“Well.” He let out a long breath and climbed off, cleaning his fingers off on the sheets. “Good to know you’re a man of your word, Hendrix.”
I covered my eyes with my forearm, waiting for my breathing to return to normal. We didn’t address the fact that it wasn’t the rough fucking that had made him weep, but the tender intimacy of him on my lap that had driven him to the edge. It was something I’d never forget, though. Filed away into memories I’d call up whenever I felt the urge to get myself off unaccompanied.
Miles stood up and dug his clean clothes out of the mess on the floor, dressing for the second time that night. He brushed his hair and disappeared into the playroom. He came back with a small black bag and a look of feigned annoyance on his face.
“We’ve got to get going then.” He clapped his hands twice, then flickered the lights on and off to get my attention.
“Going?” I rolled onto my stomach, intent on narrowing my eyes, but losing the ability to even pretend to be annoyed when I saw him there. Even on the heels of a mind-shattering orgasm, I was already well on my way to being hard again. His eyes telegraphed all of the things he wanted to do to me at the club he apparently still intended to drag me to.
“Going.” He made an amused sound, almost a laugh, but almost a threat. “You didn’t think that was all I had in me, did you, buddy? Come on, now. The night is young and I want to find out how many more orgasms you can manage before you pass out.”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-TWO
Miles
Grayson came downthe hallway with a black tawse dangling from his first finger. There were cracked white stains against the leather, and when I saw the implement, I shot an accusatory look across the kitchen toward Hendrix.
“You said it must have gotten lost in the parking lot at Rapture.” I snatched the toy out of Grayson’s hand. Testing the bite of the leather against my palm, I carried it toward Hendrix, whose entire throat and cheeks had turned red as a strawberry.
“Thought it had,” he muttered.
“It was in the cabinet under the sink in the bathroom,” Grayson offered. “Tucked really far back there behind the toilet bowl cleaner.”
“I wonder how it got there,” I mused, Hendrix’s face making it all too clear, but it was fun to tease him.
Grayson waved me off, turning on his heel and disappearing back down the hallway. I flipped the tawse in my hand, offering Hendrix the handle. He sighed, taking the toy and letting it fall at his side.
“I haven’t seen this since the weekend you moved in,” I said.
“I know.”
“I beat you so well that night, the last time you came it was practically air.” I mimicked thepoofof his final orgasm from the first night we’d gone to Rapture together.
“And yet.” He raised the tawse, dried cum flaking away from the leather tips.
“The last time was shooting blanks,” he muttered, pushing the toy back at me. “Not the first three.”
“Is that all it was?” I took the tawse from him with a laugh, fully aware of how many times he’d come for me that night. I remembered what pose his body had been in each time, and I recalled the escalating levels of desperation that had colored his tone. The last time, no sound had left his mouth, but his body had seized with such a violent force he almost snapped out of his cuffs. “You should have hidden it better if you didn’t want me to use it again.”
“I didn’t want you to use itoften,” he said.
“It’s been three months.” I put the tawse on the dining room table, giving it a gentle pat. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“That’s the last of it.” Grayson maneuvered open the front door, a cardboard box in his hands.
It was time for my best friend to move out. I hated it, but I was also looking forward to what this meant for Hendrix and me. Also what it meant for me and Grayson. We’d been together, first as lovers and then as friends, for so many years, I didn’t know what our relationship would be like if we weren’t under the same roof. He seemed to share the same concern and trepidation, his brow knit together when he came back into the house.
“This is weird, yeah?” he asked.
I nodded, and Hendrix dropped a soft kiss against my ear. “I’ll be right back.”
He went into the back yard, closing the slider behind him and leaving Grayson and me to say our goodbyes.
“Where’s Wes?” I asked the obvious question, which I hoped didn’t make my avoidance of the goodbye part of things painfully obvious.
“He’s at the apartment dealing with the furniture guys.”
The past months had been a whirlwind. Having Grayson and Hendrix under the same roof had worn down every last nerve in my body. With Gray intent on driving Hendrix up the wall, there had been plenty of nights that sent Hendrix back next door. He’d taken advantage of the last months on his rental, up until the day he turned in the keys to HR. The mood between them wasn’t horrible, just tense sometimes, and I knew much of it stemmed from Hendrix’s worry about Gray’s influence on Wes.
