Chapter 8 #2
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. When he opened them, the last spark of resistance had guttered out. His voice, when it finally came, was flat and dead. “Of course. You’re right. She seems… lovely. You can give her my number.”
The words were ashes in his mouth.
His mother’s face lit up with triumphant relief. “Oh, wonderful! I knew you’d see reason.” She reached over and patted his hand, her touch making his skin crawl. “I’ll call Linda tonight. She’ll be thrilled!”
His father gave a short, approving nod and returned to his meal, the matter settled to his satisfaction.
Sam looked down at his plate. The roast was dry, the air was still, and every word that followed passed in the numb, ringing silence of the conquered. Inside, a wall of shame, higher and more insurmountable than ever before, sealed him in.
∞∞∞
Gael
The air in Private Room 3 was cool and silent save for the low, resonant hum of the building’s climate control. It smelled of clean leather, antiseptic wipes, and the faint, coppery anticipation of sweat.
Gael stood at the steel utility table, his back to the center of the room, methodically laying out his tools.
A bundle of unbleached hemp rope, already broken in and soft.
A selection of floggers; deerskin, elk, a narrower one with falls of braided suede.
A bottle of lubricant and a box of condoms.
A single, rolled silk blindfold.
Behind him, standing perfectly still in the prescribed spot on the parquet floor, was Leo.
He was everything Gael typically preferred in a casual play partner: slight of build, fine-boned with dark, silky hair that fell over his forehead, eyes the color of dark roast coffee, wide and eager.
He had a dancer’s grace and a bottom’s desperate, grateful heart.
He was beautiful, pliant, and understood the rules.
“Position,” Gael said, his voice flat, not turning.
He heard the soft shuffle of bare feet; the rustle of the simple cotton drawstring pants Leo wore being pushed down to his ankles.
A moment of stillness, then the quiet creak of the heavy, padded wooden bench as Leo assumed the position: on his knees, torso laid forward over the bench’s width, chest down, ass presented high and round in the air, cheeks parted slightly by the posture. The perfect, offering arch.
Gael finally turned.
Leo was trembling, just a fine, initial shiver of adrenaline and anticipation. It was a good sign.
Predictable. Not like the other one…
Gael’s mind supplied, unbidden. Samuel’s tremors were jagged, laced with terror and a shame so deep it was erotic poison. He pushed the thought aside, a hard, mental shove.
He picked up the silk blindfold first. Approaching silently, he stood over Leo. “Color.”
“Green, Sir,” came the muffled, eager reply.
Gael draped the silk over Leo’s eyes, tying it securely at the back of his head.
Gael’s hands, cool and dry, ran down the length of Leo’s spine, feeling the muscles jump under his touch.
He traced the twin dimples at the base of his back, then cupped the full, pale globes of his ass, squeezing once, assessing.
Leo whimpered, pushing back minutely into the contact.
"Look at you," Gael sneered, his voice low and dripping with contempt. "Already gagging for it. You’re just a greedy little hole waiting to be filled, aren't you?"
“Yes, Sir,” Leo breathed, the words falling easily from his lips.
“I know you are.” Gael’s voice dropped, taking on a condescending, almost bored edge.
“You’re pretty, Leo. A pretty little thing.
But that’s all you are, isn’t it? A slut who thinks his only worth is right here," he said, delivering a sharp, open-handed smack to the exposed ass.
The sound cracked in the quiet room. Leo cried out, his back arching.
"You live for this. For being told what a useless, cock-hungry toy you are. "
He began with a double-column tie at the wrists behind Leo’s back, his fingers moving swiftly. The hemp whispered as it wound, cinching snug but not cruel. “You think about this all week, don’t you? My hands on you. My approval. It’s the highlight of your otherwise insignificant little life.”
“Yes, Sir,” Leo moaned, the humiliation a direct hit to his kink, making him press his hips harder against the bench.
He admits it so easily, Gael thought, a spike of contempt, and envy, piercing his focus.
He wears his need like a badge. Samuel hides his. Samuel’s need is a landmine, buried deep.
Annoyed with himself, he finished the tie and moved to Leo’s ankles, securing them to the legs of the bench, spreading him open.
He was fully exposed now, bound, and blind, a feast of vulnerability.
Gael selected the deerskin flogger, its falls soft but thuddy.
He let it drag across Leo’s skin first, a teasing whisper.
“Such a lovely canvas,” Gael said, his voice a dark caress. He raised his arm and brought the flogger down in a measured, heavy swing.
Thud.
