Chapter Seven #2
Cameron dropped his gaze. When he looked up again, his attention immediately went to where Ellery was fussing over Kefir.
Even a damn human had more idea of how to be a good master than he did.
Cameron closed his eyes for a moment, hating himself for his weaknesses, for not knowing how to reach out to his own pet that way.
Cameron glanced to his side. Less than six inches of sofa separated him from Franklin. It might as well have been miles.
“You’re not hurt?”
Cameron jerked his gaze up Franklin’s face. “What?” A new wave of self-loathing rushed through him as his pet flinched. He couldn’t even make one sodding word gentle…
Franklin dropped his gaze.
Cameron’s hand tightened into a fist at his side as he fought against the urge to pull his pet closer and cling tightly to him. It was his place to make sure his pet was safe and felt cocooned and protected from the wider world, not the other way around.
“I’m the master. You’re the pet,” he said, with every ounce of calm he could scrape up.
“Yes,” Franklin quickly agreed. “I wouldn’t want it to be any other way.”
“That means I look after you. I don’t need you to do that for me,” Cameron said.
“Yes,” Franklin repeated.
Cameron ran his eyes over Franklin once more. He appeared to be fine. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t been hurt. Arslan had been very clear about that when they’d spoken after the others had left the room. A master wasn’t just responsible for his pet’s physical safety.
Taking a deep breath, Cameron arranged the necessary words carefully inside his mind before he tried to say even a single syllable. “The way I spoke to you earlier was wrong.”
Franklin opened his mouth to speak, but Cameron held up a hand and stopped him short. It had to be said, and it was too important to be interrupted.
Arslan’s words raced around and around inside Cameron’s head as silence descended over them for several long seconds. With power comes responsibility. And he was responsible for Franklin now.
“I shouldn’t have lashed out at you that way.” A master should always be patient with his pet. “It won’t happen again.”
“No.” Franklin shook his head. “You were right.”
Cameron took a deep breath. Instinct made him want to snap, to tell his pet that he’d be allowed to speak as and when his master told him that he could, not whenever the hell he wished.
He shouldn’t interrupt when his master was still struggling to find his own words so he could say the right thing to him, so he could explain such important things to him.
Power. Patience.
Cameron took yet another deep breath. It did him no more good than the last one had. He moved his hand, freeing it so he could push it through his hair while he struggled to pick up his lost thread.
Franklin was quick to take the action as a sign for him to continue. “You don’t have to apologise to me.”
“Yes, I do.” An apology wasn’t a sign of weakness; it was a sign of strength—a sign that his pet could trust him to do better in the future.
Franklin shook his head. “No. I get it.” His lips curved into a strange mockery of a smile as he tilted back his chin, as if ready to receive a blow. “I know I’ve got it coming for the way I acted before. I’m not a coward, Cameron. I’ll take whatever punishment you think I deserve.”
Everything Arslan had said to Cameron just minutes before hit headlong into Franklin’s own words and dissolved into a mess of jumbled thoughts inside Cameron’s head.
He was too close to the edge. And all he knew for sure was that he was scared and confused and that that made him want to lash out at the nearest and easiest target.
Wrapping his arms around his torso, he clamped his lips firmly together in an effort to stay completely silent and not inflict any more damage than he already had.
“Cameron?” Franklin prompted after a few seconds.
He turned toward his pet. There wasn’t a great deal left of the over-confident businessman who had strode into his dressing room at the club that first night they’d actually spoken to each other.
The only thing that made Cameron sure he was still facing the same person was simple fact that Franklin’s scent called to him as strongly as ever, filling him with desperation to make the man his mate.
Without the expensive suit and the forced air of superiority, it was hard to think that Franklin could ever be anything like those men from the clubs.
Tearing his gaze away from Franklin for a moment, Cameron looked to the others in the room. Arslan was watching over him very carefully, just as he’d promised he would, ready to step in if necessary, just as he had when he’d taught the other members of his pride how to deal with humans.
Cameron had no doubt that Arslan had heard every word they’d said to each other.
“Lions don’t punish their pets the same way humans do,” Arslan said, very firmly. “It would be far too easy for serious harm to come to a pet that way.”
Cameron nodded his understanding.
