Heal (His Command Book 4)

by Piper Scott

  Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut so tightly the darkness behind his eyelids speckled. He did understand. He’d taken Sir for granted, thinking Sir wasn’t as powerful as Garrison, but he’d taken it too far. There was a difference between power laced with brutality, and power laced with kindness. Sir was not made weak because he had compassion—the fact that his control was so refined he exerted it over himself was a testament to his will. He did not lash out, even when Gabriel deserved it. He punished Gabriel in ways that would make him understand what he’d done wrong instead of ways that would allow Sir to get his frustration out in full.

  “If you understand, then you’ll want to be punished, won’t you?” Sir’s hand was on his ass again, caressing his skin. “I want you to count for me as I punish you, so you can see how much you’re valued. Every spank is meant to honor you—to encourage you to be the best you can be, so that you can please me, body and mind.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Gabriel’s body was on edge, left tingling in anticipation. He hung on Sir’s every word, goosebumps running up and down his arms.

  He would count. He would count and remember that he’d been bad, and that Sir truly knew what was best for him. It wasn’t the way the evening was supposed to have gone, but he didn’t regret it in the least. Sir was teaching him a lesson, and Gabriel would remember it forever.

  The first spank startled Gabriel, and he cried out in surprise. When he caught his breath, he crowed out a broken, “One.”

  Sir’s hand smoothed over his skin, then drew back and struck again. Pain seared Gabriel’s backside, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. He jolted forward, and his cock rubbed against Sir’s leg. “T-two.”

  “Good boy, Gabriel,” Sir whispered. “Keep counting. I want you to know how much I value you. I want to hear you acknowledge it. You’re better than this. Don’t ever pretend that you’re not.”

  The hand drew back, and a smack rang through the room. As his cheek jiggled from the impact, he rubbed his cock against Sir’s thigh. Pleasure mixed with pain. Was Sir doing this on purpose? Gabriel never wanted him to stop. “Three.”

  Another smack. Gabriel’s hips moved against Sir’s thigh at a steady pace now, giving his cock the stimulation it craved. The spanking didn’t hurt anymore—Gabriel’s mind had gone haywire, and pleasure was the only thing that registered. “Four.”

  How many more was Sir going to give him? Tears ran down Gabriel’s cheeks, but he smiled. There was no other feeling like this. He’d never been punished and made to feel good at the same time.

  Why had it never been like this before?

  This wasn’t a beating. This wasn’t anything Gabriel had ever experienced. He’d been waiting for the day Sir lost his patience and struck him, but this was pleasure masquerading as punishment. Would he always be so spoiled?

  Sir wanted this to happen to him. He wanted to guide Gabriel, but at the same time, he never wanted to hurt him.

  Sometimes, pleasure had to be delivered in a package more purposeful than kittenish tenderness to get the point across.

  On the next spank, Sir’s hand found a part of Gabriel’s ass that had been struck before. Pain spiked through Gabriel’s pleasure receptors and made itself known. Gabriel cried into the blankets, but his hips rutted forward, and he worked his cock against Sir’s thigh harder than ever to compensate. Pain morphed into pleasure and tightened in his balls. Did Sir notice? Gabriel wasn’t sure. “Five!”

  So close. He was so close. The small part inside of him that clenched whenever orgasm was on its way was clenching now, and with it, the rest of Gabriel’s body. His toes curled and his fingers locked into the blankets. His eyes remained shut tight, and he bit down on his jaw as the sensation overwhelmed him.

  One more spank. Just one more, and he’d come.

  But the last spank never came. Sir repositioned him on the bed and rolled Gabriel over so that he was on his back. The change of position was jarring, and Gabriel opened his eyes to find that his vision had adjusted to the dark. He saw Sir looking down at him, on his hands and knees at Gabriel’s side. “A first offense is five counted spanks, Rabbit.”

  Only five? Gabriel ached for more. Sir had to know it, and it was why he was limiting the punishment. He had to know that Gabriel was seconds away from coming.

  Sir’s hand on his ass wasn’t his punishment—the denied orgasm he’d teased Gabriel with was.

