Andy and Sol’s room is sunlit and empty when they arrive; Rich sets Andy delicately down on his bed, peels the patch off his narrow chest, and then takes it upon himself to hurry into the bathroom and start his shower up.

  Andy waits in squirming frustration for only a moment or two before reaching down and palming at himself through the damp, brief fabric of his shorts. When he catches Rafael’s alarmed glance, he curls his lip in tired disgust and gropes himself only more intently, challenging now, hips rocking.

  “I didn’t make the rule,” Rafael reminds him, stung by the expression. “Would you rather I stood idly by while you signed the warrant of your own punishment?”

  “You don’t know what he fucking heard—”

  “You were hardly discreet. And I’m aware Carraway overestimates his own ability to sniff out lies, but what he does know is a body unsatisfied, and one that’s taken matters into its own hands.”

  “My balls are gonna be plenty blue when he calls me again in a month or two,” Andy says with bitter humor, and stands up, wavering, as the sound of the rattling shower curtain heralds Rich’s imminent return.

  “Unless he calls you immediately to return!” Rafael says. “He heard you willing to break his rules upon his very doorstep—this is just the sort of trap he’s like to set—”

  “Mother of curses, he’s really in your head, huh?” Andy says, bleakly amused, and limps away toward the bathroom before Rafael can marshall himself to answer. Rich opens the bathroom door in a billow of steam and makes a noise of worry when he sees Andy standing so unsteadily; Andy doesn’t entertain his concern, only stumbles past and disappears into the shower.

  “Everything okay?” Rich says, and then jumps sharply as the hallway door clatters open and Sol appears in it, ears high, eyes wide.

  “What happened?” he demands, with no further preamble. “He’s back? I didn’t think Carraway even remembered he existed, I mean, not outside of afterparties or whatever, and even then—it’s mostly Garnet and Connor and Hunter, I thought, I don’t know. He wouldn’t go at first, he got the damn shock collar, he wouldn’t just go. Did he get punished for it?”

  “Hey, hey, he’s fine,” Rich says, and folds Sol into a hug. He stands right there in the doorway and holds Sol close, one massive pale hand petting up and down Sol’s taut, compact spine, then cupping the back of his neck as Sol’s ears and shoulders slowly relax into the embrace.

  “Carraway found him… unsatisfying,” Rafael says a trifle distantly, watching the two of them together. It seems unwise to mention Andy’s indiscretions, even to his own roommate; Sol has a much better poker face than Rich, but every man aware of the rule-breaking hastens the terrible inevitability that’s crawling uneasily along Rafael’s spine. “I’ve found it entirely possible to survive his disinterest, if not his displeasure.”

  “Damn,” Sol mutters into Rich’s chest. “I don’t know if I’m jealous or scared out of my mind. But you can’t tell Andy a damn thing. His skull is bone straight through.”

  “I’ve met guys from New York, yeah,” Rich says dryly, and Sol gives a weak hiccup of a laugh and pretends, badly, to punch him in the side. After another few long, lingering moments, the patrician sighs and pushes himself back out of Rich’s arms, then pulls the ribbon out of his disheveled hair and reties it.

  “Alright, okay, enough of this cuddling nonsense,” he says with crisp authority. “I’ll see what’s up with him already. You guys… do whatever. Catch you later.”

  “Later it is,” Rich says, and drops a quick kiss on Sol’s head. Whenever Rich does that, Sol’s long ears pivot downwards and then spring back up, much like a housecat receiving a head pat. It may well be an automatic process; it is unfortunately charming. Perhaps this is why Rich kisses him in this way so frequently.

  Sol turns and disappears into the bathroom toward the sound of running water. Rafael watches him go, still studying the elegant sweep of his ears as he fixes them on Andy’s position, and when he looks back to Rich he’s startled to see Rich watching him, looking thoughtful.

  “So, you figure—” he starts, and then glances at the hallway beyond the open door and abruptly stops, swallowing the words. “Let’s head back to our berth, huh? Long day.”

  Rafael trails an extra step or two behind as they make their way up the service stairs, uncertainty churning in his stomach. Rich doesn’t look upset, but this semblance of secrecy is unfamiliar and unnerving.

  Rich makes sure his bedroom door is closed behind them, before he turns to Rafael and says, “You were distracting him on purpose.”

