“I still don’t know who wants me dead,” I said, resting my hands on his bare thighs. “I don’t know who wants you dead. But I know I can’t think straight if I’m worried about you.”
Golden inhaled deeply, keeping his eyes downcast.
“And I need to think straight.”
“Then stop worrying,” he whispered.
I slipped one of my hands around to the inside of his thigh and gave him a pinch. He flinched, his whole body seizing, but he stayed on top of me, settling after a breath.
“Excuse me?”
“This is a bad idea,” he murmured.
My fingers plucked mindlessly at the inside of his thigh, little pinches and twists designed to keep him alert and focused…on me. His cock started to tent his briefs, a dark wet spot appearing on the front where the head of his dick swelled against its constraints.
“We tried this one way,” I reminded him. “We had a contract, a weekend, and I don’t know about you, but it wasn’t enough for me.”
His chest expanded with another breath at the mention of his safeword in the context we both understood. Things had gone too far over New Year’s, but things were different now. We’d been strangers then, and while there were still plenty of things we didn’t know about each other, I knew enough.
I knew enough to want.
“And then you showed up on my porch,” he said softly.
“And you saved my life.”
In more ways than one, but I didn’t say that part.
He looked up, though, his lips pursed and his lashes fluttering through a rapid succession of blinks.
“I don’t like the idea of you dying,” he said.
I couldn’t stop the laugh from coming out. “Neither do I.”
I hated that we were both so bad at this. Whatever this was. This confession, this soul-baring moment. It always seemed so easy on TV. A brief exchange of words, a kiss, maybe an orgasm or two. But Golden and I both seemed to be incapable of saying the words that were right on the tips of our tongues.
At least, they were on the tip of my tongue.
Maybe he didn’t feel the same. I didn’t think I could bear that.
His hands slowly drifted up, over my pecs and shoulders, coming together behind my neck. His fingers threaded together and he settled.
“The cabin was a lot,” I said, and he nodded, so I kept at it. “Too much for all the time.”
“I…I like when you…”
I pinched him again, higher and harder than before.
“I never want to stop hurting you,” I promised him.
“Okay.”
I danced my fingers away from his legs, up his stomach to his chest, where I rubbed the pads of my fingers over the delicate and hardened buds of his nipples. He shivered, a shaking breath falling out of his mouth. The threat of pain was there, and I wanted him to know what life with me would be like. That threat, thatpromise, would be ever present. I wouldn’t be running him into the mountains and making him sleep in a cage in the closet. Or rather, I would… just not every night.
“Your body is mine,” I grunted, pinching his nipples hard.
He arched toward me with a surprised and pained groan. I twisted my fingers, tightening the points of pressure on his nipples, tugging them away from his chest.
“Yours,” he exhaled the agreement.