  “If you are bad again, it will be ten.”

  How quickly could Gabriel be bad? If he grabbed Sir’s face and yanked him down to kiss him hard, would Sir punish him all over again? “What will happen if I’m good, Sir?”

  “If you’re good?” It was hard to tell through the dark, but Gabriel thought he saw Sir smile. His hand cupped Gabriel’s jaw, and sparks shot through Gabriel, speeding his pulse. “If you’re good, then you’ll be rewarded.”

  “If I’m good, will you spank me again? Please?”

  The only answer Gabriel got was the sound of Sir sucking in a breath through his teeth.

  Sir leaned down, so close that their lips almost touched again. Gabriel already hungered for his kiss, and he’d only just gotten his first taste of it. Breathless in anticipation, Gabriel closed his eyes and let his head fall back just a little, so his lips were more easily accessible. He was ready.

  “We’ll talk about that later, Rabbit,” Sir whispered. Gabriel felt his words, and he imagined the touch of Sir’s lips. Passionate, eager, and all for him. “For now, you need to get to sleep. You will wake up at your regular time tomorrow. You’ve lost the privilege of sleeping in.”

  “I understand, Sir.” What Gabriel got was better than sleep. The ache in his balls was torture in the most deliriously blissful way. “Thank you, Sir.”

  “Goodnight, Rabbit,” Sir whispered against his lips.

  “Goodnight, Sir,” Gabriel whispered back.

  The mattress shifted. Sir stood and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  28

  Cedric

  “You’ve gone and fucked it all up now, Cedric.”

  “Not helping.” A cup of coffee steamed in front of him, sweetened with Bailey’s, but not even the alcohol was helping the panic steadily rising inside. After what he’d done last night, Cedric would need a whole bottle to get over the guilt. He pressed the phone closer to his ear until it smarted. The pain was well-deserved. “I need advice, Oli. What the hell am I going to do?”

  “To be honest, I thought you were kidding when you said you hadn’t already slept with him.”

  “How is that something to joke about?” Cedric asked, exasperated. “When is the last time I slept with anyone?”

  He could almost hear the shrug. “I thought the whole BDSM thing was just a polite front for lots and lots of anonymous sex.”

  Cedric pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed loudly. “I am not a prostitute, and I will never be one. I sell a service that may or may not include sexual stimulation, not my body.”

  “Well, after last night, you might want to reconsider that claim. You got the condoms out and everything. Admit it—you were going to fuck him senseless.”

  “Remind me why I called you?” Cedric asked. He pushed away from the table and sank against the back of the kitchen chair. There was a cobweb in the corner of the ceiling. It drifted, caught by a breeze Cedric couldn’t feel.

  Oli snorted. “Because I’m your best friend, and who else are you going to call at, oh, half-past five in the morning? You’re damn lucky that I’m at my wit’s end trying to find a job right now, or I’d be pissed that you woke me up. Not everyone can take off their shirt, strap on a little leather, and ask a fifth of the world’s population to pay their bills for them. Some of us have to kiss ass instead.”

  Oli’s particular brand of sarcasm wasn’t helping. Cedric, defeated, watched the cobweb drift in the breeze. “I don’t want to be a jerk, but can we talk about my massive fuck-up, please? I need some help. You’re the one from the outside looking in.
What the hell am I going to do?”

  “Not much you can do, is there? I mean, the way seems pretty straightforward to me.” Oli clucked his tongue, like he was thinking. “Step one: you’ve already made your mistake, so if you want to get your dick wet, go get it wet right now before you do anything else. Like, massively wet. Have lots of sloppy, satisfying sex. You might as well take advantage, right?”

  Gabriel, looking over his shoulder with lust-lidded eyes as Cedric’s length slid between his ass cheeks… Cedric’s cock throbbed at the thought. “Not helping. I want him, but I can’t have him. He’s too damaged to be able to give consent, and I won’t take advantage of him. I already feel like a monster over what I did last night. I should have had the willpower to tell him no. I shouldn’t have so much as kissed him. What I did was wrong, and then I punished him for my mistake after he was justifiably pissed that I stopped play midway through. I’m losing my goddamn mind over him.”

