Once upon a time I offered a story to the brilliant Sarah Lyons. And she came back with hands-down the best prompt I’ve ever received (and if you’re currently feeling a twinge like I’ve just insulted your past prompts, hang on a minute).
“Sex that breaks a boundary for the character. Like, it can be the mildest thing, or the most hardcore, but if it’s a character’s hard limit and they do it anyway (consensually), that is the most powerful thing ever.”
Listen. I get a lot of fucking prompts, and I love them all. But that? I could write ANYTHING to that and fly with it. I should do a whole series of just writing different character combinations to that prompt. I could write it forever and never get bored.
What I wrote is this. Please allow me to introduce you to Josh and Keith, whom you’ll see again in Queers of La Vista book four, One Life to Lose. This takes place, oh, a year and a half, maybe two years before OLtL.
The ride home was silent. Keith’s hands were clasped in his lap and his head was directed toward the window. He hadn’t moved since he finished with his seat belt.
Josh resumed fantasizing about all the ways he’d hurt Keith’s parents if he could do it and not get caught.
He drove them to his apartment, not asking. No way was Keith going back to the dorms like this, not when his body was rigid with anger and he wasn’t speaking. In the four months they’d been dating, he’d never seen Keith go quite this dark, and it was a little ignoble how…intriguing Josh found it.
Keith—white, blond, with an easy smile and a bashful way of talking about sex—had seemed so normal. A good head for business, a damn quick wit when he was relaxed enough to use it, and cute. In a perfectly normal, all-American kind of way.
Tonight, though, Josh had seen the mask slip a little. He’d be interested to hear what his folks thought, though that debriefing would have to wait.
“Want a drink?” he asked, touching Keith’s arm as they entered the building.
Keith twisted away and walked up ahead. “No thank you.”
Christ. Was he pouting? Josh withheld an eye-roll and reminded himself that despite coming off like a forty year old businessman most of the time, Keith was only nineteen. And dinner had been a clusterfuck, so sulking was probably allowed.
Well. Okay. He’d give him…fifteen minutes to sulk.
Josh prided himself on reading people exceptionally well. He had, after all, seen in a bumbling first year student the man he wanted to start a nonprofit with, and far from bumbling, Keith had jumped on board without hesitation. He wasn’t foolish about it, he was confident; get Keith one-on-one and he could persuade anyone of anything. Tonight’s combined parents dinner had been a disaster, yes, though Keith’s stepmother at least seemed able to play along and make appropriate smalltalk while his mother and father sat paralyzed with what had to be race-related fear of their black dinner partners.
Keith needed a little lightness, a reminder that they were not their parents, and not bound by them, either. Which is why Josh said, “I had no idea your parents were so afraid of black people.”
He expected a forced laugh, a softening of the lines around Keith’s mouth, the hard glint in his eyes. Instead, Keith spun around and began pacing.
“That had nothing to do with race,” he all but spat at the floor as he stomped. “That was about you, and me, and—” Words apparently deserted him.
Huh. Josh watched him pace and put the cap back on the rum he was about to pour. Maybe not. Maybe this wasn’t the whining he thought it was going to be.
“Okay,” he said. “Then what was it about?”
“It was about fucking me, Josh!” A strangled sort of laugh came from Keith’s throat. “Literally! It was literally about fucking me, about you fucking me, about me being the bitch! Goddammit.” He kept throwing his skinny arms toward the floor. “I knew it, I knew they’d be like that, and right now he’s probably muttering about how I’m a fucking cocksucker and Marianne’s pretending not to hear him because he was so embarrassing. Dammit!”
Okay. I got that wrong. Really wrong. Now what? Josh moved into the room, working more on instinct than intellect. Four months wasn’t that long, but their four months—of mutual exploration, of intensity, of risking more than just bad sex for the sake of knowing each other deeper than they’d known anyone else—had been serious. Could he play on all that now? Did he dare?
“Keith—”
“No! No, don’t tell me it wasn’t that bad! It was awful, and your poor parents, oh my god, I’m so fucking sick thinking they had to see all that—”
“My parents are fine. Keith, come on, my parents know you aren’t like that.”
“I’m not a homophobe who’s so desperately uncomfortable with the idea my son’s taking it up the ass that I can’t even look his boyfriend in the eye? Well, great, I’m glad I’m off the hook!”
Jesus. Keith was the good gay boy who never harped on roles, never said things like “taking it up the ass” or “cocksucker”. He was sweating a little at the temples, but his face was pale.
“Just take me back to school. I’ll be fine. I’ll play Destiny, kill some people, and get over myself. And maybe never talk to them again.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Josh said, taking a breath.
“Oh, seriously? Does it seem like I’m joking around right now?”
