Benched: Volumes 4-6 Boxed Set

by Misha Horne

  “What if you change your mind, though?” he finally asked, in the middle of it now, with no way out but through. “What if one day you don’t like that? What if I’m, like, broken for regular sex, and I can only get off on getting spanked, and you decide you don’t want to do it anymore?”

  “What if you’re…” Juno frowned, staring at him a minute and then sitting up. “What if you’re broken? Is that what you just said? What does that mean?”

  “I just think I might like it too much. Like, I used to jerk off all the time, but it was just to random stuff. I was never thinking about any of this stuff. Now, I can’t… it’s like I’m a freak. I’m obsessed, like it’s an addiction or a fetish or whatever. I can’t stop thinking about it. I mean, you can’t even… if you knew how hard I get when we do this stuff…”

  “I do know. I’m right there with you. Like, it literally just happened. I told you how hot is was. I know how hot you thought it was.”

  Juno slipped a hand down his thigh, letting it rest there, the back of his knuckles brushing against his balls, and Kyle sucked in a harsh breath.

  “Yeah, but…”

  “But nothing. There’s nothing wrong with anything we’re doing, or anything you’re feeling. You need to give yourself a break. Getting spanked turns you on. So what? You and about a million other people. There’s nothing freakish about it. I don’t want to hear that word again. If I tell you you’re a naughty boy who needs him bottom smacked and that turns you on and makes you feel good, that doesn’t make you a freak. It makes you someone who knows what he needs, and makes me someone who gets to give it to you. Maybe it’s not what you expected to like, but there’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “What about the other stuff, though?”

  “Which other stuff?”

  He blinked and swiped at his eyes, his eyelashes sticking together with sweat and maddening tears that just seemed to hang out all the time, but refused to ever go anywhere without help. “You know. The way I like it when you… take control. How crazy I get when you act like… when you…” He swallowed, his frustration turning physical and his throat closing up as he tried to explain. “Just when you talk to me and lecture me and stuff. That isn’t normal. That’s not—”

  “No.” Juno put a hand up to his mouth to quiet him, looking angrier than he’d maybe ever seen him. “Stop. Seriously, just stop. Be done saying normal and regular. Those aren’t good words. They don’t mean anything.”

  “They’re just words. That’s not the point.”

  “Yeah, words for you to beat yourself up with. And you’re not doing that here. That is the point.”

  “Whatever. It doesn’t matter what words I use. Doesn’t change what I’m talking about.”

  “What you’re talking about’s a bunch of bullshit, Kyle. Listen. First of all, I know you might not remember, since I had to do my lusting all one-sided for a while there, but I was thinking about smacking that sweet ass of yours before you even knew my name. I’m into it. Alright? I like that. This is not a one-way street. You have to know that.”

  The relief was a little heavier than he expected, and he tried not to laugh at the teasing, even though he wanted to. “I always knew your name,” he said instead.

  Juno rolled his eyes, smiling as he reached out to trace a finger down Kyle’s jaw, stopping at his chin and tilting his head up. “Second…” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I have really have to say this. Don’t you know what my fetish is by now, rook? It’s you. I like you, Kyle. End of story. You’re my favorite thing. You’re every fucking fantasy I’ve ever had. I’m always going to be into whatever you’re into. Because I’m into you.”

  “But, that’s not—”

  “Enough.” Juno moved quickly, climbing on top of him, gripping the tops of his arms and holding him down, stroking his shoulders with his thumbs and squeezing him tight. “You like what you like, and I like what I like, and that’s between you and me. It’s nobody else’s fucking business, so none of this matters. You need to stop thinking so much. That’s exactly why this is so good for you. You get to stop thinking.”

  Kyle’s brain struggled against the safety of Juno’s weight on top of him as he straddled his waist. His body seemed to get it, melting in the security of being pinned down, but his mind was locked up tight, refusing to get the message that it was okay to calm down now. It was perfectly happy to keep blowing things up and kicking things over, throwing tantrum after tantrum until the whole place was destroyed again, worse than before. He shook his head.

