bar. I usually do calisthenics all day. Even when I’m injured, I can’t handle the tedium of rest.
But it’s different with Lucas here. I want to rest. I want to have sex and hold him. I want to be comfortable.
What I don’t want, really don’t want, is to put that collar on.
O’Neil hangs it on the crossbeam of the cell bars. “Shower time, big guy.”
Showering is the highlight of my week. Hot water. Getting completely clean. Getting to shave. Sometimes there are fresh blankets and clothes when I get back. It’s great. But I have to wear the collar.
I don’t want to wear it in front of Lucas.
“Come on, big guy. Better while it’s my shift.”
He’s not wrong. If I don’t shower now, it might be Briggs who takes me. There won’t be extras, and I have Lucas to think about.
I get up from the mattress. Normally, I don’t bother dressing for the walk to the shower, but today I pull on my sweatpants. Then, crouching beside the mattress to block O’Neil’s view with my body, I hand Lucas his jeans.
Him coming with me is nonnegotiable. I won’t be separated from him. Maybe O’Neil already assumed that because he doesn’t say anything when I draw Lucas to his feet and make him walk with me to the bars.
I can feel Lucas’s eyes on me, but I don’t look at him as I grab the collar from the crossbeam. My stomach turns as I strap it around my neck with the prongs at my throat.
Fuck, why does it feel so awful? It’s not like I’m not used to it. It’s not even like Lucas has never seen me wearing it. I was wearing it the first time I laid eyes on him.
But it feels different now. I feel … fuck, I don’t know. I don’t like it.
O’Neil opens the cell gate and stands aside. I have to precede him to the locker room. Even with the remote for the shock collar in his hand, even with a gun, baton, and taser at his belt, he would never trust me at his back. He’s right not to.
I tug Lucas until he’s in front of me because I don’t trust O’Neil either. I don’t want him behind Lucas.
Lucas looks over his shoulder. I can tell he’s just uncertain, trying to ask what this is about, but I’m not prepared to have his eyes on me. I think I’ve lost the knack of schooling my expressions. Men who try to put up a front in places like this don’t survive. You only survive by actually becoming something else, something not human, and not-human things don’t guard their expressions.
I haven’t needed to for years because my expression has only ever been predatory. But now …
Fuck.
I don’t know what’s on my face, but it makes Lucas’s eyes soften. He reaches for my hand.
I pull away.
His face does something that I can’t interpret. He’s not angry, but he’s not happy either. He looks forward and starts walking.
“The hallway,” O’Neil calls out from the back when Lucas assumes incorrectly and angles toward the guardroom door.
We traverse the dim hallway that runs along the outside of the cinderblock guardroom until it ends at a steel door that’s propped open. Lucas glances back again.
I’m doing better now, so I’m able to nod at Lucas to tell him it’s okay. He proceeds into the stairwell. We climb to the top, where another steel door is propped open to let us into the shower area of the locker room.
A half wall contains the open bay of showers. I stop and strip off my pants, draping them over the half wall beside the waiting towel, bar of soap, and electric razor.
“Should I …?” Lucas asks incompletely.
Shifting to keep myself between him and O’Neil, I nod. The movement pushes the prongs against my throat, reminding me that I’m collared like a dog.
Lucas strips off his jeans and lays them beside my sweats, exposing the hickeys I left along his groin to mark him as mine. They soothe me slightly.
Lucas glances at me again then goes through the opening into the shower bay. Following, I hand him the electric razor.
He stares at it like he’s unsure what I want him to do with it. I gesture at his face. He can shave if he wants.
He struggles with it. He’s probably used to blades, but that’s not an option here. After a few minutes, I take the razor back from him. Gently gripping his jaw, I tilt his head and clean up the remaining light stubble from his face and throat. As I work, I soothe myself with the sight of the marks I left on his neck to claim him. No one can doubt that he’s mine.
His eyes drift halfway closed as I work. He relaxes. A little color blooms in his cheeks. I let my eyes drift down to his slightly thickened cock.
“Sorry,” he whispers when I’m done shaving him. “I don’t why I’m so … it just … it feels good when you touch me.”
My breath catches. I wish we were alone, but we’re not, so all I can do is reach out and pet his hair to show him that I like touching him.
I get to work shaving my own face. O’Neil is more patient than Briggs and the others, but it won’t last forever.
I’m used to the electric razor and the absence of a mirror—hell, I don’t even remember what I look like anymore—so I make quick work of my face and neck. I run a hand over my head to check the length of my hair, but I buzzed it last week, so I decide to leave it. I’m worried about running out of time.
As I swap out the razor for the bar of soap, I check on O’Neil. His expression is neutral, but he’s watching me. The remote for the shock collar is still in his hand.
I walk Lucas over to the showerheads. I would like for us to shower together, but again, time.
