Three months later

They were done. Thomas stood back, surveying the twelve paintings critically, but he knew they were what he wanted them to be, every one of them. He pivoted on his heel to look at the thirteenth, which was placed in the opposite corner of the work shed.

He'd converted the building into his studio when he'd returned from the Berkshires three months ago. The shed was in the middle of the pasture, previously a feeding area and rain shelter for the herd they'd had years ago. He'd worked on it after store hours, getting it renovated the way he needed it. Kate sometimes came and grazed just outside while he ripped and hammered through the long hours of the night, stripped down to jeans and sweating.

Every drop of moisture rolling over his skin reminded him of the touch of Marcus' hands, the slide of his body over his. Full circle, back to longing and yearning, with too many hours to fill in the dead of night.

He hadn't spoken of his time with Marcus, pushing away his hurt that his family studiously avoided the topic as well. He told them he'd agreed to prepare about a dozen paintings for the gallery. The commissions would be enough to replace the roof on his mother's house, make sure the store had a comfortable winter with a heating upgrade. They couldn't argue with it, though his mother pressed her lips together, saying nothing to support or reject it as she finished making a new pot of breakfast coffee during the Monday morning discussion.

His dad had always joked and called them "Monday staff meetings", but over time they'd essentially become the day that the more significant store issues and strategies were discussed. Other mornings were just for being a family. On those mornings, Thomas found himself quiet, concentrating on eating as much as he could without drawing his mother's nagging to eat more. Half following Rory's latest gripes, their mother's comments about neighborhood goings-on, the volunteer work she'd do this week. When Celeste's next break was.

Thomas brought himself back to the present as he gazed at the one canvas off to itself. It was painful to look at, but he made himself do it. It was leaving in the next couple days, so the statute of limitations for the self-imposed torture was within reach.

It was taller than he, and twice as wide. When he looked at it he got pulled into it, as if the painting had the ability to stick a fist in his stomach and reel him in by his intestines.

He'd done most of it this week, working with singular determination through the day at the store, grabbing a sandwich and candy bar from his mother's kitchen and heading to the shed once night fell, the painting calling to him. The craving need to give the deepest part of himself form and substance, at least on canvas, had taken everything else away as he slashed and stroked.

At times, his arm had been wrapped around his middle like a restraint, hand plastered hard against the lower part of his abdomen to compress the burning there, his eyes watering.

Like now, for he'd finished this last painting just tonight. Before him was the finished result. Heaven, and the torments of Hell.

Sinking down on his stool, he studied it. What would Marcus think of it? Thomas wished he could be there to see his reaction when he did. He'd left a message earlier in the week with Marcus' staff assistant that the paintings would be ready by Friday and requested shipping instructions. Marcus was just completing a local exclusive on a much bigger name than Thomas. Remembering how Marcus was during the week of a show, Thomas hadn't expected to hear from him until it was over, but he knew he would hear from him eventually.

Since Thomas had returned, Marcus had called him every few days. His mother and brother didn't resort to hanging up on Marcus, but neither one, as well as the demands of the store, gave Thomas much privacy. What wanted to be said filled up the phone like static white noise that got unbearable as he rattled off inanities. It didn't matter what he said, anyway. He just wanted to hear Marcus' voice, even as it left him heavy and aching.

Marcus then mailed him a cell phone, the smartass. Even signed him up and paid for a year's service, noting that he would take it out of his commissions. Thomas left the cell phone in the studio and at night he would check the messages, listening to Marcus' voice. He wouldn't call him back - he used email to respond.

Thomas knew he was taking them back to where they were before the Berkshires, but he'd known that it had to be this way. Time and distance made it possible to do it, at least on the surface. Beneath the surface he feared he was disintegrating, being consumed by the black hole inside his gut a little more every day.

He'd taken Rory for an X-ray today, loaded up four grain trucks, helped Mrs. Smith find a socket set. Marcus had likely had coffee at Starbucks, done an interview for an art magazine, rubbed elbows with God knew who.

Over time, Marcus had begun responding on email. The first email Marcus sent had one word in the subject line. Chickenshit. But after that potshot, they started exchanging information. Not just the progress on Thomas' art, but also details about his family.

Marcus hadn't been sarcastic; if anything Thomas had been encouraged by his questions and interest. And pouring his thoughts into Marcus' ear and getting his reaction had helped. It had reminded Thomas that as well as a lover, Marcus always had been a pretty damn good friend.

Rory's doc says if he'd push himself more he could probably do more... Marcus' response... So when are you going to kick him in the ass?

Celeste's dating some guy at college we think will ask her to get married at Christmas...trying to convince her to finish college first... Geez, don't I sound like her frigging dad?

