Excerpt from "Unfinished Business"

Max rose. Only an inch or two separated them in height, but Max towered over him. "You're late." He took hold of a fistful of Ethan's hair and brought his face close. "You know that I don't like to be kept waiting."

The blue eyes burned in to his. Ethan's heart hammered against his ribs. "It was only a few minutes. The traffic-"

Max's fingers tightened. "Any amount of time you keep me waiting is too long."

"I know. I'm sorry." Ethan couldn't guess what Max would do next. He might shove him to his knees and order him to suck him off. He might bend him over the desk and fuck him within an inch of his life. Or it might just be a long slow kiss. Keeping him guessing was part of how Max asserted his control and that excited Ethan. It was what Max wanted, what pleased him. It was what Ethan loved.

Max pulled his face closer. "You'll have to make that up to me."

Ethan's lips parted, hungry for Max's mouth. "Yes, Max," he whispered. Max's mouth covered his in a kiss that stripped Ethan to the bone, made him feel utterly naked. Max's arms both cradled and trapped him. I own your mouth, that kiss said, I own your ass, I own your cock and I'll have my fill of you.

"Are you hungry?" Max asked, the words warm breath on Ethan's neck.

Ethan pushed his erection against Max's crotch. "Starved."

"Good." Max released him from his grip, took Ethan's hand like a courtier and led him to the bedroom.

The drapes were closed against the glare of the afternoon sun. In that artificial twilight, candlelight glittered from various perches around Max's bedroom. The covers of the wide bed were folded back, waiting.

Max slipped Ethan's jacket off his shoulders and laid it over a chair, then loosened Ethan's tie and let it fall to the floor. One by one, he undid the buttons of Ethan's shirt. The subtle pressure of his fingers as they moved down his torso made Ethan's heart hammer against his ribs. The smell of him - a touch of cologne and dark maleness - the radius of body warmth, the nearness of him made Ethan hungry and anxious. Max could lavish him with love or withhold everything and Ethan didn't know which he planned.

"You owe me," Max said, slowly opening Ethan's shirt, revealing him a little at a time, "and you'll give me whatever I ask."

Max's fingers moved over his chest, grazing a nipple. Ethan sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. "Anything, Max." Whatever Max would demand of him, whatever Max wanted him to be for the next few hours, he would give without question and happily lose himself in it all. He would let Max take him, thoroughly, deeply, roughly if that was how he wanted it.

Max slid the shirt down Ethan's arms and it dropped to the floor. He unbuckled Ethan's belt, opened his trousers and then eased his briefs down his hips. In a moment more, Ethan was naked and vulnerable, hard with desire. Just the way Max wanted him.

Max stood back to look at him, pride and desire in his eyes. It was the way a man looked at a thoroughbred racehorse, a work of art, a fine-tuned race car - testimonial to his owner's good taste and superiority as a man. A possession, except for the heat in those blue eyes that said he was not just a thing of beauty, but valued for himself. Loved.

Max raised an arm and traced Ethan's lips with his finger. "Then do it."

As naturally as breathing, Ethan closed the distance between them and lowered himself to his knees before Max. He opened Max's belt and fly, then took Max's rigid cock in his hand and looked up at him. The blue eyes burned into his. You're mine, those eyes said. Body and soul, flesh and heart.

Max rested his hand against the back of Ethan's head, gentle and caressing for the moment. Ethan kissed his cock, a sign of his devotion. Then as Ethan sank his mouth down the length of Max's cock, that hand tightened into a fist in his hair, a grip that tread the edge of pain. Above him, Max sighed with pleasure, like a man come home at last.

Yours. Body and soul, flesh and heart. This was where Ethan knew he belonged: at Max's feet, worshiping him.

* * *

To Max at that moment, the most beautiful part of Ethan's body was the back of his neck. Candlelight shone there, turning his skin nearly as gold as his hair. Max slid his hand up the length of Ethan's back and gripped him at the point his neck joined his shoulder. Gold hair caressed his fingers as Ethan, on his hands and knees before him, turned his head, trying to see him. His neck was exposed and vulnerable, like a man's head bowed in submission before his master, or a penitent son before his father. It was that submission which moved Max and excited him like nothing else.

He pushed the head of his cock against Ethan's hole, prodding at him, then pushed into him. Ethan's head came up and he gasped in a breath at the invasion. "You like my cock up your ass," Max said, half a question.

"Yes, Max," came the answer, soft and hungry.

"How do you want it?" He pushed in deeper.

Ethan gasped in another breath. Already his back was sheened with sweat. "Any way you choose to give it to me."

"That's right." Max thrust deep. Ethan moaned and writhed beneath him, pushing back against him to deepen his thrusts. His back was arched, the long muscles taut.

"Like that," Ethan murmured, "just like that."

Max had never quite understood how a man could give himself so completely to another as to let himself be taken like this and not feel violated. He knew the power it had over Ethan, that it was sustenance to him. But how it was so, he couldn't grasp. That was a secret of Ethan's temperament, something locked deep in his heart: a need to be taken as powerful as his own to take, a love of subjugating himself as strong as Max's to conquer. That was Ethan's gift and he gave it to Max alone.

He gripped Ethan by a hip, driving deeply into him. It was now, perhaps, that he loved Ethan best, though the words to tell him never came easily. Words fell short or were misinterpreted. It's what a man did that told his truth and exposed what lay in his heart.

Beneath him Ethan writhed with pleasure, the muscles in his back and thighs contracting and releasing as he pushed back against him, panting in rhythm to their movements. "Don't stop," he begged, half conscious of the words. ". . . so good . . . you're so good to me." Words that testified, however imprecisely, to Max's power over him. But they also testified to the power he had over Max.

Max knew Ethan's rhythms, knew what he wanted, what to give him and when. That was part of his sense of control, but it was also part of the balance of things between them. Too much or too little of any one thing and the pleasure suffered.

He reached down, encircling Ethan's waist with an arm and closed the rigid length of Ethan's cock in his fist, slick with lube. Ethan was groaning now, gone someplace beyond words, his hips jerking as he fucked the tight circle of Max's fingers. The pitch of those moans changed, became more desperate.

There was something about Ethan just before he came that reminded Max of a drowning man. The last few moments before conscious will surrendered and the head went under the waves. It was that point of complete surrender, the giving up of the last of one's will to a greater power which was Ethan's most perfect moment of beauty.

It drove Max over the edge. He felt the downward pull in his belly, the tightening of his balls. He saw the reflection of his impending climax in Ethan whose head was thrown back and his eyes squeezed shut, heard it in the desperation of Ethan's cries that were a blend of both pain and pleasure.

They came together, Ethan in Max's fist and Max buried to the hilt in Ethan's heat. Max clamped Ethan in his embrace as though he were trying to absorb Ethan's body into his own. They strained against each other as if resisting some force tearing their flesh apart.

After awhile, their bodies calmed, the hard breathing subsided and tightened muscles relaxed. They lay sprawled across the bed, Max keeping Ethan close, though he knew that Ethan was like a cat in this regard, waiting patiently for Max to release him from the cage of his arms.

Max didn't want to let him go. He never did, after love. This was when he needed Ethan the most, though he had never said so. Perhaps it was the symbolism that made him uneasy - Ethan wanting to pull away from him, wanting distance. Or maybe it was only a lover's insecurity, one of the thorns that came with the rose. But the moment passed, Max relaxed his grip and Ethan rolled away from him, breathing soft and even, contented and drifting toward sleep.