Disclaimer: You just like making me say this, don't you? NOT MINE! Satisfied? Pairing: Clark/Lex WARNINGS: Starts slow and builds: More BONDAGE. Age-discrepant. HEAVY DOMINANCE AND SUBMISSION. S/M sex. If any of the above bothers you, you *will* find this story disturbing. If in doubt, throw it out. Lots o' hot vanilla out there elsewhere. Also: veers off canon along about January 2002, so kinda AU-ish, but aren't we all. Spoilers: Poem from "Nocturne", but in different context. Thank you to intrepid beta Mark. Sequel to my story "Justice" Started: 11/30/02 or so Feedback: mog@pacific.net
The American Way by C.M. Decarnin

"I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition." Lex pulled experimentally at the heavy chains imprisoning his wrists.

"This is the only way, Lex. I've thought it out.

Take me to You, imprison me, for I
Except You enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me

were I think your exact words, Lex."

"I was talking to my father when I quoted that."

"I know. It was really creepy."

"You weren't there, how did you hear me? And I was talking about the power of God as compared to CEOs, Clark. Not a dungeon scene."

"I have good hearing. And a literal mind."

"How do you happen to have a dungeon?"

"Just a little Yankee ingenuity. I cleaned up an abandoned storm cellar. There are lots of them around."

"Very enterprising."

"That's the American way, Lex. See what you want and go and get it. Right?"

"You know, Clark, you may be the only person on the planet who could lure me into an underground chamber, ask me to close my eyes, then trap me in chains and manacles, without me going totally berserker on your ass. But even knowing it's you, young Skywalker, I have to ask myself, have you completely lost your mind?"

"Nope."

Lex sighed. "Oh good."

"You said it yourself, Lex. I lured you here, I tricked you, trapped you -- chained you to a bed -- against your will -- and whatever happens now is out of your control. No one could hold you responsible. No jury in the land."

"I see. This would be the same jury that doesn't throw your teenage butt in jail for kidnap/rape."

"They're not ever actually going to know. That's just worst case scenario."

"And I didn't immediately report this outrage to the police because..."

"The trauma, Lex. The shame, humiliation and self-blame. You only wanted to forget."

"Okay, you are now officially sicker than I am. Where does a country boy like you get stuff like this?"

"The Internet."

"Yet another failure of the parental controls concept. I thought we agreed to wait till you were sixteen."

"I changed my mind. You're always allowed to change your mind. We learned that in Sex Ed."

"They meant from 'yes' to 'no', not 'no' to 'yes'!"

Clark sat on the bed, and chid gently, eyes innocent, "You really have to learn to break the rules sometimes. You're so uptight, Lex!"

Lex sputtered, speech center short-circuited, incapacitated, aghast, crashed flat at the galactic impudence.

Clark was unbuckling the buckle of the belt Lex had on because he'd been at the factory, in business clothes, that afternoon. Clark had a smile on his face and Lex could tell unbuckling the belt buckle was giving him a rush. The leather tongue of belt was pulling slowly through the metal rectangle, the buckle's metal tongue letting go reluctantly -- Clark lifted his eyes to Lex and slowly pulled the leather tight. Lex's eyes closed and his mouth opened. Damn, Clark had the knack. The touch, that felt erotic opportunity, and went for it.

Then he pulled the leather out of the other side of the buckle, lowered Lex's zipper and put his hand inside.

Lex was gone. Within Clark's hand his cock was high and mighty, and in charge. Keen Luthor brain at best here for the ride.

It was a soft touch, gentle, tentative... Experimental. The skin surprisingly uncallussed, for a boy who did a man's work on a farm. The fingers softly closed around him one by one... and slid.

"Ahnngg!" and "No no no don't stop, don't stop, oh Clark for the love of -- god, don't st-- Ahnngg." Lex's spine arched without any of his other muscles moving, froze there paralyzed as Clark's warm fingers caressed the trembling of his penile stretch, then closed a little tighter. Clark got up on the bed, let go of him, and slid one hand up either of his trouser legs. Then pushed his thighs apart. "Ah, Jesus!" Lex had looked and caught a sight of Clark Kent kneeling over him, expression kind and excited, till that opening up of his body made him close his eyes again. It didn't always happen, but when passion mastered him Lex couldn't keep his eyes open, not spare attention for minutiae like sight and vigilance.

"Clark," he breathed, and just then fingers again closed around his sex, and he pulled his breath all in. So... gentle. Too gentle. Yet the carefulness touched him, woke an ache inward, that brought tears up under his eyelids, and somehow warmed him to a kind of sexual readiness no expert handjob had ever reached. His cock proud and fully unfurled, responded to Clark's soft touches with throbs of happy want. Clark stopped to reach up and pull Lex's pants apart more. The loss of touch brought a low "Uhhhh" from Lex's throat, and unthinking the wish whispered from his mouth, "Suck me."

And Clark, obedient youngster that he was, put his hand back on Lex, warming his cock in kindly fingers, and leaned down and put his mouth around it.

Lex's fantasy life for two months past had featured little else; if the reality was a little dry, a little clumsy, inexpert, it only made it that much more hellishly endearing, dangerous, and oh, the real thing, the real Clark trying to figure out, on him, what sucking cock was all about, took him past anything his fantasy had ever told him. The slight tongue-touches and shifting grips of the lips around him were virginity itself, that Clark had brought to him so willingly; and Lex took, awe and orison infusing his alpha-male awareness as he arched, thrusting to the back of Clark's hot mouth and coming from almost the sheer honor, as a reflexive swallowing closed soft-warm-wet on the head of Lex's cock.

"Ahhhh!" Almost a protest, shocks of pleasure shaking him like a doll, but -- now? So soon? The spasms shivered down him, every move of Clark between his legs setting him off again, but the child hadn't even pulled Lex's pants down. Now he was kissing Lex's lapsing cock, ah -- sweet, sweet, sweet.

Sweet was enough. But, he sensed, not what this boy-man had in mind, all the elaborate arrangement, the subterfuge, betokened a long, elegant and fantasized seduction -- that maybe Clark thought he'd need, to get the man he wanted in the mood.

