The Scent of Winter: A Novella Read online

  “I said I’m sorry...sir. I forgot myself. I took something that wasn’t mine to take and nearly lost it in the woods. I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t belong to me. I belong to you.”

  Søren nodded his approval.

  “You’re forgiven,” he said. “Now get in.”

  Kingsley dove into the pile of wool blankets and lay on his side in the fetal position. Søren stood over him, looking down at him. He didn’t seem the least bit cold. Of course he had on his winter boots, wool socks, thick black trousers, a shirt, a sweater, a heavy wool coat and a black and white scarf. But it was more than the clothes. The cold seemed incapable of touching Søren. Or it could touch him but it couldn’t harm him. Snow fell onto snow but the snow never complained of the cold. It was the cold.

  “Warmer?” Søren asked after Kingsley had lain there a few minutes.

  Kingsley nodded, still rolled onto his side with his knees to his chest.

  “Lie on your back,” Søren said, removing his gloves.

  Kingsley did as he was told and found that once he lay flat on the bedroll with the blankets over him, he was quite comfortable again. Almost warm. He could sleep out here all night naked under these blankets and he would be fine. Well, until he had to go out and take a piss. But until then, he would be fine.

  Søren removed his coat and laid it atop the blanket pile. He took off no other clothing—much to Kingsley’s annoyance—but he did slide in under the blankets and on top of Kingsley, which was heaven. Face to face, eye to eye, hip to hip, Kingsley naked and Søren clothed. And Kingsley discovered something lovely then. He wasn’t just comfortable. He wasn’t just warm. He was hot.

  “Better?” Søren asked.

  “Much. Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re welcome.” Søren kissed him on the lips, a cold hard kiss that left Kingsley sweating.

  With Søren’s full weight on him, Kingsley struggled a little to breathe. Søren was even taller now than when Kingsley had first laid eyes on him in January. Taller, stronger, heavier...a boy no more, if Søren had ever been one. Kingsley wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t naive. He knew about those men who acquired boys his age, collected them, seduced them, and then discarded them when they grew into men and lost all their boyish beauty. Would Søren still want him when Kingsley was twenty, twenty-five, thirty, fifty? When Kingsley had crow’s feet and gray hair? Would anyone still want him then? Would he even live that long?

  “Will you still love me when I’m fifty years old?” Kingsley asked Søren between kisses.

  “No,” Søren said, pressing his cool lips to Kingsley’s neck.

  “No?”

  “I don’t even love you now,” Søren said. “Why would I love you in thirty-three years?”

  “Ah, good point.” Kingsley smiled at the ceiling of the fishing shack. “Well...will you still want me when I’m fifty? Like this?” Kingsley asked, pushing his hips against Søren’s.

  “You mean naked and pathetic and willing to do whatever I tell you to do?”

  “Yes,” Kingsley said, pressing his erection up and against Søren once again.

  “Time will tell,” Søren said. “Now hold still.”

  “Hold still?”

  Søren reached down and laid his hand flat onto the ice floor.

  His bare hand.

  The bare ice.

  This wasn’t a good sign.

  Søren’s eyes were locked onto Kingsley’s, who lay there trapped underneath Søren’s body.

  “Søren?” Kingsley whispered.

  “Yes?”

  “Aren’t you going to hurt your hand like that?”

  “You said I had ice in my veins,” Søren said. “Did you not?”

  “I might have implied something like that.”

  “Then the ice won’t hurt me, will it?” Søren asked, his hand still pressed flat and hard to the ice.

  “I was only joking.”

  “Were you?”

  “I don’t really think you have ice in your veins.”

  “No?”

  “No, sir,” Kingsley said. “Only living beings have veins.”

  “That was a joke, too, wasn’t it?” Søren asked.

  “A little joke.”

  “You like to make jokes, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes. I guess.” Kingsley wasn’t laughing or smiling anymore.

  “I know a joke,” Søren said.

  “You do?”

  He nodded.

  “It goes like this—what did the French whore say when his cock was grabbed by an ice-cold hand?”

