Tenderly Wicked

by Katerina Ross

  It was impossible for him to go home after work and just sit there, waiting for Vadim to text him. What if something did go wrong? What use would he be, approximately an hour and a half away, at the other end of the city? Max knew of course the main purpose of the so called silent alarm was deterrence. It was something to inform your new lover to prevent him from acting abusive. But if it didn’t help, what next? Theoretically, Max was to call the police. That would be the wisest choice. However, he was so wound up that he couldn’t bring himself to patiently pass the time on the outskirts of Moscow knowing he wouldn’t be able to control the situation at all.

  He decided if he spent a few hours somewhere not far from Vadim’s place, just in case, and it turned out to be a waste of time, he wouldn’t be too upset, and therefore he settled in a café on the fourth floor of the Evropeisky shopping mall opposite the Kievskaya railway station, in a corner of a huge food court. Its interior was made to resemble a garden with fake orange trees and wooden tables, somewhat kitschy. The gorgeous view of a steep embankment across the Moskva River was partially obstructed by some billboards and thus spoiled, but Max stared at his surroundings unseeingly anyway, while his coffee got cold, and now and then his fingers started nervously drumming against the table.

  He was going to wait for Vadim’s message and then get hopelessly drunk. What else was he supposed to do?

  He couldn’t help but imagine what was going on in Vadim’s apartment right now, just a few hundred yards away. Vadim, in their bed, on all fours, legs spread invitingly… A hand caressing his thighs, making him shiver… Then a harsh slap across his buttock. “Enjoying yourself, huh?” And again, a teasingly light touch…

  What was even worse than jealousy was Max’s imagination kept picturing Vadim’s new crush as his abusive ex-lover, Gleb.

  He hoped Vadim at least hadn’t agreed to be tied up on the first date.

  Max couldn’t help thinking—wasn’t he to blame for Vadim having rushed into a new relationship so fast? Okay, maybe it wasn’t a relationship so far, just a one-night stand, but still. Vadim had been so miserable, so wound-up about the prospect of being on his own again. It was no surprise he’d started looking for a new partner so soon after their break-up. He needed someone by his side. Anyone, really. And it wasn’t all about sex.

  Max remembered Vadim telling him he’d wanted to apologize to Gleb to get him back, though he must have realized it would lead to further abuse. Vadim couldn’t stand to be alone. Maybe it had something to do with his first attempt at a relationship when his partner had freaked out after an accident and left him in the hospital—and then Vadim’s parents had turned away from him too. He’d had to cope without any help or consolation from the people he’d wanted to love him … or at least to care for his wellbeing.

  While Max’s worst fear was being called a fraud, a wannabe Dom with no right to enter the serious SM scene, Vadim’s worst nightmare, as it seemed, was of being abandoned. And Max had made it come true.

  Could he ever make up for it by being a friend to Vadim, by showing someone would care for him without any promise of sex or kinky pastime? Max wished it were possible.

  The dusk got thicker. The clock on Max’s cell phone showed it was exactly eight PM. No messages from Vadim.

  Bloody hell. What now?

  Maybe Vadim had forgotten to deactivate the set alarm, too much into his new play. But maybe not. What if something had happened, for real?

  They had agreed if Max didn’t hear from Vadim in the next fifteen minutes, he would attempt to contact him by phone. It was the most agonizing quarter of an hour in Max’s entire life. At exactly eight fifteen, he dialed Vadim’s number. Vadim didn’t pick up. In an elevator, Max called again. And then again, in the street.

  He berated himself for being delicate and not asking Vadim for any details on his partner. Name, phone number, address, anything. What was he thinking? Oh yes, he was licking his own wounds, upset Vadim had found a substitute for him so soon, instead of focusing on what was important.

  Max crossed the road running, he ran and ran, and rushed into the familiar yard, and into Vadim’s apartment block. He hurried to retrieve the keys from the letter box and cursed its tiny slot, and then cursed the elevator for being too slow to come down—if it weren’t the ninth floor, he’d rush up the stairs. And then cursed himself as he fought to open Vadim’s door.

  Finally, he stepped into the dark corridor, and called out, “Vadim?” His heart hammered wildly.

