As John stepped to one side, sweeping into the room at an angle like a stalking predator, she got her first glimpse of the man kneeling in the middle of his living room. The man John had told her about at dinner, she had to assume. She didn’t know his name, and his face was downcast, in shadow. He was their age, with dirty blond hair. Clean-shaven. As for his body, he was slightly built and covered in goose bumps, wearing nothing but a pair of white briefs. Not exactly what she had imagined. So...clean-cut.
John didn’t give her any time to acclimate to the situation, just spoke in that same aggressive performer’s voice, which was nothing like the calm, steady one he used on Robin.
“I hope you don’t mind I brought a friend along. Truth is, your mouth is good enough to suck my dick, all right, but other than that, looking at you is a turnoff. So I found someone more up to my standards to distract me while I pound you.” Without even looking at Robin, he stalked up to the man, grabbed him by the hair—and it was at this moment that she held her breath, expecting John to yank his head upward, to see—
—and John pushed him down onto the floor, toppling him off his knees. Put his boot on the man’s face.
She jerked in fear, hands curling into fists.
“Go kneel, sweetheart,” John said, not turning from the other man. He pointed to a cushion laid out neatly at the head of the room; she didn’t question him, didn’t hesitate, only rushed quickly to where he’d indicated. She kneeled and folded her hands on her lap. Forced herself to look at the tableau laid out in front of her.
John stepped off, grabbed the man’s chin and jerked his face up to look at Robin. The faint indentations from John’s boot formed wavy squiggles across his cheek. “Isn’t she beautiful?” he asked, staring at her with an intensity she couldn’t translate. “This is the kind of girl a guy like me marries. You? You’re just a piece of ass I keep around on the side for when she has a headache.”
Such a horrible lie, and yet the man half crumpled on John’s floor let out an equal parts nauseous/pleasured moan. Robin’s stomach twisted and a sick heat curled down her tightly clenched thighs. John’s only giving him what he wants. He wants this. God, he wants this. Even though John had verbally set her above this man, she was, in a more important sense...below. Outside. Not central. It made her head swim. I wanted this too.
“He’s hard,” John remarked. He was looking in her direction, but his gaze had softened in intensity, seeming to focus on some middle distance. It was no less terrifying. “Do you think that’s because he likes being used like a whore? Or because he wishes he could ever fuck you?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Being an observer was hard enough.
“Sometimes he gets confused. Forgets he’s gay for a reason, and needs to be reminded. Tell him you’ll never fuck him.”
“I’ll never fuck you,” she said, softly, not even thinking of the words. A human echo. A mirror. Doing everything and anything John asked of her.
So why did John look so hurt?
* * *
“I’ll never fuck you,” she said, staring at John and simultaneously not seeing him at all. It sent an ice-cold arrow lancing into his gut. Why did it feel like that was meant for him? And why did it seem like that was exactly what he’d asked of her?
Focus.
“See, pig? No woman wants you, and I really only need you as a hole, so at this point that little hard-on of yours is pretty much worthless.”
Andy moaned. The guy loved this kind of thing, being debased, and normally John loved giving him everything he wanted, even the homophobic fetish stuff John was borderline uncomfortable with, but somehow with Robin here it felt strangely cruel.
Shake it off. She’s fine. You’re fine. Andy’s fine.
Well, what he’d planned next was simple. Brutal, but reassuring in its simplicity, and something they’d done many times before.
“Can’t have you making a mess,” he told Andy in a low voice as he went to the table where he’d set out the implements. Leather suspension cuffs. Gleaming metal, spikes and screws and chains. The selection process always gave him a very pure, clean high, a nonsexual delight, and he’d figured why a long time ago: like working with the camera, it represented a union of art, purposeful technique and random synchronicity.
He chose.
And then he dragged Andy—limp, pliant, breaths shallow and panting—underneath the suspension hook, pulled him up to his knees, cuffed him, pulled up the chain and locked it tight. He moved quickly and violently. He had an audience, after all.