Time for the big guns. Josh stepped forward, and when Keith moved to side-step, he reached out. “Angel.”
“Don’t fucking call me that.”
Whoa.
“I thought you loved it when I called you that.”
“No, not right now, right now don’t fucking talk to me, don’t look at me, don’t fucking think about me. Just let me go away until I’m less fucking ugly, less awful—” Keith was fighting incredibly hard not to cry, which was more than a little disturbing. “Please don’t call me that. Everything that makes me feel good is so cheap right now.”
Josh pulled him in, and despite resisting, he allowed it.
“I hate them, I hate that they hate me, I hate myself,” he mumbled. “I’m so sorry. Please tell your parents I’m so, so sorry—”
There were so many pointless reassurances he wanted to make. But no. Josh tightened one arm around Keith’s shoulders and leaned back just enough so he could press a hand over Keith’s eyes.
Keith immediately stiffened. “You can’t be fucking—”
“Hush.”
“I’m not in the fucking mood!”
“I don’t care,” Josh said, treading very thin ice over very deep waters. Please let me not fuck this up. Dear God, please let me not fuck this sex and love and power thing up with my boyfriend right now.
When Keith tried to pull away, Josh held fast.
“Let me fucking go—”
“Angel,” he whispered against Keith’s ear.
Abruptly, Keith stopped struggling. “Please don’t. It hurts so much when I feel this way. I hate that you saw me like that.”
This was like that telephone game, as if each of them had experienced dinner through so many (and such different) filters that now it was as if they’d gone to entirely different events.
“You are so fucking beautiful and strong,” Josh said.
“I’m weak. I’m weak like he always thought I was, and this just proves it. This, this right now, where you—where you’re—this proves it. I’m the weak one, the bitch, the bottom, always.” Keith finally leaned his head into Josh’s shoulder, though it was a damn bitter victory after all that. “I think they wouldn’t mind if I was gay like Rock Hudson. If I was big and buff and manly. They hate that I’m like this, and I can’t help it.”
How had he missed this vein of internalized poison? Four months of dating, a year and change of friendship; Keith never judged. He had no problem with flamers, and he’d never seemed ashamed of himself around anyone.
Josh had the beginnings of an idea. The worst kind of idea. The kind that could explode so fast and so hard that you picked emotional shrapnel out of your psyche for years. Irresistible.
“Are you a cocksucker?” he asked, keeping his hand on the back of Keith’s head, holding him close so he couldn’t look up.
No answer. Suspicious sniffling.
“Are you a filthy little cocksucker, Keith? Do you like it when I fuck your throat and make you gag?”
“Please don’t…”
“Say it. Tell me you’re a cocksucker.” Josh’s heart was pounding and he obscurely hoped that if Keith noticed, he didn’t think it was only arousal. Arousal was present, but he was also scared shitless that he’d take this too far and not be able to recover it for them.
It’s not like he really knew what he was doing. But he thought he knew himself, and Keith, better than he knew anyone else.
Dear Jesus, please guide me. I have no fucking idea how to help him right now. Please give me strength.
“Say it, Keith.”
“Why? Why do you—I thought you said it wasn’t supposed to be therapy?”
“Tell me you’re a fucking filthy cocksucker and you love it when I make you gag.” Shit, down, boy, this has nothing to do with sex. Disregard all the cocksucking talk.
“I…I do, but that’s—I can’t make this fun, Josh, I’m trying, but I can’t.”
Josh shifted them slowly toward a wall. When he could press Keith back against it, he let go so Keith could lift his head. “Look at me.”
Damn. Bloodshot blue eyes. My angel.
“I want you to hear yourself say it. Are you a cocksucker?”
“Yes.” Keith’s eyes held his. “I suck cock.”
That heady mix of obedience and conviction drove Josh fucking mad.
“Do you love it when I make you gag? When you choke around my dick?”
“I love it—I love it when you—” Proper face, proper lips, proper mouth that never said words like these.
He caressed Keith’s bottom lip with his thumb, teasing it. “Say it for me.”
“I love it when you gag me, I love feeling your dick in my throat.” Keith’s forehead crinkled. “God, that sounds so fucking wrong.”
“So fucking right. Just like the sounds you make when I’m fucking you. Or the sounds you make when I’m spanking you. You love that, too, don’t you?”
Keith looked away. “Please don’t make me say that.”
“Why? Why not say what you like, if both of us know it?”
“Because it’s—because I’m not you. I’m not big and brave and straight-acting and butch like you, Josh. I can’t charm everyone in the room.”
“Baby, who the fuck said you had to be anything else?”
“Them. Always. They always wanted me to be student body president, or head of the debate team, or really they wanted me to be the head of anything at all, but that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to do the work, not—not get the glory.”