  “I—”

  The punchline to the joke was, of course, a pained animal howl. It was uncontrollable, erupting from deep inside Kingsley, and there was no stopping the scream on the way out.

  “That’s right,” Søren rasped into Kingsley’s ear. “You know this joke.”

  “Jesus fucking God Christ in heaven you evil son of a bitch…” Kingsley said as his shoulders came off the blanket. He swore in English. He swore in French. He swore in what little Latin he’d learned.

  “Funny joke, isn’t it?” Søren said.

  “I hate you. I fucking hate you so much...” Kingsley’s eyes watered again. His stomach muscles had contracted from the cold so hard he almost ejaculated out of sheer shock to his anatomy.

  “Tell me how much you hate me,” Søren said. “I like to hear it.”

  Kingsley might have told him and told him in excruciating detail that involved not only his hatred for Søren, but also for Søren’s mother, his father, his grandparents, his cousins, his as-yet unborn progeny and even any pets he might have had in his life or would have someday.

  But.

  Søren’s hand heated up quickly against Kingsley’s hot flesh, and now it was an almost-warm hand that stroked his cock under the blankets. A warm hand and growing warmer by the moment. Søren massaged him with long strokes, hard strokes, sensual strokes that brought Kingsley to the very edge of orgasm so quickly he’d forgotten how much pain he’d been in only seconds earlier.

  “I have to come,” Kingsley panted. The muscles in his thighs quivered with the need and his back shook and his hips pulsed and pulsed against Søren’s hand, and Kingsley couldn’t have stopped if someone had held a gun to his head.

  “You’re going to come,” Søren said, still stroking, stroking... “You’re going to come until you’re empty. I want you spent. I want you hollow. I want you to have nothing left inside you. No will to live. No will to die. No anger. No fight. No hope. No sorrow. Nothing. You’re going to come and come and come until you are a shell of yourself and then maybe, just maybe, I will be able to put up with your company the rest of the evening. I’m certainly not going to spend any time with you until you learn that you’re too old for temper tantrums. You understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Søren stroked him harder, faster, and that coil in Kingsley’s groin tightened, tightened like a clock that had been wound too much so that the spring was about to break. Oh, he was about to break. He rocked against Søren’s hand, pressing his head against Søren’s chest, watching the blankets shifting as they moved in the lantern light. Ah, it was bliss. It was heaven. It was ecstasy. His hips rose off the bedroll and he came with a pained whimper, the orgasm was so strong. Semen spurted out of him and onto his stomach in a hot wet rush.

  “Good.” Søren punctuated that word with a kiss on Kingsley’s naked shoulder. Then he breathed onto the kiss and Søren’s breath was warm, shockingly warm, and Kingsley melted into the floor. It was a miracle the ice didn’t steam underneath him. “Now again.”

  Søren ran his bare hand over the wetness on Kingsley’s stomach, then used it as lubricant when he started stroking Kingsley. Søren hadn’t been kidding. He really did mean to make Kingsley come again and again and again until he was empty. It hurt at first, being rubbed right after the first orgasm, but soon enough he was rock hard again, pulsing his hips into Søren’s hand, coming again with a shudder and a cry.
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br />   “One more, I think,” Søren said and kissed Kingsley on the forehead. “It usually takes three with you.”

  “Three?”

  “Three climaxes before you’re spent,” he said.

  “Does it?” Kingsley asked.

  “It does. I know your body better than you do,” Søren said.

  “Because it belongs to you.”

  “Exactly.” Søren smiled as he started massaging Kingsley’s cock again for the third time. At first Kingsley was certain it wasn’t going to happen. He was already spent. He’d come twice in under ten minutes. A third time so quickly? He was a young man, yes, but still mortal.

  “I don’t think I can,” Kingsley said, wincing as Søren pulled gently on his wet cock.

  “You can. I know you can. You can and you will. You don’t have a choice.”

  “I don’t?” Kingsley wanted only to sleep now and sleep for ages in Søren’s arms. His eyelids were heavy and his body leaden. He was sweating hard from the exertion of two powerful orgasms.