Andy hung from thick cuffs, arms stretched to the ceiling as if praying, weight resting on his knees. John didn’t ask him if he was comfortable. They had their rhythms, their tender moments, but tonight wasn’t about that.
Chained. Vulnerable. Bowing to him. John drank in the sight for a moment, focusing on the pale underside of Andy’s exposed arms where the flesh lay close to the bone. The curve of Andy’s biceps was defined but very subtle, just the kind of male body that most appealed to John. He grasped Andy by the chin, tilted his face up, then slapped him. Fuck, it felt good to work with his hands again.
And he’d used exactly the right amount of force. Yes. A sharp noise that still echoed. A spot of color, like the blushes on Robin’s cheeks. Andy whined deep down in his throat; his forehead was sheened with sweat.
John kneeled in front of Andy, wrapped his thumb, forefinger and middle finger in a tight circle around his balls, and pulled. A hissing noise burst from Andy’s mouth, pain and shock seething over.
John kept the pressure steady as he fastened the metal ring around the base of Andy’s stiff bobbing cock and tight-stretched sac. “He needs this,” he said, using a voice as emotionless and remote as possible. “The pain reminds him what he’s good for.”
“Thank you for reminding me, sir.” It was the first time Andy had spoken, and his voice cracked, straddling the line between pain and pleasure.
There were four blunt-tipped screws set on the inside of the metal ring. John tightened them one by one, until they indented the swollen flesh equally on all sides, a compass of torture. Andy let out a hiccuping sob, then fell into strained silence. John listened carefully to his breathing—shallow, but not too shallow. He waited, crouched there, until those breaths slowed and became even, and he judged that Andy’s body had found a new equilibrium. An accommodation of sorts with the leather that bound him and the metal that racked him.
Then he rose to his feet and gently raised Andy’s eyelids with the pads of his thumb, enough to see the enormously dilated pupils. He let go. Andy blinked.
No more need for words now. Somewhere—far away, beyond his current mental horizon—he remembered someone was watching. This is everything I have, he thought. The bitter and the sweet. The truth. And then his thoughts became very simple, divided between his own need to fuck and come and his partner’s need to breathe and receive.
He unbuttoned his jeans.
* * *
In their second year of college, Robin had seen John naked. It was 2 a.m. and she’d had an exam the next day and a splitting headache, so she’d gone to the kitchen for a glass of water to swallow her aspirin. John had been rooting around in the fridge, and when he closed the door, she got an eyeful of him in three-quarters view as he chugged a bottle of orange juice. She’d yelled something at him about putting on some damn clothes and don’t you own a fucking robe and he’d just cocked his eyebrow and jutted his hips at her, dick wagging, like the carefree pervert he was.
This was nothing like that.
The stance John took was iconic. A man standing firmly planted, fist wrapped around erect cock, outer length jutting free, bending it at the right angle to...to... Oh God, the sight did something to her, she couldn’t just kneel here and fucking analyze it like art.
He was more than himself. And she was—she didn’t even know what she was doing here.
She understood the nameless man’s submission on a visceral level, even if the kin
d of humiliation he wanted was alien to her desire. She didn’t just understand him, she wanted to be him. To be bound there at the center, serving as John’s...vessel. Something pretty for him to stick his spectacular cock into—not that he was freakishly large, but he was a big man and proportionate in every way and more than that, beautiful. Oh how she wanted to be good for him, take every inch even through the tears and thank him afterward.
She didn’t move. She barely even breathed.
John shifted forward. His submissive, who was visible to her in profile, his metal-bound genitals hidden between his spread thighs, opened his mouth. The heat below her waist flared and grew almost unbearable. She thought she’d put aside her shame when she put the necklace on, but her body’s arousal triggered nausea, drew her into herself, made her feel small.
And alone.