In this stark analysis, Josh could see himself reflected. Yes. Keith wanted to be in the background. He wanted to be the brains of the operation, no matter who was running it. He wanted to be the irreplaceable sidekick, the Joan Harris to someone else’s Don Draper.
Josh had only ever wanted to be at the top of the ladder. But he’d be damned if he’d let Keith get away with thinking one role was less valuable than the other. And they weren’t only talking about business.
“You want to top me in front of your dad? Let him see you can give just as good as you get?” He teased Keith’s lip again. “Come on. I’ll do it if it’ll make you feel better.”
“Shut up. That’s totally and completely disgusting.”
“Yeah, but would it help?”
Keith sighed. “Yeah. I mean obviously no, we’re not staging a sex show in front of anyone, still less my dad, but yeah. His problem wasn’t you being black, it was that you were like the son he always wanted. Smiling and charismatic and commanding. That’s what he wanted me to be, Josh, you know? And then I was sitting there, watching his brain work, and he was trying to figure out what he’d done wrong to get this fucking pansy for a son when he should have had a man like you.”
Keeping up the pressure of thumb on lip, Josh murmured, “You think I’m commanding?”
A puff of laughter. “Pretty much a given.”
“I’m’a command this mouth to suck my cock.”
Without waiting for more, Keith slid to his knees, still in his suit, every inch the handsome boyfriend, the well-adjusted college student. The guy Josh would have said harbored very few dark shadows in his smiles, but maybe he was really just the guy who hid them especially well.
He didn’t reach out.
“Good little cocksucker,” Josh said, making his voice deeper. He pulled Keith’s face against the front of his own slacks. “Say it.”
Keith hesitated. “I’m a good little cocksucker.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Was this going the way he wanted it to go? He couldn’t tell. Keith on his knees was all his libido needed to see, but what about Keith himself? Was all this just another way of playing second fiddle? And if it wasn’t, how the fuck could Josh turn it around without making it literally about who fucked whom?
“Such a sweet little cocksucker. What else are you, baby?”
Eyes fluttering shut, Keith leaned in, pressing his cheek against Josh’s thigh. “I’m a bitch. I’m a pussy. I like it when someone else is in charge because I’m weak, because I can’t handle pressure, because I’m a fucking faggot and everyone knows it.”
Oh my angel, no. Don’t hurt yourself.
“Everyone looks at me and they know this is all I’m good for, they always did, and my dad was always so fucking ashamed of me, because I wasn’t big and broad and strong, because I didn’t have a loud voice, or a booming presence. I wasn’t a man’s man; I was a man’s bitch. And he knew it.”
It wouldn’t do any good to mention that Keith’s dad wasn’t all that big or broad or strong, that his voice was no lower than Keith’s was, not really, accounting for age, accounting for Keith’s usual level of excitement.
“And you, you make it all so much better and so much worse, because we started doing all the other stuff, the stuff where sometimes you hurt me and it makes me feel so good, and that’s probably wrong, but it doesn’t feel like it is, and I can’t even look at him because if he knew that, he’d be so fucking disgusted.”
“Baby, for what it’s worth, my mama would slap me if she knew I’d ever raised a hand to you, even if she knew you asked me for it. There’s a reason we don’t tell our parents everything.”
“Then she’d just know that I was weak, too.” Keith looked up. “Did they think I was weak? That’s how it looked, didn’t it? That I was weak, and silly, and it could never work between us because you’re so dignified and I’m just me.”
“Listen, do you really think I’d go for a weak guy? Promise I wouldn’t introduce one to my folks. They didn’t think you were weak.” He ran a hand into Keith’s hair. “You gotta shake this off. What your dad does and does not think—about you, about us, about high school debate class—isn’t relevant.”
“It is, though. If I was stronger, if I could convince him, he’d help us fund QYP. I mean, your folks are going to help, aren’t they? Because they believe in you.”
“My folks are going to help because we have a viable business plan and we’ve already got some outside backing. They wouldn’t just write me a check, and they shouldn’t.”
“My folks aren’t going to help because it’s me asking. If you asked them alone, not as my boyfriend, they probably would have invested. How fucking sick is that?”
“We’ll fund it without them, Keith. You and I are going to make this work. Do you doubt us?”
“Never.”
Josh shook his head. “You can’t doubt yourself but not us. Are you just pretending the rest of the time? Do you always feel this way?”
“I—I’m not sure.” Keith rubbed gently, sliding his check along Josh’s dick. When he spoke, Josh felt it. “I don’t think I doubt myself really. But the way he looks at me makes me feel so fucking ugly, so exposed, like he can see everything we do.”
“Your dad isn’t God.”
“I don’t even believe in God. But I can’t escape Dad. And it’s like everything I am is just salt in his wounds.”
