“I trust you to take care of me, Sir.”
He draws my hand to his mouth and sucks on two digits, soothing himself while the tears dry on his cheeks. Leandro returns a little while later with food and water for us both and a cold compress to lay across Gio’s buttocks.
“How do you think that went, Silvio?” he asks while we snack on bread, cheese, and fruit from the platter Leandro provided. I’m still mostly reclined with Gio straddling my hips so that he doesn’t have to sit up. I feed him small bites of food and he licks my fingers after every serving, docile and content.
“It was intense,” I say. Neither good nor bad, it was simply a lot.
“Did you feel as though you were part of the scene?”
“Yes, I liked holding him. That made it better for me. I didn’t feel as helpless, as I have in the past.”
“I liked it too,” Gio says softly.
“Did it hurt?” Leandro asks Giovanni.
“Terribly.”
“In a good way?” he asks.
“It hurt in a necessary way. The pain purges my toxic thoughts and quiets the voices. Even without the sexual component, I find it very cathartic.”
“Maybe once you’ve healed, you’d like to try again with the whip,” Leandro suggests. It is something we’ve discussed already in private.
“If my Sir will allow it, but I want it like this,” he says to me. “I want you to hold me.”
“That can be arranged,” Leandro says to us both.
“What do you say to Leandro, Giovanni?” I ask.
He glances up at Leandro and says very sweetly, “Thank you, Leandro.”
“It was my pleasure.”
Giovanni drops his head back onto his chest, tugs at my shirt collar to nuzzle his nose against my chest hair, and purrs contentedly. I throw the blanket back over top of us while Leandro dims the lights and plays some soft music. Within minutes, Giovanni is out like a light.
I remain wakeful, vigilant. Despite my happiness for Giovanni and my gratitude toward Leandro, my thoughts are troubled. Even with training and guidance, this sort of treatment is not something I can provide—I know that with complete certainty now. The most I can do is be an active participant, which means that for as long as we are together—and I hope it is forever—we will have to rely on a sadist to fulfill Giovanni’s more masochistic desires. Not only that, but Giovanni’s arousal is mingled with pain. Mine is not.
I tell myself that this is yet another obstacle we will overcome, and it’s simply the way we are both built. Even still, I can’t help but compare myself with Leandro and Valentin, sadists whose desires are better suited to fulfill Giovanni’s needs. Rational or not, I can’t help but feel somehow deficient as a Dominant.
16
Giovanni has chosen to stay with me here among the living, a triumph in itself, and yet I sense with a mounting awareness, my brother’s eyes upon me. His presence haunts me from the dungeon to the bedroom, maddeningly silent, causing me to doubt myself without uttering a single word.
“How is your Master?” I ask Giovanni one sultry summer afternoon, after a rousing bout of bondage and sex. We are now lying spent on the dungeon bed. There is nowhere on his body my hands haven’t touched. Still, I crave him.
“He’s lonely,” Giovanni says.
This gives me pause, the idea that my brother might be suffering from beyond the veil.
“He told you that?” I ask.
“Not in so many words, but I can sense it. Sometimes, we communicate that way. Just feelings being projected back and forth. Like, imagine being cold and walking outdoors into the sunshine. The sun doesn’t have to say that it loves you because you feel it on your skin, warm in its embrace.”
It is not an embrace that I imagine when I sense my brother’s presence, but a cold, prickling disappointment. I will never be the Dominant he was. My desires will never complement Giovanni’s in the ways that his did.
“You said that he misses me,” I say.
“Master was always very private with his feelings, and he’d never admit it to me because he doesn’t want me to join him there. But he misses being here with us. I can sense his despondency too.” Giovanni motions to the dungeon, all of Valentin’s toys and trappings on display but unused, a sad tribute to the man himself. “He was never much of a voyeur before, but now that’s all he’s able to do. I feel guilty sometimes, about keeping him here, but I need him, and I think you do too.”
