Between the Bars Pt. 04

"Oh god Daniel. It feels so tight... I want you to be in there." What it would be like on my knees with him behind me... slowly pushing into me and my muscles wrapping around his hard shaft filling me up, owning me, possessing me. He was panting in hard jerks and so was I now, eyes slitted to watch him totally at my mercy, unable to touch his cock and give himself the pleasure and relief he needed.

For a reason I didn't understand, I suddenly stopped caring about my own orgasm. I got to my knees and crawled over to him with my cock aching. I crawled between his legs and spread his knees with my hands. His head went back and he groaned deep in his throat when I wrapped my hand around his throbbing shaft. I ducked my head and closed my eyes as I gently sucked his balls into my mouth, first one then the other.

"Rylan... please..." He was panting hard and his hips swiveled against my hand. "Let me out of the cuffs, I want to touch your hair..."

"Uh-uh." I grunted and shook my head with my mouth full of his sack and he melted back whimpering. My mind was blanking again, drifting on his scent and the taste of him and the way his cock pulsed in my hand. I drew away and climbed onto his lap straddling him with my cock against his belly and his next to it. He tilted his head back and gazed up at me with this indescribable look of trust and need and I wrapped my arm around his neck and licked his open lips.

"Soon... we'll be out of here soon and I'll get to feel you in me..."

He whispered 'Oh god' or something and I started to ride him. I thrust my hips into him and the chair thumped on the floor and our cocks slid together between our stomachs; it was almost like fucking and Daniel moaned deep in his throat and it sounded so beautiful I shivered all over. The tingle in my balls deepened into a burning fire that raced up my spine. I wrapped my hand around his cock and stroked it. He bucked his hips and I felt his abs tighten and his back arch; he shot in my hand, splattering his stomach with his warm cum. Watching it spurt out pushed me over the edge and I finally gave into the orgasm licking at my insides. Yellow bursts of light exploded behind my eyes and I came so hard that for a moment, I actually felt dizzy from the pleasure and I collapsed on Daniel's heaving chest and we stayed locked together limp and slick with sweat and juices until our breathing finally slowed.

Reaching back, I unlocked the cuffs and Daniel brought his hands around and rubbed his wrists, opening and closing his hands to get the feeling back into his fingertips. I got off his lap, bending to kiss him before I pulled him to his feet. After a quick, chilly cleanup, we were under the layers of warm covers in bed with the heater on. Daniel wrapped his warm body around me and I drifted mindlessly, hovering between sleep and oblivion.

"You did great," he said in my ear. He sounded far away and it took a second for me to come back from wherever I was drifting. "I'm proud of you."

The praise made me feel warm and happy, like a puppy being petted. "You didn't think I could do it, did you?"

"I knew you could. I just didn't think you knew it." He stroked my arm with his warm hand and then reached behind him to grab something. He hung the handcuffs on the bedpost next to my head. My breath caught in my throat and I stiffened, knowing exactly what he wanted, even though he didn't say it.

The silence hung thick between us. The tightening in my crotch confused me and I lay still on my side with my back to him.

"Talk to me," he said in a low, commanding voice, right next to my ear.

"Uh, about what?"

"You need to tell me who hurt you. We can't get past it until you do."

My stomach sank. "Oh." I stopped, hoping he would let me off the hook, but he peeped around at my face with his eyebrow lifted expectantly and I sighed. Fuck.

"Okay," I said reluctantly. "Just remember you asked. You remember me telling you about Matt, right?"

He nodded and I rolled to my back and stared up at the ceiling.

"Yeah, so Matt was my first love. He told me he loved me too and I believed him because when he fucked me, it felt like love. Anyway. We talked about going away to school together, somewhere that we could be open about who we were and our relationship. It was difficult to hide it. We were going to move to Champaign and go to the U of I, but I got a scholarship to Northwestern and as much as I wanted to be with Matt, Northwestern has an outstanding English program. Getting a scholarship there was a big deal and I couldn't disappoint my grandparents. Evanston and Champaign weren't that far away, we promised we'd visit each other.

