CB Conwy

by Alphabet Soup [Torquere] (epub)

  “Yes, you are sensitive, aren’t you?” CK stepped in close and let the tails of the flogger run like water over his face and chest. Andy took a deep breath, smelling the warm smell of leather and gasping a little when the ends of the flogger brushed first his nipples and then his cock.

  “Remember, it’s good. This is what turns you on.” CK let the tails run over his shoulders, his chest, his dick. The feeling made him shiver. “This is what it’s all about; this is the scene. This is what I want you to feel.”

  Andy lifted his head with a jerk, staring at CK.

  His Dom was smiling, eyes happy. “This is what the letters are all about. This is it.”

  CK’s words made Andy shiver, and something clicked inside of him. He closed his eyes, surrendering to whatever CK wanted him to feel.

  “Yes.” There was a deep satisfaction in CK’s voice. “Give in to it. I’ll catch you if you fall. Keep talking.”

  Andy felt the next slap to his butt, more of a warm pain this time. He gasped, moving his head to the side where CK stood without opening his eyes.

  “I’m right here.”

  Another blow, hard, stinging this time, and Andy cried out. It felt good, and he did the same with the next blow, and the next. He opened his eyes, unable to take his eyes off CK where the Dom stood to the side, bare upper body shining with sweat as CK swung the flogger in another hard blow that made the pain and liberation spread through Andy.

  “Yes! Yes, please, CK, please.”

  Another blow, and he lost eye contact with CK, letting his head fall forward, lolling like he was drunk. Then CK was there, lifting up his head and pushing close, holding him tightly in spite of the straps.

  “Yes, thank you, please, please...” Andy didn’t even know what he was asking for, and he began crying, his body heaving with great sobs as he let go of everything, let CK catch him and hold him. The intensity of his crying was overwhelming, and he pushed his head hard into the crook of CK’s shoulder. CK just held him tighter, whispering encouraging words in his ear that he couldn’t understand, but they still soothed him, told him that this was all right. That he was all right.

  His crying slowly subsided, and he sniffed as he lifted his head. CK carefully wiped the tears away from his cheeks.

  “Are you okay?”

  Andy nodded. He was exhausted, and his ass stung, but he felt twenty pounds lighter and strangely present in the room.

  “Yes, you are.”

  Hearing those words only confirmed Andy’s feeling of wellbeing, and he closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling of CK touching him and massaging him while the Dom loosened the straps holding him still.

  “Are you going to fall?”

  There were only the straps holding his arms left. Andy shook his head.

  “Okay. Open your eyes.”

  Andy did as CK told him to, watching as CK undid the last cuffs around his wrists. He took a step toward his Dom, swaying a bit when the ground seemed to be somewhere far below him.

  “Oh, you’re floating.”

  Andy cast a glance at CK, who smiled encouragingly at him. “It’s fine; just enjoy it. Let’s get you to bed.”

  “Are you coming, too?” His voice sounded odd as he let CK support his wobbly steps.

  “I...” CK stopped him, embracing him again. “I am,” CK whispered into Andy’s ear, squeezing him tightly, one hand around his neck.

  Andy nodded and leaned heavily on CK; standing like this was really nice. CK chuckled and pulled back, a bit reluctantly.

  “We really need to get you into bed before you fall asleep.”

  Andy just nodded; talking was unnecessarily demanding at the moment.

  In the bedroom, Andy headed straight for the bed while CK undressed. He had already closed his eyes when CK shook him, demanding that he sit up to get something to drink. He grumbled a bit, but the cold water was good, and he drank thirstily. Then he lay down again, reaching out for CK.

  CK turned out the lights and got into bed, arms wrapping tightly around Andy. Andy put an arm around him as well, the skin soft over the hard muscles. “I think I get your alphabet soup now.”

  “My alph... Oh, you mean the abbreviation?” CK chuckled, and Andy could feel the laughter shaking the muscles under his arm.

