Chapter 15

fifteen

I wakeup too early the next morning and stare at the ceiling, cataloging my options.

I can either stay here, in this strange mausoleum of old roses and new scotch, or I can leave and let Mark suffer properly. Grieve all over the house and grounds and roam drunkenly into the kitchen when he wants without worrying about running into someone else.

Having haunted my dad’s farmhouse for days on end, I understand it. There are some things so miserable, so private, that even their being witnessed feels like an additional agony.

Also I’m worried he hasn’t eaten since we got here, despite my trying to give him clumsily made sandwiches through the library door.

I shower and dress, and when I emerge, I see one of the library’s doors hanging open, and the dim space beyond it empty. I think I hear a shower somewhere else in the house, down the far hallway, where Mark’s bedroom is. That encourages me. If he’s able to leave the library, then maybe he’ll be able to have a conversation with me about whether it would be better if I left.

I wait half an hour or so, drinking a cup of coffee in the observatory and watching a slow drizzle take up on the glass, trying to give him plenty of time to get dressed.

I’m restless, bothered. I don’t know what by. That he has a picture in a drawer of a man wearing the same wristwatch as him? That he might indeed want me to leave?

It’s all ridiculous, and I still can’t help it. I want to be near him. I want to watch those infinitesimal twitches in his jaw while he’s thinking; I want him to quirk an eyebrow at me in faint amusement. I want to watch those blue eyes flash when he forgets to control himself.

But it’s not up to me. And maybe this is a chance to show how obedient I can be for him. How submissive. Going away when I’m told.

I go back to the kitchen and pour two cups of coffee, two glasses of water, and pile a bowl with berries and cut bananas. I load up a tray and go to the library door, which is once again closed.

I knock. “Sir?” And then I add, pointlessly, “It’s Tristan.”

There’s no answer. I hesitate for a moment, torn between worry and breaching his privacy, and then I do what I’ve been good at for the last eight years, and I follow my gut. I open the door.

The library is not large, not like something from a movie, but there’s something arresting about it nonetheless. An unlit fireplace yawns at one side of the room; at the far end, there is a large bay window letting in the room’s only light, which this deep in the wooded valley is a low, green glow, filtered through the petaled shade of a magnolia tree. Books are stacked floor to ceiling on sturdy shelves, a mix of old paperbacks and leather- and cloth-bound books. An antique desk sits in front of the window.

Mark is behind the desk, wearing only a pair of soft lounge pants, his hair dark and damp from his shower. His hands are braced on the leather-topped surface, and his head is dropped between his shoulders.

“Sir, I—”

He doesn’t look up. I set the tray down, take a small breath, and step forward. It’s not so unlike a battle, approaching him right now.

Step light, breathe light. Be ready for anything.

“I brought some breakfast in,” I say. “And I wanted to ask if I”—the question scalds my throat as I push it out—“if I should go. To a village or somewhere. Sedge said you might want to be alone.”

He doesn’t move from the desk or look up, but I see the muscle-layered sides of his rib cage expand in an uneven exhale.

I step forward again. “But I don’t mind staying,” I add helplessly. “If you want someone here with you.”

His shoulders move with his next breath, and they’re so rigid, so tense, a tension that is wrapped all around his body from head to toe. He looks like he’s barely holding it together.

“Go if you want,” he grinds out at last. His voice is rough, hoarse. With scotch or misery, I can’t tell.

“What do you want, sir?” I ask, and he finally looks up at me.

I nearly take a step back at the ferocity of his stare. His eyes are scorched with emotion, nearly black in the low light of room. As he stares at me, his cheeks grow darker.

He’s flushing. It doesn’t look sweet on him. It looks dangerous.

“You should go, Tristan,” he says. His voice is low and not at all cold. I’ve never seen him like this, flushed and avid. It’s intoxicating.

Literally. I feel unsteady. Buzzed.

