Chapter 26
twenty-six
saúl
“Icoddled Roy too much.”
“Huh?”
Yeah, that might not have been my best opening line. I’d been brimming for the last half an hour, though, with everything I needed to say. Everything I wanted to do to the boy who was in so much fucking pain I could almost feel it crawling into my skin.
It was still too early in the day to get a motel room, but I’d settled for a diner near a gas station that was completely empty. I’d never stopped here before, but food quality hadn’t been at the front of my mind.
An old woman had come to take our order and convinced us we had to get their loaded nachos. I had a feeling it was just the only fresh thing she had in the kitchen, but I’d take it.
Regardless, I had a feeling it would take her a while to get our food. The iced tea had already taken longer than I would’ve assumed.
“Roy. He… Whenever he worried about the others, or when he lashed out at someone or was rude, I coddled him.” I scrubbed a hand down my face.
“I wanted to protect him so badly, kept telling myself it wasn’t his fault, that it was a product of his disorder, of the trauma he’d gone through, and it was, but I think I should’ve called him out more. ”
Cam blinked. He’d been tense for the past hour, but that somehow meant his eyes were more glazed over, his posture drowsier now. As if he’d already spent all his energy, and it was taking everything in him to process new things. “That makes sense.”
“It’s why I’m not just pulling you on my lap and telling you how much you deserve the fucking world. Even if it’s killing me.”
A blush spread up his neck, all the way to his cheekbones. “So you’re telling me to go to therapy instead.”
I grimaced. Coming from him, it sounded dismissive.
“A professional can help you untangle all that guilt better than I can,” I reasoned. “And then I can hold you and not worry about repeating the same mistakes.”
“I don’t think it was a mistake. What you did with Roy.
” Cam frowned. He twiddled with his thumbs as he slouched forward.
“I think we’re all responsible for our own mental health and what we do with it.
We’re not at fault for being fucked up, and people should give each other more grace, but at the end of the day, it’s what we do with it. Right?”
“Right.” I paused when I saw the same woman coming to us with a set of plates and cutlery. Gave her a smile and a tilt of the head while she set everything on the table, then breathed out when she headed back to the back kitchen. “Daddies can be irrational, too, huh?”
I didn’t quite believe the words, but experience had taught me they were the most efficient way to drop the topic. I wasn’t going to stop living because of what happened. But no one was going to talk me into being less cautious or absolving me of all responsibility.
I’d been an adult—seen the signs, seen what was going on—and I hadn’t done a single thing.
“Not funny,” Cam mumbled. He dropped the subject, though, taking a sip of the tea instead.
By his scrunched-up face, I assumed it had too much sugar.
He’d complained about it plenty over the past couple of weeks.
It had been pure luck that I’d kept him from opening his mouth in front of the wrong person. “Did you punish him? Roy?”
I cocked my head to the side before bidding my time by sipping some of my own tea. It wasn’t as sweet as his face had led me to believe, but he was more sensitive to those things than I was. I only cared that a drink had enough ice and freshened me up.
“No.” I tried to imagine it, wonder if it would’ve changed anything, but I didn’t think it would have. “It wasn’t part of our dynamic.”
“Has it ever been?” Cam kept splitting his questions in two. “Part of your dynamic with someone?”
I cleared my throat. “Can you call a one-night stand a dynamic?”
After Roy, that was all I’d had. I hadn’t been celibate.
I went through phases, but I didn’t go for anything that would last, that would create attachments and endanger everything again—until Cam, but I was trying to stay in the present instead of spiraling like I’d started doing in the car.
There was no room for the two of us to do the same thing.
“Depends on how intense it was, I think.” Cam bit his lip. “Some of the best scenes I’ve had were just that.”
“And I’ll ask you more about them later, but…” Once again, I was interrupted by the server waltzing in from the kitchen with a big platter of nachos for us. I tracked her movements until she was well out of earshot. “A single scene isn’t the time or place for a punishment, is it?”