  “Yes. I get it now. Thank you.” He leaned up and gave CK a gentle kiss before lying down again.

  “You’re welcome.” CK’s voice was quiet. He kept his arms around Andy, and Andy fell asleep before he could say anything else.

  ***

  CK’s eyes kept straying to the man walking next to him. It was a nice day, much warmer than Sunday, and they had left their coats in the car before going for a long walk in the park, just strolling around and talking a bit. Andy looked good, grounded.

  “Are you okay to go to work tomorrow?”

  Andy sounded surprised. “God, yes, I have to go to work.” He laughed. “I’d totally forgotten about the rest of the world. But yeah, I am.”

  He gently bumped CK’s shoulder. “I’m really grateful, you know? Thank you for putting me back together.”

  CK put an arm around Andy. “You’re welcome. I won’t say ‘anytime,’ because you won’t need that again. Now you just need to find your feet.”

  CK lifted his face to the sun, enjoying the peaceful walk.

  “I want to find them with you, though.” Andy’s voice was firm, and CK cast a glance at him, surprised at the sudden assertiveness in his voice. “I know you’ve already done a lot for me and that I should just have realized these things on my own, but I still want to play with you. At least, I do if you want to be with me.” The firmness of his words contrasted with the color in his cheeks and the sudden tension in his shoulders.

  “I want to be with you.”

  CK saw the relief in Andy’s eyes, his posture regaining some of the confidence from before, and the feeling was echoed in CK, the fluttery feeling of being wanted and wanting someone right back.

  Andy’s words had caught his attention, though. “What makes you think that you should have done this alone?”

  Andy shrugged and started walking again. The man really wasn’t comfortable talking about his past, even if he had become much better at it during the last couple of days.

  “I should have just stopped him from doing it. Said no, walked away, something. Anything. I’m not exactly a weakling.” Andy was walking slowly, looking down at the gravel covering the path.

  “It wasn’t your fault.” CK was not going to let Andy get away with putting himself down.

  “That’s bullshit. I’m not some innocent victim in this.”

  “That’s exactly what you are.”

  “You don’t know how it was! It wasn’t as if I didn’t act up. I talked back to him and refused some of the things he wanted me to do. Sometimes I was really provoking.”

  “You could have fucked every member of the Sox in his living room, and he still wouldn’t have had any right to hit you.”

  “No, but...”

  “But what?”

  “I should have just walked away! Why the fuck didn’t I just walk away?” Andy had stopped and turned to look at CK again. The expression on his face was pained.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Andy made a resigned hand gesture. “I don’t fucking know, okay?”

  CK just waited.

  Andy started walking again. “I didn’t know I could, okay? I didn’t know that it wasn’t okay, what he did to me.”

  CK reached out for Andy again, ignoring the tension of the muscles under his arm as he put it around Andy’s shoulder. “I think that’s a pretty good explanation.”

  “I shouldn’t have...”

  CK interrupted Andy before he could finish the sentence. “I think it’s a very good explanation. How should you be able to walk away if you didn�
�t know that you could -- or even that you should?”

  Andy tried to speak again, and CK shook his head.

  “No, you should think about this. You’d act differently today, but you didn’t have the experience to do it then. I think it’s as simple as that.”

  “This something your therapist taught you?” Andy sounded slightly hostile.

  CK smiled. “No, it’s something my friend was taught by his therapist. He was really stubborn, though. It took him months to acknowledge it. Nothing like you.”

  Andy snorted. “I think I’ll refrain from answering that.”

  “I think that’s a very wise decision.” CK chuckled and pulled Andy closer.

  Andy looked at him in surprise.

  “You don’t have to figure everything out in a few days. You’ve done more work in the last couple of days than most people do in a year. It’s really impressive.”

  “It’s all due to you.”

  “You really do believe that, don’t you?” CK stopped, a thoughtful expression on his face. “I think you should take some credit for what you’ve done.”

  Andy wouldn’t meet his eyes, mumbling something.

