Chapter Twelve
The room they had changed in had been calm, quiet, very far away from the outside world. As Kefir followed Ellery out of that room and deeper into the club, he came face to face with a very different place.
The low dark space was crowded with men—far more than Kefir had ever seen at a gathering of any pride. A million and one different scents and noises wrapped around them, intense and disorientating.
He crept a little closer to Ellery’s side. The lead between them stopped being interesting and pretty. It became vital. He had no desire to lose sight of Ellery in the chaos.
Music pounded through the corridors, seeming to fill even the tiny spaces left between the leather-clad bodies. Strangeness and confusion pressed in on him from every side.
Kefir clenched his hands into fists behind his back, as if there was something there he could grab hold of to steady the world, but there wasn’t.
Someone stumbled and collided with him. Kefir moved his bare foot just in time to prevent it being trodden on.
Caught between wanting to protect his future mate the way a lion should and wanting to look to his human master for protection, Kefir was left with no idea what he was supposed to do, or even what Ellery would be pleased with him for wanting to do.
Ellery tugged on the lead. A clear order amid the confusion.
As Ellery walked forward, Kefir instinctively ducked into the slipstream created by a pair of shoulders far broader than his own.
Each step jostled the toy Ellery had slipped inside him.
The leather shorts seemed to shrink, until Kefir’s cock pulsed against the fabric, unable to stiffen further in the tight confines but unable to soften while the plug kept moving inside him either.
One room led into another, then another.
Ellery guided him even deeper into the building, until they walked past a muscular man standing at the head of a quieter corridor.
The man nodded to Ellery as he passed him.
When Kefir looked over his shoulder, the man was staring after them, apparently enjoying the view a great deal.
But Kefir couldn’t blame him for staring—in his natural habitat, Ellery was more magnificent than ever.
The next room they stepped into was calm in comparison to all the others.
There were fewer men, fewer things calling to Kefir’s attention.
He took a breath. His lungs filled with the smell of leather, but there was less pressure around it.
It became far easier to appreciate how beautiful the scent was.
Ellery led them to a little group of empty seats set around a table on the other side of the room.
“Thoughts, kitten?”
Kefir blinked up at Ellery as he lowered himself to kneel in front of Ellery’s seat on the sofa, just the way he’d seen Ryland kneel in front of Arslan so many times. “It’s very nice, sir.”
Ellery laughed, a rich beautiful sound. His eyes crinkled at the edges in a way they seldom did when he smiled at the den. “You’re a terrible liar, kitten. Stop trying to be polite. Tell your master the truth.”
“It’s…different than being with lions, sir,” he whispered.
Ellery stroked his fingers through Kefir’s hair, his touch just slightly rough and entirely perfect. “Yes, it is.”
“All the men here are part of your pride, sir?” Kefir asked, cautiously.
Ellery shook his head. “Some of the members of the club are men I’ve been friends with for the best part of a lifetime; most of the crowd in the public rooms I couldn’t even name.”
Kefir nodded his understanding. The men in this bit of the building were important. The men out there weren’t. That made it easier. Dismissing anyone who wasn’t in that room from his mind, Kefir looked around him and began to take in a few details.
No one there was entirely naked the way the lions were for their meets, but the clothes they wore were just like Ellery’s. They merely seemed to highlight those bits of them that were bare so the nude parts actually looked more naked.
A dozen or so men sat around, talking to each other.
Some of the submissives knelt on the floor or stood behind their master’s chairs waiting for an order.
Two men stood apart from all the others, in the far corner of the room.
One was cuffing the other to a big X-shaped cross.
As Kefir watched, the free man stepped back and picked up a whip.
He brought the whip down hard on the bound man’s back—against the sub’s back—creating harsh red lines against his skin. Kefir turned his face away from the sight.
Ellery tugged on the lead, encouraging him to look up at his master.
“He’s being punished, sir,” Kefir observed, as neutrally as he could manage.
Ellery broke eye contact for a moment. Looking over Kefir’s shoulder, he appeared to examine the sight of the two men very carefully. Kefir could still hear the leather lash striking the man’s skin. He hadn’t thought Ellery would need to think about his answer for a second, let alone a full minute.
“Yes,” Ellery said eventually. “He’s being punished.”
