Mike's Saga 18

Mike's Saga 18

“Mike?” Austin stared at the purple wheals and the rainbow of bruises.

“Kid.” Mike leaned against the sink, trying not to hiss as his bruises touched the porcelain surface. He wanted to look relaxed, to feel relaxed, but his throat felt dry, and he fought the urge to stare at his bare feet. He’d hurt Austin. It had been unforgivable. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, knowing the words were entirely inadequate. No words would be adequate.

“It’s OK,” Austin said too quickly and gnawed on his lower lip.”Did Milton…” Austin waved his arms, seeming to encompass all the bruises and marks on Mike.

Mike smiled, trying to look gentle. “I fought them. It’s really not too bad.”

“It looks terrible.”

Mike swung around and studied himself in the mirror. “It is dramatic, but I’m not broken or anything. Don’t let Landon and clothesline ever get near you.” Mike ran his fingers down the red lines on his thighs. “No sympathy from him. Behave like an asshole submissive and get treated like one.”

“You’re not an asshole.”

“I can be.” Mike shrugged and studied his reflection in the mirror. He was an asshole. There was no doubt about it. He’d hurt Austin; he’d run away. He’d hurt everyone, tearing a big gaping hole in the fabric of the family. Just like his parents he’d run from everything, but Milton hadn’t let him. He’d sent Josh after him with his determined bluntness and unhesitating conviction that he was in the right. Mike had been horrid, disgraceful, despicable. He could go on for days, listing his flaws, but it hadn’t mattered. They’d come after him. They’d welcome him home. Milton had engulfed Mike in a hug that had been far more than a casual motion. It had sunk into his bones and crunched through his barrier of muscle. Tilden had stroked his long fingers down Mike’s cheek with his infinite gentleness. They’d open their hearts again, so he could batter them with his stupidity and selfishness. Austin, the youngest and the most pure innocence, was standing in the tiny space of the bathroom, his eyes speaking volumes. Austin should punch him or at least swear at him, but his face showed nothing but concern and undeserved adoration. Even the three lone freckles that splashed across his forehead seemed to be in cahoots in welcoming and forgiving Mike.

Austin reached out and caught Mike’s hand, his fingers tentative at first and then stronger. The words so soft that they almost vanished unheard into the tile and porcelain. “Don’t. You belong here. I love you.”

“How could you?” Mike wheeled around on Austin, jerking his hand from the boy’s grip. “I hurt you. I deliberately hurt you. It was my responsibility.” Mike dashed a tear from his face with a vicious wipe of his hand. “I’m despicable.”

“You are not.” Austin wrapped his arms around Mike’s waist and unashamedly hugged him. “I don’t want a pound of flesh. Please stop hurting yourself.”

“It’s not that easy.” Mike swallowed hard, trying to stop the tears that were way too close. He kissed Austin’s shaggy and slightly too long hair. It was always on the kid’s shoulders and scattered in all directions, something that had to drive neat and orderly Milton half insane, yet he never insisted on a trim. Mike perched unsteadily on the edge of the tub, almost enjoying the anchoring pain of the bruises pressed against porcelain. “Austin,” Mike said in the gentlest voice he could find, “the bruising and battering wasn’t punishment. I like it. I’m dark. I want these.” Mike traced a welt on the front of his thigh.

“Why?” Austin’s voice was high and infused with the naiveté of youth.

Mike shrugged, but forced himself to look more inward. Austin’s eyes were too big and too desperate; Mike couldn’t blow him off with an easy shrug. It wouldn’t be right. “My fantasies...My fantasies are about rape and pain and force.” Mike stroked his hand through Austin’s dark hair. “I don’t know. I’m not right. I shouldn’t want to be hurt like this.”

“They do it.”

“Milton doesn’t hit any of you like this.” Mike bit his cheek, tasting the fresh blood on his tongue. He was the broken one, the crazy one. He shouldn’t be here in this nice peaceful family.

“Sheldon calls him Master. What’s the difference?”

“He doesn’t have to beat Sheldon into submission. I can’t give it up.” He was useless as a submissive. Why did he torture everybody? Why hadn’t he had the courage to just stay gone?

“Milton,” Austin shouted.

“No. I’m OK.”

“Bullshit!” Austin stood up and wrapped a nearby towel around his waist. “Milton.”

At these moments Milton somehow always looked bigger and broader than he really was. He blocked the doorway with a languid ease, and his eyes swept over both men in the bathroom.

