Chapter 10
“Are you ready?”
Benji considered the question. His head was fuzzy, and he had lost track of time when Noah started fucking him with four fingers.
Now he was up to five. Noah’s slick knuckles rested just beyond Benji’s hole, which was stretched further than ever before.
“Just one more stretch,” Noah told him gently. “And it’s inside. Do you want to slow down?”
Benji shook his head. He was sweating onto the pillows, trembling so hard Noah had to prop his knees up underneath him.
He felt like taffy, loose and lax. Surely Noah could fit his whole hand inside him.
He’d been prepping Benji long enough. Those two huge plugs, plus all this fingering—this had to be the time where it finally worked.
When Benji didn’t chicken out at the last second and safeword out.
“Benjamin?” Noah kissed his spine, licking sweat from his skin. “Words, baby.”
Benji groaned unintelligibly. He knew vaguely that there was a foreign country waiting outside the closed curtains, everything waiting for him to explore. But once again, Noah had narrowed the world down to the bed he had Benji splayed out on.
“Do it,” Benji panted.
Noah placed another kiss to his spine and started to press in. Benji’s hole bulged around Noah’s knuckles, and for a straining second, Benji thought he’d fucked up. He couldn’t do it, it was too much, he was going to have to bow out again—
But then Noah’s knuckles slipped past, and Benji’s hole settled around his wrist.
Benji drooled into the mattress, alight with triumph.
Holy shit, he thought dimly. I did it.
“It’s in,” Noah told him, his voice dark with awe. “God, you look incredible. How does it feel?”
Benji shifted curiously. He could feel Noah’s fingers against his inner walls, could feel Noah making a slow, careful fist. He’d never felt that before. It was the most intimate thing he’d ever experienced.
“It’s so much,” Benji managed, his voice thick. “Noah.”
“You’re taking me so well,” Noah said. “So good for me. Just had to let me in, yeah?”
Benji wanted to cry; it was so overwhelming. The kind of good that was so intense he didn’t know whether to lean in or flinch away from it. But Noah was holding him in place, one hand on his tailbone and one hand inside him in a way nobody had ever been before.
Noah’s hand shifted inside Benji, thrusting slowly in and out. His knuckles tugged again on Benji’s hole, but from the inside this time.
Benji came so hard he blacked out. When he woke up, his hole was empty, and Noah was smoothing a cloth down his sweaty chest.
Benji watched him work, all of him hazy and shaky and raw. He felt like Noah had opened his ribcage and touched his beating heart. And here he was, putting Benji back together with those deft, sure hands.
It was dawn when Benji awoke again. Benji stared at the curtains, the morning sun shining through the gap. It was warm, the sheets tangled around one foot and nothing else.
Noah was sitting on the bed beside him. He was fully dressed, wearing a tank top and a pair of shorts that were so soft Benji once spent a whole evening rubbing them without noticing.
“Whoa,” Benji slurred. “Tank Top Noah. Never seen him before.”
Noah looked down at his tank top in surprise, like he hadn’t even noticed he was wearing it.
“If you want to go sleeveless, you’re usually in the fancy sports shirts,” Benji continued, plucking at the hem. “With the special fabric and… stuff.”
“I wear tank tops in summer,” Noah said. “You just haven’t seen it yet.”
Benji hummed, rolling over onto his back. His hole throbbed, but it was a good ache. The kind of ache he’d had a lot since he’d met Noah.
Noah ran a hand over his bare chest. “How do you feel?”
“Good,” Benji said. His head was still slow and syrupy, his limbs loose. He wiggled slowly against the sheets, feeling his hole gape. “Could probably take you without any prep. Slide right in.”
Noah’s eyes darkened. His hand spasmed on Benji’s chest, his thumb brushing Benji’s nipple tantalizingly.
Then he sat back. “I’ll keep that in mind. For now, I got you something.”
“You already got me a resort in Bali,” Benji reminded him.
“I didn’t get it for you.” Noah grinned. “Unless you want me to.”
“No,” Benji blurted. “Do not buy me a resort, Noah. Hard line.”
“Got it,” Noah said softly. His smile flickered, like he was reminding himself of something. Then he reached over and set a velvet box on Benji’s chest.
