Gannon Morgan [Seven Brothers for McBride 2] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (14 page)

After praising Ollie to the heavens for his food, McBride asked again about Jonas and Caleb.

“When Jonas bought us, we lived with him in his house. Not here in Woven Spire, but over in Curve Port.” Ollie pointed in the general direction of the massive seaport town. McBride had been there once to conduct business for his farm. It was crowded, smelly, and noisy. He was very glad when he returned to Woven Spire. “We each had our own room, and he would come to us when he was…in need.”

The way Ollie said that made McBride’s belly tighten. “In need of what?”

“Blood.” After a very deep breath, Ollie added, “And sex.”

McBride pushed his plate away. He wasn’t hungry at all anymore. “He took you against your will?”

“No.” Ollie pushed his plate away as well. “Oh, I’m making a mess of this. Jonas only fed from my brothers, and he didn’t force me to—that is, I wanted to do—Jonas just had me…”

McBride almost didn’t want to hear him say it. If he spoke of what had been done to him, it seemed to make the pain more real. But then McBride thought of Alden, and how talking about the abuse helped him to realize he wouldn’t be treated that way here. McBride wasn’t a man who solved things with his fists, and he wasn’t going to let anyone else do so under his watch. Moreover, he wasn’t going to let one of his men suffer needless regret for what a landed gentryman had done to him against his will.

“Jonas had me do things to him.” Ollie turned very red and then rose to clear off the table.

Rising in turn, McBride reached out for Ollie, taking his hand gently and leading him into the living room. There was one small couch and a table. McBride put Ollie on the sofa and settled on the table directly across from him.

“What did you do to Jonas?” McBride needed to be clear if he was going to help. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions or make Ollie feel worse about what had happened.

“What does it matter?” Ollie looked out his front window toward the big house. “He’s gone now.” Ollie sounded sad, almost as if he missed Jonas desperately. That stunned McBride and made him think he had the situation wrong.

“I need to know. I can’t help you or your brothers unless I understand.”

“It won’t help you with Caleb.”

For a moment, McBride thought his liaison with Caleb had already been exposed, but Ollie’s next words disabused him of that notion.

“Jonas didn’t make Caleb so angry and rebellious. Caleb has always been that way. Although, the last few days he’s been nicer.” Ollie smiled. “I think he really took to heart that you won’t get him a thrall unless he behaves.”

“I’m not worried about Caleb.” Not outwardly, at any rate, McBride thought. “I want to help you.”

“Me? I’m fine.” Ollie fiddled with the seam on the side of his pant leg.

“You’re scared.”

“No.”

“You’re afraid of everything tumbling out when you get a thrall.” It was a guess, but apparently a good one.

Reluctantly, Ollie nodded. “I don’t want to think of Jonas when I’m with my mate.”

And that explained what Jonas had his slammers, or at least one of the Morgan brothers, do to him. Ollie had fucked Jonas at Jonas’s prompting. A part of McBride was so stunned he tried to push the information away, but he couldn’t. Once he knew, he couldn’t unknow the specifics. Like what his father had done with Jonas to a thrall, he now knew even more shocking details. Just what kind of a man was this Jonas?

“What you did with Jonas was what he ordered you to do. It’s not your fault.”

“Ordered me? No, you don’t understand.” Ollie’s gaze went soft focused and dreamy. “I did what he asked me to do because I wanted to do it. Jonas was so beautiful. Since he was smaller than me, I could pretend that he was my thrall.”

“And Jonas enjoyed that?”

“He loved it so much that he said he wanted to run away with me.” A mixture of shame and lust twisted Ollie’s features.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. Jonas never should have asked for such things from you.”

“I know, but I also feel that maybe it was my fault that he did. I liked when he fed from me, so I was always stroking myself and I think he thought—well, it doesn’t matter now. He’s gone.”

“You stroke yourself with me and I don’t think that gives me the right to push you into a situation that isn’t of your choosing.”