Kefir nodded, even as he felt his stomach clench at the idea of his master ever treating him that way—of him ever failing Ellery so badly, his mate thought he deserved to be treated that way.
Unable to look Ellery in the eye and believe that Ellery wouldn’t see his disapproval and hate him for it, Kefir kept his gaze lowered.
It was important to respect the different way humans did things—especially if a lion wanted to take a human for a mate.
Arslan had drummed that into them time and time again.
It wasn’t fair to try to turn a human into a lion. A middle ground had to be found.
Kefir took a deep breath, once more filling his lungs with the scent of men, and sex, and bondage.
He had a distinct impression that Ellery wasn’t a middle ground type of person.
There was only ever going to be one kind of ground they stood on together, and it was going to be human and carpeted in leather.
Another tug on the lead demanded Kefir lift his gaze whether he wanted to or not.
“Up here.”
When Kefir would have climbed onto Ellery’s lap and snuggled against him, quick to appreciate the reassurance he knew he’d find there, Ellery shook his head.
“No. Turn yourself over my lap.”
Kefir looked his query to his master.
“I’m going to spank you.”
Kefir thought about that for a few seconds.
“Kitten?”
“And, afterwards, you’ll be pleased with me again, sir?” he prompted.
“I’m very pleased with you now.” Ellery smiled slightly. “This isn’t about that.”
Kefir blinked up at him, waiting to be told exactly what it was about.
Ellery nodded toward the men on the other side of the room, but Kefir didn’t look over his shoulder to follow his gaze.
He didn’t want to see what was going on behind him.
“It’s about showing you that, just because something might look like a punishment from an outsider’s perspective, that doesn’t always mean it’s a bad thing. ”
Kefir nodded his understanding, even if he wasn’t entirely sure he understood anything at all. Ellery guided him to climb onto the sofa and arrange himself so he lay across Ellery’s knees, his head resting on the sofa to one side of him and his legs supported by the cushions on the other side.
It wasn’t easy for Kefir to get himself into that position while his hands were still tied behind his back.
Robbed of any sort of feline grace, he was left clumsy and clueless.
When he eventually found a position that seemed to find favour with Ellery, Kefir breathed a sigh of relief and cautiously took stock of his new place in the world.
It wasn’t as uncomfortable as he would have assumed. Both his master’s skin and his leather chaps rubbed against Kefir’s stomach each time either of them moved. His body tingled in appreciation.
Ellery reached underneath Kefir then. Undoing the fastenings on the shorts, Ellery wrangled the tight leather down until it passed over Kefir’s backside and wrapped tight around the tops of his legs, binding them together just as firmly as the cuffs bound his wrists.
A moment later, Ellery had the cuffs on Kefir’s ankles joined together too, trapping him neatly in place and making Kefir purr when a shiver of anticipation ran up his spine.
Ellery stroked his hand back and forth over Kefir’s buttocks, making him squirm. When a sharp tap landed against Kefir’s arse a moment later, he gasped, and promptly arched his back in the hope of more.
Ellery chuckled. “Yes. I thought you’d like that.”
Kefir managed to look over his shoulder at him. The emotion in Ellery’s eyes coaxed another purr out of Kefir. He’d never seen him happier or more focused. Ellery struck Kefir’s up turned arse again, and Kefir rocked slightly with the blow, causing his cock to rub against Ellery’s lap.
Strokes, taps and real spanks, each caressed his skin again and again. The room wasn’t cold. Even the humans had to be comfortable in it. But the warmth building up in Kefir’s muscles soon had nothing to do with mere temperature. Each touch sent a wave of heat racing through him.
Pain flashed inside him with some of the more intense blows—the ones that seemed to echo through the room and steal the air from his lungs, but it also rushed rapidly to his cock. Unable to stay still, he wriggled against Ellery’s knees, too full of sensations to control his own body.
Ellery didn’t complain; he just looped his free arm over Kefir’s waist and held him still.
“You’re blushing very nicely for your master, now,” Ellery observed, a few minutes later, with the air of a connoisseur.
Panting for breath, Kefir squirmed until he managed to look over his shoulder and down at his reddened arse. He mewed when he saw the flaming skin, but when Ellery stroked his palm across it, Kefir helplessly writhed for him again.
Ellery’s fingers stroked down between his buttocks then, to manipulate the plug inside him.