  “What?” says Rafael, and Rich gestures impatiently outwards, toward Carraway’s distant office. “Oh. Well—yes, you know I direct him as best I can.”

  “‘As best I can,’ shit, man, you lead him around by the bow,” Rich says. “He’d be pissed if he found out.”

  Rafael can’t help the surge of fear that rises in him at that. After so many years trapped here, it’s hard to hear the words as anything but a threat, even from so gentle a speaker. Still, Rich’s intensely thoughtful frown has no shade of calculation or menace to it.

  “He won’t find out,” Rafael says. “I know the man, I know how he plays his part, what pleases and displeases him. I’m an actor, to inspire a response from an audience is the entire aim of my profession—and he took pains to make himself my only audience, even if he’ll hardly grant me the attention to disdain me, anymore.”

  “His loss!” Rich snaps, a brief little growl roughening the edges of his voice. “But—fuck. Sorry.” He swallows hard. “But seriously, Raf, you’re gonna tell me that’s less dangerous than just having the mansion let me know where Sandgren’s at?”

  Rafael opens his mouth to give an eloquent and well-formed argument, and comes to an ungraceful halt as he realizes he doesn’t know where to start.

  “I’m below his notice,” he says, once he’s gotten his thoughts together. “Carraway cares not a single whit for what I do, he thinks he knows the measure of me and finds it petty and simple—but you aren’t below his notice, do you see? You’re right there in front of him, where he wants you.”

  “Yeah, and Sandgren thinks I’m a big dumb thug,” Rich says, frowning only more deeply now. “But he notices you, man, he’s been after you like a fuckin’ lamprey as long as you’ve been with me.” He draws a hand over his face, his hair, seizes on the back of his thick neck and shakes his head aimlessly. “Look, I’m not asking you to stop dead, okay? I get it. If you can do something, anything, you gotta. But if you keep doing what you’re doing, you gotta lemme hold my course too. I know it’s not gonna be safe, but nothing’s safe around here except sinking. And I’m not going under, I can tell you that.”

  It would be hypocrisy to demand otherwise. “I don’t want to see you hurt,” Rafael says, knowing it’s futile as he speaks.

  “That makes two of us,” Rich says, and the mask of his smile is a wavering thing, brave and frightened. “But you don’t hafta take care of me, Raf. I’ll be careful.”

  “I don’t give a single blighted fuck if I have to or not,” Rafael says, fierce despite himself, and sees Rich blink and look to him with a young man’s startled face and wide green eyes, all that sweetness surmounting the superhuman frame of his body. “Taking care of you is exactly what I intend to do.”

  “You don’t hafta say that,” Rich says, but there’s something terribly vulnerable and longing in his eyes despite his determination. “I can take a hit if—”

  “No,” says Rafael, with an authority he has no right to claim, and when he reaches up to press a hand to Rich’s enormous chest, the narrow span of his own palm covering a bare fraction of one architectural collarbone, Rich buckles and hunches for the touch, yearning into it, making himself smaller. “You’ll have no need to, Rich. Because I’ll protect you. With all my breath and body, I’ll take care of you. Just you watch me.”

  Rich gives a sharp, soft exhale, half a sob, and leans down to narrow the distance between them—not closing it, only offering his mouth with a hesitancy that draws Rafael irresistibly up to meet him. It’s easy after that to press Rich back one step, two, all his massive frame as easy to steer as any well-bred draft horse. He backs Rich to the bed, presses him down on it, lets Rich’s hands draw him in after to claim his lap, lean against his front, claim his mouth. Again and again; this is his, this sweet boy, this pliant frame, this eagerly attentive strength.

  The exultant joy of it all is such that by the time they draw apart even the sharp, persistent sting of Rafael’s split lip can’t dampen the rising heat of his arousal.

  “I hope it doesn’t make you think less of me,” he says, breathless—in the lighthearted tone of a joke, despite the squirming thread of uncertainty winding between his ribs. “I wouldn’t begrudge you some misgivings… after all, perhaps I’ll subtly manipulate you as well. A cunning puppetmaster such as myself, who can say?” He shifts, fighting the urge to grind against the thick, eager line of Rich’s arousal, and feels even that constrained motion shiver through the body wrapped around him. “My sinister plans for the next few hours are truly beyond the ken of an innocent lamb like you.”