“I don’t want to go,” I say. It’s an admission of too much, maybe, but I can’t stop it. “I want to stay.”

I approach the desk slowly, and he tracks my movement with sharp, burning eyes. Even though he doesn’t move outwardly, the rippling tension in his body signals his awareness, his restraint.

“Let me help,” I whisper.

“You can’t.” His voice is flat, dead, but his gaze—it still sears. There are smudges under his eyes and there’s stubble on his cheeks and he looks like a man who hasn’t slept or eaten or done anything but cut himself open with memories for the last two days. “You can’t,” he repeats, and looks away.

Two months ago, I would have thought he was right. For someone who’s been good at everything he’s ever tried, I am only good if I’m following orders. Sing this note. Throw this ball. Shoot this gun.

Follow this man and make sure no one tries to hurt him as he glides around his glass kingdom.

When there are no instructions, I’m lost. Maybe it’s having a solider for a father, or maybe the army did its job too well, but whatever it is, I sometimes feel like I’m missing the thing that makes people act. Like I’m a wind-up toy that can only march in the direction it’s pointed. Even in Carpathia when it was choice after choice, my call after my call, the overall mission was clear. Protect the civilians and officials. Stop the rebels. Keep your guys from dying.

And maybe that’s why I know what to do right now, why I’m walking around the edge of the desk to Mark’s side.

The mission is still clear, even if it’s changed.

It started as serving as his bodyguard, and now it’s just—

Serve.

Mark doesn’t move his hands from the desk, but his head turns, and he watches as I go to one knee?.?.?.?and then to the other. The rug laid over the wood floor is thick enough that I sink into it. My knees are close to his feet, and before I lift my face to his, I see that his bare feet are large and strong-boned, lightly dusted with hair at the top.

He turns properly now, looking down at my upturned face, and then his long fingers grip my chin, holding me still for his examination.

The sapphire burn of his stare sends a thrill of danger skating down my spine, and oh shit, what am I doing?

What if he rejects me again? Sends me away after I’ve made it excruciatingly plain how much I want him? Want to try this for him?

He could break me. And not with floggers or clamps or whatever else the rooms at Lyonesse hold, but with only one word. With a turn of his head.

I’d be broken.

But he doesn’t turn his head. He doesn’t tell me no. Instead, the fingers on my chin shift, and I feel a thumb drag slowly over my bottom lip. My mouth opens without me telling it to, and I see his pupils bloom even darker.

“This won’t be easy.” And that’s all he says before he uses his free hand to tug his drawstring pants down and pull out his cock.

I have to look, I can’t not look. He’s mostly hard, the flesh jerking as it continues to fill with blood, and light catches on the line of golden hair above it.

My mouth waters.

“I don’t want easy,” I whisper, and then I utter the most honest thing I’ve ever said: “I want you.”

Mark rolls his jaw. One hand holds my chin, the other his ready erection.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.

And then he pushes the head of his penis into my open mouth.

It’s hot and smooth, and the taste of him is the taste of freshly cleaned skin with a trace of soap. I’ve never done this before, and there’s the quiet terror that I’ll be no good at it, that Mark will sneer his derision and pull back, but there’s something inside me that’s larger than the terror—something that’s eager to please and also certain that being eager to please is enough.

I try licking, wrapping my tongue around the taut crown. His lips part.

“So pretty,” he says darkly, like it’s a bad thing, like it’s the worst thing. “So goddamn pretty, Tristan.”

My own erection kicks at the danger in his voice, straining against the material of the athletic shorts I’m wearing without anything underneath. I want to be pretty for him; I want him always to be talking in that voice, like he has plans that should terrify the fuck out of me.

Whatever’s been changing inside me for the last two months has finished changing. I need to be his. On my knees, on my back, humiliated, bruised, used. Whatever he wants me to be, I want it too.

I’m so hard now, just from his presence in my mouth, just from his voice, and then he tightens the hand on my jaw. “Hold that sweet mouth open,” he says, and slides deeper in.