I don’t want to do this anymore. The here-and-not-here dynamic wasn’t intriguing. It didn’t feel distant in a safe way, like she’d hoped. It was alienating and confusing and verging on panic, a kind of horrifying mental bout of hyperventilating. Robin wasn’t jealous—wasn’t the jealous type, didn’t have the right or the claim to even be jealous in the first place—but she still felt out of place, like a piece of furniture. This wasn’t voyeurism, it was being set aside. Like a doll too precious to play with, and she hated it. What was the point of her? What was the point of anything?
It wouldn’t be fair to use her safe word, not when John and his sub were clearly enjoying themselves, filling the room with loud wet sounds and John’s growling moans, sounds he’d never made and never would make for Robin.
“I should go,” she murmured, far too low to be heard, stood up on wobbly half-asleep legs and fled.
The night air outside felt like freedom. She could breathe again, but she was so alone—alone in the middle of this vast city—and it hurt worse than leather or metal, worse than anything she could imagine.
* * *
“Hey, is your friend going to be okay?” Andy asked from underneath the towel he was rubbing his scalp with. The marks on his small wrists had already faded.
“Um,” John said, wrapping his own towel around his waist. “To be honest I have no idea what’s up with her. She’s a grown woman, though, so I’m not too worried. I’ll text her tonight and make sure she got home okay and then tomorrow afternoon I’ll stop by her place and see how she’s feeling, talk it out. Maybe bring her a latte and a cupcake in case I need to apologize for something.” I didn’t do anything to her. No one did anything to her. I specifically arranged the scene so nobody would do anything to her. Maybe it had been the language he’d used, the stuff that a gay man like Andy was accustomed to but someone more sheltered like Robin—Robin, sheltered? Come on. What was he even thinking? She was probably embarrassed about overreacting by now. She’d shocked the hell out of him walking out, but it wasn’t his goddamn fault.
“Do you want me to call her? Maybe we were playing too hard for her. If she didn’t know what to expect...” Andy didn’t look ashamed. He never did, after, but he did look concerned. Thoughtful.
“She did know. About you, about the voyeurism dynamic. I didn’t go over every detail though. You know I like to improvise.” John wondered at the defensive note that he heard in his own voice. “Huh, maybe you’re right.”
“You should go see her tonight. You know I’m fine.”
“No. Out of the question, Andy. Come to bed with me, I’ll make you some coffee tomorrow morning, then I can sort things out with her after you go. She was just watching, after all. You got the hard play. You’re the priority tonight.” He started to turn, desperate to get out of the too-small bathroom with its harsh overhead lighting that exposed every flaw, but Andy caught him by the shoulder.
“Did she know that about tonight?” he asked, seriously.
“What? Wh—” John broke out of Andy’s grip, squirming under the intensity of his gaze, but he stayed rooted in the one spot. He could see why Andy was such a good teacher. That look made even John, with his buckets of self-confidence, feel like a chastened teenager.
“Did she know I was the priority?”
Oh. Shit.
Chapter Nine
Her hair was still wet from the shower and the kettle had just begun to whistle when the phone rang.
John Sun.
It might as well have been a scorpion lying there on the counter. She wanted to toss her towel over it, retreat to the couch, curl up into a ball and watch mind-numbing comedy or horror until sleep finally dragged her under. But after slipping out tonight without really saying anything, it would only compound her embarrassment at reacting the way she had. And it would probably make John come over uninvited to make sure she was okay.
Which she was.
Okay.
And not answering the phone was the action of a not-okay person, so she picked it up and answered the call. “Hi,” she said, keeping her voice chipper.
“Oh good, you’re still up. I’m on my way over.”
Hmm. That seemed to have backfired.
“What? No! No, John. No. I’m not dressed and my apartment is a mess. Come by tomorrow or something.”
“There is no way your apartment is a mess.” Okay, he had her there. Other than the mug on the counter for her tea, the place was pristine. “You little liar.”
“Don’t fucking talk to me that way.” He didn’t get to call her his “little” anything. Or his sweetheart, either, while they were fucking at it. The jokes they’d shared all seemed to sour in her memory. Her eyes began to hurt and sting again, dammit, and she couldn’t afford to cry, and over something so...so...
