by Jaime Samms
Vince drew in a second, then a third deep breath. He itched to call Pete, to ask him how to do this, what to say, how to keep Lee safe. But Pete wouldn’t have words for him because what Pete did, he did by instinct. What Pete did wouldn’t work for Vince. He had to figure this out for himself.
And Lee was waiting for him. Finally, Lee was trusting him to know what to do and to do it right. He couldn’t drop the ball now.
“I just need to clean up a bit. Wait for me?” Vince asked. He needed a breather, a bit of space.
Lee agreed, and Vince dodged briefly into the bathroom to splash water over his face and calm himself down.
When he returned a moment later, he was pleased to find Lee already in bed, under the sheet, hands clasped in his lap. He stared at Vince, face passive, almost blank. He’d anchored himself, dug in and unmoving—a silent dare for Vince to rout him.
It amazed Vince how easily he could now see past the impassive exterior to the nerves and fear beneath. “Why so worried?”
Lee lifted his delicately slanted eyebrows. “I look worried to you?”
“I’m starting to see the signs, yeah.” He settled on the edge of the bed. “And you’re worried.”
“I’m fine.” Lee crossed his arms over his chest. “I did what you said. I’m here. Naked. Now what?”
“Now you drop the attitude.”
Lee actually jutted out his chin. “What attitude?”
“I’m not sure if you really don’t see it, or if you’re testing if I’ll call you on it.”
The bed shifted under Lee’s squirm and his face slackened. “I’m not doing anything wrong.” His voice had hollowed out. His eyes widened. At least he dropped his arms, but the alternative to the closed-off position was to smooth his palms down his thighs over and over.
“I see.” Vince got up and motioned Lee to do the same.
For an instant, Lee froze, hands faltering on their path. Did Vince remind him to trust? Or did he wait and let Lee make up his own mind?
But the next time Lee’s hands reached the end of their trajectory at his hips, instead of running them down the sheet again, he gripped the edge and peeled the material away. He eased to his feet, flared his nostrils, and lifted his chin. “Now what?”
It was a challenge.
If Vince didn’t meet the challenge head-on, this would only get harder the next time, and he and Lee didn’t have many more false starts in them. He had to get this right. “Kneel.” He was buying time. For what, he wasn’t sure, but hopefully Lee didn’t catch on before Vince had a plan.
Lee did kneel, his movements slow but graceful. He was careful of his back, using the bed for support, but once down, he clasped his hands behind himself and looked up at Vince. His jaw was tight and his eyes still too wide, but any expression was better than the wooden lack of it he’d first sported.
“Very good.” Vince stepped close enough to touch, lifting Lee’s chin and running his fingers under his jaw. The skin was so smooth, the hard lines of bone so near the surface, rigid under his touch. “You’re gritting your teeth. Stop it.”
Lee waggled his jaw and Vince let his fingertips ride the motion.
“Thank you.” Vince bent, kissed him, with tongue and command, until Lee’s eyes closed and his breath sucked in sharply.
A jolt ran through Lee’s body, jerking his shoulders, twisting his spine and lifting one knee that dropped again with an audible thump. He whimpered when Vince pulled away, and squeezed his already closed eyes tighter.
“Are you okay?” Vince checked in, mindful of Lee’s weakness. “Your back?”
“It’s fine,” Lee ground through clenched teeth.
“Be sure.”
“I’m sure.” Lee’s jaw shifted minutely with the words.
“Unclench,” Vince reminded him, running fingers along his jawbone. He waited with patience he hadn’t expected he had, while Lee breathed through whatever was happening, and finally waggled his jaw loose.
Again, Vince bent and kissed him with determined control until Lee was gasping.
This time the shudder as Vince straightened was less pronounced, and though Lee did clench his jaw momentarily, he loosened it again without instruction.
“That was very good,” Vince praised, rewarding Lee with another, possessive kiss.
“I can be taught,” Lee snarked.
“You’d better hope I can be more patient than you are stubborn.” Vince motioned with his hand. “Get up.”
