Strain Read online

  “You’ll use it in the morning, then, boy. I’m the only one gets to fuck you when you’re tight.”

  Rhys gave up the struggle and let sleep drag him under. “’kay.”

  When Darius awoke, Rhys was snoring softly, his perpetually sunburned face even rosier with the flush his cheeks always took on when he got too warm in his sleep. Darius smiled, thinking once again that without the scraggly facial hair, it would be easier to see just how gorgeous Rhys was.

  It was time to do something about that.

  One reason he and Luis had decided to establish their base of operations at Fort Vancouver instead of a more modern facility was that all the buildings—most of which dated back to the mid- to late nineteenth century—came equipped with fireplaces. That, coupled with the windmill pumps that provided them with running water, allowed Delta Company to live fairly comfortably there on the base.

  While Rhys slept, Darius built a fire and set a large pot of water to simmer, then retrieved from his bags a soft-sided leather case he’d carried with him since his first deployment. He didn’t use it often, especially when out on patrol, but he made certain to maintain it carefully.

  By the time Rhys stumbled from the bedroom—no doubt disturbed by the scraping as Darius stropped the straight razor—the water was steaming on the hearth and Darius had pulled one of the heavy wooden armchairs from the dining room table into the block of sunlight pouring through an east-facing window.

  Rhys frowned at the razor. “What’s that?”

  “Have a seat, boy.” Darius pointed to the chair.

  Moving cautiously, Rhys obeyed, still watching Darius.

  “You ever shaved?”

  “No.” Rhys shook his head. “By the time I grew anything worth shaving, Father Maurice and Jacob had used all the razors we had. I tried with a kitchen knife I sharpened once, but I wasn’t stupid enough to try again.”

  Darius winced. “Lucky you didn’t slit your throat.”

  “For all the blood I lost, I might as well have.” Rhys gave him a crooked smile.

  “Well, it just so happens my daddy used to run an old-fashioned barbershop down in Macon. This—” Darius held up the mother-of-pearl-handled straight razor “—used to be his.”

  Rhys eyed it skeptically. “Do you know how to use it?”

  “I worked for him all through high school before I went into the service, so you bet your ass I do. You’re gonna have your first real shave in style.”

  Rhys blinked at him. “Why?”

  Darius grinned. “Because it’s time to show the world that pretty face of yours, boy. You just keep still. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Looking wary and perplexed, Rhys tipped his head back when instructed and held still as Darius snipped his beard short with a pair of stainless steel barbers’ shears. He closed his eyes and visibly relaxed while Darius worked, stifling the occasional groggy yawn.

  “Want me to try to trim your hair, too?” Darius eyeballed the tufts, which looked like they’d been hacked at by a blind man with a hedge trimmer. His hair had grown quite a bit in almost four weeks, perhaps enough to salvage something with a little care.

  Rhys shook his head adamantly. “I want it longer.” His mouth tightened with that mulish expression he sometimes got.

  Darius held up his hands to show he meant no harm. “Okay, then. Wanna tell me why you’re acting like I just threatened to shave you bald?”

  “It’s nothing. Never mind.” He swallowed, coloring.

  “Hm.” Darius went back to trimming Rhys’s beard as short as possible. “You used to cut your hair yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  Rhys sighed. “Father Maurice used to have Jacob hold me down every few months so he could hack it all off. He said it was to protect against lice.”

  Darius lifted an eyebrow. “Same Father Maurice who died with hair longer than a prophet?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.” Rhys’s mouth twisted. “Guess lice wasn’t an issue for him and Jacob.”

  “Hm. Probably not a bad idea to grow it out a bit longer. That’ll make it easier to trim neatly when you decide you want to.”

  Rhys met his eyes and ventured a cautious smile. “Thanks.”

  “Welcome. Careful now. This’ll be warm.” Darius wrapped a damp towel, still steaming from the pot of water, around Rhys’s face. Rhys yelped and scrambled to uncover one eye as Darius began working the shaving soap into a lather. Out on patrol and on busy mornings, Darius used shaving lotion, but for Rhys’s first shave, it felt appropriate to pull out all the stops.