“Okay,” he answered, his voice neutral, controlled. “We’d better talk though.”
“Sure. We’ll talk.” She hung up, banged the phone back down on the counter, then groaned and checked to make sure she hadn’t cracked it. Her sudden anger was as formless as the grief. You’ve got to get a grip on yourself. This isn’t you.
She belted her robe tighter and went to make herself some tea.
* * *
Something was definitely wrong. As he came to the door of Robin’s apartment, John made a mental note to bring Andy some kind of thank-you gift for telling him to go over.
Don’t you fucking talk to me that way.
He stabbed the doorbell. Waited there, reminding himself not clench his fists, because if she was angry, so was he. After everything he’d done for her, everything he’d put himself through emotionally, to turn around and walk out on him...
He’d stay in control. He’d find the right voice to use.
She opened the door, then immediately wheeled around and paced to the center of the living room, her red terry cloth bathrobe flowing around her calves. Walking away again. When she crossed her arms and faced him, her face was like a mask, inhumanly beautiful and frozen.
But the rims of her eyes were raw red. Something inside him broke down, noticing that, like a rib silently cracking. Talk. “Look, something went wrong back there. Part of it’s my fault. I should have gone slower, given you an easier out beforehand. What happened?”
“I just figured you didn’t need me there anymore,” Robin replied, sullen. There was no mistaking the hurt in her voice, no matter how hard she was trying to act nonchalant.
I always needed you. I need you now. “Oh no, you can’t shut me down like that. Just figured?” His forearms twisted, muscles twitching—goddammit, he’d never had to fight so hard to keep his body language under control. “This is complicated stuff, sure, and I thought you were ready, but I was wrong.”
“Don’t fucking patronize me, John. I’m ready for whatever complicated shit you can dish out, just so long as you’re dishing it out on me.”
“Wh—”
“I felt like a fucking prop, John. No more a part of that scene than the cuffs you put on him. When you said you were going to invite another person I thought—Well, I thought—” A tremor passed over her eyelids. The mask, dissolving, leaving her bare
and no less beautiful. Why can’t I touch you. Why can’t I say I’m sorry.
“What, that you’d be the center of fucking attention?” He took two steps toward her, stopped abruptly when he saw her narrow shoulders flinch. She looked like a bird on a wire, ready to fly away from him.
“Frankly, yes! Even if it was a ‘voyeurism dynamic’, as you called it, I was expecting you to be performing for me. This is supposed to be about me. Exploring my needs, helping me learn about myself. And I’m sorry if that seems selfish, but that was the agreement. That was the contract you signed. So if it wasn’t working for you then it was your own damn—Look, we could have talked about it. You didn’t have to spring it on me like that.” She looked away now, somewhere over his shoulder, and he couldn’t help moving closer, urgently wanting her to look in his eyes again.
And she wouldn’t.
Rage rose inside him, not at Robin, but at this distance between them that kept widening. He opened his mouth to let her know that he was mad, but not at her. “Well sorry! Jesus! I’d love to make you the princess of the world and give you a fucking flying pony!”
Wait, that wasn’t what I—
“If this is your idea of talking it out, John, then you can just leave.”
“So what, it’s over?”
“I guess it is.”
He sighed, shoulders heaving. All their years together, and this—this was not what he’d come here to say. These weren’t the results he was looking for. He had to at least try.
“Look, Robin, I’m sorry. I could have invited a third and had it be all about you, all about your needs, but I couldn’t figure out a way to do that and still respect your boundaries. It was either invite another dom and have the both of us team up to make you do nonsexual service stuff, which at the time seemed frankly fucking pointless since then nobody would be getting off and you’d feel pressured and I’d feel like there were too many cooks in the kitchen...” Realizing in hindsight how flimsy those excuses suddenly seemed, John finished haltingly, “or have another sub and you be a voyeur. So I went with the second option.”
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