Tamed

by T M Chris

  It wasn’t his job to figure out how Eduardo was supposed to control a man of his size. Eduardo would find out for himself that it wouldn’t work. So when Eduardo patted his thigh again, Jake clambered over it. His upper chest ended up over the arm of the couch, which was padded enough that it didn’t hurt, and his legs were supported by the couch itself. His ass laid neatly over Eduardo’s lap, and Eduardo shifted a thigh to prop it higher, making it a more obvious target. Eduardo’s dick, meaty and plump, but not hard, nestled into Jake’s stomach and Jake’s, which was likewise uncertain, butted up against Eduardo’s thigh.

  With the couch bearing most of his weight, the position was manageable if embarrassing. He hadn’t been over someone’s lap for a spanking since he’d been a much younger, leaner man, and the Marine in him screamed at him to get up off of there. Taking lashes while keeping to his feet—that was what a man did.

  “We’ll do these in sets of ten.” Eduardo’s hand rose, then dropped again with a sharp smack.

  Ouch. That’d been no warm up. Jake endured the next nine. Each one landed in a different spot, so that by the time the first set had ended, his entire ass felt sweetly warm. If he hadn’t been adding to his punishment since the moment he walked through the door, he’d be done now, and though he knew he was capable of taking a lot more, the thought of how he’d screwed himself—as usual—pissed him off enough that he brooded his way through the second set.

  The smacks were landing harder now, the leather adding to the sting as Eduardo thoroughly covered his ass for a second time, hitting flesh that was already sore. He launched into a third set without so much as asking for a color.

  Well, Jake hadn’t wanted to be asked, had he? But Eduardo didn’t know that, and it wasn’t right of him to carry merrily on without checking. Fuck that asshole. Eduardo thought he was so big because he had Jake ass-up over his lap, but they’d see about that.

  He started to kick, drumming his legs against the couch and squirming his hips away from the descending blows. When that didn’t provoke a response, he reached back and grabbed Eduardo’s wrist.

  Eduardo sighed. “You make me do so much math. Let’s see. That was seventy, minus twenty-four, plus ten equals…”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Plus another ten brings us to… sixty-six,” he concluded. “We’re going to be here all night at this rate. And that’s fine, big guy. That’s just fine. You do what you have to do. I won’t quit on you.”

  “You fucker.” Jake had had enough. He wrenched himself off of Eduardo’s lap, off the couch altogether. He loomed over Eduardo, making his body big and bulky. “I’m just supposed to let you pound on me all night?”

  “Seventy-six.”

  “Then you better fucking tie me up, because if you think I’m going to lie still and take it—”

  “You’re going to lie still and take it. Eighty-six.”

  The fucker. The absolute fucker. Sitting there all calm. Fucking counting. As if Eduardo could count high enough to scare him. He refused to be intimidated by a shitty Dom with a spanking fetish.

  Meanwhile Eduardo didn’t appear to be intimidated either, even though Jake was pacing back and forth in front of him, fists clenched, his face getting warm in that way that meant he was turning into a red version of the Hulk.

  “Earl, settle.” Eduardo’s command to the dog made Jake realize that Earl was concerned by his raging even if Eduardo wasn’t. Earl was up on all fours, ears perked high. A low growl rumbled from his throat, but at Eduardo’s command he lay back down, ears still on alert but obeying his master.

  God, Jake wished he could do that—that he could be good for his master. Lie still and take his punishment—punishment he deserved. He really did deserve every stroke of it. He’d been such an ass to Eduardo, asking for a firm hand and then rebelling when he got it. And now behaving like a wild thing, towering over him, naked and enraged. He was just—

  He was the worst.

  He plunked himself down on the far end of the couch and buried his face in his hands, not sure how to go on. Put on his clothes and leave? Chalk up another failed encounter?

  “Come here, big guy.” Eduardo gave his thigh a firm tap.

  Really? He could just go over there and start again?

  Slowly, waiting to be told no, he crawled back over Eduardo’s lap.

