by M. Q. Barber
“Master Henry?” Jay tugged the shorts over his hips and tucked his cock, still at half-mast, into the front pouch.
“Yes?”
Glancing over his shoulder, Jay could’ve been a male ingénue with his deep brown eyes and trusting face. “I feel safe with you.”
He bit down on a groan. The pain in his mouth distracted from the ache in his chest. Jay confessed his comfort, and here he sat, a soon-to-be tormentor. He needed to see Jay’s current boundaries, to test his limits, if he meant to demonstrate such things were right and proper things to have. Encouraging his student to enforce his own limits meant showing him scenes to rouse his discomfort. Preferably without further traumatizing him.
“I promise you, Jay, that in the time we spend together, your health and safety will always be uppermost in my mind.” He beckoned him closer and pinned the rose blossom and red ribbon over his hip. “I have no wish to hurt or humiliate you, my brave boy.”
They gathered up Jay’s things together and dropped his bag at the desk. The third floor waited.
Intensity would be the watchword for the night.
Henry scanned the scenes to either side as he navigated the central hallway on the third floor with his submissive at his heels. Escalating intensity would allow him to find the boy’s natural comfort level, or what passed for normal after two-week-old trauma. The possibility existed young Mr. Kress wasn’t yet aware of the damage done. He’d been seeking out the familiar last week, but experiencing it could trigger a painful reaction.
Ah. There. Two role-play scenarios in adjacent rooms with yellow door tags. Red would have indicated watchers outside only. Green invited guests to participate. Yellow would allow them to step inside if desired but encourage no higher level of interaction. Nothing that might put his submissive on the spot.
He stopped between the pair, pivoted to face the rooms, and drew his partner forward by his elbow. “Tell me what you see.”
Jay scanned left to right. “A math lesson, Master Henry.”
The scenario on the right. Tutoring role-play. That he’d started there indicated a higher level of comfort than with the medical scene to the left. A female dominant and a male submissive featured in each, so the choice wasn’t biased by the players’ gender.
“Very good.” Three steps carried him to a better vantage point with his sub in tow.
Players passed them at a steady clip, though none paused. Student-teacher role-play didn’t often meet the exotic erotic standard for attracting a crowd. Bland as unadorned oatmeal for breakfast to all but the players in a given scene.
Pressing Jay toward the viewing window, he stepped in close behind. The wide hallways accommodated voyeurs with ease, but best to shield him from accidental contact with passersby. A bad reaction to a scene by design would be manageable. A bad reaction to another player could give unintentional offense and cause an entirely different sort of scene.
“Tell me about the scene.” He kept his voice low, his mouth a few inches from the younger man’s ear. “Where is it happening?”
“At the tutor’s house.”
“Why there?” The room design featured a family living room, not a classroom, but the setup easily could have been at the student’s home.
“He concentrates better there. He’s not distracted like he is in class. He can focus on her.” Jay swayed toward the glass wall, tipping up on his toes.
Tempting, to deliver a gentle impression of his teeth on the muscled slope of neck and shoulder so near his mouth. But Mr. Kress carried too many unwanted marks. Adding his own would confuse the issue.
“He wants her to smile at him, so he works extra hard.” Feet flexing, Jay bobbed. “When he does good, he gets a reward. She tells him stuff or lets him do stuff.”
A veritable font of information, this boy. The slightest prod netted a better understanding of his motivations.
“These rewards for good behavior, what are they?” Experience would teach his pupil to speak with more specificity. “What ‘stuff’ does his tutor allow?”
“She tells him she’s proud of him. That he makes her happy, and he’s special, and he’s not stupid or”—his breath hitched—“or pathetic, or that he can’t learn anything right. If he does really good, she takes off her shirt and tells him to touch her how she wants. Or she takes his hand under her skirt and teaches him how to stroke her.”
Arms hanging at his sides, Jay rubbed his fingers together. The repetitive motion, thumbs circling, might manifest unconscious desire or a comforting memory.
