by Lilia Moon
Something raps sharply against my thigh. I jump and look down, but it isn’t her crop that’s hit me. I look back up and give her a scowl that’s probably going to get me in deep trouble. “That’s my drumstick.”
She merely raises an eyebrow, but it says everything she needs to say.
Shit. I manage to get a grip on the rest of what I want to say, but it’s hard to let go. My drumsticks are like a limb, an extension of who I am, and using them this way feels like an invasion. I promised her me. I didn’t promise her my drumsticks.
It takes another ragged breath before the rest sinks in. The focus in her eyes. The hand on my chest. The fact that the drumstick hasn’t so much as quivered again in her hand.
She’s holding the scene together with nothing but quiet power—and she’s waiting.
I have no idea for what, though. I might be a baby Dom and an even greener sub, but it’s not up to me to give permission.
And then it hits me. Why she’s using them. My drumsticks are a part of me—and a part of the one place where I know, absolutely, how to surrender.
She’s trying to help.
Chapter Fifty
Ari
Fuck. That was a close call, and everyone in this dungeon knows it except for maybe Jackson. Until I saw the look on his face, I had no freaking idea just how much his drumsticks mean to him. Pushing edges as hard as I do sometimes means you step over them, but I wasn’t trying to push, and it’s only his generosity that has gotten us back on the right side of the line.
I let out a breath I hope he can’t hear and tilt my head in a barely perceptible nod. We’ll talk about consent later and how badly I screwed up, but his generosity deserves a reward, and I want so very badly to be the person who hands it to him. Because however badly I stumbled on the way in this particular door, he gets why I chose it now. I’ve seen him play his drums, and wherever it is that musicians go isn’t all that far from subspace.
I keep my hand on his chest, as anchor and apology both, and run the shaft of the drumstick lightly up the side of his ribs. Then I rap it on his sternum, just to amuse us both.
His lips quirk, but other than that, he’s managed to get himself back into very presentable sub demeanor. I tap the drumstick gently, straight down the line of his belly and onto the base of his very interested cock. I wrap my other hand around his cock and give a good, strong squeeze.
His breath huffs out, and he hardens more in my hand.
Today’s demo was supposed to be about teaching a sub erection control, but I can’t think of a single reason why I want to do that. Not with this man. There are other ways to make his pleasure entirely up to me, and I’ve always been a better tease than a disciplinarian.
I play with him a little, alternating fisting with fun little taps with his drumstick. It’s not a bad impact toy, although it has absolutely no bend, which I need to remember when things start moving faster. His eyes are down on his cock, which I can’t blame him for—it’s a pretty picture. And one I’m going to take away from him soon enough.
I work until he’s aroused enough that I can feel the throbbing when I wrap my fingers around his cock and his breath is starting to come fast and shallow. Then I trace the drumstick up his body, moving slowly. Pulling his attention to a single focus point. He’s so visual, and I could work with that, but I’m curious about what lies underneath.
The drumstick glides, outlining his collarbone, up the side of his neck, stopping by his temple. “Close your eyes, gorgeous.”
He stares at me, and it’s one of those looks where I know he hasn’t quite processed the words yet. When he does, his eyes glide easily closed.
I watch a few seconds longer, but he’s solid. A man who knows how to be in the dark. “I will permit you a choice. You can keep your eyes closed for me, or I can use a blindfold.”
He’s still a moment, and then he nods. “I’ll keep them closed. Thank you.”
I wait a moment, but he doesn’t add a title. Which is when I know just how closely he’s watched me all these months. Most subs use a title, and it’s not something I correct in a casual scene—but it’s not something I appreciate or seek either. This isn’t Dom ego or beginner forgetfulness. He knows.
No titles, because in the end, I’m not two things, I’m one.
