Don't... (34 page)

“You didn’t touch anyone else?”

I frowned. No, I hadn’t. Not back then.

“Yet he touched you at some point?”

I barely nodded, only felt the cage become even tighter against my swelling cock. Fuck, yeah, he’d touched all right. “I asked him to.”

Jan’s hand moved from my stomach, and it worried me for a moment, but then I felt gentle strokes of the back of his hand over my hip.

“This time I actually got a reply, but he told me no, and to take no offence; he wasn’t in the mood.” Shifting back slightly so he could shape the small of my back, Jan then slipped his hand down between my cheeks. I caught my breath and rested against the tiles as fingers stroked my ass.

“I asked again a few nights later.”

Jan pushed a finger in, and I let out a groan as he continued his constant attention on my shoulders.

“He took me to bed,” I groaned and gripped uselessly at tile as Jan worked deep inside me, slow, long strokes that deliberately avoided the kick of my prostate. “No ropes, no blindfold, no knife. He’d taught me patience. He’d taught me control. He’d taught me respect. Jesus, Jan.” I closed my eyes. Jan added another finger, the kisses turning more heated, bites, tongue. “In the years of not touching, it took that one night to see how loving so fucking slowly and selflessly can drive every part of my mind and body to such a calm fucking existence, just like he did with painting.” I groaned. “The bondage, the whips, the scenes; they... they don’t turn me on. Gray—Gray turns me on with his patience, his self-control, his ability to just glance in my direction and hold me still. Mmmmm. He’s... he’s behind it all, and so long as I know that, I know I can calm myself enough to follow any order, feel any knife without feeling as though I lose control, or feeling like I need to stay in control and hit someone for touching me.”

This time he caught my prostate, fingering six quick strokes that had me screwing my eyes closed and crying out against the gentle onslaught.

“Jan, please,” I pressed my body flat against the cool of the tile, hoping to cool it down. “It hurts. The cage.” He added another finger and I nearly climbed the fucking wall as stars hit my vision. “it... stop teasing me like this.”

Jan pulled his fingers out, and I almost cried for him to put them back.

“Here.” Jan pulled me around and reached for something off the shelf. I hadn’t even noticed he’d come with a key, but then I hadn’t exactly heard him come in the first place. He unlocked the cage, and worked me free of everything before letting it clatter to the floor. My hand automatically found a natural place on the swelling in my cock as I frowned down. Fuck. I let my breathing deepen as I played a single stroke down my shaft. It felt so fucking good just to be able to touch myself.

Jan came in close, leg parting mine slightly as he rested cheek to cheek with me.

“Show me how you played yourself against Gray’s body, Jack. Before he touched you.” His thigh pressed gently against my groin, massaging my scrotum briefly, but sending me hard and gasping with just that brief contact. “I need,” said Jan, “I need to see how he drove you wild without him even touching you.”

My head dropped to his shoulder, and I cupped my free hand on his neck, loving the feel of him being so close. “Jan,” I rubbed my cock against his hipbone, then fell into a natural rhythm that brushed my sensitive head on him with every deep stroke. “Fuck.”

“C’mon, Jack.” Jan dug his hands into my ass, and my reaction was natural, hips pushing against Jan, wanting so fucking badly to melt into him.

But with a groan, I grabbed his wrists and had him up against the tiles, his eyes a little wide, before he could protest.

“You’re not Gray, Jan.” My mouth took his, hungry, not in any sense wasteful of his taste as I tongued him deep. “You’re you.” I kissed jaw. “Mr. Jan Richards.” I bit at his throat. “Mine.” Soft soul, heart, someone who had given me everything I’d been missing, and so fucking easily.

Jan groaned, and I left him there as I slid to my knees and took his cock in my mouth. No playing, no teasing, just tongue, teeth, hand working the whole length hard with Jan’s cries filling my ears.

He sang so fucking sweetly, and I made him cry that little bit louder as I took him for everything he was worth. I felt the come shift up my hand and pulled him in as deep as I could. Jan went death-quiet, the stillness that always hit when he shot, and I made sure I tasted every last offer of that exquisite stillness of his just before he crumpled down to his knees, finally taking a breath, his gasps making me grin as he rested his head to my shoulder.