“You’re different.” Ollie met McBride’s gaze. “You’re a man of law and order. You wouldn’t do something that broke the rules like that.”

The implicit trust Ollie had in him caused McBride a bit of shame for the wrongs he’d already committed with Caleb. And probably Gannon and Alden. He racked his brain trying to think if it was wrong for him to drink from his slammer while he in turn drank and fucked his thrall. McBride didn’t think the law was as exact as that, but the fact that he was ashamed by being pushed by lust to do such a thing made it inherently wrong. He hadn’t forced either man to do his bidding, but he hadn’t discussed the situation before he simply acted on impulse.

“And I don’t want to lie.” Ollie looked down and then up. “I wanted to do those things to Jonas. I…I think I was halfway in love with him.”

Something softened in McBride’s heart. “Did Jonas love you back?”

“I think he did.” Ollie dropped his gaze to the floor again. “But Caleb said he was just using me.”

Was that why Caleb seemed so driven to lure McBride into a compromising position with him? It was just a way of getting back at the upper class.

“What do you think?” McBride asked softly. He thought Ollie was devastated when Jonas left without him and that was what had caused his stricken look at the notion of getting a thrall. Ollie wanted Jonas, but he realized that could never be.

“I think Jonas loved me in his way, but we couldn’t be together because of who he is.”

That was exactly what McBride had been thinking about Caleb, but now he was even less clear on what Caleb’s motives were. Revenge? Honest interest? A perverse need to see just how far he could go before McBride slapped him down? One thing was certain. Whatever Caleb’s reasons were didn’t matter. McBride was in charge, and he was the only one who could call a stop to the situation before it got completely out of hand.

“Are you ever going to tell me the tale of how you got this scar?” Alden traced the line that went from Gannon’s hairline, down and across his eye, finally ending at a spot on his left cheek.

Gannon never wanted to tell that tale to anyone. Only his brothers knew the story, and he’d like to keep it that way. But Alden was his mate now. Lying to him was wrong and then Gannon would have to tell his brothers that he fibbed, so he decided he’d better tell the truth.

“When I was younger, I was very nosey.” Gannon recalled the dark and stark hallways of the slammer house. “Do you know where slammers come from?”

“Prisons?”

“Right.”

“I always thought they were like the thrall house.”

“Not even close.” Gannon shook his head. “You lived in a big house where you had your own room, right?”

“Once I was old enough, yes. But before then I was in the dorm area with all the other boys my age.”

“A prison is like living in your own room but all day long. The only time I saw the other slammers was when we gathered in the cafeteria for meals.” Gannon shivered when he remembered the awful food. Cold, gloppy, and generally unpleasant, he’d only eaten it because there was nothing else and the hunger pains were worse than the rank taste of the food. “Well, I saw them when we did public work projects, too, but we couldn’t really talk then.”

“They wouldn’t let you?”

“No. The work was too hard to carry on conversations. Anyway, I knew my brothers were decanted from the same pair of men as me, but I never knew anything about either of my fathers. Most slammers don’t. The prison keeps brothers loosely together, hoping to sell a large group to a gentryman for a higher profit.”

“You stayed in your room all the time?”

“For the most part, yeah. That’s why when Jonas bought us and we went to his house it was hard to adjust. I think it was hardest on Caleb.” Gannon explained how Caleb had felt exposed and vulnerable being on the outside of the big prison walls.

“I would think he would be happy to have a certain measure of freedom.”

“I don’t think that was how he felt. In the prison, our time was our own, and we were able to do what we wanted to do in our rooms. I had a gamer, and I was pretty happy. But whatever Caleb did, he couldn’t do on the outside.”

“You don’t know what your brother did all day?”

“No. My other brothers told me what they did, but Caleb never told anyone.”

“Was it something wrong?”

“I don’t think so. You can’t get the products needed to do something illegal, but whatever it was, Jonas must have taken it away from him or something because Caleb hated Jonas.”