I let the glow of that warm my insides. He sees me, and I channel that, because it’s exactly the gift I want to give him. I brush my fingertips over his face, over his closed eyelids. Then I start a slow, stately walk around him. I don’t touch him at first. I want him to tune in to his other senses. The sound of my footsteps. The changes in the air currents as I move around him. The beautiful energy that connects Domme and sub when they’re doing it right, and we are.
He quiets his movement, his breath, his thoughts. Even his cock softens some. Not from a lack of desire. From attention. His whole focus is on me, and in this moment, kink isn’t sexual. It’s two souls entirely attuned to each other.
Chapter Fifty-One
Jackson
She’s everywhere. I can hear her breathing like it’s right next to my ear, but her footsteps are behind me. Something swishes through the air, and I wait for drumstick or crop to land, but nothing does. Just sounds.
She hums, and it’s a sound I know. She makes it when something feels good. My cock lights up. He knows what that means. We’re pleasing Ari.
My head wouldn’t have understood six months ago, but I’ve been a Dom long enough to get it. Sometimes the pleasure isn’t from doing or being done to, it’s just from being. From inhaling the electric tug of power and knowing it exists because two people have agreed that it should.
I’ve never been on this end of the tug—but I can feel it. And I can feel how different it is for her. She chooses to be a sub, but however much fun she has along the way, surrender pushes on her. This version of Ari is light. Easy. Her footsteps aren’t a march. They’re what happens right before lightning dances.
I wait. If she wants to dance in a storm, I’m her guy.
I feel a change in the electricity just before the drumstick lands again, this time right between my shoulder blades. Then her fingers, brushing over my ass. The storm starts off slowly, as she keeps moving in her stately spiral around me, dropping random touches and blows, some hard enough to sting, some so ephemeral I barely feel them.
A sharp crack on my ass, and I hear the murmured approval in the room. I let it wash over me. I never expected to be on this end of a spanking, but I can deal.
Except that’s not where Mistress A is taking this. She’s still moving, and the touches are getting more intimate. A drumstick rolling up my inner thighs. A fingernail across my nipple. A kiss on my ribs. A rapid series of taps on the underside of my cock, which somehow doesn’t discourage him any. A sound I don’t recognize and then a cool slide of lube down my ass crack.
She doesn’t stay with any of them long enough for me to do more than react, and eventually I stop doing that too. I stop moving. Stop trying to guess where she’s coming in next. Stop trying to find the beat in a dance that doesn’t have one. I just wait.
A soft, pleased hum again, and strong fingers wrap around my cock, rewarding him with quick, well-lubed tugs. A groan leaks out of me, and the need in my belly flames.
Two more quick strokes and she’s gone again.
My cock weeps. He’s just beginning to figure out just how much this could suck. The rest of me can’t stay focused on that thought. I’m too busy following her touch.
Her hands are landing harder now and so is the drumstick. Heating up my skin. Reminding me of nights around an African fire. It’s primal and it’s raw and all the veneers of Jackson who functions in the day-to-day of modern, multitasking Seattle are cracking off and falling away under the beat of her hands.
She lands a stinging swat to the side of my cock a fraction off-beat, and the hitch in the rhythm hurts far more than the hot prickles on my skin. It’s not an accident. She knows exactly how much rhythm matters to
me and she’s messing with it with deliberate, impressive precision. Something so very damn close—but not quite.
Another swat, this time straight up under my balls, and another hitch in the beat.
I can hear the frustration in my groan. She’s got an evil sense of timing. If she ever lets me out of these cuffs, she’s getting a hand-drumming lesson. She’ll be wicked good at it.
I don’t know if my groan is the trigger, but she lets loose a wild storm of blows and taps on my back, my ass, my hamstrings. If I didn’t know her integrity, I’d swear she had help. It feels like a lot more than two hands working me over, pushing me into the center of the storm, raining their fury down on my wide-awake skin.
