by Piper Scott
Over, and over, and over.
The kiss continued, sweet and soft. Sir’s lips were as delicious as his scent, and the certainty with which they moved awarded Gabriel with a new kind of stability. Sir wasn’t only confident in himself as a person, but he was confident in sex, too. There was no shame in what he did. Gabriel knew what shame felt like, and how a man’s stilted movements could affect intimacy, but Sir’s kiss and the way he guided Gabriel even in silence was proud.
What they shared wasn’t a transaction, and it wasn’t being done out of desperation. Sir legitimately wanted Gabriel, and even though what Gabriel wanted was stability, deep down he wanted Sir, too.
Pretty babies, with their black hair and green eyes. A life beside a man who was strong, handsome, and merciful enough that he would not treat Gabriel like he belonged to the lowest echelon of society. A house by the woods, where they could raise their family quietly and embrace forever without the chaos of the city… Gabriel wanted it all. And tonight, when Sir took him for the first time and claimed him as his own, they would take their first step toward that future.
Together.
Sir’s hands kept guiding Gabriel, grinding him down against his cock until Gabriel was so overwhelmed with lust, he trembled. There was a sensation between his body and Sir’s that he couldn’t explain, but that he didn’t find bad—some kind of strange bunching in the fabric near Sir’s shaft. Gabriel ignored it and moved in time with Sir’s hands, and when he was pushed down against Sir’s cock, he wiggled his hips to prove to Sir that he was ready for more. Sir listened. His hands remained on Gabriel’s ass, but they no longer lifted him up and pushed him down. He left Gabriel on his own to do what Gabriel did best.
Gabriel would not disappoint him.
Arms looped loosely over Sir’s neck, his head hung and his eyes closed, he rocked against Sir’s cock. In his mind’s eye, they were already nude, and Sir was inside of him. The excitement tightened Gabriel’s throat, and the next breath he took hitched as he worked himself in controlled ways he knew would bring a man pleasure. Garrison might not have been his forever, but he’d taught him skills that would make keeping his forever-alpha easy. As soon as Sir stripped them and claimed him, he would never want to stray again. Gabriel would make him stay.
“Does this make you happy, Sir?” Gabriel asked in a whisper. His body moved while he spoke, never slowing or losing intensity. Every roll of his hips was calculated for best presentation and impact, and every time he lifted his ass and arched his back, he had Sir’s pleasure in mind. Sight and touch were equally as important when it came to seducing a man, and Gabriel did not cut corners on either. He would be good for Sir. He would always be good for Sir.
So long as Sir was good to him, too.
“So happy,” Sir whispered back. His voice was thin, stretched out by how he struggled to fight his arousal. “You’re such a good boy, Gabriel.”
The praise lit Gabriel up and manifested as a soft smile. He settled down on Sir’s lap and lifted his head so that he could look at Sir’s face. Sir’s eyes were closed, but when Gabriel stopped moving, he opened them. They gazed at each other for a moment.
This was his forever. This was the face he’d look at every day for the rest of his life, and the body he’d bring pleasure to again and again.
Gabriel let his hands slide down Sir’s shoulders, over his chest, and down his sculpted body until his fingers met the elastic band of Sir’s boxers. “Then let me be a better boy, Sir. Let me show you how good I can really be.”
Sir’s eyes were glazed over with lust, partially lost to the alpha protector inside whose goal in life was to produce strong offspring worthy of his genes. When Gabriel went into heat, he would meet that protector in full, and they’d breed like the animals they were. Alpha and omega. It was how it was supposed to be. Gabriel had no hate in his heart for betas, but they would never understand what it was like to be so connected to another person that their bodies and souls screamed in unison that it was meant to be. Gabriel wasn’t sure that he believed in the notion that somewhere out there was a soul made just for him, that when he met his alpha, the clouds would part, the light would shine, and his heart would never be lonely again. He’d thought he’d found that with Garrison, but it had been a lie.
But Sir?
