“Please.”
“Not this time. Not this soon. It's about discipline.” Fuck, yes, there was a not-so-hidden smile in that voice.
I could hear every little sound, near and far. The tiny turn of a key in the ignition. The louder purr of the engine. Mountain cicadas singing, or maybe they were crickets.
“Please.”
The truck began to move, and my stinging back shifted against the leather seat.
Chapter Ten
The second draft of my senior thesis was fueled not by Jägermeister but by fantasy. The son of a bitch had captured my imagination.
It takes a unique brand of perv to be attracted to somebody like him.
Fuck it. Then I'd just have to be unique.
The whip marks were already invisible, but I was confident I could still feel them, a secret hidden beneath my new T-shirt.
A secret hidden within my soul.
“You want to time me, bro?” James asked. His voice was louder than usual, which suggested it wasn't the first time he'd asked the question.
I was working in my dorm instead of the library, which might not have been the decision of the year, considering that I was running out of time to hack my paper out. Now I looked up at my roommate, who was wearing a baby blue towel around his hips. Funny how hairless his chest looked after I'd spent a night in filthy town with Brayden Brent.
“Oh, man. You're not still doing ice baths, are you?” I shook my head in feigned concern. “That's not cool, bro.”
James folded his arms in front of his chest. “Why not?”
“Completely disproved by science.” I gestured at my laptop monitor as if there was something on the screen to support my assertion. “There's data and all.”
“The fuck? There was data going the other way last week.”
“Yeah, well, that was last week.” Yeppers, a lot had taken place over the last week. My back was still a little tender. My mouth may have been slightly bruised. More disturbing, I couldn't stop dreaming about being bruised and tender in, well, other areas.
Brayden on top of me, heavy and forceful, the powerful muscles in that tight butt working...
I didn't need to be thinking about that right now. I needed to pound out this stupid-ass paper.
“Yeah, there was a new report out from some trainers in the Czech Republic. You can Google it.”
James looked flabbergasted there in his little blue towel. “Well, fuck. What am I going to do with all this ice?”
“Why don't you put some bottles in there, and we'll have a party?”
“The RA already hates us.”
“Good. We wouldn't want to invalidate his world view.”
“That's you all over, Nic. All about validating the other dude's world view.”
We both laughed, and James picked up his phone. It wasn't long before a delivery that included several bottles and a half keg of beer showed up, soon followed by a mostly het crowd that included a disturbing number of current and former blonde cheerleaders.
How did a school with no football team even have cheerleaders?
What was I thinking? I didn't want to watch James practice game on blondes. I wanted to get this paper written.
“I'm heading out,” I said.
James tossed me a couple of beers to take with. The carrels were all in use on the third floor of the library. I found a dusty back table where no one would notice a can coming out of a laptop bag and I began to type out my brilliant thoughts.
Nothing I'd learned from Brayden had the slightest relevance to my senior thesis on Fight Club. The movie set, the hitching post, the public sex... Since last Thursday, I'd definitely diverged some considerable distance down a strange trail.
Maybe I could get creative. I could always claim my interview subjects insisted on the right to remain anonymous, which was even sort of true, since I didn't know the full name of anyone involved other than Brayden himself. I could say they spoke off the record with the voice recorder turned off, which gave me the ability to make up a bunch of bullshit quotes. Yeah, it would work, if I could make the dialogue sound like something a real person could've said...
Morrison wanted to believe. He didn't want to flunk Nicholas Kensington the Second's son.
I typed out a few made-up quotes on my laptop, but they didn't sound quite right compared to the rhythm of Brayden's deep voice echoing in my head. It would be so much easier to write if I could think about something other than his cock in my mouth.
He knew things. Even though he wasn't doing the things people thought he was doing, he was definitely doing something. He'd gone far down the path into figuring out how to fuck around with people's heads and make them thank him for it in the process.
A whole town dedicated to BDSM games complete with jail and whipping tree. I'd seen five people—Brayden, Eugene, and Ponyboy, plus the two black hats in mirrorshades, but that town wasn't maintained by only five people. Considering the horses, there was undoubtedly a full-time staff.
Fuck.
I needed to stop focusing on what I'd seen and start focusing on something that would sound believable in an English paper.
Brayden's sexy voice. Why was it so sexy? The sound of it, the deep bass, but also the meaning of the things he said and the way he said them...
“Is that what you think you saw, Nicky? A man breaking a weaker man?”
“Are you strong enough to surrender?”
I couldn't use those lines. No way I could use those lines.
I deleted the document and started over. I can usually type at over eighty words a minute, but today I was picking it out character by painful character. An agonizing effort, and I wasn't sure why it should be this hard. How about this?
A real man can't be afraid of physical pain. A real man welcomes the opportunity to test himself and to overcome his limits.
Was that the message of Fight Club? It was the message James and I had taken away from it, certainly the message a lot of guys took away from it. Modern men are weak because they haven't been battle-tested. The Nineties were a time of peace and prosperity, apparently with no real thought that an endless war would begin only a few years later. These days, anybody who wanted to be could be battle-tested. Women too. Anybody.