  “There we go.” Eduardo ran a hand down the length of his spine. “Eighty-six. I’d like it if you could try not to add more, so I’ll be counting any further resistance as both talking back and as unnecessary damage.”

  Really? Eduardo didn’t want to add any more, so he was going to add them twenty at a time? It would be funny if it weren’t hopeless. They’d never be through it. Jake would never be good. He didn’t even care about the physical pain. He just wanted to be good.

  The smacks started again, first a quick six to get up to a round number, then those sets of ten. A familiar pattern, rhythmic and certain. A brief pause during which Eduardo rubbed a gentle hand over his back, then another set. Jake’s mental struggle to not resist, not talk back, turned into a physical struggle as the pain mounted. This was genuine punishment now. It hurt.

  The pain burned white through his mind, rendering the angry tangle of his emotions into ash as it went. His body began to resist of its own accord, thrashing and jerking, trying to escape the inescapable next blow. There was panic—he was being bad. He was being bad, and he didn’t want to be bad. But he couldn’t keep still anymore. It hurt too much, was too relentless, too real.

  Eduardo finished another set. His hand brushed comfortingly over Jake’s back. “There, there. You’re doing so well now. Another thirty, and you’re through it. You can kick if you need to. As long as you’re not kicking me.” And he began again.

  Thirty. Another thirty. How was it even possible? He wanted to take them all—knew he deserved them all—but he couldn’t. His body gave way to tears. The frustration, the hopeless helplessness, the conflict—all of it came out in ugly, heaving sobs. Punishment would go on as long as it went on, as long as he deserved to have it go on. There was nothing he could do to stop it. All he could do was take it.

  “There.” Eduardo’s voice broke through the white noise of his own sobs. “All done, big guy. All forgiven. You want to come up here? Or would you rather stay like that a bit?”

  Jake cried harder. He was grateful the spanking had stopped, but he didn’t feel finished somehow.

  “Okay, that’s fine. You can think on it for a bit. Demonstrate proper remorse.”

  Remorse. That was it. He was remorseful. He’d made Eduardo spank him so hard, for so long. Eduardo’s hand must be exhausted. He’d taken the glove off, Jake could tell from the softer feeling as he rubbed and caressed the flesh he’d tortured. Jake liked the attention, liked that his shame was on display. He crossed his arms over the arm of the couch and pillowed his head on top of them, keeping his face turned from Eduardo to hide it.

  He was embarrassed now about the fuss he’d made—all that backtalking and kicking and the pitiful tears. But he also felt wrung out in a peaceful, contented way, like he could lie here the rest of his life knowing he’d taken his punishment. Eduardo let him stay there for a long time until he’d settled enough to be more embarrassed about enjoying lying there than he was about anything else.

  He pushed himself up to sit next to Eduardo on the couch, his ass a bruised and stinging mess beneath him. He scrabbled at his cheeks, trying to erase the tracks of his tears. Eduardo handed him a box of tissues and he blew his nose, then didn’t have anywhere to put the used tissue and fumbled with it until Eduardo took it from him and executed a perfect three point shot into a wastebasket in the corner.

  They smiled at each other over the beauty of that shot, then Eduardo patted him on the thigh.

  “I think that’s good for today. Tomorrow you’ll bring that form, and maybe there will be some tweaks, but you’ve got the general idea of what we’re going to do every night.”

/>   “You’re going to spank me?” Jake asked doubtfully.

  “I’m going to discipline you. We’ll go through your day—determine what mistakes you’ve made and how much punishment they warrant—and then I’ll administer it.”

  “So you’re running my whole life now?”

  “Someone has to do it.”

  “And that’s it? There’s no sex or… scene?” Jake hadn’t actually sprung a boner that whole time. And if Eduardo had gotten off on it, Jake hadn’t noticed. Eduardo had been like a loving but stern father—determined and calm, not horny or creepy.

  “Perhaps we’ll get there,” Eduardo said with a smile. “You’re too wild for more than a disciplinary relationship right now. Affection, trust—those things are earned. For now, let’s work on getting the rest of your life in order.”

