Chapter Seven
Morning was shower steam and Tessa’s hands.
He woke already sore and already hard, the collar still on, sunlight thin through the pines. Tessa was already up when he sat up.
“How bad is it?”
“The good kind of bad,” he said. “Everything aches. I want you.”
“Come here when you’re awake enough. I’m not done with you.”
He laughed and let her haul him up.
She walked him to the private bath off cabin three before the yard got loud.
Hot water.
She stood him under the spray and washed his hair with slow fingers.
Soaped the dried mess from his chest and stomach and the tender place between his legs.
She cleaned him inside with careful fingers and watched his face for flinch and ease.
When he hissed she slowed and waited. When he nodded she continued until he was clean and open and quiet against the tile.
“Too much?” she asked once.
“No,” he said. “Just sore.”
“You earned that soreness.”
After the shower she had him lie on his stomach while she worked lotion into every mark the week had left.
Rope ghosts on his arms. Crop lines. The faint bruise of a slap on his thigh.
She was thorough without making a production of it.
When she finished she rolled him over and checked his cock and balls with the same practical care, then pressed a kiss to his neck.
She unbuckled the collar. Air on his bare throat felt strange, almost wrong. He touched the skin there without meaning to, found the faint line where leather had sat for days.
Tessa opened a small case from the drawer. Inside lay a permanent collar: darker leather, tighter stitching, a lock that closed with a soft final click and a key she put on a chain around her own neck.
“This one stays,” she said. “Though camp week ends, the claim does not. This is a permanent collar which cannot be removed…you could cut it off. You can also just say no.”
Gage lifted his chin. His voice came steady enough. “Put it on.”
She buckled it. Locked it. Checked the fit with two fingers. Her thumb rested on the ring, then traced the edge once like a signature.
“Now you are officially mine,” she said.
He swallowed against the leather.
She made him stand in front of the small mirror by the bath door and look. The permanent collar sat dark on his throat. His mouth was kiss-swollen. Marks mapped his chest and hips. He looked like a man who had stopped arguing with himself.
She kissed him then, real and unhurried, and laid him back on clean sheets.
This time there were no ropes and no audience.
She stroked his cock until he was hard and slick and pushed into him face to face, legs hooked over her hips, her long brown hair falling around them like a curtain that shut the camp out.
He opened for her easy, though he was sore. The first full slide pulled a long sound from both of them. She paused buried and let him feel the lock at his throat and the key at hers, two ends of the same fact.
Slow strokes. Deep. Her mouth on his mouth. His hands free on her back, feeling the toned muscle work as she took him. The permanent collar sat between them when she pressed her throat to his. Every time the lock brushed her key chain it made a tiny sound.
He said her name between kisses like he was practicing a new language. She answered with deeper thrusts and a hand braced by his head. The bed talked under them. Outside, boots on gravel. Inside, only the wet sound of her taking him home from the week.
Midway she pulled out, sat up against the headboard, and drew him into her lap face to face, the permanent collar ring caught between her fingers while she rolled her hips up into him.
He held her shoulders and rode the pace she set.
Sweat ran between them. The cabin filled with soft wrecked sounds that belonged to no audience at all.
When he pressed his forehead to hers she matched the pressure and kept him there through three deep strokes that made his eyes wet.
She fucked him through a climb that felt almost gentle after the ritual and somehow sharper for it.
He could feel every inch. He could feel the care in the way she angled to hit the place that made his toes curl without slamming him through the headboard.
When he got close she slowed and made him ride the edge with her until his eyes went wet for a different reason than pain.
“You can come now.”
When he came it was with her name in his mouth. When she came it was with her hand locked around the collar ring, holding him at the exact distance she wanted while she spent deep.
She pulled out and turned him to his side, spooned close, and entered him again with her chest to his back and her hand on the lock.
Slow. Intimate. The kind of claiming that did not need an audience to matter.
He reached back to grip her hip. She let him.
When he got close she stopped moving and only held him full until the urge dropped one degree, then started again.
“You’re mean,” he whispered.
“Okay, I’ll be nice,” she said, and bit his shoulder gentle.
They stayed joined. Breathing. Her mouth at his nape. Outside, camp sounds rose: boots, a whistle, someone laughing in the yard. A week ending. A life that would not snap back to cubicles and soft lunch talk without this locked at his throat.
Tessa eventually eased out of him. She tucked the blanket around his hips and left the collar where it was. She lay on her side and let him look at her.
She checked her phone on the nightstand for the first time since his arrival, scroll brief, then turned the screen so he could see a schedule block highlighted in green.
Guest instructor week. Starts Monday. Display track optional for claimed permanents. Public service demo. Advanced suspension. Breeding exhibition if the instructor requests a body.
Tessa’s eyes met his over the phone.
“She asked if I had anyone worth putting on the block,” Tessa said. “I said yes. You.”
Gage’s spent cock twitched under the blanket. Heat rolled through the ache and the care and the lock at his throat, already reaching for the next door.
“What does display track mean, exactly?”
“It means they watch you take what I give, and what she gives if I loan you for a demo.”
He wet his lips. “When do we start?”
“Monday orientation for guests. You’ll be on a short leash in the hall while she tours. If she likes what she sees, we put you on the block Tuesday. Advanced suspension Wednesday if your muscles aren’t too sore. Breeding exhibition is end of week if I agree to loan.”
“What about you? Will you agree?”
Her mouth curved once, brief, and flattened again.
Tessa set the phone down and drew a finger along the permanent collar’s edge, already planning the next way to open him.
“Rest while you can.”
He turned into her hand and kissed her palm, awkward and sincere. She let him. Outside, someone called a name across the yard. A whistle answered. Camp life went on without needing him to understand all of it yet.
“Will the instructor be harder than the eight?”
“It’s a different experience,” Tessa said. “You’ll be sore in new places.”
“I think I’ll be able to handle it.”
“We shall see,” she said, and pulled the blanket higher over both of them.
He closed his eyes with her finger still on the lock, sore and kept and already hungry for the guest week waiting past the pines.
She stayed beside him until his breathing evened, the cabin quiet except for rain starting again on the roof like a soft applause that did not need an audience.