Chapter 61 Elliot
Elliot
I crane my neck and look over my shoulder at the reflection of my ass in the bathroom mirror.
My cheeks are the color of uncooked hamburger.
My dick pulses and strains at the sight.
I know I shouldn’t like it, but God, I do.
My skin still feels warm to the touch and I’m overly aware of blood rushing through my veins with each beat of my heart.
I hear a heavy footstep on the stairs, followed quickly by another.
I pull my pajama pants up as fast as I can and scurry to my bed, pulling up the covers right under my armpits, lying back, and trying to arrange my face as that of a person who has been waiting in bed for a while.
Stuart stands in the doorway, casting his eyes around, before switching off the overhead light and coming in. My room, which is normally spacious, feels smaller with him in it. The mattress dips as he sits on the edge of the bed, facing me.
“Good night, bad boy.” The words are soft and gravelly, rolling around on the back of a wry smile.
They roll around in me too. He hesitates for a moment before reaching up and ruffling my hair.
“Sleep well.” I feel paralyzed by his voice and words and his proximity to my body.
He switches my bedside light off and plunges my room into darkness.
The mattress dips again when he gets up.
Big slippered feet pad on the carpeted floor.
He looks back when he reaches the door, his massive frame filling the doorway almost completely.
“And don’t you worry, Elliot,” he says almost sweetly. “I’ll make a good boy of you yet.”
My hand is in my pants before I hear the door click shut.
I hold my pillow over my face, smashing as much of it as possible into my mouth, and jerk it bone dry.
I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It takes less than sixty seconds.
Way less. I come so hard I can’t feel my legs for almost twenty minutes.
I’ve never really been much of a poker player.
For some reason, sitting still and listening to people explain the rules of card games feels like a particularly hellish form of torture to me.
So, while I don’t play, I do have a fondness for that moment a player shoves all their chips forward and says, “I’m all in. ”
There’s something very powerful and stupid about it. I love it.
What’s happening between Stuart and me since the night I provoked him is like that. The stakes are high. The odds are low. My chances of getting through a day without having my ass scorched are slim to none. I’m not complaining. I want it. But Jesus, I feel it.
He feels it too. He must. When he spanked me for leaving my plate on the kitchen counter instead of putting it in the dishwasher last night, he said, “Damn, boy, you’re wearing my hand out.”
He didn’t say any more. He didn’t have to. The threat was as clear as if he’d spelled it out.
I’m in the study with Stuart. He’s sitting and I’m standing beside him.
I haven’t been invited to take a seat, and something tells me asking for a chair wouldn’t be wise.
I’ve had enough trips over Stuart’s knee now to be permanently cured of seeking that kind of attention for the hell of it.
I’m behaving so much better since Stuart started spanking me in earnest that he’s had time to identify all kinds of new ways to improve me.
This morning, he advised me that he’d be doing an audit of my spending and told me to report to him in the study with a printout of my last three monthly bank statements.
He’s been reading through the reams of paper I handed him for ages.
I’ve been nervous as hell the whole time.
I thought it would dissipate after a while, but nah.
If anything, it’s getting worse. I have that fluttery, shaky feeling in my gut, and it’s making it hard to stand still.
He has a ruler and a pale-pink highlighter, and as he works his way down each page, he highlights approximately two out of three lines.
Now and again, he looks up and asks me what a particular expense is for.
Sometimes, I know. Sometimes, I don’t. Either way, he sighs heavily and pinches the bridge of his nose.
When he’s finally done with the highlighting, he gets a calculator out and taps in numbers so hard and fast that the rat-a-tat-tat of his nails on keys starts making me feel sleepy.
I blink hard and try to take deep, quiet breaths through my nose to stop myself from yawning.
I look around the room, pausing at each of the photographs behind his desk.
I stare at the picture of Stuart and my dad for a long time.
I think the same thing I always do when I see it—how the hell could the two of them be any more different?
Stuart is about as down-the-line as a man could ever be, and my dad flies by the seat of his pants and is proud of it.
I feel the familiar tug of irritation I often get when I think about my dad, and to stave it off, I look at the rest of the photographs.
My eye lands on the dark-haired man holding Sadie again.