So the book was about a moment in time that was already gone.
Which, in turn, made it safe to teach as a classic. Even though it was only twenty years old. Twenty-one, now.
I was twenty-one.
Maybe we'd grown up together. Nah. I couldn't say that. Morrison would laugh me out of his office.
This paper was a mess. There was no Fight Club. There was an expensive stage set where men played BDSM games. I should have felt frustrated and disappointed. Instead, I felt...
I didn't know what I felt. My thoughts kept going around and around.
My balls throbbed.
I thought of myself hooded and cuffed with Brayden's big hand squeezing my bulge.
I thought about myself in the dark in that cell.
Why had he left me there? Had he left me there? From what little I knew about the BDSM community, it wasn't considered a safe practice to leave somebody in bondage alone. A part of me still suspected he'd been sitting there utterly silent and yet utterly aware.
The thing is, though, in some sense I hadn't been in bondage anywhere except in my own mind. My hands were free when I walked into that cell. Once I decided to remove the hood, it was a matter of moments to unbuckle the straps and yank it off. The door was unlocked, maybe not right away, but at some point during the night.
All I had to do was push on the bars at the right place and the right time, and I could be free. My limits were of my own making. That was the lesson of the night in the cell. Maybe it was the lesson of the entire town. I could have used the safeword or given the safe signal at any time.
I shaped my right hand into a pistol and aimed it at my own head. Boom.
If I had last week to do all over again, would I be willing to go back and
pretend an ice bath was a valid way to test myself? All that Stoicism, all that Sparta crap... it all seemed like kid stuff now.
“Drinking in the stacks is a violation of campus policy.” Brayden popped the tab on my second can of beer and threw back his head to chug it down in one smooth motion. The way his Adam's apple bobbed in his throat made me swallow.
Be chilly, I reminded myself.
“You're welcome,” I said.
“You're welcome, sir.” He put down the empty can with a thump.
“You're welcome, sir.” I hit a few keys to shut down my laptop. What was the point of pretending I could write? “How did you know where I was?”
“That's quite a party taking place in your room, but James interrupted his threeway with the blondes long enough to mumble something about the library.”
Brayden had come looking for me. Somehow, my laptop was in my messenger bag, and we were walking to the elevator. Ping, and down, and another ping. Out the door.
It was a nice evening. Pleasant. Springlike. I wished I was back in the dark of the cell, but this time with a heavy weight on top of me...
Why did I have these fantasies? Why did I have to be this way?
I didn't know, but I knew I had to take it further, and Brayden obviously knew it too. Even fully dressed, even walking beside him like an average student with an average teacher, I felt utterly naked to him. As if he could see everything inside of me.
“I can't write this paper,” I said. “I tried to get too creative. I should have picked something boring.”
He smiled but offered no teacherly advice. We seemed to be strolling toward the campus pizza place. We crossed a green where some guys were playing Frisbee with a golden retriever. It was a beautiful day, too beautiful for writing a senior thesis. It wasn't a date, but it felt a little datey. I wanted to take his arm, but it wasn't a campus where a student could hold hands with a teacher.
“How did you get into music theory?” Even the question coming out of my mouth was a little datey.
Tell me all about you.
Brayden smiled a wry smile. “I had a rock band.”
“Oh boy.” Maybe that's where some of the ink came from.
“Nobody's ever heard of us, but a couple of our tunes appeared in a movie. Then I got a sponsor who wanted me to write a jingle.” He sang a couple of phrases from a cola commercial I'd heard a thousand times, and all at once I understood why a guy who only worked four hours a week could afford to buy and renovate entire ghost towns.
“Wow,” I said.
We went inside the pizza place, and he ordered the Supreme and a pitcher of beer without asking. Paid without asking too. He was taking control, and I suppose I should have been offended, but I actually kind of liked it. He was slipping into the dom role.
“Um, sir, you do know I want to explore the, um, things you're exploring in that pervo town. I want to go deeper than we did the other day.”
“That can be arranged.” His golden eyes cut into me like a knife. “And, by the way, if you're interested in graduating in a couple of weeks, I do have a suggestion for how you can handle the good Dr. Morrison. You might need to trust me, though.”
Something told me he wanted me to take some different kind of crazy risk. Did I dare? This was real life we were playing with. My college education.
Those eagle eyes were a predator's eyes. And yet the way he touched my hip, my shoulder wasn't predatory. It felt like he cared and wanted the best for me.
“OK.” I took a deep breath. “You see a desperate man in front of you. Tell me. I'm ready to try anything.”
Chapter Eleven
“You're a bad influence, Dr. Brent.”
We hadn't returned to the library or even to my dorm. I let him put the hood on me, and we'd driven up to filthy town in his truck. His brilliant idea meant I wouldn't have to do as much writing as I'd planned, so I could take some time off to get dirty.
“What's the name of this place?” I asked. “I can't keep calling it filthy town.”
“Why not, Nicky? I think it's cute.”
“Fuck you.”
“One day, if you earn it, I'll tell you.”
Ever tried to roll your eyes in a leather hood?
