Noah asked, “Do you want me to put it on you?”
Benji wanted that more than anything else in the world. He nodded, only his hazy head keeping him from seeming embarrassingly eager.
Noah picked up the collar and leaned in. The collar was cool and snug against Benji’s neck, with just enough give for Benji’s throat to bob against it.
Benji swallowed again, just to feel it. The pressure against his Adam’s apple made him even more lightheaded, his cock hardening between them.
Noah stroked his cheek. Benji thought he would say something, maybe ask how it felt. But he just sat there, stroking Benji’s face and staring at him like he’d never seen something so incredible.
Benji dragged in an unsteady breath. “H-how do I look?”
“Good,” Noah said. It sounded strained—the most strained Benji had ever heard him. His mouth opened again, hovering on the edge of speech.
“You look good,” he said again. “You look like…”
He trailed off. There was that unwavering certainty in his eyes that always made Benji feel safe. But there was something underneath it: fear. Like he knew how this was going to go, and he didn’t like the ending.
Then the fear was gone, and a fierce determination replaced it.
He dropped to his knees in front of the bed and gripped Benji’s knees. “Benji.”
Benji’s stomach dropped out, part excitement, part horrific fear. “Oh fuck.”
“I can’t hold it back,” Noah confessed. “I want you. I want you all the time, I want you forever. I don’t just want a collar you can take off. I want to know you’re mine.”
Benji shivered, hard and aching and wanting. “You just said this wasn’t a proposal!”
“I know what I said,” Noah said desperately. “I know I’m being selfish and intense and too much, butgod, Benji. I could make you so happy.Pleaselet me.”
He kissed Benji’s knee, his thigh, the crown of his hardening cock. For a heart-stopping second, Benji thought—hoped—he would tug him down by his collar. The pressure around his throat made him dizzier every second it was on, and it wasn’t even cutting off his airflow.
Then Noah reached up and hooked his finger through the heart-shaped loop, and Benji whimpered against his will.
“I could order you,” Noah rasped.
Benji swallowed again. His throat rode against the collar, and his cock jerked helplessly.
“Would you?” Benji whispered.
Noah shook his head. His eyes were huge and dark, and full of a sorrow that Benji never meant to put there.
“Only if you asked me to,” Noah admitted.
Benji almost did it. The words hovered on the tip of his tongue, huge and terrifying. It would be so easy to say yes and let the collar have a bright new meaning that Noah so badly wanted. Fuck, that Benji so badly wanted. He would be lying if he said he didn’t want to spend his life with Noah. But it wasn’t that he didn’t want to. It was that he didn’t believe the world would let him have something so good. He needed to protect himself against losing Noah, no matter how stubborn that new voice in the back of his head got when it told him to just let himself have something good, for once.
Sometimes it sounded like Daphne. Lately, it sounded like Noah.
But then the old instincts drowned it out, as always. It sounded thick and dry, and up until recently, Benji hadn’t heard it since his Aunt Nat’s wake.
Caulfields don’t get happy endings, hissed his father’s voice.Better to get out before it crushes you.
Benji stood, ignoring every stupid hopeful voice that told him to sit back down.
“I’m going for a walk,” he blurted before reaching to undo his collar.
CHAPTER 11
Benji had forgotten his shoes, but he couldn’t bring himself to care as he sped down the hall toward Daphne’s room.
