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Charles is standing at the edge of the woods, midway through a midday guard shift, when Arthur meanders over in that slow, sauntering way he has, like he’s got no where to be – Charles is always amazed how such a busy man can walk so damn slow.
He’s got a cigarette hanging from his lip, takes a long, deep drag from it before he offers it to Charles, without a word. When Charles takes the smoke from him, their fingers brush and Charles feels the familiar feeling of a match-spark crackle between them; when he draws from the cigarette, he can’t help but think about Arthur’s lips, how they were just where his are now, so close to a kiss he can almost feel it. The thought makes him smile.
They stand there, side by side, sharing a smoke like a secret and staring out into the woods as they talk.
“Seen anything interesting?” Arthur asks.
Charles turns to look directly at him, deadpan.
“No.”
That makes Arthur snort a startled laugh and Charles can’t help but want to kiss his stupid face – can’t, not out here, so he settles for nudging him with his elbow instead, handing him the shared cigarette.
It’s sweltering hot, the clouds in the sky trapping the moist heat and making everything feel damp and heavy, but even so, Arthur’s got his bandana tied tight around his neck like a lady’s silk necktie. Only Charles knows that there’s a trail of purple-red kiss-bruises that start right below that bandana and trail like stepping stones all the way down Arthur’s broad chest; only Charles knows the breathy, desperate sound Arthur makes when the gentle laving of a tongue becomes the biting of over-kissed flesh.
He’d been especially vocal about the one on his chest, just to the side of his left nipple; Arthur'd come with a startled, choked sound when Charles had sucked that one into his skin.
“I been thinking,” Arthur says, flicking ash off the tip of their cigarette.
Charles smiles. “Uh oh.”
Comfortable silence as they watch a pair of squirrels skitter up the trunk of a tree, chasing one another in catch-me-if-you-can spirals up into the branches above.
“Ain’t’ya gunna ask me what I been thinking?”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Charles replies. “What’ve you been thinking, nîwah?”
He uses the word because it makes Arthur blush – Arthur may not know what it means, but he knows it’s something nice, and that alone is enough to light his face up in shades of sunset pink that Charles can’t get enough of.
“Been thinkin', I could suck your cock right here.” Arthur is nonchalant in spite of the blush that Charles knows extends all the way down his neck. “Get down on my knees in the dirt and suck you dry.”
“Jesus, Arthur.”
Arthur squats down then, just for a moment, and Charles feels warm arousal bloom deep in his belly. They could never do it here, not really, but the threat of it, the idea, it’s intoxicating.
He looks down at Arthur, watches him stub out the cigarette butt in the dirt. Watches Arthur as Arthur watches Charles adjust himself in his trousers, maybe gives himself one long, slow stroke, just for the fun of it; just to watch Arthur’s hungry gaze follow the path of his hand, from root to tip.
The wounded sound Arthur makes, low and quiet in his throat, makes it worth it, and the desperate, pleading look in his eyes makes Charles’s heart flutter with affection.
The moment is over quick, and Arthur is back on his feet, hands stuffed deep in his pockets as if he could hide how hard he is now. Might be able to hide it from the others, but Charles can tell just by the blush, like a sunburn, on his cheeks.
“Think I’m gunna turn in early tonight,” Arthur says, eyes trained back on the treeline now. “After dinner, maybe.”
Charles understands; grunts noncommittally in response.
“Might wanna wash up, first.”
Arthur let’s out a long, soft sigh, presses a palm against the bulge in his trousers, the implication not lost on him.
“I might.”
They stand in silence for a while longer, gazing out into the dynamic stillness of the woods. Arthur lights another cigarette, takes one long inhale. Places the cigarette delicately between Charles’s parted lips, like a kiss.
“Guess I’ll leave you to it.”
Charles turns from the trees to watch Arthur as he goes, the way his broad shoulders swing and the way his ass, tight and muscular from years of riding, sways.
It’s quarter after nine by the time Arthur bustles into his tiny room in the estate house, looking rode hard and put away wet, but clean and content; when he sees Charles sitting on his bed, patiently waiting, his smile is warm like lantern light.