“Although that doesn’t mean that a human sub can simply stop needing to receive a punishment, just because he happens to belong to a lion.”
Cameron’s attention snapped across to where Ellery was sitting, Kefir now curled up on his lap and snuggling contentedly into his shoulder.
“What?” As easily as that, all of Cameron’s hard work to keep his temper in check became pointless. Anger flooded back into his voice.
“Some subs really struggle to deal with guilt. Sometimes, they can’t get past something they’ve done wrong unless they receive some sort of punishment and closure. It’s not uncommon.”
“No.” Cameron wasn’t certain about a great deal, but right then, he was sure about that. There would be no punishments. No one was going to hurt Franklin. He was going to see to it that no one ever hurt his pet ever again—and especially that he didn’t hurt him himself.
Suddenly, unable to put off being alone with his pet for another second, Cameron moved to the edge of his seat. “We’re going to our room.” Standing up, he led Franklin out of the sitting room.
With every step, he expected to hear Arslan’s, or perhaps Ellery’s, footsteps behind them, rushing after him to set rules and limits on what they would be allowed to do together when they were alone, maybe even to stop them from ever being alone together.
But the only footfalls he heard apart from his own were Franklin’s.
“If you want to hurt me, you can.”
Cameron had just turned to close the door. His back was to Franklin. That was something to be glad of. He could so easily imagine what expression passed across his face as he his pet say that.
Any response he might have wanted to make lodged in Cameron’s throat. All he could do was turn around and stare Franklin.
“If you want to…” Franklin cast a hand about as if he couldn’t think of the right word. “Whip me or whatever, you can.”
“You think I should punish you?”
Emotions flickered across Franklin’s face as their eyes met. There were too many, and they were far too complicated for Cameron to read. His pet’s scent offered him no better chance of understanding him.
Desire. Uncertainty. Fear. Lust. Sadness. Joy.
There was no sense in any of the signals Franklin was sending out right then.
A minute passed. Finally, Franklin spoke again. “No,” he said very softly. “I don’t think you should punish me.”
“Ellery was wrong,” Cameron said, success colouring his words as he remembered how to breathe once more. Arslan was right, Ellery was wrong, and everything would be fine if Cameron just did as the leader said. It wasn’t going to be as complicated as he thought, after all.
Franklin turned away from him then to look out of the window over the garden. “No, Ellery was right.”
The words were so quietly spoken, Cameron needed a lion’s hearing to catch them.
“Right?” he echoed.
Franklin didn’t even attempt to answer him.
Cameron caught him by the shoulder and spun him around. Franklin almost stumbled, but Cameron held him upright, one strong hand wrapped around each of his arms. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded.
“I said, he was right,” Franklin admitted. “A punishment would probably help me stop feeling so guilty.”
“But you just said…” Cameron’s pale blond eyebrows came together as he stared down at him in confusion.
“I said I’m not asking you to punish me. I shouldn’t have asked you to in the first place.”
Staring at Franklin didn’t convince the guy to make any more sense.
He fidgeted in Cameron’s hold on him, as if half of him wanted to push his master away and half of him didn’t. “I deserve to feel guilty,” Franklin finally muttered.
Cameron moved his hands to either side of Franklin’s face and held his head tipped slightly back, making him look up at his master.
Control. Patience. Talk to him.
“You’re not making sense.”
Franklin tried to look away, apparently determined to make it impossible for Cameron to do any of the things Arslan said he was supposed to do.
How the hell was he meant to look after the man, to take care of him and see that he had everything he needed, if Franklin wouldn’t even keep his requirements consistent for two sentences in a row?
The skin on the sides of Franklin’s cheeks were turning white. Cameron was holding him too tight. Even after he realised that, it was several seconds before Cameron could convince himself to release his pet from what must have been a painful grip.
Spinning away from him, Cameron strode across to the other side of the room. Resting his hands on the back of a chair set in front of a small desk, he took several more deep breaths. Whoever started the rumour that deep breaths helped in stressful situations was an idiot.
All that time he’d spent in those clubs, wishing he could go back to a time when he could be part of a pride and take a mate. It had never occurred to him that the clubs would be so easy to understand by comparison—at least he knew what those men wanted from him.