Chapter 18
RIGGS
In my bathroom—in my arms—Smith closed his eyes.
He took steady breaths, shifted his weight from one foot to another.
How long had it been since I’d brought anyone home?
I’d never…Ev had been the last, and that was so many years before I’d almost lost track of the days.
Even though he’d never set foot in this apartment, it was as much his as it was mine.
I’d built my home on the foundation of a safety net I’d never asked for and certainly never wanted.
I would have taken his life over the money any day of the week, but that wasn’t an option for me now.
I wondered if he would have liked Smith.
If cosmically, somehow, he was up there, pulling strings to make sure that, even without him, I had the life I’d always wanted.
Was Smith meant to be part of that? Certainly, in some way, that had to be true because there was no other explanation for how right his naked and trembling body felt against mine.
No reason for him to be naked in my house for the second time in less than a week.
I stared at our reflections in the mirror, just me and Smith there in the dark.
Ev wasn’t there, not even in the shadows.
How long had he been gone for? I clenched my jaw and drew in a deep breath, and Smith followed suit.
I slid my hand down to his chest, flattened it over his sternum and counted the beats of his heart.
I’d done that to Ev more times than I could count and spent many sleepless nights wishing my palms hadn’t been so rough from years of art and tattooing because if my skin had been more delicate, more sensitive, maybe I would have felt the wrongness in his chest. The doctors promised me that wasn’t the case, and it took me a very long time to believe them.
But again I found myself counting the beats of Smith’s heart against my hand, wondering if they were wrong.
“Thread your hands together behind your head and don’t move,” I whispered, kissing Smith’s temple before stepping away from him.
I waited for him to move his hands up and tangle his fingers together, for him to get comfortable with the posture.
It took no real time at all, and even though it pained me to leave him for even a moment, I slipped into the bedroom to search for some toys.
The light on the nightstand was on—always—and I let it guide me toward the closet, straight to the full-length mirror I kept tucked in the back.
Another holdover from another life, familiar smells filtering into the room as I dragged it out and propped it up against the wall facing the bed.
The small lamp gave off enough light so the bedroom was brighter than the bathroom, but I turned the fairy lights around the window on to give another glowing wash to the space.
Next, I went under the bed for a long-ignored wooden box, fishing out things I hadn’t bothered with in years.
I’d played, of course—the part of me that needed to pleasure and provide hadn’t died with Ev—but never here and not with my own toys.
I dropped a set of tweezer-shaped nipple clamps onto the bed, a cock ring, some small weights.
Jesus, Smith would look like a dream trussed up and weighted down, his throat in a posture collar, stretched to the point of discomfort.
I could imagine the way his cock would leak when I wrapped the hard band of leather around his neck and a matching strip around the base of his shaft.
Smith was undoubtedly a masochist, but I didn’t want to go that hard with him the second time out of the gate. I absolutely wanted to give him all the things he craved in the bedroom but within reason, with moderation…and over time. I wanted this thing with Smith to last.
Fuck.
I traded the tweezer clamps for a pair of clover clamps and went back to get him out of the bathroom. True to my word, he hadn’t moved from where I’d left him, though his cock had probably gotten at least two inches longer.
“You good?” I asked, taking my hair down and quicky twisting it up again into a tighter knot at the back of my head.
“Yes, Sir,” Smith murmured, mouth barely moving and eyes hooded.
Shit.
Had he started to drop into subspace just by standing alone in the bathroom and waiting for me?
That was…being with a man like that…
It was beyond anything I’d imagined for myself.
Smith was a live wire, ready to submit and ready to fuck at a moment’s notice.
Of course I worried the novelty of being with me would wear off for him eventually, but the risk—in that moment—felt worth it.
A readiness in my bones to return to something I hadn’t allowed myself in years, because that was the way of it for dominant players too.
I could play and be present, be as much myself as the situation allowed, but it was like a drip from a faucet. There was no pressure behind it.
“Come back into the bedroom, stand at the foot of the bed.”