“I thought you were turning in early,” Charles chides, setting aside the book in his lap – one of Arthur’s journals, the one he keeps under his pillow. The one with letters from Mary tucked between pages full of Charles’s face.
“This is early.”
Charles reaches out, his hand on Arthur’s belt-buckle to draw him in to stand between Charles's spread legs. Presses his face into Arthur’s stomach, hard muscle under a thin layer of softness, and inhales deep the lingering smell of horses and firesmoke and tobacco that clings to his clothes, seeking the unmistakeable scent of Arthur beneath it all.
“Did you wash?” he murmurs, quiet and tender, brings his hands up to grasp Arthur’s ass. Squeezes hard, just to hear Arthur inhale soft and pained through his nose.
“Yeah.”
Charles can feel Arthur’s cock, already hard in his trousers, pressed against his chest as he kneads the flesh of Arthur’s rear end. When he nuzzles his face into Arthur’s belly, the man grunts, leans into Charles’s touch like a horse, bossy and eager.
“Get on your knees for me, takahkatim?” It’s a suggestion, but Arthur obeys without question; goes down smooth and easy the way he only is in quiet moments like this.
His lips are warm on the palm of Charles’s hand, one soft kiss before Charles pushes his thumb between chapped, parted lips. Arthur’s pale eyes meet Charles’s as he sucks, asks without words; what will you do to me?
When Charles stares back, eyes unwavering in their intensity, Arthur appears to lose his nerve – he blushes, turns his head into his shoulder, suddenly shy even with Charles’s thumb still sliding slowly over his bottom lip, in and out and in again. Keeps sucking in a way that is so earnest and so stubbornly Arthur that Charles can’t help but smile.
His free hand comes to the back of Arthur’s neck, glides upwards and forms a fist, grasping a handful of Arthur’s hair hard enough to sting. As Arthur gasps, he lets Charles’s thumb slip from between his lips and smear a thin trail of saliva over his chin.
When Charles pulls his hair, forces Arthur’s chin up and out to expose the long line of his neck, to make him look Charles in the eye, the answer to that silent question is clear; Whatever I want.
Looking at him like that – open-mouthed and heavy-lidded, breath coming soft and panted, cock already hard without Charles having done much at all to put him that way – Charles can’t help himself. He leans in close, so close their lips brush like a whisper, and Arthur cranes his neck for a kiss, pulling against the hand in his hair.
The startled, stricken look on Arthur’s face when Charles spits in his open mouth is priceless – he looks hopeless confused, as if he can’t figure out whether or not he should feel humiliated, if he’s being played for a fool. It makes Charles chuckle, run a fond thumb over the sharp, flushed bone of Arthur’s cheek.
His laughter becomes something deeper, darker with desire when Arthur looks him dead in the eye, presses his lips together, and swallows.
He really can’t help himself, then; uses his grip on Arthur’s hair to haul him in for a real kiss, deep and bruising and hungry, as if he could chase his own saliva down Arthur’s throat and come to rest in his chest, behind his heart. Makes himself content with kissing Arthur until he is loose-limbed and moaning and pawing impatiently at Charles’s thighs, hands slipping higher and higher.
Arthur doesn’t say ‘please’ when his fingers play with the button of Charles’s fly, and this earns him a slap that turns his pinked cheek red; more a warning than anything actually painful.
Even so, Arthur moans low and deep in his throat, touches a finger to his own burning cheek before he leans forward to bury his face between Charles’s legs, mouthing at the rough denim of his crotch. He moans again, runs his hands over the tops of Charles thighs, but doesn’t try for the button again.
He says… something, quiet and muffled in the fabric of Charles’s trousers. Like a virgin, hiding her face behind a fan to mask the vulgarity of her desire.
“Speak up, nîwah, I can’t hear you,” Charles says, laying a hand atop Arthur’s head to gently stroke his hair back into place. He doesn’t need to remind Arthur of his own endless patience; Arthur knows he won’t get what he wants 'til he asks for it proper.
“You’re a real bastard, Charles, you know that? A miserable bastard.”
Charles just laughs. “So I’ve been told.”
He takes each of Arthur’s work-roughened hands in his own, presses his lips to the scarred knuckles of one; flicks his tongue out, licks at the space between those thick fingers in the silly way that makes Arthur whimper.
