by J. A. Rock
Then Bowser did something surprising. He stroked my shoulder gently with his free hand, then wrapped his arm around me and guided my head against his broad chest. Held me and leaned down to press his lips to my temple. His Viking beard was coarse against my skin. I felt so comforted in that moment, so astonished by a flood of emotion I couldn’t identify, that I barely noticed when he started moving the whip again. Softly at first, then harder and harder until I couldn’t ignore the pain as the strands caught my hypersensitive balls. Until I was curling and uncurling my fingers, my legs shaking so hard they didn’t seem under my control anymore. The gauze over my cuts deflected a couple of the blows, but it didn’t help much.
Two sensations collided—physical agony and a desperate need for him to keep holding me. I nearly pressed my face against his shirt and cried. Instead, I clamped my jaw, took a breath, and held perfectly still.
He released me. Pulled the fall out of my dick and gave me two lashes across my balls. Pressure welled inside me, and I felt a warmth inside my shaft, as though I were coming. But nothing happened. I was still right there on the edge, desperate, and I couldn’t go over.
He gripped my cock and started pumping.
“You wanna come?” he asked.
I didn’t know if I could. Each time he pumped, his fist hit my engorged balls and knocked the air out of me.
“Go on,” he whispered. “I wanna see you come with your balls the size of a fucking melon.”
I panted, groaning softly. He held the whip in his other hand and started striking my balls full force. I inhaled with a choked cry, my face contorting. It was like someone was punching me just below the belly button, but from the inside. My bladder felt like it was going to fucking burst.
He paused, and I struggled for a second against the tension in my throat before my breath rushed out. “Yeah,” I whispered. “Fuck yeah.”
“Spread those legs.”
My feet were still in the stirrups, but my knees were dropping toward each other in an involuntary effort to shield my groin. I spread as wide as I could. He lashed the whip upward, striking my asshole and the skin behind my balls, and I whimpered, my stomach spasming. He kept his hand moving on my cock, and everything was discord and brilliance. Mismatched rhythm and different levels of sickness and pleasure.
“I can’t. I really can’t.” It was too much—sensitized skin, the fear that if this went on any longer, I’d be sick on his table.
He stroked my shoulder. Brushed his lips over the edge of my ear, flicked my balls. His whisper was nearly drowned out by my grunt of determination. “Try.”
He went back to stroking my balls, and I closed my eyes, concentrating on his touch, on the feel of the needle under my skin when I moved a certain way. He placed his thumb on the scar from my PA piercing, and a memory flashed through me of him playing with the ring, back when I still wore it.
I imagined he was my partner. Not just for this afternoon, but forever. And I was so embarrassed by the fantasy that I dashed it out of existence, like swiping at a drawing I’d made in the sand. I didn’t want that illusion to be part of what made me come. I wanted the pain to do it. I wanted to be able to leave Bowser’s with a friendly handshake.
He was staring at my balls, his own breathing harsh, one hand hovering at the front of his pants. I wanted to invite him to touch himself.
When I did come, it was sort of a pathetic drizzle. I lay back against the steel table, relieved.
He drew the needle out of my balls and disposed of it in the sharps container. Removed his gloves, then undid the wrist cuffs. I slid my feet from the stirrups and let them dangle off the sides of the table.
“Do you wanna . . .?” I tipped my head toward his crotch. “Or want me to . . .?”
He shook his head. “It’s okay.”
He tried to help me clean up the needle entry site, but I took the alcohol pad and did it myself. I felt awkward now that we were finished.
He took the pad from me and tossed it in the trash. “So how’d that stack up to the injection?”
“Better.” I glanced down at my balls. “They look a lot more even. I don’t know how I’m supposed to stand up, though.”
“You can hang out here as long as you want.” He paused. “But I know you like to bolt as soon as we’re done.”
“You know me too well.”
“You need anything? Tylenol? Water? A hug?”
Part of me wanted to accept. And part of me shut down the idea immediately. “I’m good. I think I’ll just head home.”
