Chapter 26. Kit #2
Then his rhythm changes. My whole body tightens.
“Daddy—”
“I know.”
His hand reaches around me.
That’s it. Too much.
The orgasm hits so suddenly I cry out, my whole body seizing around him as everything white-outs for a second. I’m still shaking when Soren follows, his grip tightening against my hip as his rhythm breaks and he presses close behind me.
We stay there afterward, connected and breathing. His weight is warm against my back. My face is still half-buried in the pillow.
Eventually, he pulls away carefully.
I whimper again.
Apparently that is simply a noise I make now.
Soren laughs softly and strokes one hand down my spine.
“Good boy.”
His voice is rough. Morning-rough. Sex-rough.
“Such a good boy.”
I turn my head enough to look at him over my shoulder.
His face is close. His eyes are dark and warm. He kisses my shoulder. Then he gets up. I hear the nightstand drawer open again. When Soren comes back, there is something small in his hand.
Metal catches the morning light.
I go completely still.
Oh.
Oh.
He sees my face.
“Recognize it?”
I sit up immediately.
“The cage?”
“The cage.”
My heart starts trying to escape through my ribs.
I told him.
Weeks ago, sitting over eggs, mortified and barely able to get the words out.
I wanted the physical reminder.
The structure.
Something that made the feeling of being his tangible. Something safe.
Soren sits beside me with the cage resting in his palm.
“We talked about this before,” he says. “But talking about wanting something and actually doing it are different.”
I nod quickly.
“So I’m asking again. Do you want to try it?”
“Yes.”
His eyebrow rises.
“Yes, Daddy. Please.”
His expression softens.
“And if you decide you hate it?”
“I tell you.”
“And?”
“It comes off.”
“Immediately.”
I nod.
“Nothing you agree to once becomes permanent just because you agreed once.”
“I remember.”
“Good boy.”
He kisses my forehead. Then he helps me put it on. The moment it settles into place, my whole attention narrows onto it. It’s not painful. Just there. A boundary around a part of my body that normally seems to have its own political agenda.
I stare down.
Holy fuck.
Soren watches my face instead.
“How does it feel?”
I move experimentally.
“Present.”
He laughs softly.
“That’s not a complaint.”
“No.” I look up at him. “No, Daddy.”
His hand cups my jaw. “Good.”
The key is small in his fingers. He turns it once, and the soft click of the lock goes straight through me. My stomach flips. That sound.
Fuck.
Soren sets the key on the nightstand for now, then pulls me close enough to kiss the top of my head.
“Still good?”
“So good.”
“Then we’ll try it. We check in. If anything feels wrong, you tell me.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Good boy.”
He helps me stand.
My legs are still a little unsteady, and between the lingering pleasure, my sore backside, and the new weight of the cage, I feel thoroughly dismantled.
I love it.
“Breakfast,” Soren says, his hand finding the small of my back. “Get dressed. I want to take you out.”
I blink. “Out?”
“There’s a place on Seventh I’ve been meaning to try. Good coffee.”
I stand there for a second, body still humming, then reach for the gray sweatpants.
Before I can pull them on, Soren goes back to the nightstand.
He returns holding a small glass plug.
I stare at it. Then at him.
“Daddy?”
His mouth curves.
“Interested?”
My face heats. Very interested.
“Wear that to breakfast?”
“That was the general idea.”
I bite my lip.
“You don’t have to,” he says.
I look at the plug again.
The idea of sitting across from him in some perfectly ordinary café with nobody around us knowing—
Fuck.
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, Daddy. I want it. Please.”
“Good boy.”
He kisses my temple.
When it’s settled comfortably, I take a moment to breathe and adjust before standing again. The sensation is immediate and impossible to ignore—not painful, not even overwhelmingly pleasurable, just present.
A reminder.
I pull on the gray sweatpants. Every movement makes me aware of something: the warm soreness from the paddle, the new cool weight of the cage, the fullness of the plug.
I put on a clean T-shirt and stand in front of the mirror.
My eyes are bright.My cheeks are flushed.
My hair is still a disaster. I look like someone who has been thoroughly, deliberately taken apart and put back together.
Soren appears behind me in the reflection and rests both hands on my shoulders. He kisses my neck.
“Ready?”
