Assumed Master (8 page)

"Look at that," Dante said, reaching
down and squeezing his reddened balls. "Do you want to come, slave?"

"Yes, Master," Blake moaned.

"Don’t you dare come until you’re told,"
Dante growled, moving to lash Blake’s shoulders with the flogger.

"Yes, Master," he rasped, his face
twisted with raw emotion.

With crimson welts erupting across the arc of
Blake’s back, his breathing came in short pants. Much to Dante’s satisfaction,
Blake began surging into his strikes as he clutched the legs of the horse.

"You’re not counting." With a flick
of his wrist, Dante sent the leather tassels zipping a quick line down Blake’s
ass cheeks and the backs of his legs.

"I’m sorry, Master."

Dante smiled, flipped the flogger, and raked
the blunt end up Blake’s side before flipping it again and landing a gentle
blow across his left shoulder.

"One, Master.
Thank you."

By the time Dante reached a dozen, Blake was
successfully floating. His hesitation in counting stopped Dante, prompting him
to check Blake’s circulation and breathing. Tossing the flogger back on the
table, he moved to his side and leaned over to watch short puffs of air burst
out of Blake over a half-cocked grin. Yeah, he was definitely under.

"Slave," Dante said, running his
hand across Blake’s nape. "Are you with me?" When he didn’t answer,
Dante ran his fingertips down Blake’s arm and threaded them into Blake’s palm. "Slave,
can you hear me?"

Ever so slowly, Blake squeezed and made a
humming noise indicating he was still tethered to the here and now although on
the far reaches of it.

"Are you okay?" Dante prompted.

Again, after a moment’s hesitation, Blake
squeezed Dante’s fingers. He took a deep breath and whispered, "Yes,
Master."

"Good, slave."

Dante pulled his fingers free and went to work
checking Blake’s wrists and ankles, allowing him time to adjust to where he was
and enjoy the endorphins overtaking his system. Having been on the back end of
a Domme or two, Dante knew exactly how good that felt.
 
A Dom high was a great feeling, but trying to
compare the two places was like comparing apples and oranges. There simply
wasn’t a way to do so.

Secure in the knowledge Blake truly was okay,
he took the crop from the table and ran the blunt end across Blake’s jaw before
touching his lips with it. As if by instinct alone, Blake kissed the crop just
before Dante removed it from his mouth and ran it up his arm and down his back
before tapping each of his ass cheeks lightly. It was barely enough to
register, however, and only served as an apparent source of frustration for
Blake as he groaned with need and thrust his body as far back as he could being
restrained. Dante’s pulse leaped and cock twitched with the need to completely
own the man giving him literally everything on a silver platter.

It wasn’t until Dante was half-way through a
set of ten with the cane that Blake started begging for relief.

"Please…Master." The words floated
out of him in a low moan and hit Dante square in the chest. "Please."

"Please, what?"

"Please…
may…
I…come?"
Blake managed.

Putty.
In. His.
Hands.
God, how Dante loved that feeling.
The feeling that he held someone in his palm and was the
answer to their desperation.

"Soon."

"Please…Master…Please…"

As much as Dante wanted to keep Blake hanging
on the precipice a bit longer, his dick disagreed with any plan to wait further
and swelled to a dull ache. He tossed the cane aside, pulled his socks off with
his heels as he unbuttoned his trousers, and was naked in a matter of seconds.
After unclasping Blake’s wrists and checking his ankles again, Dante grabbed
the bottle of lube. A few squirts later, his dick was slick and poised at
Blake’s entrance. He edged the head in then stopped only to be met by Blake’s
moaning protest.

"Please, Master. Fuck…me." The man
latched on to the legs of the bench and squeezed until his knuckles shone
white. "Please."

Without further demands, Dante grabbed his
hips, slid in fully, and gasped. Jesus, the man felt good. As much as he wanted
this to last, he was lost.

"Surrender, slave."
The trigger was spoken with force as he drove
into Blake repeatedly, sending them both over the edge.