  CK laughed out loud. “You really don’t like being praised, do you?” He pulled Andy in close. They were in a quiet corner of the park, and he just held on. “I like that about you. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of things I like about you.” He suddenly didn’t know what else to say. Fortunately, Andy squeezed him tightly, and he didn’t have to say anything at all.

  ***

  “Too bad you didn’t bring your work clothes here; I’d have loved to see you in those.” CK winked, grinning when he saw how Andy’s cheeks colored.

  Andy just very slowly eyed CK’s body, taking in his business suit, and by the time those wandering eyes got to CK’s crotch, CK had to adjust his suddenly very tight pants. Then it was Andy’s turn to smile, a knowing look in those blue eyes.

  “You have a thing for a tool belt, do you?”

  “You have one of those?” CK’s mouth was suddenly dry.

  Andy laughed. “I do. And we better not talk any more about it if I want to be at work on time.” He picked up his keys. “See you tomorrow?”

  They had a date -- dinner at an Italian restaurant.

  “Definitely. I’ll call you tonight?” CK leaned in and gave Andy a quick kiss.

  “Sure. I think I’ll be home around five.”

  “Okay. Take care.”

  CK stayed leaning on the door jamb to watch Andy leave before he closed the door. His meeting wasn’t until nine, and he had plenty of time to get another cup of coffee before he left.

  The apartment felt strangely empty, though, and he restlessly walked around, cup in one hand. He ended up in his playroom, lost in thought as he let his hand slide over the padded table.

  He had had no idea what the scene on Saturday would do to Andy. He’d suspected that he would get a reaction, but he hadn’t thought that it would be that violent, or that Andy would trust him enough to give him that much. It took a lot of guts to let go not only once, but in their following scenes, too. CK was impressed; his carpenter was a very brave man.

  Only, Andy wasn’t really his carpenter. If Andy took his advice to go see someone, any self-respecting therapist would teach Andy the word “projection” before anything else. CK’s brain told him that it was wrong to exploit Andy’s feelings, that the man might be unable to distinguish between gratitude and real attraction to CK. He sighed and sat down on the table, sipping his coffee.

  The trouble was that every time his brain ordered CK to stop seeing Andy, something else inside him curled up in pain. He really, really didn’t want to let go of Andy. It was bad enough having to wait until tomorrow to see the man, and he was already planning their next scene.

  Apart from that, he had a feeling that it would be pretty hard to get rid of this new version of Andy. CK smiled as he remembered the confident statement Andy had made about waiting CK out. Maybe he needed to take his own advice: give in and stop thinking so much. He laughed out loud into the empty room and got up to leave, feeling a lot better all of a sudden.

  7

  He ended up picking up Andy from work the next day. CK had finished early, and Andy had been late, and it seemed easier just to meet at the site where Andy was working. CK parked his car at the curb, rolling down the car window and watching the upscale building complex in front of him while he waited for Andy. From the outside, the buildings appeared to be finished, but the surroundings were still bare soil with leftovers from the scaffolding lying around.

  “Someone’s going to get fucked tonight, huh?”

  CK started; he hadn’t seen Andy and Jeff walking up from behind the car.

  “It’s a dinner date, Jeff!” CK could see Andy rolling his eyes at his boss as they got closer.

  “Yeah? When the fuck has that ever meant you couldn’t get fucked?” Jeff grinned at CK, who nodded, not knowing if he should be offended or not. He looked at Andy.

  “Well, it certainly doesn’t in your world, Jeff. You’ll fuck anything that walks.” Andy didn’t seem the least bit insulted, and there was a confidence in his pose that CK hadn’t seen before. He seemed capable and professional. Even though CK might not be an entirely neutral judge of that.

  “Hell, they don’t have to be able to walk for me to fuck them; I’m open-minded. Have fun, boys.” Jeff whistled as he crossed the street and got into a car parked opposite CK’s.

  Andy got into the car next to CK, leaning over and giving CK a quick kiss. “Hi, CK. Sorry about that, it’s just Jeff.”