The poor kid had no clue how hot he was. How lovely, how desirable; how overcoming all his kindness and attentiveness could be, his honesty a heady incense, a date-rape drug in its own right, oh women or apparently, no, men, of the world watch out, this boy should be considered armed and dangerous, do not approach him, stay the fuck away -- stay far away -- alone on a vast empty plain in a helicopter shot, like one of those movies where they travel back to the time of the dinosaurs -- but was it him or Clark there all alone --?

Lex realized with a start he was falling asleep, wildly unusual for him in circumstances potentially risky in so many ways. But the only risk he thought of, jerking back to consciousness, was the look on Clark's face. He focussed, and Clark smiled, a tentative, questioning smile, the unearthly, angelic eyes full of uncertainties.

"I don't usually pass out like that," Lex said. It was the truth, and brought a bashful blush across Clark's cheeks. Seeing the happiness replace doubt in Clark's eyes, Lex felt half-sainted. It was a feeling he would like to have again, putting Clark's happiness ahead of everything, and getting such a dividend of smiles. Lex said mildly, "You probably could have somehow cajoled me into that without the chains, if truth be known."

The boy propped his hands on either side of Lex and said engagingly, "I wasn't taking any chances." His little smile, his hazel-green eyes bright and kind, the slight flush over his skin enchanted Lex. "Besides, I'm not done yet."

Lex's eyebrows rose. He knew his eyes would be lazy and sated, but he touched back, in memory, to teenage insatiability; then too, Clark hadn't come yet, had he. "Really," he said in his most sophisticated voice.

Clark's smile opened. God, he was so young! He didn't look it, half the time, his body almost formed, he kept his age cloaked in reasonableness and rational behavior and maturity a lot. But under it, there was this kid. This fifteen-year-old, who'd never done most of the things he was being so mature about, who'd never --

Fuck!

Oh, shit --!

"Clark." His changed tone had Clark's attention fully. "Did you get condoms?"

Clark looked relieved. "Sure." And there was just the little tint of pridefulness in it to melt Lex over again. Then, "Oops."

He looked a little guilty, and was trying hard for serious dismay, and failing in a way that told Lex the boy had an erection.

"Clark, I'm next to one hundred per cent positive I don't have anything, but -- you saw, with Roland... I wasn't always careful, in those days --" I wasn't always conscious in those days. "I should never have let you suck my naked cock." Clark shivered lightly all over his skin and his eyes flicked irresistibly to Lex's groin, and he blushed. Oh god.

But Clark said despite his scarlet cheeks, "I read that people don't get AIDS from oral sex."

"I read that you're probably right but that no one's ever done an actual study on it." He was, after all, the grown-up here. "And if you ever go in for serious VD testing they're going to take a throat culture. There are plenty of other diseases besides AIDS."

"But you'd know if you had those, right?"

"Not necessarily," Lex preached. Please God, if you existed, surely you wouldn't be so cruel as to let me give this child a dose of clap for his first time. He thought of some of the cunts he'd lately fucked, and of Clark's mouth, and wanted to be sick. He was fastidious, god knew, but not in ways that could possibly make him worthy of this boy. The women he chose generally turned out to be erotically aroused by money, which had worked out well, in fact spectacularly, and until this moment it would never have occurred to him to doubt that he had sampled anything but the best. A strange, somehow unwholesome sensation crept through him, that lowered his self-estimate horrifically. That Clark had done all this for him...

Was this humility?

Or just some awful look into another universe, where everything Lex Luthor stood for was beneath contempt, useless at best, while the world moved by wholly other rules he had no concept of?

Clark touched his face. "Lex?" Questioning.

From a completely different place Lex looked at Clark. And saw what it was he had known all along about the boy, that had given him the allure of the forbidden, turned Lex on with an unidentifiable cupidity, had drawn him subtly back again and again like the scent of sweet exotic fruit, like a night moth fumbling toward the one tantalizing pheromone that promised rapture. He looked at Clark's face and saw the innocent goodness, sensitive as moonlight-dusted wings to the distress that Lex was in; and how his concern was all to offer help.

Clark offered help a lot.

Clark, have you ever happened to look in my bedroom closet?

Not the one with the clothes.

But he didn't ask. He didn't want to see a painful blush, or guilt, or spoil what might, after all, be pure inspired intuition. Even if Clark did get it a little backwards.

"Just wondering what I could ever have done to deserve you," Lex said, and loved the scattershot of self-conscious happiness/embarrassment reflecting in Clark's face. So this was what they meant by grace. That could come to the undeserving, reforge a life in the space of an instant. And bless the world with the wonder of sudden sinlessness.

Okay he still didn't get that part. But he felt as if he almost did. As if, if he went with Clark, and let his life be remade with him, it would be salvation.

It seemed feasible; since he already had another hard-on. That Clark kept pretending he wasn't looking at.

"Go get the condoms," Lex said softly.

"Oh. Oh yeah." Clark leaped off the bed with alacrity, over to his rucksack, and picked out a packet and a tube. That were right on top, no fumbling. And was back. A product called Hot!Slick that Lex had never heard of and sincerely hoped was not spiced with some combination of menthol and capsaicin for that added zing. He tried to picture Clark making the fatal purchase, and completely failed. He could sooner see him shoplifting it. No volatile scent came out when Clark took the cap off and set it carefully on the little bedside table. He tore one condom out of its wrapper and knelt back on the bed, and then they ran into their first snag. Lex saw it on Clark's face, the hesitation and anxious freezing.

"Is something wrong?" He made his voice as sultry and suggestive as he knew how. Clark responded to it with a little grateful smile, and a little of the tension fell away.

"I, um. I just..."

"Speaking purely as the innocent victim here, my suggestion would be to take off a few layers of clothes."