"Austin." Milton's voice was soft and gentle as if he was coaxing a reluctant kitten out from under the bed. "May I help you?" Polite and careful, not an uncouth what do you want or slurred together. Milton's face was carefully neutral, no sign of impatience for being summarily called.

"It's Mike," Austin said, moving toward Milton's warmth and welcome, knowing he'd be wanted, that he'd be loved. "He doesn't think we want him." 

Mike watched in fascination as Milton's eyebrows rose and fell in some type of strange dance, and his eyes locked on Mike with an intensity that was almost painful. Milton looped an arm around Austin's neck and kissed his forehead with a brand of absolute possession. Austin belonged; there was no question about that.

"Austin, go downstairs and get something to eat."

Great! Alone again with his lord and master. 

"Come." Milton held out his hand. He led Mike from the bathroom to Milton's dresser. The nursery cane still lay on top, marring the otherwise spotless surface. Milton's fingers brushed the cane.

Mike tried to pull away from Milton; his stomach was doing things that no stomach should ever attempt. He couldn't do this again, not today.

"Be still. Hands behind your back."

Mike's body moved before his mind processed the order. He stood, clenching his muscles, trying to hide the shakes.

Milton didn't touch the cane further. He opened a drawer and pulled out a well-used shirt that had faded from red to rose and a pair of pale blue boxers. "Dress." Milton tossed them on the bed.

They were too big and soft with wear, but still Mike flinched as they slid over his sensitive skin. He clasped his hands again behind his back and waited.

Milton clicked his fingers and walked through to the connected sitting area. He sat in the overstuffed and hideous chair that they all called Sheldon's chair. He pointed to the floor by his feet.

"Sit or kneel. I recommend kneeling and take a cushion from the sofa."

Even with a cushion, sitting was out. Breathing hurt his ass; Mike sure wasn't voluntarily putting weight on it. Mike sank to his knees and lowered his head.

"You can look at me. This isn't formal kneeling." Milton's hand played down the back of Mike's neck in easy reassurance. "Do you want to tell me what that was about?"

What would happen if Mike said no? The cane was within easy reach in the other room, and Milton was wearing a belt. Fuck! Mike didn't even think he could take the hand.

"I see the answer is no," Milton said after the silence seemed to stretch from corner to corner and zip around all four walls. "We'll get there. I'm in no hurry." 

Milton reached for a book on a nearby table. In this house, there were always books. Books lived everywhere: in shelves, on tables, stacked under beds, even creeping into the bathroom. Of course, there were no books for the poor slob on his knees. Mike was supposed to reflect or think or maybe meditate the way Sheldon did. Super, he could meditate on his asshole qualities and why Milton was hopelessly optimistic that Mike would be even a halfway normal boy. 

The silence was awful. It only magnified every ache and pain in Mike’s body. He hadn’t realized he could hurt so many damn places, and this was twenty-four hours later. He shifted, desperately looking for someplace comfortable, and suppressed a hiss of pain as his ass touched his heels. Flambéed ass—maybe they could sell it at the finest restaurants. 

Milton’s fingers played over Mike’s neck. They rubbed at the soreness and the steady ache that inhabited all of Mike’s muscles. “This can be as hard as you like. I’m very comfortable.”

“Of course you are,” Mike spat. “I’m the one who has to take all the shit.”

“Because you want to.” Milton pulled a short length of chain from his pocket and clipped Mike’s leather wristbands together. “Maybe you need some help.”

“I hate this!” Mike tried to jerk his arms apart and started to scramble to his feet. Milton caught his ear and twisted it brutally. “Ah!” Mike crumbled back to his knees, choking back a sob of pain and shock.

“Do you want to safeword?”

Mike shook his head sharply, wishing he could reach his ear to rub the throbbing, wishing he could wipe the traitorous tears that had slipped onto his cheeks. Milton’s hand raised Mike’s chin, and Mike was forced to look into the calm, brown eyes above him.

“You’re pretty with tears on your face.” Milton’s finger brushed a stray drop of wetness. “I’m a sadist; I enjoy inflicting pain. You’re a masochist; you want pain. Neither is wrong unless we exceed each other’s limits. One of my limits is we don’t play unless you give me your submission. You’re not a boy who wants a small flogging in a bar or a little fun with the whip. You want it big and scary and psychologically approaching real. I can do that as your playmate, but we play by my rules, and I don’t play on the edges without real submission, without a boy who is honest with me about everything, not the easy stuff about did you eat breakfast, but the hard stuff about what’s in here.” Milton tapped Mike on the head. “I can fight you for your submission, but you must also learn to give it and to give it willingly and gracefully.”

