Chapter 16 #2
He swung away and went to a sideboard, where he poured himself a glass of wine while I pumped my dick.
The dining salon was always cool this time of night, but sweat prickled under my arms and around my groin.
The slick, hurried sound of my foreskin was loud in the quiet salon, our only observers Philippe’s ancestors on the walls.
Philippe faced me, wineglass in hand, and leaned against the sideboard with his wolf glittering in his eyes. Power slid around me. My beast yelped in my mind, and I tried to drop my eyes but his authority locked my head in place.
My chest heaved as I shuttled my cock. Philippe sipped his wine, his boots still gleaming from my saliva. My uneven breaths mixed with the fleshy sound of my hand on my dick, which grew harder under his stare.
He took another sip, his throat working between his open collar. His erection pushed against the front of his trousers.
I kept masturbating. Sweat rolled down my back and worked its way into the welts. Pain bit, pulling a choked cry from my throat.
Philippe’s nostrils flared. The bulge between his thighs swelled.
Grunts broke from me. My chest lifted, something within me reaching outward. It strained and flailed, and I wanted to scream because nothing waited for it. I ran and ran, and the ground was a wheel under my feet, never advancing me forward.
But I had to keep going. The alternative was stopping, and Philippe didn’t want that, which meant I didn’t want it, either.
I wanted him. So I strained harder, and suddenly I was racing across the field behind my parents’ farm.
Philippe set down his wine and lifted the crop. But I was running, legs pumping and worry nipping at my heels. I couldn’t be late.
“You are late,” my father’s voice echoed in my mind, and it was Jesse’s mind so the guttural, vaguely German-sounding words made sense.
Philippe stepped around me.
The crop landed across my back, the slice of fire deposited neatly between two existing rows of welts.
My fist stuttered on my cock.
A strap struck my shoulder blades, and my father’s voice cut through my groan.
“Again, you have missed your prayers.”
But I’d hurried. I’d had so much to do and no horse to help with the plow. We’d sold it the previous winter to buy grain.
The crop trailed over a welt. It ventured lower, mapping the ghosts of the German bullets that had left me staring up at a night sky.
Star-spangled. The constellations had glimmered through the smoke, the heavens too stubborn to dim themselves even with the world on fire.
So beautiful. The words of that song had never made sense until then.
The crop lifted from my skin.
“Slovenly, ungrateful boy.”
I worked my shaft faster.
Hurry. I had to hurry. But I was already late.
Pressure built at the base of my spine, a great swell of it pushing and pushing into my abdomen. The carpet dug into my knees. Grit stuck in my molars and lingered on my tongue.
The crop whistled.
The strap whistled.
One after another, they cracked against my flesh. My cock throbbed in my fist, an orgasm cresting despite the pain—or maybe because of it. Pleasure and fire twisted together in a tight braid.
“You think God does not see your laziness?”
He didn’t. I bit my tongue before I could say it. He saw nothing. Gave nothing except perhaps indifference, his silence as reliable as the mechanical thump of my mother’s sewing machine as she worked the treadle in the other room. She rocked with it, head bent, her own prayers woven into the cloth.
The crop raised fire, and I hissed, hand flying up and down my cock. Pressure ascended. Rebellion rose with it, and I squeezed my shaft, willing the errant, undesirable emotion to recede. Why couldn’t it leave me alone? Why couldn’t it let me be good?
My father’s voice.
Philippe’s crop.
“Come,” he ordered, power lashing.
My body obeyed in a hot, wet heave. Ejaculate spurted from my dick and spilled down my fingers. I cried out and curled over my fist as more pulses came and cum splashed my thighs. Fire striped my back. Sweat ran down my chest.
Then Philippe was in front of me, the crop handle under my chin and an unreadable expression in his eyes.
“Where have you gone, Jesse?”
“Nowhere, monsieur,” I panted. “I’m here. With you.”
He looked at me, the ribbon on his shoulder. Locks of hair had escaped his queue and framed his face. His eyes searched mine, and the crop handle nudged my chin higher, as if he was missing something and hoped to find it.
Abruptly, he stood and fetched a glass of wine from the sideboard.
He held it to my lips, and I drank, the red warming my throat and sliding into my toes.
When I finished, he returned the glass, then pulled me to my feet and kissed me.
My dick tightened, and I moaned and thrust my tongue against his.
He lingered over the kiss, one hand skimming my waist. Our hips brushed, and I waited for him to pull out his cock, but he stepped back and headed for the doors.
“Clean up and go to bed,” he ordered without slowing.
I turned, following his progress. “Philippe?”
He stopped in the doorway, shoulders rigid, his hair spilling down his back.
I’m sorry. It filled my lungs, waiting for him to turn and look at me.
“Go to bed, Jesse,” he said softly. Then he left, the candles guttering in his wake.
As one, they went out.
I slammed into my body, the impact so jarring that my teeth clicked together. The kitchen surrounded me. Sunlight poured through the window. The scent of dish soap hit my nose.
Jesse crouched in front of me with both hands on my knees. “Caleb. Baby. What happened?”
“You,” I rasped through a tight throat.
“You saw me?”
I shook my head. “I was you.”