Marcus' response... You are. You're taking good care of them, giving her the right advice.

Don't worry. She seems to have a good head on her shoulders... Thought you'd want to know that Julie's friend Ellen is doing better since our night together...actually started to help Julie out at the theater...

And so it went. Sometimes no more than a few lines, but Marcus always sent him one a day at least, some longer, some shorter. Like a damn lovesick schoolgirl, Thomas kept them all stored, rereading them, imagining Marcus talking, sitting across from him, feet stretched out and braced on the opposite sofa while Thomas did the same on the facing sectional in Marcus' apartment.

Marcus' arm lying loosely over Thomas' shins as he sipped his wine and they talked. Thomas lacing his hands behind his head in a casual pose, teasing Marcus about his fancy lifestyle.

Marcus had even sent him a box whose contents Thomas was glad he checked out only when he was alone. He'd socked it away in the shed, not daring to look at it again.

Jesus, would it ever stop hurting? He bent over, shifted, trying to relieve the pressure.

Why do you keep answering me at two and three in the morning? What was the last thing I said to you? You make yourself sick, I will come kick your ass personally...

Farm people get up early...

Don't feed me shit...

Some of it made him grin. Other times Thomas' throat clogged up as he ran his fingers over the words on the screen. Even when the cell phone got filled up and he had to delete a lot of the messages, he was weak enough to keep one in particular.

You know I'm not going to let you get away with this forever. You're just pissing me off.

The threat in Marcus' voice had a seductive touch that reached through the electronic waves and gripped Thomas in all the right places every time he listened to it. Do you want me pissed off, Thomas? You want me to come bust your ass, take all your choices away?

The prince coming to rescue the princess in the tower. Marcus was a prince all right, but Thomas knew this wasn't about rescue. Each time he heard that menacing Master's tone, his cock hardened and his heart jumped into his throat, butterflies exploding in his stomach. He made himself erase it at last and cursed himself for an idiot for the next several days when he wanted to listen to it again, like some addict needing his heroin fix.

He glanced at his watch. Two-thirty a.m. Maybe he could send an email to Marcus now before he made himself go off to bed. At six a.m. the deer corn trailer would arrive and he'd have about two hundred bags to unload.

When he logged on, the cell phone rang on the counter, startling him in the quiet of the early morning hour. Wiping the sweat off his face with one arm, he hobbled to the phone.

He shouldn't answer it. But it was the first time Marcus had called at this time.

During the day, there was the pretense that Thomas was doing something else.

Working, with family, whatever. To ignore it now would be like ignoring him if he stood right in front of him, and the bastard probably knew it.

Plus he wanted to hear his voice. Why'd he delete that message? Marcus wasn't calling as much anymore, and Thomas didn't think it was because of the email option. It was as if he realized the power of sensory deprivation. Duh. Who better than a Master knew the power of turning Thomas' own defense mechanism against him?

Opening the cell, he noticed it had a full battery. Crap. No excuse there. If he mimicked low battery beeping noises, Marcus would see through that pathetic attempt and laugh at him. "Hey."

"Hey yourself." The first notes of his voice, God, the first syllables, made need coil hard in Thomas' stomach, twisting the pain. Thomas leaned over again, tried to breathe.

Sought something to say. "I just finished the last one."

"Just now."

"Yeah. How'd you know?"

"You've got that dazed sound to your voice like you're coming out of a month of solitary. How's it look?"

Thomas turned, his gaze sweeping over them, resting on that largest canvas specifically. "I don't know. It's different from the others." Son of a bitch. He slid down the side of the counter, pressed his hand to his abdomen. Quit. He didn't want to talk.

He wanted to hear Marcus talk, let that voice pull him out of the place the painting had taken him, into a place somewhere in between it and here. "Don't know if you'll like it.

If it'll sell like the others. Don't know..." Don't know anything. But talk. For the love of God, talk.

"Unfortunately, selling and liking are two different things, because most of the buying public wouldn't know talent if it bit them in the ass. It's my job to educate them, Thomas."

Thomas leaned his head against the cabinet, closed his eyes. "You know, it's funny you've never called me anything but that. Most people assume I'm a Tommy, Tom." Thomas covered the mouthpiece, coughed into a used rag and noticed without much interest he was coughing up flecks of blood again.

"When did you have a full night's sleep last?"

"You nursemaiding me? Girl."

"Yeah, fuck off. When, Thomas?"

Thomas rubbed his forehead, scanned the counter for his antacids, realized he'd taken the last of them an hour ago. "Last night." There was a pause on the other end, significant enough that Thomas had to squelch the urge to fill in the pause with some type of verbal squirming.