They sit like that, silent and still for a few long moments; Arthur mouthing at Charles’s hard cock through his trousers, as if he can bend Charles to his will with his mouth but not his words, Charles unwavering as he teases Arthur in return.
Finally, Arthur breaks, and there’s a humiliated softness to his gruff voice that tugs at Charles’s heartstrings like a wild horse at the reins.
“Please.”
Like breaking a horse, Charles knows you must be firm and unrelenting in your commands.
“Not good enough, nîwah. I want to hear you say it.”
“Jesus, Charles, I – please.” His voice seems to break just as his will does, and when he continues, he is red-faced and quiet, but clear; “Can I… can I suck your dick?”
“Can you?” Charles repeats in the casual, unaffected way he knows gets Arthur all ornery, just the way he likes. Likes to see Arthur a little frustrated, to draw the anger out just so he can soothe it away again; to show them both he has the power to ignite the wild parts of him and put them to rest all at once, time and again.
“I don’t know; Can you? “
That about does it.
“Christ! Let me suck your cock, Charles, Jesus, just – please let me suck your cock, alright? Please.”
He sounds resentful, but when Charles releases his hands and raises his own as if to say 'go ahead', Arthur doesn’t hesitate; the way he undoes the button of Charles’s pants and draws out his cock, thick and hard and leaking, is almost gleeful in its enthusiasm.
Arthur isn’t the best suck job Charles’s had, sloppy and eager without any finesse, but even that’s been something he’s enjoyed – the satisfaction of taking something beautiful and raw and refining it, of training skill into a savage creature.
“Careful; teeth,” he murmurs as Arthur swallows him down smooth, eager as ever. Places a hand on the back of Arthur’s head, not pushing yet, just resting there.
Arthur’s response is to groan, long and low, take Charles’s cock deeper into his mouth.
When it hits the back of his throat, he chokes and moves to pull away; is held there for a moment, gagging, before Charles lets him come up to gasp for air.
A moment of silence follows; watching one another, Arthur catching his breath, his eyes wet from choking and his lips shiny with spit, looking at Charles as if he’s the only thing in the universe worth looking at. The thought makes Charles’s cock pulse as it stands obscenely between them.
“Tell me you want it.”
No hesitation now.
“I want you to fuck my face. Please fuck my face.”
Arthur goes back down with the slow glide of lips and tongue, and Charles leans back on a hand to gain some leverage so he can jerk his hips up to meet Arthur’s open, pliant mouth and fuck it, deep and proper.
Charles has always been quiet, even in this, prefers to save his breath for taunting and taming, but Arthur has no such qualms; he moans around Charles’s cock like a starved man fed for the first time in weeks, loud and unashamed, drooling saliva to slide down Charles’s shaft and balls like that same starved man.
“N-nîwah, nîwah, ah – you like it?”
The response is a moan, interrupted by a choked, gagging sound as his cock hits the back of Arthur’s throat and slips, just for a moment, deeper.
Arthur is rubbing himself through the rough fabric of his trousers as Charles fucks into his mouth, bending the rules near to breaking, but Charles doesn’t mention it – Arthur won’t come, not like that, and seeing him so hard and desperate just from being on his knees, from letting Charles use him, that’s what pushes Charles over his own edge.
When he comes, he yards Arthur back by the hair to shoot his spend over the stubble of his chin, his shiny, parted lips, pink from abuse. Milks himself onto that plush bottom lip and wipes the tip off on Arthur’s cheek just for the way he knows it makes Arthur feel dirty.
They sit like that, then, for another quiet moment as they catch their breath. Arthur’s still palming himself through his jeans, and there’d be defiance in his eyes if he didn’t look so desperate, if there wasn’t saliva and semen streaked over his chin and he wasn’t making those quiet, hitched gasping sounds Charles loves to listen for.
Slowly, like a hunter through a glade, Charles moves; slides his foot to carefully press the toe of his boot to Arthur’s stroking hand, just firm enough to trap it pressed against his crotch.
Presses harder, 'til Arthur gasps, licks his swollen lips and swallows the seed there.
“Charles, please, can I… please.”
