Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 10

arching backwards, Ren's entire body seized and began shuddering, cum shooting forth and incoherent sounds tearing from his lips.
    Ren dropped his head and the intimacy of the moment, the alternating pain and pleasure it had caused made him break down completely and suddenly great gulping sobs began to pour from his throat. Cries that spoke of long forgotten memories of love and innocence, kindness and comfort…all the things that had been withheld from Ren for so very long. Despite the soaking his uniform would receive, Con grabbed Ren up and pulled him from the bath, gently placing him onto his lap. Con's soothing voice said over and over, "Hush now boy, hush Ren. I've got you, I've got you. You'll never be alone in the dark again boy, never again. Not going to let you go Ren…not ever going to let you go."
    Ren sobbed one last time and then mercifully sank into the oblivion of sleep.
    ****
    Con sat in the deepening gloom staring at the boy huddled beneath the blankets on his bed. He could have just as easily carried the boy into the room that had been prepared for him and left him there to rest for the night. But after Ren had finally succumbed to exhaustion, Con could not bear to leave his side and so had brought him here instead. Con scrubbed at his face, passing his hands over his hair and dragging them down over his neck where he rubbed lightly. He had never been so emotionally drained.
    He could not stop the constant barrage of questions hammering away at his brain. What had Ren endured these last 6 month? How had the boy managed to live in that hellhole? What had Ren been forced to do to survive?? What evil had Anzel done to his boy? Over and over the litany of unanswered queries scraped against his mind, causing his head to throb and his eyes to burn. All the while Con grappled with the torment of the unknown, Ren too thrashed about in his bed as if pursued by the devil himself.
    How in god's name could he bring this boy back from the darkness that threatened to swallow them both alive?? Con looked back over the last several months and wondered again at how much Ren had come to mean to him. Always before, he had given any relationship with another man a wide berth, preferring to bed the willing a few times and then move on with no hurt feelings, no chance for anyone to form an attachment.
    That strategy had failed miserably with Ren. That night in his tent when he had promised the boy that, after the battle's conclusion, Ren would be his, had been burned into Con's memory. Since then, Con had waited and hoped that this need…this love for the boy would wane. Unfortunately it had only grown stronger with each passing day. And now the boy he loved had been reduced to a mere pawn in this endless lethal game with Anzel, all because Con could not keep his errant emotions in check.
    Deep in his heart, he knew that his pride…his desire to see Anzel kept in his place, to be humiliated and exposed for the heartless bastard he was, had fed Anzel's lust for revenge. It was Con's petty indulgence in seeing Anzel brought low that led to Ren's mistreatment and this thought caused Con's heart to squeeze painfully in his chest.
    Somehow, someway, Con knew he had to keep Ren from following through on whatever mission Anzel had forced upon him. Short of strapping the boy to his bed, Con was unsure of exactly how he was going to keep Ren from doing something foolish. He knew he was not mistaken when he had seen the love in Ren's eyes earlier. No, the odds were good that this boy wouldn't fulfill Anzel's demand. Regardless of what torture Ren had been subjected too, he was still the same honorable man Con had watched rise through the ranks of the Orestian army. Con knew that Ren would somehow find a way around whatever foul order he had been given and would then be foolhardy enough to go racing back to the lower realm to deal with Anzel himself.
    If there was one thing he knew, it was Ren and his bravery…his foolhardy bravery. Mix that in with just a dash of unwavering loyalty and you had Ren, a boy…no, a man who would be a formidable opponent on the battlefield. So the question that rose to the fore of Con's mind over and over again was how to stop such a man? How to keep Ren from dashing off to save Con and Gael and end up getting himself killed in the process.
    Con's attention was caught by Ren thrashing about on the bed and his sudden deep, keening cry. Con shivered at the note of terror in Ren's moans and moved