They could stop here. Kink wasn’t fucking therapy, that was true, he’d said that the first time they ever talked about it. But sometimes it could be reclaiming, and there was a whole world of hurt inside Keith that needed to be reclaimed.
“What would be the worst thing?” he asked, letting his fingers slide into Keith’s hair, guide his movements. “What would horrify your dad the most?”
“Oh god. Everything. No, not the most.” Keith paused. “That you whip me. That I let you leave marks. That I get off on it. That could be a racist thing, maybe. Not that he’d be thrilled with me doing it with anyone, but I bet he’d really hate the visual when it’s you.”
That I let you leave marks. Josh thrust against Keith’s face, holding him still. “That’s what we’re doing tonight. Get the whip.”
“It’s late, and I have class in the morning. Not that it wouldn’t be nice, but—”
“I’m not letting you leave here until you can feel me inside and out. Get the whip.”
Keith sighed. “You think beating on me and fucking me will make me feel stronger?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. Okay. Maybe. But I wish tonight had never happened.”
I can’t decide yet. Ask me again in two hours. “The whip. And take your clothes off.”
Keith pressed a dry kiss to the outside of his slacks. “Okay.”
***
Josh loved this moment, running his hands over Keith’s skin, making him shiver. He loved running the whip over Keith’s skin, too, though that elicited more of a shudder.
He’d taken his own clothes off in an impulse that might owe something to the idea that he was a strong black man, and that he had at his mercy a strong white man.
“I might be having a race thing,” he said softly, running his palm up Keith’s back. “You look so fucking pale next to me.”
“You want me to call you ‘master’?”
“Fuck no.” He paused. “You can call me ‘proud black man with whip’ and worship me.”
Keith laughed. “Oh, proud-black-man-with-whip, I worship you. I bow at your feet.”
“No, you don’t.” Josh nudged his knees apart. “Tell me what you want, Keith.”
“I want you to stop making me say stupid things like that’s gonna help.”
Josh got him with a nip to his ass and he flinched. “You’re a fucking cocksucker. You deserve to be beaten. You deserve to be used. Weak little faggots like you were built for this, weren’t they?” Another nip, this time to his thigh, but Keith wasn’t quite folding. “It’s so obvious, isn’t it? Everyone sees us and knows that you’re just my little bottom boy, that I could bend you over right there in the middle of a meeting and you’d do it for me, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, you would.” He slid a finger into Keith’s crack. “Right here. I could peel you open and let them see that you love it. You open right up for me, don’t you, baby?”
“Yes.” Clipped, cut-off hiss at the end.
Josh stepped back. “Say it.”
Keith twisted on the bed, an anguished growl tearing from his throat. “Stop fucking doing that!”
“Do as I say and I’ll hurt you, baby.”
Keith deflated. “I know this is fine. It was fine yesterday. I had no fucking problem yesterday. But today I just…can’t. I’m sorry. I should just leave.”
Oh, damn. Josh set the single tail aside and sat down on the bed. “I’m a filthy cocksucker,” he said.
“Shut up.”
“What? It’s true.”
Keith rolled his eyes and flopped onto his still-pale, still-unmarked back. “Yeah, fine. But no one looks at you and thinks: cocksucker. They look at you and think: guy who gets his cock sucked.”
“Maybe. You really care so much what people think when they look at us?”
“No. I care that my dad thinks seeing me with you justifies all the shit he’s always thought about me.”
“You should’ve hooked up with what’s-his-name, that kid who was trying to get on you when we met.”
“I actually, uh, tried that once. Like, I dated this guy in high school who was super gay, rainbow stickers all over his car, rainbow bandana every day, eyeliner, the whole thing.”
Josh grinned. “Pictures or it didn’t happen.”
“We went to prom together, actually, though they wouldn’t let us take a picture.”
“What did your dad think?”
“Nothing. He shook hands and said he had to go work in his office. And that poor kid really liked me, but I was just using him to get back at Dad. Or maybe prove something.”
Naked Keith, dick still half-hard. Josh gestured. “Why don’t you let me demonstrate my cocksucking skills?”
“I hurt that kid, you know? I hurt him because I was trying to be more manly than he was, because he was just a symbol of what I was so ashamed of, Josh. How could I do that to someone?”
“Baby, we all fuck up. And how did you hide all this shit? I thought I knew you pretty well.”
“You do.” Keith shifted up, folding the other pillow to prop himself against the headboard. “You do. I just bury it, when I can. Because it’s ugly, and it makes me feel unworthy to buy into all this crap about masculinity that I don’t even really believe. I mean, straight people do pegging, and obviously if you’re a guy taking it up the ass from a girl, you’re still, y’know, a guy.”
“Pegging? What the fuck?”