  “You’ve had all this since before the plague?”

  “Most of it.” Darius shrugged, adding a few more drops of water to the lather, watching for it to peak. “Have to replace the shaving soap once in a while, but it’s not something most folks bothered with when they looted the drugstores, so it’s always lying around.”

  “You know, it’s hard to imagine you having a family, or a childhood.”

  “Well, I wasn’t hatched full-grown from Project Juggernaut, boy.” He gave Rhys a severe look. “That was a whole other project.”

  Rhys’s eyes widened credulously, and Darius’s lips began to twitch.

  After a moment, Rhys laughed, a lighthearted almost giggle muffled by the cooling towel. Darius chuckled and removed the towel, using the badger brush to massage lather through the patches of shortened beard left on Rhys’s jaw.

  “Nah, there’s not much to tell,” he murmured as he worked. “Grew up poor in a big family. Joined the service right out of high school. Wound up in the wrong battalion—or the right one, guess you could say—and became a Jug.”

  “Did you lose your family in the plague?”

  “Probably.” He tilted Rhys’s chin back to lather underneath. “By the time us Jugs were brought out of quarantine to fight the civilians rising up against the military government at NORAD, I couldn’t find them. They might be in Colorado Springs now, at least a few of them. I don’t know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You talk to anyone in the company, they’ll tell you the same story.” Darius gave him a frank look. “It’s probably for the best. You know, Joe found his husband. Wound up having to put a bullet in his head. Hold still now.”

  Rhys quivered under Darius’s hands as he picked up the straight razor and dragged it slowly down Rhys’s cheek. He listened to the quick, even snaps as the razor sliced each individual hair flush with the skin. Rhys closed his eyes, remaining carefully immobile, and Darius continued to speak to fill the silence.

  “Everyone’s lost their people, boy, including you. Just took you a while longer. We all got that in common.”

  Darius drew the razor away to wipe it, and Rhys’s eyes opened as he seized the opportunity to speak. “So that’s why Joe— I mean, that day when we found Gabe—”

  “Yeah. Now quiet.” With a thumb on Rhys’s temple, feeling the beat of his pulse there, Darius turned Rhys’s head and brought the razor down in another pass. “I imagine seeing you react that way stirred up a ghost or two for him. Toby tends to it, though.”

  “You mean that’s why they—”

  Darius snorted. “I don’t know the details, but if you’re asking if he and Toby do what they do because he’s damaged, I’ll say the answer is no. He’s no more damaged than any of us. No, he does that because he likes it.”

  Rhys pulled a dubious face and closed his eyes again.

  Quit fucking with his head, Xolani had told him bluntly last night. To say Darius had gotten an earful while Rhys had snored quietly on the sofa was an understatement. You can’t just go half in with a kid who doesn’t know how to play the game so that you have all the authority and none of the responsibility.

  And if I have to put a bullet through his brain?

  She had sobered at that. I think it’s a little late to try to maintain our distance on that one, don’t you?

  Darius wiped the lather off the razor and
tilted Rhys’s head back, working down his jaw.

  Rhys’s breath picked up, and the pulse in his temple fluttered faster the closer Darius came to his neck. When the razor scraped down the vulnerable artery, his throat vibrated with a soft moan.

  Blinking, Darius glanced down at Rhys’s lap. The stiff rise of his dick was lifting his sweats.

  “God Almighty, you really are a kinky little bastard, aren’t you?” He shook his head, smiling.

  “What—”

  “Hold still.” He drew the razor down alongside Rhys’s Adam’s apple. Experience guided his hands, made them sure and confident. He wished he could say the same for his words. “You gonna try to tell me it’s not turning you on, sitting here with your life in my hands? You’re helpless, boy. I could do anything I want to you right now, and you love that.”

  “Please. Don’t.” Rhys began to tremble, and he wouldn’t meet Darius’s eyes.

  “Don’t what? Don’t say that? Why not? It’s the truth, ain’t it? Why shouldn’t I say it? ’Cause someone told you it was bad, you were dirty, you were to blame for all the world’s problems? So now the only way you can let yourself want what you want is if someone takes the choice from you? Because this world’s so fucked up the only time anything feels right or makes sense is when it hurts? Because you’re living every day knowing soon you might die, and when I got a knife to your throat you get a taste of that and it doesn’t look so scary?”

