4. Teddy
Teddy
The knot is still locked and the world is very soft.
That's the first clear thought I have. Not knot, not locked, just a hazy sense that everything is warm, close, quiet, and I probably shouldn't move.
I'm not going to move. I don't think I could if I tried.
He's still on top of me, fully seated on my cock, his weight pressing me into the padded bench.
I'm caught between an orgasm I didn't have and one I'm having in slow motion, because he's doing something to me I can't name.
He's doing something with his hand on my chest. I can feel it moving, maybe tracing the bruise on my pec that he left with the paddle hours ago, outlining it with his fingertips. Gentle. Barely touching. Just there. Like he's checking if it's real.
I want to thank him again. I want to tell him thank you so many times it becomes another kind of religion. I open my mouth and all that comes out is breath.
I try again.
"Thank you."
He's above me. His head tips just a little. He makes a small sound that isn't quite a laugh, warmer and quieter, like he's surprised by himself.
"You're welcome, sweetheart."
No. No, that's not, I mean.
"No. I, I mean, I mean."
My mouth moves before my brain can catch up. I hear myself trying to get the words in the right order and failing. Everything feels soft, off, too close to the surface. What I want to say is buried under the thank you, slipping out before I can stop it.
"I don't, I know it's a, this is a thing you do. I know."
I hear myself. I hate this. I hate how it sounds. I keep going.
"I just, nobody looks at me. I'm, everybody sees me, because I'm, this size, but nobody, nobody looks at me. You looked at me."
The words embarrass me. My eyes start to sting again, which feels ridiculous, because I'm an adult, knotted on a bench in a sex club, telling a stranger that nobody looks at me like I'm a teenager.
I try to backtrack.
"Sorry, sorry, that sounded, I don't."
He doesn't answer.
He goes very still on top of me.
This stillness is different from before, when he was relaxed and tracing my bruises. Now it's the stillness of someone who's stopped moving their hand. His fingertips rest on my chest, no longer tracing, just staying right in the middle of the bruise, not moving at all.
I feel him breathe. His breath catches for a moment, then resumes. He shifts a little, settling himself without meaning to, and I feel him clench around my locked knot for a brief moment we both notice. A small shiver runs across his shoulders.
The silence goes on a beat too long. I can't stand it. I can't help myself.
"Did I, I'm sorry, I can stop talking."
"Don't apologize."
His reply is short. It's different from everything else he's said to me tonight, though I can't say exactly how. I just know it is.
Another long silence. My cock gives a fresh involuntary pulse inside him. He clenches on it again, not on purpose. I can tell the difference now. And he makes a sound, very small, through his nose.
Then, in a quieter voice, after what feels like a long pause, maybe a minute, maybe less, maybe more:
"I know what you meant."
That's all he says.
I want to ask him what he means, but I don't. I'm afraid to. Something happened that shouldn't have, some kind of boundary I didn't see, and I'm too shaken to figure out what it was. I just lie there, knotted and warm, watching his face behind the mask without saying anything.
His fingertips on my bruise haven't moved. They haven't moved since I spoke.
The knot holds.
The knot recedes.
I first notice the pressure easing as the swollen base inside him slowly deflates, letting go bit by bit.
Then comes the moment when I know he can lift off without hurting either of us.
He does, carefully and slowly. When he slides off my cock, I make a sound I'm not proud of.
A small, broken no. He doesn't acknowledge it.
I couldn't follow him even if I wanted to; I'm still strapped to the bench.
He climbs off. Stands. Walks to the small attached bathroom at the back of the room. I hear water. He's cleaning up. Efficient, professional, fast. I knew he would be.
He comes back.
I watch him. He's naked from the waist down under the dark button-down, and up close, with all my attention on him, I see a body I don't think I was allowed to look at before.
He's lean, smaller than me in every way, pale in the warm, low light.
There are faint lines at his hips that hint at office life.
He looks like someone who eats well but doesn't sleep enough.
Someone who doesn't think about his body first.
I'm looking at him with my whole body and my whole mouth and a part of my brain that's reserved for things like looking at him, specifically.