There was something forced about his smile. “Some things don’t change.”
I laughed. “We really have been doing this a long time.”
“Uh-huh.”
I folded my hands over my belly. “Sometimes it just feels so comfortable that I wish I didn’t have to . . .”
“What?”
“Seek out new partners. Explain myself to them.”
He pulled a rolling chair over to the exam table and sat.
I looked at him. “Do you ever feel like that?”
“Commitment’s not really for me. Sorry.”
“Oh no. No, no, I didn’t mean that I want to—” I stopped before I could say something truly insensitive. “Not that you’re not . . . I just wasn’t thinking about that. I prefer that things remain casual.”
But every once in a while I wanted something passionate with someone who was just mine.
Bowser flicked my balls affectionately. “Well, anytime you wanna get off, you know you can come here.”
I snorted. “I appreciate that. And will most likely take you up on that. Many times.”
He opened his mouth, hesitated, and then closed it again.
“What?” I asked.
“We’ve been playin’ for years. I guess I always hoped one of these days, you’d actually submit to me.”
I raised my brows. “I was just tied to a table while you stuck a needle in my balls and cut my scrotum.”
He offered a hint of the Mario laugh. “I know. You do a real good job takin’ what I give you. You’re just a little clinical about it. Even when you’re cryin’ from the pain, you feel kinda removed from me.”
That actually hurt. But I forced a grin. “Yeah, well. You can’t have it both ways. You want to keep it casual, you can’t expect me to cry in your arms and sleep in your bed.”
“I know. I oughta shut up.”
“I’ve never felt like much of a submissive. A bottom and a pain pig, more like.”
“Well, hey. That’s—”
My phone buzzed. I sat up and tried, not quite successfully, to move my lower body. “Could you . . .?”
Bowser walked over to my bag and retrieved the phone. Handed it to me.
Texts from Jason, one of my employees at A2A Wear. Frantic and past the point of coherency.
Problem with the rush order I don’t know what to do please come in shirts are wrong too late to do anything its team funeral they’ll freak out omg omg.
Jason must have been sincerely distressed to forego punctuation. My heart started pounding as I realized there was no way I could go into the shop when my balls were the size of a melon.
“I’m sorry,” I told Bowser. “I have to make a call.”
And so I sat naked on the exam table with my balloon balls resting on my thighs and called Jason. His story was even less coherent over the phone. Apparently a very large and important shipment of T-shirts had a spelling error. I started to ask if he could text me pictures of the disaster, but his voice got half an octave higher, and I said, “Forget it. I’m coming in.”
“Trouble?” Bowser asked when I hung up.
“A work emergency.” I put down the phone. “Fuck. I’m so sorry. I need to be there.” I glanced at my balls again. “But . . .”
“You wanna borrow a T-shirt? XXL?”
The only thing worse than going to work with an inflated scrotum would be going into work in sweatpants and a T-shirt. But I had little choice.
I sighed and struggled to my feet. “All right. Show me what you’ve got.”
I parked in A2A’s side lot, facing away from the street. Slid carefully from behind the wheel, attempting to subtly support my balls with my hand. I’d borrowed XL sweatpants from Bowser because my own had been too tight, as well as his baggiest T-shirt and a hoodie that matched the pants, but there was no way the clothes were going to fully hide my condition. Whatever this T-shirt crisis was, I should have told Jason he had to solve it himself.
Except I was A2A’s owner, and I was a control freak, and I needed to know what was going on. I shuffled toward the door.
As soon as Jason saw me, he started flapping his arms. “Miles—”
“Jason? Take a breath.”
He paused momentarily in his fluttering as I approached. “Why are you wearing a sweat suit?”
“Long story. What’s the problem?”
Jason looked horrified. Jason always looked vaguely horrified.
“Jason, don’t look so horrified.”
“I can’t help it. They’re going to freak.”
“Who?”
“It’s the Team Funeral shirts.”
