21. Dylan

CHAPTER 21

DYLAN

You’ve never really lived until you had to hold a raw egg against the wall with the tip of your nose. At least, that’s what I kept repeating to myself the longer I did it. My shoulder ached in its sling and my molars hurt from how hard I’d been grinding them together, and I’d long ago lost focus on the fine brush strokes that made up the flowered filigree in the silk wallpaper in front of me.

My vision blurred beyond anything I could blink away, and I closed my eyes, wishing I had a better internal clock and some awareness of how much time had passed since Alex hauled me out of bed before sunrise and shoved me into the corner. From the other end of the room, a phone alarm began to trill. The noise—a welcome reprieve after what had to have been hours of silence—startled me to the point of almost dropping the egg, but I shifted and pushed it harder against the wall before it rolled down.

This was the sixth day in a row Alex had woken me up like this, and I knew what was going to come next. Behind me, the sheets rustled, and I wondered if he’d actually gone back to sleep or if he’d stayed awake and watched me the whole time. I never knew what time he actually got me out of bed, so it wasn’t even like I could compare once I got to a clock.

His breath against the back of my neck was more jarring than the alarm, his fingertips dusting across my bare shoulders even more unsettling. I worried again about cracking a molar.

“Go cook the egg, Dylan,” he said softly.

I shoved my hand between my chest and the wall, pushing back into him with as much force as I could muster. The egg fell into my waiting palm and my shoulder blade connected with his sternum. My injured arm still hurt most of the time, so I made sure to leverage as much weight onto my other side as I could manage. He was expecting it, though, slamming me against the wall with far more force than I’d used with him.

“What’s your safe word?” he asked, the question hot against my ear.

“Asshole.”

“We would have stopped a long time ago if that were true.”

I screwed my eyes closed, rubbing my cheek against the hand-painted textile that lined the walls of Alex’s bedroom. I wanted to dig my fingers into the seams and strip it off the wall.

“Juilliard,” I grunted.

He pushed me into the wall again. “Are you going to use it today?”

“Not yet.”

“Then go cook the fucking egg.”

Alex stepped away from me, bare feet padding quietly against the wood floor as he walked out of the bedroom, leaving me alone in the space that was so sickeningly his that it made me ill. His entire house was bland and boring, almost sterile. Every room a copy of the one before it. Every room except his bedroom and his playroom, at least. Both of those rooms had character, even if the character was a fucking domineering prick.

I blinked my eyes open, staring down at the brown egg in the palm of my hand and debating the merits of cracking it right there, smearing the yolk all over the walls and ruining his precious wallpaper that way, but even as I tensed my fingers around the fragile shell, I knew I wouldn’t go through with it. Alex knew too, or he wouldn’t have left me alone there with the egg in the first place. I decided then that he probably did go back to sleep after he got me up for our little morning ritual.

What was the saying?

Just enough rope or something.

He was already in the kitchen when I got there, sitting at the bar with his stupid little crossword and his stupid little white mug of espresso. Half rumpled from sleep, his hair was unstyled, his cheeks covered in a day’s worth of growth. He had on a pair of plaid sleep pants and his glasses. Nothing else. I swallowed down the way I wanted to salivate at him because leaning into how much I still wanted to fuck him wasn’t going to get me anywhere besides back in the corner.

Alex hadn’t touched me since I was discharged from the hospital.

Well…

Except to spank me.

Which he did more often than not and also harder than I thought I deserved. Standing in the corner with my nose against the egg should have been a reward for how bruised my ass was. If he’d wanted to be truly cruel, he would have made me sit on the floor.

With my back to him, I turned on the stove and dropped a pad of butter into the small cast iron pan on the front burner, determined to not let the very simple task get the better of me again. Six days with the egg against the wall, six days of being told to cook the egg after I’d served my time in the corner. The first five days had ended with the final product destroyed, stuck to the pan and mangled beyond recognition, which in turn ended with Alex strong-arming me over his knee and spanking me until I cried. He was always careful with my shoulder, but never with the rest of me. I knew there had to be a lesson in it somewhere, but I was too angry with him to find it.

