As of this story, I'm a little over 92K. Miles gets branded in a very different place.
Un-beta'ed, so quibble away.
- o – o -
Do You Love Me?
Miles sits on a chair in the middle of Monroe's bedroom. A few years ago, he would have been in Monroe's bed or perched on his desk, reading reports. He and Bass used to be as thick as thieves, and then some. Then he left. It's all changed now. Except for the naked part. That hasn't.
He wishes this were under entirely different circumstances though. Miles wishes he wasn't gagged, and that Jeremy wasn't looking at him like he was a side of meat. (For one thing, he'd run out of Latin verbs and had run to Chinese in his latest attempt to keep himself from reacting.)
Monroe comes into the room, brushing light, powdery snow off his collar. He strips his gloves off and looks at Miles. He smiles.
"Miles. I'd say it was good to see you, but under the circumstances…" He sighs. "I wish they'd been different." Miles huffed into the gag and rolled his eyes. Getting captured had not been part of his plan either. The time he'd spent in a cell, getting increasingly disoriented, hadn't been part of the plan either.
The former general looks around the bedroom as Monroe goes over to stoke the fire in the hearth. It's still the same. There's a round breakfast table next to a window. The only reason the table is there is because Jeremy somehow found bulletproof plate glass, and found someone who could install it. The three of them had eaten breakfast there (and had christened the table…several times) so many times Miles had lost track of the actual number. He looks away, feeling the usual pang of guilt and longing gnawing at his heart.
Bass' desk is next in his field of vision. Jeremy is sitting on it now, one leg crossed over the other. The dangling one thumps against the desk, and it's obvious the captain is in thought. The lines in his body scream of a bone-deep weariness, and Miles looks away, feeling guilty again. He hadn't noticed those, back in Indiana. He'd been too concerned about his niece keeping her word. (Hint: Charlie needed to learn the value of a promise.)
His gaze falls on the bed, and he can't look away. Getting that monstrosity made had been a trial. He, Bass, and Jeremy had ended up sleeping in a tent where their usual contest (who's the loudest) had put the fear of god into the men so badly that they'd actually cheered when the general, the president, and their whore (Miles might have gone ballistic when he'd heard that nickname being applied to Jeremy) had moved back into Monroe's manor. It was big enough for three people—four, in a pinch. It was a tossup as to who'd ended up in the middle, but it was usually Bass. Sometimes he'd ended up there. Sometimes it was Jeremy.
Miles closes his eyes, not wanting to see anything else associated with this room that he knows so well, and is so cold to him now. He looks up when he hears Jeremy step off the desk and stretch. Monroe—he stopped being Bass when Miles ran away, but it hurts to think of him as anything but Bass—is showing Jeremy something. Mile strains a little against his ropes, trying to see what's going on. Even when he's a prisoner, he can't stop nosing into Bass' private business.
Jeremy comes over to him first. He has an odd look on his face that sends Miles away from conjugating Chinese verbs to forming sentences of the Lord's Prayer in Pashto. (He's never made it past the first line, but he keeps trying.)
"Miles, do you love us?"
Miles frowns at the question, then nods, hesitantly. Jeremy cups the general's face in his hands.
"Do. You. Love. Us?" he asks again, shaking Miles' face a little. There's something unreadable in his eyes. He sounds afraid, for whatever reason. Miles nods again, not even hesitant.
It's all he's been able to think about the closer they got to Philadelphia. Seeing Jeremy in Indiana had been something of a trial, but Pashto verbs had gotten him around some awkward explanations he didn't want to give the gang (such as why he was jacking off with Bass and Jeremy's names on his lips). And then he'd gotten to Philadelphia, and he'd frozen when it had been time to shoot Bass. Again. He loved them, and… Damn if he still doesn't love them more than is actually healthy for him.
"Good." Jeremy gives him a kiss that is way too chaste and Miles whines into the gag as the man pulls back. His brain almost short circuits when Jeremy kneels down and pries his knees apart. He throws his head back and looks at the ceiling, trying to remember the proper form for "name" in the second line of the Lord's Prayer. Jeremy blows a puff of cold air alongside his thigh, and Miles whimpers in need. Pashto gets ditched for Latin and Middle High German (which he doesn't know enough of, now that he thinks about it).