I nod. My throat is tight. We go downstairs. The shop is quiet and closed, bay doors still down, morning light coming through the high windows. Soren unlocks the front door and holds it open for me.
The café is only two blocks away, so we walk.
Two blocks.
Two entire blocks of being comprehensively aware of my own body.
Soren walks beside me with one hand occasionally brushing the small of my back, and I become increasingly convinced that he is enjoying this far too much.
Someone has left a bicycle chained to a post outside the café.
Through the glass, I can see the interior glowing warm against the gray morning.
Soren holds the door for me. Inside, it smells divine.
Butter, coffee, cinnamon. The space is small, six or seven tables with mismatched wooden chairs, the walls painted dark green.
A chalkboard menu hangs above the counter in handwriting too small to read from here.
The Sunday morning crowd has settled into a low hum of unhurried conversation.
Nobody knows. Nobody has any idea what I have under my clothes. The thought nearly kills me.
Soren finds a table near the window.
Two wooden chairs.
Wooden.
Of course.
I sit.
My body immediately files several formal complaints.
The hard seat against my sore backside is one. The plug’s opinion on the transition from standing to sitting is another. The cage adds a third piece of commentary to a discussion nobody invited it into.
I shift.
Adjust.
Shift again.
Soren chuckles.
Bastard.
I redistribute my weight onto my thighs. This solves nothing so much as slightly renegotiating the terms of my suffering.
The waitress arrives with menus. Soren takes one, glances at it, then sets both menus aside. When she comes back with water, he orders eggs, toast, and coffee. Then, without even looking at me:
“The same for him.”
She writes it down and leaves.
I stare across the table.
“I might have wanted the pancakes!”
“Did you want the pancakes?”
I consider this.
“No.”
“Then we’re fine.”
I make another attempt at finding a viable sitting position.
The chair has no flexibility to offer on the matter, and my efforts produce nothing except a faint creak from the wood and renewed awareness of everything Soren has done to me since sunrise.
Eventually I give up, put both feet flat on the floor, and sit with the situation the way he keeps teaching me to sit with things: directly and without excessive negotiation.
He is still smirking. Loving this. My cheeks are warm.
The eggs arrive with the coffee. I focus intensely on breakfast in the hope that concentrating on carbohydrates will make my body less interesting.
It does not. The waitress comes back with the coffee carafe. She tops up Soren’s mug, then mine, and gives us a professionally warm smile.
“Everything all right?”
“Great,” I say. “Superb. Amazing. Thanks.”
She smiles and moves on.
Soren chuckles. He sets his mug down and cuts into his toast. I shift on the chair again. The chair communicates its position on the matter. I settle.
“It seems like someone is a very sorry boy today,” Soren says.
I narrow my eyes at him. Unfortunately, a wave of pleasure runs through me anyway. Being a brat is an eternal balancing act: pushing enough to earn the fun consequences without pushing so far that we need a serious, out-of-dynamic conversation about my behavior. Fortunately, this is the first kind.
Soren reaches across the table and takes my hand. He’s still amused.
But then his expression changes a little bit. His thumb moves once across my knuckles. “You’re doing very well,” he says. “You make me very proud.” My chest tightens. “My good boy.”
Oh.
Then:
“I love you.”
Everything stops.
The waitress is still moving between tables. Somebody behind me laughs. Cups click softly against saucers. A milk steamer hisses near the counter. But inside me— Still.
I look at him. Soren doesn’t look nervous. Of course he doesn’t. He looks like Soren. Certain. Warm. My Daddy. My face goes completely red. And the answer has been living inside me for so long that I don’t have to think about it at all.
“I love you too, Daddy.”
His smile is beautiful. His fingers tighten around mine.
I shift in my chair again, this time deliberately, because apparently I’m incapable of experiencing a life-changing emotional revelation without also being a menace.
Soren’s eyebrow lifts. I grin. My body is overwhelmed. My chest feels too full. My eyes sting a little, and I’m so happy I almost don’t know what to do with it.
Maybe that’s the strangest part. I used to think happiness had to feel like speed. Like an engine screaming beneath me. Like wind trying to tear me off the bike. Like being so alive I could barely survive it. But this is just eggs. Coffee. A wooden chair. Daddy’s hand around mine.
And for some reason, I think it might be the happiest I’ve ever been.