If I turned off the stove and gave him my safe word, the whole ruse could end. He wouldn’t lay a hand on me after that. He’d probably help me pack my shit up and then drive me to Chelsea on the back of the sleek black motorcycle he favored over a car. The word was right there on the tip of my tongue, but the egg was in my hand and the butter had started to melt, and I wasn’t a quitter.

Or…I didn’t want to be anymore.

Walking away from my family had basically been the same as quitting my entire life, and at the time, I hadn’t realized the implications of the decision. I wasn’t stupid. I understood the concept of money and knew I needed it to survive, but I’d grown too complacent with the pad of the monthly deposits my dad made into my bank account. I hadn’t put together how much I relied on him. How incapable I was of taking care of myself.

Alex was taking care of me now.

Even if I didn’t understand the how of it. Even if I hated him and fought him at every turn.

Even if I resented him for it.

His pen clicked, the point retracting.

“The butter is going to burn,” he said simply.

I swallowed, staring down at the pan. The butter was still golden, bubbling and racing around from edge to edge like an air hockey puck. Maybe if the butter burned, the egg wouldn’t stick. I didn’t know shit about cooking—we’d always had help—but I wasn’t above trying something new to see if I could avoid getting my ass spanked raw for the sixth morning in a row.

“Shut up,” I told him, frowning at the butter as the bubbles turned a darker shade of gold before going brown.

I cracked the egg on the handle and dropped the contents into the pan. The burning butter popped and sizzled, the egg immediately turning white around the edges. I threw the shell into the trash can and grabbed the spatula out of the drawer.

“You think you know best, Dylan,” Alex warned, “but you don’t know shit.”

I wanted to beat him with the fucking overpriced wooden spatula, but knew nothing good would come of that, so I shoved the flat tip against the egg to flip it before the edges of the egg burned and curled. The egg didn’t flip. The spatula skittered across the pan, dragging chunks of egg all the way across.

“Fuck.”

The pen clicked open, and the point scratched against the newspaper…Alex back at his precious crossword again. He waited in silence until I’d given up on the egg entirely, turning my back on the burned disaster and staring at his fingers, resting against the white marble countertop.

“Are you finished?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Were you successful?”

“You know I wasn’t,” I ground out, fisting my hands at my sides. My safe word was again on the tip of my tongue, but it was like my jaw had been wired shut. I wouldn’t have been able to utter it even under threat of bodily harm.

The first time Alex and I slept together, I hadn’t known what to expect. He warned me that it wasn’t going to be a normal, vanilla flavored, roll in the hay and that had been fine. Afterward, I’d been confused, a little scared, but not of him. Of myself.

Alex had intentionally hurt me during sex, he’d demanded I demean myself for his pleasure, and I’d not just complied…I’d enjoyed it. I’d gotten off more than once, my body ramped up past eleven even as pair shot through me for how hard he had my nipples between his fingers.

Sex with Alex, penetration or not, left me feeling in control of my life in ways that I’d almost forgotten. This shit, though, with him dosing out my pain medication for me, making me cook for him and clean for him, this shit with the eggs in the morning and the spankings that followed…there was control here, but it wasn’t mine.

“Were you successful?” he asked again.

I bit the tip of my tongue with my incisors, the taste of copper flooding my mouth. “No.”

He set down the pen and stood up. My fight or flight threatened to kick in, and I had to mentally command myself to not run away from him. I knew what was coming, I knew it would hurt, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever.

I knew I was safe.

He came around the edge of the island and instead of grabbing me like he had the days before, he simply cocked his head toward the stairs. I swallowed, understanding immediately what he’d asked of me. He wanted to know if I was going to come of my own free will or if I wanted to fight him on it again.

“Where?” I rasped.

“Playroom.”

Just like I’d willed my feet to stay put, I had to next will them to move. One muscle at a time, I managed to walk toward him, then past him. He took the spatula out of my hand and started off behind me. I took the stairs to his playroom and stood in the center, shoving my boxers down to my ankles before stepping out of them. I knew I wasn’t allowed clothes in here.

The room was his favorite space in the house, but even he looked out of place down there in nothing more than his cotton pajamas. He pulled the spanking bench away from the wall, which was an expensive and glorified wooden saw horse, painted black and covered in soft, pebbled leather, and made for fucking. It was the only soft thing in the whole room.