“I don’t know,” he mused. “I bet there are people out there who want to be punished without any attachments.”
“And I bet they’re considered walking red flags by most Doms in a ten-mile radius.”
For good reason, too, but I doubted he needed the clarification. Instead, I stuffed my face full of the loaded nachos. There was a decent amount of jalapenos, and the pico de gallo and cheese looked decent, but the tortilla chips were quite soggy.
Oh, well. We just needed some carbs before we were back on the road. It would do.
“Why the interrogation on punishments, Cam?”
“It’s not what you think,” he grumbled right away. I hadn’t been thinking anything specific, but the comment had me quirking an eyebrow. “I was just thinking about it earlier.”
“Uh-huh.”
Pushing Cam only got his anxiety spiking, so I ate some more and let him get his thoughts sorted out.
I did my best to avoid the server’s gaze, too, whenever she tried to make eye contact.
It was obvious she was the kind to come by and ask how we were liking our food, and my whole life, everyone had drilled it into me that I was a terrible liar.
I wanted to think I’d outgrown that flaw a decade or so ago, but I didn’t want to test it.
I just wanted to finish up here so that I could actually get Cam on my lap.
I should’ve done that before leaving the truck.
Hindsight.
“I don’t think it would help,” he said eventually, rubbing at his arms. He’d grabbed some of the nachos, using the fork to avoid the tortilla chips. It was pretty smart. I’d copy him if I wasn’t committed now to ignoring the texture. “But like, people talk about it. It works for them.”
“Sure.”
I cracked my knuckles. The thought of punishing Cam? It wasn’t appealing. If it was what he needed, though? Would I be able to respect it? To give it to him?
No. I shook my head. The idea might make sense in a fantasy setting, but this was real life.
I might not have all the experience other Doms had, but I understood hurt.
I understood the kind of firm but gentle hand that was needed to heal.
I had experience there. It didn’t matter if the experience pertained to four-legged animals. The concept had to be the same.
Punishing Roy wouldn’t have helped.
Punishing Cam—in a literal sense of the word, that didn’t have to do with his desire and pleasure? It wouldn’t work, either. It would add more wounds for me to patch over, to kiss better.
I wasn’t interested.
“Get in the back of the truck when we finish this thing.”
“Um. Why?” Honorifics were not a thing I’d cared too much about before. Given all the times I’d caught him stopping or doubting himself, though, I pinned him down with a stare until he gulped and tried again. “Why, Daddy?”
“Much better.” The praise came unbidden. “I just think you need some TLC.”
Cam squirmed. “Is that what you’re getting from me asking about punishments?”
“That’s exactly right.”
There was no doubting my words or my plan of action.
After I’d tipped the waitress and we scampered out of the diner that I’d make a note not to revisit, Cam climbed up on the back of the truck.
I spared a glance to make sure we weren’t being watched and did the same from the opposite door.
The parking lot was empty save for a couple of larger delivery trucks, but they were far enough, and I suspected the drivers were using the gas station for a pit stop before moving somewhere better.
Cam looked uncomfortable, unsure of what to do, his brows furrowed, and his hands clasped together. It lasted two seconds, though. A carefully placed hand cupped his jaw, and he melted into the touch like the touch-starved boy I’d suspected him of being. He didn’t protest when I pushed him closer.
There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver, and pushing him to my lap meant he was squished between me and the back of the front seat.
It wasn’t a position that could be maintained for long.
I was aware. Being aware didn’t stop me.
Being aware just meant I set a mental reminder to not let us spend an hour or two like this.
Maybe next year, if we hadn’t made him run for the hills by then, and he didn’t resent my guts for one thing or another, I could let him persuade me into those plane tickets he’d wanted to buy. Privacy would still be an issue, but I’d certainly have more time with him like this.
“I owe you an apology.”
“You do?” Cam’s eyebrows shot up his forehead, the skin there wrinkling with the force of someone who would have the lines of having lived before what society would consider his time. “Um. Why?”
