by M. Q. Barber
“Go on and collect your things, my boy.”
A green-ribbon staffer brought out Jay’s duffel at his mumbled request.
Henry ushered him into a changing room and joined him. Jay’s erection had subsided.
“I owe you an apology as well for letting the time get away from me.” He took the bag and unzipped it, drawing out the rumpled work attire.
“Concentration can be difficult when one is with such a delightful companion.” His submissive ought to have a proper garment bag.
“Strip, please.” He tamped down the urge to purchase one for next week. “I’ll play the gentleman’s gentleman, shall I?”
“Huh?” Bent at the waist and wriggling out of tight leather, the bare-assed boy presented an intolerable temptation. “What’s that?”
Henry flicked his tongue against his teeth and returned to sorting the clothes. “A valet.”
“You wanna park cars?”
He held in the chuckle with the thinnest thread of self-control. “I want to dress you, my boy.”
“Oh!” Jay shimmied out of the leather. “I’m ready, Master Henry.”
Well on his way, at least. Jay’s cock pulsed and swelled under his gaze.
“I’d also like to discuss your homework.” He shook out the boxers, crouched, and held the shorts at floor level with spread hands. “Step in, please.”
Jay slipped his feet in.
Skimming his palms up the outside of the younger man’s legs, he raised the boxer shorts. He gave the growing erection a wide berth.
Jay sighed. “I remember, Master Henry. I need to pick a new safeword.”
“Indeed you do.” He retrieved the shirt and stepped behind his student. “Arms back.”
Dragging his fingers along Jay’s firm forearms and sloping biceps, he pulled the shirtsleeves up. “I also want you to think of one point you want to negotiate next week. One action or behavior you want from me during our time together. A toy you’d like to try, a role-play you’d like to experience—something you desire, whatever it is.”
He turned him and began fastening the buttons from the top. “Last week I asked you to think of something you wanted to do to me. Did you think on that while you completed your homework?”
Jay’s throat worked as he swallowed hard. “Yes, Master Henry.”
“I won’t ask you for the details now. Keep thinking on it. Perhaps join it to your thinking for this week’s assignment. We’ll discuss both next week.” He finished off the shirt with the buttons at the cuffs, gripping his submissive’s hands and stroking his palms as he worked. “Did the masturbation schedule I set for you satisfy your needs?”
Twitching against the boxers accompanied Jay’s rapid nodding.
“I kept to the same schedule myself to share your experience.” He dropped the words with nonchalance and turned to gather the slacks.
A whimpering moan echoed behind him.
“You’ll continue to bring yourself to climax with your left hand during your morning shower.”
Jay curled said hand into a fist and squeezed repeatedly.
Kneeling, Henry held out the open slacks. “Step in, please.”
His slow strokes covered strong calves and thighs beneath navy slacks as he rose. “In the evenings, you may use either hand this week. However—”
Fastening the belt by touch, he locked their gazes together. “I want you to spend five minutes on light touching only. After that, you may fuck your clenched fist to your heart’s content.”
He slipped his knuckles up Jay’s cheekbone to his ear. Twice. Three times. “Gentle touches,” he whispered. “The way I’m stroking your face now, you understand?”
A shudder ran through the submissive, and his breath gusted out. “Yes, Master Henry.”
“Good.” Leaning in, he claimed his partner’s lips for a sweet kiss. “Then you’re free to go. I’ll see you at eight o’clock next Friday.”
Chapter 3
He’d told the boy eight, but the clock hadn’t yet chimed seven when Henry entered the club.
Preparations to make. And, it must be said, no shortage of anticipatory excitement contributed to his early arrival.
Emma insisted upon accompanying him to the room. “Sparse, Henry. You’re sure you don’t want something cozier?”
Yes, he’d like something cozier. A sweet dark-haired lover to cozy up to and command. Where was his much-vaunted control now?
His skin thrummed as if he’d been on the receiving end of electrical stimulation play. If he didn’t drain the excess energy, he’d be as fidgety as his submissive. Hardly the image he wished to project.