  The bedroom door stood ajar. There was a figure in the middle of the room. Vadim kneeled on the parquet floor, dressed only in jeans, head bowed. Max quickly looked around, stepped back to check if there was someone hiding in the dark, and then his glance darted to Vadim again. “Are you all right? Where is he?” At first sight, Vadim looked unharmed—no bruises, no wounds—but was he safe?

  Vadim sounded husky when he spoke up. “There’s no one else in here.”

  “Is he gone?”

  “There was no one else. I just wanted to see you. I just wanted you to come back.” He didn’t lift his head when he added, with something akin to desperation mixed with hope, “Would you punish me for it?”

  His hands were clasped tight in his lap, and when Max rapidly crossed the room, he flinched as if waiting for a slap, but ready to take it. For a moment Max stood above him, both relieved and angry and perplexed, too overwhelmed with emotions to think clearly, and then Vadim clutched at the fabric of his jeans, with a shaking sob. “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I made you leave.”

  “Hey, hey.” Max went down clumsily, in his heavy coat, well aware his boots were oozing drops of melted snow and sludge onto the floor. “What are you talking about? How is it your fault?”

  They probably looked ridiculous, kneeling there, Max overdressed and Vadim half-naked, but it didn’t matter because Vadim wasn’t all right. He trembled in Max’s arms, against his chest, holding him in a fierce hug and babbling, “You felt guilty. That’s why you left. But it was because of me. If I hadn’t pushed you too far, it could be fine. We could be fine.”

  “Shh, stop that, stop blaming yourself. You never pushed me into anything.” Max started stroking comforting circles between Vadim’s shoulder blades to calm him down. It usually worked, but not now.

  “I never—I never stopped you when it was too much,” Vadim whispered hotly, in a strangled voice. “I could have safeworded out when something went wrong, but I never did. You had to figure it out for yourself that you had to stop, and you always did. The first time you blindfolded me—you backed off, remember? Just because you thought something was not quite right, not because I asked you to. I should have asked. You can’t always feel when a sub is unwell—that’s what safewords are for. You’re not responsible—”

  “Of course I was responsible.” It was unbearably hard for Max to speak about his major screw-up, but he had to make Vadim understand his former Dom was a threat to him, and not someone to long for. “When I’d tied you to the door and left you there for too long—I fell asleep. You stood there—and I was asleep.”

  He felt his heart pounding. After such a confession, Vadim should hate him, just like Max hated himself. He expected Vadim to break the embrace, but instead, Vadim muttered stubbornly, “I should have called you. It’s just—maybe I felt scared. The last time I safeworded out, it didn’t work out well—and I couldn’t—not again…” His voice broke, and it took him a few moments before he spoke again. “It sounds like I didn’t trust you—but it’s not like that—I just wasn’t thinking clearly. Or maybe I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

  In a flash, Max remembered the marks from a studded belt on Vadim’s back, and his ex-lover’s lopsided grin as he’d told Max that Vadim was a lousy sub because he tried to top from the bottom. Had “topping from the bottom” only meant Vadim made attempts to explain what he wanted and to stop a scene when it got too intense for him?

  “Whatever you blame yourself for, it’s my fault too,”
Vadim said into the folds of his coat, with grim conviction. “I wanted to please you so much—but I made you leave me instead. I know I can be a bother sometimes. I always wondered why you stayed with me. And yet I hoped it would be something … long-term… But I’ve spoiled everything.”

  “Don’t say that. You’re not a bother, not to me. You know what? What we had—it’s the best thing that’s happened to me in years. You deserve someone who’ll take better care of you.”

  “No one cared for me like you did. Hell, you cared for me more than I did for myself! I’m spoiled for anyone else. Nobody will ever live up to you. A tad dramatic, but it’s true. What you gave me—it was a sense of … belonging. Don’t take it away. Please.”

  “Vadim … I think you overestimate me. It’s flattering, but I’m not really as good a person as you might imagine.”

  “You always did what you thought I wanted,” Vadim contradicted him feverishly. “You never forced me to do anything you thought was bad for me—on the contrary, you tried to make my life better, in every way. Do you know what I felt? I felt nurtured and safe, safer than ever before. I felt at home with you.”

