Tough Love (18 page)

Chenco stared at him for several seconds, trying to find places in his head to stick everything. Was there something wrong with a fucking condom? Apparently for Steve there was.

It was an invasion of privacy, like way, but did he really care? Steve hadn’t poked around in his private records to hurt him, he’d done it because he was a crazed control-freak. The only indignity here was proof of how long Chenco had been dry. “I’m good. Thank you.”

“You reacted a lot better than I thought you would. I assumed you’d point out you could have called in and requested the results yourself.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to Chenco, which illustrated he was off his usual game, way too focused on getting busy. Control freak wasn’t looking so bad, actually. “Nope. I’m good.” He met Steve’s gaze and said, with sincerity, “Thank you. For checking for me, for walking me through what to expect.”

They finished the list with a practical calm Chenco didn’t know he had in him when it came to kinky sex. He had to admit, it cleared a lot of snot out of the air over hooking up. For one, nobody had ever understood before Steve how in no way could any marks or signs of sex interfere with Caramela’s ability to perform.

Steve had a whole page of the contract for Chenco to fill out for her, complete with diagrams of the body so Chenco could delineate where Steve could and could not mark him. The clarification of acceptable and unacceptable kinks was great too, because all the ones he hated had been tried on him without so much as a “do you wanna?” before engagement. Permission, Chenco began to understand, was an entire buffet of pleasure in its own right.

He was surprised to find Steve’s hard limits didn’t just include sass and backtalk. He had a few kink lines he wouldn’t cross too. No infantilism, no age play and no scat. He was open to watersports, he said, but it wasn’t a requirement.

Chenco hesitated, his pen poised over the checkbox. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and he felt abruptly strange, as if reading that question had stripped him naked and put him on a stage.

Fingers threaded softly through his hair. “Chenco, you don’t have to be embarrassed with me about anything you want or don’t. And just because I’m open to something doesn’t mean we have to do it.”

Chenco tried to nod, but it was hard to make his body respond. He kept reading that line over and over.
Would you be open to watersports?
It made him think of
Mr. Benson
, of how appalled he’d been by the act when depicted there. No, he didn’t want to be a toilet. That hadn’t changed. Yet as he stood here, Steve touching him in reassurance, the menu of pleasure and sin in front of him…

All he had to do was check
no
and it would be over. Except the more Chenco stared at the question, the more he realized, for reasons blooming deep from his subconscious, he wanted to check
yes
.

Steve’s hand began to knead at Chenco’s neck. “Talk to me, boy.”

He spoke gently, but with that edge giving Chenco space and safety. Chenco drew a deep breath and let it out, staccato and rough. “I…I don’t know.”

“I assume, since I’ve made it clear I do
not
require this, that your hesitation comes from realizing
you
do.”

Gut churning, Chenco nodded once and gripped the pen so tight he feared it would break.

Steve brushed a kiss on Chenco’s hair. “Sweetheart. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in wanting that.”

Chenco swallowed hard. “A lot of people would disagree with you. I would have, before. Except right now…I wouldn’t. But I don’t know why.”
And I’m so scared by that realization I can barely breathe.

Steve kept touching, stroking, caressing, with hands and mouth and the sweet, silky gentleness of his tone. “I’m honored you trust me enough to even talk about this, Chenco. That’s what the act would be about between us. Honor and trust. Do you understand how much that means to me, that you would even
think
of allowing me that right, giving me permission to treat you in a way you wouldn’t let anyone else?”

“H-how is letting you…do that about honor?”

“Because so many people say it’s terrible. To most of the world, that we would consider engaging in that play is disgusting, inhuman, beyond the pale, an instant taboo. That you would give that act to me, allow me to turn it into something sacred, communion between the two of us?” He drew Chenco’s back to his front and pressed a long, soft kiss to Chenco’s hair. “I don’t have words to tell you how pleased with you I am right now. I can only hope I’m able to show you.”

