The sound of my name jerked me back to the conversation. “Sorry, what?”
Mariah and Tea laughed. “I was just saying,” Tea said, “that River is far too busy daydreaming about his new flame to give me any triathlon training advice.”
“You’re doing a triathlon?” I stared blankly at them for a second before shaking my head with a groan. “God, I’m sorry—I was miles away. What did you want to know? I mean, I only did it once and it was like ten years ago, but…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Tea said, patting me on the calf. “Would you like to gossip about boys instead? I’ve never met this guy, but I can make something up.”
“Maybe,” I said weakly. Before I could say anything else, the doorbell rang.
“Food’s here—hold that thought.” They gently removed my legs from their lap and hopped up to get the door.
Mariah toyed with a lock of my hair as she looked down at me with an amused smile. “You’ve really got it bad, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what I’ve got,” I said with a sigh. “I mean, we’ve had one date and like three conversations. Why am I so obsessed with this guy?” I chewed on my lip for a moment, frowning. “You don’t think this is that ‘sub rage’ thing you were telling me about, do you?”
“Sub frenzy,” she corrected, flicking my nose gently. “I don’t know, maybe a little. But it could just be that you’ve met someone you click with. It could be that after a long, drawn-out, and emotionally unfulfilling relationship, and several months of hookups and lackluster dates, you’re finally getting to enjoy the excitement of seeing someone genuinely awesome.”
“So you don’t think I’m getting too attached?”
Mariah shrugged. “Who knows? Have you been practicing writing your names with the same last name?”
“Not yet. Ask me next week.”
“Look, you know my relationship history—I’d be a huge hypocrite if I gave you a stern warning about caution. But as long as you’re approaching it with some self-awareness—as long as you know there’s a possibility you’re too attached—I don’t see any reason you can’t just sit back and enjoy the ride. Getting involved with new people is fun. Don’t let fears about sub frenzy stop you from reveling in it a little.”
Tea set the bags of food on the coffee table. “What’s sub frenzy? Sounds like a really niche horror movie—Sub Frenzy: When Submissives Attack.”
“Sub frenzy is something that happens to a lot of new submissives.” Mariah paused to spear a shrimp with her chopsticks and pop it into her mouth. “It’s like…there’s this thing you’ve wanted for ages but haven’t been able to put your finger on, and then all of a sudden—hey, there it is! It’s right in front of you, and you just want more of it, as quickly as possible, and as often as possible. It’s almost like a drug, really. Submission makes all these happy brain chemical things happen, and you’ll do anything to get another fix.”
“I can’t tell if you’re trying to recruit me or warn me away,” Tea said.
“Take your pick. Heroin might be cheaper, depending on what kind of toys you’re into.”
“Have I ever mentioned how much I value your life advice?”
“Anyway, sub frenzy can be dangerous if you get carried away. You can throw yourself into unsafe situations, or settle for any old jackass who calls themself a Dom, just hoping to capture that euphoric feeling again. And yeah, you can get too attached to someone just because they can dom you well and deliver those endorphins. But you may have noticed I have a pretty high opinion of Ellison, so you’re not exactly in any danger, and honestly? River Burke getting overly excited about a new guy is an entirely different phenomenon—one I like to call ‘River being River.’”
“It can be fun to get caught up in that new-shiny feeling of dating a new person,” Tea said, patting me on the knee. “Enjoy it, and let me live vicariously through your success, because god knows my luck has been terrible lately.”
Mariah gasped. “Wait, didn’t you have coffee with that sexy yoga instructor? What went wrong? You can’t hold out on me, Tea.”
“I’ll tell you, but it’ll cost you at least 20 minutes of foot rubbing,” Tea said, narrowing their eyes at Mariah over pointed chopsticks.
“Deal. River can do it—I’ll just tell him he agreed the next time he zones out thinking about Ellison.”
“I heard that,” I muttered.
