Slow and thorough, teasing his mouth with lazy strokes of his tongue until he felt a faint quiver in his slave's muscles.

Always leave them wanting more. The only problem was that was a double-edged sword with Thomas.

When Marcus finally drew back, Thomas gave him a shaky half smile, one hand dropping back to the ground over his head, his other fingers still caressing Marcus' bare shoulder. "Well, that was a hell of a good morning. "

"It was good coffee. " Marcus kept his voice light, even as he passed his thumb over Thomas' lips once just to feel the moistness of his mouth, to see those dark eyes go darker. He wanted to roll off Thomas, but only to turn him in his arms, hold him close here on the unyielding patio tile, feel Thomas' head on his shoulder, his muscular body sprawled tangled with his, his thigh over Marcus' leg as his spent genitals pressed against his leg. Marcus wanted to lie here, knowing it was all his.

But it wasn't. He was determined to get Thomas to change his mind, come back to his life here, but he couldn't cut himself open fatally to do it. He flat out wouldn't survive if he failed.

However, before he could move, Thomas drew him down, circled his back with his strong arms and held, his face pressed into Marcus' neck, temple against his jaw.

"I've missed you, Master," he said against Marcus' throat, increasing the size of the jagged lump there. "I know it's fucking unfair of me to say that, but for what it's worth. . . "

Marcus nodded, his eyes closed. He pushed away, rose to his knees and surveyed the beauty of what lay before him. Thomas went up on his elbows, possibly to roll to his feet, but Marcus shook his head. "Stay just like that. " Marcus sank back on his haunches, the same position Thomas had when surveying his paintings, only he studied Thomas. The splayed thighs, the cock lying in an inviting curve on his balls. Marcus moved his attention leisurely up the six-foot frame, over Thomas' pubic area, his flat stomach, then to his chest and shoulders, back to his face.

There was a yearning need there, and the Master in him couldn't help but respond to it. Reaching for the coffee mug he'd put down on a patio table, he took a sip. Still hot, but not scalding. He dropped back to one knee, pushed Thomas flat on his back again and tipped the mug over his chest, enough to splash a generous flow of the hot liquid over a sensitive nipple.

Thomas quivered, jerked, but otherwise stayed still, his eyes fastened on Marcus' face. His lips parted to handle the explosion of breath, his reaction to the stimulation of the pain. His cock started to harden again. With a curve of his lips, Marcus bent and sampled the good coffee, only now with a bite of that taut nub, a lick of the uneven texture of areola, and out to

the muscular flesh.

"Arms to the ground, pet," he murmured, a second before Thomas' palm would have touched his hair.

The proximity hovered, a sense of air movement between two objects, but then Thomas' chest heaved under Marcus' mouth as he shifted, both arms falling back above his head, which arched his chest closer to Marcus' lips.

At length, Marcus sat back on his heels and resumed his enjoyment of the coffee from his cup. He lifted his gaze to survey the artwork arranged in a semicircle around them, acutely aware of the man who obeyed his Master's Will by lying open and accessible to his desires.

There was some roughness in what he suspected were Thomas' first two attempts of the morning, when Marcus assumed he'd still been struggling to reach his muse behind an army of doubts, insecurities. But as the dawn burgeoned, the pencil had moved more freely, because Thomas had a hands-down kick-ass muse. One that couldn't be denied except under the most extreme circumstances.

Which was perhaps why, of all the things he'd seen in North Carolina that concerned him, what had concerned Marcus most was Thomas' admission that he couldn't reach his muse.

Folds of bed covers. When Thomas painted it, he would turn the linens into the suggestion of water on canvas, sensual, undulating, like the movement of the bodies on the bed that had created the impressions in the fabric. The curve of buttock, tangle of leg.

He was doing it as a series. Another canvas showed a hand gripping the covers as if in the throes of some passion, stimulated by an unseen lover, seeking an anchor amid a storm. Then the third rendering. After the storm was over, that hand again, lying flat on the coverlet seeking the lingering body warmth of the lover who'd left.

Scribblings for free forms, expert pencil pressure and contour lines for shading.

Even with it in draft form, Marcus could visualize it finished, the way Thomas would create it, that oddly disjointed layered style of his that always hinted at meanings beneath meanings.

Because of his family's needs and a resulting shortage of cash, Thomas hadn't been able to complete his MFA. But Marcus had spent nearly his whole life ferreting out talent, not only from graduating classes and shows but places other gallery owners wouldn't look, and he knew Thomas would stand toe-to-toe with the best, with or without the degree.

Never overt or overly sentimental, but something that teased the senses as well as the emotions. Thomas' work could compel people visiting Marcus' gallery to walk back and study it five, six, even ten times in the same visit. They felt the pull of it even when they couldn't put their finger on the why.

It was much what Marcus had done in his mind countless times over the past eighteen months. Coming back again and again to what it was about a North Carolina farm boy that wouldn't let him go. The promise of something he wanted so deeply it was impossible to give a name to it, but it could be sensed like the instinctual need to survive. It didn't need to be nurtured - it simply was, a primitive fact of life.

In some ways, he carried a gallery in his mind, all paintings of Thomas that Marcus had created, looking at him in a hundred different ways. This moment was a new addition to that priceless gallery of mental images he would be no more willing to part with than any masterpiece in the Smithsonian.

His lover, now on his elbows again but still at his command. Naked, legs spread, upper body slightly red around the nipple area with the heat of the coffee, some dark drops caught in the crease of his stomach muscles. His nape damp with perspiration, beautiful eyes watching Marcus' face. His paintings waited in a half crescent behind him, a testament to the layers of meaning behind the man.

Marcus laid his hand on Thomas' inner thigh, his thumb passing over the damp ball sac. "A series of five?"

"I think so. That's what it feels like right now. "

"Just remember it only counts as one, since it has to be sold as one. Joyner will want the whole group. I'll suggest he hang them together along a wall, but spotlight them individually. "

"Mercenary. " A slow grin eased its way over Thomas' face, even as his eyes lit with quiet pleasure at the implied praise.

"You forgot the bastard part. " Marcus rose and tugged him to his feet. "It's still there, Thomas. Just waiting for you to tap into it. It never went anywhere. It's you who shut the door on it. "

Tags: Joey W. Hill Nature of Desire Erotic
Source: readsnovelonline.net