Chenco sank into Steve’s embrace, his breath coming short now as it took everything in him not to cry. Steve held him while he gathered himself, not rushing him, only comforting and supporting.

Eventually Chenco slipped out of Steve’s arms enough to lean forward and, without so much as a tremble in his fingers, checked the box for
yes
.

Steve drew him back into the backward hug and nuzzled Chenco’s ear again. “Thank you for sharing this with me. I truly am honored, pleased by your trust. When we decide it’s the right time, I’ll make it something special, something worthy.”

It took Chenco a few swallows to be able to reply, and when he did, his voice shook. “You do know sometimes you about get me off by doing nothing more than talking to me?”

With a dark chuckle, Steve nipped lightly at Chenco’s ear. “Yes.”

Nobody was uneasy now. Steve seemed very relaxed, and having breached the most taboo and terrifying line item on the menu of permissive, kinky sex, Chenco filled out the rest of the form with ease. Soon they were finished with the contract, everything initialed but the last clause, which was about safe words. This was the only time Chenco argued, as he was upset he didn’t get to pick his own.

Steve wouldn’t budge. “Safe words are about being safe, not being cute. Yellow means slow down and red means stop universally in western culture. Why the fuck anybody needs to make safety complicated, I will never understand.”

Chenco wanted to argue choosing his own safe words would make it personal and give him a sense of ownership over his security, which was also pretty important from where he stood. However, not only did he not care as much about it as Steve seemed to, but he also suspected these remarks would be construed as backtalk.

As he hovered with a pen, ready to sign, he stopped when he realized what was missing. “There wasn’t anything about needles in the contract. You told me in the trailer those were your favorite, but they weren’t mentioned once.”

Whoa, but did this comment unleash
big
vulnerability. Only for a second, a cold, lonely shadow crossed Steve’s face, but then it was gone, Papi back in control. “That’s a different contract, and not for right now.”

Though Chenco was disappointed at being deliberately left out of Steve’s favorite kink, he put the thought out of his mind and concentrated on the fact that he was, finally, getting laid.

There were two contracts, one for Steve and one for Chenco—they each initialed and signed them both. When they were done, Steve handed Chenco his copy.

“What now?” Chenco asked as he tucked it into the drawer in the bureau Steve had cleared for his clothes.

Steve settled back on the pillows of Chenco’s bed. “Now you drop your towel, boy.”

Chapter Ten

From his post at the head of the bed, Steve regarded Chenco with a lazy gaze promising danger and pleasure and infinitely expanding horizons. It was Caramela’s fantasy come to life, undressing for her man, but Chenco was the one here and now, and he was nervous.

Chenco let her slide into his skin, dropping the towel with grace and artistry, exposing his body with the confidence only she could grant. When she finished, when she returned to the shadows of his mind to watch how things played out, Chenco breathed heavily as he stood at the foot of the bed, wanting to demand Steve get this party started, knowing he couldn’t.

Steve regarded the landscape of Chenco’s nude body with a passionate rake of his gaze. “Come here.”

Chenco went where he was told, and Steve watched him, coaxing him with his finger to move closer.

Then he leaned forward and took firm possession of Chenco’s balls.

Chenco wanted to yelp and cover himself—the man had promised him exquisite pain, and he’d gone right for the part of him least interested in trying pain on. It wasn’t a painful grip—yet.

Though he didn’t flinch, Chenco had to breathe, focusing on Steve’s promise that he knew what he was doing, how all pain would end in pleasure. Chenco reminded himself Steve could navigate the dangerous waters to the land of delights. As Steve held his sac, Chenco did his best not to freak out.

Steve squeezed.

This had been the pain Chenco had wanted to brace against, soft and sharp and raw. Steve constricted nerves and pinched sensitive, delicate skin. This touch was dangerous and wrong and should be stopped, said Chenco’s balls. Yet even as the message arrived, it tangled with Steve’s contract, which challenged Chenco to let go of the urge to protect himself, to give it over in exchange for transformation.

