RETURN TO GRACE

This story is for Minorka, with lots of appreciation

It's been a long night. The sky is colored rich, velvety blue as I get out of the car and enter the hotel. The sleepy man at the reception desk follows me with his eyes but doesn't ask anything. I walk along the bright-lit, empty corridors and hear no sound behind the closed doors. Everyone is asleep; everything is at peace.

I don't knock; it's time. I've even given them a bonus half an hour - so, I suppose I am well expected.

The rooms - the suite - is not shadowed and drowsy as, by all means, others are - but abundantly illuminated and with both its occupants wide awake. I don't need to glance at the messed bed I can see through the open door, the tangled sheets and the disarray of objects left on and around it. I can smell every thing that has happened here in the stiff, sharply blended air. Alcohol, sex, body fluids... blood - and something even more repulsive, something that I don't want to wonder about. The blinds are down, covering the windows, and I go to one of them first, open it widely. Then I turn around and find my little whore with my eyes.

He sits in the corner of the low sofa; fully dressed - his funny neat suit just slightly crumpled. His pose is so disciplined, so reserved - as usual and his hands are folded on his lap, seemingly in a tranquil way - but I can see the white knuckles of the intertwined fingers, the fingernails sticking in so deeply that he must be drawing blood. His hands are trembling very slightly; he is all trembling. I don't know if he tries to suppress it, if he even realizes it.

He's had it bad, I know. I've never given him away for so long before; so long... or so hard. I've heard the rumors about the man, about the things that get him going - that's why at first I refused to deal with him. But I had to do it eventually - Junya was the one who drove me to this decision, with his insolence, his defiance he recently thought he could show me. He needed a lesson. I hope this lesson was enough.

I hope it was not too much for him.

His eyes are surrounded with deep bluish shades of exhaustion and his gaze is spacey, directed somewhere past me. I wonder if he knows I am here, I've come to take him away. I notice that the corner of his mouth is swollen and marked purple - and it is not the trace that a brutal kiss can leave. I wonder if the man hit him and why. Was he trying to struggle? He never struggled before; usually it was enough for him to remember how much the prosperity of the firm depended on him to make him go along with everything that was demanded from him.

Perhaps the man pushed him further than he was able to go. Or perhaps it was another time when Junya thought he should've been defiant.

I suppose the man broke this wish to fight in him; broke it for me.

"It was a most appreciated night, Honma-san," the man says casually.

He leans against the doorpost - tall, muscular, with the hard-lined face and dark eyes shadowed with heavy eyelids. The crimson silk of his bathrobe clings to his athletic frame.

"You are welcome," I nod and come up to Junya.

He flinches as I put my hand on his shoulder and recoils from me, almost panicky. I don't like it - he isn't supposed to behave this way. Before, he always saw me as his savior, his eyes and his words pleading as I came for him. This time his face is blank, his eyes dark and unseeing as he cringes away from me. I sigh.

"It's okay, Junya." My voice and the movement of my hand are very smooth, very quiet as I reach to his face and run the tips of my fingers against his cheek. I can feel him tremble - tremble worse as I touch him. "It's okay. It's me."

I take him by his arm and pull him up on his feet, and for a moment he is pliant like a doll. I draw him closer - and this is when he breaks. His resistance is blind as he flails against me, pushing into my chest, trying to get free. He is silent, except for the little, shallow sobs that escape him - and his eyes are the eyes of a trapped, abused animal - unrecognizing, full of blind panic, desperate.

I catch him; I don't let him go. My arms wrap around his shoulders, pressing him closer, and I bear his inefficient attack, smothering it against my chest. I wait out till his pushes become faint and he just shivers violently. His sobs get less frequent but I can feel, on the shaking of his shoulders, that he is crying.

"It's okay," I repeat running my palms over his arms, trying to stroke him into calmness. "It's over. I am here to take you away. Do you want to go home, Junya?"

Over him I look at the man who moves around the lounge with a weary, predatory grace. A piece of metal flickers in his hands; a nail file. He starts digging with its tip under his fingernails and, with a sick feeling, I realize that he cleans out dry blood.

I try not to look there; I hate blood. I'm always careful with Junya not to injure him. Even on the first time, he bled just a little and I managed not to look at the red streaks on the sheets then.

"Do you understand me?" The pacifying movements of my hands do their work. I let Junya go and look at his tilted face. Now I like what I see in his eyes; relief - and compliance - and quiet, glowing adoration that is always in there when he looks at me.

"Yes," he says, his voice small, tired and broken - and its sound sends a pang of pain through me and at the same time I feel a twist of something dark and pleasant. Junya's voice when it is like this is the most erotic sound in the world I've ever heard. "Please let's go home."

"Of course." I lean down slightly and place a kiss on his temple. A chaste kiss for my sweet whore.

