Chapter 17. Kit
Three weeks later, my stitches are out and my shoulder finally moves like a shoulder again.
Not perfectly. There's still a dull pull if I reach too far behind myself, and the skin along my forearm is new and pink where the road took the old layer off, but I'm mostly functional. More importantly, Soren has declared me functional. He refused to do this while I was still properly injured.
I argued that my ass had survived the crash completely unscathed and therefore remained available for disciplinary purposes.
He stared at me for so long that I eventually apologized to the concept of medical recovery. Apparently consequences can wait. Healing can't. Which is how I end up here now.
The room is warmer than I expected. A wide couch with a dark throw blanket draped across one arm.
A single floor lamp in the corner casting amber light over the floorboards and up the walls.
No clutter. No dust. Nothing out of place, but nothing cold about it either.
Just a man who keeps his things where they belong. That's Soren.
And now I'm here, letting him put me where I agreed to be. Which is a thought I absolutely cannot examine for too long if I want to remain capable of standing upright. I still can't believe I agreed to this after swearing off dynamics entirely.
Technically, we haven't even built a full dynamic yet. We've agreed to try. Accountability. Honesty. Consequences. Soren calling me out when I'm doing the loud thing instead of the real thing. Tonight is the first time we're finding out what any of that looks like in practice.
I'm standing in front of him with my arms crossed over my chest. Soren is seated on the couch. Elbows on his knees. Hands loose between them. Watching me with the same unhurried patience he's been watching me with since the beginning. His face is calm.
He looks really fucking hot.
Which is inconvenient.
My mouth has been running ahead of me since we got here.
Something about the drive. Something about the weather.
A joke about his furniture that wasn't funny enough to deserve the amount of explanation I gave it.
Soren hasn't taken any of the bait. He sat down.
Looked at me. Waited. Eventually, I ran out of words.
Now I feel sick. Not actually sick.
Nervous. The kind of nervous that lives right under the sternum and keeps sending useless little electrical signals into every limb. Soren says my name.
"Kit." I look at him. "Before you come here, we're going over this once more."
My stomach drops.
"Oh my God. Not again," I say.
His mouth twitches.
"You're allowed to stop this," he starts even so. His eyes stay on mine. "At any point. For any reason. If you say stop, I stop. If you need a break, say pause. If you can't get the words out, tap my leg three times. Understand?"
I nod. His eyebrows lift. Right. Words.
"Yes."
"Good."
My stomach does something catastrophic. He continues like he didn't just nearly kill me with one syllable.
"And if something changes after you've said yes, you tell me."
"I know."
"I know you know. I'm saying it anyway."
Of course he is.
"Okay," I say.
"Pet names."
I blink.
"What about them?"
"I've called you little one before. Good boy. Baby boy."
My face starts heating.
"I should have asked sooner whether those are alright with you."
"They're very alright with me," I say. It’s so cute that he’s checking.
"All of them?"
"Yes."
He watches me carefully for another beat. Then:
"Good."
Jesus Christ.
"Anything you don't want me to call you?"
"Christopher."
That gets a quiet laugh out of him.
"Noted."
"Is it okay if I call you Daddy?"
Soren's whole face softens.
"Absolutely, sweet boy."
Then he sits back. Pats his thigh.
"Come here."
He's wearing dark jeans, socks, and a white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. I look at the ceiling. Then the wall. Then some fascinating microscopic imperfection in his floorboards. I'm so nervous.
Finally, I look at Soren's face. He's still waiting. No impatience. I remember the corridor. The word yes coming out of my mouth. I walk to him. Then I lower myself over his lap. My stomach drops like I'm on a roller coaster. My chest tightens.
Soren helps me settle, careful even though I'm mostly healed now, making sure my weight is comfortable before one hand comes to rest flat against the small of my back.
My fingers find the edge of the couch cushion and grip it.
He says nothing. His palm stays warm and steady against me. He waits for my breathing to settle.
It doesn't. It gets worse. Each inhale is shorter than the last. Each exhale shakes on the way out. I don't make sounds like this. I make jokes. I make noise. I make deflections.
