Chapter 16
Everything felt good.
Like, all the time. Benji couldn’t get over it. And it was all because of that goddamn chastity cage.
Benji stroked the cage absentmindedly as he waited in his studio, examining the covered painting in front of him.
Sometime in the last week, he had busted right through the frustration of not being able to get hard and arrived in a land of deep bliss that he usually only accessed after sex.
Noah didn’t even need to be there. All Benji had to do was step a certain way for the chastity cage to brush against his boxers, and he’d suddenly have a transcendent experience right there in the middle of the street.
It wasn’t anticipation—not quite. It was the knowledge that he was being good for him.
Like when he was wearing a plug or not jerking off as instructed, but all the more intense.
Not being able to get hard was a big leap from not being able to come.
Benji had been worried it would get boring, but instead, it just honed everything down.
Stripped it bare to its pure elements. It didn’t matter what was happening in the world as long as Benji had the chastity cage and Noah cupped him proudly at the end of every day.
“My sweet baby,” he would say sometimes, rubbing the metal ring around Benji’s balls.
And often—more often than not in the past few days—Benji would call him Daddy.
It still felt weird if he wasn’t out-of-his-mind horny and/or in subspace. So, he usually saved it until then. And when it happened, it filled him with such deep contentment that it made all the mortification worth it.
A knock on the door made Benji startle. He yanked his hand out of his boxers, making a face as he realized he was going to have to shake this poor old lady’s hand with sex-toy skin.
It was clean enough… right? He’d sterilized it before he put it on after his shower this morning. And he’d only touched the outside.
He jogged over to his studio door and flung it open. “Mrs. Presley! Hi!”
“Hello, young man.” Mrs. Presley walked into his studio, mercifully without shaking his hand, and stared around the messy space. “You look like you’ve been busy!”
“I’ve been inspired,” Benji said, kicking a paint can out of the way and wincing at the stack of coffee cups in the corner. “Since we got back from the trip, and all. I’ve never been overseas. And with all the, uh, personal stuff happening.”
“Falling in love can be the most inspiring thing in the world,” Mrs. Presley agreed, clasping her shawl excitedly.
“Sometimes. I’ve noticed that it will either send artists into a frenzy or make them so happy they won’t make any art at all.
I always pitied those ones. They always insist that they can’t create art unless they’re depressed!
So happy to see you’re not one of them. And thank you for showing me your studio, Noah said you were very protective of it! ”
Benji laughed awkwardly. He doubted Noah used those exact words; he always made Benji sound better than he was.
He wouldn’t have mentioned that Benji had barely let anyone into the studio Noah had bought for him, including Max and Daphne, who had only been allowed in for minutes at a time before Benji shooed them out, filled with nameless anxiety.
But he was mature now. He could let Mrs. Presley in for a visit, especially if she was offering another payment that made him open his bank account just to stare at it in shock and disbelief. He still hadn’t shaken the habit of counting how many months of rent he had before he went broke.
He had many, many months. More than he ever imagined. He still couldn’t fully wrap his head around it.
“So,” Mrs. Presley said, staring admiringly up at the huge windows that let in so much gorgeous light. “Where is this new piece you’ve been telling me about?”
“This way.” Benji led her through discarded hoodies and empty trail mix bags and tubes of paint to the canvas in the middle of the room. It had a sheet over it, since Benji had a fit of nerves when Mrs. Presley texted him to say she was almost at his building.
“Here we are,” Benji said. He gripped the sheet and reminded himself that she had assured him that she’d pay for the next one if she didn’t like this one, then pulled the sheet down.
It rippled to the floor. Benji watched it settle and waited.
Mrs. Presley let out a pleased hum. “I’ll take it.”
Benji’s breath whooshed out of him. “Yeah?”
“Yes!” Mrs. Presley beamed, patting him jovially on the arm. “I love it. You have this wonderful intimacy in your paintings. Oh, I’ve told you enough. I love it! The sweetness, the detail. And that is some lovely homoeroticism, I must say.”
Benji blinked at the painting. He thought he’d pared back the homoeroticism with this one.
It was a close-up of a pile of items on a nightstand: a watch, a sturdy ring, a pearl earring, and a glass of water beading with condensation.
A sunlit man was standing in the background, belt half out, undoing a leather collar from his neck.
It was decidedly not Benji. He’d been careful to make the angles all wrong, given the man a stubble where Benji had none, put him in a shirt Benji would never wear.
“Homoerotic,” he repeated.
She nodded, humming. “Oh, you know me, I don’t have a technical mind for this kind of thing. It’s the way you drew his hands, the tenderness of the motion. And the way the collar is being pulled out of its buckle. How your man tilts his hips. Is that very judgy of me?”
“No,” said Benji consideringly. “I did make him hold his hips like that.”
“I do love it,” Mrs. Presley said admiringly. “And I love all your warm colors. Your work is always so warm, it makes so much sense that it would happen in here.”
She looked around the studio, which was full of golden afternoon light.
Benji looked around with her. It did look like a painting sometimes. Benji had half a mind to paint a scene of the jumbled coffee cups in the corner.
“It’s a beautiful studio,” Mrs. Presley continued.
“It must be lovely, having all this space just for your work. I remember when I got my first proper garden. It was always a pet hobby of mine, but I never had one big enough for my daydreams. Then I married my first husband, and suddenly the garden was so big it fit all my dreams in it.”
Benji held back a smile. Mrs. Presley might not be very technical about art, but she felt it, and that was what counted. She was able to sum up huge topics better than any professor Benji had ever known.