Slumped over Blake’s shaking frame, Dante
wished he could stay that way for a while, but knew he had to get his husband
un-cuffed and see to his needs. As soon as he could take a deep breath, he
pulled away, unhooked Blake’s ankles and helped him upright to lean on the
bench.

"Okay?" he asked with a palm on
Blake’s shoulder. Blake nodded. "Good. Let’s move to the couch."

With an arm around his waist, Dante led Blake
to the sofa along one wall of the room, eased him to the cushions, and once
sure he was going to be okay alone for a moment, retrieved a blanket from the
closet and grabbed the bottle of water from the table. He sat next to Blake,
wrapped him in the soft cotton throw, and pulled him into his frame and sank back,
exhausted himself. Truth be told, Dante needed a bit of a recovery as well.

"Drink," he told Blake, holding the
bottle to his lips.

Blake nodded and took a long swallow before sinking
into Dante’s side and resting his head on his chest.

When Blake had come back enough to stand,
Dante helped him to their bedroom and made sure his welts were well-coated with
ointment and he was comfortably tucked in before returning to the play room to
clean things up, only to find Julie had beaten him to the punch.

On her knees beside the horse, she was busy
wiping up the remnants of Blake’s orgasm.

"Jules, what are you doing? You’re
supposed to be soaking and reading." Dante kneeled beside her and squeezed
her shoulders.

"He looks pretty out of it," she
said, continuing to mop the floor with a wet cloth. "I thought you could
use some help so you could get back to him sooner."

"And you know this how?"

"I was…" Julie’s hand stopped as
soon as her words did.

"You were what?"

"Not where I was supposed to be, Sir. I
was coming back from the kitchen. I wanted to double check the stove and I saw
you moving him to bed." The admission came with a perfect blush rising up
her throat. "I’m sorry. I just wanted to help."

"Okay."

It seemed like a simple enough
thing
. It wasn’t like Jules had never cleaned up after
others before, to include Dante and Blake, at parties in an effort to be
helpful when a sub needed attention. Dante got up and started wiping down the
toys before putting them back in the cabinet.

"I can finish here, Sir" Julie said,
getting up and moving to wipe the bench down with a fresh cloth. "It
always scared me to be alone…right after."

"He’ll be okay," Dante assured her. "It’ll
be quicker this way then we can both go to bed."

"I thought I might read a while longer."
Her protest came with a quick aversion of her eyes to the side.
"If that’s okay with you, Sir."

"No. You’re coming to bed with Blake and me
and we’re all going to get a good night’s sleep."

"But, Sir.
I..." Her spluttered answer was met with
Dante wrapping his arms around her and pulling her tightly to his chest.

"It’s okay, love. There’s going to be
absolutely nothing sexual about it. I need you there and you need to be there. And
Blake’s good with it. No sex.
Period.
No worries."
Dante kissed her crown and pulled back, reaching up and tilting her head to
meet her eyes with his. "Tomorrow we’re going to have a long talk about
how this is going to work.
For now."

Chapter Eight

Just as she had the previous morning, Julie
started wiggling her way from under Dante’s arm in the dusky hours before the
sun found the horizon. Sandwiched between her body and Blake’s, he floated in
that mystical place between sleep and wakefulness. While he cradled Julie in
his arms, Blake cradled him from behind, a perfect mesh of arms and legs,
heartbeats and shallow breath sounds. If it weren’t for the fact they were
still suspended in the wake of tragedy, life would seem pretty near perfect.

Julie sucked in an almost indiscernible breath
when Dante tightened his grip around her waist, stopping her from swinging the
first foot over the side of the bed. With her secure for the moment, he drifted
into the more asleep than
awake
plane and dozed until
he felt her moving again.

"Lay still," he mumbled as Blake ran
one leg between his, brushing his foot somewhere in the vicinity of Julie’s.

"I can’t," she whispered back. "I’m
awake."

