Bonds of Earth Read Online Free PDF

the sheets, and within moments his fingers were wrapped around his hardening erection. Breathing shallowly through his nose, he closed his eyes and thought of the playwright’s soft skin under his hands, the taut thighs and tight ass, the sharp little incisors that bit the inside of Michael’s wrist as Michael fucked him.
    While memory was a poor substitute for reality, it did have certain advantages. For example, he could conveniently forget the annoying grunts the young man had made while Michael had plowed into him; they’d been entirely too porcine for his taste and had been less than arousing. In his fantasies, though, only soft sighs and breathy moans emerged from that pale throat, and in no time at all he was close to coming from only a few firm strokes.
    He was careful to keep his movements slow and steady, never jostling himself so far as to excite the creaky bedsprings, not with the Abbotts sleeping almost directly below him. But when he rolled up and over the first cresting wave, he nearly gave the game away, for without his consent his body jerked and stiffened, toes clenching in the sheets as he spilled into his handkerchief, and the bed rocked and squealed in protest.
    “Fuck,” Michael whispered, the sudden tension in his muscles swiftly draining the dregs of his pleasure. Concentrating on his body, he gradually relaxed each part of himself bit by bit until he lay still and boneless, then wiped himself with the handkerchief and set it aside. That was one piece of laundry Mary wouldn’t be seeing.
    It was not much different from his situation at fifteen, living in his first rooming house and muffling his moans with his fist so as not to wake the landlady, imagining how it would feel to have a rough, strong hand wrapped around his cock. It had taken him eleven years to come full circle, and now he was right back at the starting place, hiding his desires in the dark like a frightened boy.
    Just as sleep finally claimed him, beckoning to him with clawed white hands from beneath a rain-soaked tarpaulin, he thought, Not quite like the beginning after all.
     
     
    S UNDAY was entirely his, but as Michael had no use for prayer and even less for leisure, he decided to start on his study of the gardening books. By late morning, when he heard the motorcar putter up the driveway, he had already finished one, its margins filled with his scribbled ideas and plans.
    Setting the book aside, he descended the stairs for dinner. Sarah was no more talkative than she had been the first day, but he fancied that she did seem a little more at ease around him. He was growing curious as to the cause of her silence; it seemed to run deeper than simple reticence around strangers and more shallowly than a fixed component of her character. Something told him she had once smiled a great deal more than she did now.
    Although they had never exchanged words in the presence of others, Michael risked asking her a question as they helped her grandmother dry the dishes and her grandfather sat smoking his pipe at the table. “I thought I’d survey the woods this afternoon,” he said. “I wanted to find some seedling trees we can replant in the gardens. Would you like to go with me?”
    She looked up at him, seemingly startled, and Michael cursed himself for making her uneasy again. When the silence stretched, Mary saved the situation. “Sarah has a lesson with Mister John,” she said calmly. “She spends every Sunday afternoon in his company.”
    It took Michael a moment to process this. “John—?”
    Abbott withdrew the pipe from his mouth. “ Mister John Seward,” he said. “Son of Doctor George Seward, who built this house.”
    Ah, so that was the fabled nephew. Smiling sardonically, Michael nodded and said, “I’ve heard of him, yes. Didn’t know his name, though. Do you suppose he’ll ever drop by to say hello?”
    To his surprise, Abbott’s expression betrayed a hint of sadness before resolving itself into anger.