“Yeah, pegging. What, you don’t know about this?” Keith’s smile soothed over the raw bits at the ends of Josh’s frayed nerves. “It’s when a girl uses a strap-on on a dude. How can you not know about this?”
“The better question is how do you know about it?”
“Hey, I’m well read!” Keith shifted closer. “I don’t believe any of that shit. I know that nothing we do makes me less of a man. I know that everything we’ve ever done made me feel more like myself.”
Thank you, God. “I’ve never seen you freeze up like you did at dinner.”
“Yeah. Well, watching my dad go all, like, ‘my son is my deepest shame’ makes me lose my appetite.”
Just because that hadn’t been what Josh saw didn’t make it untrue. Plus, if Keith could cover his insecurities that well, who knew what his dad was covering.
“If anything we do ever makes you feel that way, you’d tell me, right? I mean really, Keith. Don’t just say it.”
“Something didn’t work for me five minutes ago and I told you. I just wish it wasn’t all in my head all the time, you know? I wish he wasn’t in my head all the time.”
“I hope not all the time.”
“You know what I mean.”
Yeah. But this still isn’t right yet. “You know we’ll find the funding. It’s just a matter of time.”
“I believe you.”
Josh shook his head. “You wrote the business plan, Keith. It’s your baby.”
“It’s your ideas.”
“I had these—ideas. I had this big dream of something I wanted to build, but you’re the one who put it all down on paper.” He didn’t want to say thank you. This thing belonged to both of them now. And he didn’t want to say you’re important, too because it still sounded like he was the one in a position of power, the guy who got to decide who was important. “Listen, before I met you QYP was a thing I wanted to do to help people. To help kids. It was me and a notebook and a shitty ball-point pen.”
“Blue Papermate forevah,” Keith teased.
“Hey, shut it. I still love those pens.” He reached out, ran his hand along Keith’s leg, up his thigh, delighting in his shiver. “Now the Queer Youth Project is a thing. We have letterhead. We have a business plan. You made that happen. I could have done little pieces of it, but you’re the one who make us look good, Keith.”
“I wish my parents saw it that way. Not that I care, really, but you know.”
“Your dad is threatened by you.”
“He is not! Who would be threatened by me? That’s absurd.”
Josh shook his head, considering all the secret pockets in people’s hearts, the echo chambers where they hide their treasures and their terrors. “You don’t understand what you look like from the outside. With your American pie smile and polite way of saying ‘fuck you’ to people who disagree with you.”
“I don’t say that!”
“I know. You dismantle them. Politely. And when you restate your case most of them agree with you, not because you intimidated them into compliance, but because you managed to actually convince them that you’d thought it up, down, and around, and in thinking about it came to logical conclusions that also made sense to them, once they saw how you got there. Keith, that’s a hugely powerful gift. You think everyone’s looking at me when we meet with people, but the truth is that I lure them in, and you close the deal.”
“I get what you’re trying to do. And I appreciate it. But me being obsessive doesn’t make me a threat, and definitely not to someone like my dad.”
“It does, though. Because your dad recognizes power. He recognizes that in you it takes a different form than he’s used to, and yeah, that scares him. That feels like a threat, like a direct challenge to who he is, because you aren’t playing by his rules. Of course he wants to diminish you, but he can’t unless you let him.”
Keith slid down into the bed. “This was a really cute after school special, but can we go to sleep now?”
“We could if that’s what you wanted, but it isn’t.”
“Really? Because I’m pretty damn tired.”
Lord, give me strength and faith. Josh shifted until they were eye-to-eye. “When you leave here, I want you marked. But I will only do it if you tell me to.”
“What happened to this isn’t therapy?”
“I need to feel your power, angel. It comes straight through your words.” Believe me, damn you. I’ve never lied to you before and I never would.
Keith wrestled with it and Josh didn’t move, barely breathed, waiting. They both knew that if Keith really demanded to be dropped off at the dorms, he would make the drive. They both knew that even if he balked, there were buses.
In short, they both knew that Keith had choices, and that he was choosing to be here.
“I want you to whip me. I want you to go further than you ever have before. But I don’t want you to think—I don’t want you to see me like that and think—” He choked. When he managed to speak again, his voice was low and raw. “I open for you in ways I don’t think I could for anyone else, and sometimes it scares the hell out of me.”
“Angel, I know. I do the same. I could never go as deep into it as I do with you.” And it’s because you’re so fucking strong, because I know you won’t break that hurting you feels so fucking good. He thumbed Keith’s lower lip open and kissed him, deeply, taking and giving as much as he could.
“Please, Josh. Please. Please give me armor. Please make pain a shield I can use.”
“You know I love you.”
“Yeah.”
