Chapter 31
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
“Hear that, Jake? Marcus wants to watch.” Alistair’s leather outfit creaks as he steps beside Jake’s suspended, helpless body. “And look. He likes hearing that.”
Jake’s dick is hardening rapidly, right along with mine, traitorous and eager.
“Or maybe…” Alistair ducks beneath one of the ropes and moves behind Jake. “Maybe it’s these.”
Jake hangs less than two feet above the ground, bound and spread open, with Alistair standing between his legs.
Alistair plunges a hand toward Jake’s ass, and I jump at the sudden movement, my mouth opening on a protest that doesn’t come.
From my angle, Jake’s writhing is all I can see, and his muscles ripple in one painful heave against the ropes.
Jake’s fists open and close as his muzzled whine comes out somewhere between pain and pleasure. His muscles flex, fighting to endure instead of escape.
Alistair grins, pulling a single one-inch black rubber ball from Jake’s ass. Jake’s back arches with relief as it slips free, his rock-hard cock quivering beneath him.
My ass clenches at the thought of that ball being shoved up there, and my dick twitches against my pants, fully erect, fighting against a different kind of restraint.
“You like that, Marcus?” Alistair asks.
I try making disgust the only thing he hears, but manage only a halfhearted “Fuck you.”
“Call. Me. Sir.”
Alistair pulls two more balls from Jake’s ass, linked in a string. The motion tears another muffled shriek from him. Jake’s muscles lock until the beads dangle free, and then he sags into the ropes, breathing hard, his cock still bouncing from the pull.
“Marcus, I want to hear you explain what you’re seeing.” Alistair’s words draw my focus from Jake’s dick to Alistair’s face.
He’s staring at me as he tortures Jake, and it’s suddenly clear why this is my third test.
“There’s something wrong with you,” I say, voice wavering in awareness that my dick is giving the answer I refuse.
“I don’t think he gets it,” Alistair growls, slowly dragging his finger along Jake’s spine. “Shall we correct him?”
Alistair smacks Jake’s ass hard, then steps back from between his legs to survey the instruments hanging like playthings on the wall.
Though his head is restrained, Jake shakes it, working his jaw against the ropes.
“He’s trying to say something,” I mumble.
“What was that?” Alistair says, picking up the red-and-black leather whip he was holding when he stepped from the shadows.
“I said, he wants to say something, you fuck.”
“Oh.” Alistair shrugs, warming up. “He just wants you… to call me, Sir.”
He snaps the whip, and the braided leather strands blur through the air as a fleeting dance of red and black. The whip cracks against Jake’s skin, loud, fast, and over before I can process what’s happening.
“Stop!” I shout, seeing Alistair reel back for another.
Crack. Jake’s muffled scream intensifies.
“Stop it, you fuck!”
Crack. Another scream.
“Sir! Stop it, Sir!” I finally move my foot an inch, fully intending to run between Jake and the whip, but I realize he’s not screaming. He’s moaning.
It’s the same sound I’m making in the muted video looping on the TV screen. Despite it not making any damn sense to me, Jake likes the crack of that whip.
Alistair rears back, and I rush to speak.
“He likes it. It’s pain and pleasure, and he—he fucking likes it.”
Jake nods.
“Yes. You’re starting to get it.” Control gleams in Alistair’s eyes as his attention returns to me, while mine stay fixed on Jake’s sweat-slick body. “Now I want to hear you tell me that you like it too.”
Alistair’s command is not so painful to obey if I don’t look at him.
“I like it, Sir.” My reply comes fast and earns Jake further reprieve.
“Now,” Alistair says, “get your cock out, for god’s sake.”
The command draws my eyes down to where my right hand is gently rubbing against the bulge in my pants. I didn’t even realize.
“Take it out,” he growls, raising the whip.
I fumble with my belt buckle, scrambling to obey before the crack. Alistair waits, watching as my dick jumps free and I shove my pants down to my thighs.
“If you liked that,” Alistair says, taking a dildo off the wall and stepping behind Jake, “you’re going to love this.”
Alistair pulls two more beads from Jake’s ass and tosses the strand into the corner.
Jake mutters something through the rope that catches Alistair’s attention.
Even strung up like this, there’s something unbroken about the way he’s hanging. On his kink list, he’d listed Receiving for everything that’s happening, and again my mind tries to picture the kind of person who would willingly put themselves through this.
It looks like me this time.
Jake mutters again, and Alistair exhales, pointing the silicone dick back to the ceiling.
“What?” Alistair asks, frustrated, but still reaching around to remove the rope gag.
“Please.” Jake stretches his jaw. “Let me… see him.”
His request makes my fingers wrap around my dick, and when Alistair looks at me, my response is involuntary. “Please, Sir.”
Alistair’s thin smile crinkles his eyes. “Your wish is my command,” he says. His fingernail scratches Jake’s cheek as he drops the ropes that had muzzled him to get under the ones wrapping over his eyes and pull them free.
Jake’s eyes shine with tears pulled by the whip, but deeper in those turquoise pools burns the same hunger in me. Jake had been submitting, but now, with our gazes locked, somehow, the submission is ours.
Together, Jake and I steal the moment.
“Oh, fuck, Marky,” Jake growls. “You like seeing me like this?”