Last week, Charles had kissed Arthur silly, until he was hard and aching and arching up into Charles’s hand, and Charles hadn’t let him come, had pulled him back from the edge again and again until Arthur had begged and spilled himself just from the touch of a tongue to the tip of his desperate cock. That isn’t what Charles has planned this time, but the threat of it makes Arthur fidgety with nerves and obscenely obedient.
“I know,” Charles soothes, as if to calm a howling dog; just words, soft and soothing. He swipes his thumb over Arthur’s cheek to gather the jism there, pushes it into Arthur’s waiting, eager mouth – Charles knows it doesn’t taste good, but the way Arthur sucks it from his fingers makes it seem sweet as honey. On Tuesday, Charles had made him spit just to watch the way it made Arthur look like a dog that’d lost his bone.
“Be patient for me, âmômey? It’ll be worth it.”
Arthur’s voice is scratchy like wool when he responds, petulant but without any real venom behind it.
“Better be.” He sounds a little loopy when he says it, like he’s drunk on good liquor or Charles’s affection. “I been stiffer than a priest’s collar since before dinner, nearly, nearly shot off washin' up, just thinking 'bout what you was gunna do to me.”
Charles is spent, but Arthur talking that way, dirty and honest, never fails to make his gut clench with arousal. He kisses Arthur deep and slow and wet, then, a reward for being so damn – just for being.
They just kiss, for a while, until Arthur starts to shift like a restless pony; his knees are probably sore from kneeling on the hard, wooden floor, and Charles can see a small patch of wetness where the tip of his cock is, still stuck in his jeans.
With a hand under his elbow, Charles helps Arthur to his feet, let’s a hand rest delicately on a narrow hip.
“Take off your clothes.”
Even after dark, the swampy air is hot and sticky, and Arthur looks almost relieved to be rid of his clothes, once he is – there’s a thin sheen of sweat that coats his chest, and Charles takes a moment to admire Arthur as he stands there, his cock red and dripping and jutting out obscenely, as if reaching for Charles in desperation.
So Charles makes him wait just that moment longer.
The knot of twisted, ugly scar tissue in Arthur’s shoulder is healing well, the skin pink and shiny and new, but to see it still makes Charles’s heart seize up, how close they’d been to losing him. It’s a relief to see the manifestation of all that pain starkly contrasted, washed out in comparison to the dark, berry-red bruises Charles had sucked into Arthur’s skin not two days before, trailing down from the rough, tanned skin of his neck, over his well-muscled chest and down, down, down to where he is smooth and pale. The bruise Charles had left like a signature on Arthur’s inner thigh, flushed orchid dark now, is especially pretty.
“Your tits look good like that, nîwah,” Charles teases, just to see the way Arthur’s cheeks flush like a girl’s and how his hard cock twitches, the bead of slick at the tip dribbling down the shaft of it.
Arthur bites his swollen lip to stifle a groan.
“Shut up.”
The words are meaningless, a posturing instinct Charles has yet to train out of him.
Charles just laughs, stands to make room for Arthur on the rickety little old cot. When Arthur lies down, he places a protective hand over his own cock where it lies against his belly, as if to preserve some sort of dignity they both know he lost long ago.
“Ah, ah,” Charles says, pausing from unbuttoning his own shirt to give Arthur a loud slap on the flank. “On your belly, omiyosiw. Roll over.”
Arthur’s eyes go wide at that, awed and eager. Go wider still when Charles grabs the tin of pomade from the bedside table and opens it, setting it aside but well within sight; It’s a little dramatic, maybe, but the way Arthur scrambles to obey after that is precious and warm and arousing.
Charles spends a while just warming him up, kneading the flesh of Arthur’s ass like a happy kitten, teasing a finger up and down his crack until he’s had enough of Arthur’s whining – “Shit, Charles, please, I’m fit to die you wait any longer,” – and coaxes the man up onto elbows and knees.
“Its easier like this.”
“Sure.”
Charles can tell Arthur is nervous by the tense tone of his muscles, like a mustang ready to bolt, and feels, for a brief moment, uncertain. What if, for as much as Arthur says wants this, wants to take what Charles so badly wants to give him, what if it’s no good, what if – what if?
