At the last moment, when Jonathan had been working silently for too long, Charlie lifted his head enough to look back at the camera. It was that exact moment when the alarming flash went off.
The puff of bitter smoke shook Charlie, but the way that Jonathan looked at him, standing naked at the camera as he was, sent swirls of longing through him again.
“Gorgeous,” Jonathan panted, working quickly to put the flash pan aside, then racing back to the bed. “Absolutely stunning.”
Charlie lowered his head to hide his smile against his arm. For the first time in perhaps his entire life, he felt as beautiful as Jonathan said he looked. His savior had made him feel that way.
Chapter Three
Jonathan knew he’d discovered a gem. He’d seen it in Charlie’s eyes with that first mesmerizing look, the smolder and the burn. It was why he’d been so eager to get right to the session. Ordinarily, he would prepare a hot meal for his subjects first, let them relax and dissolve some of the fear they invariably felt when the reality of what would be required of them dawned.
With Charlie, there’d been no need to wait. There’d been no need to coax or soothe either. Charlie was the perfect subject for his particular sort of photograph. Eager. Sensual. Incandescent.
Fucking him after the first few plates had been his pleasure, not a requirement of the milieu. He’d long ago learned that the messier his compositions were, the higher a price he could fetch for them. He would have taken a dozen more photographs of Charlie debauched and leaking cum, but he’d been too greedy to share his prize with the nameless, future eyes that would purchase the end product.
He'd packed his camera equipment safely away to the side of the room, fetched a wet cloth from the bathroom, and climbed back into bed with Charlie, carefully seeing to his body and making certain he’d done no lasting harm. Doing so wasn’t entirely unusual for him, but pulling the trembling young maninto his arms and burying the two of them together under layers of quilts and clean, crisp sheets was absolutely out of the ordinary.
He didn’t usually turn his subjects out in the middle of the night, but he didn’t feel any sort of need to fold them in his arms, bury his face against their overly long hair and sigh into sleep with them either.
It must have been a sense of heroic responsibility after saving Charlie from his attackers. Or perhaps it was the thrumming memory of how open and ready to be laid bare and violated Charlie had been once he understood why Jonathan wanted him. There was a possibility Jonathan’s frustration after supper with his family had set something ablaze inside of him that wanted to thumb his nose at the turgid pomposity of the world he’d come from and to embrace the freedom he’d claimed for himself in the form of a hedonistic young man with a nubile body, despite being underfed.
Or maybe like simply recognized like and did not need the formality of time to feel a sense of closeness.
It didn’t really bear much thinking about. Jonathan smiled, closed his eyes, and pressed his chest against Charlie’s back, one arm draped possessively over him, and fell asleep.
In the morning, Charlie was still there, which was the happiest set of circumstances that Jonathan could have awoken to. He hadn’t moved much either. He’d stopped trembling and his limbs had the looseness of sleep to them. But above all else, the thing that struck Jonathan the most as he moved against the young man to stretch the sleep from his limbs was that Charlie was mostly hard.
As soon as his hand brushed across Charlie’s morning wood, Jonathan grinned and chuckled low in his throat.
“I knew you were a diamond,” he murmured, sleep hazy and languid.
Charlie slumbered on, which was perfect as far as Jonathan was concerned. It gave him more than enough time to study the young man with his gaze and his hands.
There were too many bones where there should have been flesh. That was the first thing Jonathan noticed as he caressed Charlie’s side and hip. At the same time, there was a softness to Charlie’s skin and a healthy enough pink glow that Jonathan was certain Charlie hadn’t spent his entire life on the street. He’d photographed enough bodies to know the toughness of skin that had never been clothed in fine cotton or rested in a soft bed. Charlie’s fingernails were a giveaway as well. They were ragged as if they’d been badly cut, but they were clean and the cuticles intact. Charlie had taken enough care to wash behind his ears and in every crease that a true street boy ignored or forgot.
Charlie was not a feral cat. He was a stray who had once had a home, but who had been cast out of it.
Jonathan knew how that felt.
“What mysteries are you concealing, my little diamond?” he whispered close to Charlie’s ear, then kissed the tender pulse point under it.
He kept going, dusting Charlie’s neck and shoulder with kisses while dancing his fingertips over Charlie’s side to spread a hand possessively across his stomach.
Possessive. It wasn’t what he should feel for an urchin he’d pulled out of the muck to thrust in front of his camera, but there it was. He’d found the lad, so by the rules of the street, Charlie should be his.
What he wouldn’t do with a lad of his very own! A thousand ideas for photographic compositions filled his head, each more lurid than the last. With a boy that he owned completely, he could push the boundaries of his craft to their most scintillating extremes. He could capture Charlie in moments of ecstasy and moments of pain. He could do things that no young man luredoff the street with the promise of food and five shillings would allow him to do.
Charlie had given him the impression the night before that he would allow Jonathan to do whatever he wanted with his body for free.
By the time Charlie stirred awake, which might have had something to do with the way Jonathan stroked his rigid cock with teasing fingertips, Jonathan was fully hard and half out of his mind with the need to be in the man again.
“Good morning,” he greeted Charlie’s half contented, half confused look with a heated grin. “Have you ever been fucked while half asleep?”
Charlie shook his head, his cheeks flaring red.
Jonathan didn’t ask. He didn’t need to. He reached for the jar he’d left on the bedside the night before, then nudged Charlie to roll to his stomach.
Charlie caught his breath and stretched his arms above him as Jonathan nudged his thighs apart and lifted his hips. He could have fought or protested as Jonathan used the slick substance from the jar to open him up, but he didn’t. Instead, he buried his face in the pillow, lifted his hips even more, and made sounds that would have had them both arrested if there had been neighbors on the other side of the wall.
