Not the kind of feelings I’d ever want to admit to outside this room, or ever have exposed to anyoneelseon the fucking planet, but for Noah? Yeah. I wanted him to know every minute of every day what he meant to me, and since I couldn’t always show him by spanking him raw—I mean, guess I could, but this was intense and we had other shit to do most days, like his schoolwork and regular life and all the rest of the gay sex stuff from my online research—I’d just have to work on figuring out other ways to make sure he knew it.
“Do you promise, G?” Noah asked in that same slow, slurred voice that told me it would be a bit before we could get to the academic portion of our evening. “Promise that we’re… we’re never going to be done?”
“That’s right,” I told him, burying my nose in his baby-soft hair and breathing him in as he melted against me and then just… holding him.
Which, even though we were both still hard, was weirdly enough.
Not gonna lie, all this soft, mushy stuff wasnotwhat I’d ever expected the whole collaring-a-sex-slave fantasy to lead up to, but… I didn’t hate it. In fact, pretty sure all thesefeelingsI kept getting hit with added up to something a lot like the opposite of hate.
Too bad I was such shit with words… but Noah’s ass was red, so even without the collar on, he probably knew anyway, yeah?
12
Noah
My desk was abnormally clean—nota single thing on it except my phone, my laptop, and the textbook I was currently studying from—and Gage had told me in no uncertain terms that I had to keep it that way from now on. The whole set up was painfully lacking in anything interesting—or as my master had referred to them, “distractions”—and even though I knew that that was the whole point, and furthermore, that the lack of distractions had actually been working to help me stay focused whenever I sat down to do my homework, the total absence of anything fun was still making me feel a little cranky at the moment.
Or maybe the crankiness was just because Gage wasn’t around?
I sighed, idly flipping a page in my textbook and reading the next paragraph three different times as I drummed my fingers on the edge of the desk, trying to hit the right rhythm for that Rihanna song that had been playing at the gym on Saturday when we’d all gone and done the rock climbing wall. Or… wait. Had it been Dua Lipa?
I reached for my phone to text Gage and ask but then yanked my hand back because I was doing my homework right now, thank you very much. Which, just for the record, was almost entirely no fun at all without Gage here to egg me on, tease me and reward me, but which I was going to do anyway because he’d told me to.
Well, also because Iwantedto, of course.
I really, really wanted this to work. I’d never had much luck holding myself to task before—biggest understatement of the century—but if I was to have any hope of turning my grades around, Phase One of Gage’s plan, so we could get to Phase Two—a.k.a. presenting my parents with evidence that I’d already made an improvement, followed up with a step-by-step outline of all the ways I was going to keep right on doing that so they’d let me stay at school here with Gage—then I had to buckle down and make it happen. Although thank God Gage was with me (metaphorically speaking at the moment, unfortunately) tomakeme make it happen, because no matter how badly I wanted it, my brain couldn’t seem to cooperate and settle down to actuallydoit without all these little nudges from him.
I re-read the paragraph in front of me for the fourth time, determined to get on with the doing-it phase already so that I actually had some progress to show by the time Gage got back from class.
My parents had always accused me of being codependent with him, and maybe… maybe they were right. I was all sorts of things with him now, all of which made me feel ten million times happier with life than I’d ever thought I would be, but none of which, if I was being super honest with myself, were exactly shining beacons of me stepping into an independent phase of adulthood.
I tried to care about that.
I failed.
I needed him because I was a Needy McNeedster with permanent residence in Needsville, and Gage didn’t mind—helikedit—so if it worked for both of us, that had to mean it was okay, right?
I started chewing on my lip as I tried to work out whether that was a legitimate justification or not, my fingers automatically straying to my bare neck before I could catch myself.
I’d worn that slave collar for Gage for less time than it had been gone now, but somehow, the habit of touching it for comfort had ingrained itself so deeply in me that I still hadn’t been able to break it yet. Still, he’d been right to take it off… I guess. I mean, ithadbeen irritating my skin.
I still missed it, though.
I grabbed my phone and sent him a quick text, deciding I’d just get my comfort and reassurance some other way.
Noah: Are we codependent?
Then I put my phone face down and took a minute to stare at the pic of me and Gage in our dorm room framed in a super cheesyHome Sweet Homeframe. It was a “visual reminder of my goal” that Gage had told me to hang right in front of my desk as part of the hundred and one thousand ways he’d come up with to help me stay focused and on task, and I’d rolled my eyes so hard they’d actually hurt when he’d first stuck the pic in that Grandma-style frame but… but I secretly loved it, and itwasmotivating.
My eyes strayed down to my phone, but I immediately jerked my gaze away without touching it because I was a super focused focuser who avoided all distractions.
The answer to my codependency question was probably yes though, right?
I didn’t pick up my phone to check.
Besides, Gage’s current class had a super bitchy professor when it came to students using their phones during lectures, so he probably hadn’t answered yet anyway. And that was fine, because I really needed to stay focused and get my homework done.
I mean, Iwantedto get it done, as previously stated.
