he’ll be as happy as Roger is now.”
“F-fine,” Mathias replied, milking Nikolai’s cock with his inner muscles, no doubt hoping to speed things along. Appalling behavior, but Nikolai was willing to put off that discussion in favor of the current one. “Deal,” Mathias said. “I’ll do it. Just please don’t . . .” He closed his eyes, dropped his chin to his chest. “Please don’t make me have to see him again after that. I don’t think I could stand it.”
Nikolai was getting close. He planted his feet on the bed, grabbed hold of Mathias’s waist, and jerked his hips up in time to meet Mathias’s thrusts, impaling the stubborn man on his cock. “I told you,” he said, “I don’t make promises to ill-trained slaves. You’ll stand whatever you need to stand, just like you always have.”
“Sir,” Mathias acknowledged, stoic in his defeat, and Nikolai pumped him full of cum to seal their pact.
chapter two
S
unlight.
Dougie turned his face up, eyes closed, and let the bright light touch his cheeks and warm them for the first time in what felt like months. He knew this place, of course. Hanauma Bay, Hawaii, where they’d gone on a family vacation to celebrate Mat’s graduation. Mat and their dad had spent hours with snorkels on, covering every inch of reef, chasing sea turtles through the bright water while Dougie and Mom sunned on the sand, eating ice cream from the concession stand and enjoying the view.
He was there again. Now. With her. He looked to his left and saw her stretched out on her beach towel with a romance novel and a smear of white sunscreen down her nose. She smiled when she noticed him staring. “All right, Dougie? You need some money for a drink?”
“No, thanks,” he replied, because God, how could he leave her side even for a second, not when she was here, alive and beautiful and happy. Which wasn’t possible because his voice wasn’t a child’s voice, it was . . . it was a man’s voice. How could he be a man and be at Hanauma Bay? He hadn’t been here since he was eleven or ten—no, ten, ten, because that was the year Mat had graduated and Dougie’s birthday, of course, hadn’t been until after.
Mat was waving to him from far out on the water, still wearing his snorkel, hair dripping and plastered to his skull. Seventeen and so grown up and strong and handsome, and Dougie wanted nothing more than to be like him, be grown up and strong and handsome and graduated from school a year early, be out swimming with him, chasing sea turtles with him and their dad. But he’d gone running with Mat on the beach this morning, in the wet sticky sand that sucked at your feet and made everything so much harder, and though they’d had fun playing in the waves, he’d begged out halfway through and was still too sore to swim out as far as they were. And anyway, it was dangerous, what with the spiky coral and the eels and even the blacktip sharks, although maybe that was just something Mat had told him to scare him.
Mat wasn’t scared of anything.
Dougie shifted on his beach towel, unable to quite get comfortable. The beach here was soft sand, but maybe some coral had washed ashore and he was sitting on it or something. He wiggled back and forth, still uncomfortable, and finally turned onto his belly, the sun immediately warming his back.
He should ask his mother to put some sunscreen on him before he got burned. His skin was already burning around the back of his thighs a little, like he’d been stung by hundreds of tiny jellyfish.
“Are you sure you don’t want a drink?” his mother asked. “You look a little pale.”
He shook his head, and then, because he was so impossibly happy to see her again and didn’t want to waste it, not for a second, said, “Maybe a hug?”
She smiled brightly and put her novel aside and opened her arms. Dougie climbed into them and basked there, like she was the sun. He was too big for this now, but she didn’t seem to notice. She petted