Another way (12 page)

I was floating in a bubble where nothing existed but me and my Master when something soft touched the inside of my thigh. It took me a few moments to register that it was likely a feather, and that Master was drawing it up and down the inside of my leg, making all of the hairs stand on end. Carefully, it circled around my balls, then tickled lower, just skimming over the top of my ass cheeks.

Then it was gone.

My body didn’t belong to me.

A sharp ping broke me out of my reverie, followed by a strange sting on my ribs where whatever it was had hit me. Master still hadn’t said for me to open my eyes, so I fought my instincts to look for the source of the light pain and instead, just basked in it.

I figured out after a few more snaps that it was a rubber band. Master was flicking it over strategic points on my body—my ribs, thighs, stomach… then my nipples, and eventually he snapped it over my balls a few times. I couldn’t decide if I loved it or hated it, which usually meant I loved it.

“You’re such a good boy,” Master said. I heard him shedding his clothes, then the familiar sound of a condom wrapper opening and him rolling it on.

“If you’re ready, you can open your eyes.”

I took a few more minutes basking in the darkness while his clever fingers prepped my ass with plenty of lube. It was only when I felt his weight on the table with me, between my legs, that I looked at him.

Master was so, so gorgeous. In the low light of the playroom, his skin was ghostly pale, making his sharp eyes stand out as they appraised me with so much lust. He wanted me, wanted this just as much as I did. Master kissed the inside of my knee in the same spot where he had left his mark weeks earlier. It had gone now, but my skin retained the memory of where it was.

My legs were already spread obscenely wide, allowing Master to position his body over mine and enter me in one smooth stroke. At first he held his body up and away from mine, balanced on his hands; then, when I was nearly begging for more closeness from him, he lowered down, pressing his chest to mine.

I closed my eyes, warring against the sensation of him filling me and how it was pushing me toward the edge already. There wouldn’t be any punishment for me coming without permission, but we had only just gotten started, and I wanted to last at least long enough to make Master come with me.

“Did I tell you to close your eyes?” His voice was stern.

“No, sir.”

“Then look at me, Jesse. Look at the man who owns you. Look at the man who has his cock in your ass right now.”

I whimpered and met his eyes. Master started a slightly faster pace, rolling his hips with every thrust. We quickly found a rhythm that suited us both. I’d squeeze his cock with my muscles when he found my deepest point, and he’d angle his thrusts to hit my sweet spot.

Suddenly I needed more. I pulled against the bonds on my wrists—normally they would be something that anchored me to subspace, but it was starting to be too much. I needed more than the simple act of domination.

“Please, untie my hands, please, please,” I begged him.

“Are you safewording?” he asked, stopping immediately.

“No… no,” I stuttered.

“Okay, good,” he said, rocking his hips gently and kissing my neck. “Shh, baby, I can hear your heartbeat. Why do you want me to let you go?”

“Not everything, just my hands.”

“Why?” he pressed.

“I… I want to touch you,” I admitted on a whisper.

We were dancing along that knife-edge again, between what was part of our D/s relationship and what wasn’t. Master was hesitating, I knew, because of his own personal reasons for needing to be a dominant.

“I’ll unhook the cuffs,” he said eventually. “But they stay on your wrists.”

I nodded silently and stayed still as he leaned over to unhook each of my wrists in turn. Master tangled his fingers with mine and held them down on the table over my head, his forearms braced on mine and our eyes locked as he resumed fucking me.

It was easy to hold back my orgasm because something a lot bigger than just getting off was building in my stomach. I couldn’t look away from his piercing brown eyes, his eyes that were begging for me to understand.

My lips found his again, hot and frenzied kisses that were telling us too much; they were evidence that would surely be held against me soon. Master’s left hand slipped out of mine, cupping my cheek gently to angle my jaw to his lips. I tentatively put my newly released hand on his lower back, just resting it there so he wouldn’t freak out.

“Jesse,” he moaned, and I swallowed his words, my name, and hid it away somewhere inside me.

I tugged my other hand free and grabbed hold of his hair, running my fingers through the length of it as our kisses grew more frantic. The smell of sweat and sex in the air turned me on further, and the sound of his skin slapping against mine, his cock in my ass, drew me closer toward coming.

Master’s hand cupped my hip, his fingertips grazing my ass cheek as he repositioned his other arm, putting his weight on his forearm close to my face. I turned my head and kissed the inside of his elbow.

“God, Jesse, it’s too good, too good,” he mumbled incoherently. I was beyond words, my breath coming in sobbing pants as he brushed against my prostate with every thrust of his cock, sending shocks of electrified pleasure to every nerve in my body.

Our lips met again for just a moment, then my back arched off the table and I was coming harder than I’d ever come before. My orgasm shook through me in waves, and all I was aware of, all I was consumed with was Will. At some point I realized that he was coming with me, calling my name over and over as he filled me, holding my body to his as we rode it out together.

Gradually, the world outside my own body started to come back to me. I ached, in all the right places. Will was kissing my jaw, just underneath my ear, and I turned to him, rubbing my swollen lips against his for a moment, then running my nose up the side of his, through his eyebrows, kissing his soft eyelids.

There were only moments left before we’d need to move, and I forced myself to commit everything to memory. His smell, the way his hair felt under my fingertips, how solidly his heart beat over mine. He was so, so gentle as he pulled away from me, quickly disposing of his condom, then unbuckling my legs and stretching them out.

“Are your muscles cramped up?” he said, rubbing down my legs to feel for any damage.

“A little,” I admitted, surprised at how gravelly my voice was.