All Charles can do to steady himself is to take a long, deep breath, in through his nose and out through the mouth. When Arthur, without so much a suggestion of the idea, mimics Charles, breathes so deep it rasps a somewhere deep in his chest, Charles feels a little more centered.
Arthur is uncharacteristically silent as Charles, patient as ever, slowly works a single, slicked-up finger into him, his head pillowed on his forearms and his breath coming in shaky huffs. Seeing him like that, unguarded and open, is as alluring as the way it feels to finally, finally be inside him, even if only in this small way.
“So good for me,” Charles murmurs against the soft skin of Arthur’s ass as he draws his finger back, only to push inside again, deeper, pressing more firmly. “How does it feel?”
“Like shittin' backwards,” Arthur bites out, always so honest, and he chuckles weakly in a way that lets Charles know he needn’t worry, not yet. His cock still hangs heavy and hard between his legs, and when Charles pauses Arthur shifts his weight, pushes back against Charles’s finger inside him with a broken little sound; reassures Charles it can’t be all that bad.
“When’s it s’posed to get good?”
“Soon.”
Charles withdraws his finger, and Arthur’s whole body sags like a sail with the wind gone out of it – jerks back bowstring-taut when Charles laves his tongue, wet and flat and wide, from Arthur’s taint all the way up the crack of his ass to his hole. When he swipes his tongue over it, Arthur shouts like he’s been gutshot, hands balled into tight fists and head bowed.
“Christ! Charles, don’t – don’t –“
When Charles looks up, Arthur’s blush renewed, sunburn bright, and his eyes are squeezed shut tight. His voice is small when he says, quiet and shuddering, “Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t stop. He laps at that soft, private place, wet and firm, until Arthur is panting hot and heavy and his words are lost to the motion of Charles hand on his cock.
Charles has loved these moments, the past few weeks they’ve been able to share them; the moments when Arthur forgets himself and the man he thinks he is, let’s Charles treat him good the way he knows Arthur is. He doesn’t mind breaking him down a little, first, teasing and taunting him into submission just to get Arthur to receive the love he’s given.
Finally, licked loose and open, Charles’s greased finger slips easily into the tight heat of Arthur’s ass the second time; even so, he spreads himself like a heavy, comforting blanket over Arthur’s back, as if he were fucking him for real, and Arthur groans at the press of Charles skin against his own.
“Oh Christ, Christ Charles, I’m gunna – please, let me, I can’t –“
The angle is bad, but even so, it only takes Charles a few wriggling tries to crook his fingers just so and find that spot – knows when he finds it by the way Arthur gasps low, like he’s been punched in the stomach, and the way he goes so coiled-spring tight he nearly bucks Charles like an angry bull when he comes.
Charles strokes Arthur through his orgasm, whispers pleasant nonsense into the shell of his ear until he’s finished and, without even a semblance of propriety, collapses into the puddle of his own jism with Charles still stretched over his back.
They lay like that, panting and letting their sweat grow sticky and cold, until Arthur mumbles from his place underneath Charles, voice muffled from how he’s pressed his face into the scrunched-up blanket beneath his head.
“Need a smoke.”
Charles laughs but obliges, lights them a cigarette so they can lie like nested spoons, spine to sternum, Charles’s heavy arm slung over Arthur’s side to hold the cigarette to his lips as they do what Charles can only describe as cuddling.
Charles is just lighting up a second smoke off the burned down butt of the first one – Arthur is insatiable in all things, smoking included, it seems – when Arthur speaks up, soft but sure.
“Hey, Charles.”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“I been thinkin'…”
“Uh-oh.”
Arthur jabs an elbow into Charles’s ribs for that, only hard enough to make him laugh.
“Alright, nîwah, what have you been thinking?”
Arthur’s voice is slurred with a sleepy, post-orgasmic delirium.
“Been thinkin’ 'bout how good it’s gunna feel to sit on those fingers of yours after you get me all wet and sloppy shooting your load over my ass.”
Charles can’t stifle his choked, startled laugh.
“Jesus, Arthur!”
His cock, pressed up against the crack of Arthur’s tight ass, jerks with sudden interest.
Arthur wraps a hand around Charles’s wrist to hold it still as he takes a long drag of their cigarette.
“What?” he says, and Charles can hear the sly smile in his voice. “’S still early.”