  Rich lets out a huffing snort, unconcerned, and hitches Rafael a little more securely into his lap, nosing under his jaw to kiss the side of his throat.

  “Yeah,” he murmurs, and fits a huge hand under Rafael’s shirt to thumb at the piercing through one nipple, all but clumsy in his eagerness. “You’re, that’s, hha, haha, you’re so smart, so sneaky. I’unno how a poor dumbass like me’s supposed to keep up…”

  “Ahh,” Rafael says, a voiceless gasp in place of any witty retort, and arches for the touch before he manages to master himself. “Well, then, I suppose I’ll make it plain for you, although it goes against my, ah, my nature—” He frees himself enough to catch up the man’s free hand, draws it to his mouth and takes a couple warm fingers between his lips, stroking the pads of them with his tongue and feeling Rich tremble again beneath him. When he releases them, with a final glancing kiss against the tough skin of the man’s knuckles, Rich is staring at him with flushed and wide-eyed captivation, his own lips softly parted in wondering hunger.

  “You promised you would prepare me for you,” Rafael says. “We have work to do, you lovely young thing. And I think you’ll find I can be quite the demanding taskmaster.”

  “Yes sir,” says Rich fervently, and applies himself with enthusiasm to stripping Rafael to the skin and laying him reverently out across the sheets. He fetches coconut body lotion and one of his smuggled tins of nanocream from the dresser, and braces himself over Rafael’s body to watch him with wide, intent eyes as a slick hand finds his inner thigh, the crease of his hip, and then presses two warm, insistent fingers against him. “Good? More, or less…?”

  “Just enough,” Rafael says breathlessly. “For now. I may make further demands later.”

  “Fuck, you work a kid hard,” Rich says, half-laughing, and goes diligently to work.

  It’s easier this time, although no less wonderfully intense; Rich’s fingers are thick and slick and merciless and the rest of him is in devoted attendance to Rafael’s pleasure, and by dinner time Rafael is trembling and undone, aching beautifully, muscles burning with the extended effort of repeated earth-shattering climaxes.

  “Okay,” Rich says finally, breathless, and withdraws his fingers gently, allowing Rafael to give a final shudder and go limp and panting against the sheets. “Fuck, okay—god, Raf, you look so good—” and Rafael is lifted, dizzyingly, cradled in one huge arm so Rich can kiss him devouringly. Rafael can feel the other arm working, feel Rich’s breath coming in rough gasps against his lips; he can’t contribute much beyond shivering and whispering Rich’s name, but by the way Rich’s body twitches when he hears it, he certainly doesn’t seem to mind.

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  Rich groans and goes taut all over for a shuddering minute, then slowly relaxes, letting out a long breath. “Fuck, you’re so perfect like this,” he murmurs, and kisses Rafael again more gently. Then Rafael is settled back to the bed and Rich vanishes off to the bathroom, coming back with a warm washcloth to clean him up, and Rafael is kissed and praised and finally left to recuperate while Rich goes to fetch a tray of dinner for him.

  A few weeks ago, he would have drifted immediately back to the oblivion of sleep; tonight, bolstered by the food, he rallies from the bed and strolls at Rich’s side down to the parlor to play cards with the others. He still feels pleasantly languid, but there’s hardly a lingering ache in his legs or feet anymore, and he enters the room with a flourishing and elegant bow and settles himself at Connor’s right side to pick up a hand of cards.

  The warm ease lasts for all of a few hands, and then every conversation grinds to an abrupt, ringing halt as the chime of a pair of cuffs splits the air.

  There’s a moment of silent, dreadful confusion, each man staring from his own cuffs to his fellows’ faces, an unspoken question in every eye. Then the chime comes again, and Rafael realizes with a sinking, inevitable dread that it’s coming from Andy.

  Andy has been lazily pleased with himself since his illicit pleasure earlier in the evening, unusually lively and engaged, betting and bluffing with glib daring. He jumps at the sound of his own cuffs, looks down at them in startled bewilderment, and then looks up and finds Rafael’s gaze. There’s a spark of something helplessly frustrated and frightened behind his stormy eyes—then resignation swamps that brief flash, and he gives an explosive sigh and pushes himself back from the table, discarding his hand among the scattered treats serving as the betting pool.

