“Sorry, sorry,” he managed, then chuckled some more. “It’s just… I don’t know if I should be offended or amused as fuck.”
“Huh?” I thought it over, then realized what he meant. “No, no, there’s nothing wrong with being a Daddy Dom. You asshole!” I elbowed his hip. “Motherfucker,” I grumbled as he kept shaking. “Stay still!”
He calmed down after a while, and we fell into that silence again.
“You might also want to help him figure out what he actually wants. If you think the whole 24/7 slave thing he was trying with Carl wasn’t for him, maybe either tell him to scene with someone safe or scene with him yourself.” Mal tensed when I hit a spot where he was extra sensitive. “Figure out what he wants. If it’s purely D/s or little play or both, who knows. But he needs guidance.”
I grunted. He wasn’t wrong, of course, but I felt a lot of things about this whole idea.
“You’re scared,” Mal stated, his tone kind which was almost worse than if he’d been amused.
“Of course I’m fucking scared, Mal!” I didn’t need to tell him why. He knew. Everyone in the community knew why I hadn’t been playing much since Elio. I’d had my heart broken, but I’d also had the base of who I was as a Dominant shaken when I’d lost my submissive.
“Lift your hand.” He glanced at me, until I pointedly lifted my whole arm so he could see the machine in my hand. Then he delivered the blow, “Are you saying that having Elio and then losing him wasn’t worth you trying again? It wasn’t that good? Because from what I knew of that man, he would be so pissed off at you for choosing to be a coward.”
I wanted to fucking jam the needles through his spine. Instead, I gritted my teeth and gestured for him to settle again.
I didn’t talk for a good half an hour, and Mal didn’t say anything more.
Again, I could see his point. Elio wouldn’t have wanted me to remain alone, especially out of cowardice. He’d been anything but a coward, but look where that’d gotten him in the end. He’d been a risktaker and I was still paying for it, mentally and financially, even though I’d managed to pay off most of the debt he’d accumulated over time. I hadn’t been able to beat the gambling addiction out of him, hard as he’d asked me to try.
I wasn’t sure how he’d changed what I liked in BDSM, because I’d been so hesitant to try some things again after. I’d enjoyed hurting him once, even though I wasn’t and never had been a hard-core sadist. He’d been a masochist, so I’d served him and then punished him based on his wishes. Because I’d wanted to make him happy. I’d loved him. I still loved him, but now the memories from the honeymoon period had faded away, and while the bulk of our relationship and marriage had been good, toward the end… I didn’t like to think about it.
“Do you think….” I closed my mouth.
“What?”
“Do you think it’s possible that if he hadn’t died, we would’ve made it?”
For his credit, Mal didn’t answer immediately. He took his time, and finally replied, “I don’t think anyone can know that sort of thing. I knew you were having issues; I’d talked to Allen about stepping in the last time you played at Allen’s place. It was….”
“Brutal.” I let out a long breath. “It was brutal. Exactly like he wanted it.”
Mal hummed. “But you didn’t, which was why I wanted to stop you.”
I lifted the machine and cleaned the needles in some water, then dipped them in Mal’s favorite blue.
“Thank you.”
When we finished, some six hours had passed and I was sure the back piece was as perfect as I could make it.
As Mal got off the table very slowly, by now knowing better than to jump up, I led him out of my room to our mirror corner, where we had wall length mirrors on three angles so people could get a good admire their new ink.
“Holy shit, Luukas,” he breathed out as he twisted and turned his body, staring at the image of a little boy playing with different kinds of trucks and cars in a sandbox, in front of a backdrop of a garden fence and a flowerbed.
The boy looked a lot like Jamie had in his childhood pictures I’d used as reference. The rest was their backyard on Mercer Island.
Mal sounded vulnerable as fuck when he asked, “Do you think he’ll like it?”
I crossed my arms and smiled. “Yeah. That boy will think you hung the moon even more than he already does.”
“Good.” He nodded absently, still fixated on the tattoo. Then he glanced at me. “I’m thinking it’ll make a good engagement present.”
I laughed, the happy sound bursting out of me in a way that made Sara materialize next to my elbow.
“What’s up, boss?”
“Mal’s gonna ask Jamie to marry him. That’s his engagement present.” I nodded at his back.