  Rhys made a soft, choked sound, his eyes squeezed shut and his thick lashes spiky. Unable to move with the razor along the underside of his jaw, he gripped the arms of his chair. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because it just so happens, I like seeing you afraid. Like seeing you hurt, too.” Carefully, then, another stroke over the ridges and bumps of Rhys’s Adam’s apple, wiping the razor before turning Rhys’s head to expose the other side of his throat. “I even like seeing you bleed.”

  Rhys tensed, his breath catching as he tried visibly to control his shaking.

  “You’re the first person I ever admitted that to.” Darius’s calm was more the product of decades of remaining levelheaded under fire rather than due to any real serenity. There was every chance he might send the boy running for the hills if he played this wrong. If that happened, Darius wasn’t sure he’d be able to salvage the situation. They’d lose Rhys, and it would be Darius’s own damn fault for finally pushing too far. “Not sure if it’s just you who brings it out in me, or if it’s been there all along, but it’s there all right. But we got a problem. The fact that you need me to save your life gives me leverage you don’t got. I could do just about anything I wanted to you and you’d have to take it, and I like that fact too damn much. Way more than I should.”

  The razor stopped, pausing over the pulsing artery as it fluttered beneath the press of the blade. Darius hesitated a moment, then pulled away both the razor and the hand that had held Rhys’s head immobile.

  Rhys blinked at Darius in confusion. His pupils were large and his breath still rapid.

  Darius regarded him soberly. “I ain’t gonna say this while holding a knife to your throat. I’m not threatening you. I may wanna hurt you, but only in the ways it seems you wanna be hurt. That’s something else, though, something way past what we signed on for. We get into that, it’s not about saving your life anymore. I think I can do what you need, make things really great for both of us for a while, but not unless you tell me now you want it.”

  Rhys stared at him for a long moment, a thousand thoughts flickering across his frightened eyes. Then he swallowed hard and closed them.

  He tipped his head back, offering Darius his throat.

  Fuck. Just like that, Darius was rock hard. The boy was so fucking vulnerable, and trusting, despite everything Darius had done to him. He was fucking sexy, all soft and open like that. There was so much damn power in just that one simple gesture, and none of it had a thing to do with Darius’s strength as a Jug.

  Darius hesitated a moment more, wondering if he should press for an explicit and unambiguous yes. But the foam was beginning to dry on that last strip of stubble, and he didn’t like wasting resources.

  He laid the razor against that throbbing pulse and carefully drew it down.

  If he’d believed in fate, he would have attributed the nick to it. It seemed too perfect, on the heels of what he’d confessed to Rhys. Most likely, it happened because Rhys had shuddered or moved in some imperceptible way, or the edge of the razor had dulled just enough after shaving off all that growth that it caught on a ripple of skin.

  Rhys flinched, making a pained sound, and Darius pulled the razor back and watched the crimson bead of blood well up until its own weight pulled it down the pale line of Rhys’s neck.

  Rhys’s breath hitched audibly. He stared up at Darius, and Darius stared back, a quiver of hunger tensing his muscles. The razor dropped into the bowl with a clatter, and his hand caught Rhys by the back of his neck, jerking him up and out of the chair into a hard kiss.

  He set free the savage thing that snarled inside him every time he thought of Rhys. He shoved Rhys onto the table and reached for the bowl of butter. Without instruction, Rhys shimmied out of his sweats, his lean cock hard and eager. But when he began to roll to his stomach, Darius slammed him down onto his back, stunning him. He didn’t want to look at the boy’s back when he fucked him. Not when so much happened on his face.

  Without the beard, Rhys’s features were naked: vulnerable, open, beautiful. Pale and pink and so damn young. The savage thing inside Darius didn’t care about Rhys’s youth. It didn’t care about his frailty compared to a Jug’s strength. All it cared about was the desperate need written in Rhys’s large hazel eyes. Need to be claimed, possessed, freed.

