Fifteen Shades of Gay (For Pay) (17 page)

“I tried to play along, but I said stop.” Snatching up the wooden paddle, Andrew straddled Paresh. Pinning the other man with a knee to the chest, he held the paddle an inch above Paresh’s nose. “How about I hit you till
you
say stop? Then just keep going?”

Paresh said nothing. Black eyes fixed on the upraised paddle, he bit his lower lip, chest rising and falling with quick, shallow breaths.

“I mean it!” Andrew waved the paddle threateningly, as if he meant to crack Paresh across the face.

Biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, Paresh moaned. The sound was half-fearful and half—well. Something else.

Andrew stopped, suddenly seeing himself atop Paresh. Andrew was erect; he couldn’t help it, he always got stiff when truly infuriated. And Paresh’s crotch was firm, a tent pitched between those perfectly-creased pants legs.

“This is how you really like it, isn’t it?” Shocked to find the paddle still in his hand, Andrew cast it away. “I could beat your ass all night and you’d eat it up. Why try and turn the tables?”

“It’s Sven,” Paresh whispered. “He’s always pushing me past my barriers. First he told me to choose someone, preferably gay for pay. I picked you. He told me to seduce you. I did. Now he said I needed to punish you.”

“Sven?” Curiosity made the throbbing in Andrew’s temples recede. His erection lessened, falling to half-mast even as the pain in his rear intensified. If Paresh had delivered that spanking purely under orders, he’d made a fine job of it. “Is he your lover? Your, um, Dom?”

Paresh nodded.

The hairs on the back of Andrew’s neck rose. Suddenly he understood all too well. “Is he watching?”

Paresh nodded again.

“He’s watched us since we entered the room?”

“Since the bathtub,” Paresh said, still in a whisper. “When I went down on you. He’s the one who told me to invite you back. Who chose the dildo and wanted to see you use it. Then he ordered me to mount you. It was the first time I’d ever been inside another man.”

CC TV cameras
, Andrew thought, belatedly looking around the bedroom. Were they in the lamps? The headboard? Fixed in the ceiling? Did it matter now?

“Sven!” Andrew called, releasing Paresh and standing up. “Come out!”

As if on cue, the bedroom door opened. The man who entered, as Nordic as his name, was a perfect contrast to submissive Paresh. At least six-foot-four, Sven was blond and pale with dark blue eyes. Dressed in nothing but black silk boxers, almost everything about him—broad shoulders, well-muscled chest, flat stomach, and taut thighs—was on display. Andrew’s visceral response surprised him. Down below, a reflexive jerk followed by a rush of blood made him hard again.

“I must say, I’m equally pleased to meet you,” Sven said. His accent was soft, almost nonexistent. In two moves, Sven left his boxers behind, crossing the room to stop, nude, within an arm’s length of Andrew. Every bit as long and thick as Cormac, Sven swelled quickly, rising like a weapon.

“I don’t know about this,” Andrew said. Part of his willingness to be with Paresh was the knowledge he could overtake Paresh, as he’d just proven. Sven would be more of a challenge, particularly if he had training in hand-to-hand combat.

“It was a dirty trick, not telling you I was watching,” Sven said. “But Paresh has been submissive all his life. Even his wife calls the shots. I wanted to see him try his hand at domination. I wanted to see him beat your ass the way I beat his. I should have known you’d fight back. You’re no natural submissive, are you?”

“I don’t know,” Andrew said truthfully. “When it comes to sex, everything I’ve ever done has been mutual.”

“You’ve never taken control? Never seduced an innocent, never bent a less experienced soul to your will?”

Andrew thought of Cormac. How he’d climbed in the other man’s lap, kissing him until all resistance faded, bringing Cormac effortlessly to orgasm. Even as a boy, when he’d fantasized about making love to Hugh Branson—a memory he could at last acknowledge—Andrew had imagined himself making the first move, bringing them together, pulling Hugh close for that opening kiss. Even when Andrew had gone down on Cormac, it had been a way to maintain control, to assert himself as the other man melted. To the uninitiated, sucking and swallowing might have seemed passive, but Andrew had never felt more in control.

