Underappreciated
“Hm?” Jack turned his head lazily in Maddox’s direction. He’d been watching the Mets—a middle-aged excuse for napping—while Maddox scrolled through news articles on his tablet.
“The simple things in life. I saw a scene today. Not a scene-scene, just a father giving his son a whap on the ass. I don’t think I approve of corporeal punishment for children, but it got me to thinking.”
“Thinking about what?” Jack’s drowsiness had dropped away. Maddox was his husband and his Dom, the man he worshipped, respected, loved, and sometimes feared because Maddox had a deviously evil mind. When Maddox got to thinking, it spelled trouble for Jack.
“About what I said—the simple things in life. The basics. BDSM can get fancy or formal or cruel, but the basics are the basics for a reason.” Maddox put down his tablet. “I’ve been overlooking something.”
Jack wished his dick wasn’t already getting hard because he had no idea where Maddox was going, only a sort of giddy expectation that it was going to be bad.
The basics for them meant impact play followed by rough anal and usually included a serious case of blue balls for Jack because he was rarely allowed to join his partner in climax.
That was how their first meeting had gone.
Maddox had slapped him hard, fucked him harder, then left him high and dry without so much as a kiss.
And though they’d done plenty of wilder things since then—play piercings, predicament bondage, deep sounding—that was the scenario they came back to over and over.
Jack loved it as much as he loved Maddox.
He loved the pain, delivered unemotionally and without pity.
He loved the fuck, being drilled by Maddox’s cock.
And he loved, in a horrible, gut-wrenching way, getting nothing for it in return.
Because what he got, what he always got, what he could never want anything more than, was the privilege of serving Maddox.
So if Maddox wanted to go back to basics on this drowsy Sunday afternoon, Jack was all for it.
But he’d known his husband too long to believe that was all he had in mind.
He was looking at Jack now with cold blue eyes, the eyes Jack had fallen for the first time he’d seen them.
He’d known immediately they were a sadist’s eyes, and though Maddox had been in the process of trying to arrest him at the time, he’d made a play, shot his shot, and the gamble had paid off.
“Up for a little fun?” Maddox asked, gazing pointedly at the bulge in Jack’s pants.
“Sure.” He was trying to sound relaxed, but the word came out on a croak. “What did you have in mind?”
“Have I ever told you what I had in mind before?”
Jack shook his head.
“Well, today I’m going to. Because it’s simple. Very simple. I’m going to put you over my knee and spank you.”
“Like, with your hand?”
Maddox hit him with all kinds of things—belts and paddles and wooden spoons. With his hand too, but only for a little extra encouragement mid-fuck when he wanted Jack to push back harder.
“Yeah. With my hand.”
Jack swallowed. He was sure he could handle Maddox’s hand. It was the other part that had him worried.
“Over your knee?”
Maddox only smiled. The fucker.
“That’s kind of… I mean, I’m too big for that, aren’t I?”
“Not afraid of a spanking, are you, Jack?”
“Of course not.” He was a tough guy who did a tough job, an FBI agent. Never afraid of anyone. Except a little bit of Maddox.
“Then what’s the trouble?” Maddox asked with faked confusion. “You don’t want to go over Daddy’s knee? My wittle boy don’t wanna be my wittle boy?”
Jack scowled. He wasn’t a baby. They didn’t do Daddy play. He was a full-grown man who wasn’t going over anyone’s knee, not even Maddox’s.
“I never thought I’d see you back down.”
“I’m not backing down.”
“Seems like you are. Seems like you can handle a lot of pain but not much humiliation.”
Humiliation. That was it. Maddox abused him fiercely, carelessly, but with a sort of respect for how much he could take.
There was nothing impressive about taking a simple over-the-knee spanking.
Any baby-girl in a Lolita dress or poser puppy-boy could do it.
Jack had been made for harsher things. And to drape his six-foot frame over his husband’s slightly smaller one like a bratty sub when he’d never so much as told Maddox no once in their relationship…
He didn’t think he could do it.
“Jack?” Maddox used his steely grip to turn Jack’s chin in his direction. “If you don’t want to do this, you’re going to have to say red. That’s your only way out.”
He didn’t say red to Maddox. Only once, when Maddox had warned him they weren’t stopping until he did.
Even then, under the lash of an unrelenting belt, knowing it wouldn’t end until he choked out the word red, he’d waited as long as he could, basically until he’d collapsed.