"Humor me. Lay still."

She let out a long, frustrated sigh and inched
back into his frame a bit more before running her fingertips down the arm he
held her with, a faint touch, a hypnotizing rhythm. Between Blake stroking his
calf with his foot and her propagating an innocent melody along his bicep,
Dante was slowly coming undone.

"I’m not going to apologize for that,"
he murmured across the shell of her ear as his cock swelled and pressed into
the small of her back, warm flesh melding into more warm flesh. "The no
sex rule stands as is, but I’m not sorry and I’m not going to feel guilty
anymore. I love you and I want you. I should probably feel bad, but I can’t."

Julie tensed beneath him and it sent a twinge
of remorse zipping up his spine. How the hell was a man supposed to react to
waking up to the loving touches of his husband and the woman he wanted for a
wife regardless of her recent widowed status?

"Don’t worry, Jules. Until you trust me
and can tell me you love me under no uncertain terms, I can figure out a way to
control myself. Now please, go back to sleep."

Dante didn’t have to see the scowl on her face
to feel it in her posture. One side of his lip quirked up as he ran his hand
around her middle and traced slow circles then moved to her back and continued
the motion. Then something he’d never understood or been able to do with Blake
began to occur. Tension started literally melting off her from just a simple
touch. In fact, he could almost feel Julie deflate under his hand and Dante
marveled at this new discovery. With that knowledge tucked away for further
exploration, he drifted back off, content to stay right where he was until he
was forced to get up for practical purposes.

The next time he opened one eye and glanced at
the clock, he realized practical purposes were coming to fruition. It was after
eight and while his palm still rested on Julie’s soft belly, his back had grown
cold from Blake’s absence. Squinting and blinking a couple of times, he
listened and heard movement in the kitchen. It was just like Blake to be in a
nurturing mood after a night like they’d enjoyed. It was his modus operandi.
While the man had been oblivious to the world when Dante and Julie had climbed
in bed beside him sometime after midnight, it never failed to amaze Dante how
quickly he could recover. If his nose was telling the truth, there would be a
breakfast fit for royalty spread all over the kitchen island. Blake was one to
talk about Julie’s cooking habits when he could be just as extreme in his
preparations, albeit for different reasons.

Not wanting to disturb the peaceful woman in
his arms, Dante contemplated how best to extricate his body from hers without
waking her. It seemed to him this might have been the most she’d slept at any
one given time in several weeks and he didn’t want to rob her of the precious
rest he knew she needed so badly.

He took a deep breath and started to unwind
their limbs one and a time until all that was left to do was inch away, but
just as he started to lift his arm and pull completely away, Julie inched back
and reclaimed him, never opening an eye or indicating she was awake in any
sense of the word. Well, hell. Breakfast would have to wait. If feeling
anchored would keep her from waking, Dante would have to oblige her.

In all his life, Dante had never truly felt
torn before. In fact, the concept never even occurred to him as he’d always
been perfectly content with Blake and the way things were. Even when he knew
for years he desired Julie, this ripped apart in the middle feeling wasn’t
present. He supposed it was because during that time, she belonged to another
and there was no room for his jealousy or longing to interfere. Now she was
here and quite frankly Dante found himself wondering how to juggle it all. On
the one hand he missed his routine with Blake. Blake always had breakfast ready
and waiting the morning after. Dante would get up and shower and meet him in
the kitchen. They’d hold each other, kissing and murmuring affections
until…Well, if he were being honest with himself, he couldn’t remember a time
they’d actually eaten much of the sausage and eggs, toast and grits, fresh
fruit and cheeses. Normally they ended up back in bed, a trail of crumbs
following them. And while he longed for that scenario to play out now, he also
wanted to stay curled up with the warm, pliant, very female body that was now
almost subconsciously worming itself further into his frame, legs entwining
with his, perfectly rounded ass pressing into his groin, seeking a place to
nestle.
 
He wanted it more than anything.