“After Damian’s,” I pointed out, “I was focusing so much on the boundaries you’d set. I think I forgot the one thing you asked for more than anything. I don’t think I’ve kept my end of the deal.”
I didn’t need to close my eyes to see it, the desperation in his eyes, the embarrassment and need when he asked to be kissed, to make out, to do anything that kept my mouth on his. The way he’d leaned forward every time he’d thought I was going to go for it.
I wouldn’t say I hadn’t kissed him in the last two weeks, but had I dedicated hours to it? The time he clearly craved? The time I wanted him to crave?
“What are you talking about?”
Words got trapped in the back of my throat. The good, responsible thing would be to explain my logic, the inner monologue that I knew had a point even when I suspected he’d fight me on it.
“Can I kiss you, darlin’?”
Instead, the question was what came out.
Apparently, it was a good choice of words, given how fast and fiercely Cam nodded.
I ignored the pit in my stomach. Had I been taking him that much for granted? Mistreating him this badly, that the idea of getting my lips pressed to his deserved such a response?
I grunted, shushing the lurking voices in my head.
Then I gave him what I’d offered—lips against his, exploring, teasing, nibbling until he parted his mouth and let me slide my tongue inside.
He was the one making the noises afterward, and I was more than happy to let him—to relish in it, in how easily he seemed to mold to my body, to my very whim.
It was heady—the kind of feeling that could become an addiction easily. The kind that—albeit different—had been behind why I didn’t pull the brakes with Roy in time.
Fuck.
Cam’s brain wasn’t the only one that thrived when pouring buckets of ice-cold water on him.
I leaned back, my lungs fighting for more air. It hadn’t been the reason I’d pulled back, but it gave me an excuse to not have him overthinking the move before I could find my words.
“How good are you at writing lists, darlin’?”
“Um.” Cam gasped for air. I noted how his hips bucked up in the air, seeking friction I wasn’t quite giving him. My hand went to meet him there without much input from me. “What do I get in return?”
“I take care of you.” In more ways than one, but I made the meaning clearer by dragging my gaze down to the bulge in his sweatpants, the one I’d made my best to ignore back when I was driving and not looking forward to an accident, a ticket, or worse. “Sounds good?”
Cam’s chest heaved up and down for two, three beats. “Y-yeah. Yeah, sounds good.”
“Good boy.” I rumbled the words, my forehead pressed to his. “I love how you use your words for me, darlin’.”
The constant praise came easily with him.
It wasn’t forced, or unnatural, or an exaggeration.
I’d had months of witnessing how he struggled with every other person unless he was talking about the animals.
I’d seen him stop using his words before he panicked and found an excuse to get some space.
Yet here he was, pressing himself closer to me, pushing through whatever discomfort he was battling with, and talking to me.
Giving me answers. Sharing his thoughts.
“Daddy.” He breathed out the word. The word that felt like the most comforting cup of tea in preparation for a full day out in the sun. The word that had me losing some of the weight on my shoulders before I could question why it had been there in the first place. “What list?”
Right.
The list.
The half-assed plan I’d come up with on the spot because I refused to have that reaction be the norm, to find myself realizing I was not giving him what he needed.
“I want you to write down what you want from Daddy in the next couple of months. It can be anything from kink to mundane stuff to harder stuff. I don’t care. And I want you to add, from zero to ten, how much you think you deserve it.”
“Zero means I don’t deserve any of it?”
I hummed, nipping his bottom lip before I answered. “Exactly.”
Cam squirmed. “And that will mean you won’t do it?”
“No.” I huffed. “Doing it or not will be up to Daddy.”
“But…”
“I’m not asking you to write limits, Cam.” I had a feeling he understood, but I’d rather talk him through it before there would be any misunderstandings. “I’m asking only for the things you want. I would never ignore a limit or a boundary. This is different.”
I expected more of a fight, but it was telling that it only took Cam a few seconds of chewing on his lip before he nodded and slumped down against my shoulder.
“More of this first.”
Who was I to deny him?