Clark again looked at him gratefully, but it was with very overly-gentle hands that the boy then tugged at the hips of Lex's trousers. Lex arched up to let them slide. They rode down but the underpants stayed, and then Lex felt Clark's big warm hands on either side of his bare waist. He tried not to gasp. His eyes closed. He felt one palm slide gently over onto his belly, leaving the round condom on it. Oh that was good. Then stroking, soothing, finally sliding fingers under the waistband and so carefully lifting it over his erection. Clark backed up and pulled the pants down, and got off the bed again to take them all the way off. He looked at Lex's shirt, and the topography of sleeves and manacles, and let it be. Lex watched him realize he'd have to take his own things off as well. The only item he had shed already was his workboots.

"Unbutton your shirt," Lex said softly. Clark blushed and didn't look at him, instantly registering every seductive overtone in Lex's suggestive voice. His hands came up and with a pang of heartbreak Lex saw that they were trembling. But he started to push the buttons of the flannel shirt one by one out of their buttonholes, a task that Lex, in a world not mad, should have been able to do for him. Clark had on no undershirt. He was smooth-chested. "Leave the shirt on, just unbuttoned." The soft, warm flannel would be his security-blanket, as well as keeping him from getting chilled. And Lex was used to it, on Clark, it kept his essence intact instead of exposing him in an entirely new light.

Maybe it was Lex's security-blanket.

Clark had unsnapped, unzipped, and lowered his jeans and underwear down and pulled them off, grabbing the socks off at the same time. He stood up, and, steeled, let Lex look at him.

It was a perfectly ordinary-looking cock. And yet it struck Lex as particularly nicely shaped, somehow. A little thicker in the barrel than you might expect from the length, pale in color; just slightly, now, on the interesting side of soft. Lex was no connoisseur, he had always cared a lot more about his own cock than any male partner's, and had early learned that the correlation between appearances and pleasure was pretty nearly nil. But Clark's appealed to him.

He wanted to kiss it.

The way the hips curved away to the back, almost hidden under the tail of the flannel shirt...

Clark was still standing there with just the unbuttoned shirt on, too conscious of his gaze to move, looking at the floor between glances toward Lex. For a moment Lex had an odd thought. He was glad Clark had chosen him instead of some other big-city slicker who wouldn't appreciate his gentleness and sincerity except as signs of fresh meat, who certainly would hurt him, and leave him with a first sexual experience of disappointment, from which only lessons of the 'sadder but wiser' variety could be drawn. Or some handsome local lout who wouldn't even know how to tell what Clark wanted, let alone how to give it to him. Lex was glad to be the chosen one, perfectly certain he could bring him through this with his confidence and trust undamaged. Lex's whole Rake's Progress through the East Coast sexual scene had been preparing him for this moment, all the dross about to transmute into gold as he led Clark through the angel swords unscathed to paradise.

"See anything you like?" Lex asked, and Clark blushed fierily as he smiled, and stood tongue-tied, but Lex could virtually feel the ties that stretched between the boy's hands and his spread, bound body, connections asking to be completed. "Come on. Show me."

And Clark reached forward and knelt at the foot of the bed, and Lex felt hands capture his feet, one and then the other, and lips and -- tongue! -- kiss each sole.

"Oh, god. Clark --"

Lex was flying. This was unbe-freaking-lievable, he'd never in a million years have thought a boy's tongue washing across the bottom of his foot could feel so -- He tremored to the top of his skull and Clark firmly held his foot from kicking in the ecstasy. Nibbles down the length of the sole apolcalypsed his brain. Thumbs sliding gently under his arch, into spaces between bones he never thought about, kisses touched the pads of his toes. "Oh, Clark --!"

His feet weren't satisfied, would never be satisfied, when Clark slid them apart and slithered up onto the bed between Lex's legs. He wanted Clark's weight between his thighs and got it.

"You know what a stanchion is, Lex?" Clark breathed on his face.

"Um, not sure..."

"It's upright bars you close around a cow's neck to keep her from moving while you milk her. I just got this vision of you tied up to one in our barn."

"I just got this vision of your Dad's .22."

"You'll have to get to know my Dad sooner or later. He's not what you think. He's the nicest guy really."

"Are you even a little uncomfortable lying on top of me naked talking about your father?"

Clark indisputably giggled. "You brought it up. Seriously, once he gets used to you, and understands how your mind really works," and Clark daringly touched Lex's head, "you'll see, he'd do anything for you. He's a complete softy, way more than me."

Lex's eyebrows rose. "More than you?"

"I can be pretty tough, Lex. I know it doesn't show, but sometimes you just -- you have to make decisions..." His voice trailed off and his gaze slid left.

"All the time," Lex agreed, intrigued. Clark's eyes came back to him. "So, you think your Dad will like how my mind really works? And how is that, exactly?"

Clark looked straight down into his eyes, a look that penetrated him, masculine as sex, took him over and opened him. "It's beautiful," he said, with an awe Lex could feel to his bones. "It's fascinating. I love it."

Reft of words, stripped naked to his soul, Lex felt the touch of fear. Cold around his core. Those green eyes... He could be helpless. Helpless. Then Clark's lips touched his mouth and Lex's tongue reached for him thoughtlessly, his whole body reached for him, clung toward him, he saw Clark again on the cross, a blaze like the sun behind him, head hanging in pain and shame and weakness, and Lex realized he had been lost from that moment, any pretense of observation since then just a smokescreen beneath which he'd got himself all the more well and truly lodged in love of a boy. He shuddered as if an earthquake were taking him, shaking all his parts into a new configuration, leaving him ablaze with molten fire. "Clark."

Clark blurred off him, so fast it was some seconds before Lex knew he hadn't been breathing, under the precious weight. He sucked air. Clark. He reached but his wrists brought up in padded cuffs to the clink of chains. "Clark --" and an arm was around him again, body against him, silk to flannel, skin to skin, breath on his mouth.

Only a boy. How had a mere boy done this to... the great and powerful Oz... Lex laughed, free and terrified in his chains.

Clark gazed down at him, lively and expectant.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," Lex said, and laughed again, watching Clark watch him.

The backs of Clark's fingers trailed across his cheek.

"I don't think I've ever actually seen you laugh before." He sounded surprised to realize it. "Irony is more your style. Lots and lots of irony."