  He hadn’t worn the plug all night, and he’d be tight, just like he’d wanted it. And Darius would be able to see the struggle on his face as Rhys took his cock.

  At his push, Rhys’s knees came up, tilting his ass to a better angle. Darius smeared the butter on his dick and began to work it into Rhys’s snug, gripping hole.

  Rhys’s head rolled back, exposing his throat. His mouth opened on a silent cry. His expression twisted, became strained. An entire saga of pleasure and pain composed itself in that grimace.

  “Oh God . . . Ow. Oh yes. God, please. Oh, please . . .”

  His ass seized Darius’s cock, so hot, so incredibly tight, so eager and resisting all at once. Darius paused only a moment before he drove back into that heat, filled it with his aggression, his ferocity, his need to take Rhys’s soft yielding to the very edge.

  He still held too many cards; that hadn’t changed and it never would, not until Rhys was a Jug himself. It would be far too easy for Darius to take advantage and become the monster he’d always feared he’d turn into as a Jug.

  In the world that had once been, he would never have dreamed of doing this.

  That world no longer exists, Xolani’s blunt words had reminded him.

  Darius didn’t think she knew just how deeply Rhys’s fascination with his own pain and destruction ran, or how willing the bestial instinct within Darius was to give Rhys what he craved.

  “Take it!” Darius growled, setting a punishing pace.

  “I can’t . . . I can’t . . . oh, God, please . . .”

  “You will, or so help me, boy, I’ll whip the skin off you.”

  Rhys gave a reedy cry, and his hands closed on Darius’s upper arms.

  Pulled him closer.

  Fuck, he was sexy. Darius knew he should stop and explain to Rhys how the game was played, or had been in nicer times. He should give him a safeword and discuss boundaries and all that stuff people had done back when the world was sane and they had the luxury of making games out of anguish. But those pretty, clean rules had no place in Rhys and Darius’s reality.

  Rhys was right. It was warped. And Darius just couldn’t care about that anymore. Not when Rhys went slack and still there on the table, soft cries and moans rising from his throa
t between gasping breaths. The only tension in his body that of the cock slapping against his belly with each thrust. The expression on his face was a study in agony and bliss. When he let go, the gripping pressure of his ass around Darius’s cock eased. His body surrendered and received the hammering thrusts without struggle as Darius reamed him open.

  Darius wanted that struggle. He seized Rhys’s hair, jerked his head back so that his neck strained and his spine arched, the motion tightening him again.

  “This what you want, boy?” Rhys’s eyes popped open, full of uncomprehending fear and wonder.

  Rhys’s mouth worked, struggling to form even the simplest words, sobbing breaths exploding from his lungs. “I can’t— Please!”

  “Say it!”

  “Yes!” It came out as a strangled yell wrenched from nearly empty lungs. “Please! Oh, please . . . please . . . please . . .”

  With a satisfied growl, Darius drove harder, faster, pounding into Rhys’s receptive body, urged on by his desperate cries. He dipped his head and dragged his tongue along the rusty streak down Rhys’s neck, tasting iron and soap. He set his teeth in Rhys’s shoulder, and Rhys screamed again, his ass clamping down on Darius’s dick. With a groan, Darius exploded, the world flashing nuclear white behind his eyelids, sending shock waves down his dick to pulse and jerk in that clenching heat.

  When the blood stopped pounding in Darius’s ears and the fury subsided, Rhys was whimpering, limp on the surface of the table. A small puddle had collected under the head of his cock where it lay on his stomach, still rigid. Darius wrapped his hand around it, jerking it with fast, efficient strokes. He swore he could have come again when Rhys tightened around his cock, while ribbons of his own cream lashed across his belly.

  Afterward, Darius slumped over his hands, braced on the table as Rhys lay there, staring up as if stunned. His thundering pulse and shuddering receded, and in their wake came a wave of unaccustomed tenderness.

  So vulnerable. So fragile. He could break Rhys easily, and that savage thing inside him yearned to carry Rhys to the very brink of destruction. Rhys was his now, truly his, a fact that could still ruin them both.