I turn on one showerhead for him and another for me. I hand him the soap. I do my best to stand under the hot, blissful spray while still blocking any view of Lucas. I don’t like that during the fight earlier, O’Neil and all the other guards saw him.
Lucas washes quickly, scrubbing his hair and body. His arousal is gone, maybe because he feels my tension, and, yeah, I’m tense as fuck.
Last week at shower time, I wasn’t. I was stubborn about hurrying. The guard overseeing me gave me a warning zap. When that didn’t work, he radioed one of the others to shut off the water line because he didn’t want to come into the shower bay and deal with me. That made me so fucking mad that I pissed on the shower floor tiles so he’d have to clean it up afterwards.
Now, I can’t take risks like that. I have something to lose.
Worry slithers through me. I spent years stripping myself of vulnerabilities, but the instant I claimed Lucas as mine, that’s exactly what I gave myself. A vulnerability. A weakness to be exploited.
Lucas hands me the soap. I strip the sodden bandages off my wounds and start scrubbing away the traces of blood that I missed in my earlier cold-water washup in the bathroom.
When I’m done, I turn off the water. Lucas follows suit and shadows me to the half wall. I set down the soap and hand him the towel. He hesitates with it, like he doesn’t want to use it before me. My growl for him to stop questioning me comes out harsher than I intend, and it makes Lucas jump, which irritates me.
Lucas dries off quickly then hands the damp towel to me. I make brisk use of it. My hurry now is less about time and more about wanting back in my cell. I don’t usually want that, but right now I do. With Lucas to worry about, I don’t like being out here where I don’t control things.
And I want this fucking collar off.
I toss the towel on the floor and grab my pants. Lucas scrambles into his jeans.
His panic annoys me, so I glare at him, which of course only makes it worse. He gets visibly jittery, and his eyes start darting around. I grunt in frustration and look away from him. I’m not used to having to control my anger.
O’Neil stands back to let us out. Lucas doesn’t need instructions this time. He backtracks to the door and down the stairs. He walks along the hallway and heads straight to the cell. We get inside without incident.
Everything went fine because I behaved. I didn’t push. I couldn’t, not with Lucas to worry about.
As the gate clangs shut behind me, I turn to face it, putting my back to Lucas as I reach up to unbuckle the collar. I hang it on the crossbeam. O’Neil picks it up. He leaves without a word, disappearing into the guardroom.
Lucas is hovering behind me. I grab his arm and haul him to the bed, where I vaguely note that the medical equipment is gone. At least I had the foresight to hide a few things inside the mattress. I shove Lucas down and go stalking off to the punching bag.
Last time I was at the bag, Lucas came to get me. This time, he doesn’t. He’s right to stay back. I’m really angry with him.
He did nothing wrong. It’s not his fault. But that doesn’t matter. Fair doesn’t exist in a place like this. All I can do is redirect my anger at the bag.
I worked so goddamn hard to not be vulnerable. I stripped so much from myself. And it worked. I went years without feeling fear.
And now …
When I catch sight of Lucas from the corner of my eye, I see that he’s watching me from his place on the bed. His knees are drawn up, his arms hooking around them. I growl at him. I don’t want to be looked at.
Tears spill down his cheeks. “I don’t know what I did wrong,” he says.
I grunt and hit the bag again. He came into my life, that’s what he did wrong. He made me want him. He made me value him. He made me weaken myself with human feelings, like the one I had with that collar around my neck, a feeling I haven’t experienced in years.
Lucas did that to me, forced all of that back into my life, into my self . He ruined everything.
“I know you can talk,” he says. “Why won’t you just tell me?”
I snap. I feel it, the abrupt break in my focus and control. I spin toward him with a roar. He jumps, scrambling back across the mattress as I storm his way. His back hits the wall. I drop to my hands and knees on the bed and cage him there.
He has nowhere to go, nowhere that’s safe from me. His eyes are wide and terrified as he remembers what I am. A predator. A beast. An animal that can’t leave its cage without a collar that someone else controls.
Then—fuck, then— he reaches out a shaky hand and lays it on my cheek.
He should be cowering. He should be pissing himself. He should be begging—and I should be ripping him apart.
Instead, he’s stroking my cheek.
Instead, I’m shaking so fucking hard that I feel like I’m going to fall.
More tears spill down Lucas’s cheeks, but it feels like they mean something different now. “It’s okay,” he says softly, still stroking my cheek. “It’s okay.”
I choke. It’s not okay. Nothing is okay. A week ago, yes. Now, no. This isn’t acceptable.
So why the hell am I letting him touch me, tug at me, pull me into the bed to lie down with him? Why am I putting my arms around him and burying my face against his neck?
Why do I feel like I would die if I had to go back to not having him?