Chapter 41
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
The playroom glows red over ropes, leather, rubber, and steel.
Jake lifts his chin to offer me his throat. “Anything you want,” he says.
I kiss him slow enough to feel the tremor he’s trying to hide when my mouth stakes its claim. He grinds against my leg, dragging his hard, trapped cock against denim, and I guide him deeper into the red light.
His fingers lace through mine as his mouth trails down my arm. When his teeth catch the skin over my bicep hard enough to mark, my body remembers the last time and the muscle tightens on instinct. His tongue soothes the bite, raising goosebumps in its path and dragging a groan from my chest.
His mouth leaves my arm slowly, but the heat of it lingers as our attention drifts to the wall of toys.
The yellow flogger catches my eye. I shouldn’t—
Jake follows my gaze and smiles. “Don’t fucking ask,” he warns, and walks away a step, distance he makes me cross to earn him back.
I take the flogger off its hook, surprised to find it’s suede. The tails whisper over my fingers when I rake them through, and my pulse thuds louder.
Jake reaches higher on the wall and lifts down a heavy, brutal-looking spreader bar with cuffs at both ends. He turns with it, and we meet in the middle again, toys in hand, crashing back into each other’s mouths.
He offers me his wrist without a word, and I snap the cuff shut.
“Shit,” he whispers, glancing down at his olive-green shirt. With one hand restrained, he fumbles at the buttons with the other.
“Stop,” I say. “Did I tell you to remove your shirt?”
“No, Sir.”
His answer shoots the thrill straight through me, electric and dangerous, the same charge I chased in lies and in my first taste of control. But Jake trusts me with this, and if I want to keep him, I need to learn how to hold the thrill without letting it turn cruel.
At least not entirely cruel.
“Good boy,” I say, and relish what that does to him.
There’s no getting Jake’s shirt off while one of his hands is cuffed, so I slip my hands through the opening in his half-undone shirt and spread them across his lean chest. I could explore this man for the rest of my life: his chest, his abs, the V of his hips.
He said his mind was a bad neighborhood, and I want to know every block.
I’ve spent my life twisting into whatever shape I needed to be, and somehow Jake still fits.
I tear the shirt clean off him and catch his gasp with my mouth, sealing it in before it can escape.
“Fuck.” He groans and looks up. “Hooks. The hooks are above us.”
I cuff his other wrist, and he drops to his knees like he’s offering himself. The hook attached to the rafters sways as I pull it through the ring at the center of the spreader bar. Tightening the rope forces his arms up and up, until his back is bared to me.
Laying the suede tails across his back is a test more than a strike. It’s too light to snap, but my smile still spreads as my mind fills in the missing sound and the way his body will arch for it.
Jake goes still. “Give it to me,” he murmurs.
I lift the flogger, half-drunk on the promise of its sound, its marks, and the way he’ll take it for me.
Clarity freezes the fantasy and my arm. I don’t know how to do this. I know only how it felt, and one careless inch could actually hurt him.
He wants it. I want it. But I lower the flogger like returning a blade to its sheath.
“I—I need practice,” I admit.
Jake shifts, and the muscles in his back flex and slide, his shoulder blades lifting like I’ve denied him flight. He cranes his neck enough to find me. “Yeah. Okay. That’s good, Marky. Something else then,” he says, voice rough with want.
My eyes drop to the rope holding his arms above his head.
“Yes,” he says.
“Beg for it.”
Jake laughs, but it fractures into something thinner when I tighten the line a fraction.
“Please. I need it— Please—”
I take the rope in both hands and pull.
He rises in one smooth, merciless lift, legs dangling as the bar draws his arms wide overhead and leaves him stretched, hanging beneath it. A startled laugh tears out of him.
His flicker of panic and trust is a shot of adrenaline.
I hold him there for a heartbeat, just long enough for him to feel what kind of hands he’s in, then I anchor the rope, tie it off, and step into his space, close behind him. Under the bar, he hangs high enough that his hips are level with my gaze while his feet twitch for purchase that isn’t there.
“Breathe,” I say, steadying him by sliding my hands around his hips from behind.
Half-dressed, he’s still half in the world, and it’s time that ends. I want him stripped into my world until nothing is left but how badly he wants what only I can give him. My knuckles brush the hard ridge pressing against his jeans, and his hips jerk forward to chase my touch.
“Hold still.”
Jake freezes, and his obedience fuels the buzz beneath my skin.
I unbutton his jeans with deliberate slowness, letting him feel every second of it, then tug the zipper down and slide my hand in.
He makes a sound that turns into a whine when I give him nothing more than the weight of my palm around him.
My other hand stays under his hips, taking just enough of his weight to steady him and keep him from swinging.
“Tell me what you want,” I say from behind him.
I hear him swallow. “You,” he answers. “I want you to take what’s yours.”
My mouth goes dry. I squeeze him enough to make his thighs tense. The bar creaks overhead.
“Be more specific,” I say.
Jake shifts in the cuffs, and they clink faintly above us. “I want your mouth,” he says, voice slipping lower, filthier. “I want you to suck my fucking dick.”
I could laugh at the boldness of a man hanging from my rope and ordering my mouth, but my own hunger flares instead.
“Good,” I say. “Now ask properly.”
“Please,” he whispers. “Please, Sir.”
That word again. That surrender.