My cock leaps every time she moves, breaths, hums, beats. Begging to be hit by lightning.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Ari
I planned this as warm-up. A little sensory play to get him focused on me before we headed in to the real deal. Except my guy surprised me, and he’s made this real. The signs are all there. Absolute focus, utter presence, every inch of him ready to surrender on my command.
He’s making this easy.
As someone who’s stood on the edge of that precipice more times than I can count and struggled to go over every damn time, I’m in awe. He’s not struggling, he’s not demanding that I finish this, he’s not resisting anything other than the occasional mess I make of what he considers to be an acceptable beat.
His Dom surrendered the moment he volunteered. The man has joined him. All that’s left resisting is the drummer, and I don’t need his submission.
I even up the beat and stop tormenting him. It’s time to finish this.
I move in front of him. There are a lot of directions I could take this and it’s not ego to say I can make all of them work, but this isn’t about my Domme skills or even about his submission anymore.
It’s come full circle. This is about us.
I lean in and put my hands on his chest. “Open your eyes, Jackson.” I use his name—I’m pretty sure it’s going to take that much to pull him out of where he’s gone.
His eyes slide open, and the haze in them is beautiful.
I move one hand up to his cheek and wrap the other around his cock.
His gaze sharpens, but he doesn’t move. This isn’t the obedience of someone who craves submission. It’s a choice. A gift. He’s going to let me take this right to the end.
A couple of twisting strokes to his cock and he’s right there, ready and entirely willing and aware and needy as fuck. I smile and give him a look he should recognize. Mistress A and my brat are two sides of a very skinny coin.
I can see the answer in his eyes. He knows I could hold him here. He’s willing.
Which is when I feel it flip inside me. The switch that lives inside all of us who play both ends of the power game. I let it happen, even though by rights it should be scene suicide. His eyes and my insides say we can do this. That we need to do this.
Slowly, I sink down into a crouch, never taking my eyes off his. I kneel down at his feet and open my hands, palms in front of his cock, ready to catch. And smile. “Now, sexy man. Come for me now.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Jackson
She’s not even touching me.
That’s all I have time to think before the lightning of release shoots down my spine and rolls thunder out my balls. I’m tied to the ceiling and coming all over Ari’s outstretched hands and it’s the most surreal moment of my life—and one of the most real. She might be down on her knees in front of me, but her eyes are still holding us with that amazing power of hers that’s not just about dominance but something absolutely essential to the core of who she is.
She climbs to her feet as my body shakes with the storm that isn’t yet entirely done and leans her head into my shoulder. I ache to hold her, but the ceiling somehow still has possession of my arms. I lay my head down on the top of hers and breathe. Just breathe. We’re almost done with the thunder and lightning, but I know what comes after that.
The glorious smell of the earth just after it rains.
I listen to the ragged sounds of my breath as she wipes us both down with a warm, wet towel that materialized from somewhere, and feel into the newness. Into what we’ve just become in her hands, in her care, in her consummate skill.
I’ve been railing against the label of baby Dom. Now I get it. If she’s my standard, I might be wearing that label for the rest of my life.
I feel movement behind me, and I resist. This is our space. I’m not ready for anyone else.
“Ssh.” She wraps her arms around my waist and holds on. “It’s Quint. He’s just going to unhook your arms.”
It’s quick. Milo’s magnets release in an instant, and I’ve never really understood before just how profoundly awesome that is. Two strong hands guide my arms down to my sides, and then nobody is in our bubble anymore. I try to flop my spaghetti limbs in a way that might wrap around Ari, and fail utterly.
She chuckles and kisses my chest. “Can you walk? There’s a couch in the corner just behind you.”
I’m not sure I can walk, but the alternative is slumping into a puddle where I stand, so I try. My arms feel strange and long, like my knuckles should be dragging on the ground. Ari doesn’t let go of my waist as we shuffle over to a couch that someone’s thoughtfully draped with one of the cozy aftercare blankets Fettered stocks by the crate. My bare ass is grateful. If I stick to the leather, I might never get back up.