Jay’s constructed scenario didn’t match the actions in the room, where the student received an admonishing finger-waggle for trying to touch the tutor’s swaying ass as she passed him. And a tongue-lashing, it seemed, though the tutor wasn’t loud enough to be heard outside the room.
“If the student does exceptionally well, will he be allowed to climax?” Orgasm control and denial held top slots in many a dominant’s toolkit, including his own.
His submissive came close to striking his cheek with a vigorous headshake. “Not in her. Not right away. He’s too excited. He doesn’t get his pants off, but it’s okay. She doesn’t laugh at him. She says he can please her other ways.”
The fear of premature ejaculation, perhaps, and a desire for acceptance despite it. If Jay had a control problem, a cock ring might help solve it while he learned to slow down. His intense focus on his partner’s pleasure could act as a defense to avoid feeling his own too deeply. Or the intense pleasure he felt in serving his partner might bring about his own orgasm. Difficult to say yet which had come first.
He muted his smile and laid his hand at the back of the slender neck. “And if he doesn’t do well at his lessons, my boy?” Massaging with gentle strength, he slipped into more treacherous emotional territory. “What sort of punishment does he deserve then?”
“I—he—” Tension gathered in Jay’s muscles. “Whatever his tutor says, Master Henry.”
Fear and confusion had pushed the younger man from his fantasy in so few words.
“No, not whatever his tutor says.” Forcing his sympathetic ache aside, Henry worked his fingers harder to soothe the tightness in his submissive’s stance. He pushed the same firmness into his tone. “Tell me what happens when he answers incorrectly.”
“They laugh at him,” he whispered. “They tell him he’s bad. They say he’s disgusting and he wants terrible things.”
Not she—they. The dominants he’d played with, the ones who’d taught him to accept humiliation. Proper negotiation skills could have kept him from engaging in such play.
“Is that what the boy wants to happen?” Interesting, that the verbal unpleasantness remained uppermost in Jay’s mind. The physical “punishment” of servile behaviors, restraint, or impact play might be kinks he enjoyed when not accompanied by criticism. “To be told he’s a bad boy?”
“No.” The word stuck in Jay’s throat and emerged as a tiny croak.
Henry cupped the back of his submissive’s neck, gauging the pressure to offer security rather than threat. “When he’s imagining the scene, and he fantasizes making a mistake, how does his teacher respond?”
“I don’t know.” A tremble rolled through the slim frame.
“I think you do know, Jay,” he whispered. “I think you don’t want to tell me. Shall I tell you instead?”
Foot tapping, fingers rubbing at his thigh, the boy jerked with a nod matching the quivering anxiety in his body.
“I think she makes him undress and run laps around her living room while he recites the correct answer. I think she enjoys seeing his beauty in motion and wants him to succeed.” He near-tasted the magnificence, the steady flow of energy bleeding off his submissive, light and shadow dancing across the athletic form. “I think she finds ways to harness all of the goodness in this boy so that when he stumbles he will still make her proud with his willingness and determination to learn.”
The boy’s pleading whimper went straight to his cock. U
nexpected, how it plucked a string in his chest along the way. “Is that the response he imagines?”
“Yes, Master Henry.” Jay’s squirming transmuted from anxiety to eagerness. “He’d like that.”
Caressing Jay’s back with light strokes, he paid careful attention to the resulting physical cues. His submissive didn’t flinch as fingers skated across his bruises. He sighed, relaxing into the touch.
“Wonderful,” Henry murmured. “I’m very pleased with you right now. Do you know why?”
Jay shook his head.
No. One so accustomed to hearing criticism couldn’t see what called for praise instead.
“You answered my questions in detail, with honesty.” Mouth closed, he kissed the pulse point below the younger man’s ear. Mr. Kress ought to learn the joys of gentle foreplay and the sensuality of his own skin, even the ninety-five percent of it covering areas other than his cock. “You shared your thoughts with me as I asked you to. Those are the actions of a very good boy, Jay.”
