Chapter 28. Kit
The week has been good. Phone charged, consistently above fifty percent, because once something gets promoted to Rule status, I become slightly obsessive about it.
We negotiated fifty after I argued passionately for thirty-five and Soren stared at me until I admitted that thirty-five was, in fact, stupid.
Therapy attended. Three canyon rides where I rode clean, came home when I said I would, and texted when I arrived.
I have been, in the plainest possible assessment, good.
The cage has been going well too. We’ve been trying it in stretches, taking breaks, checking everything, Soren asking me approximately nine hundred times whether anything feels wrong. It doesn’t. I like it more than I expected, which is saying something because I expected to like it a lot.
I’m in the kitchen when Soren calls me.
The sound of his voice comes from the living room. I’m doing nothing in particular, my mug abandoned on the counter half-full, the coffee having gone slightly past the temperature where I’d bother reheating it. I leave it there and walk through the doorway.
Soren is sitting on the couch.
“Come bend over my lap.”
I stop with one hand still on the doorframe. My mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“What.” Not a question.
Soren looks at me patiently. “Come here and bend over my lap.”
My brain immediately runs diagnostics. The week. Phone: clean. Therapy: clean. Rides: clean. Communication: exemplary.
I have not broken a rule. I have not even come close to breaking a rule. My compliance has been so thorough that Dex complained at Redline on Thursday that I’m becoming disturbingly well-behaved and he finds it unsettling.
“What did I do?”
“Nothing.”
I stare at him. This does not resolve the confusion. It makes it considerably worse.
“Then why—”
“Maintenance.”
I blink.
“Maintenance.”
“I’d like to make it a regular thing.” His mouth moves at one corner. “Once a week. Whether you’ve broken a rule or not.”
My suspicion increases immediately.
“You can’t just invent a new rule while I’m standing here.”
“No.”
That throws me more than if he’d argued.
Soren rests one arm along the back of the couch. “It isn’t a rule. It’s an offer.”
Oh.
“I like spanking you,” he says. “You like being spanked. It settles you. I like the ritual of it, and I think you would too.”
My body has already become a traitor.
“And you want to do this every week?”
“I do.”
“Even if I’m good?”
“Especially if you’ve been good.”
Fuck.
Soren watches my face.
“You don’t have to earn this by misbehaving, Kit. If you want it to be something we do because it belongs to our dynamic, then that’s what it can be.”
Something in my chest goes embarrassingly soft. He pats his thigh.
“Do you want that?”
I should probably make him work harder for it. Instead: “Yes, Daddy.”
His expression warms. My cock is already trying to expand against the cage, betraying every protest I’m still technically entitled to make.
“I followed every rule this week,” I complain, already moving toward him. “Phone charged. Therapy. Canyon rides. Check-ins. I have been fucking impeccable.”
“I know.”
“That should count for something.”
“It does.”
“What?”
His eyes travel over me.
“Daddy deciding his good boy deserves some attention.”
Oh, fuck him.
I make the last few feet to the couch with as much dignity as possible, which is not much considering I’m hard inside a cage and walking directly toward the lap I’ve been loudly objecting to for the past two minutes.
He takes my wrist gently, guiding me closer, and the moment his hand closes around it, most of the performative fight drains out of me anyway.
My body knows this place now. Knows him.
Knows what happens when I stop trying to make everything into an argument and let myself have what I already said I wanted.
I lower myself over his lap.
Soren’s hand settles at the small of my back, familiar and grounding, and then moves lower, caressing me through my sweatpants.
“I really didn’t do anything wrong,” I say into the couch cushion, still determined to achieve the last word somehow.
“I know. I told you that already.”
He lowers my sweatpants and boxers, leaving me bare over his lap.
“This is because Daddy wants to spank you,” he says. “And my boy just told me he wants a weekly maintenance spanking.”
My face gets hot.
His palm lands. The first slap is warm and open-handed, more introduction than actual pain, but it still knocks whatever smart response I had assembled directly out of my head. A tiny, humiliating sound escapes me. Soren’s hand comes down again. Then again.
He doesn’t hit hard. Not like punishment. The rhythm is steady, almost soothing, each slap building warmth instead of sharpness. Soon there is a pleasant sting spread across my backside and I’m shifting against his lap, panting more from arousal than pain.
“Who do you belong to?” he asks.
“You, Daddy.”
Another slap.
“Who asked Daddy to hold the structure?”
“Me.”
His palm lands again.
“And who keeps choosing this?”
The answer catches somewhere deeper than I expect.
“I do, Daddy.”
“That’s right.”
His hand keeps moving, firm enough now that I’m starting to whine.\
“Ouch, ouch, ouch.”
“You’re all right.”
“I know.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
“Then what are all these complaints about?”
“I contain multitudes,” I say, using his unofficial, silly motto.
Soren laughs.
The idea of being spanked whether I’ve been good or not is absurdly hot, but there is something else beneath it too.
I’ve spent so much of my life auditioning.