"You know me well. And while we're still on the subject, I just want you to know, I love the way your mind works, too, Clark." A slight shadow came into the green-hazel eyes. "I see the way you handle things. How you do things almost hourly that you don't want to do, but have become quite good at. Lying to protect -- whatever it is that you're protecting. Trying to avoid the outright lies, but facing them dead-on if you have to. The fact that after -- how many years? -- you still hate an untruth -- you can't know how that makes me feel, Clark, how I admire it."

The boy was looking wholly upset.

"I'll never push, I'll never ask you what it is. I respect the honesty that underlies it, more than you can know. Clark..." He waited till the bravery in the boy made him meet Lex's eyes again. There it was, that lovely pain. That gallantry. "I didn't think there was such a thing in the world. I'll never betray you. And if it's something you are as a result of the meteor shower, remember I know how that feels." He looked at him with eyes that were probably showing too much. "Just... know... being near me puts you in the shark tank. Stay away from my father. He sees things. You'd be safer if you had nothing to do with me." He felt the irony come back. "Though that could be said of almost anyone."

And Clark changed completely at that moment, eyes sharpening, body tensing. "That's why you do it!" he exclaimed, shocked with discovery. "No one is safe, that's why you keep them all away!"

Stunned, as if at a spear-wound through the solar plexus, Lex was left without defenses.

It had to be true, he reasoned distantly. It had to be or it couldn't hit him like this. Well of course, on some level, sure, it --

Jesus Christ this hurt.

Interesting.

Lionel had sent away everyone he opened up to, until he stopped. Stopped opening. And just observed.

Ironically.

Except with Lionel it had been too late. He'd never learned how to not let Lionel hurt him -- only how to never let it show. No blood in the water.

Pamela of course. Chester the chauffeur lost the job and home he'd had for seven years. Mandy the nineteen-year-old downstairs maid. Priscilla, her sixty-year-old replacement. Margaret the cook sent packing -- without her husband Carl the gardener. Tutors Mr. Sheffield, Mr. Caplan, and Mrs. Halloran, insultingly let go with hints at prosecution. The disastrous mistake of inviting Michael Campagnoni home from school when he was six...

He was surprised and seared that he remembered all their names.

The pain so unbelievable.

Grown up, he could see now, dimly, that they would find other jobs, other friends, manage to put together the pieces of their shattered lives (irony wouldn't stay suppressed for long, too much a part of him). But as a child he'd only seen the disastrous pain his father wielded. Felt it, empathetically, known, without knowing why, that it was all his fault. He could see now the quick looks they'd cast at him were surely pity. But as his father made him stand and watch while he dismissed them, he'd thought those glances each an accusation.

"Lex." Kissing on his cheek, a hug around him, moving up to a warm hand on the back of his neck. "Lex. I'm sorry. Lex?"

Lex tried to put his arms around Clark, and the damn chains clanked again. That could get irritating.

"No problem, Clark," he said in his most adult voice. "I'm just not used to insights on that level before cocktails."

And Clark pulled back and looked at him.

Finally saying, "I think we have more in common than most people would understand." Lex's careful breathing started to go out of control again. "You've spent your life trying to protect people from what you are."

Clark --

"From what your father is and what he's made of you."

Clark.

"A kind of power I can't even imagine."

"Clark." This time it reached his vocal cords. "Don't. Don't ever mistake what I am for what you are. Listen to me, this is important. I'm not you. I don't know how to tell you that in words strong enough. I've done things... Been things..." Clark's arm wormed underneath him and he was being hugged. "You're not listening."

Clark's arms around him rescuing him from drowning.

"I'm listening. You're a dangerous guy."

Jesus. "Fuck this!"

And Clark shifted around him to hold him in a completely different way, contain his fury and channel it into a volcanic kiss and a fucking raging erection --

He wasn't --

-- angry, he --

-- just wanted -- wanted --

-- to fuck Clark in the worst way, he wanted --

-- his body was arched up into everything he could touch, his arms pulled and the chains rattled and it didn't matter because Clark was touching everywhere that mattered, grabbing him, around the back and on his ass, hard, and Lex was lifting into him, into him everywhere, crying out, Clark's hand ran flat across his buttocks and he ground his cock up madly into Clark's crotch, against bone and hard-on and shot, convulsed, hard up into Clark's steel-like clasp of arms and a leg around his entire body, flinging out to the length of his toes in the sudden electrocution, feeling Clark thrust wildly on him with an unbelievable strength that shredded Lex's sanity, made him a node of black pulsing pleasure and nothing else, until another thrust caught him wrong but he couldn't stop, struggled for more, hot pouring ecstasy drenching him, and then the steely grip and a lunge hurt, too sharp not to yelp out and shrink from. Clark dropped him, instantly, pushed back, and through pain and ebbing orgasmic whelmedness Lex saw the sex-flush vanish from Clark's face, leaving him white as a ghost, barely able to breathe out, "Are you all right?" and when Lex couldn't get the breath to answer him, looking as if he were fainting under torture.

"Okay," Lex forced out. Clark gasped and got a little color back. His hands were shaking.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry."

"Hey. It's no big deal. Are you sure you're okay?"

Clark just looked blank.

"You hit pretty hard there."

"Some -- sometimes I don't know my own strength." And such a look of despair haunted his eyes that Lex wished he could reach out.

"Clark. It's okay. Really. It happens all the time."

He wasn't comforted. "I'm just so sorry." He sat back, kneeling, and his eyes closed.

Lex said persuasively, "It looks like I got the best of the bargain both times." When the innocent eyes opened wide and questioned him, he pointed out, "You didn't come."

He'd never seen anyone turn so many different shades of red in the space of less than an hour. This one was just a faint flush of pink under the skin. "That's -- that's okay. I mean we don't have to do it again."

"Oh thank heaven," Lex teased, and Clark smiled despite himself. His eyelashes flicked down, his left hand twisted the red tail of his shirt on his thigh, and he looked altogether adorable. "Clark," Lex said softly. The boy looked up, his clear and honest eyes meeting Lex's. "You are clear on the concept of orgasm, right? Greatest bliss the human physiology can experience, and all that? Just so we're on the same page here, I've been considering this the overture, where you merely whet my desire for you."