“I can’t,” Mike mumbled, casting his eyes downward. He couldn’t yield. He wasn’t soft or gentle or sweet. He didn’t want cuddled and spoiled like Austin, and he sure as hell didn’t want Sheldon’s brand of submission. ‘Yes, Master’ was never coming out of Mike’s mouth.

“Why?” Milton slapped Mike’s cheek, a gentle tap in the arsenal of slaps but the warning was clear. “Keep your eyes on me. I want to see you.”

“I don’t know,” He knew. He was independent; he was a loner; he’d never be a family man. Milton and Tilden were obsessed with family. They’d actually had family. What had Mike had–a roof and a kind stranger when he was lucky. He couldn’t be the boy Milton wanted.

“You’re convinced you can’t, so I believe you must have reasons. The question, Mike, is do I break you to find out or do I use kindness. I enjoy watching you suffer. You are a beautiful boy when you writhe under the lash and your body glistens with the special sweat of pain. You are already close to the edge with pain. I can see it in every taut muscle, in every flick of an eyelid, in every strain of sinew. You are a masochist. Your body is wired to enjoy pain, but I can take that away. I can make it pure suffering and despair. I was taught by Landon and Gordon; I know what to do, but yet as a sadist I prefer a boy who can ride the pain, who can enjoy my tortures, who can blossom under the whip. Yes, I think I‘ll use patience. We can wait.”

“Bastard!”

“Probably,” Milton said with an unthreatening smile. “No more colorful adjectives to go around the word?”

“No.”

“Fine. We wait.” 

Milton’s touch disappeared; his eyes fell back to his book. Mike silently groaned and started counting the panes in the windows and lines in the hardwood floor. He studied Milton’s shoelaces and the fine polish on the boots. Mike hadn’t remembered Milton in shiny black boots; he’d always been more a loafer man, but today his boots were black with a mirror finish. 

Mike squirmed and shifted. He listened to the turn of the page and the noises of the house. Austin was out there somewhere. The house was never empty; maybe someone would stumble into the sitting room and relieve Mike from the torture of boredom and perverted kindness. The whip would have been welcome across his inflamed back and ass. The pain took him from himself; it loosened his inhibitions; it made everything easier.

“Please.” Had that come from his mouth? Had he spoken that word?

Milton’s eyes were immediately on Mike, the book forgotten. “Do you need to stand up and stretch?”

“Pee,” Mike muttered, knowing his face was red.

“OK. This is thinking time, not torture.” 

Those words could have fooled him. Mike was beginning to wonder if having his fingernails pulled out one by one might be more pleasurable. Milton helped Mike to his feet, his hand secure on his elbow. He marched him into the bathroom and pulled his penis through the fly. Milton’s hand was warm and strange on Mike’s cock as he stood looking at the toilet. It wasn’t that Milton hadn’t touch him plenty, but not for the mundane use of the toilet.

“You could unchain me,” Mike said, trying to find a sarcastic tone. “I don’t need an audience.”

“Go on.” Milton’s hand was wrapped around Mike’s cock, pointing it at the toilet.

Mike stared at the water and the porcelain. Nothing happened.

“There are more unpleasant ways to do this,” Milton said blandly. “You don’t have a choice here.” Milton reached across and turned on the water at the sink.

“I can’t. Not with you here,” Mike said in a strained voice. “Oh, God.”

“Relax. I’ve seen it all before. It’s humiliating if you let it be. It’s very submissive, and you are a submissive.”

Mike knew his cheeks were red; he could feel the heat in his face. He couldn’t do this. Milton was fully dressed, and Mike was standing over the toilet, wishing he could make himself invisible, wishing his heart wasn’t beating wildly, wishing he wasn’t embarrassed as hell and pervertedly excited by this.

Failure. Mike’s bladder clenched in stubborn protest. Not a drop anywhere.

“We’ll do it the other way,” Milton whispered in Mike’s ear. His hand pulled down Mike’s boxers and rested warm on his tummy. “I’ll pass a catheter.”

“You know how?” The question shot out of Mike’s mouth.

“Milton Brown purveyor of all kinky skills,” Milton said with a smile. “Head of the Green Mountain Boys–remember. Gordon’s boy for several years. I know all kinds of scary and crazy things. Step into the tub for me. We’ll do it there in case we have some dripping.”

“I…”

“Boy, do it.” 

The swat to Mike’s exposed ass wasn’t light. He jumped forward. It couldn’t be that awful. Milton wouldn’t hurt him, not for real, He could always safeword.

