Chapter 22 #2
“How long?”
“Uh, I clean everything up every day,” I said, “but about a month and a half now, I think?”
“Damn,” he whistled. “That’s hot. Is it about just chastity, or CBT?”
“I don’t know, Sir.” I swallowed. Santos moved closer to me. Tony tracked the movement. I felt like a sacrificial lamb between the two of them. “I’ve never done it with it on.”
“Never done what?”
I fought the urge to huff. There was no way Tony hadn’t understood.
“I’ve tried CBT before,” I said instead. “It’s hot. But chastity hasn’t been about that for me, so I don’t know. I mean, everything is hella sensitive. I don’t know if I could take it, Sir.”
“Good girl,” Tony drawled. It was this thing he did with his voice that sent shivers down my spine. It was tenfold when the drawl was aimed at me directly. “Would you want to know?”
Fuck. I clenched. Pushing the stool back had me crashing against Santos’s back. My breath hitched. When had he moved this close?
“You can answer, Ever.”
His voice didn’t have the same drawl to it, but it was rumbly. I leaned more against him. My fingers seemed to grow a mind of their own, itching to touch, to grasp onto him for…not exactly safety.
Warmth.
Reassurance.
“Maybe, Sir.”
I knew a maybe wouldn’t get me anything from him.
I also knew being honest was important, and I was all about trying things and giving kinks a chance—and a second one just to be safe, too—but the idea of Tony in teacher mode busting my balls was too overwhelming to wrap my head around just this minute.
“That’s a good answer,” he said. “I was simply curious.”
And just like that, I was dismissed. I could tell from the tone. From his body language, too, quickly shifting away from me and toward Santos.
Santos, who wasn’t shy about resting a hand against my stomach as if it was a normal pose for two people to be in. I knew Tony must’ve tracked the possessive display, but he wasn’t mentioning it, either.
“Same question to you, man.” Tony hopped off the stool then, properly sandwiching me between the two of them, even if his attention was solely on Santos. “Forget what we texted about. What do you want?”
“I’m okay with anything.” He tightened his hand against my stomach as he spoke. “Not in a… Don’t give me that face. I know about limits and shit.”
“Good.” Tony huffed. “Problem is, I don’t know your limits and shit.”
I moved to cover Santos’s hand with mine.
I bet he wasn’t as affected by Tony as I was on a nearly daily basis, but he was still intimidating.
And I still felt guilty that today was taking place to begin with.
If it wasn’t for me, for my neediness, Santos wouldn’t have felt like he needed to reach out to someone to learn how to fuck me better, or whatever this was about.
It didn’t matter how many times he explained his reasoning.
As far as I was concerned, it was what it boiled down to.
Deep breaths.
It was important to keep oxygen flowing.
Whatever that meant.
“Sir?”
Tony glanced down at me. He looked amused in that indifferent way he must’ve mastered over the years before I joined the club.
“What is it, girl?”
Some of those texts must’ve included how I preferred to be addressed during a scene.
Blood boiled in my gut.
“I just don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
I fought not to smile, but it was hard not to tease when he looked like he was really fighting the urge to touch me. It was a heady feeling. I supposed he wanted to clear things up with Santos some more before he felt like he could do it.
That wasn’t the reason I’d interrupted their negotiation, though.
The reality was the bucket of cold water I’d needed.
“I don’t…” I bit my lip. It turned out that a reality crash was great to sort my thoughts in order, but it didn’t actually help to put them into words.
To put those words out in the open where they could be analyzed, and the two of them realized what a fucking mess I was. “I don’t want to be too much.”
It wasn’t even half of the thought, half of the argumentation I’d been building in my head for the last few days. The rest of the words lodged in my throat, though.
“You’re not too much,” Santos argued right away.
It was comforting—I’d known he would say that, no thoughts needed—but not enough.
Tony watched me for another second, head cocked to the side. “Why on Earth would you be too much?”
“I just would.” I shrugged. “It’s what happened with Sir Ismael, I think. I mean, yeah, maybe he took it too far, and wasn’t ready for the aftercare I needed, but he wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been too… something. I think.”
“Ev.” Tony clicked his tongue. “Look at me.”
“It’s true.”
It had to be.
“I’m not going to demonize that guy,” he said, palms held up, “and maybe I’m biased, because Jaime is secretly the neediest sub you’ll ever come across, but you? You’re a fucking walk in the park.”
“I’m not.” I was shaking my head before the words came out. “I don’t express things right, and I need too much, and I want too many things, and I’m into too much stuff.”
“Which only means Santos has a fucking buffet to pick from.”
Oh?
A frown etched in my face as I mulled those words over.
“I’d much rather have a sub who’s into every kink under the sun than one who only wants to be spanked for days,” Tony continued.