Blue eyes, icy around the outside, darker on the inside, fading to iris. Josh caught his breath, overwhelmed at the trust there, at the belief in him, in them.
“Lie with your arms out and your legs spread. I’m gonna go slow.”
“I don’t need you to go slow. I want—”
“A shield. Spread yourself nice and wide for me, baby.”
So fucking pale. Keith didn’t tan, he’d said; “I can slather on the sunblock or burn, those are my options.” Josh wasn’t gonna complain. Especially when it gave him such a fucking nice canvas to work with.
He’d stuck to thighs and ass and upper back before now, figuring his taste for inflicting sensation overreached Keith’s desire to feel it, but tonight he did what he’d often dreamed of doing. He took his time, starting with conservative throws with the whip, letting it wake up all the nerves in Keith’s legs, over his ass, across his upper back.
Keith flinched hard at the first one to land on his arm. When Josh followed it with another, Keith sucked in a sob.
The unexpected was bliss. If he had Keith standing, he’d be more agile, able to switch sides a hell of a lot faster. But this worked, for tonight. They could get more creative later.
If Keith didn’t fucking hate this.
Don’t think about that. Think about what he wants. Think about what he needs.
Flick, flick, flick, little snaps that would spark and then smolder, but be overwhelmed by the next one. He worked back down Keith’s body, carefully aiming for areas he hadn’t hit before until he wanted a bigger response, then laying down a few hard strikes against skin that had already met his whip.
And yeah, okay, a tiny bit of a race thing, as he started going beyond warm-up. He was whipping his boy, his pale, blond, blue-eyed, Aryan motherfucking boy, and he was doing it because both of them found it fucking irresistible.
He laid down a real nice mark at the juncture of thigh and ass, where Keith would feel it every time he moved tomorrow, and Keith yelped.
Don’t get carried away. This is a fantasy come true for you; it’s the end of a bad day for him.
Josh put the whip aside so he could use his hands, smoothing up Keith’s legs from ankle to ass, kneading him, spreading him, calming him down with touch even though he hadn’t seemed agitated.
How have I missed this before? Just because he seems like he has it together doesn’t mean he does. Right now it was impossible to miss the slight jumpiness of the muscles beneath his palms, or the way the tension in Keith’s shoulders melted away as Josh worked on them.
“More,” Keith whispered. “Don’t stop.”
Josh adjusted his dick and picked up the whip again. Maybe on a normal day he’d switch to a flogger or a crop or something, change it up, but tonight both of them wanted this, so he’d test his skills against whatever this whip could do.
Which turned out to be a lot.
He started again, focusing on Keith’s upper back, alternating sides. Harder, softer, dragging over fresh marks, a caress of the whip just before he nipped back in against the softer flesh of Keith’s arms again.
And watching him force his body to stay still when everything in him wanted to curl into a little ball to protect itself was fucking hot. It was going to be even more hot in a second, if everything when the way Josh wanted it to go.
This time when he set the whip down he climbed over his boyfriend, rubbing against him, licking trails along his marks, sometimes chewing the most compelling patches of skin until Keith whimpered.
Josh gathered his wits, and his balls, and kissed his way to Keith’s ear. “More?”
“I’m not sure.”
Damn. So close. Oh well. “Okay, angel.”
“I didn’t say no.”
More kisses and Josh said goodbye to the rest of his fantasy, already planning to grab the aloe and two glasses of water before letting either of them sleep.
“I want more. But I’m—it’s already more than I thought I could take. I’m not sure—I’m honestly not sure how much more—”
“Shh. It’s okay. It’s so much already.”
“But you want more.”
“Only if you do.”
“Josh. Don’t feed me a fucking good boyfriend line. You want to keep going.”
“It’s not a line. It’s only good for me if it’s good for you. You know that.”
Keith sighed. “Can you feel my heart? It’s racing. I want more. Not because you want it, though I’m glad it isn’t just me, but because I want to know if I can take everything you want to give me. I need to know that. Do you understand at all?”
“Yeah.” Josh tucked one of his arms under and rolled Keith until he was on his back. “I want to know if I can take you as far as you want to go, too. We’ve never really done it like that. It’s always sort of been foreplay before.”
“You ever done it like that with anyone?”
“Fuck no.”
Keith took a deep, shuddering breath. “That makes me feel better. I know you’ve done a lot of stuff I’ve never done, but this is different, isn’t it? It’s different than the last time we played with the whip.”
A question best answered with a kiss, which lingered. “Yeah, it’s different,” Josh murmured, lips brushing lips.
“Let’s do it.” Keith tried to turn over again, but Josh stopped him with a hand pressed to his chest.
“Can you hold position like this?”
“On my back?” The entire thing dawned on him, recognition spreading across his face. Real fear now, naked and exposed. “I don’t—we never—”
“Can you hold position, baby?”