  “I can’t stop thinking. I try. I just can’t.”

  He hated the way Juno looked at him, the careful way he studied him, like he understood. Hated it because how was it fucking fair that Juno understood him when he couldn’t even understand himself?

  “Okay. Then we’ll just have to make sure you’re thinking about the right things. Think about this, rook.” Juno slid his hands down his body, the soft pads of his fingers biting into his flesh, digging into his sides, wide streaks of heat burning his skin everywhere he touched him. “Pay attention. Think hard. Tell me how this makes you feel.”

  Kyle whimpered, rubbing his ass against the sheets, stretching his legs, lifting his hips, grateful and desperate and choking on need when Juno wrapped his hands loosely around his sides, caging him like an extra set of ribs, broad and firm and reassuring, rubbing his thumbs up and down his stomach.

  “Well?” Juno shifted his weight, seemed to get even heavier as he spread his thighs wider, settling back down directly on top of his dick, way too distracting if he wanted an actual answer.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered, tense and angry and frustrated, reaching for the calm center he could almost touch. “Good.”

  “You can do better than that,” Juno scolded softly, brushing and teasing down his arms with his fingertips. “You’re supposed to be thinking.”

  “Juno— ”

  Moving quickly again, with speed that always surprised him, Juno grabbed his wrists, one in each hand, and squeezed until Kyle was squirming underneath him. Until his hold turned into something like pain and nothing like pain, and there was nothing he could do to keep it from taking him over. Until the barrier between his mind and body finally splintered and washed away in a flood of breathless moans that Juno bent down to devour, kiss after kiss, licking the echoes off his lips.

  “How’s this feel?” Juno asked him again, squeezing tight one more time before letting go, inching down his body, teasing his tongue leisurely under Kyle’s jaw, along his throat, behind his ear. “How’s it feel when you know I’ve got you? When you know I love everything about you? When you know you’re all mine?”

  Kyle tipped his head back, the tiny move making him dizzy as he crashed and drifted, stoned on the words, buzzed on the belonging. His mouth opened, but the tiny grunt of pleasure apparently wasn’t going to work as a response.

  Juno nipped at his neck. A challenge. A warning. A surge of heat that shot directly to his balls. “Answer me, rook,” he whispered. “Make it good.”

  “Like I can breathe.” The words didn’t hurt coming out, but they hurt when he heard them, his own voice so tortured with relief he could barely keep from sobbing. “Like I can’t breathe, but I can really breathe.”

  For a second, it seemed like no one was breathing at all.

  “You like feeling that way?” Juno whispered, the heat from his words and his breath melting all the tension in Kyle’s neck, until his head seemed to fall deeper into the pillow.

  Like was such a stupid word. He didn’t like anything Juno did, didn’t like anything he made him feel. He loved it with a kind of vicious, scary love that made him want to smash windows and burn houses down. But he sure as hell couldn’t say that. So, he just nodded, barely able to make his head move. “Yeah.”

  “Me too.” Like he was finally satisfied, his hands wandered back down Kyle’s body. He was sure he could feel the ridges and rings of every fingerprint as Juno’s touch branded hi
s skin. “Now, keep breathing.”

  Juno reached a hand down between them, brushing against Kyle’s naked cock and shifting around on top of him as he undressed, shoving his clothes down out of the way, until Kyle could feel warm skin against warm skin everywhere.

  He shivered and groaned as Juno started to work his body against him, his cock sliding hard and smooth against his hip and thigh and belly, then teasing against his own dick, an urgent thrust that somehow relaxed him, reminded him to breathe, reminded him how much he was wanted, again and again. He closed his eyes for a minute and drifted, enveloped in soft moans and warm skin as they found an easy rhythm, grinding and rutting slowly and deliberately, some kind of contest, always some kind of contest, where everyone won.

  Kyle reached around him, grabbing tight to Juno’s rock hard ass, digging his nails in like he could tear off a chunk of thick meat and muscle. He pulled him closer, needing all of him everywhere, every bit of his skin rubbing against every bit of his, as they rocked back and forth, lost in each other.