Benji sat up, heart thudding. The velvet box fell into his naked lap. It was long and flat, Benji noticed with equal parts relief and disappointment. Not the right shape for a ring.
“This isn’t a proposal,” Benji joked. “Right?”
Another strange look passed over Noah’s face, so fast Benji thought he might have imagined it.
“No,” Noah said. “No proposal. I just thought you might like it.”
Benji rubbed the velvet, marveling. Then he flipped open the box, and his breath whooshed out of him.
A collar gleamed dully against the dark lining. It was sleek black leather, as soft as butter. A metal ring sat in the middle of the collar, curved in the shape of a heart.
Benji swallowed over a thick throat. He suddenly imagined how that would have felt if he were wearing the collar, and a lightheaded rush washed over him.
“Oh,” he said thinly. “Shit.”
He’d never worn a collar before. He couldn’t help but think of all the stuff he’d read online during late-night Google searches, about collars and doms and subs and commitment.
It’s because you won’t say yes to marrying him, Benji’s mind whispered. He’s trying to keep you.
Somehow, this was infinitely less terrifying than marriage. Somehow this collar made Benji desperate, his naked neck prickling with want.
Noah asked, “Do you want me to put it on you?”
Benji wanted that more than anything else in the world. He nodded, only his hazy head keeping him from seeming embarrassingly eager.
Noah picked up the collar and leaned in. The collar was cool and snug against Benji’s neck, with just enough give for Benji’s throat to bob against it.
Benji swallowed again, just to feel it. The pressure against his Adam’s apple made him even more lightheaded, his cock hardening between them.
Noah stroked his cheek. Benji thought he would say something, maybe ask how it felt. But he just sat there, stroking Benji’s face and staring at him like he’d never seen something so incredible.
Benji dragged in an unsteady breath. “H-how do I look?”
“Good,” Noah said. It sounded strained—the most strained Benji had ever heard him. His mouth opened again, hovering on the edge of speech.
“You look good,” he said again. “You look like…”
He trailed off. There was that unwavering certainty in his eyes that always made Benji feel safe. But there was something underneath it: fear. Like he knew how this was going to go, and he didn’t like the ending.
Then the fear was gone, and a fierce determination replaced it.
He dropped to his knees in front of the bed and gripped Benji’s knees. “Benji.”
Benji’s stomach dropped out, part excitement, part horrific fear. “Oh fuck.”
“I can’t hold it back,” Noah confessed. “I want you. I want you all the time, I want you forever. I don’t just want a collar you can take off. I want to know you’re mine.”
Benji shivered, hard and aching and wanting. “You just said this wasn’t a proposal!”
“I know what I said,” Noah said desperately. “I know I’m being selfish and intense and too much, but god, Benji. I could make you so happy. Please let me.”
He kissed Benji’s knee, his thigh, the crown of his hardening cock. For a heart-stopping second, Benji thought—hoped—he would tug him down by his collar. The pressure around his throat made him dizzier every second it was on, and it wasn’t even cutting off his airflow.
Then Noah reached up and hooked his finger through the heart-shaped loop, and Benji whimpered against his will.
“I could order you,” Noah rasped.
Benji swallowed again. His throat rode against the collar, and his cock jerked helplessly.
“Would you?” Benji whispered.
Noah shook his head. His eyes were huge and dark, and full of a sorrow that Benji never meant to put there.
“Only if you asked me to,” Noah admitted.
Benji almost did it. The words hovered on the tip of his tongue, huge and terrifying.
It would be so easy to say yes and let the collar have a bright new meaning that Noah so badly wanted.
Fuck, that Benji so badly wanted. He would be lying if he said he didn’t want to spend his life with Noah.
But it wasn’t that he didn’t want to. It was that he didn’t believe the world would let him have something so good.
He needed to protect himself against losing Noah, no matter how stubborn that new voice in the back of his head got when it told him to just let himself have something good, for once.
Sometimes it sounded like Daphne. Lately, it sounded like Noah.
But then the old instincts drowned it out, as always. It sounded thick and dry, and up until recently, Benji hadn’t heard it since his Aunt Nat’s wake.
Caulfields don’t get happy endings, hissed his father’s voice. Better to get out before it crushes you.
Benji stood, ignoring every stupid hopeful voice that told him to sit back down.
“I’m going for a walk,” he blurted before reaching to undo his collar.