"You want to really piss me off, you lie to me one more time." Thomas licked the residual powder off the antacid paper. "Then don't ask questions you already know the answer to. Jesus." His eyes watering, he gripped the phone harder. "I don't want to fight about this, okay? I've been staying up late to get the paintings done. It's what I wanted to do. I can't...talk..."

"Thomas." Marcus' voice came through sharp and hard. "You're having one of those attacks again, aren't you?"

"It's okay, they happen. Marcus, I've got to go..."

"Lie down on your side, right now. If you're not going to let a doctor help you, you listen to me. Or I get off the phone and call 911 to send an ambulance to your house." Alarm shot through him, increasing the fiery sensation. Thomas went to the floor, cursing and muttering, but doing it.

"Now take your hand, lay it over where it hurts. Don't press. Just lay it there." Thomas complied, holding onto Marcus' voice, fairly sure this wasn't going to work, the pain too intense, but he knew Marcus would do what he said. Also, just holding onto his voice, fulfilling his instruction, was what he wanted above everything else. Just talk... It would pass. It always did. He'd had to have that extra strip of bacon this morning, like an idiot. He was hungry and he'd needed the coffee to wake up.

"Have you done it?"

"Yeah. Yes. I'm not a child."

"You're acting like one. Shut up and listen. It's my hand there. Just move it, easy, slow circles. I'm sitting right behind you, leaning over you. I've got one hand on your head, stroking your hair. You feel my fingers there?" Thomas closed his eyes. Remembered them, felt them. "The way you do when I sleep, but I'm not all the way under."

'That's right." Another pause. "I'm going to talk to you, and while I do, I'm going to keep stroking your head and rubbing your stomach in slow circles." He could feel it. Honest to God. And it was making it easier to breathe. Maybe it felt so real because he wanted it so much. Marcus' fingers. Strong, long fingers, no scars or blemishes.

"How's your face looking?"

"Sshh... Obey your Master. Be still and let me touch you. I just want to take care of you, pet. Just want you to let me take care of you."

"But...who takes care of you?" There was a silence on the other end, but it was full of so many things it almost felt like Marcus was there, right behind him, his body close, curled up spooning with Thomas like that very first night, and many nights thereafter.

"I mean, other than the million guys who'd be willing to hold your hair out of your face when you throw up for the chance to sleep with you?"

"One more comment about my hair and I will get a crew cut." A pause. "You take care of me, pet. Just by breathing and existing, you take care of me in ways you can't imagine."

"You say things like that just to mess me up," Thomas said. "Mess with my head. I love your hair. Don't cut it."

"Making demands?"

"Why not? You going to come punish me?"

"I might. Do you miss having your ass strapped by your Master? Serving me with your mouth?"

Something stirred other than the pain. You know I do. Thomas couldn't say it aloud, but knew he didn't need to do so. It was a part of the whole empty need in his burning gut that wanted Marcus.

"What are you wearing?"

It brought Thomas up short, it was so cliche. It should have called for a quip or a chuckle, but not when Marcus' voice was sending frissons of energy down Thomas' spine with that note of don't-refuse-me-or-I'll-fuck-you-up command. "I'm kidding," Marcus said before he could respond. "I don't give a shit. Take it all off. Now." Thomas struggled out of the sweats and set down the phone to remove the T-shirt.

Rising, he went to the open top door to latch it. Kate raised her head to look at him. She was dozing beneath a cloud of moths surrounding the light just outside. "Sorry, Kate.

Private guy stuff." He imagined Marcus laughing at them, but did it anyway.

He was already barefoot. Laying back down on the throw rug, Thomas felt the rough threads against his tense ass, the bracket of his shoulder blades.

"Keep touching your stomach, slow circles. My hand there. Just above your cock.

You're getting stiff, aren't you? Harder and longer, your dick trying to touch the side of my hand, begging for attention."

"Yes."

"Yes, what?" His tone was sharp. Thomas closed his eyes, his heart tripping as his cock jumped.

"Yes, Master."

"Good. I'm going to keep massaging your stomach. I like the way it feels, the ridges of muscle under my palm, the way they tighten up further, every time I rub lower, get closer. I can see your cum leaking out of the slit, your balls drawn up, wanting me to cup them, squeeze them. You want your Master to touch your cock, don't you?"

Thomas groaned, his hand convulsing on his stomach. He wanted more than that.

He wanted Marcus' touch, rough and brutal, gentle and teasing. He wanted his ass filled. He wanted to be pummeled, hear Marcus growl, his hand gripping Thomas' hair, yanking it back to grip his throat with his teeth as he thrust and thrust, knocking Thomas' knees out wider, reaching down and collaring his balls as he slapped against his ass, again and again.

