The boy’s back tensed again. His whole body trembled. His breathing hitched, rough and uneven, like something thickwas caught in his chest. His whole body was fighting to hold something in, even as it begged to let go.
Then the sob came.
A broken little sound that cracked open the air between them.
Thank the Lord.
“Oh God,” Danny whispered, the words raw and hoarse like they scraped their way out of his throat. “Ff-fuck.” The curse tore out of him on a shuddered exhale and he began to sob.
There. Done.
Easton wrapped both arms around the boy and lifted him upright, shifting Danny easily into his lap. He came without protest, folding into the embrace like he’d been waiting for it all along. He didn’t stiffen or resist. He curled against Easton’s chest and shattered.
The tears hit hard and fast. There was no warm-up or delicate lead-in. It came out in ragged, gasping sobs that wracked his entire body.
Easton held him through all of it.
He didn’t speak right away. Didn’t shush or soothe or try to make the moment smaller. He just rocked the boy gently and stroked his hand up and down Danny’s back in reassuring paths.
This was the truth of caregiving, of Dominance that went beyond pleasure or protocol.
It was bearing witness.
It was staying present when someone else fell apart.
And Danny was falling apart beautifully.
He just buried his face in the crook of Easton’s neck as the sobs took over.
Easton rocked him gently.
These tears had a job to do.
So, he let them work.
Danny wept like the dam had cracked wide open, and all the pain he’d hidden since Wilbert died, or probably way before, came pouring out. His chest hitched with every breath. His fingers twisted in Easton’s shirt like a drowning man clinging to driftwood.
Easton kept rocking.
“I’ve got you, boy,” he murmured when the worst of the storm began to ebb. “Let it out. All of it. There’s nothing here but me and you. You’re not alone.”
Danny shook harder at those words.
But the cries shifted until they sounded more like grief than despair.
Easton kept holding him.
Needs were not about fixing. They were about being there when someone broke.
Chapter Eight
Beneath Danny’s throbbing butt, Easton’s lap was warm, firm, and steadying. The thick muscles of his thighs didn’t twitch or shift, they just held him.
Danny curled into the strong chest and kept his arms tucked tight between their bodies like he needed to keep the last bits of himself from spilling out. His throat ached from sobbing, and each breath scraped like sandpaper. His eyes burned. And his backside. He shifted but there wasn’t a spot that didn’t remind him of the relentless hard hand landing on unprotected flesh.
He swallowed.
I should feel awful.