“Paresh. This has been a disaster,” Sven said, seating himself on the bed next to the other man. “You failed to discipline Andrew as I commanded. Worse, you confessed everything to him. Not that I mind being revealed, not really, but the point is, I forbade you to do so.”

“Forgive me.” Paresh’s eyes gleamed. Clearly, simple forgiveness was not what he really wanted.

“I shall. Once you’ve been punished. As soon as it’s done, all will be perfect between us again.” Locating the discarded wooden paddle, Sven held it up, fixing Andrew with a smile. Good-looking under ordinary circumstances, he was handsome when he smiled. “I think ten strokes is fair, don’t you?”

Andrew didn’t know how to answer.

“Come, now. Don’t act frozen. A few minutes ago, you were ready to break Paresh’s face,” Sven said. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid to smack his ass.”

Andrew accepted the paddle. His own rear still ached dully, as he suspected it would for a day or two. As he considered, Paresh pulled his shirt over his head. Turning to face the bed, he dropped his trousers and shorts, presenting bare buttocks to Andrew.

“Do you want this?” Andrew asked Paresh.

“Of course he does. I said he does,” Sven said.

Paresh made a little sound of assent. He was rock-hard, the tip of his sex glinting with pearlescent fluid.

“Ten?” Andrew asked Sven.

“Ten.”

Taking a deep breath, Andrew cracked the paddle against Paresh’s cheeks. Then again. Then again. By the fifth stroke, Paresh was moaning. By the ninth, he gasped, “Harder.” For that tenth stroke, Andrew hit the other man as hard as he dared. By then he was dribbling cum and mystified by his own physical response. Why was this erotic? What about inflicting pain threatened to get his rocks off?

“Don’t fight it,” Sven whispered in Andrew’s ear. During the spanking, Sven had rummaged in Paresh’s chest of drawers; now he pressed a familiar foil packet into Andrew’s hand. “Finish it. He tried to punish you. Show him who’s really boss.”

Andrew found himself tugging the condom into place. Paresh was still bent over the bed in exactly the same position Andrew himself had once occupied. When Andrew guided himself, latex-sheathed but unlubricated, between Paresh’s cheeks, the other man shuddered.

“Give it to me. Please.” Paresh’s voice cracked. “Give it to me, hard as you can.”

“You deserve it,” Sven intoned.

“I deserve it,” Paresh agreed.

Andrew pushed himself inside. Paresh’s inner grip was surprisingly tight, encircling Andrew like a fist. When Paresh gasped, Andrew groaned, sliding all the way in, inexorable as a battering ram. Still angry and humiliated by the aborted paddling, Andrew thrust hard, driving into Paresh with quick, hard strokes. As his pleasure crested, he was surprised to feel Sven embrace him from behind, that huge member pressed against Andrew’s lower back.

“Accept this,” Sven said. “Accept who you really are.”

Unable to speak, Andrew let the climax take him, thinking wildly of Cormac, strong and dominant in some ways, yet pliable and inexperienced in bed. Cormac had stayed virgin so long because it had never happened for him, never been right. By contrast, what kind of man was Andrew? Hating Paresh one moment and fucking his ass the next, coming his brains out while Sven, a stranger, cuddled up from behind?

“I’m sorry,” Andrew muttered, speaking to Cormac, as he finished. Already soft, he withdrew from Paresh, staring at the spent condom in disbelief. He’d done it, done the thing he’d wanted so much as a young teen, fantasizing about sex with his English teacher. But he’d never imagined performing for the pleasure of a six-foot-four Swede with a perfectly applicable name like Sven.

“Don’t be sorry.” Holding Andrew tight, Sven kissed his ear, swiping it with a hot, greedy tongue. “This is the beginning for you, Andrew. For the three of us. Count on it.”

Rolling onto his back, Paresh smiled and stretched, as content as Scarlett O’Hara after make-up sex with Rhett Butler. “I’m so relieved. Pretending to be a Dom was excruciating.”

“Relieved?” Sven sounded stern. “Maybe you need the cane?”

Paresh’s expression was blissful. “Anything you say.”

“I… I don’t know.” Shucking off the used condom, Andrew looked in vain for a trash bin. “This isn’t me. I don’t know if I want to go on.”