  Eduardo made him sit at the kitchen table and drink a glass of juice while he wrote out his to-do list for the next day. First thing on it was making another stab at the kink list. Below that, Jake wrote down the tasks he knew he’d do—like exercise—and then, with more prompting from Eduardo, he added some things he ought to do—like the mindfulness exercises that helped with his impulse control problem and working on his job situation.

  Eduardo sent him home with a pat on his head and his to-do list in hand. His ass ached, but his knees ached worse, and he remembered Eduardo saying his punishments would be finite and purposeful compared to the pointless and more lingering pain Jake brought on himself.

  Tomorrow he’d do better.

  Chapter 3

  The day started off well. It started off so well, in fact, that it actually started the night before, with Jake sitting at his kitchen table, laboriously and neatly completing a fresh copy of the kink list. That was one item checked off already.

  He rose the next morning with an unusual sense of optimism. He was going to be super productive, very calm. There was a lingering ache in his ass and bad bruising around his knees. Asses were fleshy and made to recover. Knees were not. Also, asses were hidden. The guys at the gym were going to give him shit for having bruised knees, but fuck ‘em. He’d spin a story about a long blowjob on rough ground, and that would have them backing off quick enough.

  Besides, a little teasing was worth it in exchange for the settled feeling that a good scene brought on. He’d cried last night. Cried hard. He’d pleased his Dom, a rare enough occurrence, and had gotten a good night’s sleep, and now he was ready to tackle the world with a bounce in his step and a smile on his face.

  The guys at the gym did razz him about his knees, and also about his smile, but his smile only made the blowjob scenario all the more likely, and they were too hetero to handle listening to him brag about what they thought they could make fun of him for.

  Jake wished the bruises really were from going down on Eduardo. He hadn’t seen Eduardo’s cock, hadn’t even felt it fully hard yet, only some chubbiness that suggested Eduardo was into men or at least into dominating them. But Eduardo hadn’t made it sexual between them last night, and though Jake had appreciated that in the heat of punishment, he hoped things would go differently tonight if he didn’t give Eduardo any reason to punish him.

  But the day got away from him, his attitude slipping as people were their usual asshole selves. He hated his job doing “security” for a college campus, which mostly involved responding to complaints about students congregating where they weren’t supposed to and mediating low speed accidents in parking lots. Fill out this paperwork, show me your insurance card, how fast were you going when it happened?

  The job had nothing to do with what he’d learned in the Marines, which was cyber security, not parking lot security, but he hadn’t figured out how to turn his knowledge and experience into a civilian job yet, so he got hired for his size not his skills. Taking his resume to the VA center for some guidance was one of the items on his to-do list, but by the time lunch rolled around, the last thing he wanted to do was schlep over there and listen to a runty kid in a shirt and tie drone on about actionable bullet points or whatever-the-fuck, so instead he went to the pond and watched children feed ducks shit that ducks weren’t supposed to eat. The resume would wait until tomorrow. It’d waited this long.

  He ate a hotdog for lunch—definitely not on the diet plan—and then, getting anxious as his day kept sliding more and more off-kilter, had words with his boss when he got sent out on another noise disturbance call. He came within a few words of getting fired, and wouldn’t have cared if he did, before stomping off to do a half-assed job of clearing the quad. If the professors were so in love with the sound of their own fucking voices, they could close their fucking windows, but he got the frisbee-throwing kids relocated closer to the dorms and went back to the office to clock out.

  According to the list, he was supposed to do his grocery shopping now—pick up a healthy variety of ingredients to make meals for the week—but fuck if he was in the mood for fighting some mama with a brood of snot-nosed children over a box of cereal, so he swung through a drive-thru on his way home and ate french fries with one hand while flipping people off with the other.

  By the time he was on Eduardo’s doorstep, a sheaf of papers clutched in his hand, he knew he’d fucked up. The low-level voice that’d been telling him all day that he wanted to fuck up so he could get his ass beat good and proper had given way to a more anxious voice that wondered if Eduardo would take one look at his not-done to-do list and send him away.