“Eat your soup, baby,” she said, patting me on the back. As I took another sip, she turned to Tea with a grin. “Now, about that sexy yoga instructor…”
8
Texting with Ellison was just like going on a date with Ellison: equal parts arousal, confusion, and annoyance. His invasive questions extended to text-based communication, so carrying on a conversation with him usually led to me being forced to examine my own feelings about something I’d have much rather kept buried in denial.
I kept see-sawing between being mostly convinced he was interested in me, and being absolutely sure he was just humoring me out of pity, based on the content and timing of his messages. One text from him could make or break my day.
I could have just stopped talking to him, but come on—like that was going to happen.
> ELLISON: Why did you enjoy following my orders so much?
> RIVER: Because I have a strong drive to please people. I’m happiest when I’m making someone else happy.
> ELLISON: Why do you think that is?
> RIVER: Crippling self-esteem issues? A shaky sense of identity? Too lazy to decide what I want for myself? Take your pick.
Whenever I tried to make the conversations a little less one-sided and get information out of him, his responses were usually terse and uninformative. It started to occur to me that I might be expecting something completely different out of this arrangement than he was. I knew some people in the scene kept their kinky activities separate from their dating—they’d go out occasionally to whip or be whipped, but apart from that they wouldn’t spend much time with, or even thinking about, their Doms or subs outside the context of a scene.
Maybe Ellison was one of those people. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask, though, because then he might turn it around on me and ask if I was one of those people. And of course I had no clue—another running theme in conversations with Ellison.
So I just kept sending the occasional text, and spent all day glued to the phone and anxiously awaiting his reply. It’d be a lie to say I’d never been this pathetically obsessed before, but it had been a long time. I’d mostly grown out of endlessly agonizing over whether my crush really liked me.
But then sometimes a reply would come in that sucked the air from my lungs and set my cheeks ablaze.
> ELLISON: Thinking about you on your knees makes my cock hard.
That one was pretty unambiguous. What did he look like right then, hard and straining and stroking himself, thinking about what he’d done to me and what he wanted to do to me again?
The next time I saw him, it was at his house. From the outside the place seemed cozy and unassuming, but I rang the doorbell with my heart pounding in my ears, half of me wanting to flee in pure terror. The other half was mostly convinced that tonight was going to be a disappointment, because how could this evening possibly measure up to the two weeks of buildup and filthy daydreams of his cock in my mouth and his hand in my hair?
I wasn’t sure what he had planned for tonight. Would he take me out somewhere and tease me like he had last time, or would he throw me to the floor and have his way with me, fueled by two weeks of erotically-charged texting?
As it turned out, it was neither of those things. He answered the door, dressed as smartly as always, and gave me an unexpectedly warm smile as he stepped aside to let me in. “It’s wonderful to see you again.”
“Yeah, um…you too.” Conversation had suddenly become a lost art, its mysteries vanished in the sands of time. “The sands of time” of course being a euphemism for Ellison’s face, and my obsession with said face.
<
br /> “Sit,” he said, pointing me toward a wide, plush couch with diamond-textured upholstery that made me want to drag my fingers over it endlessly just to feel the ridges—although that was probably more about distracting myself than any actual obsession with the couch. “Would you like a drink?”
“W—water would be nice,” I said, swallowing to wet my throat. Somehow I suspected water wasn’t going to help much, when the authority in a single word out of his mouth could apparently turn me into goo.
He disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me to look around his living room and quietly panic. The whole room just oozed restful comfort, full of furnishings in dark wood and jewel-toned fabrics. Even the paintings on the walls looked warm and soft enough to wrap myself up in like blankets. It all seemed strangely incongruous with Ellison’s detached, clinical demeanor.
Ellison returned and handed me a glass of water before sitting beside me on the couch. His movements were as smooth and confident as always, no bit of him unsteady or out of place. By contrast, I took a single gulp of my water and immediately choked on it, sending myself into a coughing fit that left tears streaming down my cheeks. “Sorry,” I gasped. “Apparently I’ve forgotten how to drink.”