  “Well, shit,” he says, with fatalistic good cheer. “Make stupid bets, win stupid prizes, I guess. Fuck me.”

  “Twice in one day?” Sol says, and there’s a dark, flinty edge to his eyes and a mutinous set to his ears and jaw. “Like hell. Like hell. I’ll—”

  “You’ll sit the fuck back down, Signore,” Andy says, and shoves him with a foot, swaying precariously before he finds his balance. “I was bluffing with two pair, anyway. Might as well go do something with my night.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t wait up,” says Andy, and turns decisively away to limp to the parlor door, vanishing off into the night.

  They do wait up. Not a man speaks of the intention to, but none of them away to bed either. Rich wanders the aimless circles of an imprisoned animal, preening and picking at the parlor’s finery; Sol and Connor pace and murmur, weaving fantasies of retribution and violence that Rafael can’t find the wherewithal to chide them for.

  Rafael’s own pleasure earlier in the evening seems dishonorable and ill-gotten now. As he sits in silence, his shame wars unendingly with his frustration. He told the man, warned him plainly, and whatever happens will be his own fault—but he well recalls those days, endless denial and the fleeting madness it brought…

  It’s been some hours, and the night is truly pressing on to midnight, when Rich jumps and clicks his rings, scanning the message he received with wide eyes.

  “Andy’s out,” he says, with only worry in his rumbling voice, and swallows hard. “Carraway wants him carried down.”

  –

  Andy is easy to find, slumped outside the door of Carraway’s suite, shoulders rising and falling in labored breaths. Painfully hard yet again, with something slick and sharp-smelling smeared and shining in a careless, drying mess across his arousal and the insides of his trembling thighs. The skin is reddened by every shining streak and strapped a raw and painful pink across his ass and the backs and sides of his thighs that speaks clearly of Sandgren’s personal involvement. Whether the man was summoned preemptively, and employed to encourage a confession, or whether Carraway sniffed out some inkling of Andy’s disobedience and then summoned Sandgren, the result is the same.

  Connor and Sol both break from Rich’s side and race forward at the sight of the pale body slumped against the wall, heedless of the danger of being on Carraway’s private floor without invitation. Connor takes a knee and begins a grimly silent triage; Sol stands over him and Andy, back straight as the steel of a sword and his fists clenched to hard, pale-knuckled knots at his sides, and then turns his gaze with terrible deliberation to Carraway’s door.

  “Sol,” Rafael says, a swell of dread rising in his throat, and darts forward to catch the hem of Sol’s shirt as he takes a sharp step toward that closed, looming door. “Sol. You mustn’t.”

  “Well somebody damn well should,” Sol says, through his teeth. On his knees, Connor’s gone still in his work, head half-turned, tensed as though he might spring up and fall in by Sol’s side at the slightest provocation.

  “Sol,” Rich echoes softly, and comes up to Sol’s side to rest a huge hand against the back of the man’s neck. “Baby, please. Let’s just… get him back downstairs. Let’s take care of him. Okay?”

  Sol hesitates another moment longer, muscle rippling in his forearms as his hands clench and loosen helplessly at his sides. Then he curses, long and low and staccato in pristine Italian, and turns on his heel, stalking off down the hallway without waiting for them, a prince in exile. Connor stands from Andy’s side, nods to Rich, spits on the floor in front of Carraway’s door with a vicious, blue-eyed glare, and then tracks at Rich’s side like a hunting dog as Rich lifts Andy’s fragile body and leaves the grim mouth of the wolf’s den behind them.

  –

  Scene 10: Mansion grounds.

  Rich sleeps briefly and badly that night, and Rafael sleeps badly as well, roused repeatedly by the clinging, growling, helpless thing the man becomes in the throes of his nightmares. When he finally manages to leave his bed for the morning, it’s to a reminder of even further bad news; the official notification of the evening’s party has been delivered, and the specter of the night’s Halloween revels looms large over the already grim mood.

  If there is a single spark of a silver lining by Rafael’s estimation, it is that the boytoys’ ornamentation for the Halloween parties tends to be both grander and more varied than the usual skimpy, cheap vulgarities. The tension of anticipation wars with the painful, self-conscious longing to wear a costume and play a part, even if he has no say in that costume and the part he’s been given the script for is “vapid accessory.”