"Still yes?" Soren asks.
I swallow.
"Yes."
"Ready, little one?"
That pet name goes directly through me.
"Yes..." I close my eyes. Then open them again even though I'm staring directly at a couch cushion.
"Yes, Daddy." The word leaves my mouth before I can reconsider it.
Daddy. It's the first time I've ever called him that.
Everything in me goes still. Soren does too.
Just for one heartbeat. His hand moves slowly over my back.
"Good boy."
Oh.
Then the first swat lands. My body goes completely, utterly rigid. It's not the pain. The pain is exactly what I expected. This isn't my first rodeo. It's everything around the pain that feels different. The second follows. Then the third. The fourth. The fifth. And so on.
Soren's rhythm is almost irritatingly consistent, but he doesn't keep striking one exact spot. His hand shifts, spreading the heat instead of concentrating it. It stings and burns. My hips still jerk involuntarily. Every time. There’s always the awareness of his other hand resting warm and solid against my back.
After the tenth, I make a sound. And realize, with horror, that it was dangerously close to a moan. I do the only reasonable thing. I start talking.
"Is that it?" The words come out thin, half a register too high. "I've had massages that hurt worse." Nothing. "I went to a guy once who used his elbows. Basically attempted murder."
Soren's hand lands again. Same measured force.
"You're not even going to defend yourself?"
Another.
"Wow. Terrible conversationalist."
His steady hand remains on my back. The striking hand keeps its rhythm. And the contrast between them does something to my nervous system I am completely unprepared for.
Then Soren stops. His palm settles over the heat he's already built. I tense, waiting.
"Kit."
"Yeah?"
"I want to take your jeans and underwear down and continue on bare skin."
My face goes nuclear. He waits.
"Still something you want?"
I swallow.
"Yes."
His hand stays still. I know exactly what he's waiting for.
"Yes, Daddy."
"Good boy."
He lowers them only after that. And when his hand lands again, the difference makes my breath catch hard.
"Fuck."
Soren doesn't comment. Of course he doesn't. The next one lands.
Then another. And another, and another. I try to breathe through it.
The pain is sharper. Hotter. But the sounds coming out of me are smaller too.
Wetter. Coming from somewhere behind my ribs that I sealed off so long ago I'd almost forgotten anything lived there.
My grip on the cushion loosens. My fingers, clamped white-knuckle tight around the fabric edge, simply... let go.
The spanking genuinely hurts. Soren's rhythm never becomes erratic or angry, but the heat builds in layers until every new impact lands over skin already sensitized by the last. My forehead drops toward the cushion.
The rigidity is gone. What's left is something softer.
I stop trying to pretend none of this is affecting me because pretending requires energy I no longer have.
My breathing turns ragged. Short, wet inhales through my nose.
Every exhale carries some small sound I would ordinarily kill before anybody heard it.
Soren hears all of them. His pace stays controlled. His other hand stays steady. My whole body is intensely ware of him, of the position, of the vulnerability of it. But something else is happening too.
Something bigger than the arousal. Something inside me is finally giving way.
Then I'm crying. Actually crying. Not the kind I perform when a moment calls for it.
The kind that comes from somewhere I sealed off after Charles.
It shakes my shoulders. My chest. My hands.
My face presses into the rough weave of the couch cushion because I have nowhere else to put it.
Soren's hand stops. The steady hand on my back doesn't move.
"Kit."
I drag in a breath.
"Still with me?"
I nod automatically.
His palm presses a little more firmly into my back.
"Words, baby boy."
"Yes." My voice cracks. "I'm here."
"Do you want me to keep going?"
I don't answer right away. That's the strange part. I actually check. Not what I think I'm supposed to say. Not what would make me good at this. What I want. My chest heaves. My face is wet. Everything hurts.
"No," I whisper. Then, because I need him to know: "I think I'm done."
Soren doesn't hesitate.
"Then we're done."
That's it. No disappointment. No negotiation. No are you sure? Done means done. Something in me breaks wider. I start crying harder.
