Of Being Yours[another way 2] (29 page)

I leaned forward slightly, testing my weight and how I could redistribute it so that the brunt of it was held on my wrists or elbows or shoulders.

Master gently gripped my waist and leaned in to press a kiss to each of my shoulders. “I would like to collar you, Jesse. Is that okay?”

I nodded. “Yes. Yes, please, Sir.”

Of course, it had been so, so long since I had last felt my collar around my neck, its weight comforting and reassuring me that I was his. I was done with symbolism, I wanted the reality of it now. I wanted the bite of leather on my skin and the hot lick of pain and the sound of his breath as his heart accelerated at the way I looked.

The weight of the leather around my neck was like a steaming hot bath at the end of a long day. It was the kiss from a lover after a week apart. It was reassurance, safety.

It belonged to me and me alone. And I belonged to him. In this state, where my mind started to wander and my train of thought ran wild, things became circular, finally ending in peace.

I could feel his hesitancy. My Master had always been confident to the point of dispassion when he dealt with me before; although he could be caring and gentle, he knew me, knew my limits. I knew when I entered the playroom that things had changed. We were both adapting to these new versions of ourselves.

However much I wanted him to flog me, I could accept that it wasn’t my place to ask for that. More than I wanted him to hurt me, I wanted
this
again, the connection that we shared that transcended any other relationship I’d ever had.

His nails scraping down my back had me arching into his touch, forced a curve to my spine to elongate it, drawing out the delicious scratch. With one hand resting on my lower back, steadying me, Master swatted my ass lightly.

I stayed perfectly still. Wanted more.

He hit me again. A little harder this time. Then three more smacks in quick succession.

I could feel my cock growing as he started a regular, rhythmic spanking, and as I tried to get my mind to drift into subspace, a persistent thought niggled at my consciousness—this really did hurt.

Fortunately he deemed my warm-up complete before I started squirming away from his touch, something he surely would have disapproved of. I waited and tried to regulate my breathing as he moved away, giving me time to recover.

When the long leather falls of the flogger caressed the naked skin of my back, I could have moaned in relief. The familiar weight of the long strands moving from my shoulder to the small of my back felt like I was coming home to something that had been a part of my very identity not so long ago.

With a flick of Will’s wrist, the flogger fell across my shoulders. It was more sensation than pain, the warmth of the leather as it kissed my skin, bringing the blood to the surface, preparing me for what came next.

It fell again, across my other shoulder.

And then, what I’d been waiting for—the constant, even thuds as he worked the flogger in the circular motion he’d demonstrated for me, hitting first one shoulder, then the next.

“Let me hear you, Jesse.”

I knew this was the reassurance he needed, that he wasn’t hurting me, that it was all good.

“Thank you, Master,” I choked. Then he hit me harder. “Thank you, Sir!”

When he switched his attention to my ass, I almost, for a moment, forgot that my sole instruction of the evening had been to keep those little colored dots covered up. My hands wanted to clench and curl with each fall of the flogger on my skin, but that wasn’t the task I’d been given….

This focus gave me a new perspective on the session.

It was difficult for me not to be restrained, and I had to come to terms with that as Master continued to hit me. I had been begging for this for what felt like so long, such a painfully long time I’d been asking him to hit me. Now he was hitting me, and my thoughts couldn’t help but wander to
I wish I was tied up too.

There was no doubt that the tone of our sessions would change; Post-Accident Will and Jesse were two very different people. We needed different things than what we did a year ago. In some ways, the entire process of building up to the bondage, the sensory deprivation, and the level of pain play I was used to before the accident could be good for us both. There weren’t many people who could go back to square one with an integral part of their relationship and start again. We would evolve again, rise from the ashes, and who knew where we might go next?

I found my physical limits quicker than I thought I would and was squirming away from the lash much sooner than I wanted. Master knew when it was enough and laid the flogger down just out of my line of sight.

With his touch I turned, still breathing heavily, and brushed my hair back from my face. Master took one look at my erection—achingly hard, swollen, sticky, and red—and groaned. My fingers clenched at my thighs. I wanted him.

“Please, Sir,” I whispered.

“Jesse—”

“Please,” I interrupted him. “Please.”

He curled his hand around the back of my neck, drawing my body to his as his mouth crashed down onto mine. I immediately parted my lips, granting him access to where his tongue could flick, hot and wet, inside my mouth.

Somehow we got to the floor without damaging ourselves or each other; care for things as literal as our physical well-being was beyond us now. I wanted
him
, the essence of him.

He made me writhe and beg and whimper for every touch of his body on mine, made me cry out over and over as his searching fingers prepared my body for his cock. When I was ready, he was too; bare, he pressed his cock against my hole, waiting for my body to accept him in.

Through the hazy edges of residual pain, I forced myself to relax, to allow it.

The sounds that came from us both were raw, primal cries of pleasure and pain and goddamn
relief
as he filled me, connecting us both again. There was no use in thinking about all the time I’d forced myself to not even think about the possibility of this: his body, moving gently in mine, being in this room with this man, experiencing
this.

It built slowly, but our need for each other eventually exploded, and all guises of gentility dissipated as Master arched up onto his hands, I drew back my knees, and he fucked me. His eyes—they were what I needed to stay connected in this moment, the edge of a smile teasing at his lips, the frenetic searching kisses that our lips demanded and gave willingly.