It’s nothing like porn, nothing at all, because porn hadn’t told me that it would be so wet, such a stretch, that I’d feel a strange surge of pride whenever he gets deep enough to choke me. Which he does more and more, pulling out and then sliding to the back of my throat. His hand is still on my jaw, holding me open, and then his free hand comes up and brushes something off my cheek.

A single tear.

It’s purely physiological, from the steady invasion of my throat, but something about it feels good too, like crying for real, freeing and cleansing. Soldiers shouldn’t cry, but I’ve never been able to help it much, probably because most of the time it feels right and necessary—confirmation that an invisible pain is real; it’s so real that it can be touched and tasted.

And it turns out I like this, being used to the point of tears. I suck in breaths when he withdraws and try to swallow him down when he goes back in, and while he’s not being easy with me, I recognize that he’s holding something back too.

When I meet his gaze again through my leaking tears, I see that his restraint is not out of pity, or worry, or anything tender or tentative. He’s taking the time to study my every reaction; he’s using his restraint to watch me with a newly unfettered expression. Like he knows it’s my first time and he’s relishing it.

I will use you like a toy. Like a thing. I will make you cry and like it.

“Swallow it,” he says, and that’s all the warning I get before he pulses in my mouth. He’s so deep that I barely taste him, but I feel it, hot and thick, and when I start swallowing, he slides his hand down to my throat to feel me drinking him down.

Triumph is scrawled all over his face. That expression with his hand on my throat—and knowing that my mouth was good enough to get him there within minutes—means that I’m now in an agony of lust. My cock burns against the silky fabric of my shorts, and my heart is thumping against my ribs like a sledgehammer.

He holds me still until he’s finished, and I’m looking up at him with tears streaming down my face. As he pulls out, I become aware of how much wasn’t in my mouth; God help me if he ever wants to go all the way in. But the trepidation is tangled up with lust too, with the need to be something for him, even if it’s just an obedient plaything.

He stares down at me, his palm idly massaging my throat. He’s still hard, his chest moving in controlled oscillations, and his face is still victorious.

“I knew it,” he says.

“Knew what, sir?” My voice is lower, thicker, with his hand against my windpipe.

“That this is where you belonged.”

Where I belong. At his feet, with my mouth open and my heart in his hands.

“Yes, sir,” I whisper, and I can’t help it—I want to touch him. Touch the taut, tan skin of his abdomen and the neat black ink of his tattoo. Press my palm to his chest and see if his heart is beating as hard as mine.

But when I reach, he catches my hand. “Touching is earned,” he says. “A prize. And we’re not done playing yet.”

With strength that astonishes me—and thrills me in a sick way—he grips my arms and hauls me to my feet. I’m only barely upright when my shirt is torn off and I’m bent summarily over the desk. My shorts are ripped down to my ankles, and instinctively, I lift up, an unthinking response to the sudden nakedness. His hand is on my neck immediately, pressing me back down. His bare foot kicks my ankles apart; the shorts are kicked somewhere off to the side.

“If you want to stop, tell me,” he says. “But if you want this, stay down.”

“I want this,” I whisper. I press my hands on either side of my head, proof I’m not planning on stopping, leaving. “But. I’ve never—”

It’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassed.

Mark isn’t embarrassed at all though. There’s a rough eagerness to his touch as his hands drop to the curve of my ass and he slowly spreads it apart. Cool air kisses along the delicately pleated skin of my entrance.

“Has anyone been here before?”

“No. I’ve—I’m—”

He crouches behind me, and one hand moves to stroke over the sensitive opening.

I shudder. Such a small place, and yet one short caress has me burning all over.

“Never?” he asks. I can’t tell what’s in his tone. “You’re a virgin?”

“Yes,” I say, so glad my face is pressed to the leather mat on the top of the desk. I shouldn’t be so embarrassed, it shouldn’t matter. Lots of people in their twenties are; lots of people want to be.