I was listening, but I was also parsing out what it meant in my head. If he was wrong or right.
“But I shouldn’t be the focus.”
“Ever.” That was Santos. Santos pushing me off the chair and turning me around until I was face-to-face with his chest. Cupping my face with both hands until I was staring into his eyes because he’d given me no other choice. “You are the focus.”
“But—” Fuck. I could feel my chin begin to wobble.
I didn’t think it was the kind of wobbling that would lead to waterworks, but I still bunched my fingers around fistfuls of Santos’s shirt.
The material was slippery because, unlike me, he hadn’t changed into outside clothes and was wearing the workout clothes he’d started to put on every morning in case he felt the itch to go for a run.
His words. Not mine. “You have all this stuff going on. Things should be about you, not me and my—”
“Stop.” It was the closest to a command Santos had ever given me.
A bolt through my core wouldn’t have left me standing straighter.
“This is going to be the mushiest thing I’m ever going to say, but…
Don’t you get it’s always been about you?
Everything. Everything I have ever done has been about you.
From the second we were roomed together at boarding school to hell, enlisting, even.
Because if I did what my parents wanted, the heat would be off you, and you’d be there, safe, on the other side, and I could come back and not be a burden.
It’s always been about you. Nothing’s changed.
Don’t make it change now. I couldn’t—I can’t do it any other way. ”
There was a clock ticking in the background. Actually, it might just be my head needing to keep track of something. Something to ground me.
“You…” I gulped.
The words ricocheted in my brain. It couldn’t be true, could it?
Except I knew Santos. I knew the way his eyes shone when he was being his most honest. When he was being vulnerable but pushing himself to do it.
Because of me. Because what he said made sense.
I could glance back at our life and see it might’ve been the way he described it now.
I just… What the fuck did I do with that?
That kind of devotion? It couldn’t be healthy, could it?
It should be the kind of thing I put a stop to.
No one could make their lives about another person. It was what everyone would say.
“Well, my job here is done. You may kiss the bride.”
I chortled.
Santos kissed me before I could come up with some sort of retort, some taunting because Tony wasn’t the type of Dom to say funny shit like that.
All those thoughts fled as Santos’s body crowded me against the kitchen counter. As the marble dug into my skin, but his mouth was the only thing I could focus on. His tongue swirling inside my mouth, reaching to the back of my throat as if there was a contest he was intent on winning.
I was, weirdly, not complaining. I just held on to his stupid, slippery shirt like nothing else existed.
“Get on your knees, Ever.”
Huh?
I’d barely had a second to catch my breath.
The words were like a current that flowed through me regardless, an invisible string pulling me to the floor.
“Will you not leave just yet?”
I frowned.
It said a lot about what that kiss had done to me, because it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize the question was aimed at Tony and not me. Tony, who was still in the room, and I could’ve told Santos he was too much of a voyeur to have actually left without notice.
“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
I sat on my ankles more properly while they exchanged a charged look I didn’t want to bother interpreting.
Fuck.
Not squirming was hard.
I hadn’t been on my knees in a while. Online dynamics meant I might pose on my knees, on top of a bed, but that had been about it. Being at the club had me on my knees sometimes, but I hadn’t been playing there as often lately.
It showed in how the discomfort quickly settled.
I supposed that was why Tony had wanted me somewhere more comfortable.
He wasn’t saying anything now that Santos seemed to be in control, though.
“Tell him what you want,” he instructed.
“What I want,” Santos repeated. He moved his hand to my hair, his fingers curling around the messy strands there. The softest tug followed. I pressed my mouth tight before I proven what a wanton mess I was to them. “Just like that?”
“With subs like Ev?” Tony teased. “Yeah, just like that.”
I didn’t fight the claim. I would do pretty much anything Santos asked of me. I wouldn’t feel bad about it, either.
Perhaps my life hadn’t been about him in the way that he’d built the narrative around his, but he eclipsed everything regardless.
“What does that mean?” Santos, of course, did.
He probably didn’t notice, but his urge to defend meant that he was tugging my hair tighter. Making it harder to stay silent. To not make a sound that would only be rivaled by the best porn stars, because fuck if I hadn’t missed the pressure that came with being owned in any way.
“You know how you say you’re a service top?
” Tony asked. I glanced up at him, but for once, all his focus was on Santos.
There was something else, too. I was probably imagining things, though.
It happened when I got too in my head with lust and horniness and the need to…
“He’s a service sub through and through.
Yeah, he wants intensity, and humiliation, and a bunch of other big words, but what he wants most?
He wants to be good for you. To do what you ask him to do, and to do a good job of it. Isn’t that right, pretty girl?”
Air left my lungs as I was assaulted with Tony’s full attention once more.
I could only nod, though.
It was what I’d been thinking, just explained in more words.
“Yes, Sir.”