His hair is wet and smells clean and I know it's because he must've taken a shower before I came. Must've washed away the traces of the man's presence on and inside him. It pleases me.

I nod to the man when we walk out and he waves us, distracted for a moment from packing his toys in a flat black suitcase. I have just a brief glimpse at what those things are and I don't want to see more. I let the door slide shut behind us and walk Junya to the elevator.

Now he clings to me, his fingers clasped on the sleeve of my jacket - and my arm around him is the support he desperately needs. It feels good; it is the way I want him to be. I can give him all support, all protection he needs.

His hand that clutches on me is trembling slightly and, as the cuff of his shirt slips down a little, I can see a scrape of raw flesh around his wrist. Must be the handcuffs. Well, he'll have to be careful in the next few days not letting anyone at the office see that.

In the elevator Junya goes weak suddenly, slumps against me. His pale face with the ink-blackness of the eyelashes looks so defenseless - the face of almost heartbreaking beauty. The face that is full of such innocence, even though his mouth is swollen and tender with the traces of someone's teeth on it, with someone's cock that battered between his lips. He is a prostitute with a face of a child and the eyes that have fireflies dancing in them when he smiles.

He leans heavily against me as we walk out of the hotel and to the car. The driver holds the door open as I help Junya get inside and slide in with him. The driver's face is calm, his eyes wander at the brightening, azure-blue sky above us. He's learned not to ask any questions, not to be surprised with anything; that's what I pay him for.

I pull Junya closer to me as the car starts, and he doesn't resist. His head lolls against my shoulder and his body in the cradle of my arm is weak and quaked with shivers.

"You'll get warm soon," I say. "I'll make you feel warm."

I hesitate before opening the portable bar and reaching for a bottle of whiskey.

"Did you drink?" I ask him. I don't like him to. Junya's eyelashes fly up, his eyes become confused, guilty for a few moments.

"I don't... remember."

"It's okay," I whisper, comforting him, letting him know I am not angry. I reach to his mouth and plunge my tongue into it. There is a faint taste of alcohol - and of the other man there - and there is also salty, metallic taste of blood. At first Junya tries to get away from me, my lips and tongue hurting him - but a moment later the struggle is gone and he tilts towards me, his body's answer instinctive, immediate.

He is mine. I've been his first - and I'll be his only one, no matter how many men he'll let pass through his body by my order. He knows that he belongs to me - deep down he knows it even when he defies me or tries to escape me. He is mine to take care of him and to punish him - and nobody will ever step between us.

My thumb runs against his cheek, pressing on the corner of his bruised mouth. He makes a short painful sound that I catch with my lips. The motions of his tongue are feverish, desperate - as if he tries to submerge himself into kissing me, tries to forget this way that it hurts.

I withdraw slightly and reach my hand to the button that raises the screen between the driver and the back seat. The driver turns towards me very slightly.

"Where now, sir?"

"Just keep driving," I answer.

Junya's eyes are huge and dark - looking almost tragic in the shadows that fall on his face when the tinted screen is raised. But his mouth is so soft - kissed bloody and blue - and still chaste, still breathtakingly touching as his bottom lip trembles slightly when he asks:

"We are going home, aren't we?"

"We are," I answer and take him by his upper arms, pulling him across the seat.

He lets me settle him, his eyes wandering over the car's ceiling, but he winces when I pull off his tie and start unbuttoning his shirt. It's most likely because I hurt him - he doesn't say anything, doesn't try to draw my hand away. Below the collar I see the raw, red traces on his skin, probably left by fingernails. I brush the tips of my fingers against them and elicit another shiver from Junya.

I am contented; the man listened to what I told him - and every mark he left on Junya's body is where the clothes will cover it. Except for his mouth but I think it'll hardly be noticeable in a day or two.

"It hurts," he complains when my fingernails scratch against the sore place.

"I know," I say. I can never resist him saying that; I try to believe that I'm never intentionally rough with him, that if it happens, it's only by accident - but I can't help admitting what a surge of pleasure the sound of his faltering voice sends through me, what a need to hear it again and again.

I lean over him, locking my lips on his again, making it impossible for him to talk, trying to expel my own impulses. He moans in my mouth as my hand tightens on his shoulder. I kiss him long enough to feel dizzy, to feel almost satiated. He gasps softly when I let him go. I see him try to curl, as if shielding his body from me - and I am surely not going to let him do it.

I hold him down and he doesn't struggle, probably too tired for it. He bites the inside of his lip when I open his shirt.

I draw in a sharp breath; it looks worse than I expected. There is an expression of acute shame in Junya's eyes, as if it's him who's done it. After all those years, he still feels shame. And in a way it's true; it was his own fault that it had been done to him. If he didn't push me so far, I would never let it happen.