It’s just that I never wanted to be.

Fingers stroke over my rim again, exploring. “It’s such a pretty hole,” says Mark in a low voice. “All tight and lovely, just ready and waiting to be opened. A flower.”

He presses, testing the resistance there, and my cock, trapped against the edge of the desk and hanging rigidly down, surges miserably. I reach without thinking—I have to touch it, I have to have relief—until a sharp smack makes me grunt.

Pain stings my wrist and it’s put firmly back by my head. “That has to be earned too.”

I pant a little against the leather, the pain now a sparkling heat spreading up my arm to my chest. Everything is sparkling. If you cut me open, my blood would be sparkling too.

Mark bends over me, his hard member against my ass, the linen of his pants brushing against the backs of my thighs. His naked chest is hot and firm against my back, and the feeling of being pressed down onto the desk is better than I ever could have imagined.

Having someone’s weight on me—harrowing in combat—is so fucking wonderful now. I think I’ll dream of it when this is over.

“This is enough to make someone wild, Tristan,” he says in my ear. “Bent over and exposed. Letting me do whatever I want.”

“Whatever you want, sir,” I echo breathlessly, mindless with lust now. I want—I want—I can’t even name all the things I want right now.

Him inside me. Him on top of me. Him using me until he erupts and all those heavy limbs are finally, finally relaxed. “I want to make you feel good.”

“So sweet of you,” he says, and then his teeth sink into my shoulder. I jerk underneath him, the shock of the pain mingling with the arousal churning in my stomach. His weight leaves me, a hand pressed between my shoulder blades to keep me where he wants, and then I hear the drawer next to my hip roll open. There’s the sound of searching, rustling—he’s looking for something, but I don’t think even he knows what he’s looking for—and then I hear a pleased grunt. Before I even have the time to wonder what it is that he’s found, there’s a sharp, flat sound, and a stripe of fire sears along the side of my ass.

“A ruler,” Mark says. Almost cheerfully. “An old one, probably from when this was my grandfather’s office. They made them thicker back then.” He whacks me again with it and I jolt.

“Does it hurt?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say into the leather mat on the desk. “But don’t stop. I—want it.”

And I do, I do want it. It hurts, but it’s the hurt that comes with laps or push-ups, with long drills or nights spent out in the cold, sleeping on the ground. It feels right somehow, like it’s for something—except instead of it being for my country, for my fellow soldiers, for goodness and bravery and loyalty, it’s for him.

For Mark.

The ruler comes again and again, diabolical and hot, and Mark straightens and steps back so he can hit my ass everywhere, until I’m sucking air through my teeth, until my head is rolling on the desk. And then like he’s building a sick kind of ladder, he layers stripes one above the other, from my knee to the lower curve of my ass.

The last one stings so much that my knees buckle, and I suck in a wounded breath.

“Mmm,” he says. “Such a nice little spot, isn’t it? So good for the strong subs who need a little bit more?.?.?.?effort.” He strikes me there again, pausing to listen to my low groan before he moves to the other side and does it again, taking care to layer two extra stripes along the bottom of my ass.

The ruler clatters on the desk near my hand, and Mark seems to be admiring his handiwork, chafing his large palms against the welts he’s left all over me.

“So pretty,” he murmurs to himself. “So sweet.”

I feel the slide of his hand and then gasp again as it finds my erection, giving it a sharp squeeze that has me moaning. His thumb swipes expertly over the head and goose bumps erupt all over my body as he smears the slick precum everywhere.

I would have never believed before now that I could still be hard after being worked over with a ruler, but here I am, shamelessly trying to press into his touch, widening my legs. Too late, I realize that might have been his aim all along, because then he runs two fingers slick with my own arousal over my newly exposed hole. I shiver on the desk, my hips rocking mindlessly back to meet him, and he rewards me with a slight press of his fingers inside.

“Oh,” I say, like he’s surprised me.

He pauses.