Beautiful is what one would call him. So beautiful he could almost give Trouble a run for his money.
He’s different from Trouble though. Trouble has a lightness about him.
A sweetness. It’s plain as day. You can’t miss it.
The man in the photo does not. Or if he does, you sure as shit could miss it.
“Elliot.” Stuart’s voice startles me. “Would you like to know how much money you spent on smoothies last month?”
Oooh shit.
“Pretty sure I spent a couple of hundred dollars. It sounds like a lot, but it’s one of my three meals per day, and before I moved here, it was almost all of my fruit and vegetable intake. So, you know, kind of worth it, I think.”
Stuart’s face is a straight line. Hard and immobile. “Wrong. You spent eight hundred and forty dollars on smoothies.” He punctuates each word clearly, driving the insanity of them home. My ass cheeks are familiar enough with his tone now that the second they hear it, they quiver in consternation.
“Uh, um, are you sure that’s right? It sounds like a lot.”
“It is a lot. And yes, I’m sure. I added it up twice. Eighteen ninety-nine for a smoothie? Are you kidding me? And how many of the damn things are you buying? That’s more than one per day.”
I swallow. “Well, the thing is, sometimes I buy one for Wyn, and if I’m going over to Luke and Jessie’s, I pick up a couple for them too.”
Stuart steadies his breath and squeezes the bridge of his nose again. He repeats the whole process for my spending on alcohol and going out, Ubers and Lyfts, and the amount I spend on takeout.
Given that my spending has decreased so dramatically since I started living with Stuart, I was fairly confident he wouldn’t find many issues. Boy, was I wrong.
Geez. Shit adds up.
Stuart goes through all my expenses painstakingly and explains how I can do better. He sets new budgets for me for each expense category, patiently explaining how and why he’s arrived at each amount, not moving on until I’ve agreed with his reasoning.
I can see now that this is something I should have been doing myself. I’ve definitely heard Will and Jessie talk about budgets at length.
Just didn’t realize they applied to me too.
Since everything Stuart is saying sounds profoundly reasonable, I agree to all of it.
If there’s one thing I’ve proved by trying to manage my own finances, it’s that I’m complete shit at it.
He tells me I can go out as often as I like to hang out at friends’ houses, and I can go out for drinks or a meal once a week.
He leaves me with no doubt whatsoever that paying for dinner for the entire table isn’t going to fly anymore.
“And obviously, the only smoothies you’ll have for the foreseeable future are those I make for you.”
“B-but, Daddy…” My bottom lip juts out involuntarily, and I have to make a conscious effort to pull it back in.
“Fine,” he sighs. “Twenty dollars per week on bought smoothies. That’s one ridiculously overpriced smoothie or two reasonably priced ones from the place down the road. The choice is yours and the offer is final.”
I mean to argue, but he’s started to lay my bank statements out on the desk in front of me, taking his time to make sure they’re neat and placed parallel to each other. I’m met by a sea of text, the majority of which is underlined in pink.
Stuart is on his feet beside me. I don’t look up, but I can feel him towering over me.
I hear the soft chink of metal on metal and the swift sigh of leather whipping through belt loops.
The nervousness that’s been my companion since I stepped into the room rachets up.
My back stiffens. My ass cheeks clench hard.
Stuart folds his belt in half and then folds it over again.
He lays it on the desk next to a particularly excessively highlighted page.
Though I’d dearly love to, I’m unable to tear my eyes off his belt.
It’s dark brown. Soft, worn leather. It looks supple.
Very supple. It looks like the kind of thing that has a nasty bite.
Cold dread runs through me, settles in my groin, and then turns hot.
My heart pounds and my breathing is suddenly erratic.
The hems of my work pants quake at my ankles.
This is a threat. A clear threat. There’s no getting away from it.
Stuart is fully threatening to whip my ass with a belt.
I should be horrified. I should bolt out of this room and call any of my friends to come and get me.
They’d be here like a shot. Luke would be horrified.
It’s obvious that’s what I should do. I don’t though.
For whatever reason, the way I’m put together makes me see the belt and react precisely the same way a dog would if you used a high-pitched voice and cried, “Walkies!”