The slight shiver that passed over Clark and the darkness that rose behind his eyes were arousal. Lex let his gaze shift slowly down over Clark, regretting the decision about the shirt; he would have liked to see that body hot and cold with wakening desire. But between the falls of soft red plaid Clark's cock was rising again, curving and distending into urgency; Clark's breath came faster.

"Our condom seems to have escaped," Lex said, lifting his head up off the pillow to see his stomach bare. Clark leaned to the bedside table and got another rubber, ripping its tiny packaging. But then he just held it in shivering hands, a slow burn of red fighting a cold pallor on his face.

"What do you want?" Lex softly asked. Clark couldn't speak.

Okay. Been here before. "We have all the time in the world. We can do everything. What do you want to try first?"

The boy didn't move and didn't look at him. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Want. Fear. Anger. Had to be, though nothing showed. Everything so strong, fierce, and in conflict, and something basic wrong. Freezing now it came to the real thing, oh yeah that's anger. Terror. Lockdown. "Clark. Clark. Honey." The endearment tasting freakish, daring, on his tongue. "Clark?" He's fifteen, for fuck's sake. And you let him run this scene? But Clark had seemed so happy, capable. Right up until he had to decide -- reveal -- whose cock should get the condom.

"Clark."

And Clark looked up at that tone, naked want wild in his eyes, hands still frozen.

Lex, softly, "You can have anything you want. Anything. I promise, Clark."

Clark shook his head, eyes closed.

"Clark. Unlock my hands."

Relief. Defeat. Despair. Clark dragged himself to the table and got the key. He unlocked the left cuff, and the right. Lex pulled his wrists free, sat up, and caught Clark in his arms.

"It's okay, Clark. Please don't be afraid. There's just so absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Nothing happens here that you don't want. And anything you want will absolutely happen here. I promise you." Clark was shaking his head, against Lex, saying nothing, desperate. "Lie down with me. Come on. Lie down and talk with me. Let's get you out of this --" Lex slid the shirt back off Clark's shoulders, down his arms, away. He shucked out of his own silk shirt and took Clark in his arms again. "Come on."

He laid Clark down, and lay beside him, stroking his distress-filled face, then putting his arms around him. He started petting down his back, the vertebrae into their curve, vulnerable hollow, onto the soft bottom, palm-fillingly lovely. "Tell me." He stroked to the thighs, and across. Clark surged very slightly against him.

And Lex now knew.

Clark hadn't worked his exuberant plan through to its real conclusion, or he hadn't ever really understood his own desire. He was fifteen. Lex had met -- laid -- women and men twice Clark's age who didn't understand. Until they met him.

"It's okay, Clark." Lex whispered it: "I know." He felt Clark's body ripple under his hands and against him, "I'll take you there." And Clark whimpered a negative of disbelief, but already Lex could tell his body understood, had translated the language of his purposeful touch, and Clark was warming, opening. Lex gently laughed. "You made a real good start, I have to say. I haven't come like that in... years. If ever. Not under anyone," and Clark stretched beneath his wandering hand, and groaned, and Lex gently pressed him onto his back, and palmed one nipple, and kissed the other.

"No," Clark objected unconvincingly.

"Oh I think so," Lex said and licked it. Sucked and tongued. Stroked the other with his fingertips. He swung down and lowered his tongue deep into Clark's navel. A shout got away from the boy, a writhe as Lex held him down, tangy delving driving Clark's body against his will. Lex laid his hand on the underside of Clark's erection and the body under his began to shudder. Lex licked out onto smooth belly, wiggled his tongue till it almost met the tip of cock that stretched for it, and then lifted up as Clark's voice sobbed. "Not yet," he whispered, looking into the boy's face. The green eyes were glazed, half-lidded; looking not at him, and not at anything; slacked mouth half-open. "Yeah," Lex whispered, and lightly pressed his fingertips onto the undersurface of the rigid cock. He had this boy's attention utterly. The question was, what should he do with it.

He knew for certain what Clark wanted.

He knew that Clark knew too.

Wanting didn't mean he could carry the weight.

Clark was unbroken. Beautiful colt wild and friendly, flirtatious and free, tossing his head, eyeing the saddle, the bridle. The whip.

His rider.

Clark Kent. Sweet God. Who would have known, who would have ever known...

Warm under his hands.

I can do this... The question is... oh should I?

He's only a boy. (Himself as a boy: knowing every stroke of the lash as if it twined inside his DNA.)

God look at him.

Mouth red, cheeks flushed, eyes almost shut, glaze showing between midnight lashes, head tilted so slightly away, unconscious offer of the throat, insignia of submission bred into the bone.

Want and consent though were two different things. So were consent and capability.

Lex kissed the offered throat, and when he looked up again Clark's eyes locked his. Fathoms of rut there, so deep he probably could never speak consent, or anything, too hypnotized.

Softly, Lex asked, "Do you want me to put the manacles on you?"

Clark's arms both stretched above his head, and spread. Head turned away in shame.

Oh God.

With steady hands Lex fastened the discarded padded cuffs around Clark's wrists. Tested for tightness, and pulled the chains a little shorter to their anchor hooks. To spread Clark's arms. He found the condom closed in Clark's left hand, pulled the fingers open, and took it.

A cry broke from the boy, brief and agonal, the end of any pretense; prayer; plea.

"Now I can do what I want to you," Lex murmurred hot against Clark's cheek. "You can't stop me." Clark twisted, gasping. "I can take you now. I think I will." A little moan started in Clark's chest, and didn't stop. Lex traced down over it with possessive fingers, onto the belly, stroked up on separate tracks, Clark out of his mind with it. Suddenly Lex straddled him across the belly, leaning down and licking on Clark's mouth. Clark's tongue flew out to meet him and Lex reared back and slapped him hard across the face.

Clark lay as if paralyzed. His head still turned away from the blow.

Lex carefully took the boy's face in both his hands. He lowered his mouth on Clark's, and entered. The boy stayed passive. Unresisting. Electrically tense. Each touch and thrust of Lex's tongue a shock that shook him. Lex withdrew.