If Sir wasn’t that person, he was a sunny day after a month of rain. He was the sensation of waking up on a cold winter morning toasty and content beneath the sheets. He was sunrise, and he was sunset. But most importantly, he was genuine. Gabriel didn’t believe that Sir would harm him any more than he believed that he could breathe underwater.
“Do you have lube, Sir?” Gabriel asked.
Life snapped back into Sir’s eyes. He looked away from Gabriel and leaned over to access a drawer on his end table. From inside, he produced a bottle of lube and a box of condoms. Gabriel looked at the condoms, then looked back at Sir, wary. “Just lube, Sir. That’s all I need.”
They couldn’t breed if Sir was shooting into latex. Gabriel needed to take him raw.
“And all I need is a condom, Rabbit.” Sir took one from the box and went to tear it open, but Gabriel stopped his hand before he could. His fingers clamped over Sir’s, holding them in place. He knew that if Sir wanted to, he could easily break free of Gabriel’s grip, but Gabriel had to try. Condoms weren’t supposed to come between them. When Sir took him, their bodies were supposed to understand each other in full. There could be no understanding if there was a barrier in the way.
“No,” Gabriel insisted. He took the condom from Sir’s hand and tossed it off the bed. There was a box of them sitting by Sir’s thigh, but it didn’t matter. Gabriel would throw every one of them away if he needed to. “I’m yours. You don’t need to use condoms when we’re together.”
The arousal in Sir’s eyes was gone. The alpha protector Gabriel had coaxed out of him vanished. “No.”
One word. One crushing, disastrous word. Tears of frustration beaded in Gabriel’s eyes, and he fought against the urge to slam his fists into Sir’s chest.
“This was a bad idea, Rabbit. It wasn’t your fault, it was mine.” Sir lifted Gabriel off his lap and set him on the bed. Piece by piece, he dismantled Gabriel’s future, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. You deserve better than that. You’re counting on me, and I let you down. I promise that I’ll be stronger in the future.”
“Stronger in the future?” Gabriel’s voice trembled, his anger barely contained. “You want to be stronger in the future? For what? Why? I belong to you. I want you to take me. Why aren’t you? Why are you holding back? What you’re doing isn’t strong—it’s stupid!”
Sir looked like he’d been struck, but Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to care. He pushed himself back from the bed and rose on trembling legs, knees threatening to buckle. Was this some kind of game Sir was playing? Was he trying to test his devotion? If that was it, he’d pushed too far. Gabriel wasn’t going to take it.
“Rabbit.” Sir’s voice was flat, his dominance like steel. “You will calm down right now.”
“No, I won’t.” Gabriel clenched his fists, only to find that his hands were trembling. He took a few hurried steps back from the bed and tried to do away with the energy swirling inside of him, but it was no use. “You took me in. I’m yours. So why won’t you touch me? Am I really that ugly?”
“Rabbit.” It was a warning.
Gabriel didn’t take it.
There were hateful things he wanted to say. Scathing, hideous things that rattled loose from his soul like pebbles once stuck to the sole of a shoe—even when they were free of him, the impressions they left were lasting. They tumbled from Gabriel’s lips, clunky and disjointed, their jagged edges meant to hurt. “If you don’t want me, then give me to someone else. I won’t take this anymore. I can’t take this anymore. You’re not an alpha. You’re not… you’re not anything!”
Sir didn’t say a word, and his face gave nothing a
way.
“You don’t know the first thing about being a man!” Gabriel took a stumbling step backward, too wired to stand still, but too terrified of what he was doing to keep himself steady. “You don’t know anything at all! If you would just… if you would just fuck me, then it wouldn’t be hard at all! But instead, you’re keeping me between being yours, and being no one’s, and I can’t take it anymore!”
His clothes were in Sir’s bathroom—he’d left them folded neatly on the closed toilet lid after stripping for his shower—but Gabriel couldn’t go grab them now. He knew that he was pushing the limits and tempting fate, but he couldn’t stop himself. Sir wasn’t being fair.
“Just… just go away!” Gabriel wasn’t sure if he was screaming at himself, or screaming at Sir. He took another few stumbling steps toward the door and hooked onto the knob. “If you won’t f-fuck me, then someone will! Someone who deserves me!”
