“If you’re good?” It was hard to tell through the dark, but Gabriel thought he saw Sir smile. His hand cupped Gabriel’s jaw, and sparks shot through Gabriel, speeding his pulse. “If you’re good, then you’ll berewarded.”
“If I’m good, will you spank me again?Please?”
The only answer Gabriel got was the sound of Sir sucking in a breath through histeeth.
Sir leaned down, so close that their lips almost touched again. Gabriel already hungered for his kiss, and he’d only just gotten his first taste of it. Breathless in anticipation, Gabriel closed his eyes and let his head fall back just a little, so his lips were more easily accessible. He wasready.
“We’ll talk about that later, Rabbit,” Sir whispered. Gabriel felt his words, and he imagined the touch of Sir’s lips. Passionate, eager, and all for him. “For now, you need to get to sleep. You will wake up at your regular time tomorrow. You’ve lost the privilege ofsleepingin.”
“I understand, Sir.” What Gabriel got was better than sleep. The ache in his balls was torture in the most deliriously blissful way. “Thankyou,Sir.”
“Goodnight, Rabbit,” Sir whispered againsthislips.
“Goodnight, Sir,” Gabrielwhisperedback.
The mattress shifted. Sir stood and left the room, closing the doorbehindhim.
28
Cedric
“You’ve goneand fucked it all up now,Cedric.”
“Not helping.” A cup of coffee steamed in front of him, sweetened with Bailey’s, but not even the alcohol was helping the panic steadily rising inside. After what he’d done last night, Cedric would need a whole bottle to get over the guilt. He pressed the phone closer to his ear until it smarted. The pain was well-deserved. “I need advice, Oli. What the hell am I goingtodo?”
“To be honest, I thought you were kidding when you said you hadn’t already sleptwithhim.”
“How is that something to joke about?” Cedric asked, exasperated. “When is the last time I slept withanyone?”
He could almost hear the shrug. “I thought the whole BDSM thing was just a polite front for lots and lots ofanonymoussex.”
Cedric pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed loudly. “I amnota prostitute, and I will never be one. I sell a service that may or may not include sexual stimulation, notmybody.”
“Well, after last night, you might want to reconsider that claim. You got the condoms out and everything. Admit it—you were going to fuck himsenseless.”
“Remind me why I called you?” Cedric asked. He pushed away from the table and sank against the back of the kitchen chair. There was a cobweb in the corner of the ceiling. It drifted, caught by a breeze Cedriccouldn’tfeel.
Oli snorted. “Because I’m your best friend, and who else are you going to call at, oh, half-past five in the morning? You’re damn lucky that I’m at my wit’s end trying to find a job right now, or I’d be pissed that you woke me up. Not everyone can take off their shirt, strap on a little leather, and ask a fifth of the world’s population to pay their bills for them. Some of us have to kiss assinstead.”
Oli’s particular brand of sarcasm wasn’t helping. Cedric, defeated, watched the cobweb drift in the breeze. “I don’t want to be a jerk, but can we talk about my massive fuck-up, please? I need some help. You’re the one from the outside looking in. What the hell am I goingtodo?”
“Not much you can do, is there? I mean, the way seems pretty straightforward to me.” Oli clucked his tongue, like he was thinking. “Step one: you’ve already made your mistake, so if you want to get your dick wet, go get it wet right now before you do anything else. Like, massively wet. Have lots of sloppy, satisfying sex. You might as well take advantage,right?”
Gabriel, looking over his shoulder with lust-lidded eyes as Cedric’s length slid between his ass cheeks… Cedric’s cock throbbed at the thought. “Not helping. I want him, but I can’t have him. He’s too damaged to be able to give consent, and Iwon’ttake advantage of him. I already feel like a monster over what I did last night. I should have had the willpower to tell him no. I shouldn’t have so much as kissed him. What I did was wrong, and then I punished him formymistake after he was justifiably pissed that I stopped play midway through. I’m losing my goddamn mindoverhim.”
“Okay, okay, so if you’re finished with step one, move on to step two: comingclean.”
“You’re not going to tell me to hop in the shower, are you?” Cedric asked, words as dry as he could make them. When Oli teased, he went alltheway.
Oli scoffed. “Okay, so sometimes I’m a dick, but I’m not that much of a dick. I mean coming clean as in, you need to get in touch with whatever idiot thought it would be a good idea to leave you alone with a little sexpot omega and admit that you did a nasty thing by kissing him last night. You don’t want to sweep this undertherug.”
“ThatidiotisSterlingHolt.”
“And that name should mean something to me because…?” Oli sighed. “Listen. I know that you’re freaked out, and I know that you’ve got a lot riding on this job, but we all make mistakes. So okay, this Sterling dude might be mad at you, but on the bright side, you didn’t knock anyone up. You didn’t even touchhisdick.”
That was a lie, but Cedric let it go. Oli didn’t need to know about how he’d denied Gabriel an orgasm last night—or how he’d fisted Gabriel’s cock on their first night together before he knew any better. “So I call him and tell him I did, and then what? How is this going to make things any better for Gabriel? He needed me to keep my hands to myself, and I fucked up and victimized him. What am I supposed to do to make things right with him? How the hell am I supposed to apologize after I almostrapedhim?”
There was a long pause—long enough that Cedric took his phone from his ear to check that the call was still going. It was. Seconds ticked by. He returned the phone to his ear in time to hear Oli speak, his voice hollow. “I thought you were asking me how to save yourcareer.”