"Left or right?" Jeremy asks, drawing Miles out of his attempts to keep his dick from taking over his higher brain functions. That question kills the line his dick is making to his brain pretty quick. The brand, glowing white-hot in Bass' hand, does the rest. Miles begins jerking in his bonds, trying to slam his legs shut.
Holy shit, that is not happening!
Bass had never let him be branded, despite the fact that Miles had said it would be a show of solidarity. Bass had said that Miles was an extension of him, and his loyalty was never in question. (That had probably come back to bite him in the ass four years ago, though, so…) And now, there was Bass, twirling the brand in his hands and smiling.
"Left, and keep his legs open." Bass stalks across the room, and Miles whimpers as Jeremy pries his legs apart, exposing him and the soft skin on his inner thighs. Jeremy presses a soothing kiss into Miles' right thigh, trailing down to his knee with tiny little butterfly kisses that make Miles wish he wasn't tied to a chair because damn if that isn't infuriating to the extreme.
His mind goes blank as the brand presses into his left thigh, inches below the juncture in his thighs. Miles arches, howling into his gag as the world goes white. He almost passes out as the brand is pulled away, slumping in his bonds. Something cold gets pressed into his leg, and he whimpers, finally passing into the arms of unconsciousness.
Miles wakes up in the massive bed that took a carpenter two weeks to build. He's got a bandage wrapped around his upper left thigh, and he's still in incredible pain. Jeremy is next to him, dressed in a pair of cotton shorts and not much else. He's still got more clothing than Miles, which pisses Miles off for whatever reason.
"Je…" Miles tries, trailing off into a pained rasp. His mouth tastes like an old shoe. Jeremy wakes up, blinking lazily. Gentle lamplight turns his skin gold, glowing with good health. The captain smiles and sits up, straddling Miles' right thigh.
"I need to check your brand, and then we can talk," Jeremy says. Miles has always envied Jeremy his ability to go from sleep to wakefulness and absolute alertness in seconds. He'd have killed for that trait at almost every stage in his life. (Including when Ben decided he was going to be a good older brother and make sure his younger brother was up in time for school one week. Miles nearly killed Ben for waking him up at six in the morning.)
Miles whimpers as the bandage gets pulled away from the brand. He whimpers again, a sharper, pained sound, as Jeremy blows a puff of cold air along the burn.
"Well, it's not infected or putrefying," Jeremy said lightly, grinding his hips against Miles' unbranded leg. Miles wondered just how Jeremy could wake up, make comments like that, and be horny all at the same time. He would figure it out some day, and patent it. And sell it, and make a fortune.
"G…great," Miles rasps weakly. Jeremy gives him an evil smirk that crosses a few critical wires in his brain.
"Since you've been such a good patient, and sex isn't such a good idea right now…"
Miles doesn't even try to conjugate verbs or recite the Lord's Prayer in a foreign language. He just throws his head back and arches up as Jeremy's mouth closes around his length. There's not much else he can do. His hands are tied to the headboard, or he'd have them wrapped in Jeremy's hair, urging the man to just go fucking faster.
He thrusts his hips up sharply as he finishes, and Jeremy pulls off with another evil smirk and an obscene pop. Miles passes out again, exhausted beyond all belief.
The scene gets repeated a few more times over the next three weeks—although it's Bass who wakes him up from time to time, or Jeremy. Miles is incoherent for days after both of them wake him up.
By the time the brand heals and it's just raised skin in the shape of Bass' stupid tattoo, Miles is beginning to wonder why he thought about leaving. And why he never insisted on getting branded before—because the wake-up calls are excellent.
When their private physician clears him to move again, Miles nearly leaps out of bed. He cuts off all circulation to his wrists instead, and groans in annoyance as Jeremy and Bass laugh at him.
A week after that, when Miles can walk around without feeling the brand as much (which means he's not going weak-kneed and cross-eyed and various other unwelcome side-effects) he sits at the breakfast table he remembers helping Bass and Jeremy christen rather enthusiastically.
Bass looks at him, and smiles. "Do you love me?"
Miles nods. He looks at Jeremy, and nods again when the man asks him the same question.
How could he not?
This is his home.
- o – o -
So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Is Monroe sexy-evil, or just evil? Drop a line and let me know!