  Suddenly, Max remembered the picture he’d seen at Vadim’s office: a perfect home Vadim had created for someone else—and this very moment, something clicked in Max’s head. It all made sense, it all indicated a pattern. When they’d just met, Vadim had asked him if he could pretend they had been together for some time—not just lovers for a few nights, but people committed to each other, in love with each other, if within a Dom/sub dynamic. Had Vadim thought he could only have something like this as role play? Maybe he hadn’t even realized it possible, to combine a loving relationship with the fulfillment of his submissive, masochistic cravings. It was one or the other. Mostly the other. Yes, Vadim had a hunger for it, too—a hint of risk, and pain of course—but it seemed he’d always had to put himself in real danger to get what aroused him, instead of exploring his dark desires within safe and consensual boundaries. Vadim wanted someone to belong to, someone to chastise him for misdeeds and praise for achievements, someone who cared, and not just used him as a whipping boy. Yet such a relationship was nothing but fantasy to him. Something he couldn’t have in real life.

  Max must have tightened his arms around Vadim’s body in a protective way, instinctively, and Vadim probably sensed a change in his mood. “What if I promise to tell you when something goes wrong?” he asked pleadingly. “Could we try again?”

  “It won’t always work, it’s not that easy,” Max retorted with bitter sadness. However much he wanted this, it was better to stay realistic. “Sometimes we get carried away, we lose track of ourselves … and then…”

  “Yes, and that will be the times when we both screw up, not just one of us. Accidents happen even during ordinary sex if two people don’t say when it hurts or when they’re uncomfortable, right? But if we communicate … if I tell you what to avoid … I don’t think mishaps will be a frequent thing. You’ll listen, you’ll remember. I know I can rely on you, but I totally understand if you’re not sure that you can rely on me. That’s what the problem is. Will you trust me to stop you?”

  Max didn’t answer, and Vadim continued to persuade him, grabbing at his coat convulsively as if it made his words more convincing. “You always treated me as an equal. No one else did. That’s why I’m not used to it, sharing fantasies, sharing responsibility, sharing anything. But we were so very compatible. We could overcome this if we tried.”

  They were compatible, that much was true.

  Max heaved a sigh and tried to dislodge himself from Vadim’s grip. As always when Vadim wasn’t inclined to let him go, it proved difficult.

  “You know, I’m sweating in this coat,” Max complained.

  Vadim reluctantly drew back. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Actually, you should be,” Max grumbled. “You scared the hell out of me, and now I’m almost boiled. What a nice way to treat a Dom you supposedly want back, for whatever reasons… Oh fuck.” He tried to get up and felt his knees protesting most disagreeably. “Do your legs hurt too, like mine? How long have you been kneeling here?”

  “Twenty minutes, maybe half an hour?” Vadim looked confused. “I’m not sure. I just wanted to meet you like this…”

  Max pictured him, alone in the room, staring at the floor, and waiting, waiting, waiting, and trying to push away the fear that the man he was hoping to see wouldn’t deign to come at all. “I didn’t know you had such a penchant for dramatics,” he said almost jokingly, to cover up a sudden onset of sadness. “Let me help you up. You’ve had enough.”

  Vadim let Max pull him up onto the bed like a rag doll. Judging by the way he winced, his knees didn’t like the unforgiving parquet floor either.

  Max retreated to the corridor to hang his coat and shake his dirty boots off.

  “I could have called the police instead of coming myself,” he said from out there. “It wouldn’t have been very funny, them storming in and finding you on your knees.”

  He heard Vadim snort. “Nah, you wouldn’t have done that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know you. It’s a thing with you. You always try to solve every problem yourself. A bit of a control freak, I think. Very much like me.”

  Well, yes. Unfortunately, Max couldn’t argue with that.

  He stopped in the doorway to contemplate Vadim lying on the bed. It was so tempting to give in. So temping. Max licked at his bottom lip anxiously, hesitant about what to do.

  “I feel nervous when you stand so far from me,” Vadim confessed. “It’s like you’re still wondering if you should go or stay. Would you come back here? Just to talk. I’m not trying to seduce you.”

  “Hmm. I don’t think it works well.”

