A Kind of Freedom Pt. 02

"I'm..." Anwen paused, catching her breath, panic welling in her breast, seeping cold down into her belly, rising up into her throat, into her brain. She could barely raise her voice above a whisper. "...but what if he comes back while I'm gone?"

"I'll have some of my local associates sit out front all day and all night to tell him where you are. How's that for a compromise?"

"I... Okay. Okay. But just for a few days, okay?"

Hainora nodded, smiling and rising to her feet with a creak from her bad knee and a faint hiss of pain. "That's fine. Let's get you packed."

It was an innocuous beginning to one of the great scandals of the Republic - one, they would both agree later after it was all said and done, that was entirely out of proportion to the actual events.

_____

Tifereth, in Arcadia - the present

In Arcadia, their scarlet letter was losing badly at baiduk yet again. She had been losing all night in Pearls, and now as dawn broke over the city, her streak remained uninterrupted. Tifereth sighed as she tried to negotiate a difficult ko fight that threatened to capture an entire corner of the board. Despite the game's soaring popularity in the Republic, it was difficult to find people to play against in Tirtassia. That gave her at least the comforting balm of being out of practice - an excuse for the embarrassing mistakes she had made early on in this match. The palm wine she'd been downing all night was not an aid to her game either.

"Is there a reason to drag the fight out?" Her opponent, a robustly formed woman with warm and sensual features (but a rather unfortunate nose), asked. "I have already won. I won in the first five minutes."

Tifereth grunted in answer, then took the initiative to struggle for the center, abandoning the ko fight to place one of the other corners under threat. Her opponent did not take the bait, and instead, placed her small white stone down, sealing the fate of a dozen of Tifereth's own. Each piece clicked as she placed them into her captive basket.

"Better just to give up. No shame in it, especially for a foreigner." Her opponent cackled.

Instead, stubbornly, Tifereth continued the fight across the board. Her pattern recognition was reawakening with this first game, each move a little less clumsy. It was a lightning match, too fast to allow for careful consideration. Instinct was the order of the day - and a strong instinct for action was part of her inheritance from the Lady Starshadow. It served her well in the arena and the cage, and it usually served her well on the board.

The defeat was inevitable, of course. Her mistakes in the first few moves had sealed that fate, as her opponent continued to remind her of. But she played it out to the end nonetheless, placing black stones down confidently. By the end, she was back in her form, and the defeat did not sting. Next time - and there would be a next time, for stubbornness and a drive to perfection were also part of her inheritances - she would win, she was sure of it. With a small bow of her head, she thanked her opponent, slapped a small fortune in promissory notes down on the table, and rose from the seat.

Banh, as usual, was chewing betel nut with the bartender instead of playing. They spat into a small brass pot, its insides stained crimson like some sacrificial vessel, and chainsmoked and gossiped in Kuretz, adding considerably to the atmosphere of poorly concealed criminality in this baiduk parlour that was also a gambling parlour and a brothel. But, even distracted, Banh was aware enough to see Tifereth rise and spun from the bar, drumming his hands on it a merry moment before pushing off and throwing his suit jacket over one shoulder, following her back out into the street.

"Where to now, Miss Tifereth?"

The early morning light was filtered through the fog, sparing them from too much discomfort, but Tifereth still shielded her eyes for a long moment to adapt. The long night of drinking and gambling had not been kind to her. It felt as if some malevolent desert zephyr had blown in to steal the water from her muscles, her head starting to pound. The faint neon buzz of the sign - 'Pearls' in three languages, and a pictogram for the illiterate - bore down into her hypersensitive ears and made her teeth itch.

"I'm exhausted, Banh. So, you know."

"Oh yes. I know. When one is exhausted..." Banh began with good cheer.

"...one eats stingray." Tifereth affirmed their usual remedy, and began to slink through the foggy street towards the stalls by the bay.

"I always wonder, Miss Tifereth, why it is you never take a woman at Pearl's?"

Tifereth was slow to answer as they paced along. The words were difficult to form, and not just because her mouth was filling with cotton and sand.

"I don't like to hire girls for that," She finally managed to say as they climbed one of the small bamboo bridges covering a drain cut into the street. "Because I know what it's like to have people expect things of your body just because you're a certain way. That's why I pay them to play, and drink, but not for that. For what Pearl hires them to do, just because they're pretty enough. Just because everyone says they have a gift for it."

Banh listened, but she could not tell if he understood. His expression was inscrutably slack - too much betel nut, perhaps. It could, she knew, leave its users with that fixed glassiness at times, as the stimulant paradoxically acted to depress the system. But she did not think that was it either.

They ordered curried stingray from a small Kurzai orc man who squatted beside one of the winehouses the sailors favoured. They ate the spicy dish from their fig leaf wrappings as they staggered on towards the Republican concession, where Tifereth's small apartment waited. Tired and with her hangover creeping ever closer, she did not realize until much later that Banh was silent for the first time since her arrival.

_____

Jachir, aboard the Maenad

"Won't she mind if she comes back?" Marcus gasped out as they collided with the low bed of the cabin, their bodies entangled. He was soft against Jachir's taut muscle, and the sensation delighted them both.

"No - the parlour cabin has two rooms attached, and my Lady is in the other." Jachir explained as he pressed forward against his conquest, driving him down onto the soft mattress, against the wood panels concealing the steel bulkheads.

Hungrily, he silenced further concern with a needy kiss. It had been well over a week since his last encounter (a delightful evening with one of the stableboys at the big house), and there was a desperate neediness in him. It was not quite a hunger, but it was bone deep, a throb not just in his already achingly stiff prick, but somewhere in his heart. The touch, the taste, the scent of another man. The exquisite intimacies. Marcus answered him with equal passion, hand roaming over his shirt front, tugging at it, pulling it away from the hard muscle and struggling with the buttons.