Be entertaining enough. Easy enough. Needy enough to be worth helping but not so needy that helping becomes exhausting.
Sorry enough after I fuck up. Good enough when I don’t.
There was always some condition. Some reason I had to provide for why someone should keep paying attention.
And here is Soren, spanking me on an entirely ordinary afternoon after a week in which I have done absolutely nothing wrong. Not because I earned it. Not because I failed. Because we like this. Because it belongs to us. Because he wants me. This is mine without an audition.
“You’re doing that thing,” Soren says, his palm landing again without breaking rhythm.
“What thing?”
“Going quiet because you’re thinking too hard.”
“I can’t help it. You started a philosophical crisis with your hand.”
“Mm. My apologies.”
Another slap.
I jerk.
“I’m going to spank the crisis out of you.”
I laugh into the cushion.
“That’s not evidence-based therapy.”
“Good thing I’m a mechanic.”
His palm lands again.
And again.
Eventually, thinking becomes difficult anyway.
I close my eyes and let myself feel it. The warmth spreading over my backside. The steady rhythm. His hand at my back whenever I move too much. The cage holding me in that constant frustrating boundary while my body grows increasingly interested in everything Daddy is doing.
“Good boy,” Soren murmurs.
That makes me squirm harder than the slap that follows it.
He keeps going until I’m floating in the post-spanking haze I’ve learned to recognize as subspace, my limbs loose and my thoughts soft around the edges.
Then his hand stops. For a few seconds, nothing happens except his palm resting warmly against my back.
“Still with me?”
“Mhm.”
“Words, baby.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
His fingers brush lightly along my spine.
“Do you want this to stay just a spanking?”
I blink slowly into the cushion.
Oh.
“Or,” he continues, “do you want Daddy to unlock you?”
My entire body wakes back up.
“Yes.”
His fingers still.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, Daddy. Please, unlock me.”
“Do you want me to make you come?”
Fuck. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Good boy.”
I hear the quiet click of the key entering the lock. The cage shifts away, and Soren sets it on the side table. Fuck, it’s disorienting for a second.
His hand returns.
The spanking resumes, still warm and steady rather than punishing, but now his other hand wraps around my cock.
The first stroke pulls a sound out of me that I absolutely did not plan to make.
My fingers tighten around the cushion. The combination is obscene.
Heat across my backside, then the slow pressure of his hand.
Sting. Pleasure. Sting again. My nervous system gives up almost immediately on deciding which one deserves priority.
“Daddy—”
“I’ve got you.”
His voice drops into that low register that goes straight through me.
“You don’t have to hold anything together right now. Just feel it.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know. You’re doing so well.”
My hips start moving into his grip without shame, chasing every slow stroke. I’m making these small involuntary noises through clenched teeth, losing another piece of whatever composure I walked into the living room pretending to possess.
His thumb circles over me. Then his other palm lands against my ass. I yelp and moan at the same time. Soren chuckles softly. Bastard. “Please.”
“Please what, baby boy?”
I’m already too close. Dangerously close. I’m not sure I could hold back gracefully if he told me no, which means I need to ask before my body makes the decision for me.
“Daddy, may I come? Please?”
Soren’s hand slows just enough to torture me.
“Yes.”
I gasp.
“Come for me, baby boy.”
That’s it.
My whole body locks. The orgasm tears through me hard enough that I cry out into the couch, hips jerking into his hand while everything else disappears for several seconds.
Soren stops spanking immediately. His palm moves over my backside in slow circles instead, easing me down while I shake through the last of it.
“Easy.”
I breathe. Try again. Breathe. Eventually, breathing becomes a thing I know how to do.
“Up.”
His arm slides around my chest and pulls me upright against him. I go boneless almost immediately. My face presses into his neck. His hands move over my back, soothing, and he kisses my temple, my hair, anywhere he can reach without requiring me to become structurally useful again.
I am sticky. My ass stings. My brain has become soup. Perfect.
“You did so, so well for Daddy.”
“Mhm.”
“Same time next week?”
I manage to lift my head enough to look at him. There is amusement in his eyes. He’s asking. But he already knows.
“Yes, Daddy.”
His smile deepens.
“Good.”
Honestly, he could give me one every day and I might still pretend to complain about it. For dignity.
We stay there for a long time, my ear against his heartbeat, his hand moving slowly over my back.
Neither of us is in any hurry to go anywhere else.
Somewhere in the quiet, I realize that I have never felt this particular combination of wrecked and safe at the same time.
Not like this. For most of my life, being wrecked meant something had gone wrong.
A crash. A mistake. A night that went too far.
Something I’d have to apologize for once I put myself back together.
Now I can fall apart on purpose. I can hand him pieces of myself because I know I’m getting them back. I don’t have to earn the attention. I don’t have to fuck up to get it. I don’t have to audition.
Daddy wants me when I’m difficult. Daddy wants me when I’m scared. Daddy wants me when I’m good.
And lying there against his chest, sore and sticky and ridiculously content, I think this might be the happiest I’ve ever been. Again.