The question is so casual, so intimate, and my pulse hammers its reply. Shame comes right behind it, quick as a slap.
“I—” My throat strains around the truth. “I do.”
“There it is,” Alistair says, eyes on me as he pushes the dildo into Jake.
Jake’s moan is sharp, helpless, and I flinch. “Don’t look away,” he says as Alistair pulls the dildo out, then shoves it in again.
I lift my head to find Jake’s eyes seeking mine, bright with pain and something feral underneath.
“I want you,” he repeats, and then, carefully, like he’s placing the words directly in my hands, “to control me. Like this.”
My fingers tighten without my permission. The room narrows to those words, his turquoise eyes, and the hard truth in my fist. Alistair’s movements, pumping the dildo into Jake’s ass, register only vaguely in my periphery.
“Breathe,” I tell him. “Just watch me.” The order comes out before I can soften it.
Jake obeys, only shuddering once, and ugly relief floods through my chest.
His arms strain against the ropes as if he could reach me, abs tensing in rhythmic flashes that draw my eye back to his bouncing dick.
His attention never leaves me. Whatever is being done to him, whatever Alistair thinks he’s proving, the part that matters is here, between us, alive and refusing to belong to anyone else.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this hard. I’ve never seen something so wrong, so hot.
Jake licks his lips. “Fuck, yeah, Marky. Flex for me, baby.”
“Fuck,” I whisper, the most vocal I’ve ever been during sex, if that’s what this is.
Jake groans, watching me the way I’m watching him.
I put my hand up and flex the arm not pumping my leaking cock.
“Fuck, yeah,” Jake moans, and his smile brings me to the edge. “I wish this was you,” he says. “Your fucking ripped body, owning me, so— Fuck, I’m— I’m close,” he says.
Alistair never touches Jake’s dick.
That means… it’s me. I’m doing this to him, and that sends a wild pulse through my body that brings me right to the edge.
I tighten my fist around the head of my cock, holding back the release threatening to spill out.
Then I bring my other hand down too, flexing every muscle in my body for Jake as I fuck myself through both fists.
The thought of Jake coming without being touched makes me accept his fantasy into my imagination, replacing the dildo with my own dick.
“Fuck,” I say, louder this time.
“Oh, shit!” Jake howls. “Shiiit!”
His body tenses. The whole rope web shivers as he erupts, shooting cum through the air onto the ground, and it’s all I can take. Desire surges down my spine, seizing my cock, and I cum, hot, thick ropes that land farther than usual.
It’s Jake, yes, but it’s also the moment, the control, the power of watching him come undone.
Alistair drops the dildo.
I pull my pants up and wipe the sweat from my forehead, bringing the salty smell of my own release with it. What the fuck did I just do?
“Jacob Quinn.” Alistair pauses to drag in air.
“You’ve passed your first test… again.” He walks to the far corner of his playroom.
“Marcus Philips. You’ve passed your third test faster than anyone has before.
I’ve… enjoyed it.” Alistair grabs a single strand of the web, tied to a hook.
“Now, get out of my sight. Both of you.”
When he pulls, Jake is lowered to the ground, and he gasps as the bindings come undone. He looks frail now after being driven almost to the breaking point.
I run to him.
“Would you like to be excused from dinner?” Alistair asks.
“Yes, we’d like to be fucking excused.”
Alistair shrugs, throws clothes at Jake’s crumpled body, and opens a hidden panel in the playroom’s back wall before disappearing through it.
“What the fuck?” I ask, hands hovering, not trusting myself to touch Jake without making it about me. “Are you—”
The question dries up. My pulse is still tripping over the truth I shot onto the floor before I could admit it with words.
Jake swallows hard. “Can you… help me get dressed? I’m okay.”
I get an arm under him, careful, and he leans into me for half a second—enough to tell me he’s steadying himself as much as I am. His skin is hot. The rope marks are angry red, and his jaw stays set against whatever he’s feeling.
Seeing him fumble with his shirt, I help guide it over his head, then work the buttons with fingers that won’t stop shaking. When he wriggles back into his pants, some of his strength seems to return. Relief makes me watch him too closely, so I force my gaze up to his steady face.
“I’m glad you stayed,” he says.
The words land in the raw place he’d already fit himself into on the beach. He’s here, upright, looking at me after I’ve just learned something about myself I can’t unlearn.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, because of Alistair. Because of my reaction to it. Because of what it woke in me.
Jake closes the distance and kisses me, urgent, like he’s stamping his name across the ruin.
He breaks the kiss long enough to breathe against my mouth. “Tell me,” he whispers. “Tell me I’m yours.”
Desire spikes through me, and right behind it, something possessive lifts its head. The flash of Alistair’s hands on him turns my stomach, and rage snaps back into place. Those greedy fucking hands touched what I’m starting to think of as mine. And—
That’s the confession, isn’t it?
I haven’t only been imagining how to protect Jake from Alistair. I’ve been imagining Alistair gone and Jake still on his knees.
In front of me.
The darkness inside me surges against its locked door, and every muscle in my body strains to hold it back.
Jake draws back to search my face. “Marky? You okay?”
“I should be the one asking you that. We’re getting out of here. Come with me.” I hate and love how easy it is to command him, and I soften it before it’s too late. “If you want.”
His answer is another kiss, and when he nods, the relief in my chest is so sharp it hurts.