  “What?”

  “Not seducing me.”

  Vadim was silent for a moment, like he didn’t believe what he’d heard, then said quietly, “The more reasons to cross the room.”

  Just a few steps, as if in a dream. Vadim’s hand reached out, and in a few seconds they were kissing and touching and groping, roughly, frantically, raw need mixed with desperation. Vadim’s mouth slanted clumsily against Max’s neck and cheek and ear, and Max found he couldn’t resist it. This was something more than carnal need, a connection worth giving another try, no matter how much effort it would take to make it work out.

  “I’m sorry I scared you. I missed you so much,” Vadim gasped against Max’s lips.

  “I missed you, too.” Max backed away and skimmed his hands along Vadim’s bare torso. “I’d like to make you feel good. What do you want?”

  “You,” Vadim said simply—and flashed a happy and somewhat cheeky smile at him. “Make me yours in a very, very agonizing way. I know you can.” And he tilted his head as if inviting Max to dare.

  It was too much to endure. Max flipped him over—Vadim gave a startled squeak—and yanked him down across his lap. Vadim wriggled, getting comfortable, his head to the left and feet to the right. He was able to rest his arms on the bed and place his head on them. Max managed to unzip and unbutton Vadim’s jeans in the process, when Vadim raised his hips, and pulled the denim down, along with the boxers. He sneaked his left hand to cup Vadim’s genitals and knead his cock, which responded very quickly. His other hand came to rest on Vadim’s exposed ass and stroked it calmingly.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t punish you harder than you deserve,” Max promised ominously.

  He didn’t hold Vadim down, he only put his hand on Vadim’s back, keeping him in place. Nervous, as if it were their first time, he gently tapped on the cheek closest to him a few times, then on the other. It was a light rhythmic beat, more a warm-up than the real thing. After two dozen spanks or so, Vadim wriggled his ass, impatiently pressing it up into Max’s hand for more contact, and was rewarded by a harder swat. Max kept his hand tight and cupped, which ensured a nice sound. Soon Vadim’s skin became pink and pleasantly hot to the touch. Max couldn’t help himself and
stopped for a few moments to slowly rub the target area, eliciting an appreciative moan from his sub.

  “Ready for another round?” Max asked, his palm resting on Vadim’s ass. Vadim nodded frantically. “Okay then,” Max said nonchalantly—and there came another rain of swats. He lost himself in a steady rhythm, and so did Vadim, or so it seemed. Every time Max’s hand landed on his ass, he jerked with a throaty groan, his face buried in his arms.

  “Ten more,” Max warned him. “Count for me, from ten to one.”

  Vadim’s voice went rough and sexy as he kept the tally. He writhed on Max’s lap, trying to rub up against him, bare and pale save for where Max had marked him, with his jeans and underwear pooled around his ankles, sweat glistening on his skin. He looked beautifully submissive, totally lost in the moment. It was both a turn-on and a pang in the heart to see him like this, trusting his Dom enough to relax into mindless, wanton pleasure. That was what Max had wanted so much, missed so much, the possessive feeling of having this compliant body at his mercy. It was overwhelming.

  When Max finally stopped, he kept his hand on the flushed flesh, first stroking it lightly, like he did before, then adding a hint of nails, the way he liked. Vadim gave a desperate whimper, but stayed still.

  “Good boy,” Max praised him. “I think you deserve a reward for taking your punishment so well.”

  There was a heavy fullness constricted in his pants that matched Vadim’s erection. It was time to do something about it.

  He lifted the lax body from his lap and stood up. “Get rid of these jeans. Lay on your back, hands above your head. Don’t bring them down.”

  He quickly undressed, too impatient to fold his clothes. They dropped to the floor—to hell with his usual tidiness, he’d pick it all up later. Vadim watched him hungrily. Max climbed onto the bed and kneeled between Vadim’s invitingly spread thighs. His cock bobbed in anticipation as he unhurriedly slid his palms along Vadim’s flanks, higher and higher. Vadim’s abdominal muscles fluttered as he fought to stay still, his cock hard and neglected against his stomach. Max pinched both of his nipples, and Vadim inhaled sharply, arching his back involuntarily.