Then he put his phone away and tried to focus on his case study.
Chapter 14
Adonis
Unfortunately, before Adonis could attend the “class in patience” Bash had planned for him (he wasveryexcited about it), he had to participate in a coaching session with Damien Zelinski.
Damien and Anamária Costa went back years. Adonis had never met the guy until Minneapolis, when he’d sat through a dreadful dinner with his mother and Damien, who spent most of the dinner getting wine drunk and laughing with his mother.
Anamária was convinced that Damien was the key to getting Adonis into shape for selection to Team USA. Adonis was open to coaching from Damien, especially if that was what his mother wanted, but he didn’t like the man. He’d left a bad first impression on Adonis, and the research he’d done on Damien after the dinner hadn’t given him more confidence.
From what he’d found online and on social media, Damien was based in Montreal with his husband. His husband was a gallery owner who regularly showcased queer artists. He seemed far calmer than Damien, whose social media posts showed him regularly scantily clad at clubs, raves, and circuit parties. There was nothing wrong with that, at all (Adonis enjoyed a club and rave personally, and had tried out and liked a circuit party in Florida during his spring break of last year). However, Damien, who was in his mid-forties, regularly posted pictures of himself with young men surrounding him. They seemed, at the oldest, to be twenty-five. More of them were likely Adonis’s age, or maybe as young as eighteen or nineteen. They gathered around Damien like limpets on a shark. That, combined with the hungry looks Damien had given Adonis when Anamária wasn’t watching, made Adonis uneasy.
He knew that he appealed to a particular type of older man. Sometimes, he didn’t mind that. He had been fucked by several men old enough to be his father (not that he knew how old his father actually was—Anamária refused to talk about him, except that it had been a one-night stand and there was likely some family in India). He had often enjoyed those encounters. Many of the men were drawn to him, though, for reasons he didn’t like.
Adonis was submissive, yes, but he wasn’t submissive because he liked to be controlled or owned. Some guys liked that—that was fine. Adonis wasn’t about to yuck anyone’s consensual yum.
Though he wasn’t sure exactly how to articulate it, Adonis had always felt like he got some power from being submissive. Knowing that he was the tool men could use to bring themselves pleasure—that was powerful. He liked it.
He didnotlike it when men saw him as an object, rather than a tool. There was a difference. A subtle one, to be sure, but it was there.
The difference, Adonis decided, was respect. There wasn’t respect in the way Damien looked at the boys in his photos. It was possession. Or, at least, a desire for possession. That was how he’d looked at Adonis, too.
And Adonis was not something to possess.
——
Damien was a short, wiry man with overly tanned skin, a reconstructed hairline, and a Botoxed face that always made him look moderately sedated, even when he was passionately giving instructions to Adonis during the practice session.
He wore all black: a turtleneck, slim pants, and matching figure skates. He circled Adonis while he skated. He was like a vulture, Adonis decided. His incessant cawing of instructions and advice made Adonis want to pop the blade off one of his skates and toss it at the man.
Unfortunately, Damien knew what he was doing. He had been a stunningly good skater, with an uncanny ability toseewhat another skater was doing. His instructions were demanding, but precise.
If it had just been demanding and precise, Adonis would’ve been fine.
But Damien also liked toshowAdonis.
“Like this,” Damien said after providing instructions on an axel, and proceeded to fail spectacularly in executing it. Once a great skater, not always a great skater.
“You get the idea,” Damien said.
“I think so,” Adonis said. He was trying not to laugh. He had the feeling Damien wouldn’t appreciate being laughed at.
“I’ll show you,” Damien said. Before Adonis could say that there was no need, Damien skated over to him, placed one hand on Adonis’s shoulder and the other on his hip (unnecessary), and said, “When you take off, push the movement from this hip.” He pushed to demonstrate.
Adonis slipped out of his grasp. “Got it,” he said.
The next time he executed the axel, he made sure it was perfect.
——
“I just—oh fuck—I’m not sure what—Jesus Christ—what Anamária wants me to—fuck—get out of it.” Adonis barely managed to get a word out between gasps. He was in his apartment, tied to a chair with scarves. He was completely naked.
Bash, for the last thirty minutes, had been teasing Adonis’s cock, working him to the brink of an orgasm and then slowing down. The lesson in patience had turned out to be an edging session, and Adonis was both enjoying it and about to fall apart.
“Shh,” Bash said, squeezing Adonis’s balls just a bit. He was kneeling between Adonis’s spread legs. He, too, was fully naked. “You’re thinking too hard. Just focus on this.”
“I’m trying tonotfocus on this, so that I don’t cum,” Adonis gasped.
