CHAPTER FIVE
The room was small, quiet, and smelled like leather and cedar.
Rodney knelt on the pillow next to Mordechai's knee and tried to remember how to breathe.
The silk of the blindfold was warm against his skin, heated by his own body.
Everything was sound: the soft creak of the couch as Mordechai moved, the low thrum of music from the club beyond the door, the embarrassingly loud sound of his own heart.
Mordechai's hand was in his hair. Long fingers moving through the strands with a slow, rhythmic patience that was at odds with everything Rodney had expected from a man who'd just spent good money to have him for a night.
He'd expected—what? Roughness. Urgency. To be bent over the nearest surface and used.
That was what happened in the scenarios he'd imagined, the ones that had kept him awake for three nights and left him equal parts terrified and curious.
Instead, Mordechai was petting him. Gently. Like he had all the time in the world.
"Sir?" Rodney finally said, because the silence was killing him.
"Mm."
"What are you thinking about?"
A soft exhale that might have been a laugh.
"You. What to do with you. What you can take.
What you might surprise me by wanting." His fingers found a spot behind Rodney's ear and rubbed slowly.
Rodney felt his shoulders drop, almost without meaning to, and he leaned into the touch before he could stop himself.
"There. That's what I wanted. You just relaxed. "
"I didn't mean to."
"I know. That's why it matters." Mordechai's hand moved from his hair to his jaw, tilting his face upward.
Rodney couldn't see him, but he could feel the weight of his gaze.
"I'm going to ask you some questions, Rodney.
I want honest answers. Not the answers you think I want to hear, and not the answers that make you sound braver than you are. Just the truth. Can you do that?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Good. Tell me about your sexual experience. What have you done, and with whom?"
The question should have been embarrassing, and it was, a little, but Mordechai's voice made it feel like something else. Like an interview conducted by someone who was genuinely interested in the answers. Rodney swallowed.
"There were two. Men, I mean. The first was a camel. His name was David. We were together for about four months. It was... nice. Quiet. He was a good guy. We just didn't have much chemistry."
"What was the sex like?"
Rodney's face burned. "Vanilla. Really vanilla. Lights off. Under the covers. He was very... polite about it."
The sound Mordechai made was somewhere between amusement and disappointment. "And the second?"
"A dolphin. Terrence. More energetic, but he narrated everything. The whole time. Like a play-by-play."
"And that's it?" Mordechai asked. "Two partners?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Have you been a top or a bottom?"
"Both. I don't have a strong preference. Or—" He hesitated. "I haven't had enough experience to know if I have one."
"Honest answer. I appreciate that." Mordechai's hand returned to his hair, stroking slowly. "Have you ever been with a predator? An actual one, not like that dolphin."
"No." The word came out faster than Rodney intended. "No, Sir. I haven't."
"Does that scare you?"
"Yes."
"Good." Mordechai's voice was low and warm and carried a current that made Rodney's skin tighten.
"I can feel you right now, every muscle in your body is telling you to bolt, and you're still on your knees.
That tension is where we work. You don't have to resolve it.
You just have to stay honest with me about what you feel. "
Rodney nodded, then caught himself. "Yes, Sir."
"Now. I'm going to tell you what I'd like to do tonight, and you're going to tell me if any of it is something you absolutely cannot handle. Not 'don't want to,' that's different. I mean the things that would break you. The things that go beyond fear into harm. Do you understand the difference?"
Rodney thought about it. "I think so. The things that would make me use the safe word."
"Exactly. Lioness. You say it, and everything stops.
Not a pause, not a negotiation, a full stop.
I will remove my hands from you, I will step back, and we will talk about what went wrong.
That word is yours. It's the most powerful word in this room.
More powerful than anything I can say or do. Do you believe that?"
The certainty in his voice was like a hand extended in the dark. Rodney reached for it. "Yes, Sir. I believe you."
"Good." Mordechai leaned closer. Rodney couldn't see him, but he could feel the heat of his body, smell the dark feline musk of him, cedar and leather and something underneath that was purely animal.
"Here's what I want. I want to touch you.
Everywhere. I want to learn your body, what makes you tense, what makes you shiver, what makes you moan.
I want to find out what your skin feels like under my hands and my mouth and my teeth.