“You’re sure you aren’t needling me in the hopes I’ll swat your behind for you?” An empty, lighthearted threat. Never mind Victor wouldn’t allow such play without his direct supervision—Henry wouldn’t be so crass as to presume. Fifteen years of friendship accommodated shifting boundaries.
“I’m sure Jay Kress is a lucky boy.” Her smile urged him to check her mouth for the canary. “This is what, your third meeting as his dominant?”
He surveyed the setup. She’d chosen well. The room matched his reservation request for nothing in the way of furniture or frames. Sparse, yes. Perfect for admiring a lovely, graceful body in the form of one Jay Kress. He drew the wood-slat blinds over the viewing windows and locked them in the closed position. The only one admiring his student tonight would be him.
She turned to keep him in profile as he circled her. “I know your tricks, Henry Webb.”
“I know yours, you shameless gambling hussy,” he teased. “Don’t start games you don’t mean to finish.”
He lunged only to tickle her ribs. A feint in gratitude for her understanding, the playfulness she allowed him to bleed the nerves she had to have seen. Perhaps why she’d insisted upon joining him and started a game both knew would go nowhere beyond a good laugh.
She dashed back, fending him off with her hands. “I could say the same of you. The boy’s a sweetheart, isn’t he? A proper eromenos?” Laughing, she danced away. “I’m going to win the wager, Henry.”
Hands falling to his sides, he stopped in mid-stalk. His swirling joy solidified and cracked. “No. You aren’t, Em.”
“Henry?”
She approached with the gentle steps he himself would use to relax a nervous novice. Did he appear so off-balance to her? The boy didn’t know him as well. A blessing, since he seemed to be channeling the uncertainty of his youth. Even the first time he’d wielded a single-tail whip hadn’t been so laden with emotion. Young Mr. Kress changed the picture.
“I’ve upset you.”
He squeezed her shoulder. Forgiveness in a clasp. She had no way to know the depth of the river or the speed of the current. How he wanted to let it carry him and the boy downstream, to wash up on some foreign shore where they hadn’t met in violence and pain and rescue.
“He isn’t a toy to be won, Emma. He’s a scared, confused young man who doesn’t know half of what he wants and is ashamed of the other half.” This was therapy, not a relationship. An odd sort of therapy, but therapy nonetheless. “I won’t abuse his trusting nature and throw a leash on him. In two months, he’ll have an understanding of himself and his needs, and I—”
A clean break. No playing together once the time was up, not even a play session for old time’s sake. Such behavior would complicate the emotional separation.
“I will let him go.”
Emma’s eyes softened as she pursed her lips. Raising two perfectly manicured hands, she adjusted his pin-straight tie. A blatant excuse to offer comfort in her fingertips, but he said nothing.
“You’re an honorable man, Henry. Like my Victor.” She patted his chest. A mother’s gesture. “He waited a long while for me to come along. But when I did, he snatched me up. I hope you’ll seize the moment when it comes for you, too.” She shook her head, slow and steady, meeting his gaze. “You rein yourself in so tightly. I don’t want to see you alone for the rest of your life
.”
She let go, dropping her hands from his chest. He captured one.
“Go and play with Victor, Em.” He carried her hand to his mouth and pressed a soft kiss to her knuckles. “We both know he’s happier with your bottom resting securely in his palm. I’ve preparations to make for my boy. You’ve given the desk staff the instructions?”
“Of course I have. They’ll send him up to change and then to find you here.”
“To knock and wait.”
“Would a proper submissive have it any other way?” Her lips gleamed when she smiled. “Excuse me, Henry. I think it’s time to knock on Victor’s door.”
She sauntered out, the sway in her hips elegant and enticing as ever.
He tucked the red card into the holder on the door. No unwanted guests. A closed scene tonight to boost Jay’s confidence and allow space for his vulnerability.
Forty-five minutes left, and the boy would be early. Of course he would.
Henry set to work.
When the knock came, he alerted to the sound like a bird dog scenting prey in the bush.
He rose from his half-lotus with a loose calm, confidence descending. He mastered his passions. They did not master him.
