Rene was flustered as all hell… and fucking adorable. He pushed every one of my buttons, especially the ones thatlikedit when he needed me to step in and push a little.
“Yes?” I prompted. Then, firmly. “Tell me.”
His breath came out in an explosive rush. “Doyouwanttosleepinthebed?”
I blinked.
Did I… want to sleep in the bed?
Was that what he’d asked?
Rene sucked on his lip for a second. Then, before I could get my wits together to make it clear that yes, always, I wanted to be as close to him as he’d let me, he blurted, “Because the cot doesn’t look very comfortable, so I could take it if you didn’t want to share the bed with Teddy and me, but if you didn’t mind we could all sleep there and I wouldn’t touch you or get clingy but I thought it might be nicer for you than—”
I put a finger against his lips, not hard enough to shush him, but still causing him to go silent almost instantly.
“Rene,” I said. “Breathe.”
He nodded, eyes locked onto me, and did it, the motion causing those erotically plush lips of his to move against my finger in a soft rhythm that made me want to groan.
“Such a good boy,” I murmured, sliding my hand around to cup his jaw because I had to keep touching him.Hadto. But also because I needed to get my fingers away from his lips before I pushed them inside and took a level of control we’d never discussed.
Rene leaned into my touch, a soft sigh escaping him, and I was lost. His, completely. He just didn’t know it yet.
“Now,” I started, my voice feeling raw, “are you saying you want me to sleep with you tonight, beautiful?”
He nodded, a shiver going through his body. “But, um, only if… if you want?”
“There will never be anything I don’t want to do with you,” I said forcefully, which was true but also quite possibly too much, “but Ididthink we’d agreed I was in charge here, so isn’t that my place to decide?”
I was teasing, sort of. I was also hoping to put him at ease, though, since he’d already given me ample evidence that having me in charge relaxed him.
But in this case, I’d misjudged, and it had the opposite effect.
“Oh,” he said, his shoulders hunching a little. “Um, yes? We did. I mean, you are. Iwantyou to be. Sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No,” I cut him off, feeling a little flustered myself because my feelings were so strong, and yet we were so damn new to each other that I felt like I was teetering on the edge of fucking it up. I took a breath, trying to ignore my burgeoning arousal and the pull I had toward this beautiful, perfect boy, so I could focus on communicating better. “You should always ask me for what you want, Rene. And I always want you to tell me what you need. I just want to be clear about…”
For a second, I was stumped. I was fantastic at following my gut, powering through obstacles to get what I wanted, taking care of my own… but for something like this? I really wasn’t great at communicating. Not in words. Not when I’d only ever operated on instinct when it came to how I treated the one I cared for.
I could see now what Greg had meant about Blair and me. Wehadhad something “kinky” between us, even though, at the time, neither of us had ever thought of it that way. The way we were with each other had simply felt organic and natural and right. But it had also been, what had Greg called it? A power dynamic. Me in charge, Blair liking it that way, utterly fucking perfect.
What we hadn’t had, though, was any explicit communication about the way we operated. We’d been so in sync that discussing it had never felt necessary. No, more than that, it simply hadn’t crossed my mind. It would have been like two fish discussing water. But this new-to-me world I’d been learning about today, full of Daddies and kinks and sometimes even written contracts of consent? That was all totally foreign to me.
And yet that was why Rene had come. It would be what he expected. And now that I knew about those things, too, I was second-guessing that my instincts alone were enough.
I needed Rene totellme. I needed to know where to draw a line before I raced right past it in my effort to give us what I was so damn convinced we both wanted. I needed to know that Rene was a hundred percent on board, but he was so reticent and I was so forceful, that I wasn’t sure how to—
Oh.
A lightbulb went off.
“Sam gave you a safeword,” I said. “Do you remember?”
Rene’s lips twitched, the stress of a moment before replaced by something lighter. “Yes. Um, platypus?”
“Because they lay eggs,” I reminded him solemnly.
His eyes sparkled, so brightly I felt it in my soul, and then… he giggled, clapping a hand over his mouth as soon as it slipped out.