“No need to apologize.”
“Right. Yeah. Thanks.” I set the glass back down, which was a mistake—now I had nothing to fiddle anxiously with. I busied myself with picking at a loose thread on my jeans, which did nothing to fill the silence, but it was easier than making contact with those piercing eyes…and besides, I’d forgotten every single word in the English language, so there was no point in talking anyway.
“You look nervous.” Ellison’s voice was light yet restrained, like he was fighting to hold back a grin.
“Probably because I am,” I said with a harsh laugh.
“Why are you nervous?”
“Partly because I knew that any second now you were going to start asking me questions I had to answer.” I finally looked up and gave him a little bit of a glare, but my heart wasn’t really in it. “Partly because I don’t have any idea what to expect right now.”
“Does it make you uneasy, not knowing what to expect?”
“You have no idea,” I said darkly.
Ellison chuckled. “I’m starting to get a picture of it. Any other reasons you’re nervous?”
“Because I’m a little worried you’re going to want to do embarrassing things to me in public again.”
“Were you embarrassed last time?”
“You could say that. Or you could say mortified. Dying of humiliation. There’s options.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“The embarrassment? Not really. I enjoyed…the other stuff, though.”
“Good.” He leaned back on the couch, and when he spoke again, his voice had a hard edge to it. “Stand up.”
The order was like a punch to the chest; my stomach dropped, and my whole body felt tight and hot. Ellison raised his eyebrows a fraction of an inch, and my body jerked into attentiveness. I pushed myself to my feet and faced him, my breath already starting to shake.
He spread his legs wide and pointed at the space between them. “Stand here.”
I picked my way over to the spot like I was navigating a mine field. To be fair, I hadn’t seen any solid proof that the floor wasn’t going to explode.
“Closer.” He beckoned me, and kept beckoning as I shuffled forward until my shins were pressed against the couch. My skin itched under the heat of his gaze, and I wondered if this was all wrong, if I should be on a higher level than him. Shouldn’t he be towering over me, ready to dispense punishment if I transgressed?
“Turn around,” he said in that maddeningly calm voice. “Hands on top of your head.”
I raised my arms and slowly turned myself until all I could see was his wall and the way my shadow stretched across it, and for a long time I just…stood there. I had no idea what he was doing behind me. Did he like what he saw? Was this just as weird to him as it was to me? Was he just killing time? My shoulders were already starting to ache, and I tried to shrug the tightness out of them. Hopefully that wasn’t against the rules.
My body tingled with a strange sort of arousal that didn’t quite reach my cock. He hadn’t even touched me yet, but my nerves were firing all over, giving me a prickling awareness of every inch of my skin and every muscle that twitched and pulled as I stood for his inspection. How could a handful of words have this much of an effect on me?
“Face me again,” Ellison said, and I did. His lips curled in a slow, careful smile. “Strip.”
With trembling fingers, I started in on my buttons. I made it all the way to the last one before it occurred to me that maybe I should be making it more sexy, more striptease than “hurry up, someone’s waiting for the dressing room.” I tried to shrug the shirt off with a flirty roll of my shoulders, but my body was too tight with nerves and it came off jerkier than I wanted. Which of course only made my fingers tremble more, so when I got to my belt, I fumbled it twice before I managed to get the buckle undone.
“Why are you so anxious?”
I could have rolled my eyes. I could have told him that being forced to get naked in front of someone was the stuff of most people’s nightmares and he should damn well know that. I could have thrown my hands in the air, snapped, “Why do you think I’m anxious?” and grabbed my shirt and left.
Instead, what came out was, “I’m not sure I’m doing this right.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. If there’s anything I want you to do differently, I’ll correct you. Your only job here is to do as I say.”
