Chapter Thirteen #3
When the man he loved patted the cabbie on the arm, he pulled over, and he paid him.
Apparently, they were getting out.
Once outside of the cab, Corbin looked around. It was a shopping district, and he wasn’t sure what they were doing there.
“Lunch?” Corbin asked. “Or shopping?”
His lover grinned, and wordlessly, Will pulled him toward a store. The second Corbin saw it, he knew what was going to be inside.
Sexy things.
Oh, boy.
It was clear that his lover was keeping his word. They were going shopping.
Okay, that was doable.
He could do this.
All he had to do was buy some things Will liked, and try to pleasure his man without a freakout.
How difficult could that be?
Really?
It wasn’t like the idea of offering up pleasure for Will petrified him, so it shouldn’t be too bad.
Besides, Will was smiling, and Corbin was thinking about the kiss in the stairwell. There was still a part of him that was alive, or he wouldn’t have gotten all tingly.
At some point, he was going to have to get back on the horse—so to speak—and it looked like that time was now.
“Let’s buy some things,” Will said. “I know you’re curious since Gene and Ethan were being open.”
Oh, he was.
That was the truth.
He was DYING to know what was going on in the man’s pants, and he wasn’t talking about Ethan’s dick, but more so the toys.
Curiosity killed the Corby.
All.
The.
Time.
Now, he wanted to know what turned his man on, and hopefully, watching Will all bound, sexily tied up, and in some bondage gear would get his own juices flowing.
Hopefully.
Inside the sex shop, it was a sleezy place, and Corbin was hyper aware of everyone around them. Men were in there, and there were viewing booths where they could hear people moaning, and flesh on flesh.
Oh, Jesus.
Corbin was not anywhere wild when he was freaked out by this, but his man wasn’t.
“Here,” he said, as Will brought them to a stop in a corner to show him. “This is what Ethan had on last night.”
Corbin stared, and he tried to understand it.
It was all foreign to him.
“You put this,” he said, pointing at the vibrator inside the clear packaging, “inside someone’s ass, and then make them wear this to keep it in,” he stated, pointing at the leather chastity belt.
Why did Corbin feel like he was in a whole other world?
This was both intriguing and crazy—all at once.
Will kept explaining it.
“The man’s dick comes out the front, and from how hard Gene was going, pushing Ethan, he definitely had a ring on it.”
He tapped the silicone rings that weren’t that far away from the vibrators.
Well, this was a one-stop shop for all things freaky. That was for damn sure.
Corbin just stared.
“And you like all of this?” he asked, trying to keep an open mind, but already, it was closing fast, and that was going to be a problem.
Or so Corbin suspected.
Will laughed at the question.
“Yes. Oh, and you will, too, at some point. Not wearing it, since you’re not submissive in bed, but enjoying it with me. That’s half the fun of toys,” he added. “Playing with them is enjoyable.”
Uh-huh.
Corbin listened as Will continued talking about all of the toys there, oblivious to the discomfort that was creeping up in his lover.
Was it getting hot in there?
Corbin thought so.
“This is a cock cage. That’s what Ethan has on now,” he said, since the man had said it.
The man beside him stared, and his face looked horrified.
“That looks like torture. Why?” Corbin asked. “I don’t understand any of this. Why would someone want to be hurt?” he asked, thinking back to what had happened to him even though he was fighting doing just that.
Will was patient.
“Because it’s a good kind of torture. Pain isn’t always bad.”
Oh, well, he could attest that was a false statement because, yes, PAIN was bad.
It ruined lives.
Look at his.
Something came over him, and maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t do this, or the fact that he was going to lose Will since they were no longer compatible in bed, but that feeling overwhelmed him.
The room closed in.
And in that moment, Corbin started panicking. His heart began racing, and he remembered the pain.
He remembered being tied down, and hurt in ways he never wanted to relive. He remembered his body being lashed, burned, and tortured until he’d pass out from the pain of it all.
That’s when he knew.
As Will talked, he couldn’t do it.
There was no way he’d ever be more than vanilla. There would never be a wild Corbin who lived in those shadowy corners like Gene, Ethan, or Will.
The bottom line was that they’d broken him of anything out of his comfort zone, and this was most definitely that.
Fight or flight kicked in.
That’s when Corbin backed up, and walked out of the place, leaving his man behind.
Once more, Corbin was reminded that he’d been destroyed, and likely never being put back together again by anyone.
He raced to the street, and began puking up his coffee. His whole body retched, and he couldn’t keep the bile from rising up and making him ill.
It all came back to him.
The.
Horrible.
Pain.
Once more, he experienced the loss of his relationship and how he was going to be unable to give Will the sex he craved.
They’d won another round in the battle for his soul, and Corbin wished he’d not survived the whole ordeal. Maybe that would have been for the best.
Because he was not whole anymore.
As he puked even more, immediately, Will was beside him.
“Hey,” he said, running his hand up and down his back to soothe him.
Corbin kept puking, and as people stared, he was mortified.
And the whole time, Will protected him.
“Too many bloody Marys,” Will said, laughing while he was sick inside that he had been the cause of this—pushing the man too far.
Too fast.
It was obvious that Corbin, clearly, wasn’t ready.
His poor man simply couldn’t think about it, and that meant Will had to step up and take care of him. Sex was most definitely not happening for a while.
When he finished puking, Will held his hand, and walked him to the beach not far away. When they sat down on the sand, Corbin only said one thing.
And it was heartbreaking.
“I’m sorry. Don’t hate me. I tried.”
Will pulled his head down, and placed it on his lap, so he could stroke his face and soothe him. The whole time, Corbin lay prone, wondering if he would ever get back to where he was before.
Also, he wondered if he would pay for his mistake of taking that undercover case for the rest of his life.
“I will never hate you. It’s okay.”
Corbin had tears in his eyes.
“They may never go away, Will. I don’t know how to make them go away. They live in my head. They may be what causes me to lose us. I’m damaged, and I don’t know how to fix me.”
Will let him talk.
The therapist told him that sometimes, listening was all that mattered.
“A part of me wants to tell you to leave, but a part of me wants to beg you to stay. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
When he was done, then, and only then, did he speak.
“You’re not damaged. You’re my Corbin. We know you’re not ready, so we slow down. How about we go back to the resort, and we go sit in the hot tub? Or go swimming? I’m good with us not trying this again for a while.”
And he was.
His man’s reaction wasn’t faked.
It wasn’t him intentionally trying to avoid intimacy out of laziness, or not caring about him. The PTSD had Corbin by the throat, and he couldn’t let that hurt him.
They needed more time and therapy to fix what had been shattered in Corbin.
Will had to protect him because it was clear that Corbin was freaked the fuck out, and couldn’t handle it.
“Please don’t hate me for being broken. I’m trying,” he whispered. “Only, the things you like, are the things that remind me what they did to me. They tied me down, and I can’t…”
He wanted to puke again.
“Breathe,” Will said.
Corbin was trying.
He really was.
Because Will could see they’d moved too fast, it was time to put the brakes on.
So, he reassured him.
“Then we skip that. We tried, and it didn’t work. You know that the therapist said to try and if it freaked you out, back up and regroup. So we regroup, Corby. I’m not leaving you, and I’m never going to be angry when we stumble. We get back up, and we try to settle ourselves to find you peace.”
At his words, Corbin stopped shaking. The therapist did say that.
But Corbin had to worry about one thing.
What happened when he could never go back there again, and Will walked away?
What happened when they stole that from him too?
Because he didn’t doubt that was next.
Corbin could feel it to his soul. He was no longer man enough to keep Will.
And he knew it.