Oh God.
Team Funeral. The Segers, who had placed a rush order by phone last week for twelve matching T-shirts to be worn at a relative’s funeral. Why a family would wear matching T-shirts to a funeral was beyond me, but they had added a generous tip on top of the rush price, and I’d promised we would have the shirts done in time for the service.
I ignored the discomfort as my swollen, welted balls rubbed against the front of my pants. “What happened to the shirts?”
Jason pulled a seafoam T-shirt out of the box. Shook it out. I read the purple airbrushed letters: UNCLE MATT, REST NOW WITH THE ANGLES.
“Oh dear.”
Jason’s head popped out from behind the shirt. “I looked for the original order to see if it was their mistake or ours. And it was theirs; they definitely spelled it ‘angles’ on their form. But—”
“But we should have caught it,” I finished. We prided ourselves in checking submissions carefully. We’d been able to stop an “Andesron” soccer jersey from happening, as well as a Will Work for Foot hoodie and an order of five hundred My Other Cat Is the Millennium Falcon bumper stickers.
“And their funeral is tomorrow!” Jason sounded dangerously close to hyperventilating. My friends all thought I was wound too tight. I really, really wanted to introduce them to Jason. Except that anytime one of them stopped by the store, Jason was always charming and serene as a Constable painting. “I mean, not their funeral, but . . .”
I nodded. “And perhaps our funeral too. I’ll give them a call.”
I got on the computer and pulled up the Segers’ order. Gave the number a call.
“Hello?” The voice that answered was soft and calm.
“Hi, Mr. Seger? This is Miles Loucks from A2A Wear. Your—”
“Hi, Miles.”
I paused at the interruption. “Yes, hi. Your order’s ready for pickup, but we’ve just noticed a problem.”
“Oh?” He didn’t sound ready to kill, so that was something.
I explained the situation to him. There was silence when I finished.
Then he said, without the slightest change in tone, “I’m in the neighborhood. I’ll stop by and see how bad it is.”
“It’s pretty bad,” I admitted. “I mean, the shirts all say that your uncle is resting with the angles.”
He laughed. “It’s all right, Miles.” The way he said my name was quite beautiful. And God, what was with that voice? It had an otherworldly quality, like he was narrating the prologue to some epic fantasy movie. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
No. No. Terrible. I did not want to meet the man whose order I had failed to proofread while I was wearing a sweat suit three sizes too large and my testicles were the size of regulation softballs. “Listen . . .”
But he’d already hung up.
“You’ll have to deal with him,” I told Jason. “I need to get out of sight.”
“What? No! You’re the one who knows how to talk to people.”
“Jason, I’m wearing a sweat suit. I can’t possibly interact with him.”
“What do I say?”
“Apologize. Offer him a refund—fifty percent, since technically it was their mistake. Offer to reprint the shirts, even though the new ones won’t be ready in time for the funeral. I’m going to the back to take inventory.”
I left Jason standing there stammering and took refuge in the back room. There I didn’t have to worry about keeping my crotch sheltered. The air was warm and held the vinegary smell of new shirts. I took out my tablet and pulled up the inventory list.
I’d opened A2A three years ago. My friends had thought a T-shirt design company was a bit of an odd choice for me, since I struck them as neither particularly creative nor fashion-conscious. My cardigan-heavy wardrobe contained, as Dave was fond of saying, Mr. Rogers’s rejects, and I tended to judge harshly anyone over sixteen who wore graphic tees. But the demand was high, and I had a good head for business and a great creative team. Even Jason, who practically burst into tears if the cash register drawer was slow to open, had surprisingly viable ideas.
My friends had all been very supportive. Kamen had been adamant that I name the shop No Shirt, Sherlock, but had eventually come around to the idea of Arm 2 Arm Wear—A2A for short. Dave and Gould had helped me decorate. Our tech-support friend, Ricky, had done the website. A2A currently had a four point six on Yelp, and the store was probably the accomplishment I was most proud of.