"Look at me Clark."

The boy read the command. He opened eyes that were drugged utterly. Deep. So deep. He had sunk beyond where fear or reason reached, far into the dusky principality of lust.

"I'm going to do it Clark." Clark moved. "Yeah. It's real." Lex put two fingers in Clark's mouth and pushed them deep. The passivity held. "My cock is going to be inside you, Clark." Lex reached for the lube. He kissed Clark's soft mouth, gently, wetly. He breathed in Clark's ear, "Your virginity is mine." He pushed some pillows down along his side, then slid down and forced Clark's naked thighs apart and got between them. The moan started, half-hysterical, and he lifted Clark up and worked the pillows under him. He laid his hands on Clark.

"Shh, shh. Hush Clark." The moan stopped but held just below the surface of a sound. "You look so beautiful. Spread out for me like that." Clark jerked on the chains, that didn't give at all. Lex stroked inside his thighs. And up his cock and Clark's stretched torso twisted. Lex bent and licked the tip of the cock, took it in his mouth and lavished the head with washes of heavy tongue and salivaed lips. He took his mouth off just before Clark seemed about to scream and cream in him. He heard the moaning whimper start almost inaudibly. "Okay Clark. I'm putting the condom on now. It won't be long before I'm in you, taking you; I'm going to do it fast and hard. I'm rolling the condom over the top of my cock, I think you'll remember how big that is from having your mouth on it. It's going to stretch you wide as it stretched your mouth Clark. I'm rolling the rubber all the way to the thickest part at the bottom now. That's going in you too, all the way. You are definitely not going to be a virgin after this has been in there." He touched Clark's silky balls. "I'm not going to do that extra lube thing. Just enough to get it into you. I'm going to break you open. I think you want to feel it when it happens. I know I want you to." Lex slid the puddle of lube in his hand up the ensheathed length of his erection, hardly able to close his hand around it, and leaned back baring his teeth at the sensation. Hard as oakwood, hard as cruel steel, yet so sensitive to touch.

He leaned forward and kissed the boy's cock one final time. He whispered to Clark, "I want you to hurt for me." And watched Clark's belly hollow as he gasped for breath; his arousal stiffen.

He put his thick cock to Clark and pushed it in.

Clark cried out and reared his hips up, then down. But Lex had hold of him. He thrust, with weight on it. Inches sank in. Clark cried, "Lex!" and Lex stopped dead. Clark's body pleaded, with catches and whimpers of breath that spoke regret, terrors, uncertainties at the realness of what was happening, the horrifying presence of Lex inside him opening him, nothing he had imagined had been like this. "Lex --"

"It's okay, Clark, it's okay, I'm here, I'll never hurt you."

"It does -- It hurts --"

Trying to not move, hands stroking -- his slick hand on Clark's cock and sliding. He listened to the silence and the panicked breath. Lex leaned closer without pushing in. His voice dripped lust.

"Tell me how it hurts." Clark only looked at him with panic-stricken eyes. Lex slicked harder up Clark's cock and felt Clark weave his hips then stop at the shock of Lex inside him.

"Does it feel like knives cutting?"

Clark made a little nod and anxious gasp.

"Does it burn?"

Another little open-mouthed sound.

"Can you feel how far in I am?"

He felt Clark move under him once like an ocean swell, and Lex's moan joined Clark's voice, but he still didn't let himself move. He felt his voice shuddering down to the gutter.

"Does it... ache?"

Clark contracted around his long hard shaft.

And then his whole body stretched and shuddered.

Lex started moving his groin in little circles, and Clark followed him.

Lex took hold of Clark's hard-on and at the same time withdrew himself partway. Clark cried out again, clenching, helpless. Lex's hand jacked Clark's erection and when Lex's cock thrust in again Clark's breath sobbed and caught confusedly, unable to distinguish the sweetness from the fear. Lex's right hand petted reassuringly up his soft loin, that contracted and made Clark cry and gasp.

"Oh Lex --! Oh god --!" Hurt and need and the ecstasy of Lex's fist taking his cock so melded that when Lex slowly sank full-length into him Clark could only pant and jerk, and as Lex withdrew and thrust again into his secret heat, Clark turned his head right, wailed, "No!" and Lex relaxed.

He let go of Clark's cock, and panted, "Oh. Yeah. You're my -- boy. Uh-huh." His fingers fluttering over Clark's nipples, the reaching pushing him deeper. His forefingers and thumbs closed around the aureoles, the tips of the nipples wrinkling hard as he squeezed tight, and started to twist, and dug his cock as deep as it would go. Clark turning his head left, a gasp of "No!" and "No!" and wrenching "No!" as Lex withdrew, and "No! No! No!" as he forced back among the hot flesh once again, crooning, "Aren't you my boy, Clark -- aren't you my boy, yeah..." And Clark panting "No -- no -- no --" and with full confidence Lex lowered on top and into him, yanked hips back, thrust deep into the hot boy body, supported on one forearm and clasping him with the other, entering the hot depth to Clark's rhythm of resistance and arousal, ravaging into the struggle for fulfillment in exact time with his -- his -- boy's desire. He heard him make a tiny sound of pain at one hard push and overrode it with arching, and ordered, "Give it to me. That's what I want. I want you mine." Felt Clark hit a rough spot, of panic, and took him harder. He slid in his slick hand between them and at last took Clark's cock, wavering near hard, and brought it there with two quick strokes that arched the boy agonizedly, up into Lex's covering body, hard against him, crying "No -- no --" gasping "No! Ah! Ah!" Suddenly trying to escape him with heels digging into the bed and lunges to this side and that as Lex bore down and started thrusting hard, forcing into his deeps, taking against all opposition and bringing his boy's first virgin hard-on with his firm slick grip into a hard and lovely helpless pulsing orgasmic thickness that couldn't stop, that pulled cries out of him Clark's throat had never made before, his champagne spouting, and Lex felt it under his tight thumb and fingertips, the rush and spurt of it to the deep hard sounds Clark started making. Lex hauled back and half lifted him up off the bed with the first of final, brutal penetrations he threw his whole weight into. Clark's cock in Lex's fist stretched hard and shuddered. Lex watched his face, flushed and lovely, completely helpless with his first, his very first, orgasm in the presence of another person, shattered with its perfection and the dark hurt that was its power. The boy's cries turned to whimpers as his orgasm finished and Lex kept on relentlessly, ramming him full of hard thick cock and tightening the hold around his softening erection. Till finally he cried, "Oh Lex -- it hurts --" and Lex ejaculated hard into the blessed suffering, baptizing Clark with the hot liquid of his seed, and taking him forever as his own. "Oh Clark --"

The helpless boy, chained down, was ridden hard by thrust after final thrust of Lex's coming, taking it, learning it, the most important lesson of his life.