“Fuck, Jack, just—fuck.” He groaned something else, then bit at my neck as he clambered into my lap, nearly knocking me back, his hand between us and angling my cock toward his ass. He sank down, and I cried out against his shoulder with the intensity, with the fact Jan rode me bareback. I know he would have asked if he wanted it any different, but what made his ride down on me more profound was how much he knew I wanted this, that the shower helped ease the OCD in me. Ass muscles tightened around my cock, and I hissed as I tilted him back and took his nipple under my teeth. I knew his dick would be too sensitive to touch so soon after coming; didn’t mean I couldn’t find some way to drive him nuts.

“Harder,” breathed Jan as he squirmed under my teeth-play, his one arm resting over my shoulder, hand holding my neck, ass grinding into my lap, twisting on my cock. Right before he lifted up, then slammed back down.

I closed my eyes and just hung on with teeth, hands, and fucking life as he rode me. “Christ, yes.” He felt so good, he looked so good, and this went down as one of my most favourite ways to fuck Jan.

His hand gripped my jaw, lifted my gaze. “Come for me, Jack.”

“Hmm.” Simple enough words, four of them, thirteen letters, nice little spaces between mono-syllables, but combined with how Jan had spoken them, smiled at me, drove onto my cock, every muscle in my body tensed, then suddenly expanded as I lost track of all reason except the come racing my shaft. I shouted, some swear word, maybe? Definitely attached to Jan’s name. Christ, everything—everything was attached to Jan’s name. Because, fuck, if he wasn’t the gentlest fucking Dom that managed to drive me nuts.

I felt the world finally slip back around me, and I breathed hard into Jan, hands wrapped tight around Jan’s body, holding him close, wanting him in my body with me. My head nestled into his throat.

“Rob and his toddler died.”

I looked at him. “What?”

He was smiling, but a tear rolled down his cheek. He kissed me, just gently. “Don’t be mad, please,” he whispered quietly.

“Jan?” I pushed him to arm’s length. Mad?

“I didn’t know how you’d take it if I told you. Or even if I was allowed to tell you being your trainee Dom. Or even if I was supposed to be grieving when I had you.”

I thought back. Fuck, was that the phone call surrounding taking off the cage? “Wednesday.” I widened my eyes. “Jan, for fuck’s sake—why the hell didn’t you say anything? You...”

He shrugged, another tear fell, and I saw all of his insecurities then. “Jan, why did you sign the contract?” I knew the reason; I needed to see if he could say it.

His face screwed a little. “Trust, respect, compassion.”

“Security?” I gave him the main one. “You signed it because you thought it would stop me walking away as easily as Rob did every time he saw you?”

He tensed and I didn’t let him go. Ten years in one relationship where he’d been kept in a pretty box and only taken out when someone wanted to play. Had he realised he’d fallen quickly, maybe too quickly, and he’d panicked, seen the concept behind the contracts, the collaring, and rushed into everything thinking that’s what would keep me close?

“For god’s sake, Jan, you know I love you, right?” I pulled him close, felt him resist me a touch, then held just a little tighter. “
You
keep me here. The collar... the collar is there to represent that, it doesn’t enforce it; neither does the contract. And,” I was angry, mainly with myself with how he’d become lost in that. “And the Dom/sub role doesn’t
ever
mean isolation emotionally for either party. You—”

I pushed him back a touch. “You loved Rob for ten years, ten long bloody years, Jan.” I brushed a thumb against his cheek. “If it didn’t tear you up to hear you’d lost that part of your life, you wouldn’t be the same man I fell for. I just wish to fuck I’d known.”

A tear fell, and Jan closed his eyes as he rested his head against mine. “I got drunk. It’s where I met Darren. I came home that nigh—” He shuddered, and I heard a soft sob. Frowning, I kissed his cheek.

“I just wanted some privacy,” he whispered quietly. “I wanted my home, and I turned the cameras off.”

I ran a hand through the back of his hair and closed my eyes.

“Us. I needed us.” Jan groaned, and I gripped his hair. “Jack, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry for trying—everything. Your room—it all came out so
wrong
.”

“’S alright,” I said softly, “no real damage done.” I offered a sad smile. “I’m a tough shit beneath all this soft, loveable exterior.”

I doubt if Jan heard me. Gentle sobs jerked his body every now and again, and I stopped talking, realising he’d told me all of this in the shower, out of earshot of any audio. He still needed his privacy, his space to grieve. I should have seen it at Artisan’s, the French Bistro we went to after the clinic, just how much he relaxed away from his own home.

Now he just needed to be held, and for as long as possible as far as I was concerned.