Gabriel didn’t mean what he said, but the hurt twisted inside and made him react in ways he regretted. Sir was special to him, and sounding off on him like this was only going to come back to hurt him, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop. There was anguish deep inside that needed to come out, and it all left him at once.
Garrison had promised him the world, then left him alone and hopeless, and now Sir was following in his footsteps with empty promises and half-truths. All Gabriel wanted was stability—a family to call his own. Was that too much to ask?
He twisted the doorknob, intending to return to his room to cry the rest of the pain away, but before he could step through the threshold, Sir rose from the bed. All he wore was his boxers, their front tented by his arousal, but even naked, he was intimidating. Taller than Gabriel remembered, body held rigid with anger, Sir swept forward like a cloud across the horizon to blot out the sun before a storm. Gabriel released the doorknob and staggered into the hall. His back hit the wall, and the air left his lungs all at once.
Sir towered over him, the only light coming from the television in the room they’d just abandoned. Its dim presence outlined Sir’s body and encouraged shadows to play across his face in menacing ways.
Gabriel knew that look, and he braced himself for a beating. He’d been bad, very bad, and now Sir was going to punish him like he deserved to be punished. He’d overstepped the boundaries, and he deserved whatever rage Sir wanted to unleash upon him.
But no rage ever came.
Instead, Sir whispered words detached of emotion—and somehow, that hit Gabriel just as hard as his fists would have. “Go to your room, Gabriel. You’ve been bad, and you need to be punished.”
27
Gabriel
The room was dark, but Gabriel didn’t need to see in order to feel the sharp impact, or hear the slap that rang through the room. The burning pain that spread across the tender skin of his ass brought him down from his fear and sobered his mind.
What had he been thinking?
Sir’s hand came down again, the sound of his open palm striking Gabriel’s ass crisp in the otherwise quiet room. Gabriel buried his face against the blankets and pushed out a breath through his teeth as the sharp pain of impact diluted into lingering, tingling discomfort that refused to leave him alone.
He’d been bad. He’d gotten frustrated and yelled at Sir when Sir was the one in control. What did it matter what Gabriel thought? What had given him the right to speak his mind freely? He was the omega, and that meant that he was the one who had to listen. Sir was right to punish him—he’d stepped out of line.
“In this household, Rabbit,” Sir’s hand traced over the skin he’d just struck, chasing some of the pain away with affection, “you won’t yell. You won’t scream. You won’t blow up. It’s okay to be angry, but you will express your anger like a normal, adjusted human being. That means that all the hurt you feel inside? You need to express that to me with words. You need to open up and let me know when you feel neglected or unfairly treated so we can fix the problem before it becomes an issue.”
Sir had pulled the boxers Gabriel wore down from his ass so it was exposed. The elastic dug into the underside of Gabriel’s cheeks, right where his butt met his thighs, but all he could do was squirm in an attempt to correct it. The lower half of his body rested over Sir’s thighs, and the upper half was supported by his bed. Gabriel buried his face in his blanket and tried not to make a sound. He wanted to howl in disappointment and in pain, but he knew that now more than ever, he had to be good.
He’d been so close to officially becoming Sir’s, but he’d ruined his chances by being too hasty and emotional. Sir wasn’t like Garrison, and he would never be. One day, Sir would give him a family. All Gabriel had to do was hold on until that happened.
The hand that stroked pulled back, and Gabriel braced to be spanked again. When Sir treated him like this, he saw just how childish he had been. There was no reason for him to have gone off like he had. If he’d just talked to Sir like an adult, none of this would have happened.
Smack!
Gabriel sucked in a breath and tensed. He buried his head in the blankets and tried to stay still, but the sudden pain was hard to tolerate. He wiggled his hips and inadvertently rubbed his dick against Sir’s thigh.