“Don’t move,” he orders and then leaves the room. I see bare legs, the low light catching on the golden hair of his calves and thighs. He must have discarded his pants at some point. And I have the strange feeling that I shouldn’t lift from the desk to see where the pants ended up, that I must stay exactly as he left me. I want to prove myself to him—prove that when he commands, I will listen.

He comes back, feet padding on the stone flags of the hallway and then on the wood planks and rugs of the library. I can almost feel his pleasure when he sees me in the same position he left me in. And I hear it when he says, “Good boy,” along with a light caress to my spine.

My toes curl at those two words. Good boy.

He sets something on the desk near my hip, and I hear tearing and then the noise of something slick on hard flesh. A condom.

I knew it was coming, and yet my breath catches in my chest. He’s going to fuck me with his cock now. He’s going to slide into a place so tight that even a single finger feels like an invasion.

His mouth drops to my shoulder and then to the nape of my neck.

“I wish you could see how incredible you look,” he murmurs, and then he reaches for something. A plastic click—a bottle—the sound of liquid. Something cool and slick is painted over the tight eyelet of my ass and I shiver.

“Shh,” he says. “It’ll warm up in just a minute.”

And then his finger circles me, slow but not sweet, more like the touch of someone savoring a first course, knowing a full meal is ahead. It breaches me with leisure; first the fingertip, then up to a knuckle, and then another.

I’m starting to sweat, my skin so flushed it feels like I’m burning. Between my legs, I feel each and every infinitesimal draft of air along the swollen and slick end of my cock.

“Have you ever done this to yourself?” he asks.

He runs a club where sometimes people sleep in dog crates for fun. I shouldn’t feel so flushy and awkward when I reply, “Yes, sir.”

“Just fingers? A toy maybe?”

“Just fingers. I—I was too embarrassed to buy a toy.”

There’s a huff of laughter; warm air brushes past the place where my neck meets my shoulder. “Just wait until someone tells you about the internet.”

His finger is thick, long, and he turns it just so. It brushes against the place inside that makes me wild.

“I’ve never—” I’m squirming underneath him now, and if I thought him lying on top of me was heavenly, it has nothing on moving underneath him. On writhing and bucking and being held pinned in place anyway.

“I’ve never had a real place of my own,” I continue, and this is almost more embarrassing than anything else, but then there’s another caress inside and any emotion that’s not oh God, right there vanishes. “I was nervous about ordering something and having someone find out I’d bought it for myself.”

“So just your fingers, then,” Mark says, and then when he pulls out and pushes back in, there are two fingers. I’m being stretched. Dilated. This is as much as I’ve ever done to myself, and the angle has never been like this, it’s never been this deep and adept. I make a noise as he begins to fuck me slowly but thoroughly with his hand, grazing my prostate with every stroke, working me open bit by bit, until it gets easier and easier to take.

He’s moved off me, and I try to look over my shoulder at him. I can’t see much, but I can see that his expression is pleased and darkly ravenous. His eyes are fixed on where his fingers move in and out, and his free hand is sliding up and down my abused flank, sending sparks of sensation all over my body.

“I used to dream about having a submissive like you,” he murmurs. “Just like you.”

The words sink into me like heat from a fire, and even with pleasure spiking through me, I know how dangerous it is.

How dangerous those words are for someone like me, someone who’s only one breath away from falling in love.

“I didn’t know to dream you,” I admit in a whisper.

He stills behind me, and there’s a pause. I wonder if he’s going to speak, laugh, scoff, but instead, he lowers his mouth to my shoulder and catches the trapezius muscle in his teeth. He bites down, and the pain steals my breath away.

He lingers for a moment, teeth undoubtedly marking me, like he’s trying to put something he can’t say into the bite instead.

And then his mouth comes near my ear. “Tristan.”

“Sir?”

“This part won’t be easy either.”