“Easy.” Milton’s arm swept around Mike’s waist; his beard rubbed against Mike’s neck, familiar in its scratchiness. “This isn’t painful. It’s not the most pleasant, but not painful. It’s about trust and submission. Can you trust me here?”

Mike managed a small nod. He let Milton guide him into the tub. He stood with his knees locked, trying to stop the shaking. Milton kissed Mike’s neck and rubbed the small of Mike’s back. Milton’s fingers ghosted down Mike’s thighs. Mike squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the stupid tears back into place. He wasn’t a wimp. He could do this. It was only Milton; the man taught history.

“Kathmandu,” Milton said in a voice that was barely above a whisper. He unclipped the chains and kissed Mike hard on the forehead. 

“What?” Mike sputtered. “That’s my safeword.”

“My choice.”

“I could’ve done it.”

“Go to the bathroom,” Milton said in a voice that suggested argument would be fruitless. “I’ll be outside.”

Mike slumped against the cool tile and clung to the towel bar. He’d failed at this too. He couldn’t stop the tears; they crowded over the barrier of his eyelids and spilled down his cheeks. He turned the spigot on in the tub and splashed his face with water. He was tough; he wasn’t showing this side to Milton. He wasn’t a little boy who needed coddled and guided. He grabbed a towel with too much force and swiped at his face. The toilet, he needed to use the toilet; that’s what had started this debacle. It was easy without Milton’s body behind him, without Milton’s hand on him. It was all so ordinary and normal and without any thrill. He washed his hands and stared at himself in the mirror above the sink. Ordinary, boring, useless, coward. He was a coward. His brown eyes leered back at him; his lips twisted into the word. Coward.

Mike forced himself from the bathroom. Milton was stretched out on the bed, another book in his hand. He rolled over and smiled at Mike, a small uncomplicated smile full of sympathy that Mike didn’t want.

“I’m fine,” Mike snarled.

“You aren’t. Come lie down with me.” Milton patted the striped blanket.

“Leave me alone.” It was a colossally stupid thing to say in front of a man like Milton. It would guarantee that Milton would never leave him alone. Mike wasn’t a novice at this; he’d seen the results of those words with the other boys.

“Mike, come lie down.” Milton’s hand again patted the blanket. 

“I don’t need this.”

“It’s not about need; it’s about want.” Milton rolled to a sitting position, his chin propped on his hand. “You’re very submissive. Let yourself have it. It doesn’t make you weak or needy or whatever other vile word you want to attach to it. I will play all the games you want to play, but you will also submit to me. It’s that simple. Now come here.”

Mike shuffled forward, wanting but not wanting. “You safeworded for me,” he said, still hovering out of reach.

“Yes, you weren’t ready; it was more control and humiliation than you wanted. You’re happy to have me flay the skin off your back, but you aren’t happy for me to control you that intimately. We’ll work on it. It’s not a failure; it’s just a delay. Now don’t make me beat you before you’ll get comfortable on the bed.” Milton half rose to his feet and caught Mike’s wrist.

Mike should have remembered that Milton was quick. He tumbled forward, landing on the bed. He tried to buck away, but Milton now had superior leverage and easily and rapidly arranged Mike over his knees. Milton’s hand stroked Mike’s tender flesh, a reminder of his capability to hurt. Mike shuddered and lay still.

“Good boy, my beautiful and spirited boy. You’re lovely sprawled over my knee, your skin quivering at my touch.”

Mike fisted the blankets and willed himself to survive the onslaught. He’d provoked another beating. Stupid! Fucking stupid! 

“Relax. I’m only admiring my beautiful prize.”

Mike snorted. Relax while hanging over someone’s knees. Milton was insane.

Milton’s hand traced down Mike’s thigh. It kneaded the bruised flesh, the pressure gentle. It moved upward, running parallel to Mike’s spine. The pressure grew over his shoulders and softened near his flamed ass.

“Better,” Milton said gently, his hand continuing its ministrations. 

How long had Milton been at his impromptu massage? Mike sighed softly at the touch. He couldn’t move now if a grizzly jumped out of the closet; his muscles were all lulled into some sort of trance. 

“This is submission. It can be about pain, but it can also be about pleasure, and harder for you it can be about control. I know you’re not Sheldon or Austin. I won’t organize your lunch or harass you about mowing the lawn. You’re not that sort of boy, and I won’t try to make you that sort of boy. We can have a great deal of fun together, but you will also learn to submit to me, not just during a scene or in role play, but for real. You live with us; you’re not meeting me at a club. I love you. You are my boy. You belong to this family, and you will learn that lesson. I will not give up.”