STORY EXCERPT

“He’s gone. You can come out.” Ollie turned away from the front door as soon as he saw McBride go into the big house with the thrall. As cute as the slave was, Ollie had no interest in him. His love had returned, which made him ecstatically happy, but the thought that he wouldn’t get to keep him for long almost broke his heart. Too soon McBride would realize something was wrong. Since he wasn’t a fool, he was bound to discover what Ollie was so desperate to hide.

“I’m sorry. I should go.” Jonas entered the living room. His blond hair was a riot of curls around his head. Even in the darkened space, the strands caught whatever light there was and gleamed. Their lovemaking had ranged from sweet to hungry and all points on the curve between. Just looking at him now aroused Ollie. He wanted to put Jonas right back into his bed and start all over again.

“I don’t want you to go.” Ollie closed the distance between them, but Jonas took a step back. “Please don’t move away from me.”

Jonas hung his head. “All I’ve ever done is mess up your life.”

“That’s not true, and you know it. You were lost.”

Jonas looked up, his worried blue eyes softening. “You saved me.”

“You saved me, too.” Ollie had been so in love with Jonas almost from the moment he saw him in the prison. He’d wanted him then and thought Jonas would certainly buy him if not all of his brothers, but Ollie hadn’t seen him again for over a month. When he and his brothers were taken to a grand home, Ollie was convinced he’d never see the man with the golden hair and big blue eyes again. But his luck had been good because the house they were taken to was Jonas Davenport’s.

Another week went by before Jonas had first come to feed. Ollie found out later that Jonas was trying to avoid him so he wouldn’t fall any further into love than he already had, but they were headed on a collision course no matter how diligently they tried to steer away. When Jonas came to feed, Ollie had luxuriated in his touch. The feel of him pulling strongly at his neck was sublime. After dozens of times, Jonas had eased his hand down Ollie’s bare chest, pushed his loose night drawers away, and cupped his cock.

“The very first time you touched me, I knew.” Ollie moved closer to Jonas.

“I never should have—”

Ollie cut him off with a kiss and eased him back into the bedroom. The covers were neatly made, making Ollie question him.

“I thought if he came back and saw the disarray and smelled the strong scent of sex he would know. So I made the bed as fast as I could.” Jonas looked down at the covers.

“Let’s mess it back up.”

A quick grin stripped the fear off of Jonas’s handsome face, but only briefly. Worry bled back into his eyes so fast it was becoming his permanent cast of features. “He’ll find me.”

“Eventually.”

“He’ll make me go.”

“Then I will go with you.”

“By law he owns you.”

“Then I will convince him to set me free.” Ollie wasn’t certain he could be so persuasive, but he would try. There was never any harm in asking.

“But I gave up everything to come here.”

Ollie nodded. Jonas had told him the scope of the tale last night. As stunned as Ollie was at the depths Jonas was willing to go to keep them together, he didn’t have the heart to tell him he had probably ruined their chances by his grand act. Still, the gesture was a wide and sweeping one, romantic and powerful, but ultimately doomed. There was nothing either one of them could do to change the class they’d been born into. Once a slammer, always a slammer. And Jonas would always be a landed gentryman no matter how he longed to be Ollie’s thrall.

ADULT EXCERPT

“If we are to be brutally honest with one another, you must recall that it was I who threw myself on the bed and encouraged you to mount me.”

“Is that how it went?” Ollie asked, sliding his hand over Jonas’s thigh.

Jonas tossed himself face down on the bed and lifted his bottom up. “Just like this.”

A low, hungry growl filled the small bedroom. Ollie yanked Jonas’s legs apart, knelt between them, but didn’t penetrate him.

“Please,” Jonas begged. Ollie had such amazing self-control and staying power. If Jonas had even a tenth of his strength, he would have been able to resist Ollie’s powerful allure, but he didn’t, so he hadn’t. “Fuck me.”

Ollie teased his finger around the tight entrance of Jonas’s hole. He did this with methodical precision while Jonas squirmed and pleaded with Ollie to give him more. Slowly, Ollie eased one thick finger in and out, making Jonas hungry for completion.

“You really want me, don’t you, my lusty thrall.”

Jonas almost found his release right then. He loved when Ollie called him his thrall, mainly because he said it with aggressive possession. It had been Jonas’s lifelong fantasy to reject his role as entitled landed gentryman and become a slave owned by a slammer for blood and sex. Ollie was his perfect master. He could play at being cold and brutal, but it never went too far because Ollie was not truly of that mindset.

“I want you almost painfully.”

“You want me to inflict pain upon you?” Ollie teased. “I don’t know if I want to hurt you.”

“But your cock is so big.” Gloriously thick and long enough to touch all the secret spots inside Jonas’s body, Ollie’s cock was the most perfect one Jonas had ever encountered. He’d had his fair share of liaisons where he offered himself for penetration, but only Ollie had been able to make him climax hands-free with only the thrusting power of his prick. But Jonas didn’t think that was the key to his infatuation with him. No, he thought the fact that he loved and trusted Ollie was what made him fully receptive to his powerful strokes.

“It isn’t the size of my prick, but the tightness of your sweet hole.” Ollie slid another finger in beside the first, making Jonas tilt his hips. Each thrust caused him to lift his bottom higher, making a grander offer to his true master.

“Will you put the collar on me after?”

“Don’t ruin this, Jonas.”

Ollie’s resistance to take the last step was strange to Jonas. Everything else he had embraced fully, but that show of ownership he rejected outright.

“It matters to me.”

“It’s symbolic of me owning you.” Ollie removed his plunging fingers and eased Jonas onto his back. Rising over him, he kissed him deeply. “I don’t want to own you.”

“But that’s what I’ve done all of this for.” Jonas didn’t want to play at being a thrall. He wanted to become one in as many ways as he could.

“I know what you said you did. Even with that, I don’t think that makes you a thrall in the eyes of the law.” Ollie lowered himself down until the tip of his cock took the place of his talented fingers. Rather than fill him with one hard thrust, Ollie took his time and sank into Jonas.

The slow-filling bliss made Jonas’s eyes water so he closed them, uttering a sigh.

“That is the sound I most love to hear you make.”

“A sigh?”

“A sigh of contentment.” Ollie made one right in Jonas’s ear, and then lowered his mouth to the scar on his neck. While teasing that mark, he built his rhythm. “Tell me the truth, Jonas.”

“The truth to what?”

“Tell me that you didn’t give away all your worldly possessions to try to make a life with me here as my thrall.”

Jonas looked up and met Ollie’s gaze. “I sold everything I had and put the money in your account.”

“Oh, Jonas.” Ollie shook his head. “You may have doomed both of us.”

“But I didn’t know what else to do.” Jonas gripped Ollie’s powerful shoulders so that he wouldn’t pull away until they were finished.

“I will have to find a way to get what money I can, and then we will run.” Ollie rocked faster and harder until his breath was ragged and sweat covered his chest. Right at the peak of his climax, he pushed Jonas’s head to the side, placed his mouth against the scar, and bit down, sucking hard enough to make Jonas buck below his body.