Alex clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and folded his arms over his chest. Waiting. The way he held himself made his pecs and biceps bulge, and my cock, even knowing what was coming, twitched against my thigh.

“On it?” I asked, voice cracking.

“On it.”

His eyes scanned my face as I climbed onto the bench and folded myself over it. He had O-rings on either leg designed for restraint, but he also had handles. He’d fucked me on the bench once, back before everything in my life had gone to shit. I didn’t think he was going to fuck me today, but his cock tented his pajamas so I at least knew he was thinking about it.

“Scoot down more so your bad arm isn’t pressed against your chest,” he said.

I slid down so the top half of my chest and my head hung over the edge, stretching my good arm down to reach one of the thick steel handles, curling my fingers around the metal. It quickly warmed under my touch and I closed my eyes, sucking in a slow breath.

“Okay,” I said.

My shoulder hurt. It always hurt, and I started to wonder if it would ever feel normal again. I didn’t need surgery, but there was going to be weeks of physical therapy, and even then…the reality of that crushing possibility was too much for me to process, so instead, I welcomed the burning sting of his hand against my ass to spank it right out of my mind.

“Why are we down here, Dylan?” Alex asked, having moved around behind me. He pressed one of his fingers into what felt like a particularly deep bruise in the center of my left ass cheek and I grimaced, tightening my grip on the handle.

“Because I ruined breakfast,” I answered.

“Why else?”

I swallowed, tears already leaking from the corners of my eyes.

“Because I want to be,” I whispered.

“And I want you to learn how to cook a fucking egg,” he said sharply, landing a biting slap against that bruise on my ass cheek with his stupid fancy spatula. It was far less painful than the heavy sting of his palm, but one hundred strikes of the spatula later, the pain blurred into itself and Alex could have dusted a feather against my ass and I would have cried out for how much it hurt.

Alex breathed heavily, wailing down on my ass until the spatula cracked in two. The top half landed against the floor with a deafening crash and I sucked in a breath during the pause.

“Dylan.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to be finished.

Alex sighed, brushing his fingers over my ass before resuming his pace, this time using his hand instead of the spatula. He spanked me so hard the whole bench dragged across the floor from the force of it, and it hurt.

It hurt.

It hurt .

It hurt until it didn’t hurt anymore, and then everything felt like heaven, like I was lying in a cloud of silks and velvet, and I let out a loud and watery cry for peace.

“Thank you!” I shouted at him, even though the words didn’t sound real to my ears.

He stopped mid-swing. I felt the air push against my tender and probably bleeding backside in lieu of his palm. I sobbed again. I thanked him again.

I thanked him.

Alex’s next breath rumbled through him all the way down to his fingers. He pulled me up into a seat, letting me lean against his bare and now sweaty chest to catch my breath. It always took me awhile to stop crying after we finished, and Alex diligently stroked my hair and kissed the top of my head while I settled back into my body. He always waited until I pulled away from him to go. He never pulled away first. I didn’t know if he was aware he did that or not, but I sure was.

“You need a bath today,” he said into my hair, “not a shower. You need to soak that bruising.”

I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t fight him when he helped me stand. He followed me up the stairs to his bedroom, one step behind me the entire way in case I stumbled or fell.

I was safe.

I braced myself against the edge of the sink while Alex filled the tub with warm water. He poured in some Epsom salts and some herbs, using his fingers to swirl the mix around. His palm was as red as a strawberry, a sharp contrast to his otherwise tanned complexion. He held it out to me, not groaning or grunting when I grabbed onto his hand for balance climbing into the tub.

Sitting down in the massive soaking tub hurt far more than the spanking had, the salt and the herbs immediately starting to relax my muscles and tenderize the bruises. My face was damp from the tears, and I slipped under the water, eyes closed tight and lungs full of air. I counted to forty-nine, wondering what it would feel like to drown right there in his bathroom. My lungs ached, fighting against my brain to get air, and at the very last moment, I pushed my head back above the surface.

Alex was still there, sitting on the closed toilet lid, his crossword now in hand.

He’d left me alone under the water, but he’d come back.

He knew what I would and wouldn’t do.

I was safe.

“Thank you,” I said to him softly. He accepted my thanks with a nod, and I was grateful…because it was the only thing I had to give him.