“Then stop thinking,” Troy said into the pillow, but his hips pushed back anyway, seeking more.
“Nah.” Rafael slowed his pace down to a long deliberate grind, his thumb stroking along the lace waistband like he was memorizing the texture of it. “You had these on all day. Out there with me, walking around the city, and you were wearing these the whole damn time and I didn't know.”
A pause. Troy's fingers tightened in the sheets.
“Yeah,” he said, quieter than the rest.
He'd been wearing them all day. Walking around Chicago with Rafael while wearing black lace under his jeans and Rafael hadn't known until now. The image of that was going to live in my head forever, was going to surface at the worst possible times, was going to haunt me.
“Fuck.” Rafael pulled out slowly and then pushed back in, deep and unhurried, and the sound Troy made was a long wavering thing that dissolved at the edges. “What else?”
“What?”
“What else do you like. Tell me.”
My hand was slick with pre-come. I hadn't touched myself in the last minute, had just stood there with my cock in my fist and let it leak while the scene through the door rearranged everything I thought I understood about Troy. I could feel the wet heat of it against my palm and I couldn't make myself care about that, couldn't make myself care about anything except what I was watching.
Troy turned his face sideways on the pillow so I could see his profile, his jaw tight, working up to admitting to what he wanted.
“I've got more,” he said finally. “Back in my bag.”
Rafael went still. “More what.”
“More of these. Different ones. And other stuff.”
The silence lasted two full seconds, and then Rafael made a sound that was low and involuntary and extremely honest. “You've been walking around this house for a week with a bag full of that shit and you didn't say anything.”
“Wasn't sure it would go anywhere.”
“Troy.” Rafael pulled out, and I watched him climb off the bed and cross to where a bag sat slumped against the wall. He crouched in front of it. “Can I?”
“Yeah. Side pocket.”
I watched Rafael unzip it, watched him go still for a moment when he looked inside. Then he reached in and came out with fabric I couldn't make out clearly in the low light, just the impression of dark material and thin straps and then a small coil of rope.
My breath stopped entirely.
“All of this?” Rafael said. His voice had changed register entirely, gone rough and wanting.
“You said tell you what I like.” Troy pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked back over his shoulder, and for a half second his eyes were almost pointed at the door. I stopped breathing. He looked back at Rafael. “So that's what I like.”
Rafael laid everything out on the edge of the nightstand and I could see it better now. Another pair of lace underwear, darker than the ones Troy was wearing. A thin strip of fabric that might have been a blindfold. And a short length of soft-looking rope that Rafael picked up and turned over in his hands with an expression of genuine reverence.
Troy wanted to be tied up. The knowledge settled into my bones and made a home there. My stepson wanted his hands bound while someone fucked him and he'd brought the rope with him because he'd been hoping for this.
“You want this?” Rafael asked.
“Only if you know what you're doing with it.”
“I know what I'm doing.” Rafael came back to the bed with the rope in one hand and he reached for Troy's wrists, and Troy let him, tipped forward onto his face with his arms extended and let Rafael cross his wrists and start winding the rope around them in a figure eight that he tied off with practiced efficiency. He pulled it taut once to test it and Troy made a sound that was almost a whimper, a sound I'd never heard him make before, the sound a man made when pressure hit exactly right.
I was leaking so steadily it was running down my knuckles. I could feel it, this slow warm slip of pre-come over my fingers, and my cock was so hard it ached all the way up to my stomach, and I wasn't stroking anymore, just holding myself, just trying to keep quiet while the thing through the door dismantled me.
My stepson. My stepson with his wrists tied and his face pressed into my pillow and those black lace panties still twisted to one side, the rope against his skin catching the gold of the lamp, and Rafael running both hands down his arms like he was appreciating the image he'd created.
I wanted to be the one who'd tied those knots. Wanted my hands on the rope, my fingers checking the tension, my voice asking if it was too tight. Wanted Troy offering his wrists to me with that expression on his face, that open wanting trust that he was giving Rafael instead.
“Perfect,” Rafael said. Just that word. Quiet and certain.