Maybe I’d have seen this as a breach of contract a few days ago, not so much today, but I took Jack breakfast in bed, straddling the tray across his lap, my thank you for him being everything I’d needed last night, despite me being the biggest dick going. We’d slept on his single camp bed, something I hadn’t done since I was a kid, and my mother had taken us on cheap newspaper holidays. I’d had to share a bed with my sisters. This time had been a whole lot better, the jostling of knees, elbows, and fight for cover, resulting in giggles and quiet whispers knowing big brother was watching us.

Jack had insisted his giggles were “manly, not-fucking-girly giggles,” which had only set me off more, which then set him off.

Strange what grief could do to you.

Wednesday, I’d had every intention of taking that cage off Jack, in fact my head and hands and groin had been able to think of nothing else since we’d left Artisan’s. In true spirit of the game, as Jack was signed to chastity, it was only fair that I avoided all thoughts and visual stimulus of seeing him naked, and thus keep my hand off my dick too. Hard, considering things had been really
hard
that morning. I’d avoided him, content with keeping his body toned and supple by coming up with a to-do list that, in all reality, didn’t need doing.

I left that “to-do” note there with a backward glance, wishing I could be standing there when he read it, and for the first time seeing the benefit of the cameras and a rewind button. Maybe if I asked Gray...

That high stayed with me all day, marred only slightly when I saw Jack and Gray with their heads practically together in Jack’s office, Jack having that same look of heat he’d shown me at Artisan’s, now all there with Gray.

Gray made a deliberate point of moving away. Maybe he was more in tune to the wider picture around Jack, one Jack seemed oblivious to; how his strength and vulnerability kicked people into such a high gear around him; how people left on the outside looked in enviously at those he allowed to get close.

But I’d still had every intention of getting that bloody cage off.

The phone call from Rob’s wife had changed all of that, and I didn’t really understand why, not until I’d sat with Jess on my lap at home and felt all the emotion coming from Jack.

An afternoon of talking to a woman I’d hated for nearly a decade, having her cry on my shoulder, saying she’d known about me and Rob and that she was okay with it, then in the hospital listening to how the term “hit and run” could sound such a bloody cowardly term, topped with Rob’s wife asking me to identify his body. Getting drunk on my own had seemed the only thing that made sense after that.

What happened afterwards hadn’t. I hadn’t lied to Jack, I’d needed privacy, nothing else, just to maybe cry myself to sleep in ways I’d refused my father when I’d seen the prison rep sit mom at the kitchen table and tell her he’d died.

And Jack. I’d needed Jack. Only not like that,
never
like that.

To add insult to his painfully obvious confusion, just a short few hours later, I’d stood whipping the hell out of his back, the first two times closing my eyes because I couldn’t face the bites on his shoulders, the third forcing me to look knowing I’d hurt him more by not focusing.

And that, knowing he was hurt, that I’d hurt him again, that he downright loved me enough to take a whipping for me when it should have been me on the cross. It should have been enough, any other time it would have never gotten to that point, but he’d refused to say anything to me in the medical room, and the hurt in his eyes.

Still seeming tied up in the contract, behind the contract, Jack had said
nothing
. So I took Jess home. I couldn’t have cared less for Darren, he just tagged along. Yeah, they’d both caught me out by arriving early, and part of me had been mortified catching Jack unawares. But he’d done what he always did: slipped back so easily into his contract, having a dig about not taking a whipping for any more transgressions, and everything else after that, it had come so easily.

There was something about Jess in that dress, feeling the silk over her ass, no underwear, it got me so hard, but the real twisted element, the one thing that would have let me screw Jess there on the table, was knowing I’d stirred hurt, anger, and shame in Jack, enough to shake him out of his coldness and take Jess off me.

Seeing that burn mark on his thigh, reality kicked me pretty hard in the balls. I’d invited people I didn’t know into my home, and exposed Jack to a whole host of potential dangers, one of the worst burning its way into his thigh right there. Now I understood the privacy element, that this wasn’t a game, that times had to be respected when it came to understanding when, where, and who with. Especially when it came to people who I spoke to outside of our community. I couldn’t even run with the anger that I should have been told there was a darker side to the Circle, mainly for the fact it was sex and there was always a darker side to sex. The MC’s Doms and subs went through very tough training, just the mental side had screwed with my head, so I could understand a sex-trader wanting to cash in on that. I really had no clue about the world Jack and Gray shared.