Swaying silk teased his skin as he strode to the door. He’d traded his customary formal attire for a shirt and trousers more akin to a martial arts uniform tonight. Black silk concealed and revealed in turns as it flowed to provide a focal point but not a distraction for his student.
He pulled the door open. “Welcome, my boy. I’m delighted to see you.”
Jay stood in silence if not stillness, his head bowed and his hands clasped behind him. The picture of perfection in leather shorts and thin sandals but for the trembling in his arms. Waiting was so hard for this submissive. Teaching him to enjoy it—a pleasure, through and through.
“Have you missed me this week?”
“Yes, Master Henry.” The answer came tripping on the heels of his question. With a jerk, Jay stifled the beginnings of a nod.
Clasping the back of Jay’s neck, he coaxed with a slight tug. “Come here, dear one.”
The younger man flung himself forward with the force of Jackson Pollack covering a canvas.
Henry widened his stance to steady himself. Pushing the door closed behind them, he allowed Jay the time to feel whole. He ran his hands over his back with a light touch, reluctant to press until he’d seen the current state of his bruising. Healed, one hoped.
A storm of rapid, hot breaths blew across his ear. Jay’s grip compressed his ribs.
The fierce hold stirred a potent mix of protective instincts and desire. Were Jay his lover, an expression of either wouldn’t go amiss. Ask how poorly he’d fared this week to require such a desperate embrace. Wrestle him to the floor, pin him on the mat, and take him as he shouted his pleasure.
But Jay was his student, not his lover.
Henry pushed down the growling beast clawing its way out of the basest corners of his brain and demanding to possess its prize. He waited in patient stillness for his partner to relax. Catching the moment between the end of instinctive need and the stirring of embarrassed awareness was crucial. It wouldn’t do to make Jay self-conscious about his needs. He struggled with that enough.
“I thought we might forgo viewing other games this evening and instead spend this time together playing one of our own.” He slipped his words into the gap with all the painless precision of proper needle play. “Are you prepared to surrender yourself to me?”
Jay’s shuddering sigh boded well. “I am, Master Henry. Thank you, Master Henry.”
“Wonderful.” He put sorely needed distance between their bodies and gestured his student forward. “Leave your sandals here and stand in the center of the sheets.”
He’d unrolled one of the club’s play mats in the center of the room. A bit larger than his king-size bed, but the fitted and top sheet set he’d brought from home adequately covered the surface. The mat provided a softer embrace than the bare wood floor for a submissive’s knees, or back, or other things during a long scene.
“Spread your feet to shoulder-width.” Pain had its uses, but it wasn’t an element suitable for his boy at this juncture. “An at-ease pose.”
Jay jumped to obey. As eager as if he’d been born for it. For me.
“Clasp your hands in front, arms relaxed.” He sought an unobstructed view of his back. “Excellent. Well done. Stay just like this, please.”
The praise produced the expected effect, straightening Jay’s shoulders and stiffening his spine. A spine unblemished by last week’s motley patchwork of colors.
Concerns about his partner’s physical readiness for play laid to rest, he advanced. “Last week we talked about the importance of choosing a safeword and using it as needed. Have you chosen a new safeword as I asked?”
“Yes, Master Henry.”
“Tell me your safeword, please.”
“Tilt-A-Whirl.”
A unique choice. Forcing Jay to disclose his reasoning wasn’t a strict necessity, but curiosity pulled at him. “Share with me, my boy. Tell me why you’ve chosen this word.”
Jay shuffled his feet. “’Cause you said I should pick something I didn’t like. I don’t like carnivals. I ruined it for everybody.”
He forced himself to let his foot fall naturally, to avoid revealing the stutter to his partner. Had Jay left his explanation with a distaste for carnivals, he would have judged it a personal quirk, a sweet note of knowledge about his pet, and let it go. But now—not so.
“Everybody?” Best to start simply and ease toward the hurt. “Who went to the carnival with you?”
“Peggy took us, me an’ Beth an’ Nat. My sisters, I mean, Master Henry. Peggy’s the oldest.”