  “That man has a fucking big mouth.”

  Andy laughed, the sound open and good. “He does. I think he does it to hide that he’s got a big heart, too. But he certainly took some getting used to when I started working for him. I was still in college.”

  “I could imagine. He doesn’t exactly sound like a professor.”

  “No, there’s a long way from ‘The discourse of linguistic re-conceptualizing of political structures’ to... well, Jeff-speak.”

  “The discourse of what?” CK didn’t consider himself stupid, but he had understood about three words of that, if you took “the” and “of” out of the sentence. Two, if he were forced to explain them.

  “The title of my senior honors thesis.” Andy sounded a bit sheepish. “I wrote about glasnost and perestroika. In the Soviet Union.”

  “Sure, I get that. Well, the difference, at least. Okay, that was the only thing I got.”

  Andy laughed. “That’s what I mean. Oh, are we going to my house?”

  “Yes.” CK looked at Andy. “I supposed you want to get changed first?”

  “I do; I definitely need it this time.” Andy wasn’t sweaty, but his clothes did show that somebody had been painting near him.

  “What are you working on? The complex seemed pretty much finished.”

  “It is; Jeff’s firm normally does indoor work, mostly custom. Hence my expertise in bookshelves.” Andy flashed another smile at CK. CK found that he liked this version of Andy more and more. “This is just a job Jeff took to help out a friend who couldn’t finish on time, and I got on the project since I ‘fucking couldn’t be bothered to show up Monday morning when the interesting fucking work was beginning.’” Andy’s imitation of Jeff was remarkable.

  “He said that?” CK had had a pretty favorable impression of Jeff thus far. That was changing quickly.

  “He also pulled me aside when nobody saw it and questioned me until he was sure I was okay. He’s a good guy. It’s just the way he is.”

  “Hm. If you say so.” CK reserved his right to mutter something unintelligible at that. Luckily, he was interrupted by their arrival at Andy’s house.

  “You want to come inside? I’ll just have a quick shower.”

  “Sure.” C
K followed Andy inside the house. There, CK forgot how to move when the carpenter meticulously undressed, from shoes all the way down to and past his underwear. Andy didn’t look up until he had picked up the pile of clothes.

  “Oh! I...” Andy seemed as if he had totally forgotten that CK was even there. “It’s just that my clothes are dirty. I get sawdust all over the house if I don’t take them off here.” He looked a bit flushed.

  “Hey, no need to apologize to me, baby. I fully appreciate your cleanliness.”

  “Yes? Because, I mean, I’m...” Andy seemed to be stuck, lost in watching CK watching him.

  “Going to take a shower?” CK didn’t even try to keep the tease out of his voice.

  “Yes! I mean, yes...” Andy fumbled with the bundle in his arms and turned to the bathroom, giving CK a very, very nice view of his naked backside. He had muscles in all the places that mattered, and they weren’t grown in a gym like CK’s. CK enjoyed the sight until the door closed behind Andy.

  CK told his more than half interested cock to find something else to do and walked into the living room. Just like last time, it was meticulously clean and very tidy. CK had thought that leftover pizza boxes and at least one forgotten sock was standard equipment in any bachelor’s home, but that certainly wasn’t the case here. It once again struck him how complex Andy was; nothing was what it seemed like with him. In the beginning, it had almost made CK turn his back on this sub; now, it was what kept him intrigued and wanting to learn more about the man.

  “Ready to go?”

  Andy apparently meant it when saying “a quick shower.” Or perhaps CK had been lost in his thoughts. Andy was a favorite subject of his, after all.

  “I’m really hungry,” Andy added.

  CK let his eyes glide over Andy, taking in the khakis and the shirt with the top button undone. He did nothing to hide his appreciation, and Andy’s cheeks looked a little hot.

  “Definitely. Let’s get something to eat.”

  ***

  “You said that you studied political science -- how come you’re working as a carpenter now?”