Page 46 of Tell Me Lies: Manlove Edition

He doesn’t look away but shakes his head as if saying no to the words that have already passed his lips. But he is also somehow relieved, as if something has been decided. He’s said the worst things he could, and there’s no taking them back.

I swallow hard, having trouble facing this man. He’s not the same person who watched a children’s film with a depressed man. Was he taking his meds?

At a complete loss, I try, “So, you’re really angry, and I think we should talk about it?”

He sneers. “I do talk about it. The whole thing. With my VA group. With my psychiatrist. I see no reason to discuss the things that make me a man with a cum-rag like you.”

Okay, maybe he’s not done with the worst things he can say. I don’t dare answer. What other abuse can he hurl at me, and how long can I stand it?

He’s trying to frighten me off, to chase me out.

But if I can just stand here until he exhausts his meanness…

“Will you just go away!” Unprompted by anything—anything from me—Laur attacks.

When his hands connect with my chest to roughly shove me away, some wires get crossed. My body misreads the signals and I’m faintly aware I should not be getting hard.

Laur is my lover, after all, and he’s always been rough with me.

It surprises both of us when I grab his wrists on the second shove.

Laur— I’m reminded— is a little guy. He lurches in my grip and cannot get free. The man hurls curses at me. Nothing special. A garden variety of “son of a bitch” and “piece of shit” and variants on the theme. He barely noticed it, but he’s at my mercy.

I test this theory by pushing his arms behind his back and pulling him toward me. He moves stiffly, too brittle to resist and surprised to find himself moving against his will.

I hold both his wrists in one hand and look down at his face. What will he do? He jostles and wrenches. It’s a strain on my grip, but he’s not going anywhere. When his flailing makes his robe flap open, I yank it with my free hand to help it along.

“What the actual fuck, Chard?” He gapes at me…

“You know our safeword.” I reach between his legs.

****

Laur stares at me speechless, his one eye wide with astonishment, the other lid half-raising with symmetrical instinct. Then he flings one arm free and jabs at my head. As a soldier, he knows to go for my throat or my eye. But his punch is loose-fisted and uncommitted. After I take the blow, I grab his arm again and bully him onto the couch.

As I pin him under me, forcing his legs wide around my waist, he hides the side of his face in the pillow and glares. “Knock it off, you piece of—”

I grab his face in my free hand and force him to look straight at me. Raw fear passes over his face as I lean in to kiss him. It reminds me of that day in his car, when I meant to kiss him and his cold, blank expression scared me off. He’d been terrified to be kissed. Now the fear melts into anger. He knees me in the stomach and thrashes away. Not enough to hurt me, not enough to shake loose.

We wrestle a moment before I pin him again, my hips and hard cock anchoring him as I tug at the robe and tangle it around his arms to restrain his motions.

Laur vibrates with anger and inarticulate swearing. Is he too mad to free himself from the stupid fluffy robe, or is he just playing along now?

I fight to get his boxers off his legs and force my hips between his thighs, then hold him immobilized and helpless. With the underwear stuck around one ankle and his legs spread wide around me, with his robe wrapped around his arms, he is finally naked.

He shuts his eye and bears the indignity of being looked at.

Beneath the extreme tan lines, his pale skin is dotted with pink and brown divots and gouges in a patchwork of missing pieces and scar tissue. His muscles are taut as wire and rock-hard because of how I’ve pinned him. His right nipple is pink and raised like a tiny button, but his left is a white slash of scar tissue. Some word has been carved into his side, uneven, slicing cuts. It is not a language I understand.

My gaze wanders the cratered landscape of his naked flesh until it lands on his cock. That rigid pole is instantly familiar, and a territory that makes my mouth water with desire and my hand instinctively reach. I stroke him, and he grunts, out of breath from his struggle, but infinitely tough and masculine, even raw and exposed as he was.

I remember the first time he’d commanded my body. Remember how I’d whimpered his name. I lean over his ear to remind him, “Laur, I want to fuck you.”

He smiles, a wry and unsurprised expression, “You’re still a presumptuous little shit.”

I rub my hand lower, cradling the base of his shaft in my palm and stretching my fingers toward his ass. “Think I can get away with it based on charm and good looks?”

Laur swallows hard and nods slightly. I press my lips to his Adam’s apple and he flinches away from the gentleness.

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