"There you are," Soren says softly. His palm moves once over my back. "Good boy." I make another wrecked little sound. "That's my little boy." His hands move. One arm slides carefully beneath my chest while the other supports me, and he helps me upright.
I end up sideways against him, my face pressed into the front of his shirt.
His chest is warm. Solid. One arm wraps around my back.
His hand cradles the base of my skull, fingers threading gently through my hair.
He's shushing me. Just making that low, quiet sound while I keep crying.
My hands come up and find the front of his shirt. Grip. My shoulders shake harder.
If anything, the crying gets worse now that nothing is being asked of me anymore. His chin rests against the top of my head. His heartbeat is steady beneath my ear.
I don't remember the transition to the couch beside him very clearly.
One moment I'm upright against Soren's chest with my fists full of his shirt.
The next I'm tucked beside him, hip pressed against his, legs drawn up on the cushion, the dark throw blanket pulled over me from the waist down.
Soren's arm is around me. His hand rests safely on my right upper arm, thumb moving in slow, even strokes.
My eyes feel swollen. My face feels wrecked.
I feel incredible. Not physically. Physically, I'm sore and very aware of what just happened.
But inside? Light. Almost bubbly. Like somebody opened a valve I hadn't realized was under pressure. I don't know how long we sit there. Time stops meaning much. Eventually I start coming back to myself, but when I speak, my voice still sounds rough and small.
"I want more than this."
Soren's thumb pauses. I rush to clarify.
"Not more tonight. I mean... this. You. The whole thing."
My face heats again, although apparently I've decided dignity is optional tonight.
"I've wanted it since the first time you took me out for sushi." A tiny pause. "Maybe before that." Then: "Please, Daddy."
I'm surprised by how easily I can call him that now. My right hand has ended up resting on his thigh. Soren covers it briefly with his own.
"Look at me." I lift my head. Our eyes meet.
His are dark in the amber light, the lines at the corners deeper than I noticed before.
There is no pity in them. "We're not deciding the rest of our dynamic tonight, baby boy.
" I listen. "You're wrung out. And we haven't had the full conversation yet.
What we both want. Rules. Limits. What accountability actually means.
What belongs inside the dynamic and what doesn't."
His thumb moves once over my hand.
"We need to build that while you're fully settled and able to argue with me properly." A laugh escapes me. Tiny. "But we will talk about it."
"Okay."
"And we're not doing anything more tonight."
I understand what he means. I don't feel disappointed. I'm still floating somewhere three inches above my own body, but I understand. I don't argue. "Yes, Daddy."
I let my forehead fall back against his chest. My hand turns over on his thigh. Palm up. An invitation. Soren's fingers slide between mine. I have to fight the urge to tell him I love him. Because that's what it feels like in this moment.
"You still with me, sweetheart?" His voice is low.
"Yes, Daddy."
"Good." His thumb moves over mine. "Stay there." He eases his arm away slowly, giving my body time to notice the loss of contact, then stands. I stay exactly where he left me. My body sinks deeper into the cushion. Knees drawn up. Arms loose. I feel small. I'm too tired to be afraid of it.
Soren reaches for the remote. The streaming menu appears. Then My Neighbor Totoro starts playing. He doesn't ask what I want. He just decides for me, which I love.
My head lifts. "I'm making cocoa." I look at him. It feels like he just announced Christmas is coming early. And then, the look he gives me then—like I'm something precious, something worth protecting—makes me look away before I start crying again.
He goes into the kitchen. I hear him moving around. Cupboard. Ceramic. A spoon against the inside of a mug.
I don't move. He told me to stay. So I stay. When he comes back carrying two mugs, I'm still exactly where he left me. His eyes flick over me, warm and pleased.
"Good boy."
My entire body goes soft all over again. He sets one mug down in front of me. I pull my hands out from beneath the blanket and wrap them around the warm ceramic. The first sip is sweet and rich. My eyes close. When I open them again, the whole world feels softer around the edges.
"Good, baby boy?"
I nod.
"Now rest." He sits beside me again. His arm comes around my shoulders. I settle against his side. He kisses my temple. Totoro plays.
And I let myself be Little.