  “Okay, okay, so if you’re finished with step one, move on to step two: coming clean.”

  “You’re not going to tell me to hop in the shower, are you?” Cedric asked, words as dry as he could make them. When Oli teased, he went all the way.

  Oli scoffed. “Okay, so sometimes I’m a dick, but I’m not that much of a dick. I mean coming clean as in, you need to get in touch with whatever idiot thought it would be a good idea to leave you alone with a little sexpot omega and admit that you did a nasty thing by kissing him last night. You don’t want to sweep this under the rug.”

  “That idiot is Sterling Holt.”

  “And that name should mean something to me because…?” Oli sighed. “Listen. I know that you’re freaked out, and I know that you’ve got a lot riding on this job, but we all make mistakes. So okay, this Sterling dude might be mad at you, but on the bright side, you didn’t knock anyone up. You didn’t even touch his dick.”

  That was a lie, but Cedric let it go. Oli didn’t need to know about how he’d denied Gabriel an orgasm last night—or how he’d fisted Gabriel’s cock on their first night together before he knew any better. “So I call him and tell him I did, and then what? How is this going to make things any better for Gabriel? He needed me to keep my hands to myself, and I fucked up and victimized him. What am I supposed to do to make things right with him? How the hell am I supposed to apologize after I almost raped him?”

  There was a long pause—long enough that Cedric took his phone from his ear to check that the call was still going. It was. Seconds ticked by. He returned the phone to his ear in time to hear Oli speak, his voice hollow. “I thought you were asking me how to save your career.”

  “No.” Cedric closed his eyes and let his shoulders slump. “I couldn’t give less of a shit about my career. Right now, all I can think about is how I hurt Gabriel. How am I supposed to make this right?”

  Another long silence passed between them. Cedric opened his eyes a sliver, staring at the ceiling through his lashes. Gabriel was broken—shattered into a million little pieces. He’d shown tremendous progress over the past few weeks, but was it enough? He’d pieced together the dirty truth about Gabriel’s past, and he’d learned about his heartbreak. Until just a few weeks ago, he’d been in love with Garrison Baylor, whom Cedric had come to believe was one of the most deplorable men on the planet. He wasn’t ready to sleep with anyone yet, let alone Cedric, who’d been acting as his pillar of strength after a highly traumatic event.

  Gabriel couldn’t give consent. Cedric had fooled himself into thinking that he could because his attraction to Gabriel burned like wildfire set loose on a field of dryer lint, and the only way to extinguish the flames was to give in to the heat. But now? Removed from temptation and left to process what had happened, he knew he’d done wrong. Gabriel trusted him, and he’d betrayed that trust by taking things between them too far. It didn’t matter how much he liked Gabriel—the fact was, there was no way Cedric could give in to his desire without turning Gabriel into a victim.

  If Brittany were there to see what he’d done, she never would have forgiven him. He knew better.

  “I’m not ignoring you,” Oli said, choosing his words carefully. “I’m just… I’m kind of in awe that your biggest concern right now is making things right with the omega who wants to jump on your dick instead of the alpha who could rocket your career to superstar levels. From what you told me, he came on to you. Why are you feeling so torn up about it?”

  “Because he doesn’t know any better.” Cedric sat up straight, then thought better of it and slumped down onto the table. The Bailey’s-infused coffee waited inches away from his head. “This Garrison Baylor guy he was going on and on about? He ran an omega sex ring, Oli. He took kids from their homes—kids who’d just gone through their first heats—and pretended that he was their boyfriend… that he could make things right for them, if they would only do him this one little favor…”

  “The White Lotus bust?” Oli’s tone changed. “That Baylor?”

  “You know about it?”

  “It was all over the news. Some hotshot attorney dating one of Baylor’s boys just shot down that bastard’s appeal and made sure he’s serving life in jail for what he did. It’s kind of big fucking news, Cedric.”

  “The name sounded familiar, but I guess it never clicked.”

