Thomas slid it from his shoulders, rising a bit. Reaching forward, Marcus caught the collar, damp with sweat from Thomas' nape, and pulled it all the way free. As he let it fall to the ground, the breeze folding it over, he traced the marks on Thomas' back and ass left from the flogger.

A still, heavy moment. As he touched him, Marcus wasn't sure of Thomas' thoughts about last night. But Thomas was looking up at the clouds shifting, his hand opening and closing on the grass next to him. "My back is sore this morning," he said, low. "I liked it. Liked knowing it was you who made it that way. It turned me on to remember it. And though you've been trying to keep your distance, you couldn't keep yourself from running your hands over them this morning, pressing down so I'd feel it. You liked it. "

"I needed to mark you. Fuck you. Always feel like you're mine. "

"I am. I've already told you that. " Thomas curled his fingers around the belt he'd pulled loose, held it up to him, extending an arm whose the muscles were bunched with tension. "Mark me again. "

God, Marcus didn't think he could get harder, but he did, just from those three words.

Thomas saw his reaction. He shrugged out of his clothes fully and then rolled to his stomach naked. Rising on all fours, he deliberately and provocatively adjusted his thighs open, raising his ass for whatever Marcus wanted to do to him.

Pure lean muscles, a farmer's tan, his head bent down, waiting for Marcus' bidding.

Lust could burn, Marcus knew that, but he'd never felt it threaten to incinerate every rational part of him, all the careful, civilized shields he had that made him a functioning member of society, leaving this savage, rutting Neanderthal. Whatever propelled his next actions, thought had been pushed away in favor of sheer response, reaction. He needed, wanted, couldn't hardly breathe with the power of it.

Doubling the belt over in his hand, he brought it down on Thomas' tight muscular ass, the left buttock. It clenched further. He put his hand on the heat of the mark, the heat of the man beneath, and his own hand trembled. He strapped him again, both cheeks, several strikes on the upper back, layering the marks still sensitive from the flogging.

When Thomas drew in a breath through his teeth, it pierced straight to Marcus' heart. Bending down, he laid his lips on one of the marks as Thomas' shoulders flexed under the caress, his head turning to see him, to brush his forehead with his jaw.

Marcus threaded the belt under him and wound both ends over his knuckles. Bringing the strap in tight across the flat expanse of Thomas' lower abdomen, he trapped his cock against his belly and made Thomas groan from the punishing friction.

Then he wrenched a deeper groan from him when Marcus thrust in, using the hold on the belt to hold Thomas rigid as he rammed in hard and fast, pistoning, taking them both up.

Marcus needed it, needed it like air, needed some outlet for the emotion that clogged in his throat and made his heart want to explode every time he touched Thomas, kissed him, saw his smile and knew he would go. Leaving a growing emptiness that might dull in time but would kill Marcus in the end nonetheless, because one simply couldn't exist without the other half of one's own body.

Marcus let go of the belt and dropped, covering him and taking hold of Thomas' cock, gripping the pulsing weight of it. A second later Thomas was coming, falling to one elbow. Marcus followed him down, face pressed to his neck as he worked him, felt his seed make his own hand slick, his knuckles wet. Thomas' ass muscles clenched him like a fist as well, making Marcus wish he could stay hard forever, make Thomas come like this forever.

"Don't you hold back on me," Thomas rasped. "Let go. " Marcus tightened his fist, his other han

d on Thomas' hip, clutching as his hips slammed against his ass, making Thomas feel the full size of him, pushing against his thighs, driving him to both elbows now. Marcus rolled them to their sides on the blanket so he could keep pumping him, moving Thomas with the force of it, his hand dipping to grip his buttock and open him up further.

"God. . . " As Thomas gasped it, Marcus set his teeth into his shoulder, letting go, jetting into him.

Sometimes when it was like this, Marcus felt every sensation as if his senses were completely open. A space of total spiritual clarity, no shields against the detailed sensations of earth, air, fire and water moving around him. Of flesh, Thomas' thighs against his own, the quiver of his buttocks, the beautiful way his shoulders and chest lifted and expanded from his breath, reminding Marcus of a butterfly slowly opening and closing his wings. He could almost imagine the patterns and markings on Thomas' shoulders, the network of veins.

A man's soul was a fragile thing when this close to the surface, very much like a butterfly. Maybe that was why time seemed to stop in these moments, as if it was a protection. Once the winds of time resumed, that butterfly would be blown away, as if blasted by the backdraft of a semi. It had to have time to sink back behind the protective wall of flesh and mental shields.

Some of those walls were built thicker and tougher than others, which perhaps explained why it came so easily to the surface for Thomas, whose shields seemed almost dangerously transparent at times.

Marcus molded Thomas protectively into the curve of his body at the thought, holding him securely about the waist, still inside of him as they both got their breath back. Since he had his arm under Thomas' head, Thomas brushed his lips on the smooth inside skin of his forearm.

"Wow," he murmured. "That was something else. "

Marcus rose on one elbow then, sliding from him and tugging him to his back to look into his face, needing to see his eyes. "Yeah. " Thomas grinned. "Poets. Both of us. " He cast a glance to the right. "What do you think?"

Marcus moved his attention to the series of sketch pads propped up in tented fashion so Thomas could show them to him, the pages anchored with clips against the breeze.

The one he'd been working on was this meadow, a bird's eye view. In the ripples of meadow grass there were the hints of sinuous bodies and limbs. The grasses followed the contours of muscles, as if the meadow held the memory and impression of past lovers.

As remarkable as that coincidence was, the next sketch cinched it. It was the curved back of a man as his male lover knelt in intimate posture behind him, the suggestion of a butterfly's markings upon his back even as one of the creatures fluttered into the picture with them. Just one. . .

Had he internalized Thomas' work in his dreams, during his doze? Logic told him he had, but something deeper, the thing that tumbled inside of his heart with such strength whenever he looked at Thomas, suggested something different. It was a feeling so strong it could be the essence of joy and fury. Perhaps the two together created passion because it was the struggle to give and take all at once. It told him he would never know if the idea had come from Thomas' mind or his own.

Maybe what Thomas painted was the melding of both of their desires, fears, dreams and fantasies. Maybe that was the real reason he'd never felt excluded when Thomas painted.

"What do you think?" Thomas' tone was studiedly neutral, almost making Marcus smile.

"I think the more free rein you give your talent, the more you're going to amaze the world. " Marcus glanced down at him. "But if you want me to go on record, my official comment is I should be able to get a decent commission off them. "

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