"Shh," I whisper, trailing the kisses over his chest, "it's nothing. You'll be all right."

He shivers as I clamp my lips on his split nipple. I know there is blood in my mouth but it's okay as long as I don't see it. My fingers trace the welts on his skin and I feel the small movements of his body, so finely attuned to my touches. The little gasps he makes are distressingly beautiful.

It never stops surprising me - that he sounds so much the same in pleasure and in pain - so much the same that sometimes I can't distinguish what is what. Sometimes I think he can't distinguish it either.

"I didn't want it to happen," I say between the kisses, glancing at him. "You realize it, don't you? If you only didn't listen to Fujita when he tried to set you against me, if you didn't antagonize me... He used you, he wanted you for himself, he doesn't care for your wellbeing as I do. And now look where following his advice brought you... Where is he when you need him? And was it worth a try?"

The corner of his mouth starts trembling as I say it and I don't know if it is the meaning of my words or the infinite gentleness of my voice. I kiss him again - and when I look, there is an exhausted, resigned expression in Junya's eyes. His eyelashes flutter softly as I run the back of my hand against his cheek, sensing the slight wetness of his tears.

"But it's okay now, don't worry, my little one." My voice drops on the last words; despite everything, I am still reluctant to call him with an endearment, to let him know exactly how much he means for me. "I'm not angry any more. I had to punish you but now I forgive you. I won't let anyone hurt you any more."

And saying that, at this moment, I really believe it - even though I know it is not true and Junya shouldn't, can't believe me.

"Do you want me to forgive you?" I ask looking at his face - and I see my words reach him and he knows exactly what they mean. There is a moment when his body seems to be clenched in a spasm, his thin eyebrows broken painfully over the eyes that seem to ooze despair - and then he whispers, almost without a sound but unmistakably:

"Yes."

This word is all I need. I open his belt and pull his zipper and pull his pants down, revealing more of dark, purple bruises on his bottom belly, the blue traces of sprains in his groin. His cock is swollen and limp and he cries out as I take it to my mouth. He is crying again with pain as I suck on it but I feel it harden in my mouth. My touch never fails to affect him; I never have to doubt it. His body will never reject me.

His head tosses from side to side as I work on him, his plaintive, childish cries unceasing now, sounding as if he can't take enough breath. I let his cock go and take it in my hand at once, the movement made slick and easy with the coating of my spit on it. I see Junya clench his teeth in pain at the rougher touch - but his hips push towards me, his cock strives into my hand. I force my knee between his legs, making him spread wider, and see his swollen, shut anus, the coloring of it so purple-blue that it almost make me blanch to see it.

I pause for a moment, looking not at him but above, through the shaded window, to the streets that slide past our car. The morning is in full swing, the people hurry past on their business. I feel so insulated in here, in the world of my own, the world that belongs just to me - and him. I am happy.

I free my straining cock and set it against his entrance. I put my mouth on Junya's as I thrust in - and swallow his cry. All through my body, I can feel him convulse as I drive my cock inside him - and I shiver, too, at the heat and tightness that envelop me. I feel his cock pulse in my hand as pain is about to take over his erection - and I never let it go, work him into hardness again, almost effortlessly. I thrust into him and stroke his cock and he moans in his sweetest voice that I want to hear over and over. Sometimes I feel that nothing in my life has ever made me so happy as listening to him at the moments like this - and, which frightens me more, nothing will ever make me so happy.

How can I ever let him go? How can I relinquish him? Fujita is a fool if he thinks he can fight me, can win me. Junya is mine, will always be mine.

"I love you," I say looking at Junya's desperate face. My voice make his eyelashes flutter, his lips tremble - and his body clenches around me, sending me over the edge. "Do you know that?"

"I do," he answers and his come spurts on my hand as the shivers hit him. I let myself go, coming inside him in a long spasm of sweeping pleasure.

I hold him in my arms until he stops shivering. My lips are pressed to his temple and I feel the moistness of his tears and sweat on his skin.

"Now we are almost home," I say and push the button, the screen slides down. The driver sees my sign in the mirror and takes a turn.

I have enough time to help Junya pull his clothes back, make everything look almost as neat and decent as before. Our hands stumble against each other over the buttons of his shirt, and I can feel his fingers shake. I smile to him; his eyes are the eyes of a drowning man who clings to the only support he has - and this support is my gaze.

The car pulls to stop at the porch of his house and I get out, extend my hand to him to help him. His fingers are ice-cold and squeeze my hand almost painfully. I let him do it - I pull our linked hands to my lips and kiss his fingers. I don't care if anyone looks, if anyone sees us; I don't care for anyone - this is the ultimate proof of how big my love is.

Then he turns away and walks to his door, his steps almost straight even though I know he probably will collapse as soon as he gets to his flat. I watch him until the door shuts behind him - and then I drive away.

THE END