A spanking was nothing. How could he say red over it?
But the whipping had only been physical pain.
Being turned over Maddox’s knee and spanked by hand would be psychic torture.
“I’m not saying red.”
“Of course you aren’t. Because you’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you?”
Maddox knew the answer to that and right now Jack hated him for it, for knowing exactly how to trap him. No bondage had ever put him in a worse predicament than this one.
“Let’s go then. Pull your pants down and get over Daddy’s knee.”
“Are you really going to say things like that?”
“I am if it gets a reaction.”
He gritted his teeth, trying not to give Maddox a reaction.
Sometimes when they played he was stoic and sometimes he screamed.
Sometimes he floated in sub space and sometimes he suffered every blow with full presence.
But he’d never in his time with Maddox had to force himself so hard to submit.
Before Maddox there’d been scenes he’d tolerated more than enjoyed, usually because he was bored.
So if he could endure a mild, ritualistic scene for a stranger, then couldn’t he do the same for Maddox? Of course he could.
He got resolutely to his feet and stood over Maddox as he undid his fly. He pushed his jeans and shorts down, but before he could step out of them, Maddox forestalled him.
“Leave them around your ankles like a bad boy.”
So they were doing that, were they? Fine. His pants were around his ankles every time he took a shit. No big deal. None of this was a big deal. A silly little ritual that would be about as painful as a shaving nick.
He shuffled around to Maddox’s side, bound in this ridiculously ineffective way, and dropped gracelessly to his knees.
He had no idea how to get over Maddox’s lap and he hated appearing incompetent.
It didn’t help that Maddox was smirking at him, enjoying his dilemma like the fine sadist he was.
But with a little maneuvering, he managed to brace his arms on the other side of Maddox’s legs, forming a table over him.
This wasn’t so bad. Doggy style, basically—the position he got fucked in regularly except with Maddox under him instead of behind him. Now Maddox would smack his ass a few times and soon it would be over. He closed his eyes and waited.
And waited.
Finally he opened his eyes again and turned his head up to find Maddox regarding him with a flat expression.
“It’s not like you to be disobedient, Jack.”
“I’m not being disobedient.”
“Aren’t you? All right, never mind. If you can’t give me the experience I’m looking for, then we might as well not bother. You could’ve just called red.”
“I’m not calling red. I’m not being disobedient. I’m—” He choked to a halt, his eyes filling unexpectedly with tears. He couldn’t bear disappointing Maddox but he didn’t know if he could bear this either.
“Maddox…”
He wanted to say please, but that was hard too and it wouldn’t get him anywhere. Maddox had given him his choices, but they were such awful, awful choices.
Slowly he crawled his way forward until his legs were straight with only the tips of his toes on the ground and his ass stuck right up at the ceiling.
He buried his head in his folded arms, uncomfortable, exposed, ridiculous.
His legs trembled, and when Maddox stroked his thighs with a pleased “better,” the condescension stabbed through his heart like a knife.
“I should’ve had you over my knee a long time ago. Your ass is truly incredible in this position, practically begging for it.”
If Maddox had a paddle in his hand, Jack would beg for it. He craved the cleansing masculinity of true pain over this humble posture and the tender caresses, the sweet, approving words.
“Now remember that you’re supposed to count,” Maddox said. “Bad boys always count.”
He wanted to protest that he hadn’t been bad, that he adored Maddox so feverishly he never even considered defiance, but to protest would be to defy.
Maddox had asked for an experience. This experience—the experience of him being a very good, very bad boy suffering Daddy’s discipline, so when Maddox brought a hand down on his right ass cheek with a hopelessly light thwack, he dutifully said, “One.”
“One what?”
“I don’t know.”
Sir? Daddy? God, he was going to kill Maddox in his sleep tonight.
“Maybe a little thank you?”
Thank you. Great. This scene was maximum cringe. Where was his fierce, sadistic Dom, his no-nonsense cop from Terminator 2, his ice-cold husband? Would he even still love Maddox when this was over? He expected different from Maddox—inventiveness, cruelty, pain.
“One, thank you.”
Maddox chortled and gave him another, barely harder than the first.
“Two, thank you.” If he weren’t so uncomfortable, he would be bored. He dug his toes into the floor and tried to rebalance himself, but Maddox smacked him again just then, causing his feet to skitter.