Ari fusses for a bit, getting me comfortable, fetching a stool for my long legs that don’t fit on the couch, tucking a pillow behind my head. I let her. My gorilla arms haven’t figured out how to function yet, and there’s something going on with her that I don’t quite understand. I can’t see it—she looks like a veteran Domme taking care of her sub. But I can feel it.
She sits on the couch beside me and touches my cheek. “Is it okay if I straddle your legs?”
I nod. My words haven’t really figured out how to work yet either.
She lifts and settles in a way that I hadn’t imagined latex pants could stretch and cuddles into my chest. She doesn’t stay, though. She sits right back up, opens a bottle of arnica gel, and starts massaging one of my arms. It’s not gentle—a few brisk rubs up and down and then her thumbs poke right into the gorilla and tell him to get lost.
I squirm a little, because I checked my Dom card at the door tonight. “Scene’s over, beautiful. You can stop torturing me now.”
She chuckles. “This is help, I promise. Trust someone who’s been tied to a lot of hooks.”
I wince again. “I didn’t rub your arms enough, did I?”
She shakes her head and kisses my cheek. “You did fine. I know how to work with the restraints. You don’t, although you’re going to be a lot less sore than most because you didn’t fight them.”
The words sound like standard, friendly, analytical Ari, but I hear something else in them. Something that makes me squirm and expand all at the same time.
Pride.
I clear my throat and wait for her to look at me. “You were amazing.” Those are weak words for what I mean to say, but the gorilla has only moved far enough to take a seat on my brain.
She smiles at me and closes her eyes for a moment, just breathing. When she opens them again, my soft Ari is back. She cups my face and kisses me very gently. “Thank you.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
Ari
I hear the rumble beside us before I see the bottle of electrolyte drink. The list of people who would dare to interrupt me in aftercare is really short, and this one has hairy knuckles.
Quint puts a hand on my shoulder and hands me a bottle too. “He’s crashing and you’re close. Don’t be idiots.”
I wince and Jackson growls.
I stare at him, because nobody growls at Quint, especially when they’re naked and very recently tied up.
Quint just chuckles, unscrews the lid on my bottle, and walks away.<
br />
Jackson picks up the arm I was almost done rubbing down and pulls me in closer to his chest. “I’m fine, and nobody gets to give you shit for what just happened between us.”
I take a long swig of electrolytes. “Even when he’s right?”
“Yes.” Jackson tips back his bottle and drinks long and deep. Then he looks at me. “Have we reached the part of this yet where you get to curl up in my lap and I can just hold you for a while?”
My Dom is back. “I was thinking of something more along the lines of your head in my lap so that I can play with your curls.” And so that he can get some blood back in his head, but I don’t say that part.
He smiles into my hair. “That sounds nice. Save it for later? I’ll put on a fire.”
A pillow nest in front of his fireplace is one of my favorite places and he knows it. I tuck in a little closer. Clearly he can get his blood to wherever he needs it to be. “Do you want your pants?”
I can hear his eyebrows going up. And his honest confusion. “Why?”
Some day I’m going to stop assuming this man is like any other Dom I know. “Because people are probably going to come over soon and want to talk to us, and I thought you might want to be less naked.”
He snorts. “Are these the same people who just saw you turn me into a very naked human drum?”
That’s a really sweet description of a surprisingly intense scene—and he’s not wrong. About becoming my drum or about how much anyone else is going to care what he’s wearing. “Yes. Those people.”
He shakes off the rest of my half-assed massage and wraps both arms around me. “They need to stay away for a while. I’m not done sinking into what just happened yet.”
That makes two of us. “You surrender better than I do.”
I feel the smile into my hair. “Just more easily. We get to the same place.”
We do, and that matters too. I go hard into that particular dark night, but when I get there, I go deep. He sailed in light as a feather, but it didn’t dampen the depth of his journey any.