He grabs the back of my neck, and without warning I’m hauled off the desk and pushed onto the floor. I don’t have time to adjust or get my bearings; I’m pressed down, my cheek against the carpet, my left knee shoved up to expose my entrance. My erection is trapped underneath me, and though the carpet is plush, no carpet is soft enough for bare flesh to rub against repeatedly. But I rub anyway, squirming, desperate for friction. My heart is wild in my chest, and I think I might ejaculate right now. Solely from being shoved down and shoved open. Solely from the shadow of him over me, from the sight of his left hand planted by my face, large and strong.

Something big, hot, and slippery presses against me, and I shudder, closing my eyes and breathing into the floor. It’s so big. So much bigger than my fingers or his, so much?.?.?. more. And when he breaches the tight muscle that guards against intrusion, I make a low, labored noise. It feels like he’s splitting me in half, cleaving me right in two.

He hisses above me, an animal sound, and my dick surges painfully just to hear it. Hear what my body is doing to him. I want to hear it again; I want to hear every noise possible.

I remember reading that I should open for this part, that I should bear down against him, and I take a deep breath and push against the invasion. With an abrupt slide that has us both grunting, he sinks all the way home.

For a moment, that’s all there is. The discomfort, the stretch, the fullness, the heat. My cock like an aching bar against the carpet, desperate to rut and come, my pulse pounding in my throat.

His strong hand by my face, the fingertips digging into the carpet.

“That’s good,” he groans, giving an experimental thrust. “I knew it would be. I knew it would be so—fuck—”

He moves again, this time lowering himself so that he’s all the way on top of me, his chest and stomach to my back, his legs tangled with mine. One arm slides under my stomach, hand spread possessively wide, and then his forearm braces above my head.

His head comes down and I feel his lips on the place where my jaw meets my ear.

I want to move, to turn to kiss him, but I can’t. I’m pinned with his weight, his hips, his arms around me, and the feeling of it is like the feeling of the expensive rug on my needy cock: exquisite torture.

I test it a little, still trying to move, and only succeed in driving his organ deeper into my body.

Soft lips curve against my cheek. “Trying to get away, Tristan?”

No. No, that isn’t it at all. “Making sure I can’t,” I whisper in admission, and his fingers tighten on my stomach.

“I knew it,” he says, an echo of his earlier words, and I should hate that—I should hate that this is what I want, that it’s so obvious. That someone else can see that I don’t want to be on my own two feet, being looked in the eye and kissed softly. That I don’t want romantic or respectful or tender.

That I want to be pressed facedown into the carpet while my boss pumps into me from behind instead.

I am shivering, moaning, trying to fuck my cock against the same carpet that’s also rubbing me raw. It feels so goddamn right that I think my bones are going to crack under the rightness of it.

I was always meant to be here.

I was always meant to be here.

His heavy limbs and hard torso and chest keep me still for the taking; he fucks me like he hasn’t gotten to fuck anyone in years. Which I know isn’t true—I can still remember the slick sound of him using the gloved submissive’s cunt—but it feels true, it feels so true. In the ragged tear of his breath, in the way the hand on my stomach keeps flexing and grabbing and spreading. In the way he keeps mouthing my shoulder, my neck, the top of my spine.

In the almost desperate driving of his hips, the strain of his stomach and thighs and calves to get himself deeper, to pound harder.

And each and every piston of his hips has me seeing stars; the blunt head of him and his wide shaft rubbing against the sensitive gland deep in my body. Each thrust rocks my own hips forward, forcing me to fuck the carpet, and the knot inside my groin is so tight that I can’t breathe, and his shuddering, grunting satisfaction is also mine, and the proof that I’m giving him pleasure is just as potent as a hand on my cock—more—and then I’m a wild thing underneath him, because it’s too much, I’m feeling too much—

“Oh, so pretty,” he croons as I writhe, sobbing, the orgasm clawing its way from somewhere I didn’t know orgasms could come from. I’m spurting hot and thick all over his grandfather’s carpet, and the contractions are clenching in my stomach and thighs, and I think deep in my core too, because his crooning breaks off into a rough, staccato grunt.

