Love in the Land of Fire, Brochu, Rebecca [best free novels .txt] 📗

urge; he stays strong and finally manages to catch a few hours of uneasy sleep somewhere around dawn.

When he drags himself out of bed and stumbles bare chested and bleary eyed into the kitchen he stops abruptly and blinks confusedly for a moment at the sight that greets him.

There’s a truly impressive spread of food across the counter and table, all of it set out as if waiting for him to inspect it. Josiah looks around, vaguely puzzled and feeling as if he’s missed something important, but Rafe is nowhere to be seen. He wanders into the eating area, and sees that the table is laid out for one and that’s where he finds Rafe and he can’t help the way he sucks in his breath harshly at the sight of him.

The submissive is kneeling beside the chair at the head of the table and while that alone is a delicious sight it’s the way he’s dressed that causes Josiah’s cock to harden almost painfully. Rafe’s dressed in the traditional garb of a submissive proposing a contract to a dominant and the sight of it, the message that he’s silently sending, is enough to strain Josiah’s already weak control over his instincts.

Rafe is bare from the waist up, clad only in the thin, form fitting black shorts that are embossed with his family crest in delicate silver stitches. Josiah isn’t sure where he’d managed to get a pair from since he’d arrived with only the clothes on his back and what Josiah himself had purchased for him. He can practically smell Marcel’s involvement in this so he pushes the question to the back of his mind.

His hair has been even more carefully groomed than normal, pampered until it falls in a gleaming silky wave to his glistening and obviously lightly oiled shoulders. His collar has been polished until it shines as bright and pristine as the day it’d first been soldered on. His whole body, from the way he’s dressed to the way his head is bent meekly so that he stares at the floor, is an invitation, one that Josiah is confused about but helplessly drawn to.

His bare feet are nearly silent as he pads across the smooth wooden floor until he’s standing directly in front of Rafe. Almost against his will his hand reaches out and he runs his thick fingers through the heavy fall of Rafe’s silky hair, his eyes drifting closed for a moment at the exquisite feeling of those glorious tresses catching on the calluses that decorate his fingertips. Rafe leans into the touch like a large sleek cat, all fluid movements and deliciously sculpted lines.

Josiah wants this, wants to accept what Rafe is so obviously offering, but he knows that he can’t. He knows that it’s too much of a switch from the night before to accept it without questions. Instead he trails the hand currently entangled in Rafe’s hair through the clinging strands until he can fully cup the back of the other man’s head and uses his hold on him to tilt the submissive’s face up towards his own. Once they’re looking each other directly in the eye Josiah asks the question that’s currently burning inside of him.

“Why?” It comes out hoarse and rough but Josiah doesn’t care.

All he cares about is the way that Rafe’s looking up at him, emerald eyes soft with fragile trust and need apparent in his gaze. It’s a look that makes Josiah burn, that ignites all of the instincts to dominate and control that live just beneath his civilized surface. It’s the look a submissive gives a dominant when in need, the look that screams out that person’s desire to serve and be loved in return, to give and be cherished in turn. It’s something Josiah’s almost never truly hoped to see directed at himself outside of the pleasure houses.

When Rafe speaks his voice is low, his tone respectful and yet not as meek as his position portrays. There’s a 3subtle fire in his words that sets something within Josiah at ease. There’s a spark in Rafe’s eyes that reassures Josiah that the passion and steel that had attracted him to begin with are still there.

“Last night you showed me something I’d never seen before from a dominant in charge of my care. You showed me restraint. You could have taken what you wanted, could have tried at least, and there would have been little I would have been able to do to stop you. We both know that even though I’m skilled you’re far better. Noah…Frisch, he never stopped no matter what I said or did. That last day, when I finally broke out, he was going to do something new, something with needles and sedatives and I knew that if I didn’t stop him I would never wake up again. I didn’t want to die by his hands, didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, so I ran and when I didn’t see a way out I tried to make one. The guilt eats at me because I know that someone else will be given to him in my place, another made to suffer his sickness no matter how they felt about it.

Mistress Jean is so adamant that our family owes him a debt that she gave me to him even though I never signed a contract. I know she would have given him whoever she could get her hands on.”

Josiah flexes his hand against the back of Rafe’s head, the light action meant to soothe, to show Rafe that he’s here and listening, to ground him in the present and keep him from getting swept away in the past. He’s pleased when Rafe’s shoulders relax slightly, the tension that had begun to build within him lowering a bit as the lines around his eyes and mouth smooth out.

“But you, Josiah, you