"We were pretty busy the first few months of school and didn't see each other. I didn't exactly plunge into the gay scene in Chicago but I did explore it a little bit. I'm sure you know how exciting it is when you first come out and see you're not all alone in the world after all. It was an especially intense time for me, being from a small town, and never having known anyone openly gay. But I didn't fuck anybody else because Matt was the only one I wanted. I wrote him all these passionate letters; he didn't answer most of them, but I didn't expect him to; that just wasn't his style.

"I finally went to see him. I wanted to share all my new experiences with him; I wanted us to go to gay clubs where we could kiss and dance and everything else we'd never gotten to do in public. But when I got there, I saw that Matt wasn't going in the direction I was. He was living a different life. He'd pledged a frat and was living in the frat house; so instead, we ended up going to frat parties. I was disappointed but it was okay because we were still together."

Stopping, I took a deep breath. Daniel was lying beside me with his arm folded over my chest, his chin resting on it, his eyes huge and bottomless so close to mine. I glanced at him and he nodded encouragingly. He could tell this was hard for me.

"Okay." I swallowed, stalling. "So, we went to this frat party with some of his buddies. It was something new and I was having a pretty good time even if it wasn't exactly where I wanted to be. I had a lot to drink and smoked a little pot, so that I was feeling pretty uninhibited. I probably didn't even know how wasted I was. I'm not even sure how we got back to the frat house, but I ended up in Matt's room with him and about four of his friends. We... uh... got to talking and I'm not sure how it happened... I was drunk, too drunk to know what was going on at first, and then when I finally understood I couldn't stop them..."

Daniel drew in a sharp breath and his eyes narrowed. He stared at me, but I flushed and couldn't continue because my throat was so tight. Finally, he reached up and gently brushed my hair back from my eyes.

"So these frat boys, they..."

"Yeah," I interrupted before he could say it.

"And Matt? What did he do?" Daniel asked. He didn't sound angry or upset, just calm and encouraging, reminding me that he was a detective after all.

"Actually... I'm not sure. I was so wasted, Daniel. Everything got all mixed up and I just... I think he just kind of watched, he didn't do anything to me but he didn't try to stop it either."

I closed my eyes, shutting out the details. Shutting out the memory of Matt's eyes, and his face that night just looking at me, just watching while I was helpless and in pain. I'd never told anyone exactly what happened that night and I didn't plan to now. I'd finished with it years ago, locked it away, filing it for future reference when I might need it some day, the day I wrote a "serious" work. Someday, I would use all that pain to create something and nobody could take that away. Until then, it was mine alone.

"What happened afterward?" he asked softly.

"I dunno, I guess I passed out. I woke up while it was still dark. I was on the floor and Matt and one other boy were asleep in the room. I grabbed what I could find of my stuff in the dark and left."

"Did you call the cops?" There was a sad note in his voice; he knew what my answer would be.

"No. What would they have done? I was drunk... I was high... the cops wouldn't have believed a little gay boy anyway. I just got the fuck out of there."

"Yeah," he said simply. "Most rapes don't get reported. The victims are too ashamed to tell anyone."

"I'm not a victim. I was stupid. I shouldn't have been there; I shouldn't have let myself get in that situation. I should've known better."

"It wasn't your fault, Rylan. You were with the man you loved, you had no way to know he'd violate you and betray your trust like that. You thought you were safe."

Safe. His words struck me like a punch in the gut, and for a split-second, everything I'd kept locked up inside threatened to burst. Gasping, I instinctively curled into a ball and Daniel was there, holding me and whispering in my ear that it was okay, that nobody would hurt me again, all the things I needed to hear then but I didn't because I never told anyone. Wrapped in his arms I let him take all that old pain away and when it was finally gone I felt wrung out and empty and totally clearheaded. I looked up into his blue eyes and I saw nothing but a refuge there. Daniel was my safe haven. I wouldn't let myself think about later, when this would all end. I was safe with him. Closing my eyes, I let him take my arms - in front of me, not behind - and there was nothing but peace when the metal closed around my wrists and the lock clicked.

Chapter 19

The low sheet of gray was finally gone from the sky, leaving it high and thin and shockingly blue. The fields stretched in every direction from the kitchen windows, endless white expanses of glittering unbroken nothingness. The sun reflecting off the whiteness made tears sting my eyes. Three miles away across the southwest field, a plume of smoke rose from the nearest neighbor's chimney, but nothing moved. I felt like Daniel and I were the only two people in the world, frozen in this spot like insects in amber; and instead of lonely or restless, I didn't think I'd ever been more content.

