For once, Robin sounded flummoxed. “I didn’t— I hadn’t—” I heard him take a breath, as though bracing himself. I did likewise. “You’re right. Those are things I definitely need to consider.” My eyes flew to his, and he gave me a warm smile. “If you want help with the paperwork for the medical issues, we can talk to my lawyer, see what needs to be done.”
And just like that, with no muss, fuss, or dramatic pronouncements, we committed to a future together.
Robin held out his hand, and I let him draw me back to the bed. His fingers crept under the ends of my hair to stroke my neck. “Okay. That’s that, then. No whippings that will leave marks.” He leaned in and kissed below my ear, and his voice dropped to a low growl. “I’m assuming needle play is still all right? It would be a lot harder to paint those marks as nonconsensual. I can still make you scream.”
I started to melt again, but something felt like it was missing, or off. Regret scratched at the back of my mind, taking some of the shine off the understanding we had reached. Temptation kept whispering two words in my ear.
Just once.
A consolation prize, for both of us. One chance to taste something I yearned for, to refuse to let fear dictate my every choice. Then we’d do the smart thing, the wise thing, the safe thing, the responsible thing. But for just one time, I’d be unafraid.
Was I being self-serving? Reckless? Possibly. I didn’t know anymore.
I swallowed. “Just once.”
“What?” Robin drew back to stare at me.
“One last time to leave marks.”
He studied me for a long moment, then dragged me in for a hard kiss. “Guess I’d better make it count.”
We decided to wait until after the holidays, after Jace and Ling left. Jace wouldn’t be concerned if he saw the marks, but Ling might, and I didn’t want to try to explain to her. The four of us rang in New Year’s with a pitcher of sangria and hot tubbing outside in the snow.
Then, on the second of January, Robin and I were alone once more in his house—in our home. We started the day off right, with Robin herding me to the sex swing—he wasn’t going to take the chance of anything going wrong with my joints that day—and fucking me until I nearly blacked out when I came. Aching, and with his cum still seeping out of me, I sat passively while he infused me with a large enough dose of factor to get my levels close to one hundred percent.
I showered while he made brunch. As I took a piss, I felt, as always, the sting of self-consciousness, of being controlled, of being possessed, at nothing more than the sight of the open bathroom door.
Robin didn’t need grandiose ceremonial gestures to assert dominance. He didn’t need collars or trappings. All he needed were the little things, like an open door denying me the possibility of privacy.
After we ate, we went to the playroom. He hadn’t even done anything to hurt me yet, but I was entranced as he zipped me into my arm and leg bindings and clipped me to the rings on the cross. Maybe it was because I was already letting go, making my mind blank, shutting everything out except for him. For this one time, this one perfect day, I refused entry to the fears that plagued me every day of my life. I put it all in Robin’s hands. He would take care of it. The only thing I had to do was trust in him.
I also trusted that I had done everything I could to shield him on the off chance that something went awry. In Robin’s safe, and in the hands of his lawyer, were both a video recording and a testimony I’d written, affirming that I had consented to everything Robin would do to me today. And Robin would be recording our play, to prove that I never withdrew consent, or that if I did safeword, he heeded it.
It might not protect him if something happened and a really aggressive prosecutor decided to go after him, but it would go far.
Now it was out of my hands. So I let it go.
Bare-chested, in nothing but a pair of jeans, Robin pressed against my back, pinning me to the padded cross and covering my body with his. His lips were warm on my shoulders.
“Do you want this?”
I nodded, too spacey for words.
“Speak,” Robin growled in my ear, reminding me that verbal acknowledgments weren’t optional. Especially today.
“Yes!” I moaned as his hand slipped around my hip and seized my cock, stroking me until I was on the brink.
“Tell me what you want.”
I whimpered as he released my dick, and cleared my throat, trying to find words.
“I want you to whip me.”
“Is that all?”
“No. I want—I want you to leave marks. Bruises. Even break the skin.” I drew a shuddering breath. Already it seemed I could feel the lighter strokes with which he would warm me up, escalating toward the ones that would burn or even slice. Fear and a sweet, sweet rapture jockeyed for position in my chest. And that was just from anticipation. “I want you to make me bleed.”
He was silent for a while then, pressed against me, warm and sheltering. After a moment, though, he stepped back, and the cord of a dressage whip tickled as he dragged it across my skin.
“What’s your safeword?”
That had to be a formality for the sake of the video. He knew I wouldn’t be able to relax and enjoy this unless I was sure we had covered all the bases multiple times.
“Bodysuit.”
“And that’s the only thing I’ll stop for, right?” he clarified—again, for the sake of the video. “You can beg and scream and tell me no, but unless you use that word, you don’t actually want me to stop.”
“Yes.” I laid my head against the padded wood. “I don’t want you to stop. Please.”
“Tell me again. One last time. Do you want this?”
I arched my back, offering it to him as a target. “Yes. Please. I want it.”
“I love you,” I thought I heard him whisper, and then he let the whip fly.
There was no real comparison to describe the pain of that thin bit of knotted leather cord biting into my skin. “Heat” was too mild. It was like being lashed by lava. It stung from the first, but long after the blow fell, the burn continued to mount and spread, radiating out from that narrow line.