He doesn't look at me while he crosses to the wall rack.
He picks up the crop.
My cock, which has been dripping steadily for the last half hour, stiffens. Something slower and deeper than a jump, a full-body pull toward the shape of him standing there with the crop in his hand.
"One more," he says.
"Okay. Okay."
He comes back. Stands between my spread legs. Lays the flat of the crop against my hip. The tip of it rests just at the crease of my thigh.
"One more stroke. Then I'm going to let you come. Yes?"
"Yes. Yes, please, yes."
He smiles behind the mask. I can see the corner of his mouth.
It's the warmest he's been with me all night, less a full smile, more a softening of his lips, and there's something about it that feels different.
Softer at the edges, less controlled. Like he's smiling about something that isn't exactly me.
I hold onto it. I hold onto a lot of things without knowing what they are.
He raises the crop.
The stroke lands on the inside of my thigh.
It's not a cruel one. It's the same instrument with the same pressure he's been using all night. I've taken dozens of these by now. I know this one.
Good boy. Take it. One more and he lets you come. One more. You can do one more. You've done everything he's asked all night and you can do this. Hold still. Hold on. Hold it together. Hold it.
I hold. I hold because he said good boy and I'm his good boy and I can take one more stroke on the inside of my thigh and I can stay strapped to this bench and I can.
Except this time the stroke doesn't land on me. It lands in me.
The thing that's been in my chest all night surges up.
The territorial, animal, alpha thing I've been pressing down every time his hand touched my chest, every time he said good boy, every time I felt the leather hold.
I press it down. It doesn't go. I press harder.
My arms pull against the cuffs. My jaw clenches.
My whole body locks tight, every muscle fighting, because I can hold this.
I've been holding this. I've been holding this my whole life.
Mind your size, be careful, be gentle, hold it, hold it, hold it.
And it doesn't go.
It rises. Like a tide. There's no shore. There's no wall. There's no careful, gentle, minding-my-size part of me left high enough to stay dry, and the last thing I hear before it takes me is my own voice in my own head saying good boy, good boy, you can hold it, and then the room drops away.
The bass from the floor, the concrete walls, the smell of leather and disinfectant, all of it goes, replaced by one thing, one scent, so total and close it's like putting my face into a cupped handful of it and breathing until my lungs are full.
Him.
And this is different from the way I've been smelling him for three hours.
That was warm, appreciated, a thing I liked.
This is need in a shape I've never felt before, a hunger that starts in my jaw, my chest, my gut, my balls, pulls everything toward one point, one purpose, one word that's closer to a heartbeat than a thought:
Mine.
My cock, which was hard, becomes something else. A thing with its own urgency, its own direction, thick, dark, aching, pointing at him like a compass needle.
I heave against the chest strap.
It doesn't give. I heave again, and this time I'm pulling because the strap is between me and the only thing in the world that matters, and I can hear something, his voice, far away, saying my name, but it's at the bottom of a well and I'm at the top and I don't care.
The chest strap splits.
The sound is nothing, a soft tearing, leather giving up, but the feeling is everything.
My chest comes free and the rush of it, the power, the yes of my own strength finally being used for the thing it was built for, is so sharp and bright that I groan out loud.
My free hand goes to my left wrist on instinct, fingers wrapping around the cuff to tear at it, and my nails bite into my own arm.
I don't feel it. I won't feel it until later.
"Teddy."
His voice. Closer now. I can hear it. I don't care.
I yank my left wrist. The metal clip on that side snaps off the anchor, a bright, absurd ping in the small room, and both hands are mine again, both arms, all of me, and I sit up and the thigh straps are still on but I can reach them now, I can reach everything, and I unbuckle them with fingers that still work, still precise, because the rut has my brain but not my hands.
Thigh straps off. I lean forward and undo the ankles. I'm off the bench.
I'm standing.
Torn leather hangs off my wrists. I'm naked. I'm covered in sweat, the dried streak of his come from hours ago, the pre-come that's been running out of me all night. My cock is so hard it hurts, curved up against my stomach, the head dark and wet. My chest is heaving. My mouth is full of saliva.
He's three feet away.