  “You feel so fucking good,” Juno whispered, sucking at his neck, scraping teeth across him so slowly his body seemed to sizzle in response. “Just you, rook. Only you.”

  He whined, because the only other thing he could think to do was scream as the words burrowed into every nerve in his brain, every pleasure center, turning belonging into the deepest need he had.

  Juno eased them over, rolling them sideways, grabbing his ass and then sliding his other hand in between them, rubbing his thumb over the head of his cock, making all his most sensitive spots ache. He wrapped both their dicks loosely together in his palm, stroking up the length with a soft grip and long fingers, squeezing and tickling and torturing until Kyle felt like crying, wasn’t sure he wasn’t crying, because when had anything ever felt that fucking good?

  “Fuck.” He arched up, losing control before he could predict it, cum pulsing thick and hot, running down his dick and all over Juno’s. A second later, Juno’s hand around him became warm and slick, his palm filled Kyle’s cum, the sensation startlingly different. Juno groaned deep, dropping his head down, and he could see the strength sliding out of his shoulders as he came a second later, and Kyle felt the same hot rush of slippery heat coating him like candy.

  He wanted to stay like that forever, sloppy and sticky and exhausted. So well taken care of and loved that he wasn’t sure how he kept getting twisted up, ending up at the opposite side of things, wondering why anything else mattered.

  “Better?” Juno asked him as rolled away just far enough to land on his back heavily beside him.

  “Yeah.”

  “We gotta find a better way to make you quit thinking, rook.”

  “That was a pretty good one. I liked that.”

  “Me too.” Juno kissed his shoulder, breathing him in deep. “Do you get that that’s no different than me spanking you? That it doesn’t matter what we want as long as we both like it?”

  “Yeah. Kind of. I guess.”

  “What got you thinking like that? Was it the spoon? Because that can go. We can just—”

  “No. It’s not the spoon. Don’t touch the spoon. Stop changing things.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think it’s just… Sometimes I don’t even remember who I am. Everything’s so different now, and I think about who I was, and I don’t even remember what it feels like, and I go crazy, because what if I need to go back there? I can’t. I don’t know. I guess I’m just always trying to poke holes in things.”

  “You don’t have to go back there, rook.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  Juno grabbed the heavy quilt off the foot of the bed and pulled it up around them both. He had a way of putting his arm around him, loose and lazy, that made his feel so goddamn safe it was ridiculous. He rested his head against Juno’s chest, and his voice rumbled through him, low and slow, vibrating against his ear, almost like the words were holding him too. It never even mattered what he said when he held him like this. He just liked to listen. Something about the way he talked, always calm, always patient made him absolutely crazy.

  “No. It’s not. But you still don’t have to go back there. You can keep being somebody different. You can be whoever you want. Whoever that is, I want you here.”

  He sighed. The romance stuff wasn’t getting much easier, even though he was liking it more and more. He wondered if that was a fetish. If there was porn where people got off on hearing guys say Only you. Kyle let him eyes close, never more relaxed than when Juno was relaxed and holding him close, like he could absorb that somehow, straight into his bloodstream.

  “I like this,” he muttered, not able to clarify what this was, exactly, just all of it, everything, the universe as a whole, as long as Juno was next to him.

  “Me too.”

  “I never knew it was like this. Being with somebody. I never knew it was… nice. It’s like the opposite of hurting.”

  “Yeah. I know. I feel it.”

  “You think maybe we’re cheating somehow? Or doing it wrong?”

  Juno yawned loudly, his chest rising and falling underneath him. “Doing what wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” Kyle ran his fingers along the stitches of the quilt, matching up the patchwork squares, like he’d done since the first night he’d slept over, more a habit now than a game, because he had them all memorized. “I thought being in love was supposed to be hard. But, you just make me happy. I never felt like this.”

  “No. This is definitely right.”