Lee glared, but after less than a heartbeat, got cautiously to his feet, then replaced his hands behind his back. “Now—”
“Now what?” His cock twitched at the jut of Lee’s chin when he interrupted him. Vince grinned. “Now we start again. Kneel.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Vince shrugged. “You want to get to the good part? Because I can do this all night.” He ran light fingers over his semi, drawing Lee’s gaze to it. “Remember, I don’t need to fuck to get off.”
Lee groaned deep from his chest. “Fuck me.”
“Maybe. Now, you kneel.”
Lee lowered himself, mindful of using the bed to protect his back. This time, Vince only had to tell him to relax his jaw once and it stuck. “Now your shoulders,” he instructed. “Lower them. There’s no need to be so tense.”
Lee rolled his shoulders, tried to relax them, and when he’d released a little of the stress he was holding there, Vince leaned, as if going for the kiss Lee reached for. Instead, he tweaked a nipple and Lee yelped, curling in on himself, swearing.
“Lee.” Vince cupped his chin and lifted his face.
Lee straightened with some difficulty, but the tension was clearly back.
“You don’t like surprises, then.”
Lee glared.
“So now you know what’s coming. Stand.”
For an instant, Lee’s jawline hardened. His eyes narrowed, accentuating their pretty angle.
Vince tightened his hold on Lee’s jaw. “Problem?”
“No.”
“Good.” Vince held out his other hand. “Up.”
Lee took the offered help and rose. This time, he didn’t glare, just watched.
“I think you’re getting the hang of this. Kneel.”
Using Vince’s offered help, Lee knelt, face soft, shoulders back.
Vince’s half-hard cock stiffened further. “Now that is lovely. You can be trained to freedom after all.”
Lee blinked at him.
“But.” Vince reached past him into the nightstand and retrieved lengths of soft cloth. “Not tonight. Hands, please.”
Without hesitation, Lee offered his hands, wrists together. His gaze locked with Vince’s, and his eyes glowed.
“Oh. There it is.” Vince draped one of the strips over Lee’s wrists. “You’re very sure about this.”
“You won’t hurt me.” Lee swallowed hard. “You came after me. People don’t come after me. Or worry about my issues and wait for me to catch up.”
“You need to feel one hundred percent safe, Lee. This is important.”
“I do. I know I’m safe.”
“Okay.” Vince tied the cloth around his wrists. He knew his knots. This wasn’t something Lee could escape from without help. “Now close your eyes.”
Lee swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently. His jaw pulsed and the chords of muscles at his shoulders stood out for a moment. Finally, he breathed deeply, nodded, and closed his eyes.
“You need to tell me if it’s too tight,” Vince told him.
“Okay.”
The blindfold wasn’t going to completely black out Lee’s vision. If he opened his eyes, he would see light, probably even movement and shapes. Vince’s trust lay in the faith Lee would leave his eyes closed, let the blackness remain complete, and let Vince take care of him.
“How is that?” Vince asked once it was in place.
“Terrifying,” Lee admitted. He licked his lips, but to his credit, he didn’t ask what
came next.
Vince took his tied hands and slowly turned him in a circle, then walked him around to the other side of the bed.
“Now sit.”
Lee wobbled, head swinging minutely back and forth.
“Trust me,” Vince crooned. “One step back and sit. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
If Lee fell, it would screw up his back yet again. He was rightly afraid of that outcome. But if this was a big ask in the trust department, it was just as big for Vince. Lee’s submission and his back injury were tied together in some way Lee didn’t want to or didn’t know how to talk about. The only way around, in this case, was through. Vince had to trust Lee to stop the situation or show his faith in Vince’s care for him. There could no longer be a halfway.
Lee took a single step back and lowered himself slowly onto the edge of the bed. His grin, when he sank to safety, was radiant.
“Very good.” Vince tried to keep his voice steady and his relief to himself. If the words wavered slightly, well, too bad. “Now back up and lie down, head to the right.”
Lee shuffled around until he had his feet on the bed and was lying prone in the middle of it.
“Spread your feet.”
Lee did.
“Wider.”
A visible shiver shook Lee as he spread his legs wide, making an exhibit of his privates and his half-hard dick.