Lex finished with him, rolled away and stripped the condom off.

He stood up and released the cuffs.

"Get on your knees."

Shaken, opened, chilling with sweat, with cum dripping out of him down his thighs, bruised and taken, Clark slid off the bed onto the floor.

Lex reached and touched Clark's cheek.

His own voice felt like velvet in his throat. "You want me to stop?"

Clark mutely turned his cheek in to Lex's palm.

When he raised his eyes, the look was from the center of his soul.

"You have to know what we're doing here." The boy's head bent, and Lex laid his hand on the soft dark hair. Clark took a few deep, ragged breaths. Then without hesitation he leaned against Lex's thigh, caressed around behind it with one hand, and kissed the muscular front curve. He watched as Lex's cock swelled up and rose, until it curved up like a scimitar.

Lex lifted Clark's chin on his fingertips. "I want you again. Right now."

He saw a flush sweep across Clark's cheeks, and disappear. Shivering and naked, he looked up at Lex with open eyes, accepting shame, embarrassment, the fear of pain, what all might come.

"Bow down to me." Hesitant, not knowing quite what he should do, Clark bent forward. Arms stretched out to the sides, he bowed, and laid his cheek down on the floor.

Shaken in his turn, Lex grabbed a condom, rolled it on his eager member, slicked it sloppily, and knelt in back of Clark, thighs touching him. Without a word he thrust, hard into soft up to the root. Clark gasped, with a whimper in the sound that hardened Lex's dominance. He stroked Clark's bent, submitted back softly with both hands, then held his waist as he drew himself out of the boy, all the way. He reached beneath Clark and ran his knuckles under Clark's lengthened cock, up to the tip, feeling Clark shiver up his whole body. Then positioned himself again, inserted his thickness through the defenseless slicked opening and rammed it home. Clark jerked and made another whimper of pain and obedience that swelled Lex's engorged meat to greater size. With a trembling breath, he dragged the width back out of Clark's heat. This time Clark groaned, and shuddered when the hand felt his soft testicles. His hips veered to the side. Lex steadied them, and forced back in again, sinking himself deep on the single stroke, hissing at the sound Clark made, and the sensation of taking that so recent virginity, searing around the thickness that Lex plunged into it. He left it in, holding still for a full minute, stretching the boy deeply. Clark pulled forward, but Lex put both hands on him to pull him back. He only had to correct Clark once. Repeatedly, he drove into the inexperienced opening, thrusting down each time deeper towards Clark's heart. Sometimes withdrawing instantly, sometimes keeping the subordinated boy dilated, tense and strained until he moaned. Finally he sobbed in a breath and pleaded, "Lex..."

Lex leaned over him, and stroked his neck. "Be still, Clark." His hand smoothed over Clark's shoulder and upper arm, then onto his back.

Clark's breath shook. His erection, when Lex felt for it, was hard and trembling. Knowing his state of submission, Lex thought he might stay this way for hours, if Lex demanded it, sinking deeper into his sexual trance. But shortly he himself had had as much as he could take. Sinking hard into Clark, he ordered, "Beg me."

"Please, Lex." He whispered it immediately. "Please. Please."

"Please what? What are you asking me to do?"

There was silence and harder breathing.

"I want you to admit it, Clark. You're mine and I want you to say the words. Tell me three things you want me to do to you."

A gasping moan: "T-touch me." A whisper only a breath: "Fuck me. Finish me."

"Elegantly put." How much that 'Fuck me' must have cost the shy Kent son, who never said a swearword, even 'damn'. Lex shuddered suddenly with lust, and the move transmitted to Clark through Lex's deep-sunk cock. He shuddered out and in, without withdrawing, his inches sticking a little with dried blood. He slicked himself again and slid it deep.

"Oh please... oh please... oh... Lex..." Clark's voice so sunk in lust, in need, his body stabbed with hurt, sexual hurt that only wanted more; as he started riding in, and plunging deep and fast, he let Clark's moans and pleading lead his rhythm, and "No -- oh, no -- oh, no -- oh, no --" sped him, Clark resisting meant Clark past control, the sound brought sweat out all over Lex's skin and whipped his hips into a pistoning reflex, scoring ecstasy at every stroke.

"Clark..."

"Oh --

"Lex --

"Oh --

"Lex --"

Clark's voice pumped by Lex's slams into him and Lex's hot carnality, hunching over him possessively in greedy lust. He drew his fingertips down Clark's rigid shaft and stroked back in between his hard, tight balls, and Clark rose up against him calling, back going concave then like a cat's in heat, voice rising and falling and body swaying as he prostrated himself again to Lex's thrusting.

Lex laid his hand flat under Clark's hot cock, pressed it up against his belly and slid his slick palm up and down its length as hard as it would go, his other arm around Clark's waist, holding; he was sliding through him long, smooth and hard, flesh sweet and tight around him, his hand sliding the slippery pulsing shaft pressed tight up to Clark's skin. Lex shoved, Clark came, and Lex shoved him onto his belly and fucked him into the floor, ramming him against the hard cold stone and cried agonizedly, "You're... my... boy! My... fuckslave!" and came inside him like the heat-death of the universe, starting the slow collapse and rush toward reincarnation.

"Clark?"

Lex sat up.