  “You don’t,” Søren said. “You’re going to come again because you have to. It’s what I want.”

  “Why?” Kingsley asked. “Why do you want me to come? It’s me, not you. You don’t get any pleasure out of it. Do you?”

  Søren lowered his head and put his lips to Kingsley’s ear.

  “I like the sound you make when you come,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “More than music. Which is why you’ll make it for me again, won’t you?”

  “Yes,” Kingsley said, nodding tiredly. “I will for you.”

  “Right.” Søren’s hand slipped from Kingsley’s cock down to his testicles. He held them lightly and Kingsley shivered with pleasure.

  “I don’t have any choice.”

  “No, you don’t.” Søren stroked the tender skin behind Kingsley’s testicles. When Kingsley was about to beg for it, Søren pushed a single wet finger inside him. Kingsley quivered in Søren’s arms, in pleasure and in happiness.

  “That’s good,” Kingsley said breathlessly. “I don’t want to have a choice. I just want to do what you tell me to do.”

  “Obedience is its own reward, Kingsley.”

  Kingsley thought coming so hard half his brain shot out of his cock was a damn good reward, too, but he didn’t say that out loud.

  Søren pressed his fingertip into that place inside him that ached to be touched, and in that perfect way Søren knew how to touch him. Kingsley’s body went tight and taut again. His heels chaffed the blankets as Søren stroked him internally. He was so hot, so aroused, he almost wanted to kick the blankets off. But the one rational cell of his brain that was still functioning warned him he’d regret doing that very quickly. His every breath steamed. The tiny fishing hut felt like a sauna. His body was open and aching. Søren must have felt that openness because he pushed another wet finger into him. Kingsley gasped and moaned, twitching at the tender touches. God, why couldn’t he live like this all the time? Naked, a slave to Søren, a toy, a whore to be used at Søren’s will as Kingsley served at Søren’s pleasure.

  Søren kneaded that aching organ inside him and Kingsley could do nothing but take it. He was lost, insane, writhing in need. He threw his leg over Søren’s without asking permission first. Søren didn’t object, merely kept pushing and pushing his fingers into that spot—gently but constantly, keeping the pressure firm and right and perfect.

  “You’re going to come for me again, aren’t you?” Søren asked. “From this, you’ll come.”

  Kingsley licked his dry lips. He couldn’t talk, only nod.

  “Every drop, Kingsley,” Søren said. There was a hard edge to his voice. “Don’t hold back from me. I’ll know, and we’ll do this again with you naked on the bare ice.”

  Kingsley believed the threat. He had no doubt in his mind Søren would make him come while naked on the ice floor if he disobeyed. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He had no choice but to obey.

  The orgasm built slowly and steadily. It was different, coming from the inside of his body than the outside. Deeper. Softer. But more powerful, too, in a way, since only Søren could make him come like this. He writhed so hard against the wool beneath him he could feel his skin abrading. The pain stoked the pleasure. He would come any moment.

  “Even if...” Kingsley began. “Even if you don’t love me when I’m fifty, I’ll still love you.”

  “Could you be more of a whore?” Søren asked. A rhetorical question, obviously, but Kingsley answered it anyway.

  “Probably.”

  “Prove it.”

  Kingsley proved it. His back arched as a muscle spasm shot electric pleasure through every nerve in his body. He came with a cry that was more like a shout that went on and on as Søren fucked him—hard—with his fingers. He was impaled, split, and writhing. It wasn’t an orgasm so much as a full-body convulsion. The whole valley must have heard his cry of pleasure. He hoped it did. He hoped someone heard. He needed to be heard. Kingsley needed the world to know who he belonged to. If he couldn’t shout it from the rooftops, he’d shout it here.

  It passed at last, and he lay utterly spent and empty and hollow on Søren’s arm, his lover’s bicep better than any pillow.

  “Now will you behave?” Søren asked him, easing his fingers out of Kingsley’s body.