He pulled back and gauged Jay’s expression, a bit of wide-eyed shock coupled with the beginnings of a smile. Excellent. If he could hold those thoughts as the night progressed, his training would be promising indeed.
“Come along, my boy. We’ve other things to see tonight.” He felt like Dickens’s Christmas ghosts, hoping to see a change in Jay’s behavior from witnessing three scenes. Ebenezer Scrooge should be so lucky.
Exchanging the occasional nod with familiar faces, he led his partner down the hall in search of something appropriate. A scene with more sting than the first but less identification, one to push Jay’s boundaries without making him mentally insert himself quite so much. Not yet, at any rate.
He slowed outside a red-tagged room. Male dominant, female submissive, a mix of sensory deprivation and sensation play. Yes, this would suit.
Three short benches lined the window alcove for voyeurs. A brunette occupied the one at the far right. Alone, mid-thirties perhaps, tastefully outfitted in a floral-patterned corset and flowing skirt. She’d woven her yellow ribbon into her hair like a crown. The sort of partner he might have sought for an evening’s entertainment on another night.
He guided the boy to the far left bench. “Turn this sideways, please, and seat yourself at the front, straddling the bench and facing the window.”
Sleek and silent, Jay obeyed with a graceful haste. He carried himself with natural talent, his easy acceptance and well-tended appearance fit to be the pride of any dominant.
Nodding to acknowledge the fleeting glance from the unattached submissive, he joined the boy on the bench. He left a thin slice of air between their bodies. The subtle tilt of Jay’s head suggested animal awareness of the proximity.
With slow movements, he laid his hands on Jay’s shoulders.
A tiny startle reflex greeted him, but his submissive didn’t pull away.
Leaning forward, Henry cupped the roundness in his palms and rubbed his thumbs over Jay’s back. “Tell me what you see.”
The younger man jerked right, aborted in mid-motion, and returned to facing the window.
“It’s all right. You’re only telling me, my boy. Your words are for my ears alone.”
With regal dignity, the yellow-ribboned woman rose and departed in silence. Courteous and insightful. He resolved to speak to Emma after sending the boy home. As the membership coordinator and de facto hostess, she’d be certain to know the woman’s name from a description of her style. He’d leave a thank-you note at the desk for her tactful exit.
“I see”—Jay sucked in a breath—“a woman.”
The halting words bespoke discomfort, though the cause mystified.
The submissive knelt in a nest of pillows, her body angled toward the viewing area and displaying her nudity. Small clips showcased the rosy tips of her breasts. She arched her back and pushed into the sensation as her dominant tugged the delicate chain connecting them. A fitted blindfold deprived her of sight. Lovely, but tame. Nothing violent or degrading to upset his boy.
“Tell me about the woman.” He massaged in slow circles, aiming to ease the tension in his student’s neck and shoulders. “What thoughts are passing behind her eyes?”
A sense of danger and anticipation came to mind. The submissive’s pain would be little more than a spring shower, and the pleasure following like a summer thunderstorm. Jay might mention the trust showed, or the care the dominant took in placing a clip in his pet’s labial folds and the joy she took in it. The way he chose to view the scene and the elements he focused on would say much about his state of mind. A baseline for his future lessons.
“She’s in love with him, and she wants to prove it, so she put the blindfold on.” Once started, Jay poured forth a flood of words. “But now he’s hurting her, and she’s not sure she made the right choice, but she doesn’t want to disappoint him”—his leg vibrated with a rapid tic—“and she hopes it’ll get better but it won’t because she’s not anything to him.”
Chill sweeping through his chest, he focused on evenness. Methodical, constant touch. Steady breathing. Not allowing his shock to show in his hands.
Either the experience with Cal had so colored and tainted Jay’s thoughts as to make him incapable of seeing what lay in front of him, or he felt comfortable enough in his new master’s embrace to discuss the emotions surrounding the assault, albeit obliquely. Ascribing his own feelings to the nameless woman.