“Don’t ask for permission,” he said, his lips against my neck, his voice low. “I can’t give you that yet. I’m not ready for that responsibility.”

I understood. “Okay,” I said. “But I’m close.”

“Me too.”

I drew my knees up further and locked my arms around his body, attaching my lips to his neck and exploring that area thoroughly with my tongue and lips and teeth, until he was arching his back and changing to those short, shallow, sweet thrusts that tipped me over the edge.

I knew when he was coming. I was coming too.

Although I hadn’t dared to wish for this when I’d walked into the playroom earlier, it was everything I could have hoped for and so much more. This was a reconnection of so many different sides of ourselves. I wasn’t one thing to him; we meant something to each other in multifaceted ways, like prisms that broke up something simple and painted color on the walls.

It was peaceful there on the floor, with his arm loosely draped over my waist as we recovered; from this spot I could see each of the individual grains of wood up close. My fingertips dragged over the darker knots in the pale waxed oak.

On closer inspection, I saw that what I had thought was a characteristic flaw was actually a tiny dark-red spot of what could only be my blood.

That was a revelation that shifted something in me. I felt like I would literally walk out of the room a changed person, all because of that one drop of blood on the floor.

It wasn’t just blood, it was what I became while in the room. These four walls, the beams in the ceiling, the smell of leather and wood and wax, were part of me, and parts of me were parts of them. My blood and sweat and snot and spit and come and tears had soaked into everything here. It wasn’t just a room. When you gave so much of yourself up while in one place, that place changed you. It changed me.

Overwhelmed, I lifted my fingers from the red dot and laced my fingers with Will’s.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go to bed.”

“
T
ELL
me what you want,” he said, his voice still low and commanding though the session was definitely over. With squishy pillows and the soft comforter around my shoulders, I was basking in the afterglow, basking in the new things bouncing around in my head.

It took me a long time to separate my thoughts, analyze them, and decide whether I was going to be completely honest with him or not.

“I want to wear my collar again.” I went with honesty.

Will was silent, and I guessed he needed time to work through that statement too. In all truth, it was a request that would hurt my pride if he refused.

“We’re getting there,” he said. My heart sank. “Do you really think we’re ready for that, though?”

“I am,” I said quickly. “I want that again. It’s something that means a lot to me.”

“To me too,” he agreed. “And that’s why we probably shouldn’t rush into it. Your collar is probably the biggest step we took in that part of our relationship, but I don’t know if we’ve rebuilt everything to that level again yet.”

I took his hand and pulled it to my chest. He came easily and found a new spot to nestle into.

“It’s not just getting it all back again, though, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s like everything with Dr. Smith. We don’t necessarily want to go back. We want to find a new way of going forward.”

I felt his smile against my skin.

“I’m surprised you listened to that.”

And then it was my turn to chuckle. “I listen to everything,” I said, digging my elbow into his ribs. “You bastard. I don’t know. Before the accident we were just coasting. Like she said, we could have stayed like that for years.”

“And now? What’s changed, Jesse? We were happy before.”

“I know we were,” I sighed. “But for how long could those predictable sessions have lasted? One threesome nearly ended up with us throwing punches at each other.”

“I will never share you again,” he said. “Don’t make me, Jesse. I won’t.”

“That’s not even in the cards,” I said, sighing. I resisted the urge to groan. “We did the same thing for too long. Blow job, flogger, clamps, sex, come. Rinse and repeat.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s true, though,” I protested. “I was happy with that too. But it’s not what I need as a sub.”

“I know. But whenever I brought something new into it, the whole thing went to shit. Like that night with the twinky kid. And the chastity cage. You weren’t willing to play ball either, Jess.”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “I’m not saying it’s your fault, not at all. But all the shit we’ve been through in the past few months, it makes you look at things differently. What I thought was perfect….”

“Wasn’t,” he finished for me. The word was loaded with despondence.

“Exactly.”

I brushed my fingers over his cheek. “Hey. You know that’s behind us now, right? We love each other enough to make this work.”

Smiling, he turned his face to kiss my fingertips. “Of course. Fuck, even when I thought that I’d completely wrecked any chance of ever being with you again, all I could think of was how much I really love you. I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t.”

This back-and-forth reassurance was becoming more common, a consequence of encouragement by our shrink to do it more and the need inside each of us to know we weren’t alone.

When he turned his back on me, I knew he wasn’t turning away. When he pushed his ass back into my groin, I knew what he was asking for.

“No,” I whispered. “If you want it, ask. I’m not fucking you from behind like some faceless trick.”

He rolled onto his back and reached for me, his expression unreadable. “Make love to me. Please. Jesse.”

The way he said my name still defined me.

I was so slow, so achingly careful as I prepped us both with the lube and pressed into him. Vulnerability seeped from his pores like smoke, which I inhaled, making it my own as we moved together, his pleasure mine and my pleasure his. Owning each other. Belonging to him all over again.

In the velvety orange glow of the next morning, early, the bed shifted with his weight. The coolness of the sheets told me he’d been up and moving around, leaving me sleeping. His fingertips brushed over the sensitive skin on the inside of my wrist, and I stretched, yawned, reached for him again.

When I pried my eyes open, he had something balled in his fist.

Silently I raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to explain.