  “Define ‘behave.’ ”

  Søren only sighed. He tossed the blankets off them and stood up. Kingsley took the opportunity to dress as quickly as he could. He knew he only had a minute or two before he’d start to feel the cold again.

  “I’ll behave, I promise,” Kingsley said. “I want to please you. Always. In every way.”

  “Don’t wander off again and get lost in the woods, and I’ll be a very happy man.”

  Kingsley grinned. “If that’s all it takes to make you happy, then you should be a lot happier than you are, mon ami.”

  “I am happy,” Søren said.

  “You are?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Kingsley was happy. He’d just been tortured into orgasming three times. Happy might have been an understatement. They were alone together. The night was so clear and beautiful it could have been a picture off the front of a Christmas card. And they’d just shared a brutal, intimate hour together.

  “You like me, don’t you?” Kingsley asked.

  Søren rolled his eyes. “Come along, Whore. Back to school with you before you wander off again and end up in Canada.”

  “I might like Canada,” Kingsley said.

  Søren grabbed him by the lapels of his coat, zipped it up and wrapped his scarf so hard around Kingsley neck he almost choked to death. “Canada might not like you,” he said. “The people there tend to be decent and polite.”

  “So nothing like you then,” Kingsley said. “Too bad. I guess I’ll just stay here.”

  Søren grabbed Kingsley by the back of the hair and set him walking across the ice to the woods.

  They walked in silence. It made Kingsley nervous. He’d rather talk, but Søren wouldn’t let him. In the silence, he had only his thoughts for company…and they were not good thoughts. If Søren hadn’t found him, he might have died out here in the woods tonight. A humbling possibility. And all because he’d let his jealously get the best of him. It had been juvenile. It had been a temper tantrum. He should be ashamed of himself. And he was.

  “Thank you,” Kingsley said when they reached the border of the school’s property. Søren had darkened the lantern so no one would spot them in the woods. Kingsley felt like a ghost standing there, like everyone was real and corporeal and alive but him and Søren. If only that were true.

  “You’re welcome,” Søren said. He started to step out of the woods and onto the cobblestone path that led back to the dorms when Kingsley reached out and grabbed him by the hand.

  “What?” Søren asked.

  “I don’t want to go back yet. Stay with me. Please?”

  Søren looked at him through n
arrowed eyes. Then he stepped back into the darkness of the forest, taking Kingsley with him. They made a circuit of the school until they stood in the dense thicket of cedars that backed up to the chapel. Kingsley heard music...singing...

  “Choir practice,” Søren said.

  The school’s choir was small—only ten boys—but they were well-trained and had won competitions for their angelic singing. They were singing an old song—“In the Bleak Midwinter.” Standing there with his hand in Søren’s hand listening to the choir, Kingsley heard the lyrics in a way he never had before. Mary in the stable with the newborn Christ...

  Angels and archangels may have gathered there

  Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air

  But his mother only in her maiden bliss

  Worshiped the beloved with a kiss

  Kingsley wished there were angels here to worship Søren. He deserved it, all of it, the seraphim and the archangels and all the heavenly host. But Kingsley couldn’t give that to him. So he kissed him instead.

  And lo, a Christmas miracle occurred, and the only miracle Kingsley wished for.

  Søren returned the kiss.

  The kiss was as heated as the night was cold. It was tender as the night was bitter. It was light as the night was dark. It ended only when the song did—and if Kingsley remembered correctly, the choir had sung it twice.

  Søren stepped away from him at last. He turned his back to Kingsley, and started to walk to the school once more. Then he stopped and turned back around.

  “I swear on all that is holy, if you ever get lost again...” Søren said, and shook his head.

  “You’ll kill me?” Kingsley asked.

  Søren smiled. “Probably.”

  “Mr. Edge?”

  Kingsley blinked himself awake.

  The driver was looking at him through the rolled down partition.

  “Yes?” Kingsley said, sitting up again. He’d fallen asleep on the long drive.

  The driver pointed out the window.

  “We’re here.”

  3

  Trillium Woods

  Fully awake, Kingsley glanced out the window at his surroundings.