“You didn’t have fun?” Odd. Jay didn’t seem the type to be dismayed by spending time under a woman’s thumb, but perhaps he’d been a teenager itching for more freedom. “How old were you?”
“I liked it at first. All the lights and the noise and the food. I’d never seen anything like it.”
A hint of wonder edged his tone, sweet and innocent. The desire to hear that tone again, to show Jay such delights in the playground of adulthood, clamped hard in his chest.
“I was five, Master Henry. I hadn’t been off the farm much. The carnival came the summer before I started kindergarten. I wanted to try everything. Peggy said I shouldn’t be such a piggy. She was right.”
Defeat and shame marred the younger man’s remembrance. What should have been a happy memory of childhood.
“Tell me what happened, Jay. You rode the Tilt-A-Whirl?”
“I begged like a brat ’til she took me on. An’ then it was all spinning an’ I”—he whispered, fierce and low—“I threw up. All over me an’ her, too. She was so mad.”
So the girl had let her baby brother gorge himself, and made the poor decision to allow him to ride the attraction despite his full stomach, and reaped the rewards of her choices. A teenager, undoubtedly. One humiliated in front of classmates or a crush and eager to transfer her failings to a more vulnerable target.
“I see why you dislike the ride. Vomiting is such an unpleasant feeling.” He kept his voice light and even. Phrasing his question to give Jay a sense of what ought to have followed, he suspected things had played out much differently. “Did you enjoy the rest of the carnival after she helped you clean up?”
Jay stepped back and turned to face him. “We didn’t stay, Master Henry.”
“Oh?” He nodded to his student. “Mind your positioning, please. How am I to study every inch of your beauty when it shifts as we talk?”
Quick though he was to reclaim his former pose at the gentle chide, Jay flushed and smiled, too. Good. He hadn’t failed to hear his master’s praise wrapped in reprimand.
“Tell me what happened when the ride ended.” He had no need for harshness to keep this sub in line. The knowledge that he’d given pleasure would do so all on its own.
“Um, I
dunno, I cried a lot, I think.” The words flowed faster but with a distance, as if he recounted events detached from his own experience. “Nat laughed and Beth kept saying I was gross, an’ Peggy yanked my shirt off and threw it in the trash, and Chuck told her no way was he riding home with us when she stank so bad, even if she took off her shirt, too.”
The girl’s boyfriend, presumably. But the image piercing his mind’s eye was of his sweet boy, shirtless and sick, crying in a crowd of strangers at the carnival as his siblings berated him.
“I ruined the whole night. Peggy took us straight home.” Jay shrugged, though he kept his head bowed. “I rode in the truck bed so I wouldn’t stink up the cab.”
Anger twisted into a tempest in his stomach. Callous caretaking had taught Jay to expect no better, perhaps.
“I’m sorry you had such a terrible night at the carnival, my boy.” No wonder Jay had cried out for Cal’s return that night. He saw love in all but rejection. Blamed himself for the errors of those around him. Excused any behavior but his own. “I hope your sister learned her lesson.”
Jay shifted his head. Slight, but signaling his interest.
“She must have been quite upset with herself for not setting a better example and providing clear rules for you to follow. Shirking her responsibilities.” He clicked his tongue. “Despite her failings, however, you’ve made an excellent selection for your safeword.”
“I have?” Jay blurted the words and half-twisted before he recovered himself. “I mean, I’m sorry for speaking out of turn, Master Henry.”
“It’s fine, dear one. Part of your training is learning to ask questions when you need to. You’ve apologized, as you should. Shall I explain how you’ve pleased me?”
He would explain regardless of the answer, but he waited to see if Jay would ask for what he wanted. The few short weeks they’d have together, eight nights in all, necessitated reinforcement at every opportunity.
“Yes, please, Master Henry.”
“Good boy,” he murmured. “I asked you to choose a reminder of something uncomfortable for a reason. During our play sessions, should you begin to feel the discomfort or confusion, the shame or overwhelming helplessness you felt as a child at the carnival, I want you to reach for your safeword and use it. Do you understand?”