He applied a little more pressure then, massaging out the aches until I was a loose, languid mess underneath him all over again. Will held out a hand to pull me to my feet, and I found solid ground easily.

It surprised us both when I wrapped my arms around his middle, pulling him to me because I missed his closeness. We were in deep. We were in really, really fucking deep.

Chapter Nine

I
KNEW
what I needed to do. To pretend otherwise was lying to myself, which I had already done for far too long. Once I’d made the decision, though, it took days for us to be home at the same time long enough to hold a proper conversation. I never realized how little time we actually spent together until I was forced to wait for it.

Adele was on a day shift, so I was expecting her home by about five in the afternoon, but I didn’t hear her key in the lock until way after seven. It was typical.

“Hey,” she said as she shut the front door to our apartment behind her. “I wasn’t expecting you to be in.”

I shrugged and downed the last of my second beer for liquid courage.

“Adele,” I said softly, and she gave me a wry sort of smile.

“We need to talk, huh?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled.

She shrugged off her coat and dumped it on the floor next to the closet with her purse. It annoyed the hell out of me that she wouldn’t just hang it up, but I’d never said anything to her about it before, so now wasn’t the time to start.

“You go first,” she said, sitting down on the coffee table so she was facing me.

“I don’t think our relationship is working anymore,” I said bluntly.

“You’ve been seeing someone else,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me.

“So have you,” I immediately retorted. It was a guilty, reflex action, but as soon as the words left my mouth, I knew they were true. It was another fact I’d been ignoring. And Adele’s hot flush was more than indignation.

“How dare you—” she spat, but I shook my head.

“Throwing insults at each other isn’t going to get us anywhere,” I said.

“Are you surprised that I went looking for affection elsewhere?” she asked, half sneering and half sobbing. “You spend all your time with Will. You’ve barely noticed me for months now.”

“That’s because you spend all your time at the restaurant!” I yelled.

“It’s my
job!
” she yelled back. “At least I’m doing something with my life, achieving something.”

“Ouch,” I muttered under my breath. I turned away from her, pacing a few steps back and forth in the confined space. “How did we let things get this bad?”

“Because you never
talk
to me,” she wailed. “Every time I try and tell you how I feel, you brush me off.”

“I do not,” I retorted.

“You do, Jesse! Your mind works at a mile a minute, I’ve seen that, I know that you can process a lot of shit at the same time. But I’m not even on your radar these days. You don’t notice me coming and going. If I don’t come in at night, you barely even care!”

“Of course I care, Adele. We’ve been together forever. I just don’t know how you’ve managed to keep all these… these
resentments
from me until they boil over into something like this.”

“
‘This’
being us breaking up?”

“I never said I wanted to break up with you,” I said, not knowing where the words were coming from. Of course I wanted to break up with her. I just didn’t want her to know that.

Adele flopped back onto the couch, sighing, “Jesus Christ, Jesse,” and covering her face with her hands.

I sat down for two seconds, then jumped to my feet and walked to the kitchen to get another drink. I couldn’t stand the stillness or the silence. Or the unspoken accusations. Or the spoken ones. I thought briefly about ordering something to eat, but I really didn’t want to assume that I’d be welcome to stay long enough to be able to eat it.

Adele appeared in the doorway, silent and watching.

“You’re going to tell me,” she said, not begging now, commanding.

“What?” I asked.

“Everything. From the beginning.”

“Adele, you don’t want to know that,” I said in a low voice.

“I do,” she insisted. “I know I probably won’t like it, but I need to know, Jesse, I really do.”

I shook my head. There was no way in hell I was going to tell her. Adele walked around me to the fridge, helping herself to one of my beers and heading back to the den. I followed her reluctantly, noting that she had taken the couch, which forced me to either sit next to her, or on one of the bean bags on the floor.

I took the floor.

“What is it you want to know?”

“Everything,” she repeated adamantly.

I rolled my eyes. “That’s a very broad subject matter,” I said sarcastically. “Care to be a little more specific?”

It was her turn to roll her eyes. “You’re seeing someone else,” she said, more calm than the last time she’d accused me.

I might have been determined to not tell her everything, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to give away anything that I could help. “Yes,” I told her. I didn’t offer an apology. Not yet, anyway.

“Who?”

“Are you sure you want to know? I can’t take it back, you know. When it’s out there, it’s out there.”

“I want to know,” she insisted. She sounded mad again now.

“Will,” I said in a low voice.

“Will?” she whispered. “No way. Will?”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I concentrated very hard on my bottle of beer.

“I thought it was that woman… Laura…,” Adele continued. At least she didn’t sound mad anymore.

“Laura’s married,” I pointed out.

“You’re
cheating
, Jesse,” Adele sniped at me. “I didn’t think you’d be so
noble
as to let someone’s marriage vows stop you.”

“Pot calling the kettle black, hey, Adele?” I snapped back at her. “It’s your turn for confession time. Who are you seeing behind
my
back?”

She turned scarlet again, likely in rage this time. “Theo,” she muttered under her breath. Ah. The chef.

I laughed humorlessly. “At least my guesses are closer to the mark.”

“I’m not sleeping with him,” she bit back indignantly.

“Oh, good for you,” I said, letting the sarcasm drip from my words.

“Oh, I will now, don’t let that worry you,” she retorted.

Silence fell around us for a few more long, long moments. My thoughts kept going back to my packed duffel bag in the bottom of my closet, waiting for when I finally had the guts to end this and go… somewhere else.

“You can’t be gay,” Adele said eventually. “You’re just… not.”