My denied dick spasmed between my legs, precum smearing across my stomach. “Right.”
“How do you stop this?”
“Red,” I rasped.
“Good.” He let his hand fall back toward my dick, his fingers encircling my shaft, and pulled down until it snapped back and slapped my stomach. “Let’s play, baby.”
CHAPTER 18
RIGGS
In my bathroom—in my arms—Smith closed his eyes. He took steady breaths, shifted his weight from one foot to another. How long had it been since I’d brought anyone home? I’d never…Ev had been the last, and that was so many years before I’d almost lost track of the days. Even though he’d never set foot in this apartment, it was as much his as it was mine. I’d built my home on the foundation of a safety net I’d never asked for and certainly never wanted. I would have taken his life over the money any day of the week, but that wasn’t an option for me now.
I wondered if he would have liked Smith.
If cosmically, somehow, he was up there, pulling strings to make sure that, even without him, I had the life I’d always wanted. Was Smith meant to be part of that? Certainly, in some way, that had to be true because there was no other explanation for how right his naked and trembling body felt against mine. No reason for him to be naked in my house for the second time in less than a week.
I stared at our reflections in the mirror, just me and Smith there in the dark. Ev wasn’t there, not even in the shadows. How long had he been gone for? I clenched my jaw and drew in adeep breath, and Smith followed suit. I slid my hand down to his chest, flattened it over his sternum and counted the beats of his heart. I’d done that to Ev more times than I could count and spent many sleepless nights wishing my palms hadn’t been so rough from years of art and tattooing because if my skin had been more delicate, more sensitive, maybe I would have felt the wrongness in his chest. The doctors promised me that wasn’t the case, and it took me a very long time to believe them. But again I found myself counting the beats of Smith’s heart against my hand, wondering if they were wrong.
“Thread your hands together behind your head and don’t move,” I whispered, kissing Smith’s temple before stepping away from him. I waited for him to move his hands up and tangle his fingers together, for him to get comfortable with the posture. It took no real time at all, and even though it pained me to leave him for even a moment, I slipped into the bedroom to search for some toys.
The light on the nightstand was on—always—and I let it guide me toward the closet, straight to the full-length mirror I kept tucked in the back. Another holdover from another life, familiar smells filtering into the room as I dragged it out and propped it up against the wall facing the bed. The small lamp gave off enough light so the bedroom was brighter than the bathroom, but I turned the fairy lights around the window on to give another glowing wash to the space. Next, I went under the bed for a long-ignored wooden box, fishing out things I hadn’t bothered with in years. I’d played, of course—the part of me that needed to pleasure and provide hadn’t died with Ev—but never here and not with my own toys.
I dropped a set of tweezer-shaped nipple clamps onto the bed, a cock ring, some small weights. Jesus, Smith would look like a dream trussed up and weighted down, his throat in a posture collar, stretched to the point of discomfort. I couldimagine the way his cock would leak when I wrapped the hard band of leather around his neck and a matching strip around the base of his shaft.
Smith was undoubtedly a masochist, but I didn’t want to go that hard with him the second time out of the gate. I absolutely wanted to give him all the things he craved in the bedroom but within reason, with moderation…and over time. I wanted this thing with Smith to last.
Fuck.
I traded the tweezer clamps for a pair of clover clamps and went back to get him out of the bathroom. True to my word, he hadn’t moved from where I’d left him, though his cock had probably gotten at least two inches longer.
“You good?” I asked, taking my hair down and quicky twisting it up again into a tighter knot at the back of my head.
“Yes, Sir,” Smith murmured, mouth barely moving and eyes hooded.
Shit.
Had he started to drop into subspace just by standing alone in the bathroom and waiting for me?
That was…being with a man like that…
It was beyond anything I’d imagined for myself.
Smith was a live wire, ready to submit and ready to fuck at a moment’s notice. Of course I worried the novelty of being with me would wear off for him eventually, but the risk—in that moment—felt worth it. A readiness in my bones to return to something I hadn’t allowed myself in years, because that was the way of it for dominant players too. I could play and be present, be as much myself as the situation allowed, but it was like a drip from a faucet. There was no pressure behind it.
“Come back into the bedroom, stand at the foot of the bed.”
He followed me back, stopping at my bed even as I continued around to the other side where I’d left the toys I wanted to use.Admittedly, the list of things I wanted to do with Smith was longer than a healing forearm tattoo would allow, especially if he wanted to explore pain play, but I was a creative man in my heart, and I was confident I could make do.
Lifting the nipple clamps in front of his face, I cocked my head to the side and asked him, “Do you know what these are?”
“Clamps,” he murmured.
“Where do they go?”
“Nipples.”
“Whose nipples?” I asked.
