Page 23 of Anchored

The master smacked his fingers away with a growl and went back to jacking himself. The sound of fist against flesh grew louder, the smell of anger and arousal filling the room. Daniel knew that scent all too well.

“Because I thought you had a working one of your own,” the master said, “and that maybe”—jerk—“just maybe”—jerk—“you’d be smart enough to figure it out!”

Daniel inched his hand ever so slightly back toward the master’s lap, offering his service again. “I—”

“God!” the master shouted, his fist nearly a blur over his cock, his face twisted with bitterness, with empty, unsatisfying pleasure. “Stop talking! There’s no staff here to write your witty repartee, and oh, my bad, I seem to have left my teleprompter in the other room! Lord knows you can’t seem to string three words together without it— No, no! Look at me. Look at me!”

Daniel realized he’d pulled into a huddle, his face tucked into the cradle of his arms. He forced himself to unclench, to turn his eyes back to the master’s cock, to the white-knuckled hand jerking short and furious near the head. Any second now, that hand would be turned on him, he was sure of it.

“Because apparently,” the master snapped, picking up right where he’d left off, as if he weren’t jacking himself so hard he’d probably leave bruises, as if his cock weren’t connected to the rest of him in any way, “that mouth really is too pretty for intelligent discourse. No wonder I beat you so badly in the ratings every day; all you do is stutter! And Ben Cheng is too busy daydreaming about burying his cock up your ass—which, no doubt, you have magically somehow never realized—to figure out that there’s obviously nothing there beneath that shiny blond head of yours! But oh, that doesn’t matter, because all you have to do is sit there and everyone falls all over you! And you, all ‘look at me in my custom-tailored suits that show off my perfect ass and bring out the blue in my oh-so-bright eyes,’ hiding your bracelets in jackets worth more than most schmucks make in a month because they aren’t good enough for you, they can look but never touch, oh no, because you’re above us mere mortals, you’re—”

The master’s orgasm strangled his next words, turned them into a grunt that sounded almost painful. It seemed to catch him by surprise, and he looked pissed at it, pissed that even a fleeting moment’s pleasure had dared to interrupt his tirade. It caught Daniel by surprise too—how could such a thing bloom from such roughness, such fury?—splattering the sheets and his shaking hip. And with both the master’s hands free, would that roughness, that fury, be unleashed on him through something more bruising than words?

“Oh, look,” the master drawled, no longer shouting but each word still dripping with venom. “Do you like my shot?” The master drew a finger through the line of cum on Daniel’s hip, wiped it on Daniel’s stomach. “What, no charming comments, Halstrom? No banal proclamations disguised as wit and wisdom?”

Daniel had no idea how to answer. He didn’t really think the master wanted an answer anyway, which was good, because he was probably trembling too hard to speak, so far past frightened that he’d moved right on to numb. He dared a look at the master’s face, and the master glared back, hard and steady.

Then all at once the man seemed to deflate, to unclench, to actually become less somehow.

“Well,” the master said, all the anger leached out of his voice, leaving only weariness and perhaps a hint of . . . wry amusement? “How about a washcloth, at least?”

Daniel was out of bed so fast he thought he made a draft.

He took perhaps a little longer in the bathroom than he should have, washing the sweat from his face while he waited for the water to run hot. When he returned to the bedroom, the master—much to Daniel’s relief—reached for the washcloth, leaving Daniel with no confusion about whether he should clean the man himself.

When the master was done, he tossed the washcloth on the floor without a second glance. Daniel remained standing by the side of the bed, hopped up on adrenaline that he ached to spend five or six miles jogging off, worried that the master would burn it off for him with a strap, or worse, those enormous fists.

The master settled back against his pillows, pulling up the covers and patting the empty spot beside him. “Well, come on,” he said, reaching up to turn out the light, and though every last cell in Daniel’s body screamed at him to run, to hide, to get away, he obediently climbed beneath the blankets. He did, however, curl up on his side away from the master, counting that as a win.

Until the master rolled over and spooned up next to him, pressing skin to skin from ankle to neck and wrapping a tight arm around his middle. Daniel yelped at first contact, but made no struggle.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” The master sighed into the back of Daniel’s neck, pressing his lips there with what seemed like affection—and wasn’t that just too weird for Daniel to even begin to get his head around. “I’m a forty-two-year-old man who just came in his own hand. I assure you your virtue is safe for the night. Now go to sleep.”

Sleep. Yeah, right. The hand at his stomach slid up to the jointure of his shoulder and neck, kneaded with gentle force, then resettled against his belly. Soon after, he heard soft little almost-snores, and managed a first, hesitant attempt to unknot his body—so hard to do with the hot, heavy reminder pressed to his back, draped over his side, breathing softly against his neck. But sometime near dawn, he managed to convince himself that the danger—for that moment, at least—had finally passed, and he slipped into a fitful sleep.

Daniel woke perhaps an hour later, sweaty and sore, the master plastered to him like a sheet of hot, heavy cellophane. He stretched carefully, trying to ease his way out from under the arm and leg wrapped over him without waking the master, or at least to roll onto his back and kick the covers off, but it seemed the master was too light a sleeper.

“What’d I say about fidgeting,” the master half grumbled, half slurred. His arm tightened around Daniel’s middle.

Daniel tensed, ventured a careful, “Sorry, Master. I was hot.”

The arm disappeared just long enough to flip back the bit of blanket covering Daniel, then returned. “Now can you hold still and let me sleep?”

“Yes, Master,” he said, even as his legs shuffled beneath the master’s much heavier one, cramped from the weight and too much time spent in the same position.

An angry sigh puffed across the back of his neck. “What, you gotta piss or something?”

The master sounded more fully awake now, and also quite irritated. The hostility made Daniel wonder if he hadn’t simply imagined that brief moment of affection last night after . . . well, after whatever the hell exactly that was. Sarcastic tirade? Angry masturbation session? Either way, he counted himself lucky to have come out of it without any new bruises. Unless the ones to his ego counted; if the master really felt that way about him, why’d he bother to lease him?

The fingers resting on his stomach clenched, curling in with warning force. “You plan on answering me sometime before the end of the year?”

Shit. He’d forgotten the question. “I . . .” He hedged, thinking furiously back. What the hell was wrong with him? Sure it’d been a long night, a fucking eternal weekend, but that was no excuse for— Oh. Bathroom. Right. “Sorry, yes,” he lied, seeking escape, however brief, from the clutches of the prickly man behind him.

The master let loose another sigh, and Daniel swore he could hear the accompanying eye roll. But the arm and leg atop him disappeared, and then a hand between his shoulder blades gave him a not-so-gentle nudge that reawoke the pain of fading bruises. “Hurry up. Goddamn six-million-dollar cuddle, I damn well plan to enjoy it.”

It didn’t seem to Daniel that the master was enjoying much of anything just now—in fact, a quick glimpse of the master’s face in the early light revealed not just irritation but also, he thought, disgust. Obviously, the man was furious with him. The “six-million-dollar cuddle” had felt deliberately punitive, even a little cruel, as if the master knew it was the last thing Daniel wanted. It was equally possible, of course, that the master didn’t give a damn what Daniel wanted and simply meant to take at least a little of what he’d paid so much for, angry or not.

Whatever the case, Daniel was glad to be away from it, even if only for a few moments. He didn’t have to piss, but he forced himself anyway, just in case the master was listening, then washed his hands and face, shivering slightly as sweat dried on his skin in the cool air. He wanted to stretch, shower, go for a run, come back and sleep for twelve solid hours. But none of that was an option anymore, and the master was waiting none too patiently for Daniel’s return. He didn’t dare dawdle.