Wait,
Chenco told his balls.
Let me sit with this for a bit, because I think if we hold out, we’re going to get something incredible.

Steve’s grip changed slowly, alternating between pain and massage, scrambling the signals to Chenco’s frantic brain until it didn’t know the difference. He wasn’t sure how long it went on—maybe minutes, maybe hours, maybe days—he only knew it began with his body tensed and ended with him breathing into the pain, riding it into waves of pleasure. While his cock never exactly got hard, he certainly began to understand what Steve had meant about getting off not necessarily being a physical thing. If he had a metaphorical cock, it was throbbing something serious right now.

He was so focused on his balls, he didn’t realize what was about to happen to his left nipple until it was too late.

It began as a lick, a quick flick of the tongue, but Chenco was so sensitized to pain he read the lick as a bite. Gasping, he started to draw away, then stopped. It had caught him off-guard—two fronts at once was a trick.

Steve grinned, his expression making it clear this was why he did it.

This was how Steve played him, always changing the assaults and sensations—as soon as Chenco got used to the lick-nip-lick-bite of his nipple, Steve pinched his backside. A hand stroked Chenco’s thigh, a loving gesture. Teeth scraped his abdomen.

Lips trailed over his foreskin—then teeth—

Fear getting the better of his determination to withstand the torment, Chenco jerked away from Steve’s grasp, then opened his eyes, ready to apologize.

The words died on his lips as he saw the delightful savagery on Steve’s face—right before he leapt at Chenco and pulled him, rolling, to the bed.

Everything happened so fast—Chenco went flat on his back, pinned, Steve’s heavy body pressing over his, rough hairy chest and thighs grinding along his wiry frame. The tormenting had him keyed up, jerking and startling at every touch, and just when he would get himself calmed down, Steve would tweak a nipple, nip at his chin, grind his pelvis.

Chenco tried to withstand it, tried to bear up, but he couldn’t hold on. It wasn’t about pain, which was what he’d readied himself for. It was that he never knew what was coming or from where. It had almost nothing to do with discomfort and everything to do with realizing Steve could and would hurt him, and he couldn’t anticipate it, couldn’t guard against it, not even in his mind. He had to hand over control, give Steve the power to decide what pain was and when and how it happened. It wasn’t long before Chenco felt himself sliding, leaking out of his composure.

“Please,” he said, first in a whisper and then in a whine. “Please—please—”

“Please what?” Steve sucked hard in the center of Chenco’s chest.

Crying out, Chenco arced into him. “
Ngyh.
Please—please, don’t…please stop…”

Steve chuckled at Chenco’s sternum, licking it like a popsicle. “You want me to stop?”

Chenco didn’t know what he wanted. He was starting to lose more and more of his mind every time Steve touched him. When Steve took Chenco’s nipples in his teeth, tugging at them as he moved his head back and forth in rapid motion, Chenco began to wail. Not because it hurt, but because he couldn’t stand to be lost anymore.

Steve slapped his thigh.

It was a sharp, stinging pain, and the shock of it brought Chenco up short. The second strike tingled. The third started to burn, and he gasped. On the fourth he cried out, and on the fifth he tried to wriggle away.

Laughing, a wicked purr making all the hair Chenco hadn’t waxed or shaved stand on end, Steve grabbed Chenco’s hips and flipped him over. Chenco had just enough time to acclimate to the new position when his thighs were wrenched open, knees apart, butt lifted. His libido pulsed as he imagined Steve looking at him, felt him tease Chenco’s opening with fingertips and tongue.

Then Steve’s lips brushed Chenco’s hole, and he clenched, entire body ready to bolt.

Holding him down, Steve spread him wide and took the edge of his opening gently in his teeth.

Chenco screamed—it didn’t hurt, not yet, but it would, it would
hurt
, and it was all he could think about. When Steve thrust his tongue deep, Chenco cried out as if he’d been impaled roughly with a metal plug. His sensors were broken now, his brain short-circuited, and he couldn’t get away. When a real nip came, he shrieked and clawed at the sheets.