  A true actor elevates his script, however flimsy. With a few weeks of new life and work at Rich’s side under his belt, Rafael has no intention of allowing himself to be swept helplessly along this time; he has his own goals to further, his own information to gather. His own sweetly oblivious and soft-hearted soldier to preen and polish to a gilded shine in front of the hungry monsters Carraway consorts with, and his own much-amended script of mindless, innocent questions. If information is to be his only weapon, he intends to use this opportunity to sharpen its blade to a mortal edge.

  For now, though, there are chores, and errands, and more chores. The lord of the manor spends his time before each party relaxing, and makes not even the scantest attempt at office work. Predictably, Rich has no such layabout intentions. Rafael is grateful for his own ever-increasing endurance, because as usual, Rich takes the absence of assigned work as a personal affront and invites himself on board every project that could possibly use a set of enormous hands.

  The kitchen staff want him to help unload equipment from the caterers. The caterers are happy to have someone around who knows where the generators are. The compound’s maintenance staff are pleased to add Rich to the cadre of skilled technicians running wires and setting up lights, after which he troubleshoots augmented reality decorations and advises on antigravity tech. The gardeners make a bid for Rich’s time that has him looking more thrilled than anyone ought to at the prospect of setting up several miles of dainty picket fencing around all the rose beds, and then this evening’s various entertainments start to arrive with dozens of trailers and Rich trots off to confer with security staff on where to get everyone parked.

  Halfway through running a load of power and water cables back to one of the compound’s power hook-ups, Rich's step hitches and his head snaps up.

  “Oh shit,” he mutters, drops all his cables, and starts moving fast enough Rafael's usual jog proves insufficient.

  “What is it?” he gasps, running flat-out at Rich's elbow.

  “Sandgren's on an intercept course with Connor and Sol,” Rich growls quietly.

  “Oh, damnation,” Rafael hisses, and keeps up.

  They've gotten no more than a few steps inside the mansion itself when Rich slows to a halt, looking dismayed. He lifts a hand, clicking his data rings together, and bares his teeth at the screen that comes up.

  “Too late,” he says tightly. “Sandgren found them. And… shit, he's taking Connor back to his office. Fuck, Connor, what did you say?”

  Distantly, Rafael notes how terrible it is to have just enough omniscience to know what's happening while lacking the power to stop it, but he's preoccupied with the awful, crushing lack of air in his lungs. He caught another glimpse last night of that simmering, leashed rage behind Connor’s eyes; he has no way of knowing if Connor’s self-control has held. If he’s being punished for some bold, sharp-tongued insolence, or if he simply flew at Sandgren’s throat.

  The image hangs before Rafael of Connor's cheerful face gone slack and vacant like Sam's, Connor's beautiful, nimble frame turned clumsy and faltering, and the horror and rage and grief fill him until he can't bear it. He can't stop Sandgren, can't keep him from his foul work. And Connor, who's so fierce and wild, a creature so free he breaks himself on his cage—who’s been so kind to Rafael and is so dear to Rich…

  He’s overstepped, despite warnings, despite cautions. Just as Andy did. And Rafael is helpless.

  It's a relief when everything goes far away and small, including Rafael's feelings. He watches as though from a distant catwalk over a silent stage as a hollow doll with his face and body stands motionless at Rich’s elbow. Playing no part, because no part can fix what’s already been set in motion. Reciting no meaningless words or empty lines.

  “Fuck,” Rich says, low and rumbling, and then he's striding forward again and Rafael watches from a distance, jogging along at his side back out into the busy, crushing heat of the late October morning.

  Rich throws himself back into the mill of errands. Trailers are parked, equipment set up, messages run, machines assembled, performing animals led here and penned there, fences and cooling stations planted all over the grounds, maps and timetables arranged and rearranged.

  Perhaps it’s a good thing that Rafael is a numb and quiet shell; he barely has to feign a calm disinterest as the men around him complain at length about Sandgren’s security protocols, the paths in and out that must be guarded and the deliveries waylaid for examination. In a sharper state of mind, perhaps he would be listening more intently, searching through the endless checks and scans and double-checks for a weak point.

