Page 5

“Yes,” he said, his voice thick and small. “Yes, Daddy. I’m so sorry.”

I smoothed my hand over the heated skin, gently.

Then, I stood him up slowly, my hand at his elbow steadying him as his legs found their balance. His face was flushed, his eyes wet at the corners. I cupped his jaw in my palm and tipped his face up to mine. His eyes were glassy, the blue gone soft and unfocused, and then I kissed him.

“Good boy,” I murmured against his lips, and felt the shudder that ran through him at the words. “You took that so well. So beautifully. Every single stroke. I’m proud of you.”

His breath hitched. His eyes fluttered open, wet and enormous, and he looked at me, unguarded, showing he’d been wrung out properly. No performance left in him. Just JJ, emptied and open and waiting. I let my hand drift down to his chest, settling over his T-shirt and feeling the rapid flutter of his heartbeat beneath my palm. He was still shaking, his legs unsteady beneath him, and he was hard. Achingly hard. When my fingers brushed lower, he made a soft, desperate noise and pressed his hips forward without seeming to realize he was doing it.

“Colors, baby,” I said, keeping my voice low and even. “Tell me.”

“Green,” he whispered, and his voice cracked on the word. “Green, Daddy, please — I’m okay, I’m — green.”

I held his gaze for a beat longer, reading the honesty in it. No hesitation.

“Good boy,” I said again, and watched the relief wash through him. I pressed one more kiss to his forehead and felt him lean into it with his whole weight.

Chapter 3. Sullivan

“On the bench,” I told him, and my voice had dropped into the register that made him move without thinking. “Hands and knees. I want you where I can see you.”

He went. Clumsy, unsteady, his jeans still tangled around his knees, but he went. He crawled onto the bench.

The same rope. The one JJ had used to bind my wrists behind the kidnapping chair earlier tonight, coils of it still sitting on the floor where Mel had dropped it after untying me. I picked it up and felt the weight of it in my hands. JJ watched me over his shoulder, his blue eyes tracking the rope as I measured out a length between my palms.

His chest was pressed against the burgundy leather padding through his T-shirt, his arms stretched forward along the frame, and I took his wrists one at a time and secured them to the recessed D-rings. JJ’s body trembled under my hands. His face was turned to the side, cheek against the leather, and I could see the flush spreading down his neck, the way his lower lip had caught between his teeth.

Gustav appeared at my side. He held the red silicone ball gag in one hand, the black leather strap dangling from his fingers, and his green eyes were bright with delight.

“Thought you might need this,” he said, and handed it to me.

I took it without comment. I fit it into JJ’s mouth with my thumb against his chin, feeling the resistance of his jaw for half a second before he opened for me, and buckled the strap at the back of his head with two firm tugs.

His blue eyes went glassy and very wide. His breath came fast through his nose, his chest rising and falling against the leather padding, and his fingers curled against the edge of the bench as if he needed something to hold onto. I checked the restraints. Ran my thumb over the rope at his wrists, testing the tension. Checked his hands — fingers pink, circulation good, no blanching. Checked his face — the gag seated properly, the strap not cutting into the corners of his mouth, his eyes holding mine.

My hand rested at the back of his neck for a moment. Warm. His skin was damp with a fine sheen of sweat, his pulse jumping under my palm, and I let my thumb trace the curve of his spine.

He was bare from the waist down against the burgundy leather, flushed and trembling, the marks from my hand and belt standing out in warm patterns across his skin. So hot.

I took my time. My hands on his hips, his lower back, the curve of his ass, touching him. JJ made a muffled sound around the gag, his hips shifting against the bench, and I leaned down close to his ear.

“Stay still,” I said, and felt the shiver that ran through him at the sound of my voice.

The spanking bench was the perfect tool for this: built by hand, the same way everything important at The Hearth seemed to be, every detail tailored for the needs of its regulars. Heavy oak, lacquered smooth, the kneeling shelves measured precisely to fit the range of bodies that ended up over it each week. I’d watched it absorb a hundred different surrenders.

He made a show of squirming his knees into place and arching his back, but I could see the effort it took to keep his reactions on a leash. I let him wait, just long enough. Sometimes that was the hardest part, the stretch of time between anticipation and the real thing, but it was also where the best kind of fear lived. I circled him once, measuring the spread of his arms, the way the rope at his wrists held his elbows right at the edge of comfort. I ran my palm along his back, down the heated curve of his ass. I could feel the way he trembled beneath my hand.

The marks I’d left on him were blooming across his skin, a web of handprints and belt stripes. I set my hand on the back of his neck and leaned in so close that my beard brushed his ear. He shivered.

It was easy, sometimes, to forget how many years we’d been doing this, how long it had taken him to trust me enough to let go as fully as he did now. Watching him here, on display, I found myself wanting to draw it out as long as possible, to keep him suspended in that star-bright place where his need and my attention met in perfect balance. I let my thumb stroke the nape of his neck, then followed the line of his spine down until my hand was resting on the small of his back. He made a noise around the gag, part protest, part plea. I couldn’t help it — I smiled and then leaned my weight into him.

JJ let out a noise that was unmistakably relief, followed a second later by a ragged, desperate whine as my fingers pressed into him. He was so ready it was almost funny, but I made him wait anyway, fucking him with my fingers until his whole body trembled with the effort of holding still. For the next several minutes, I worked him slowly, my fingers inside him, slick with lube from the bottle I had brought, alternating between rough and gentle, cruel and kind.

My other hand wrapped around his cock, and I felt him buck against me, a sharp, desperate jerk of his hips that he couldn’t control. He was already slick with pre-come, hot and hard in my palm, and when I squeezed just enough to make him feel it, he made a sound around the gag that went straight through me.

I set a rhythm. Slow strokes with my right hand while my left kept working him open, two fingers now, curling just so every time I pressed in. JJ’s whole body was shaking, his thighs trembling against the bench, and the sounds he made were muffled and wrecked and perfect. I watched the way his fingers tightened against the padded rails, the way his back arched and then went slack and then arched again, chasing something he couldn’t quite reach.

“Easy,” I murmured, though I wasn’t sure he could hear me over the pounding of his own pulse. “Easy, baby. I’ve got you.”