“That is perfect.” Vince admired the view before him, and the bravery of trust on display. He ran a hand down the nearest of Lee’s legs to his ankle, then dragged the end a tie over it. “You’ll be trapped here,” he warned.
Lee licked his lips. “You won’t let anything happen.” He didn’t protest as Vince lashed his legs to the bedposts. His body had tensed again, with gooseflesh all over, his nipples tight and pointed, his cock more than half-mast. His breathing was fast and shallow. That had to be addressed first, so Vince trailed fingers over his abdomen.
“Calm. You remember Pete’s breathing exercises? For meditation?”
Lee snickered. “That what we’re doing here? Meditating?”
Fuck! Vince’s cock twitched and hardened. Quickly, he shucked his clothes and stroked himself. The joke wasn’t defiance, exactly. But it was hot, and Vince liked the spit and spark Lee offered. “Be careful or that might be all you’re doing.”
Lee huffed, squirmed, his cock bobbing with the movement. It was fully erect now as well, and Lee’s breath was no longer panicky-fast, but heavy and excited.
Vince gripped one of Lee’s nipples and pinched hard enough to make him gasp. His back arched and Vince let go, immediately taking a step back.
“Vince!” Lee’s head came off the bed. He turned it one way, then the other.
“Shh.” Vince touched his shoulder. “I will never leave you alone like this.”
Lee sank back. “Sorry.”
“No need.” Vince ran his hand down over the abused nipple, softly caressing this time, and continued to the thin trail of hair at Lee’s navel. He stopped just at the base of his cock, pulling forth a whimper. “You are far too beautiful for me to leave alone. If you could see how you are right now, you’d understand. But we have to protect your back. That arch worried me.”
“It wasn’t painful. Much. I’m stronger now. If I need to stop, I’ll tell you. Red and yellow, yeah? Stop and slow down.”
“Very good.” He touched Lee’s jaw, his shoulder, the backs of his knuckles, his toes, his thigh, his stomach, then cupped his balls.
Lee moaned and shifted his legs wider, scooting his hips down so his knees bent and fell open.
Lightly Vince trailed a finger over his hole. “You understand this is mine. I decide who uses it and when.”
Lee thumped his head on the bed but said nothing.
“I won’t let you go without everything you need, Lee. You believe that?” Vince was back to touching Lee randomly, this time varying his touch between gentle caresses and harder kneading, occasionally pinching something sensitive.
“I know,” Lee panted. He was sweating now. His cock was leaking pre-come. His body shivered and writhed on the bed and he alternately clenched his jaw or bit his lip.
Gripping Lee’s cock with one hand, Vince touched his mouth with the other. “You keep biting that lip, you’re going to make yourself bleed. Please don’t make me stop. I can’t gag you yet, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Lee freed his lip from his teeth and licked it, his tongue pink and wet as it traveled over the plump, irritated flesh. “Don’t stop,” he demanded.
Vince stepped away from the bed, crossed his arms, his dick raging at him for backing off. “Pardon me?”
Lee groaned, a deep, pitiful sound. “Vince.”
“Lee.”
“Please,” Lee whispered. “God. Please don’t stop now.”
Vince moved in quickly, placing a warning hand on the bed near Lee’s head, then taking his mouth in a rewarding, commanding kiss. He didn’t stop until Lee was squirming and grappling at him with his bound hands, trying to touch whatever part of him he could reach. Lee kissed hungrily now, desperate for sensation, unable to be still with the want coursing through him.
Vince wasn’t a whole lot better off. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted inside another man this badly. Maybe he never had. Pete’s hand and blowjobs were spectacular and never failed to make Vince’s soul sing with release. But he’d never wanted to be inside Pete like he wanted this with Lee.
“Don’t move,” he ordered as he at last yanked himself out of the kiss. He dragged open a drawer for lube and condoms, crawled onto the bed between Lee’s parted legs, and hiked him down the mattress until his hips were propped at an acceptable angle, pillows stuffed in place to support him. There was just enough room between the end of the bed and Lee’s body for Vince to fit, and he silently praised his spatial perception for leaving the ties at the right length.
