Then again, maybe not. I had no clue what my parents were into, nor did I care. In other words, I gave exactly as many fucks as they did.
Gotta admit, it was convenient to have unlimited access to funds, though.
“What do you think?” the pierced-up dude decked out in BDSM gear, who must’ve been the high priest or something here at the kinky church, asked, handing over the collar he’d custom made for me.
I stacked all the sex-toy shit I’d gathered while wandering around the aisles onto the checkout counter and took the collar from him, grinning the minute my fingers touched the leather. It felt like fuckingbutter, and he’d lined it with some kind of crazy-soft fur that pretty much guaranteed my boy wouldn’t have any of the issues he’d had with that first one.
I ran my fingers over every inch of it, especially the seams that might irritate Noah’s neck, and it was all top shelf. There’d been hella cheaper ones online, but no way had I been about to order something that I couldn’t touch myself and then expect Noah to wear it for me, not after how torn up he’d been when I’d made him take off the other one. I still caught him touching his bare neck some days, looking sad, and that… fuck. That just didn’t work for me.
“This looks fucking amazing,” I told the priest, tilting it in my hands to better see the extra customization I’d asked for. I’d wanted it subtle enough that Noah could wear it without feeling like he needed to hide it, and the pierced dude had knocked it out of the park. It still looked like something someone a bit edgier than Noah might wear, but at least it didn’t screamkinky-ass slavelike that old dog collar had.
This one was made out of leather so dark that it almost looked black, but it wasn’t. It was like dark chocolate. The color reminded me of Noah’s eyes when he got all horned up and needy.
It had been tempting to have a big metal ring set into it like a lot of the collars I’d seen online had, so I could attach a sexy-as-fuck set of tags for Noah—I’d found some that said “slave” and “Daddy’s boy” and “owned,” any one of which I figured would make him cream his panties if I made him wear it for me—but at the end of the day, I wanted something he felt like he never had to take off, so I’d skipped the ring-and-tags idea. Instead, I’d had the priest dude work in some kind of engraving… embossing... whatever the fuck it was called when you carved words into leather. It looked like a decorative pattern from a distance, but up close…
“Property of Gage, eh?” the priest said, grinning at me. He’d managed to get that phrase worked into a continuous loop around the collar in a gorgeous, swirly script, and it had turned out fuckingbeautiful.
“That’s right,” I said, running a finger over it. And shit, that felt nice, too. The indentations were subtle, but I could definitely feel those words, which meant Noah would be able to reach up and touch them whenever he needed a little extra reassurance, too.
I knew my boy, and he’d like that a lot.
“For your girlfriend?” the priest asked, nodding at the collar as he pulled the pile of extras I’d piled on the counter toward him and started ringing them up.
I frowned, looking up at the guy. Did Ilooklike I had a girlfriend? “Yeah, no.”
“Oh,” he said, holding up the cock cage I’d grabbed off the shelf for Noah. “Boyfriend. Sorry.” He winked and added, “Lucky guy.”
Who, Noah? No,Iwas the lucky one… but hold up, had the dude just saidboyfriend?
“You want me to throw in some flavored lube?” he asked, snatching a bottle from the counter display. He waggled it at me. “The cinnamon one is my favorite.”
“Uh,” I said, my brain too busy cautiously skirting around the “boyfriend” label he’d just dropped, like it was a bomb that needed to be diffused, to give a shit about what he put in my bag.
The priest grinned at me. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, ringing up the lube and tossing it in. He winked again. “You and the boyfriend can thank me later.”
Boyfriend.
He’d said it again.
It just... just sounded really fucking weird, you know? Because Noah wasn’t myboyfriend; he was and always had been mybestfriend.
I’d known ever since the first time I’d jizzed with a chick involved—a kick-ass hand job from Gretchen Myers back in eighth grade, for the record—that I wasn’t cut out to be anyone’s boyfriend. I mean, sure, I’d enjoyed the fuck out of finally having someone other than me handling my junk, but the rest? Not to sound like a dick, but…
Well, nah. I didn’t really give a fuck if I sounded like a dick. It just was what it was, and the way it had gone down was that right after Gretchen Myers had gotten me off, she’d kissed me and told me I should meet her at her locker in the morning so I could walk her to class, because that’s what good boyfriends did. But yeah, no. I’d shut that shit down fast. I walkedNoahto class in the mornings, and every girl after that Gretchen chick had been the same. Always wanting me to do little extras that boiled down to the same exact thing: being theirboyfriendwould have meant cutting back on time with Noah, and that was and always had been a hard no for me.
Noah could call it “codependent” if he wanted to. All I knew was that I’d never wanted to have any distance from him and never would, especially not just to appease some chick, and therefore I wasn’t—and had zero interest in ever eventryingto be—boyfriend material. I just wasn’t wired that way.
Besides, boyfriends did boyfriendy-type things, like using stupidly sweet names for their boo, and walking them to class, and buying them presents, and holding their hand, and always thinking about them, and sending them stupid memes to make them laugh, and kissing them and wanting to touch them all the time, wanting to hold them close and shit, even when no one was down to fuck, and…
…
…
Hold up.
Holy shit… was Noah myboyfriend?
“You okay there, big guy?” the priest asked, snapping his fingers in front of my face.