“It's a party,” he said.
I swallowed. Just like that, my mood changed, and the ebullient bubbles of happiness in my blood seemed to pop out of existence. “I don't know that I want to go to a party. I don't want to do group scenes.”
His right hand squeezed my left thigh. “You know better than that, Nicky. I'm not putting you into any situation you're not ready to handle. So let me be clear with you. Nobody will touch you, and you won't be touching anybody except me. Same as before. It's a hard limit for both of us. You can trust me, Nicky.”
I thought about the scene with Eugene and Ponyboy. I did like watching. I did like knowing there were others like me.
A party, though. That sounded so... big. So official.
“I know, sir. I know I can trust you. But I... uh...” I needed reassurance, I suppose, but I was ashamed to ask for it.
He squeezed my thigh more firmly. “It's safe to admit you're afraid. I want to see all of you. All of your emotions. Not just the pretty ones. If you can share your fear with me, you can share anything.”
It sounded logical, but it didn't feel safe. My father's son could never say he was afraid. My father's son had to be chilly like the polar bear on an iceberg in the middle of the Arctic Sea.
Except, about this, I couldn't be chilly. The uncertainties were crowding into my head whether I wanted them there or not.
Maybe I was making a big mistake. Maybe I shouldn't be letting the little head do so much of my thinking for me. Maybe all this trust wasn't as meaningful to him as it was to me.
Doms liked to swap their subs. Everybody knew that. It was a big part of the power trip for them.
Yeah, everybody knew that. It suddenly felt very dark inside that hood.
“Look, I don't want to safeword or anything, but this is something I'm serious about. I really don't want to be shared around.” Did my voice sound too young? Probably, but I didn't care. I was desperate for him to hear me.
“Hey. Hey.” He must have hit the brakes, because the truck slowed suddenly enough to make me feel it in my gut. “I'm serious too. I don't want to share you around. There's doms into that, and I'm not going to kid you about it, but I'm not one of them.”
“So you don't...” I bit my tongue.
“You can ask your question. You have permission.”
“You don't fuck that Ponyboy guy? That Eugene, he doesn't make the guy suck your cock?”
“No, baby. It isn't like that with me.” Brayden's voice was patient, as if he had all the time in the world to go over this point. “We'll be talking more about all your limits. But that's already a non-negotiable. I don't share what's mine. I might show you off. I might enjoy seeing envious eyes knowing I've got something they'll never have. But, no, I don't fucking share. We're on the same page about that.”
At last, I felt comfortable enough to stop asking questions, and we lapsed into silence while Brayden concentrated on the road. The truck was easy to control, even around these mountain curves, and he kept that reassuring hand on my thigh. After some minutes, he said, “It's good to have a sense of community, to know there's others like you. To know you're accepted. Doesn't mean you're expected to fuck everybody in that community.”
That's something I thought about a lot, although I'd never talked about it to anybody. Who could you talk to about something like that? With my family money, I could have gone to a lot of colleges, some of them closer to places where you might expect a gay boy to want to be. Crazy party places where I could meet other people who shared my desires.
But I heard things about munches, leather clubs, group scenes. Scary things about submissive guys getting traded around. I didn't want to find myself in a place where the doms could team up and put that kind of pressure on me. It felt dan
gerous to me, like it would damage something deep inside of me.
I wanted to be tested to see how deep I could go. I wanted to surrender to an intensity of feeling beyond anything the vanilla crowd could ever imagine.
But I wasn't a guy who could feel good about himself if I gave myself away to just any random guy standing around with a whip.
What I wanted was something more personal. More intimate.
I wanted—I needed—a one-on-one experience with a master I could respect above any other man.
There's one me, and I only needed one master. I didn't want to be part of a group gang bang or a slave auction, didn't want to be passed around like a toy. I wasn't sure I could ever find what I was seeking from the leather community. Maybe it was my youth, maybe it was my distance from the scene, but everything I'd heard about BDSM guys made me... Hmm. What did it make me?
I wouldn't use the word, “afraid.”
“Reticent” might be the word.
Yeah, that was it. I was a little reticent.
Nothing about the guys I'd hooked up with had given me any reason to change my mind. Seems like everybody else my age thought it was stupid to be exclusive. It felt like I had to protect myself because nobody else felt the way I did. I was different. Not just different from the straight guys, or different from the vanilla gay guys, but different from everybody I'd ever heard of in the leather community.
The truck stopped, and I knew we'd arrived. His hand was still warm on my thigh, and he squeezed me again, not hard. We sat for a moment.
“You're not alone, and it's important for you to know you're not alone.” His voice could be cool and distant, especially muffled through my hood, but now it was warm.
I swallowed and said nothing. Nobody wants to be alone, but was I ready for this community?
“This is how it's going to go, and I promise you it can't go another way. I will keep you absolutely safe. Everybody here is sworn to secrecy. No one ever talks about what they do here or what they see here.”
“Yes, sir. I know that, sir.”
“When I brought you home last time, Nicky, I gave you a little test. You didn't know you were being tested, but I needed to see if you would talk about your experience.”
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