The first dozen strokes, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to take it. It was too much. They never stopped hurting, nor hurt less. The next dozen were still agony beyond description, but I had lost the ability to process and react to it the way I had in the beginning. It still felt like I was being flayed alive, but that incredible swell of euphoria cushioned me from it. I screamed and eventually wept, with nothing more than a vague awareness of my own responses. I was sobbing, shaking, and if those black twill sleeves hadn’t been holding me to the cross, I wouldn’t have been able to support myself. Robin’s chest was like an open flame against my back, igniting all those crisscrossing stripes.
“Six more,” he murmured, his lips against the back of my neck. “I’m going to try to draw blood this time. Okay?”
I nodded weakly, then managed to recall that I was supposed to give audible responses. “Okay,” I said on a hitching breath. “Six more.”
I shrieked when the first one landed. The pain was immense; surely I had to be gushing blood from a wide-open fissure down the back of my shoulder. But my skin was dripping sweat—if I was bleeding, I couldn’t feel it. The next one was, if anything, even more brutal, and the one after that harder still.
Then I felt it—the smallest trickle of something wet down the flesh covering my ribs.
Three more followed, precisely placed rivers of molten agony running down my skin.
I had no memory of him releasing me from my bindings and moving me to the cushions in the corner. Lying with anything touching my back was unthinkable; I sprawled on my front, hiccuping sobs still punctuating my breaths.
The touch of a wet cloth made me cry out in both pain and relief. Even Robin’s expensive, soft-as-down washcloths grated like sandpaper. But blessedly cool sandpaper.
Robin was murmuring a steady litany of gentle praise and reassuranc
es, which I kept tuning in to and then drifting away from. “. . . took that beautifully. So proud . . . little bit of antibiotic ointment on these . . . amazing . . . Drink for me?”
The movement to reach the straw was almost more than I could do. But my mouth was parched and the water sweet and cool. Then Robin eased me back down and that was all I could remember for some hours. I didn’t quite fall asleep, but I was way the hell out of my head, drifting in an insensible, semiconscious haze.
God, I felt fantastic. The pain—and, oh, there was plenty of it—was a negligible concern.
Robin sat next to me, tending to anything I needed. I think maybe he was reading in between stretches of solicitude. It never occurred to me to mind him making a fuss over me.
Sometime in the evening, I came down to earth enough that he managed to get me on my feet and into bed. Carrying me wasn’t a possibility with my back so welted. He kept the room warm enough that I didn’t have to have the covers touching my back. We lay together in the dark, his fingertips lightly tracing my shoulders and hips. Anywhere but my back.
“I don’t think once is going to be enough,” I muttered with bittersweet resignation, my face half-buried in the pillow. “That was too incredible. I don’t know what to do.”
He kissed the shell of my ear. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”
“Aren’t you afraid at all?”
“No, and you don’t need to be either.” More butterfly-light kisses wherever he could reach on my face. “Rest. We have as much time as we need to work things out.”
Six months ago, I wouldn’t have accepted that. I wouldn’t have been able to leave it alone, wouldn’t have really bought into the idea that I didn’t have to have every experience and all the answers right that moment.
But now?
Now I believed him.
While the Dunes Resort in Douglas, Michigan, is a real place, the Buns & Baskets fundraiser for the Mr. Michigan Leather event usually happens in March, not in June. Hopefully they’ll pardon me for taking liberties.
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I want to thank the few hemophiliac gay men who took the time to answer my questions as I researched this book. While there is a great deal of information out there about hemophilia and even about sex and hemophilia, there’s not much about gay sexuality and hemophilia.
Particularly I would like to thank J, who spent time with me on Skype answering questions about incredibly personal things. It was a pleasure working with him, and I very much appreciate his willingness to help me get it right. We were both flying blind when it came to BDSM and hemophilia, though, so while I tried to get a feel for hypothetical issues that might come up, any errors there are entirely my own.
The Laird’s Forbidden Lover
Player vs. Player
Strain series
Strain
Juggernaut
Bane
Saugatuck series
Saugatuck Summer
The Professor’s Rule series, with Heidi Belleau
Giving an Inch
An Inch at a Time
Inch by Inch
Every Inch of the Way
To the Very Last Inch
Impulse (A novel in three parts)
Inertia, Book One
Acceleration, Book Two
Velocity, Book Three
Impulse: The Complete Trilogy
Amelia C. Gormley published her first short story in the school newspaper in the fourth grade, and since then has suffered the persistent delusion that enabling other people to hear the voices in her head might be a worthwhile endeavor. She’s even convinced her hapless spouse that it could be a lucrative one as well, especially when coupled with her real-life interest in angst, kink, social justice issues, and pretty men.
When her husband and son aren’t interacting with the back of her head as she stares at the computer, they rely on her to feed them, maintain their domicile, and keep some semblance of order in their lives (all very, very bad ideas—they really should know better by now). She can also be found playing video games and ranting on Tumblr, seeing as how she’s one of those horrid social justice warriors out to destroy free speech, gaming, geek culture, and everything else that’s fun.
Blog: ameliacgormley.com
Twitter: twitter.com/ACGormley
Tumblr: ameliacgormley.tumblr.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ameliacgormley
Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/author/show/6445292.Amelia_C_Gormley
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Risk Aware Page 26