Which made “resting with the angles” all the harder to deal with.
After a few minutes, I realized I needed a couple of boxes that were under the register counter. I hobbled cautiously into the front. No sign of Mr. Seger. Jason was out on the floor, organizing the clearance racks.
I went around the counter and soon discovered that crouching was not an option. Keeping my legs stiff, I bent at the waist and lifted one of the boxes out. Set it on the counter. As I lifted the second box, someone slapped a sheet of paper on the counter and left his hand on it. White dude. No wedding ring. Overgrown cuticles. Nice nails. Faint knuckle hair.
I looked up. And up. Until I got to his face, which was closer to the ceiling than I was accustomed to faces being.
La beauté.
I would estimate that eighty percent of the people I encountered were acceptable looking. Twelve percent were captivatingly ugly. Five percent were celebrities and had help. And three percent were outlandishly beautiful.
Mr. Seger was probably close to six foot seven. Lean, and long-limbed. He wore an odd overcoat—knee-length, black, with a belt and a Sherlockian turned-up collar. Long, dark-gold hair gathered into a ponytail, and his eyes—were they purple?
“Miles?” That same low, gentle voice from the phone.
I straightened partway, but kept my knees bent enough that my crotch was hidden behind the counter. “Yes?”
When I met his gaze, he smiled.
“I’m Mr. Seger.”
I caught Jason’s frozen expression from over by the racks. Looked back at Mr. Seger, who appeared too young to be a “mister.” “Hello, Mr. Seger. I’m Miles Loucks. I’m the owner. And I can’t tell you how sorry I am about—”
“May I see the shirts?”
He didn’t sound demanding in the least. Just cheerful and amused.
I had to reach sideways for the box to avoid leaving the shelter of the counter. I removed one shirt and shook it out, as Jason had done. Mr. Seger took it from me, and our fingers brushed. I might as well have been in high school again, jolting when Tyson Ellis handed me his Jell-O at lunch. My face heated, and I waited for the implosion.
But Mr. Seger laughed. And laughed some more.
Rich sound. White teeth. Absurdly sharp canines. My cock, despite being weighed down by a balloon filled with sand, was more than a bit interested in Mr. Seger’s laug
h.
He wiped under his eye with one finger. “Oh. Oh, oh. Uncle Matt would have loved this.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said again. I didn’t really feel guilty per se—I have a hard time sympathizing with other people’s grammatical errors, or with the idea of wearing matching shirts to a funeral—but I was sorry about the potential negative Yelp review. “We can offer you a partial refund—”
“No, no. It’s all right.” He folded the shirt and set it back on the box. “I’ve looked at the order form. It was my mistake.”
“We usually proofread carefully, and check with the customer if there’s any confusion about spelling. I can’t believe I didn’t catch this.”
He was looking at me with his head tilted, a half smile still on his face. Those pointed teeth were really throwing me. “Please don’t feel guilty.”
“I understand how much stress you must be dealing with. You didn’t need this on top of it.” I winced as I shifted and my balls rolled along the side of my thigh.
He leaned forward slightly, gazing into my eyes as though—well, as though he were about to kiss me. “I suppose there is one way you could make it up to me.”
I was startled. My apologies were really just a formality, given that I hadn’t been the one to misspell angels. “Yes?”
“Could I take you to dinner?”
What?
I mean truly, what?
At what point had I given him any indication that I . . .
But when I opened my mouth to refuse, politely but with enough of an edge to let him know that his offer was entirely inappropriate, the words “All right” came out.
“Friday night?” Mr. Seger smiled softly at me. The sort of smile you gave someone you’d known far longer than five minutes.
No. No, no. This was not happening. I was not standing here in a sweat suit trying to hide my engorged balls behind a counter while a towering, ponytailed stranger asked me to dinner.
And yet, I said, “Okay.”
He straightened. “I’d like to get my full name out of the way now. Feel free to laugh.”
