Chapter 23 Santos
TWENTY-THREE
santos
“So, what’s not clicking for you?” Tony asked.
I shook my head. It sounded so easy when he said it like that, like it was just a matter of Ever kneeling a different way. It wasn’t that.
I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t know how to cope with the responsibility he placed in me, but more than that, I didn’t know how to cope with the ideas that rushed through my head.
“It was just easier before,” I whispered.
Tony had asked Ever to go grab a couple of pillows from his room upstairs so that he was more comfortable kneeling—and as an excuse to get me alone.
“With that Dom, I mean. I could just fuck him how I wanted and call him names, and everything else, no problem. I guess it didn’t fall on me, you know?
He just told Ever what I should do to him, and I did. ”
Following orders was easy. Familiar.
Being in charge wasn’t.
“You want me to tell you what to do?” Tony arched an eyebrow.
I hated myself a little bit.
Ever had said it was okay. Shame still engulfed me. I was frozen, unable to tell him no, to tell him that I got Ever, that I didn’t need anyone, that I was a…man.
Fuck.
I’d done the work. I shouldn’t feel so caged by the notion of masculinity and what it meant and didn’t mean.
Right?
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“So don’t hurt him.” Tony shrugged.
“But he wants that.”
He talked a lot about it. About León and Danny. About masochism. About limits and how much he could or couldn’t take, and how much he wished he could take.
“Make him think that you are,” he amended. “Kink is much more intense when the focus is on the mental aspects.”
“I’ve read that, yeah.” I nodded to myself. I needed to get my shit together. Ever was either giving us time to talk, or he was about to come back here. “I don’t think I fully understand it.”
Tony at least seemed to take it into consideration. I appreciated the people who didn’t rush to offer a solution.
I had to say, with him here in an all-leather ensemble, I definitely felt the strength that oozed off him. It was similar to the one that oozed off most people at the base. The one I’d never been able to replicate.
“Has Ev told you about Danny?”
“Yeah.”
Danny’s dynamic with León and Carlos was the one he talked about the most. If it wasn’t because I still felt off-center with León, I would’ve reached out to him instead of Tony, but Tony and Erika were the ones he talked about the most apart from those three.
Tony just happened to sit closer to me when we went to the munch the other week.
“I’ve seen that boy come undone, bleeding strapped up to a cross,” he said. He held my gaze as he spoke, completely unmoved. I swallowed. “I’ve also seen him come undone with a barely reddened ass.”
“Okay?”
Tony sighed. “The physical aspect can be one hell of a catalyst, but it’s the psychological one that will keep a sub coming back for more.”
I hummed.
Footsteps alerted me that Ever was running down the stairs.
Time was up.
Tony still watched me too intently.
I shivered.
“Sorry I took so long, Sir.”
“You’re good.” Tony grazed him with a smile that bordered on mocking.
I didn’t think I could replicate that, but Ever still came to my side without my doing anything.
I couldn’t depict the look Tony sent me. I ignored it. I could text him later. It would prove what an unprepared mess I was, but it would be less humiliating.
“Do you still want to do this?”
“Sure.” Ever bobbed his head up and down.
He was trying to frown, but the soft smile on his lips trumped the effect. I was kissing it off him before I could think straight.
Maybe I could just go by intuition, or something.
Ever kept going on and on about how León was the best Dom because of how he went with the flow of a scene and how organic everything felt when he had his focus on a sub.
Tony hadn’t used those words, but he’d talked about leaning on my strengths and taking control in whatever way worked best.
Maybe my way of taking control was simply staking my claim on him. Over and over and over.
“Go down on your knees, babes.”
Maybe it was okay if my voice trembled a bit, and I didn’t have the imposing posture all other Doms seemed to have.
Ever seemed too happy to follow the command, regardless, and that was what should matter.
“W-what are you going to do?”
Deep breaths.
I was in control here.
There was no subterfuge. Ever was on his knees because I’d asked him to. We had a man watching because I’d asked for it. There wasn’t a ploy to manipulate me running beneath the surface.
It was Ever.
Ever, whom I trusted. Always would.
“I just wanna fuck you,” I breathed out.
It was still not commanding or dominating, but it was so fucking honest. Maybe that was enough.
Ever’s breath hitched in the way I imagined happened when he was in that club, with a man he might not even know, acting like the perfect Dom.