  As he is now, all he can manage is a vague and despairing fatalism. Carraway bragged at length of how impenetrable his fortress-manor is, when he first captured Rafael, and to hear the odds weighed against them feels like only a confirmation of what he already knew. Patrols, perimeter guard towers, lykoi slipping silently through the forests, miles of woodland interspersed with traps and guards the workmen know nothing of but rumor. Service workers shipped in in windowless shuttles, their identification checked, their persons scanned and examined. Even Carraway’s “friends,” such as they are, are driven in by Carraway’s own men and their vehicles scanned as they approach.

  It’s the mad, palatial paranoia of an old soldier who knows himself surrounded by hungry wolves. Rafael listens quietly and allows the despair to flow over and through him. It makes little difference, after all. The men of the harem are few and distinctive enough to be easily caught, even if they somehow managed to remove their collars—the story of a desperate man who once attempted such a thing has been passed around since Rafael was freshly-caught, although the stories varied in whether he was dragged back to the mansion and tormented to some vicious end or simply died as the collar sensed his interference and shocked him until his heart gave out…

  “Raf,” says Rich.

  Rafael has been standing by the man’s side, absentmindedly handing him tools at his request while Rich muscles a precious length of float-tubing back into the grooves of a trailer bed—he hasn’t finished his task, but he’s standing up from the work, looking at Rafael with wide-eyed urgency.

  “Yes,” says Rafael, startled back to some measure of presence. “I’m, yes, I’m here, what’s wrong?”

  “We gotta go,” Rich says—to the mechanics, “You guys good without me? Sorry—I gotta—” and he barely waits for the mechanics’ agreement before striding off across the lawns.

  “What is it?” Rafael asks, dimly aware of renewed fear nagging in the distance. “What happened?”

  “Connor's out, finally,” Rich says, and calls up a screen. “Looks like he's headed back to his room.”

  Rafael's heart jumps and twists at the same time, a startling burst of spontaneous life from a body he all but forgot to claim as his own. If Connor's walking on his own, he's not ruined like Sam, and it shouldn't make Rafael's heart ache for Sam, but it does. The safety of distance is fading, and Rafael wants it back.

  They find Connor limping painfully toward the harem wing, naked and grim-faced. There’s no subtlety of drugs and teasing torments, this time; his cheeks are slapped red and bruised, his lip is split and swollen and there’s bruising on his neck as though Sandgren dragged him by his collar, or perhaps simply choked him by hand. The awful man has abided by Carraway’s prohibition, well-known among the boys in Rafael’s day—no lasting wounds, no broken skin. He must have been provoked to a true fury, though; he’s toed the line with a vicious mastery, and Connor’s shoulders and thighs and ass are dark red, welted and bruised almost to the drawing of blood, pink and purple bruising marring his fair skin and drowning the freckles.

  “Fuck,” Rich says, and speeds up. “Connor!”

  Connor flinches for only the barest moment. When he turns to look at them, his face shows only a tired resignation, despite the redness of his eyes and nose and the drying tear tracks and streaks of come on his cheeks. Rafael falters at the sight of those tears, heart seized with a terrible shame for the man, how he must hate to be seen so reduced—but Rich has no mind for such matters, and is already reaching out, hovering as delicately as an elephant over a mouse.

  “Hey, man, you want a hand? I can carry you, if it’d be easier.”

  Connor scrubs the back of his hand over his eyes and sighs hard, but when he raises his head again he’s smiling, however faintly. “Sure,” he says, in a small, hoarse rasp. “Just don’t go and touch my ass, I think it’s fixin’ to fall right off.”

  Rich picks him up with the utmost of care, tucking a forearm behind his knees and cradling him against Rich’s chest, where he sags exhaustedly.

  “I got you, pal, you’re good now,” Rich murmurs, and gently presses a kiss to Connor’s sweat-dark hair before setting off down the hall, carrying a second ill-treated friend in as many days towards a semblance of safety.

  Smashwords as well as your (but not Amazon yet except for After the Storm), under the series title, Stories From The Michigan Fleet. The early access ebook of Run Aground is only! The final, polished version of the ebook will come out November 2026, when the webnovel finishes posting. If you missed book one, After the Storm, you can . And check out our !