Henry waited until he could be certain his voice wouldn’t give him away. “She’s not enjoying their game?”
The woman wasn’t bound, and the club required the use of safewords for all submissives. The ecstasy on her face as her dominant removed the nipple clamps spoke for itself. The rapid convulsions following refused any other interpretation. Obvious enjoyment, but not obvious to young Jay.
“She thought she would. But he changed it.” He carried dull defeat in his tone, rote and drained of energy. “That’s not the game she wanted to play, and now she can’t say no ’cause she already said yes.”
He struggled not to make his questions personal. To demand to know who had taught the boy so badly. To hear every lie this boy had learned from Cal and whatever others had come before him.
Fantasies involving force swam in the minds of any number of power-exchange players. A dime a dozen. A rare sight in the exhibitionist areas of the club, to be sure, but not unknown upstairs, where a submissive might have such fantasies fulfilled in complete privacy with a trusted dom in a space that allowed for comprehensive aftercare for regaining emotional balance.
Despite the surface dynamic, the power lay in the submissive’s hands. Unquestioned. A single word to halt the game and take back control. Any dominant worth his creative salt found ways to ask leading questions or back off within the role-play if the sub’s response edged close to true trauma.
Yet Jay painted the submissive as a helpless victim, unable to act.
“Does she want to say ‘no’?”
“Yes.” Rocking, he wrapped firm conviction in an earnest plea.
Wanting to object, but unable to do so. Giving Jay a sense of agency would begin correcting this confusion. “What if she has a responsibility to say no?”
“He won’t let her.”
“Then that is his failing. Her responsibility, to herself and to her dominant, is to say no when the game has gone too far for her liking. Or if she’s gotten a cramp in her leg, or she feels tingling in her extremities, or”—he searched for a lighthearted jest—“or if she’s just now realized her DVR will not be recording her favorite show and it starts in five minutes.”
Jay jolted and twisted his torso to face him. “But—that’s not. . . .”
“Whenever she is uncomfortable with what is happening in the room.” Jay’s cheek warming under his hand, he tipped his head and aligned their gazes. “At any time. A safeword isn’t a condom. You aren’t limited to using it only once. You needn’t walk around with it in your wallet, saving it for the right moment.”
Jay’s light flush made him look sixteen rather than twenty-five. God help him if no one had given the boy the safe sex talk.
“Pulling out your safeword ought not to occasion mockery. Barebacking leaves you vulnerable to disease and parenthood. Operating without a safeword leaves you vulnerable to much deeper hurts. Promise me from now on you will use your safeword as needed, at will.”
“Even”—Jay glanced down and breathed out—“even with you, Master Henry?”
“Especially with me. If I have occasion to test your limits, I want to know we are playing this game together. When I push too hard, you are required to use your safeword. Those are the rules. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master Henry.” Jay confirmed his sincerity with an even gaze and tight lips.
“Good. Tell me your safeword now, please.”
Jay moved his mouth, but no sound emerged. After three tries, he uttered a strangled whisper, “Popcorn.”
The syllables struck wrong, a hammer and chisel opening a crack deep in the marble. The ruin of the piece, the project entire, if he allowed.
He pressed their heads together, spread his fingers, and cradled the boy’s skull. Echoing cries and Cal’s caustic scorn played an agonizing accompaniment.
“You’ll choose a new word.” Hearing the word again would be intolerable. “For tonight, the word ‘safeword’ itself will do. As part of your homework this week, I want you to think of something you dislike and select a word related to it. You’ll tell me your new word when we meet next week.”
“More homework?” Sweet hope danced in Jay’s tenor. “Next week?”
“Always more homework, my dear boy. It pleases me to think of you applying yourself to your lessons.”
With squirming hips, his submissive communicated his pleasure in the thought as well.
Henry edged his own hips back to maintain the distance. The night demanded control, not indulgence. Though he granted himself a slight one, a wisp of a kiss on his companion’s cheek before letting him go.