"Jesus Christ." His hands were trembling and his muscles were in collapse. His head hung down. "Clark?" Lex's head jerked up. "Clark." The boy lay where Lex had left him, sprawled naked on cold stone. Lex pulled him gently. "Get up Clark." He leaned down and kissed Clark's shoulder. "Come on. It's too cold here, you'll catch your death." When Clark stirred and groggily made movements, Lex helped him sit up, and pulled him into his arms. Clark's arms went around him sleepily. God he was heavy. He shivered against Lex and Lex kissed his face fervently. "Okay, come on. Come on, Clark, wake up. Up off the floor."

He pried himself up and pulled the blinking Clark finally to his feet. So this was what he would be like to wake up with. Lex laughed to himself. By the time he steered him to the bed and wrapped a sheet around him the boy was almost actually awake. Clark looked at the manacles.

And looked away.

Lex leaned forward and tried to see his face. He still felt shaky and it finally occurred to him he'd skipped both breakfast and lunch to have time to meet Clark here before sundown. He dismissed it. He reached across and pulled Clark's far shoulder around to make Clark face him. "How are you doing?" he asked in his softest voice.

Hair all tousled, Clark tried to look up but couldn't meet his eyes for more than an instant. Lex hooked his leg around Clark on the bed to get it out of the way and moved up close, and held him and kissed his cheek. "You can say anything to me, Clark. Are you pissed off?"

"No..." But he sounded doubtful.

"It's okay if you are. I probably shouldn't have gone into a full-blown scene like that with you."

"Scene?" He could hear the edge of indignation and sense of betrayal in the uncertain word.

"That's just what it's called when you... play like that. It doesn't mean it isn't real, Clark, that the feelings aren't as deep and passionate as any other kind of sex." His hand was caressing the far side of the boy's face. He wanted to hold and protect him, but it was awkward -- Clark was right, he was the taller of the two. Like one of those baby birds that gets left in the nest of another species. But, Lex thought, a baby still. It had to be wrong to think of him as adult, as he so often did.

"I never felt like that before."

Oh god. Lex said very softly, "You haven't had much chance. Maybe I shouldn't have gone for it, but I could see how much you wanted it."

"I'm not like that!" Clark wrenched away and Lex let his arms fall. "I'm not a -- a -- I'm not -- sick like that!" His voice trembled.

"Clark, it's a normal part of human sexuality. People do it all over the world. And classically the person who ends up on the bottom is a take-charge, alpha personality in -- ordinary things."

Clark sat still. Then he started to blush. The red burn travelled from his face all the way down his neck and under the sheet.

"You were beautiful," Lex said softly. "So open and giving. It's so rare, Clark, when it's that perfect. You were incredible." He took the hot face in his hands, and kissed the burning cheek.

"I wanted to," Clark said, eyes closed. "I wanted you to..." He couldn't find a word.

"Violate you." Lex murmurred it against his skin. "Break your sanctuary. Take your control away from you and let you do exactly what you wanted."

Clark's breath had gone controlled and ragged.

Lex murmurred, "You want me to do it again this moment."

"Lex --" It was a breath, a fragile orison.

"You want my tongue in your mouth. You want me holding your wrists behind your back. You want my body pushing you back on the bed, lying on top of you." Clark straightened, head back. "You want me to give it to you. Like a freight train. Without mercy. Lie between your legs" -- Clark writhed, upright -- "and push into you like a big truck piston, take it, take it, take it --" Lex's hand had found Clark's rigid cock and milked it rhythmically as Clark made little panting desperate sounds. "You want to twist and fight me and not be able to stop me. It will hurt every time I take you." Clark arched back against Lex's strong supporting arm and his gasps came anxiously. "Yeah," Lex said. "Yeah." and leaned in on him and with a harder grasp ordered, "You want it. Show it to me. Yes!" and pushed hard against him as Clark shot, head back and gasping, while Lex held him up and stripped his cock of every final drop of semen and every exquisite sensation. Clark turned his head toward Lex's kissing, but didn't have the strength to move his lips. Lex kissed them anyway. "So beautiful..." eating Clark's hot breaths.

After a while he murmurred, "And that's what I would do, except that you're fifteen and I'm twenty-one, and in those six years I've passed my scientifically determined sexual peak. Tragically, I'll never be able to keep up with you in the sack."

Without lifting his head from Lex's shoulder, Clark puffed, "Fuck!" in tones of wonder and amazement and exhaustion, and flung his arms around Lex heavily.

"Ah," Lex said, and shut up. He rocked Clark once or twice and thought of many things, not least the deleterious effect he seemed to be having on Clark's vocabulary.

Finally Clark said, less anxious but still questioning, "Why do I like this?"

"Nobody knows, Clark. There are theories. None of them agree. Most of them start from the idea that it's abnormal."

"Like I wasn't weird enough already." It was a sigh and a resignation that gave Lex a sad feeling. "How did you know that I... I mean... You could tell?" The alarming idea had just occurred to Clark.

"I could tell. But only because I had you in bed with me. And because... Well... The short version is, because I was my generation's ranking slut. The long version... years of experience; a lot -- I mean a lot -- of sex, S/M and so-called not, a lot of partners, hundreds -- you get to know the subtle signs," or not so subtle "like it's second nature. Like you, the way you'd know a cow is hungry, or the chickens are in heat." Against his chest Clark started laughing suddenly. "What." Clark beat his forehead gently against Lex's shoulder, and then rolled out of his arms and fell back on the bed, and turned on his side, laughing helplessly. He tried to say, "Chickens --" but it came out without sound, and he rolled in on himself, helpless again instantly. Enchanted, Lex complained, "Hey. I know about human sex, not -- avian." Then, "Well, I can see my image as the Dr. Ruth of leather is completely blown."

Weakly, Clark held up his hand to plead with Lex to stop. Lex gently took the jerking fingers, stroking them till Clark heaved a last big sigh, and opened his eyes, his lashes wet with tears. He smiled up. Without thinking, Lex smiled down.

Oh god, he dimly realized.

I am so fucked.

End

3/27/03

Go on to Justice: With A Vengeance