  Contentment warmed his belly as Juno ran a hand across his stomach, petting and stroking, and Kyle drifted in the steady exhale of breath against his shoulder, trying not to think about the boxes still stacked in the corner.

  * * *

  It was dark when he opened his eyes again. He wasn’t sure if it was day or night, and the alarm clock next to the bed was blank. He sat up, stretching his arms on either side, looking for his phone, or Juno, or anything familiar, really, but the room was still and empty.

  After a minute of his eyes adjusting, he realized the soft light he’d mistaken for the moon, or a street lamp, was actually coming from the corner of the desk, from a camping lantern, the kind he always used to want, the one that would turn into a flashlight it you twisted it right, and had a radio on the side. The power was out, he guessed, and Juno was, well, Juno. Not somebody that would ever leave him in the fucking dark.

  That was a stupid, sappy thing to think, something somebody would write in a poem, and when his eyes burned, he blamed it on the annoying stiff ache in his arm, that still lingered along with the storm.

  Thunder clapped again, so hard it shook the house, the old windows rattling like there was a truck idling outside. Everything was old at Juno’s house. Everything squeaked and creaked and rattled, nothing like the stuffy dorm room he’d just left behind, and definitely nothing like the house he’d grown up in, where it was always empty and quiet, echoing with silent anger— the kind he hated the most. He’d take creaking doors and wobbly chairs over that any day.

  Even alone in a dark room, he felt safe here, like Juno’s house and Juno’s things formed some kind of barrier between the person he’d been before and the person he would rather be. Until he looked up at the boxes still looming, still piled up across the room, monstrous in the dark and taking up so much space. Then he felt sick.

  Not nervous and not unsure, and he sure as fuck didn’t want to take anything back, which was what Juno would think he meant, if he tried to explain to him that he didn’t want to unpack any of the things that he seemed so desperate for him to put away. More like flat out, cold balls scared that he didn’t belong somewhere like this.

  Scared wasn’t something he did much. Angry and worried and twitchy, sure. But scared, that was one his brain seemed to save for the really rough stuff. And the idea that he’d fuck this up, that he’d poison it by filling it with ugly things and anxious feelings, was so scary he could hardly breathe when he thought abou
t it.

  It felt like opening those boxes would be like lighting a match and burning this one safe place to the ground.

  “Everything’s fine,” he said out loud, like he was arguing with someone. Probably himself. Except arguing wasn’t the right word, really. He was lying. He couldn’t even trick himself with that shit, and he was a pro at tricking himself. But, with that voice, small and shaky and weak, he probably couldn’t sound any less fine if he tried.

  In fact, he sounded exactly like he had in second grade when he’d gone to the nurse’s office, holding the arm that had ached all day, that always ached when it rained, even though his dad said that was impossible. Sounded about as fine as he had when he’d stared at the odd way it just hung there, and knew it was broken.

  It had sort of hurt, but not that much. He’d probably been in shock, he knew now. But he’d told the nurse he was fine. That he wasn’t scared. That had been partly true, anyway. He hadn’t been scared of the pain. Or the blood. Or the teeth he’d lost somewhere between the playground and the office. Even the horrified look on her face when she stared at his arm hadn’t scared him, which now that he thought about it, had totally not been professional. He’d been scared of the million little things that he knew would come after.

  Everything had been different back then. In second grade, he’d spent night after night in the front yard with his dad, learning signs and desperately trying to figure out the difference between a slider and a sinker. Trying to stop biting his nails so he could grip better, trying to understand why he felt so angry when his dad threatened to paint them pink if he didn’t keep them out of his mouth. Back then, he was going to pitch when he grew up— be the best pitcher the world had ever seen. Except, he had to be careful, and not roughhouse, because pitchers could never, ever hurt their arms, ever.

  When Jeff Markowski had started a shoving match at the top of the jungle gym, he’d thought the word roughhouse for a split second, had even kind of seen it in his brain in big letters. And then he’d shoved him back anyway, because that kid was an asshole, telling everyone the field trip to the science museum got canceled because Kyle’s mom forgot to show up to be parent leader. Again.