"Are you...touching yourself, Master?"

"Would you like that?"

"Yes." God, yes.

"Tell me what you'd like. And I'm not touching your cock until I decide it's time."

"I want to take off your shirt. Rip it off. One button at a time. Put my mouth on your skin." Bite you, suck on it as if I could eat you one bite at a time and finally not be empty, empty... "God, I love your body." But more than that. "I love the way you breathe faster when I touch you, when you're getting hard and I know you're going to fuck me, I can see it in your eyes. Not asking me or coaxing me. You're just going to fuck me, and that's the end of it.

"I want to get on my knees, watch you open your pants, take down your underwear and force your cock into my mouth. Hold my head so you can thrust in hard, smell your come, wanting you to jet into my throat almost as much as I want it in my ass. I want you everywhere, Master. In every way."

"I'm touching you now." Marcus' voice was rough, thick. "I'm moving my hand down and fisting your cock. Pumping it in my grip, making your ass come up off the ground. Spread your knees out wide so I can see your balls, finger your ass if I want." Thomas obeyed, his hand working himself, Marcus' hand in his mind, those green eyes close, his lips, his long, lean body.

"I sent you something. I know you have it there, in your studio where you can lock it up. Have you used it?"

"No. You didn't - "

"Say that you could. Good slave."

Though part of it was Thomas not wanting to use it alone. He'd thought often of that box since it had come.

"Get it," Marcus said.

Reluctantly, Thomas rose again and went to the locked cabinet. His shaking fingers had some trouble with the combination padlock, but then he opened it, removed the box. He'd only taken a brief glance at it, but now he swallowed. It was a vibrating plug of daunting diameter and length with a bottle of warming lubricant. "Pet?"

"I'm here."

"It's my size exactly. You can take it."

"It looks different...detached."

"Grease it up. I want you back on that carpet with it up your ass in five minutes."

"You aren't moonlighting as one of those porn stars, are you? The ones who make molds of their cocks and sell them in catalogs?" Even as he made the joke, Thomas' hands were moving over the texture, putting on the viscous liquid. It was about the right size. If he closed his eyes, he could just imagine...

"You imagining it's my cock you're lubing up?"

"Yeah."

"I thought so. Your voice started to get all low and sexy at the end. You practically purr like a tiger when you're about to get off. Makes me harder. Rub me, Thomas. Let me feel your hands. Am I good and slick? Hard enough for you?" Thomas nodded. "Yes, Master."

"Good. Get down on the floor again. Keep that phone near. I want to hear your groan as you take it. God, you have a fine, tight ass. Best I've ever had." Thomas didn't want to touch that, the mixture of jealous and possessive heat the comment evoked in him. He went back to the rug and lowered himself. Putting his feet on the side of the cabinet so his knees were raised, he began to take the greased dildo.

"Rub it against your cock and balls first. I want to feel your cock against my cock." Thomas grunted huskily as the friction made his cock jump, convulse.

"Yeah, that's it." From the cadence of Marcus' breathing, he knew Marcus' hand was working himself. He was probably sprawled on his couch with his paperwork and an open bottle of wine, the lights of New York spread in a panorama before him while Thomas was in a shed in a quiet field in North Carolina, surrounded by the smell of paint, canvas and old lumber, a silver star and black sky domed over it all. It didn't matter. Thomas' eyes landed on the last painting.

"It's...of us."

"What? The one you just finished?"

"Yeah." Thomas groaned as he rocked. "It's always tougher this way, even if it's the same size."

"Music to my ears, pet. I want you stretched. Take me deep. Don't you clench up.

You can take all of me. You did that first night when your hole was practically virgin, when I used my mouth to loosen you up, until you were wiggling and humping up against my face like an animal."

When Thomas arched up, the dildo slid home, filling him, stretching him hard, for though a sex toy could be made like flesh, nothing had the miraculous give and yet firmness of a man's flesh-and-blood cock. Of Marcus' cock.

"You make me sound...like some schoolkid...on his first fuck..."

"You were, in a lot of ways. And I fucking loved it. Someone taught you where the parts were. I taught you how to fuck. You remember the night I fisted you, at the club?

You trusted me like you never trusted me before. Am I all the way in, pet?"

In ways he couldn't express. Thomas breathed out the word on a rasp of air. "Yeah.

God, that's tight."

"Ah, Jesus, you had to tell me that, make me imagine the way it feels, as if I don't already know. You want a little pain with it. It finally blows your mind past that bullshit worrying you. Stomach hurt?"