The fire popped in the fireplace behind me and I glanced through the kitchen door over my shoulder at Daniel on the couch next to the fire. He'd been reading under a blanket and he'd dozed off. His face was half-hidden, snuggled into the quilt, and his sides rose and fell with the slow rhythm of his breathing. I smiled because he looked so fucking adorable. Yeah, he was content too. He'd stopped pacing around like an animal in a cage. When he got out of bed and spotted me at the table with my notebook early this morning, he came up behind me and rubbed my shoulders before bending down to kiss me, and when we parted we'd stared into each others' eyes until I finally had to look away, heat rising in my face.

That odd butterfly feeling I'd had in my belly then was back now, as I gazed at him snoozing under my grandma's quilt. Shit. My heart flipped and I groaned to myself because I was in serious trouble.

I'd started writing almost as soon as I woke up and I'd been scribbling away pretty intently until now. The words flowed more smoothly than my hand could keep up with, having to scrawl it longhand. It had been a long time since I'd been in the zone like this. I found it odd that Daniel's presence, and everything that happened last night, didn't distract me. Instead, it seemed to make me more focused than I'd ever been before.

Usually when writing, I got up and wandered around, played computer games, flipped through channels on the TV, all the electronic distractions I'd set up for myself. I didn't have any of that here and everything was so much simpler; and instead of annoying me, having Daniel here put me at ease. I'd never felt this all-encompassing desire to be with someone. My eyes darted to the window where an icicle was forming drop by drop on the eaves outside and my heart sank. The ice was melting and time was running out. Paradise lost.

"What you looking at?" Daniel's rough, sleepy voice cut into my thoughts. He blinked at me, smiling sleepily and rubbing his eyes with his palms, and my dick got hard. I was suddenly afraid he could read exactly what I was thinking so I ran my hand through my hair to cover my nervousness.

"Damn, I need a shower." I shuddered when I realized how greasy my hair was. Sponge baths weren't cutting it anymore. Daniel could run a damp cloth over the soft stubble on his head but I needed shampoo.

"A shower would be nice, then I could stick my tongue up your ass."

He watched me, his grin getting wider as my face heated. He loved making me blush.

"Why are you getting red, Rylan? You liked it when I talked dirty last night," he taunted me softly. Everything that happened last night washed over me in a wave and I felt my stomach drop like I was on a roller coaster. Thrilling but somewhat nauseating.

"Last night was different," I said when my throat finally let me speak. I stared down at the table, untwisting the end of the wire spiral of my notebook.

"Yeah, it was. Last night was something entirely different." His self-satisfied grin softened and he lifted the quilt and patted the hollow next to him, in the curve of his body. I'd never seen anything so inviting. "Come here."

I got up and went over to him, bracing my hands on the back of the couch. He pulled me down next to him and wrapped his warm arms around me, and I buried my face in his neck and closed my eyes. My cheeks and my lips burned a bit, scraped raw from his stubble, constant skin on skin friction last night. When I shivered, he mistook it for cold and pulled the quilt over my shoulders.

Daniel drew a long breath and I froze, waiting. I was afraid he was going to start talking about last night and I didn't want to talk about it. There were too many things I couldn't put into words and I didn't want to try, not now and maybe not ever. To my relief, he just closed his eyes and didn't speak.

When the lock clicked around my wrists last night, my thoughts stopped. It was the first time in my life my inner narration was silent and I just let myself be in the moment, without telling it to myself in my head so I could understand it and remember it later. Like a dream, the images were hazy and disconnected, awash in emotions.

Hands on me, lips, hot skin everywhere, flesh on flesh, his weight pressing me down keeping me safe. Overwhelming peace, total security. My hands bound and my mind quiet, relief, no struggle. The kind of surrender I feared more than anything in the world until Daniel showed me what trust meant. He showed me what it meant to be safe and in return, I turned myself inside out for him. Somehow he knew what I secretly needed, what I could never admit even to myself let alone to him; I didn't know how, but he knew. He knew. Pillow cool against my face and my chest, fingers wrapped around the bed frame's iron bars, wrists bound together with a short chain; my eyes closed while Daniel's hand landed sharp stinging blows on my naked ass cheeks. His voice in my ear, telling me.