Keith mastered his expression first, then his body, spreading himself wide. “I’m ready.”
He only thought he was ready, or ready enough. But Josh wouldn’t really be satisfied until he fell apart. Easy to start with Keith’s nipples between thumb and index finger, rolling, pinching, pulling. Start with something he thought he understood.
Harder now, but still within the realm of things they’d done before.
Now he stood up again, playing with the whip, letting it trace invisible paths on Keith’s skin, brushing it over nipples that already thought they knew what soreness was, and how to deal with pain.
“Do you want me to restrain your arms?” Josh asked, when even a small flick to Keith’s stomach made him jump.
“It’s not voluntary. I’m just twitching, even at the thought of what you’re going to do.”
You have no idea, baby.
“Yes, please. If that doesn’t—if it’s still okay with you.”
“The more still you are, the less I worry I’m going to inadvertently hit the wrong thing.”
“Oh god. Um. Okay.”
The restraints were between the bed and the box spring. They weren’t the most stable way to restrain someone, but they’d work for right now. Keith just needed something to hold onto.
Josh kissed each wrist before he tightened the straps. They’d used them before so they were already sized correctly and Keith took deep breaths, pulling a bit, feeling it. His eyes found Josh’s and locked on.
“I’m scared. Not of you. Of—letting myself down.”
“Make it about me, then.” He climbed over Keith’s body and bent down to kiss him. “I know you can do this. I know you can take everything I’m about to give you. Do you trust me?”
“I trust you. But that’s not the same thing as trusting myself.”
“But you trust us. So trust us right now.” He pressed his lips to Keith’s and breathed. “I got you. Let me cover you with my shield.”
“Okay.” Tears glittered off Keith’s eyelashes. “I love you.”
“I love you so much.” Josh caught his eyes and held them. “And I love whipping you. I’m gonna get back to it now.”
Keith nodded, hands fisting, tugging.
“Yeah. You’re gonna be so messed up.” He let his fingers trail down Keith’s abdomen, briefly caress his dick.
“Oh god—Josh—you aren’t going to—”
“I might. I just might.” He wouldn’t, certainly not tonight, but that flare of fear was intoxicating as hell. “Angel,” he murmured, letting the word curl from his tongue.
Keith shivered.
“Good. So good.”
It was everything he could do not to take a picture. Keith looked incredible stretched out for him. He flicked the whip on one pale thigh and Keith hissed.
Important not to get lost in the moment too much. Though how could he, with his lover’s eyes watching his every move? Impossible.
Another, other thigh. And again. Then lower, on the outside of his calf, careful as hell not to wrap the lash around lean muscle. He shifted, knowing the next one would hurt, knowing that he needed to play with Keith’s fear in order to show him his strength. Still, he pulled back, letting only the tip of the whip snap against Keith’s belly.
“Oh!”
That was it. An “oh!” He’d have to do better than that.
The next one caught him just under the nipple and he cried out, pulling at his bonds. Josh ran his hand over the mark.
“I’m glad you’re tied down.”
Keith, through tears and sweat, managed, “Me too.”
“Yeah, boy. You good to keep going?”
Terse nod.
Josh played fingertips along the smooth plane of Keith’s arm, stroking until his fists released. He stepped back and moderated his breaths until he could swing in time with them.
I will make this so fucking good for you.
He started slowly, taking time to settle into a rhythm mainly so he could mess it up again. Thighs, calves, thighs, not going too fast.
Josh was hot and hard, aching with desire he knew he could keep pushing until it was almost unbearable. He worked Keith over, shocking him by catching a nipple, making him scream a little when he went for the tender flesh under his arm. Not trying to hurt him, just trying to wake him up. Never too hard; he could tell by the marks, which were pink and red, but none would bruise deeply.
This pain was more psychological, with the physical to hold its hand. Josh had never gone this far with a lover, and he couldn’t imagine his ignorance. This was the hottest night of his life, or would have been, if not for the reason they were doing it.
Keith’s dick went soft when Josh got him at the nipples. He writhed, grunted, eventually moaned, soft and exhausted, while Josh finished marking him.
They would do this again. Josh felt that certainty like it was a stone he could hold in his hand.
He didn’t feel the soreness in his arm and shoulder and back until he put the whip away.
“I’m sore,” he said, watching for Keith’s expression.
“You’re sore?”
“Yeah. You wore me out.”
Keith’s sweet, teary smile melted everything in Josh. He returned to the bed and lay across his boyfriend, rubbing all over his roughed-up body.
“You didn’t break the skin,” Keith whispered, taking pained, shallow breaths.
“Of course not.”
“Felt like—felt like I was ripping apart.”