Sir’s hand went back to caressing. When Gabriel was bad to Garrison, Garrison had never rubbed the places he’d hit, and his voice had always been full of hatred and spite. When Garrison had punished him, he’d wanted Gabriel to hurt, and sometimes he’d beaten him badly enough that Gabriel couldn’t get up the next morning. Sir wasn’t like that. Even though it hurt to be spanked, Gabriel noticed that Sir didn’t put the full force of his body behind it, and he never struck the same spot twice. The pain wasn’t even that bad—if it wasn’t for the sudden, unexpected nature of each smack, it wouldn’t have hurt much at all.
In fact, every impact of Sir’s palm pushed Gabriel forward, causing Gabriel’s hardened cock to rub against Sir’s thigh in secretive, sinful ways.
“Do I need to remind you that whatever happens to you is my decision?” Sir’s fingers smoothed over Gabriel’s sore cheeks. “Your body belongs to me. That’s easy. Anyone could own you like that, you know. Anyone could exert force over you and demand that you succumb to their desires. The physical is just as easily taken as it is given. There is nothing special about that.”
All the men he’d slept with as favors to Garrison. All the times Garrison had demanded he perform. All the long, lonely nights with no one but himself to keep him company…
“But why I’m punishing you right now, Rabbit?” Sir struck him again, his open palm bouncing off Gabriel’s rounded cheek. Gabriel cried into the blankets, but even as he did, he pushed his hips forward to rub his cock against Sir’s thigh. Pleasure and pain wove through him in tandem, twin sisters who sweetened each other by proximity. “It isn’t because I want to dominate your body. Your body is already mine. What I want from you is something I can’t take by force. What you need to give me isn’t something you can hand over so thoughtlessly. What I want from you, Rabbit? It’s your mind.”
Gabriel gripped the blankets tightly and clenched his jaw. His mind? What was so special about his mind? Sir couldn’t hold it. He couldn’t brag about it. He couldn’t fuck it…
“When you act in defiance of me, you prove that I own some of you, but not all of you. Your body is mine, and it has been since the day we met, hasn’t it? I’ve seen how willing you’ve been to give it to me.” Sir’s hand ran from his exposed cheek to the small of Gabriel’s back, and Gabriel couldn’t help but grind against his thigh, seeking friction. He’d been hard in Sir’s bedroom, and he was still hard now. After so long without physical contact, he needed release. “But your thoughts? Your emotions? Your devotion? Those don’t belong to me. Not yet. And we need to fix that, don’t we?”
Sir’s hand ran back down over the curve of Gabriel’s ass. His hand was exploratory, mapping out Gabriel’s body like Gabriel was of value. Even with the lights off, he got the feeling that Sir was soaking h
im in, drinking in the feeling of him rather than the sight.
“Yes, Sir,” Gabriel uttered. The harsh words he’d said and the emotion behind them was gone now. Beneath a firm hand, he was docile and obedient. He remembered his place. He belonged to Sir, and he had to treat Sir with respect. “Please, Sir, punish me so I’ll remember. I never want to forget again.”
“You say such beautiful things, Rabbit. Do you say them on purpose?” Sir’s hand dipped low, following the curve of Gabriel’s ass to the space between his thighs. Gabriel sucked in a needy breath, certain that Sir was going to start stroking him, but Sir’s fingers met the elastic band of the boxers he wore, and he toyed with it instead.
“No, Sir.”
“I almost don’t believe you. Almost…” Sir drew the elastic back so it was taut. “… because you wouldn’t lie to me, would you? You wouldn’t tell me pretty lies to avoid a punishment you deserve.”
Gabriel panted his reply, too starved of breath and addled by arousal to give Sir anything more than that. “No, Sir, I wouldn’t.”
The elastic snapped back into place. It hit the back of Gabriel’s thighs, causing Gabriel to grunt into his blankets. The sting was temporary, but his body didn’t know that. It pushed forward involuntarily with pain, his cock brushing Sir’s thigh to bring him pleasure.
“Tonight was supposed to be your reward for good behavior. I wish it didn’t have to end like this.” Sir’s fingers slid back and forth over the band, and every now and then, he tugged it as if to draw it back again. “Do you understand why it’s gone this way?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Then you understand how to make it never happen again?”