“Three, thank you.”
God, this was so awful. It was mean and horrible and nearly unbearable.
The word red lodged in his throat, refusing to either come out or be swallowed down until he could barely force the required response out past it.
He began to gasp, and the humiliation of reacting so dramatically to such mild punishment made his breathing even more labored until it started to sound like he was crying.
He wasn’t crying, damn it. What Maddox was doing to him barely hurt, though a low fire had started to build.
He wished Maddox would vary his strokes instead of coming down over and over on the high, bony points of his ass.
He could feel how red they were, how tender his skin had become, as if he himself were tender, and though he was trying to hold all that in, the continual need to open his mouth to count forced it out.
He shook his head, confused. What number were they on?
Had he stopped responding? Maddox was spanking him faster now, the blows coming too quickly to be numbered, each of them a sharp sting on top of already-burning flesh.
He squirmed, trying to shift Maddox’s hand to a new area, and Maddox chastised him like he was a child.
He wasn’t a child. He wasn’t, he wasn’t.
He could take this. Only how much more was there to take?
All the blood had rushed to his head and he really was crying now, though he didn’t understand why.
He felt punished. Bad. He’d been grudging about giving Maddox what he wanted, and his penalty for that reluctance was that it would never stop.
Tears ran down his face and into his mouth—ridiculous, salty tears of pain and humiliation.
His nose clogged and he began to struggle in earnest, trying to leverage himself off Maddox’s lap, refusing to say red but needing it to stop.
But though Maddox was smaller than he was, he was no less strong, and he used his muscle now, wrapping a firm arm around Jack’s waist and hauling him closer, pulling Jack’s hip against his hard cock as he railed away with the other hand, always in the same spot, always with maximum force.
Jack’s cock was hard too, understanding its role in this scene even as he struggled against it.
He kicked his feet like a child, trying to push up on his arms as incoherent sobs were beaten out of him.
It hurt. God, it hurt. How could it hurt so much when it was nothing but a little tap, tap, tap?
How could he be handling this so badly? How did Maddox always do this to him so effortlessly?
When he could fight no more, he surrendered. Maddox felt it—the moment he let his body go limp and his mind go silent.
“There’s my boy,” Maddox said, a word he never called Jack, but Jack felt it today.
He was Maddox’s boy. His good boy. His good boy being punished because Maddox had the right to punish him.
There didn’t need to be an infraction or a reason.
It didn’t have to be the way he wanted it or liked it. He submitted. That was all.
His consciousness floated away on a cloud of pain and love and surrender.
He had no thoughts, only sensations, and even those were dim and hazy.
He hardly noticed when Maddox eased himself out from under him to come around behind him and slide into him.
It was a quick fuck, pleasing only Maddox as their fucks often did.
Nothing would be offered to Jack except this opportunity to suffer on his Dom’s behalf.
Maddox groaned lightly as he came, his fingers drilling holes into Jack’s hips.
“Who’s my good boy?” he asked as he withdrew.
“I am,” Jack answered without shame. “Thank you.”
“Come on, babe. Let’s get in the shower. That really took it out of you, didn’t it?”
He nodded as he clambered to his feet. He shucked his clothes right where he stood and let his hard cock lead the way to the bathroom.
Usually he soaped up Maddox, thrilled to run his hands over his husband’s lean physique, but today Maddox pampered him, all the time whispering words like baby and precious.
Jack was still tender—not his ass so much, but his heart—and the words opened him wider than he could bear.
“Maddox,” he said, not sure what he was asking for, and Maddox pressed him against the tile wall and took him again, slowly this time and with a hand on his cock until he came with the force of a hundred pent-up orgasms.
“I love you,” Maddox said as he continued to fuck into him.
“I love your strength and your suffering and your surrender and how you give me all of it. I love your body. I love your brain. I love hurting you and using you. I love this.” He squeezed Jack’s balls hard enough to make him scream and came.
“You see what I mean?” he asked when they were warm and dry and wrapped around each other in bed. “It’s the simple things in life. Too often underappreciated.”
Jack smiled into Maddox’s neck, holding him tight because his world was still spinning. Their love was the furthest thing from simple, but he would never make the mistake of under-appreciating it.
~~The End~~
Need more Jack and Maddox? Their story begins in Deep Under and continues in Back Under