Lee was panting hard, playing with his dick, but his hands stilled at the sound of the condom wrapper. “Vince?”
“Lee.” Vince squirted lube and rubbed it over Lee’s hole.
The groan that came out of Lee when he sank the first finger in was music to Vince’s ears. The second finger elicited a small gasp and a squirm. The third got a groan and a plea for more.
Reaching back, Vince pulled the restraints loose from Lee’s ankles with a tug of the carefully tied knots, and lifted his hips. “You ready? Comfortable?”
Lee nodded. “Please,” he whispered. “All the way. Hard. I need it all.”
Vince positioned himself, blunt cock pressed implacably against Lee’s opening. Was he really doing this? He had never thought this was him. But Lee’s parted lips, his hands curled into grasping claws, reaching for something he couldn’t quite get hold of, his straining body: he needed this. He needed something to hold on to. Someone to do what he needed. For him.
Vince pushed in, relentless.
Lee’s loud, harsh keen made him still at the apex of the thrust just long enough for Lee to gasp in a breath and nod. “Go. God, Vince, Please. Go.”
Not needing further invitation, Vince pulled back to the very brink and pumped back in, setting a fast, heavy rhythm. His cock surged and throbbed, and he knew he wasn’t going to last if he kept it going at this pace. It was truly going to be as hard and fast as Lee seemed to want.
Without hesitation, he wrapped a hand around Lee’s cock and pumped, matching his hand to his hip movement until Lee was once more panting and pleading, no coherency to the words tumbling from his mouth. He shot in a few short minutes, back bowed and body so tense Vince panicked that his back couldn’t take the strain. But the hot seed pouring from him spoke otherwise, and his hole pulsing tight around Vince sent him over the last hurdle into pure white-hot pleasure.
He’d intended to pull out at the last and spread his seed over Lee’s body, but, well, maybe next time. Once he’d caught his breath, Vince eased out, removed the condom, then tossed it to the trash can. Glad he was kneeling,
because his legs were so numb, he untied Lee’s hands.
Lee’s first action was to grab him, pull him down, and kiss him stupid.
Vince let him, because the feel of Lee’s mouth and tongue, the confidence of his touch was nirvana. He’d feared that kind of contact would take much longer to achieve.
When Lee finally let him go, he gently turned Lee’s head to untie the blindfold, but Lee clutched his hand.
“Not yet,” he said softly. “Help me to a pillow. I want to tell you something.”
“Okay.” Vince guided him up the bed to lie on a pillow. Then lay down next to him, stroking along his sternum and belly.
“I got a scholarship, you know,” Lee began. “Out of high school. Despite being on my own for most of it, I won a scholarship to NYU.”
“That’s good.”
“It was great, but I was stupid. I made mistakes. Trusted a guy who used me and took my money. Hurt me. My back, I mean. Compression fractures. Then he left me alone in the hospital to start over with nothing. He was a Dom, just not a very nice one.”
“Not a Dom. A predator.”
For a few moments, Lee said nothing. “I guess for a long time, I didn’t know there was a difference. I would go to clubs to find guys to play with, but most of them took what they wanted, and I let them, but they didn’t give much in return. I thought I was doing it wrong. The more they pushed me, the more I challenged them. I— It was fucked up, I guess, but that one guy, he was one I thought I could trust. So when he screwed me over, I thought I was wrong about everything. The only way I could think to fix my life was to do it all by myself. Being alone so no one could do that to me again was supposed to keep me safe. I had to scratch the itch. But it was never, ever personal.
“I made myself into what I needed. Took care of myself. Made enough to go back to school and finished, caught Oscar Caruthers’s attention. Turned out that internship was just another form of me serving the whims of a master who didn’t give two shits about me. But I did it. I did what he wanted because he had the power I gave him, and I didn’t want to be wrong. Again.
“When you came out here, I thought . . . I knew he was cutting me loose. I was going to have to start all over. Back at the beginning with nothing.” He swallowed a few times, and the blindfold moved, like he was blinking behind it.