It didn't. The power of endorphins. Of Marcus. Thomas closed his eyes. Marcus knew how to make it stop hurting, and yet was the source of all pain, good and bad.

Thomas didn't care. He wanted it all.

"Does it have our faces? You don't usually do faces..."

"No... It's all the things..." He couldn't talk. He couldn't. His entire focus was on his cock.

"Start rocking yourself against the floor. Use your ass muscles to work it, use the floor to put it in deep. And my hands are on your cock again, Thomas. Holding you rough, squeezing you, fisting you..."

"Jesus..."

"The picture," Marcus commanded. "Tell me more."

"It's everything...you've ever done to me... Everything I wanted you to do, but was afraid to ask."

When Marcus swore softly in his ear, Thomas felt the power flood him, knowing he'd pushed his Master closer to the edge. He wanted Marcus to come, wanted to hear it, wanted it to take him over. "Your mouth...in my ass...but me too. I'm tonguing you, licking your balls while you're holding my thighs, spreading me, fucking me with your fingers, and you've put me in a cock harness so I can't come, but I'm going to explode. I want to put teeth marks in your ass...

The picture actually didn't show any sexual aids, just all those positions intertwined in a tree of life, hints in the tapestry of its branches as it stood rooted, the lone focus in a field drenched in a setting sun. Arms and legs were entwined to do one thing but interlocking with the next position, so other couplings could be envisioned. The sky was full of powerful rich reds, casting that faint crimson and violet hue over the two men twined at the base of the tree, sleeping on a blanket. It was as if the shadowy images in the tree above were dreams. There was a goat nearby...

It had been so easy, so flowing, it was no wonder it had pulled him in, immersed him. He'd painted red and brown streaks on his face, bare arms and his stomach, finishing the painting looking like some mad Celtic warrior involved in a sacred ritual, carried by the vision of it.

All the ways he wanted Marcus to touch him, fuck him...all the ways he wanted to service Marcus, make him come, make him not want anyone else, ever.

Best ass I've ever had...

The power of the physical made it all about that, even as Thomas knew it was goaded to such high limits by what wasn't the physical. But this was male need, the emotional inextricably linked with the physical so it was the dominant form of experience. It said it all. Meant it all.

"You ready to come, pet?" Marcus' breath was ragged. Thomas could imagine his long frame, fingers working up and down his cock. His cock as well, an overpowering dual image that had his lower body seizing, his bowels cramping, ass muscles tight on the plug, on Marcus' cock...

"You...first..." He managed through clenched teeth. "I want you to come in my ass..." He focused on those two figures locked together in dreams beneath the tree, two men in an embrace that could be combat. What would it be like to fuck Marcus...hold him in his arms, feel him strain against his hold the way Thomas did, a delicious wrestling that wasn't an attempt to get away but to get more, to allow the thrusts to be more powerful?

Hold him so he wouldn't get away... Was that what it was for him, restraining Thomas, doing everything to him, knowing he couldn't run away from the power of the feeling? Was Dominating Thomas one of the keys to Marcus' inner gates? The most powerful one of all? Was that the key to the rest?

And should Thomas be looking for a way in, knowing he couldn't offer him anything if he got there? It wasn't fair. It wasn't even kind or equitable, no matter what the poems said. It just was.

He loved Marcus.

For the first time in his life, Thomas said it in his mind consciously. He loved him, and the bitch of it was, being sure of it at last, when they were so far apart, sure of it down to the bottom of his worthless soul, meant he shouldn't say it... But love wasn't fair.

Julie's voice. Tell him... You think it's kinder not to, but it isn't.

"I love you, Master. Love you... Come for me. Please." There was a groan, a more vicious curse, the sound of the phone hitting something, and he heard Marcus begin to release, that quick rush of breath mixed with animal grunts that spurred his own. Hearing it, he could hold out no longer...

"Come - "

That was all Marcus could manage or Thomas needed. He grabbed another paint cloth he'd been using, held it over himself as he jerked off with his hand, his ass stretched and burning, as full of Marcus as every other part of him was in his mind.

Love you... God, finally accepting it was as bad as dying.

As they slowed and the radio came back into his consciousness, Thomas became aware of Lonestar's heartwrenching, I'm Already There, a song which had entirely too much meaning for this moment. He focused blearily on the Coleman lantern, the dim light it threw on his finished paintings. He held the phone tight in his hand, gasping. If he could, he'd imagine Marcus turning him, still inside him, curved against the back of his body as he slept, his breath and touch on Thomas' throat.

"You bastard," Marcus said at last. And hung up, leaving Thomas aching anew.