He followed me back, stopping at my bed even as I continued around to the other side where I’d left the toys I wanted to use.
Admittedly, the list of things I wanted to do with Smith was longer than a healing forearm tattoo would allow, especially if he wanted to explore pain play, but I was a creative man in my heart, and I was confident I could make do.
Lifting the nipple clamps in front of his face, I cocked my head to the side and asked him, “Do you know what these are?”
“Clamps,” he murmured.
“Where do they go?”
“Nipples.”
“Whose nipples?” I asked.
Smith swallowed audibly. “Mine.”
“Very good.”
I smiled, cradling his face in my hand and stroking my thumb across his eyebrow, and he leaned into the touch like he was dying for it. Had I ever been with a man so responsive? I didn’t think so.
I tweaked his nipples until they were hard and fastened the textured rubber clamps to each one.
As the intricate clamps tightened down around the already sensitive buds of skin, Smith’s eyes grew large and his jaw went slack.
His lashes did a little flutter, and I tugged on the chain for good measure to make them tighter.
“Does that hurt?”
He blinked hard, mouth opening and closing like a fish before he said, “Not in a bad way.”
“I don’t think there is a bad way with you.”
The next thing I wanted to do with Smith was the greatest act of pain I figured I could bring to him, though not in any way he’d expect.
I’d been honest with him, but I wanted to make sure he understood what his life would be like if he stayed with me.
People put so much focus on arousal, hinged so much of their self-worth on the way they made other people feel, and with me, that wasn’t a fair indicator.
I was all in on Smith Covington, even if my body didn’t always outwardly agree.
I wanted Smith in dangerous and terrifying ways, but that didn’t mean I wanted to fuck him, and it certainly didn’t mean I was always going to be hard for him.
“Get on your knees,” I told him, and he went down with all the grace of a man who was born to kneel.
I undid the fly of my jeans and pulled my soft cock out, stroking it a couple of times before dragging it across his mouth before he understood the ask and opened.
I fed my flaccid dick onto his tongue until his nose was buried against my stomach, and then I told him to suck.
Smith suckled my cock like a pacifier, and not once did he utter anything that sounded even remotely close to disappointment when my shaft didn’t thicken against the roof of his mouth.
“Your tongue is burning hot,” I murmured, brushing his hair back from his face. He blinked up at me, mouth barely stretched and pupils dark as two pots of ink. “Do you like having me in your mouth?”
He moaned, the vibration shaking through my entire body.
I thrust toward the back of his throat a couple of times, reading Smith’s face for any signs of annoyance or boredom and finding none. He was just as horny and submissive as he’d been in the bathroom, as he’d been on the couch at Rapture watching that predicament bondage scene.
I slid my hand away from his face and down toward his ear, finding the pressure point at the back of his jaw that would coax him to his feet. He startled, my cock falling out of his mouth as the pain lanced through him, and he let me raise him back to standing.
“You’re such a good listener, baby.”
He smiled, a breathy thing, and I pressed our mouths together, tasting the sweat of my dick on his tongue.
Like a good boy who didn’t need instruction, Smith also kept his hands to himself.
Ending the kiss, I pulled the leather cock ring out of my pocket and reached between his legs.
He was too hard to get it on without a fight, and tugging on his balls wouldn’t do a single thing to ease the blood in his erection.
Smith grunted and groaned while I manipulated his cock and balls into the leather, giving his sac a good tap once I’d finished fastening the snaps.
“You’re not coming tonight,” I reminded him. “And that’s what you wanted, right?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And stop doesn’t mean stop.”
He shook his head.
“Get on the bed. All fours.”
It took a second for the instruction to register, but he made it to the bed and onto his hands and knees in what I considered a reasonable amount of time. I pressed my hand against the small of his back until he sank into an arch, pushing his still bruised ass into the air.
“It’s easier to see you this way,” I said, stepping back to appreciate the sight of him, prostrate and hard, ready and restrained.