[
This is chapter one of a completed four-chapter novella to finish posting by the end of the first week of November 2020.
]
Chapter One: Possessed
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July-August 1775, Manhattan
20 July 1775
Bester drew his cloak tightly about him; dipped his tricornered hat at his superior, Captain Lamb; and, scanning the street, slipped out of the battery redoubt at the tip of Manhattan Island. The cloak wasn't for the cold. It was to hide Douglas Bester's uniform identification that marked him as an artillery lieutenant in the American rebels' Continental Army. Ever since the British had tried—and barely failed—to break out of the siege at Boston the previous month at Bunker and Breed's hills, a new move by the British was anticipated and spies were assumed to be moving about in New York City. The British still had access to the outside world from Boston via their fleet of warships, and there was every fear that they would abandon Boston only to attack New York.
For a month and more the artillery militiamen who manned the battery protecting both Manhattan and the approaches to the strategically important Hudson River had been on round-the-clock high alert. The men were frazzled. As an officer, the twenty-five-year-old, sturdily built, muscular, handsome, and dark-haired artillery lieutenant had been under as much, if not more, tension than most. In his case there was added tension that he couldn't talk to any of the men about—he could only endure and look for opportunities where they might present themselves.
He should have returned to the nearby barracks and sleep the sleep of the dead in anticipation of his next shift scanning the waters of the harbor, but he was too keyed up for that. It had been too long since he'd had the type of relief that he, a robust, highly sexed man of particular interests, needed. Instead of moving in the shadows of the battery walls to the barracks, he turned his steps into the interior of lower Manhattan, seeking out as many forms of relief as he could manage. Fraunces' Tavern, on Broad Street, would provide at least some of what he needed. As well as being a meeting place for revolutionaries to share what news could be had of the British movements, Bester could seek out the calming effect of tobacco and the numbing solace of ale.
A well-formed and outgoing military officer, Bester had no trouble finding a place at a table in the crowded tavern. His friends were calling for ale for him even as he cast off his cloak, hanging it on a peg by the door. He moved across the room, through boisterous clusters of men, to be offered a pipe as he sat at his friends' table in the cloud of smoke and noise hovering over the tavern room. He had hung his uniform coat up with the cloak and had now become just one of the many men in the room in a billowy white cotton shirt, navy-blue britches, and gray stockings. He wasn't just another man in the room, though. He was particularly well put together, his black hair tied off with a ribbon at the back of his head, rugged and dark facile features strikingly marked by hazel eyes, a muscular torso, and well-turned thighs and calves. He stood a full head above most of the men in the room and outweighed them as well, although he would be described as solid rather than heavy. He could wrestle any man in the tavern to submission and all there recognized that he could. He'd done so for sport on many an occasion, wrestling only in his britches and showing the curly black matting of hair on his chest and arms. He was truly a man's man and in his prime.
He also had a nature that most men in the colonies didn't have—and even fewer willingly revealed. He was attracted to other men rather than women, and at this particular moment he was in great need of release. Thus it was that he was particularly observant when his mug of ale was delivered by a tavern boy—not a boy, really, a young man—although all servers in taverns were called boys. This one was one Bester had not seen in Fraunce's Tavern before. He was sure he would have remembered seeing him before, as just the sight of this one set Bester's juices going.
The young man was sandy haired and slim. He was considerably younger than Bester and yet looked to be in his majority—which, in itself, piqued Bester's interest. The ale server was quite comely, moving like a dancer through the crowd as he delivered mugs of ale. He had a beautiful smile, long lashes above pale-blue eyes, and sensuous lips. A charge went through Bester's body as the ale was delivered, because their hands touched in the transfer of the mug and the young man looked down into Bester's eyes and the rugged soldier caught the unmistakable smile of interest.
The world of men preferring men was a tightly held secret and suppressed one in colonial times. When two men of this interest met, there were unmistakable looks that passed between them. Bester felt his body tighten up as the young serving man gave him such a look and took a fraction of time longer than was necessary to withdraw from the touch while transferring the mug.
Bester immediately felt himself starting to go hard, but when he looked up again, the young man was gone. He hadn't gone far, though. He had returned to the bar to pick up more mugs of ale and he was distributing them around the tavern. But he kept looking back in Bester's direction, and despite the conversation at the table on the status of the British presence and of various colonial leaders' calls for a break with Britain, Bester found himself frequently picking out where the young, lithe, sandy-haired server was in the large, smoke-filled room.
He saw that the young man did keep looking back at him, but he noticed that the server also was listening intently to the conversations at the tables in the small groups of men standing about, as if he was gleaning as much of what was being said as he could. This disturbed Bester a bit. He had moved into a conversation at his table about the capabilities and ranges of the cannon in the nearby battery at the tip of Manhattan, but seeing the interest being displayed by the tavern boy, he bit off what he was going to say next. Captain Lamb, the commander of the battery unit, had warned all of the men about British spies being about and needing to be vigilant about what they said in public, and he realized that a single mug of ale had loosened his own tongue. He went silent, hoping that those in conversation at his table wouldn't notice that he had clammed up.
Going silent, though, permitted more attention to go to observation, and it became increasingly evident the tavern boy was eyeing him and conveying an invitation. When, after looking meaningfully in Bester's direction, the young server moved to the back of the tavern room and then through the beaded-curtain-covered doorway of a corridor leading to the back of the building, Bester excused himself on the excuse of the call of nature and followed through the door. The corridor was dark and the young man was several paces ahead of Bester, but he turned and gave Bester a smile before continuing on, which Bester recognized as an understanding between the two.
No words need be spoken. Douglas Bester stood facing the back wall of the tavern, arms bracing himself against the brick wall in the shadows, pulled far enough away from the wall for the young tavern server to kneel between him and the wall; unbutton his britches fly; fish out a now-hard, thick, and long cock; and take it into his mouth, with his hand cupping Bester's ball sack and squeezing and rolling the balls, while he sucked the soldier's cock.
Bester's need was so strong that he wasn't able to endure this very long. He pulled the young man up onto his feet, unbuckled him, and pushed his britches down to the cobblestones.
"Climb my hips," he growled, and the young man raised his legs and hooked his knees on the larger man's hips. He gave a little cry of pain and surprise—and of his own need—as Bester's staff penetrated his channel.
"Yes, yes, plow me," the young blond man exclaimed in a strangled voice, as Bester gripped and spread his buttocks cheeks and moved deep inside him.
"Plow yourself," Bester growled.
Unbuttoning the soldier's shirt, laying his cheek against the black curls between Bester's muscular pectorals, and gripping the man's biceps in his hands, the young man did that, moving his pelvis on the cock, fucking himself on the buried shaft.
Both men, coming into this in high need, came quickly. They just held there, panting,
"I want—" the young man murmured.
"There's more. Just hold," Bester responded. "My name is Douglas. I want to meet with you again."
"I'm Timothy," came back the answer. "You're a soldier, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"An officer at the artillery battery."
"Yes, how did you know?"
