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"Is this okay?"

"Yes. Yes, God, yes."

"Ten," he says. "You count. Out loud. Quietly. Wes and Gunnar are on the other side of that wall."

The first one lands with a flat crack, open-handed, across both cheeks. It doesn't hurt. It stings, and then it doesn't sting, and then it's warm, a warmth that spreads out under my skin and goes straight to my cock.

"One," I say into the pillow.

He does it again. Same place.

"Two."

By six, I'm shaking. By eight, I'm grinding down against the bedspread every time his hand lands, and he says stop moving and puts his other hand on the small of my back to hold me down, and I make a noise into the pillow that I'm not proud of. By ten, I'm not counting so much as gasping the numbers.

"Ten," I sob. "Ten. Ten, Dane⁠—"

His hand stops. Then I feel it again, soft now, flat and cool against my hot skin, rubbing slow circles.

"Pink," he says, like he's reading a scouting report. "Be gone by morning."

"I don't care⁠—"

"I do." He leans down and kisses the base of my spine. "Rule three."

He gets the lube.

He takes me like that, face down, taped to the headboard of a Country Lodge in North Dakota, my ass still warm from his hand.

He opens me up slow. He takes his time. He's got two fingers in me and his other hand pressing down on the small of my back, and every time I try to push back on him, he stops. Waits. Until I'm still. Then he starts again.

"Please," I'm saying into the pillow. "Please, please, I'll be good, I'll be so good, I'll say yes, I'll say yes for real⁠—"

"You'll say yes for real," he agrees, and slides into me.

I bite the pillow so I won't scream.

He's slow. He's so slow. Long, deep strokes that make me feel every inch of him, all the way out and all the way in, and his hand moves up my spine to the back of my neck and holds me there. Not hard. Just holds. The weight of him over me. The tape around my wrists. The heat of my ass against his hips every time he bottoms out. I can't move. I can't do anything. I don't have to do anything.

All I have to do is take it.

I've never felt anything like it. Like I'm floating. Like somebody's finally taken the weight I've been carrying since April out of my hands, and I can just let go.

"You're doing so good," he says against the back of my neck. His voice is rough. "So good. You can let go. I've got you."

"I want to come." I'm crying a little. I don't know when that started. "Please, can I come?"

"Not yet."

"Please—"

"Not yet. Wait for me."

I wait. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. He fucks me slow and deep while I shake and shake. His breathing goes ragged against my neck. His hips start to stutter. And then he gets his hand under me and wraps it around my cock and says, in my ear, "Now," and I come so hard everything goes white.

I feel him come a second later, buried deep, his teeth on my shoulder, groaning my name into my skin.

He takes care of me for a long time after.