Lit by moonlight streaming in through the rounded porthole windows, they broke from the kiss to undress one another. It was not the neat, intimate but clinical service offered to a gentleman (or, in Jachir's case, a lady) by his valet. Marcus yanked and pulled crudely at Jachir's jacket and his shirt, and he in turn stripped his partner's shoes with military efficiency marred only by the fumbling fingers of raw desire. They were careful enough to avoid damage and severe wrinkles - some habits die hard in a valet - but it was short work for the two to stand naked.

Jachir ached as he looked at Marcus. The short, unassuming body hid not one, but two, works of art. A great field of stars dotted Marcus's chest, tattooed eight-pointed stars at his shoulders trailing down into six and five pointers that swirled over his right pec. Over his heart, the sun blazed, pushing the black of night away in an inky wash that stretched down his side as far as his hip. With trembling fingers, he touched the faded ink, and Marcus sighed into it, leant in close, let him admire the ink, urged him down, onwards.

Jachir had tried women, but never had they given him this desperate fire, this profound ache, this sweet need. He had never felt the natural urge he now had to kiss Marcus's shoulder, to follow the stars with his lips and tongue, to suck one rubbery nipple between his lips and gently worry it with his teeth. He had never felt the bottomless pit thrill in his stomach the way it did as his hand traced down Marcus's soft belly and found the other work of art.

Sinking to his knees before the shorter man, he came face to face with it. Heavy, uncut, thick and girthy, it was the kind of cock he dreamt about at night and woke to embarrassment over. He wasted no time in diving onto it, sucking its fat head between his lips and pressing down to work it in, jaw straining. His hands found doughy cheeks, squeezing them adoringly, pulling Marcus in, urging him to use him.

Despite the beautiful sculpture of his body, the hardness of his muscles, the skill he'd cultivated at violence - this was where Jachir found himself again and again. On his knees, gagging, groaning, trembling, his cock throbbing, dripping, pulsing with eager need. To his delight, Marcus was not foreign to giving a man what he needed, and indulged him. He reached down, gripping in Jachir's neatly trimmed head of hair, pumping into his mouth, pushing deeper, butting up against the back of his throat, drawing a coughing gag out.

Yes, Jachir moaned to himself, yes, use me, use my throat, I need it! The rough gagging was part of the experience, had been since his days at boarding school fagging for a handsome prefect. When Marcus held him down and pushed into his throat, he stilled it only enough to keep from vomiting. His shudders aroused them both, and he looked up past Marcus's belly, past the beauty of his tattoos, and fixated on his unassuming features. Marcus grinned back down at him, enjoying the power of having such a powerful man on his knees for him, the massage of Jachir's gags around his cock, the sight of Jachir's own erection swaying obscenely where it jutted between those powerfully built thighs.

It did not take long at all for Marcus to finish in his mouth. A minute, perhaps - a perfect minute of raw pleasure for them both. Jachir drew back as he came to capture it in his mouth, savouring the musky, metallic taste and swallowing greedily before rising again. They kissed, sharing the taste, and tumbled back onto the blanket of the still-made bed. Marcus found his cock, jerked him as they kissed, stroked him smoothly, smearing the precum over him as lubricant for the act. They had not cleansed themselves, and so neither could enter the other that night, but they made do.

Jachir slid between Marcus's legs and hefted his legs up, pressing in between them, while Marcus reached up and adoringly caressed his muscular torso and pinched a nipple. They ground together, Jachir thrusting away, grunting quietly, sighing with pleasure and need. The softness of the smaller man's thighs wrapped around his cock was exquisite, the hairs slicked with precum a textural delight. It was not long for him, either, before he came, spurting between the soft flesh to spatter Marcus's tattoos.

Adoringly, he lay atop the valet to Lord Woodsbreeze, and lapped his own cum from the blazing sun-disc decorating his heart. Its beating against his tongue was poetry to him, and stirred him to new passions. Hungrily, they devoured one another for the better part of an hour, before Marcus reluctantly brought it to a halt.

"Stop, stop," he groaned as Jachir suckled once again on his magnificent meat, his hand fondling and squeezing his balls. His fingers were curled in the tousled mess of Jachir's once neat locks. "I must get back... Oh, gods, I must get back, Jachir, I must get back... Lord Woodsbreeze will be expecting me to be there... Please..."

"Give me this last, my beautiful stud," Jachir sighed out to him, staring up past his cock at the valet. "One last load, and then you can go."

He did not wait for Marcus to answer before he dived back down and redoubled his efforts. His other hand came in to stroke as he bobbed his head, noisily slurping at the head that so beautifully filled his mouth and made him complete. Marcus stiffened beneath him after just moments, shuddered, and held him down for one final ejaculation, spurting into his stomach.

Reluctantly, true to his word, Jachir released him. They kissed regretfully, nestled their foreheads together, and then Jachir watched as his man for that precious hour - who could never be his man for more so long as they were both in service - washed himself in the basin, dressed, and left him in a cabin that smelt of linen starch and of their sweat, semen, and saliva.

Already, the need was returning. It was never enough. One day, Jachir told himself, one day you will find the right man, and he will be free to stay. And then it will be enough. One day.

_____

And that's our latest installment. If you were looking forward to Bliss's noble dalliance, well - tune in next time. Remember to comment or send me a line, and of course, the ego of your humble author can only benefit from votes. I hope those of you who came for the gay sex weren't expecting something more along the lines of Fritscher or Townsend. And let us never forget that not every musclestud is a top.

A rewrite of chapter one may be pending, as I am no longer satisfied with the prose.