“Maybe he just resented being owned.”

“I don’t think so.” Gannon considered. “Anyway, Jonas was going to send Caleb back, but he changed his mind. I don’t know what changed it, but Caleb was left alone in his room.”

“That’s not telling me how you got the scar.”

“I’m getting there, but you keep interrupting and getting me off track.” Gannon kissed the tip of Alden’s nose. “Now, where was I? Right. Caleb was safely locked away in his room while the rest of us had the run of Jonas’s massive house. We helped with chores, but there weren’t a lot as Jonas had mechanical servants.”

“He must have been very wealthy.”

“He was. Or seemed to be. But then things started to change. Furniture went missing. And then the rugs, the paintings, and the household items like lamps disappeared. It was like they would be there one day then gone the next.”

“How strange.”

“It was. One night I heard something, and I was curious if I could solve the mystery of the disappearing stuff. I snuck downstairs, but I didn’t see what I was expecting.” Gannon recalled that moment and the shock that had made him gasp, turning the men’s attention to him. “My master, Jonas, was being fucked by a mechanical man while another man, a landed gentryman, watched.”

Alden gasped, making pretty much the same noise Gannon had when he’d walked in on the scene.

“The man who was watching rose and attacked me. He said he was going to cut out my eyes so I’d never see anything again.” Gannon traced the mark. “He would have blinded me if not for Ollie.”

“Your twin?”

Gannon nodded. “Ollie must have heard the noise, too, because the next thing I knew he flew down the stairs and attacked the man for hurting me. He swiped his blade across Ollie’s belly, giving him a scar.” Gannon traced a line across his own stomach. “And then the man was gone.”

“You don’t know who he was or what happened to him?”

“He was the neighbor. He never came around again. Jonas was frantically getting us help while the mechanical man just stood there.” Gannon shivered. “It was so strange the way his eyes seemed to follow Jonas wherever he went, but there was no emotion there.”

“Did he disappear, too?”

“No. Not too long after that event we moved out here to the
tallos
farm. Jonas was with McBride’s father, and he gave us the mechanical man.” Gannon lowered his voice. “I asked the robot once if he remembered me or what he’d done to Jonas, but I think Jonas had his mind erased because he had no idea what I was talking about.”

“Where’s the robot now?”

“Caleb fucked it to death.”

Alden tenderly kissed the scar right as it dipped down and took a nick out of Gannon’s eyelid. “I’m sorry he hurt you.”

“Do you think it’s ugly?” Gannon thought that was what had terrified Alden when he’d first seen him.

“No. It doesn’t stand out that much. Jonas must have gotten a good surgeon.”

“You really don’t—”

“I was afraid at first.” Alden lifted up so that he could look Gannon more squarely in the face while they were lying in bed. “But not now. It’s just a part of you, like the way the sun bleaches your hair, or the way your nipples harden when you talk about your gamer.”

“What?” Gannon looked down at his chest. His nipples were perfectly flat.

“Tell me about your favorite game.”

As Gannon described the complicated scenario, his nipples rose to attention.

“See?”

“I’ll be damned.” Gannon laughed. “I knew I loved to play games, but I didn’t realize I loved it that much.”

“I think it’s cute.” Alden lowered his head and kissed each of Gannon’s nipples. “I just hope someday you’ll have the same reaction when you talk about me.”

“Oh, I’m already there.” Gannon grasped Alden and rolled him onto his back. “But you don’t activate my nipples.”

“No?”

“Oh, no. You get my cock straining to make contact.” To prove his point, Gannon nudged Alden with his prick.

“I’d much rather have control over your cock than your nipples.”

“Who said anything about control?”

Alden lowered his head but then looked up at Gannon. It was seductively submissive. When he asked Gannon to get on his back, he couldn’t roll over fast enough. Once he was situated, Alden inserted a greaser. He straddled his hips and then wiggled his tight little ass until Gannon was practically begging him for release.