He made a surprisingly dismissive sound in the back of his throat, like trying new things of his own interests was a novel concept for him. I did remember some of the things we’d talked about while he was in the chair getting tattooed, and I wondered if for him that maybe it was.
“Have you at least been with a man before?” I asked.
“Yes. Kind of.”
“You’ll need to elaborate on that.”
God, I hoped he didn’t tell me I was the first. I didn’t think my heart could take it.
“I’ve been with a man before once,” he said, and I tried to not sway on my feet at the honesty. “He was, heis, a friend of mine. I had too much to drink one night, and we fooled around.”
“Did he take advantage of you?”
Smith’s head jerked up, his eyes wide and worried. “What? No! Absolutely not, it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t drunk, justbuzzed, and he let me top him because I wanted to see if I liked it.”
My mouth went impossibly dry. “And did you?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you bottomed? Sucked cock? Had yours sucked?”
His cheeks turned the most perfect shade of pink, and he shook his head.
“Was I the first man to jerk you off?” I asked.
“Yeah. Yes.”
“Did I do anything you didn’t like?”
His mouth pulled into a tight line, and he leveled a serious look up at me. “Yeah,” he answered. “You stopped.”
I chuckled, shaking my head. “I stopped because you finished.”
“I was nowhere near done.”
There was the level set of his shoulders again, the thoughtful confidence. It was like Smith was on a dimmer switch and someone—maybe him, maybe me—kept adjusting it and turning his submission on and off. He absolutely felt better about himself when he was leaning into that instead of running away from it, but getting him there and keeping him there was something else altogether. That was something meant for relationships, which he and I would never have.
“Okay,” I conceded, rubbing my hands together. “Tell me what you want then.”
“I want to fuck.”
The bluntness of it all had me huffing out a breath that sounded a lot like a laugh. I tried to stifle it as to not hurt his feelings, but that was a completely different conversation for a different night entirely.
“We aren’t fucking,” I told him. “But I brought you here with the intent to get you off, and I’ll make good on that.”
“Okay,” he whispered.
“Do you want to submit, Smith?” I asked, taking another step toward my bedroom.
He followed after me, chest first, like there was some sort of tether between us. “I think so.”
“Do you understand what that means?”
“Not entirely.”
“It doesn’t mean you shut up and do what you’re told,” I said, corner of my mouth twitching. “Well, it can, but…in this case, with us, here, tonight, it means you give yourself to me and trust me with your pleasure. You yield to me because you believe I know how to make you feel good and I know how to do that while keeping you safe.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out, and we both took another step toward my room.