He rides me through it all, like he’s trying to literally fuck the sperm out of my body thrust by thrust, and maybe it’s working because the climax is wringing me out, milking me of everything I have, and then I’m crying in the rug, so dizzy I can barely see, a warm slick of ejaculate underneath me.

“You—” he says, and he swears a bitten-off oath, plunging in once more and holding himself inside me with all of his weight.

Even through the dizziness, I feel him swell and pulse, releasing the fullness of his pleasure into the condom. The throb of him inside me steals my breath away, and I’m still so dizzy, and I want to feel this forever, this exact thing: him on top of me, jerking inside me, his breath warm on the stinging bite he left on my neck.

Mark doesn’t deny himself a moment of his orgasm, only moving to stroke himself a few more times with my body, as if to make sure every last bit of use of me is had, and I shudder with renewed longing as he finally slides free and straddles my thighs. I feel the wet length of his dick nestled against the cleft of my ass; when I muster the effort to look over my shoulder, he’s looking down to where his still-condomed shaft rests on my skin, his chest heaving, his cheeks flushed.

“My God,” he says, his voice hoarse with exertion. “You have no idea what a fucking prize you are.”

He gets up, and I let my eyes flutter closed for a moment, knowing I need to move but unable to summon the energy to. If it weren’t for the heavy hammer of my heart against my sternum, I’d believe I was dead.

I intuit more than hear Mark’s steps—his tread is always quiet, but barefoot it’s nearly silent—and then there’s the far-off sound of running water in the kitchen. I know he’s back when I feel a waft of air and then a warm cloth is pressed against the intimate skin of my entrance. I shiver and try to move, and a firm hand comes down on my back.

“I’m not done yet,” Mark says, and he takes his time running a hand over the welts on my thighs and ass, testing the bite on my shoulder with his fingertips. It all stings, but I don’t think there’s any broken skin anywhere; Mark must have found that wafer-thin line that maximizes sensation without causing anything more serious than a florid signature of his touch.

For a moment, I’m reminded of the rumors about him, the stories of Mark Trevena, Special Activities operator. That torture was something he often did, something he was supposed to be skilled at doing. That the reason he knows how hard to hit me without breaking the skin might be because that knowledge was very useful in his previous life at the CIA.

It should give me chills, this thought, and I think it does, except those chills are swallowed by everything else, by him rolling me onto my back and examining my face for carpet burn. He carefully wipes my cock clean, lingering triumph in his expression, along with the intense focus I recognize from his meetings. He doesn’t speak.

I’m coming back to myself unsteadily, a soul crawling back inside its earthly shell. “I think I made a mess on your carpet,” I finally say.

Mark’s eyebrows lift in blank confusion, like I’ve just brought up the price of Skittles in Svalbard. “Carpets can be cleaned,” he says slowly, like he thinks he might be missing something.

I hiss as the cloth works away the little flecks of drying orgasm on my dick. When I look down, the skin is bright red, but again, not broken.

Raw enough to hurt, whole enough to be abused again soon.

“I should clean it then,” I say. My voice is dazed. “The mess. I don’t want to leave it there—”

“It’ll be my favorite stain,” he says, sounding entertained. He uses the cloth to scrub at the worst of the spatter and then tosses it on the chair near the desk.

Mark stands up and looks down at me. At some point, the weather shifted—tepid rain to angry clouds. He’s all shadows now, and the little light that’s left is preoccupied with caressing his jaw and strong nose, with turning those blue eyes into a dark, shimmering mercury.

Above me like this, he looks like a god, something from a myth, and it’s impossible not to notice that he’s still erect.

I want—

I’m not ready for this to be over.

I’m not ready to go back to the way things were. “Is there more?” I ask in a whisper.

Something bleak passes over his face. “There’s always more,” he says.