Josh nuzzled against his cheek. “I was careful. So careful.” He thrust against Keith’s belly. “You’re so sexy like this, covered in pictures I drew on you. Was this what you wanted?”
“This is…so far beyond what I wanted.”
“Good. I want to go so far beyond what you think you want, Keith. I want your life to be so fucking far beyond what you think you deserve.”
“It is. You are.”
Relaxed kisses, as if Keith wasn’t still tied to the bed, covered in marks, as if Josh wasn’t micro-thrusting against him. These kisses promised rainy days snuggled on the couch watching movies and early holiday mornings when the only celebration necessary was the two of them and a pot of coffee.
Josh had never felt like this in his life, and he wanted to ride over the top of this current for as long as it held them both aloft.
He took Keith’s dick, semi-hard and growing fast, and his own, fisting both of them while he tried to balance and keep kissing.
Keith laughed against him. “You’re so coordinated.”
“Shouldn’t you be blissed out on endorphins right now?”
“What do you think I am? I feel like I’m floating a mile above this bed, even though I can feel that I’m restrained. Both things are true.”
“Man. That sounds hot.”
“You should let me do you next time.”
“Fat chance.” Damn. He knelt up, forfeiting kisses for the time being in order to flick Keith’s nipples with his fingernails while he jacked them both. “Feel good, baby? You like that?”
“Ow—ow—no—” But even as he complained, his body twitched upward like his dick was a puppet string Josh was pulling.
“That’s right. You love it. You love it when I hurt you. You love it when I let you prove yourself again and again.” Faster, Josh’s toes curled, his grip tightened. “Oh fuck—fuck, Keith—you gotta come too—”
Dominoes; Josh’s orgasm began, tipping over into Keith’s. Both of them, rhythms slightly off, desperately reaching, Keith’s body practically jackknifing in an effort to hunt down the sensation he needed from Josh’s hand.
The orgasm hit like a full-body electrical current, surging through Josh, shooting out his dick. He kept twitching, panting, leaning over now to kiss Keith.
“That was so good.”
“Oh god. That was intense.” Keith craned up. “Let me go. I have to hold you now.”
“I’ll let you go, but you have to lie still and let me put aloe on the places you’re most raw.”
Keith subsided, lips turning up. “You’re gonna minister to my wounds, nurse?”
“Oh, you bet your ass. I’ll get us a cloth, too.”
Post-sex niceties, including freeing Keith. Applying aloe was a ritual unto itself, and one Josh found he very much wanted the opportunity to do again. Of course, Keith might veto that. Whatever effect the night had had on Josh, it was probably a whole other thing in Keith’s head.
He finished up with the backs of Keith’s legs and put everything away, tucking Keith into the sheets.
“Can I ask you something?”
He turned. “Sure. Of course. Anything.”
“Have you always wanted to do that? With me, I mean.”
The truth. He had to tell the truth, because that’s what grown men do when asked questions by the guy they want to marry.
“Yeah.” Josh hit the lights and climbed into bed himself. “Yeah, since the first time you let me flog you. I mean, not like that completely. I want to use everything on you until you can’t tell what’s happening, and if it’s hot or cold, hurting or turning you on.”
Keith swallowed. “Good. I’m glad. I didn’t want to feel like it was just me.”
“You worried about that?”
“I didn’t want to freak you out, but I want to learn how to take that better, Josh. And it’s not the only thing I’ve thought about.”
Josh held out a hand, brushing the backs of his knuckles down his boyfriend’s cheek. “What else?”
“I’m not gonna tell you everything all at once. You have to earn it.”
“So what did I earn tonight?”
A steadying breath, and Keith’s hand closed over his. “Sometimes when I think about it there are two of you, focused on me, like I’m this totally wanton thing and you have nothing better to do than make me feel.”
“Two of us,” Josh said, scooting closer. “Really.”
“You jealous?”
“Hell no. I’m trying to think of who we know I’d trust to touch you. Not a long list, angel.”
“It can’t be someone we already know.”
“But—”
“Josh, it can’t be. And I don’t know how serious I am about it.”
He was serious. Josh kissed him.
“Okay. I’m glad I earned a little intel there. Good to know.” Another kiss, into which he closed his eyes. “You are the sexiest, most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. Thank you for tonight.”
“Thank you. I’m still worried about—”
“Keith. Talk about it tomorrow. Tonight we’re going to sleep. Okay?”
“Yeah. Goodnight, Josh.”
“Goodnight, angel.”
Josh was big and strong and he’d just taken a whip to his man until both of them were exhausted, but when Keith tugged him closer, he went without protest.
His head on Keith’s chest only made it easier to fuck with his nipples some more.
“Ow!”
“Sorry.”
“Liar.”
They kissed a few more times and fell asleep.
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