Sven and Paresh exchanged glances. Then Sven loomed over Andrew, kissing his forehead with warm lips. “We’ll pay. We like you, Andrew. It’s easy money, isn’t it? Delivering a spanking and following up with what comes naturally?”

Andrew didn’t trust Paresh at all. If possible, he trusted Sven even less. But he found himself nodding.

Chapter 10

The next two weeks passed quickly. With Connie now settled in Marie’s apartment, Andrew had more free time than he’d enjoyed in weeks. He did a few extra jobs for Wasserman, none of which included being groped, caught up on his email, and updated his manuscript,
Fifteen Shades of Gay (For Pay)
, to the point when he’d called Paresh to apologize. After that, Andrew found himself looking at a white digital page and a blinking cursor. Paresh’s attempt to dominate him, the spanking and the confusion of pain, long-buried shame and arousal was impossible for Andrew to distill into words. It crossed his mind to booty-call Monica and reaffirm what he’d once taken for granted: that sex with girls felt good to him, that even the plain vanilla missionary position could still get him off. But that would have been using Monica, not for their mutual pleasure but solely to quiet his doubts. He needed to talk to someone. Cormac texted him every day or so, but Andrew couldn’t imagine discussing the spanking with him, much less how he’d finished inside Paresh. That was what made Andrew most ashamed, how he’d pounded away at the other man, savoring the control and feeling vindicated, as if all his humiliation transferred into Paresh with those final spurts. And Sven’s presence had made it even better, as if Andrew had proven himself somehow, a cur crudely marking his territory in a bigger dog’s territory.

“Thank goodness,” Marie said when Andrew sent Connie on an afternoon sightseeing tour which included Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Today was a good day, meaning Marie was propped up on the sofa instead of her bed. She much preferred the living room, where she could look out the window or watch TV on a full-size screen instead of her phone. “I’m glad Mom’s here. I really am. Except for the times I want to choke the life out of her.”

“Yeah, well, we haven’t had much private time. Did you already finish the mommy porn trilogy?”

Marie shook her head. “I swear, I can’t see up close anymore. Dr. Czarnecki says I probably have cataracts. Apparently it’s no big deal, just something that goes with chemo. Once I’m well enough, I can have them removed and see perfectly again.”

Andrew nodded, though inside he made a mental note to Google cataracts. Weren’t they a symptom of old age? His vision had always been 20/20. How strong was Marie that she could accept this, another loss, another diagnosis, another surgery on the horizon?

“I’ll read to you,” he said. “Good thing Mom’s not around. I don’t think I could do it with her listening in.”

“I don’t know why. She’s read the trilogy. Who do you think recommended it to me?”

Andrew gulped. He never discussed erotic movies and magazines with Connie or Jake. In fact, the idea of Jake recommending a sexy book to heat up his son’s lonely nights was deeply unsettling. Maybe it was a mother-daughter thing, something the XY brigade couldn’t fathom?

Andrew read aloud until he reached yet another spanking scene. Slipping a bookmark between the pages, he asked Marie, “Why do you think Josephine lets Elijah beat her ass? Wouldn’t it be easier to find a man who wasn’t so into discipline? I mean, their relationship’s demeaning, isn’t it?”

Marie’s smile was so mischievous, so much like the old, pre-cancer Marie, he found himself grinning back. “What? Spit it out.”

“I’ve never had a guy spank me. But I think it could be sexy. Especially if a handsome billionaire like Elijah was the man who did it.”

“Wouldn’t it make you feel like a little girl?”

Marie winked.

“You mean you would want to feel like a child during sex?”

“Oh, Lord, when did you turn into Prudie McPrude? Maybe for a minute or two. It’s just a lead-up to oh, do me, you big powerful overwhelming man.” Marie’s mischievous smile returned. “I have to tell you, if I were dating a hunk like Cormac, I’d let him spank me, hold me down, tie me up, you name it.”

Andrew chuckled.

Unable to raise her chemo-eradicated eyebrows, Marie wrinkled her forehead suggestively. “If you want to share, I’m like a vault. Promise. Pinky swear.”

“Cormac and I aren’t exactly dating. And we’ve never done it. Not really.”

“Do you want to? Or are you just exploring? Playing around, seeing how it feels to be with a man?”