  Why would Eduardo want a shitty sub like him? Why would anyone? He’d been given a few simple tasks, all of which were designed to help him, and he’d pretty much totally failed at them. And now he wouldn’t get to suck Eduardo’s cock. He should’ve been good. He should’ve. Why did he always have to ruin everything?

  Eduardo opened his front door just as Jake had about talked himself into turning around and leaving, and Jake handed him the papers, not caring whether Eduardo liked what was on them or not. He stood silent and sulky in the foyer until Eduardo whistled for Earl. He couldn’t be mad at Earl, so he bent down to give him a proper greeting, enjoying the warm solidness of his body. Earl seemed to be telling him that he’d been there too—that he knew how hard it was to be a good boy. He licked up over Jake’s face with a tongue wet enough to make him laugh.

  “That’s enough,” Eduardo said. “Go to your bed, Earl.”

  Jake straightened reluctantly as Earl trotted off in immediate compliance. Eduardo was glowering at him, so he stripped, making quick and tidy work of it. It was too late to bring a completed to-do list, but he could at least not antagonize his Dom further. When he got his pants off, Eduardo tsked at the sight of his knees.

  “I shouldn’t be indulgent, but you can remain on your feet today. We have enough to get through as it is.”

  Jake swallowed, his bravado gone. How many things had he left unchecked? Three? Would that mean thirty swats? That was nothing after yesterday. He just needed to remain calm and not add to the number—grit his teeth and let Eduardo do it.

  In Eduardo’s living room, he got into a familiar position—on his knees between Eduardo’s legs. Eduardo held him there for what felt like a long time, the scent of his groin rising into his nose, giving him a feeling of settled security. He’d been bad today. He’d been bad, but Eduardo hadn’t sent him away. Eduardo would make him better, and he’d be forgiven. Like yesterday.

  He took a deep inhale and pushed into the bulge in front of him. Eduardo’s hand was light on his scalp, scratching soothingly over his hairline.

  “You did a good job on the kink list,” Eduardo said. “I’m pleased with that.”

  Already Jake wanted to cry for the loss of what he could’ve had.

  “And I see you completed the tasks you said were easy for you to handle—a healthy breakfast, working out. But then we get to these other items. Tell me what happened there.”

  Jake told him. In too much detail. How there wasn’t any point in polishing his resume because no one was going to hire him anyway
, how feeling stuck in a job not worthy of his training had led to him having words with his boss, how that confrontation had made him too agitated to deal with a crowded grocery store, how the whole day had unwound before his eyes.

  “It started here, didn’t it?” Eduardo pointed to the spot on the to-do list where Jake should’ve done his mindfulness exercises.

  “I was running late. I meant to get to it later, but—‍”

  “Then it started here.” Eduardo put his finger all the way at the top of the list, before there was any writing at all. “Sounds like you need to wake up half an hour earlier to make sure there’s time for this. We’ll make a new list for tomorrow, and you’ll do better. For today, looks like you owe me…” Eduardo ran through the calculations in his head as he tugged on his glove “… forty.”

  “Forty?” Jake regretted the question almost as fast as he’d gotten it out. Watch it go up to fifty now. But Eduardo actually answered him.

  “Ten for each unfinished task, plus ten for talking back to your supervisor, though perhaps you deserve more than ten for that. Sounds like there were multiple instances.”

  Jake kept his mouth shut. There’d been a lot of instances. So forty it was. He crawled up onto the sofa, the position familiar now after the amount of time he’d spent in it yesterday. His ass smarted from yesterday’s spanking, but he could do this—could keep calm and get through it without adding to his punishment.

  The first set of ten was a warmup. Yesterday he’d thought it wasn’t, but that was because he hadn’t known how hard Eduardo could go or how much a hand spanking could hurt. The very first smack was a good reminder—awakening last night’s pain for a reprise—but it wasn’t until the second set that the wallops really got fierce.

  Jake tensed with the growing urge to revolt. Who did this? Lay like a child and allowed another man to hit him? Accepted the increasing sting of heat, listened to the slap of leather against flesh, and felt the reverberation echo through him? Who believed he deserved such a thing?