“Yeah,” he said, staring around the golden room Noah had brought for him. “It’s pretty fucking great.”
When Noah came into the studio an hour later, Benji had cleaned most of the floor.
“Hey, Mr. CEO,” Benji called, dumping the coffee mugs back on the ground and marching up to throw his arms around him.
“Mr. Soon-To-Be-Stern,” Noah replied. He kissed Benji softly, then leaned back to nod at the painting. “Did she like it?”
“She did,” Benji said, unable to stop himself from grinning. “But that’s not what I brought you here to show you.”
Noah’s gaze lingered on the canvas with obvious interest before he replied. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” Benji said. “Oh.”
He pulled Noah’s hand, leading him to a blank canvas he’d laid out on the newly cleaned floor. There was a tarp spread around it and a pot of gold paint sitting at the top.
Noah’s lips twitched. He tore his eyes away from the painting to ask, “Are you painting me again?”
“Nope.” Benji waited for the anticipation to stretch, Noah’s eyes going eager and dark, before kicking out and tipping over the gold pot of paint.
They both watched the paint pool over the canvas, dripping onto the tarp.
“You’re going to fuck me on that,” Benji announced.
Noah’s lips curled up properly, looking the kind of proud that he always felt when Benji said something he wanted in the bedroom. Then his smile straightened out, going back to the calm, cool dom persona.
“You better have brought lube,” he said. “I love that paint on your skin, but I’m not putting it inside you.”
Benji pulled a packet of lube out of his pocket. He never went anywhere without one nowadays.
“Good boy,” Noah said, before he went for Benji’s belt. “Still wearing your cage?”
“You haven’t told me to take it off,” Benji said. “So, no.”
He tried to be sarcastic about it, but he couldn’t help the giddy joy in his voice. The wedding was next week. He’d almost made it a whole month without coming. He’d never felt success like this, bone-deep and glowing.
Noah reached into Benji’s boxers and cupped the cage. His eyes got hot and soft and possessive.
“Are you sure?” Noah asked.
Benji snorted. “What are you trying to do, catch me out on the last stretch?”
“No,” Noah said, amused. “I’m only wondering if you want to wait to have sex.”
Benji had considered that, in the beginning. Noah had even stopped coming onto him so much in that first week, all too aware of what Benji couldn’t have. But Benji wanted it. He wanted Noah inside him, wanted the closeness and satisfaction of it, even if he couldn’t get hard.
“I don’t want to push you more than you can take,” Noah continued.
Benji bit his lip. Even with the continuous deprivation turning everything up to eleven, he still doubted whether he could make it.
He took off his shirt wordlessly, then his pants and shoes. He stood naked in his messy studio as gold paint dripped off the canvas on the floor beside him.
“I can still take it,” Benji promised. “That’s what you said, right? You’d give it to me until I couldn’t take it. So, give it to me.”
Noah’s eyes went half-lidded. He stepped forward, and Benji realized with a thrill that he wasn’t even going to take his clothes off. He was going to fuck Benji in his nice work suit and get gold all over his knees.
“Daddy,” Benji added. It still felt stupid and vulnerable when he wasn’t actively out of his mind with lust, but the heated look Noah gave him made it worth it.
“Until you can’t take it,” Noah repeated. “Right?”
Benji nodded fervently. His cock was pressing against the cage, trying desperately to get hard and failing. It was torture. It was the best thing he’d ever felt.
Then Noah pushed him down onto that canvas, mashing him into the paint, and the best thing he’d ever felt was replaced by about ten other things at once.
Afterward, Noah wiped Benji’s face clean with his shirt. “You can safeword anytime.”
“I know,” Benji said, his tongue thick. He dropped his head onto Noah’s shoulder, which was wet with paint.
He wanted to tell Noah how devoted he was to this, how it made him feel like a religious person on a pilgrimage, how it narrowed the world down into manageable proportions after a lifetime of chaos.
“I can do it,” he said finally. “Feels like I was made for it. To do this for you.”
Noah hummed quietly. He stroked Benji’s hair, getting more sticky paint on his hand.
Benji sighed and pulled away. The paint was sexy in the moment, but it was getting truly gross now that it was drying.
“Okay,” Benji said. “Now we gotta sneak across the building hallway covered in paint.”
“My favorite part of the day,” Noah said.
For once, they both climbed into the bath.
After the annoying scrubbing was done, Benji settled back against Noah with a sigh.
“This is nice,” he said sleepily. “You should get in with me more often.”
Noah kissed his wet hair. He felt so good behind Benji, strong and slick and cooler than the bathwater. And Noah could hold him properly like this, both arms around him.
Then again, Benji began to consider as his eyelids fluttered. If Noah climbed in with him every time, Benji would probably fall asleep before Noah got any actual cleaning done.
Noah stroked his chest soothingly. “Benji?”
Benji made a curious noise, still half-asleep.
“I want to adopt Max.”
Benji’s eyes snapped open. He turned to face Noah, suddenly wide awake.
“You want what?” he demanded. He blinked hard, memories struggling through his sleepy, post-orgasm brain. “Like Desmond said? A… a publicity stunt thing, to show everyone we’re serious?”
“No. Not a publicity stunt. I want…” Noah paused. “I want Max to know he can always come to me. That I’m in his corner. Not just as his brother’s partner, but as his guardian.”
Guardian, Benji mouthed. They were going to have to do something about that. Max wasn’t going to call him a guardian.
He laughed, the noise uncomfortably wet until he cleared his throat.
“Shit,” he sighed, letting his head flop back against Noah’s chest. “We’ll ask him.”