That really shouldn’t have worked, but somehow…it did. The unwavering confidence in his voice spread over me, inspiring a flicker of something like it in me. I didn’t have to anticipate his desires or guess at his true meanings—if he wanted a striptease, he’d demand a striptease. The decision was out of my hands.
Abandoning any pretense of grace, I shoved the rest of my clothes off. I staggered a little while I was tugging my socks off, and my hand shot instinctively to his knee to steady myself. Something about it felt off—he’d always been the one touching me, not the other way around. With a pang of regret, I pulled my hand back. He had a nice body; I’d have like to spend a while touching it.
I kind of wished we’d spent a while kissing before all this. The kissing had been nice.
“Kneel.”
My cock twitched at the firm authority in his voice, and I lowered myself to the floor without a shred of hesitation. His carpet was thick and plush, surprisingly comfortable under my knees. Once again I was left with the question: head down or up? The only other Dom I had experience with wanted it down, but then again, it was becoming abundantly clear to me that Ellison wasn’t like Brandon.
I went with down anyway, reminding myself that if it wasn’t right, Ellison would correct me. Maybe he’d be gentle about it, with a soft word or a finger under my chin, or maybe he’d be a little firmer, with the palm of his hand across my face. A tremor rippled up my spine, and I fought to stay still as Ellison stood and circled around behind me.
Seconds ticked by; what was he doing back there? I focused as hard as I could on the geometric texture of the couch’s upholstery, but only my eyes were sticking to the task. My brain was somewhere else—somewhere Ellison’s hand held endless promises for me.
“What was your favorite thing about what we did last time?” His voice didn’t so much break the silence as slip into it, the air in the room making way for his words.
The memories rattled in my head, clear as day but jumbled together. I’d spent the last two weeks reliving them in excruciating detail just about every night, but the order of them, their position in time and space, was lost.
The easy answer would have been “when you made me come.” It’s kind of hard to top an orgasm, especially one that comes after the kind of teasing and buildup he’d put me through. It had been explosive—a literal “my knees went weak” sort of
experience—but when I thought about that night, it wasn’t the first thing that came to mind. It wasn’t what I’d thought about most when I took myself into my own hand.
“I liked, um…” My own answer terrified me, but it was hopeless to think I could deny him. “I liked when you…slapped me.”
“Oh? I’m surprised.” He didn’t sound surprised. Mildly curious, maybe, but there was a sureness there, like he’d known exactly what was on my mind. “You told me you don’t like pain. What was it about being slapped that you liked so much?”
My eyes fluttered shut, my chest tight as I was flayed open by his words, by his scalpel-sharp questions and his relentless pursuit of truth. He was putting everything inside me on display, and I couldn’t help but let him.
“It was…I liked that you were punishing me, I think. I was so anxious about everything, and it was a relief, in a way. Like even though I’d done something wrong, I’d paid for it, and it was okay.”
“Interesting.” He moved closer to me, so close I could feel the heat of his body at my back. His hand slid into my hair and curled into a loose fist, tugging gently on the strands. My cock throbbed, jutting out from my body at an absurd angle, and I realized distantly that it wasn’t because of the pain, but because he was finally touching me.
Sheesh, did I even want to know what that said about me?
“You don’t like uncertainty,” he said, and I gasped as he pulled my head back, leaving me wide-eyed and staring at his crown molding. “You want to know what’s going to happen to you, and you want to know when you’ve made mistakes.”
“Yes,” I said. His hand tightened in my hair, pulling hard enough to hurt. “Yes, sir,” I corrected.
My head fell forward as he released my hair with a soft chuckle. My cock bobbed in time with my heaving chest, a drop of precum already sliding down the head.
“Would you like to know what I’m about to do to you?”
“Yes, sir,” I whispered.
Ellison leaned in close, his breath hot on my ear. “I’m going to make you get your ass ready for me, I’m going to fuck your throat, and then I’m going to fuck your ass.”
Truth By His Hand Page 10