It's not wrong to want this. It doesn't mean you're weak. It doesn't mean you liked being hurt.

His telling it to me made it true. My secrets climbed out of the box in which they were locked and Daniel took the fear and the shame away. He was the light in my darkness.

He opened an eye and looked at me when I squirmed and swallowed. There was still shame there because I'd never opened myself like that before, not even with Matt. I was wide open and if he mocked me or used my secrets against me, I had no defense. He could destroy me like Godzilla crushed Tokyo and it fucking terrified me.

"You okay?" he asked softly. He squeezed me and the anxious tightness left my chest. Safe here.

I nodded. He wouldn't do that to me. He'd promised me. He'd promised me that when the cuffs came off, we didn't visit that place again. Only when I wanted to. Only when I asked for it.

When the cuffs were on, I didn't have to ask for anything.

"We got any food left? I'm getting hungry." His belly rumbled under my hand for emphasis and we both laughed. I sat up, reluctantly leaving the warm cocoon of the quilt, muttering something about lunch even though I had no idea what time it was. Clocks didn't matter anyway. There was no schedule to follow and nowhere we had to be; so, when tummies growled, it was time to eat.

Movement caught my eye in the blinding whiteness outside the window, in the field past the corner of the barn. Two four-wheeled ATV's approached, one of them trailing a big yellow raft-type inner tube with black handles tied on with yellow nylon rope. The riders were Jeremy and Madison, Paul and Charlotte's two kids, my cousins. Watching them park the ATV's and tromp up to the house, I clutched the edge of the counter with the realization that if Paul let them drive the four-wheelers over the frozen fields, then the roads would very soon be passable for a car and that meant we'd be leaving soon. It also meant condoms.

They burst in the back door in a swirl of cold. Maddie threw her arms around me in a snowy bear hug while Jeremy headed straight to the stove's warmth. He was fifteen and didn't have much to say, like his father. Maddie was the outgoing one. She grinned up at me, her freckled cheeks red from the cold. In the puffy parka and layers of scarves and mittens, she still looked like a little girl, but she was getting so grown up. She was almost fourteen now and according to her mother, already the battles over low-slung jeans and belly-baring tops had begun.

"Mom sent us over to get you," Jeremy announced after we all greeted each other in our usual low-key manner. "She said bring your stuff."

"You've got power, then?" I asked. Daniel appeared in the doorway and my eyes automatically lifted to him. When he walked into a room, he was the center of it. The kids stared at him and he smiled, looking totally at ease while Jeremy answered my question.

"Yeah. Mom figured you'd be ready for a hot shower."

"Sounds great," Daniel grinned at me from under his lashes and I fought the heat in my cheeks. I didn't want the kids to see me blushing, but Maddie's eyes were just as sharp as her mother's and Jeremy hadn't missed a trick since he was born. He looked between us skeptically, while Maddie was busy pulling off her coat.

"You can sleep downstairs in the guest room," Maddie piped up.

Daniel and I exchanged a glance. Jeremy continued to stare at Daniel while I introduced them.

"My dad says you're a cop."

"Yeah, I'm a detective down in Florida," Daniel nodded. Not even suspicious Jeremy could resist that smile and he grinned back.

"Can I see your badge?"

"Jeremy," I protested but Daniel said of course and went to go get it from his bag, which he'd stashed in the dining room. Leaving the kids in the kitchen, I went back to the bedroom and got what little we had together. I saw him sliding his gun out of the bottom of the bag when I walked back in carrying some dirty clothes I wanted to throw in Charlotte's washer.

"I'll leave this here," he said quietly and I nodded. I knew he didn't feel safe without his gun, so I appreciated him not bringing it into my family's home. We found a safe place for it in the bookcase.

The kids inspected his detective's shield while I put everything in a grocery bag. There wasn't much. It was still down in the teens according to the thermometer, so Daniel and I piled on layers of sweaters and warm socks and all the other cold weather gear from the closet. My grandpa's clothes fit Daniel, so he had plenty to wear. My grandparents left all their coats and things here, since they didn't need them in Florida. Heading through the door, I enviously imagined them sipping mimosas in the warm Sarasota sun while I froze my balls off.