  “Because you aren’t an omega, I guess.” There was distance in Oli’s reply, not spiteful, but not exactly friendly, either. “If you were an omega, you would have known. It’s been… it’s been showing a lot of people’s true colors, who stands up for what’s right, and who casts a blind eye. There was trouble deciding on a jury, because good old prejudice runs that deep, even today. When he was able to appeal, there were almost riots. If your boy was trying to get back to that creep, then I can see where you’re coming from. No sane person would want to go back to a situation like that. He beat those boys. He abused them. He raped them. I’ve been reading the court transcripts, and it’s… it’s ugly.”

  Cedric didn’t want to hear more. Imagining the things done to Gabriel at the hands of a monster was too hard to swallow. “Then what am I supposed to do? He can’t give consent, but I went ahead and tried to have sex with him, anyway.”

  Nothing that Oli said was sarcastic anymore. “But you didn’t. You stopped yourself. It’s okay to be tempted, especially if he was trying to seduce you, but the fact that you took control of the situation and shot it down before you went any further shows that you’re aware that he’s off-limits. I think now, the kindest thing you can do for him is call your boss and tell him what happened, then ask him to remove Gabriel from your care. He’s not going to understand right now, but one day, when he’s better, he’s going to appreciate what you did for him.”

  It was the conclusion Cedric had been dreading, but the one he knew they’d come to. There was no other way. He’d taken things too far, and now he had to take drastic steps to make sure they never went that far again. Last night was proof that his body was weak, and his mind was even weaker. If Gabriel tempted him again, he’d give in.

  The only thing to do was send Gabriel away before he made a mistake he couldn’t take back. A kiss was one matter, but anything more? Cedric couldn’t live with himself if that happened.

  “I know it’s not going to be easy for you, but it’s the right thing to do.” Oli’s voice was sympathetic, but sympathy did nothing to unwind the struggle tying Cedric’s soul into knots. “And I think… I think in the end, maybe it’s a good thing. No matter what happens to you professionally, you’ve acted with integrity. And more than that, I think it’s a good step forward. Since Brit passed, it’s… you haven’t been yourself, you know?”

  Cedric said nothing. He already knew it was true.

  “I don’t know if you’ve been hooking up with people since she was laid to rest, but you haven’t… you haven’t been interested in people for a long time, and I think maybe this is a positive step forward. Even if you can’t be with him, it’s proof that you can still feel. One of
these days, you’re going to meet someone who knocks you off your feet again. Your heart isn’t dead. There’s still so much out there for you to celebrate, and so much love for you to give. He may not be the one for you, but he’s the one who’s given you what you need to find that person.”

  “Right.” It was hard not to sound bitter when Cedric’s heart told him one thing, but his mind told him another. Injured or not, Gabriel was someone special. Cedric had met enough people in his life to know that he wasn’t right for everyone—but Gabriel? Without trying, Gabriel had lifted his spirits and made him feel again, and that was more precious than Oli could ever know.

  Oli hesitated. “So you’re going to call that Silver dude, right?”

  “Sterling. And yes.”

  “And you’re going to ask him to take Gabriel back home?”

  “… Yes.” Even the thought tasted bitter. Cedric didn’t want Gabriel to go, but he couldn’t see a way around it. He’d failed, and this was his punishment. “I’ll give him a call once the sun’s up.”

  “Sounds like a good plan.” Oli paused. “And Cedric? I’m proud of you. It really takes balls to do what you’re doing.”

  “Thanks.”

  The call ended after half-hearted goodbyes. Cedric curled his arms on the table and buried his face in them, facing the reality of what he had to do, even as his heart begged him to do otherwise.

  29

  Gabriel

  Heat.

  Sweltering, blistering heat.

  It manifested as sweat on Gabriel’s brow and radiated from a place so far inside of him, it might as well have come from his bones. The ache inside lit to a dull roar, like wind blowing over the tops of tall trees, or the sound of a train barreling down the tracks.

  Gabriel opened his eyes and he knew it.

  Heat.

  It had come for him at last.

  Arousal pulsed low in his gut, a creature rising from the depths that could not be pushed back down. Dark and full-bodied, it addled his mind with thoughts of sex, but only one man he wanted it from.