I want to take you apart slowly and see what's underneath.
And eventually, when you're ready, and you'll be ready, Rodney, I'll make sure of that, I want to fuck you.
Not fast, not rough. Not the first time.
The first time, I want to feel everything. "
Rodney's mouth had gone completely dry. His cock, which had been in a state of confused semi-arousal since the auction, thickened hard against the leather of the cock ring. The restriction made him acutely aware of every pulse of blood.
"Is any of that something you can't handle?" Mordechai asked.
"No, Sir." His voice was barely a whisper.
"Is any of it something you want?"
The question landed differently than the first one. It wasn't asking about limits. It was asking about desire. And Rodney, who had spent most of his life not knowing what he wanted and being too afraid to ask for the rest of it, found the answer waiting for him like it had been there all along.
"All of it, Sir. I want all of it."
Mordechai's hand tightened in his hair. Not painfully, possessively. The grip said: I heard you. I'm going to hold you to that.
"Stand up," Mordechai’s voice changed. Still warm, still controlled, but with an edge. An authority that hadn't been there during the conversation. The Dom had been talking to him. Now the Dom was directing him. "Slowly. I'll help you."
Rodney's legs had gone stiff from kneeling, and he wobbled as he tried to rise. Mordechai's strong hand found his shoulder, firm, steadying, and guided him to his feet. The blood rushed back into his calves and he swayed, but the hand kept him upright.
"Turn around. Two steps forward."
Rodney obeyed. Moving blind was disorienting, every step felt like it might be off a cliff, but Mordechai's voice was his anchor. Two steps. He stopped. He could feel the couch behind him now, the leather cool against the backs of his thighs.
Mordechai's hands landed on his shoulders. Both of them, warm and large, spanning the width of his upper back. Rodney flinched at the contact, then forced himself still. The hands didn't move. They just rested there, heavy and present, letting him adjust.
Then they began to move.
Slowly. Down his shoulders, along the curve of his back, over the soft terrain of his sides.
Mordechai's touch was exploratory, not tentative but deliberate, like a man reading braille.
He traced the shape of Rodney's body with his palms, and Rodney understood with a jolt that Mordechai was learning him.
Mapping him. The dip of his waist, the swell of his hips, the places where his body was soft and yielding and so unlike the hard, lean bodies Mordechai was probably used to.
"You're tense." Mordechai’s breath was warm on the back of Rodney's neck.
"I'm nervous about—" Rodney swallowed. "My body. I know I'm not…"
"Stop." The word was quiet but absolute. "You don't get to do that. Not in this room. You don't apologize for your body, and you don't pre-empt my opinion of it. I'll tell you what I think when I'm ready. Until then, be still and let me touch you."
Rodney closed his mouth. The command settled over him like a blanket, warm, heavy, surprisingly comforting. He didn't have to worry about what Mordechai thought. Mordechai would tell him. All he had to do was stand there.
So, he stood there.
Mordechai's hands moved lower. Over his hips, down the outside of his thighs, then back up along the inside, close enough to make Rodney's breath hitch but not close enough to touch where he ached.
The tease was deliberate. Rodney recognized it even through his inexperience.
Mordechai was building something. Winding him tighter with each pass of his hands, each brush of fingertips against sensitive skin.
"Your skin is extraordinary," Mordechai murmured.
"Soft. Like nothing I've felt before. Most shifters carry their animal in their skin, rough patches, thick spots, calluses.
You're just... soft. Everywhere." His hands curved around Rodney's stomach, palms flat, and Rodney's first instinct was to suck in, to hide, to be less.
But Mordechai held him firmly and didn't move.
"Here, too. This is part of you. Don't flinch from it. "
Rodney let out a shaky breath and stopped trying to hold his stomach in. Mordechai's hands spread wider, fingers pressing into the give of his flesh with an appreciation that Rodney couldn't quite believe was real.
"I like this," Mordechai said. "I want you to know that. Not because it matters whether I like it, your body is yours regardless of my opinion, but because you look like you've never heard it before, and that's a problem I intend to fix."
No one had ever said anything like that to him. Not David, who had been kind but uninterested. Not Terrence, who had been too busy talking to notice. No one had ever touched his stomach and said I like this and meant it.