I release him to walk around his body, making him wait, suspended and open. He turns his head to track me, helpless to do more than listen and tremble. When I finally face him, his cheeks are flushed, eyes bright, mouth parted.
I circle back behind him and palm him once more through his open fly, just to feel the jolt it sends through him.
Then I turn him by his hips, slow and controlled, until he’s facing me.
I tug his jeans open wider, free him through the gap, and there he is, hard and unapologetic, inches from my mouth.
He looks down with a wicked, desperate smile.
“Tell me exactly how you want it,” I say.
Jake’s eyelids dip, savoring the command. “Like you mean it,” he whispers. “Like I’m yours.”
I take him in my mouth, tasting skin and hearing the first helpless sound he makes. My hand cups his balls while my tongue traces every vein, and when his grip tightens on the bar, I hear his breathing shift one tick toward fatigue.
“Legs over my shoulders,” I command.
He hooks his ankles over me, and the tremor leaves his arms as I take some of his weight and steady him beneath the rope.
“That’s going to cost you, though,” I say, then suck my middle finger and press it back against his hole.
“Yes, Sir,” he says. “I deserve it.”
I push it in, and he bucks deeper into my mouth. I didn’t know making someone else unravel could feel this good, this blinding, this close to losing myself. Pumping his cock and giving him another finger, I start to lose myself in pleasing him until—
“Oh, fuck, Sir. Marcus—stop.” The urgency in his voice pulls me back. “Put me down,” he pants. “I want you inside me before I come.”
I love knowing I got him that close, and with my own cock straining uselessly inside my jeans, I lower him carefully to the floor and slip the hook free from the center ring.
He keeps hold of the bar at arm’s length.
I duck inside the closed loop to unshackle his hands while he kisses my neck and grinds his leaking cock against my ass.
“Get me out of this thing,” he says, and the second one hand comes free, Jake reaches around to undo my belt.
The bar hits the floor, but Jake takes his time sinking with it. He kisses my chest, then my stomach, and ends on his knees in front of me with my cock in his mouth. I rake my fingers through his hair and push his mouth deeper until his nose presses to my stomach. When I finally let go, he gasps.
“Yes,” he says. “More like that.”
I grab the back of his head and thrust hard into his mouth. The rush is dizzying, nerves waking up to the reality that no amount of lies could have quenched this. I’ve wanted this man, this moment, so much more than any story.
A groan slips from my lips.
This is more than wanting. When he looks up at me with my dick in his mouth, the last of my excuses give out. Every other thrill I’ve chased suddenly feels cheap. Whatever’s been locked inside me all this time is here now, alive, hungry, and impossible to shove back down.
Jake sees it, wants it, and trusts me with it. That trust is what keeps this from becoming something ugly.
His mouth works me slowly and thoroughly, deliberately messy. The sound is obscene. His hands glide from my ass to my stomach, then down again, cupping and stroking like he’s reminding me who’s choosing this. My vision flashes white.
“Stop,” I say.
Jake’s mouth and hands leave me in an instant, and my dick bounces in the air, left throbbing with one drop of precum at the tip.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he says, grabbing my hand to pull me to the swing. “Not before I feel every inch of you first.”
Behind Jake, the swing sways beneath thick ropes and steel hooks. He drops back into it, and the ropes rock him away from me as he threads his legs through the straps and scoots to the edge.
I pump lube into my hand from a bottle on the wall and get myself ready while taking in the sight of him laid open before me.
I push into him slowly, dragging his moan into a long, wrecked “Fuucck,” then stay buried inside him with one hand wrapped around his cock.
The room could be full of kings or corpses; I don’t look up.
“Don’t move,” I tell him. “It’s time for your third test.”
Jake’s laugh breaks before he winks. “Yes, Sir. Been dreaming of your cock inside me,” he says, tightening around me.
I start slow, then drive harder, feeling how the swing gives me even more control.
Jake’s eyes flutter shut as his head tips back. I pull out just enough to make him feel the loss, then yank the swing toward me by the ropes.
His body tells on him with a tremor.
“You’re close,” I say.
“Yes, I’m—”
“Not until I say.” I release him only to take the ropes in both hands.
He groans, fists clenching as he obeys by fighting his own body.
“Good boy,” I say, and he catches his bottom lip between his teeth.
I speed up, and his fists dart over his face. “Fuuck,” he gasps, voice breaking, holding on because I told him to.
The sight of him holding back for me drags me right to the edge. “Now,” I tell him. “I’m going to come—inside you.”
“Do it. I can’t stop you.”
I devour that lie and drive into him as he breaks. His cock jerks, cum spilling hot over his stomach and chest, and the sight of him coming because I allowed it sends me over. I come deep inside him, pumping through each pulse until I’m empty, he’s wrecked, and the swing finally settles.
I fold over him, wrapping him in my arms and nuzzling into the warmth of his neck while he stares up at the hooks holding us.
“That was—” He pants, pulling his legs free from the loops. “You did good, Marky. So. Did I pass?”
“You passed. I’m nowhere near done with you, though.”
His grin flashes. “Maybe we work on that flogger?”
I look him over, sprawled in the swing, cum streaked across his stomach, chest, and shoulder. “You’re covered in cum.”
“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.”
He drags a finger through the mess on his shoulder and tastes it. Before he can swallow, I kiss him, stealing the hot salt from his tongue beneath the mint on his breath.
“Kinky,” he whispers.
“Yeah.” I kiss him again. “I guess so.”