Leo cried out, a sharp, sweet sound of surprise-pain-pleasure. A rosy bloom appeared on the white skin.
"Look at that," Gael smirked, laying another stroke right beside the first. A rosy bloom spread. "You mark up so pretty. Like you were made for it. Made to be used. You love that, don't you, slut?"
“Y… yes, Sir!”
Thud. Thud.
The rhythm began, steady and implacable.
Gael watched the color spread, a heat-map of his control.
With each impact, Leo’s body jolted, his breathing grew more ragged, his soft cries more desperate.
Gael took it in, a cold, vicious satisfaction curling in his gut.
This was control. This was simple. This was a need he understood and could control.
"God, you're taking that so well," he said, his tone shifting to a mocking, pitying praise. "Such a good boy for me. Just a good little whore, made to take his beating. Isn't that right?"
"Yes! I'm your whore, Sir! Your good boy!" Leo sobbed.
"You're nothing," he hissed, the words coming faster, filthier. "You know that? A warm, tight hole. A set of pretty reactions I bought for the night. You'd let me do anything, wouldn't you? Because you're a desperate, worthless slut."
"Anything! I'm yours, Sir, I'm worthless!" Leo chanted, his voice breaking on a scream as the suede bit deep.
The raw, abject surrender should have been enough. It always had been in the past. But now, it just made the other absence louder.
Gael felt detached, a conductor hearing an orchestra play a familiar, simplistic tune. His mind kept slipping back to a different rhythm: the stuttered hitch of a breath, the frantic flutter of a pulse in a slender throat.
Frustration coiled, hot and tight, in Gael’s gut. He swapped the deerskin for the suede flogger. It was lighter, sharper, a sting rather than a thud.
“You love this, don’t you?” he hissed, the words coming faster, laced with a venom that wasn’t for Leo. “You love being put in your place. Being told you’re nothing. That your only value is in how well you obey, how prettily you bleed, how loud you cum when I allow it.”
“Yes! God, yes, Sir!” Leo sobbed, his body a taut bow, his cock hard and leaking against the bench.
He agrees. He revels in it. Why can’t the other one?
The thought enraged him. Gael’s arm came down harder, the suede falls biting into the already-warmed skin, raising vivid, crisscrossing welts. Leo screamed, a sound of pure, unadulterated ecstasy.
He threw the flogger aside; it clattered against the steel table.
He unbuckled his own belt with rough, impatient hands, the leather sliding through the loops with a sound like a sigh.
He didn’t need preparation. Leo was more than ready, his body singing with endorphins, his need a palpable force in the room.
Gael put on a condom and slicked himself with the lubricant. He positioned himself, one hand gripping Leo’s hip hard enough to bruise, the other fisting in his dark hair, pulling his head back.
“This is what you’re for,” he whispered, his mouth close to Leo’s ear. “Remember that.”
He pushed in, a single, deep, unforgiving thrust, sheathing himself to the hilt in the tight, welcoming heat. Leo shrieked, the pain slicing through him a welcome thing, his body convulsing around Gael.
Gael set a brutal, punishing pace just the way he knew Leo liked, slightly more pain than pleasure.
But deep down, Gael knew that it wasn’t really about Leo’s pleasure, nor even his own. It was about exorcism. About dominating the frustration, the inconvenient obsession, the ghost of wide, doe-eyes. Each thrust was an attempt to drive Samuel’s image from his mind.
He’s not here, Gael thought, pistoning into the willing body beneath him.
But his traitorous mind superimposed images.
The curve of Leo’s spine became the stiff, rigid line of Samuel’s back in the conference room chair.
The muffled cries against the bench became a hitched, stuttered breath.
The willing, spread openness beneath him became a defensive, terrified cringe that had inexplicably aroused him more than any display of submission ever had.
The heat coiled, unbearable, at the base of his spine. His rhythm faltered, grew ragged. He was chasing it, chasing the release that would silence the noise in his head.
“Cum for me, boy,” he commanded, his voice ragged, his grip vicious.
It was all Leo needed. With a broken, sobbing wail, he obeyed, his body seizing in a violent orgasm that clenched around Gael, milking his cock, dragging him over the edge.
And as the wave crashed over him, as his vision whited out and his own release ripped through him, it wasn’t Leo’s name on his lips. Behind his clenched eyelids, it wasn’t his well-used body he saw.
It was a pair of wide, haunted eyes. It was the soft, bitten swell of a lower lip. It was the face of Samuel Ruiz, pale and shocked and unbearably, unforgivably present in the most intimate moment of betrayal; against Gael’s own rules, against his own carefully constructed world.