Free Blood Brothers by Barbara Sheridan, Anne Cain Page A

waist and slid his hand down the smooth abdomen. “Don’t you know how sad I’ll be if you leave me?”
    “I know,” Kiyoshi muttered. “I’m sorry, Sakurai. I’m sorry for everything …”
    Kiyoshi’s voice trailed off as his friend wet a cloth in a bucket of water and began to slowly bathe his flushed skin. “I-I don’t-don’t know why Mother was so mean to you. Our fathers were friends, it was only right he take you in when your mother died.”
    He shivered when Sakurai moved the cloth lower and parted his knees. Kiyoshi trembled again when the cool dampness touched him there . “Maybe she was mad because you’re half-Chinese…” His words turned into a groan as his friend stroked the cloth over the hardening length pushing up beneath his abdomen.
    “I think so,” Sakurai whispered.
    The woman always had treated Sakurai poorly. If something broke or was lost, if a season yielded a bad crop, or if she simply disliked the look on his face, Sakurai received the blame and the beating that came with it. “I don’t like that boy’s eyes, ” she would complain to Kiyoshi’s father.
    “They’re so black they hide whatever bad thoughts lurk in them. ”
    -7-

    Barbara Sheridan and Anne Cain
    She criticized everything about him—the way he sometimes spoke in Chinese, his height, the inky blackness of his hair, even the way his full, bow-shaped lips always seemed to stay in a half-smile. From what Sakurai could remember of his own mother, he looked so very much like her. Perhaps that was the true reason why Haha-ue had hated him so much. Each time she saw Sakurai, she must have seen his mother’s face. When Sakurai first went to live with his adoptive parents, he wondered if Haha-ue was only bitter because he reminded her of the woman who had borne a son so much stronger and healthier than her own.
    The week before Kiyoshi’s father died at the hand of bandits, he laid flowers on the grave of Sakurai’s mother. Though only a boy, Sakurai understood then that man had loved her. Once Kiyoshi’s father perished, Haha-ue forever more addressed Sakurai’s mother as the whore, her voice full of cruelty and jealousy. So many times Haha-ue accused the woman of having been a Chinese devil in the form of a seductress, tricking them into adopting the reprobate’s burdens—meaning Sakurai.
    But in a village suffering so many hardships, as much as his adoptive mother loathed him, she wouldn’t turn him away. Sakurai was another son to help with the farming and keep the house standing after Kiyoshi’s father died. And of course, Sakurai wouldn’t run away. Not when he had his Kiyo-kun, his only friend in the world.
    The sounds Kiyoshi made now as the cloth probed deeper between his legs sent a shiver of pleasure through Sakurai. He bit down on his lower lip to hold back the groan that tried to escape him and moved closer on his knees. A hand-width’s distance separated them, and he could feel the heat coming from Kiyoshi’s body.
    “But don’t worry yourself about your Haha-ue now,” Sakurai whispered as he gently massaged the damp cloth over the taut sack
    -8-

    Blood Brothers
    beneath his dear one’s swollen cock. “ You’ve always loved me, and that’s been enough.”
    The material slipped from his hand. Flesh touched flesh. Sakurai wrapped his fingers around Kiyoshi’s firm cock, moaning under his breath as he felt the feverishly hot skin.
    “I love you, Kiyoshi,” he breathed. “I love you so much.”
    Kiyoshi gazed up into Sakurai’s face. He squirmed when his friend’s hand closed around his hard, aching organ. The last time they’d touched this way, Kiyoshi had been afraid. He’d collapsed on the field, tired and weak from the heat and overexertion. Sakurai carried him to the bamboo grove growing behind the house and laid him down in the shade. It seemed so natural to Kiyoshi then to receive a soft kiss from his dear friend on the cheek. But when Sakurai’s hand reached underneath