Acting like he had any right to him or knew anything about keeping him happy.
“I want to fuck you until you feel like the most used, filthy girl that’s ever walked the Earth. ”
“Please.”
The plea was barely there, but I heard it all right. I heard it even over the thunder of my own heartbeat because that was the kind of shit I told him when there was someone else in the middle. Someone else who would take the brunt of it if shit went wrong.
“Good girl,” I caressed his jaw as he glanced up at me.
The trust there was breathtaking. I’d been afraid that, with someone else in the room, someone Dominant, Ever’s attention would flicker between the two of us.
That he’d be more focused on Tony, waiting for his commands instead of mine, but he looked at me like it was just the two of us in his room.
Like this was a regular day when I was having my way with him.
“Can you lose the clothes for me, pretty girl?”
“Y-yeah.”
Even then, there was no hesitation. No furtive glances. There weren’t any from me, either. All my focus had to be on Ever. There was no other way.
It wasn’t even about the sight of his body out of the green sweater and matching skirt he’d put on that morning. It wasn’t even about the way his skin shone with the sunlight coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Those were just extras.
It was the devotion in his eyes. The one I imagined had always reflected in mine whenever I glanced at him for more than two seconds.
“I douched and lubed up upstairs.” Ever bit the inside of his cheek while I pretended the words didn’t have me straining against the joggers I had on. “It’s why I took longer.”
“Good.” The way the word caught in the back of my throat wasn’t something I wanted to overanalyze. “Were you that thirsty for it, babes?”
“Always.”
I took a sharp breath. I needed to get myself together. I needed to get out of my head and give him exactly what he wanted. Reward that shared devotion.
“Do I take off my tights, too?”
“Huh?” I cursed. Fuck. I had never once seen a Dom fumble so much. Sure, we’d established I wasn’t one. Whatever. I shook it off. “No, you can keep those. And the underwear.”
Mostly because the lace elastic that wrapped around his thighs looked hot as fuck, and he’d gone to the trouble of matching his underwear with them. It felt wrong to see it on the floor when it looked so good against his skin.
“You look so fucking hot,” I breathed out the words while running a thumb across his cheekbone. Ever’s eyelids fluttered, the thin hairs ghosting against my skin and sending a shiver down my spine. “Turn around, on your hands and knees.”
Once I got a quick nod, I moved to grab another pillow from the living room for his face. Someone else would’ve probably prepared for that beforehand.
Fuck that.
As embarrassing as it was being a fumbling mess, I’d endure that over hurting Ever in ways that had no place between us.
Of course, I’d forgotten that to get to the living room, I had to move past Tony.
Tony, who had stayed eerily silent while we were in our own little bubble. Tony, whose presence didn’t rattle now, but it was still a reminder.
“Color?”
“Huh?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You think tops don’t use their safe words, too?”
“Oh.” I didn’t think that. Fuck. “I’m good. Green.”
“You’re doing good with her,” he said. My breath hitched.
The pronoun change came more naturally to him than to me.
Ever wanted to be feminized, down to every aspect of the language, when we were fucking.
I didn’t forget. I just didn’t change the way I thought of him in my head, just the words I used.
And I didn’t have the time right now to wonder if that was another way I was failing him. Her. Fuck. “Still want pointers?”
I’d already made it this far, might as well go all the way.
“Sure.”
Tony smirked like he knew something I didn’t. For the first time, annoyance didn’t rise to the display of ego. It was something more twisted, something like…need. Not for him, but for something else. Something else he resembled right now as he took a step closer to me.
He wasn’t touching—I’d told him I didn’t feel good about it—but it almost felt like he was.
“After you bottom out, get her on her knees, her back to your chest.” I nodded as he paused. “Pinch her nipples. She’s going to love it, but see how it feels for you. Play with the pressure, how hard you tug at them.”
My breathing started to become ragged. As if I was a teenager about to come for the first time.
Another notch of embarrassment to recover from after today.
“Okay.”
Tony kept that same dominance about him, that same unbreakable control. I could see the allure Jaime would find in being a brat to him. In breaking through that shield. It had to be the challenge that appealed to them.
“If it feels good? Go for the balls. Squeeze, drag your nails over them. See how long it takes to see her start crying, and how you feel when she does.”
Too many instructions. Too many ifs.