“You’re angry at me, sir,” Mike said, feeling oddly elated. Almost giddy.
“I was angry with you,” Alastair said, eyes narrowing. “I am now angrier that you disobeyed my orders by coming.”
But you let me in, Mike thought, and silently thanked Talitha for the tip. “I know, sir,” he said. “But I had no other way to prove myself to you.”
Alastair’s expression remained distant, cold, but Mike thought he was beginning to read behind that frozen-glossy surface, and what he saw, or thought he saw, made him feel a surge of hope. “Prove yourself how, precisely?” he asked.
“You were right,” Mike said. “That I promised you complete loyalty at all times. And I failed at that.” Alastair’s expression didn’t change. He forged on: “I can’t promise I won’t fail you sometimes. I’m not perfect. But I can do something to make it up to you.”
“What do you think you can possibly do for me?” Alastair said, and the frigid poison in his tone might’ve put Mike off if he hadn’t known that it was because Alastair felt threatened, and felt enraged by that very threat.
Mike silently withdrew the flogger he’d secreted in his jacket and held it out.
He’d bought it at a specialty store, and at no small price, because he knew Alastair would tolerate nothing but the highest quality. The handle was polished rosewood, inlaid with silver; the braided lashes were premium leather, dyed blue and white—the signature colors of Waters Industries. At the base of the flogger’s handle he’d had the initials AW engraved.
For a long moment, Alastair looked at the flogger, and at him, without speaking. Then, just as silently, he took the offered flogger.
“Punish me, sir,” Mike said. “As you see fit.”
Was it his imagination, or did he see a flash of desire in Alastair’s sky-pale eyes?
“I have never beaten you,” Alastair said, carefully, as though tasting the words: turning them over to see if he liked them. “Or whipped you, or flogged you.”
“No, sir.”
“Has anyone?” Alastair’s eyes were cool, appraising. “An old girlfriend, perhaps?”
Mike was glad that he could answer this one so easily: “Never. Sir.”
Alastair was still another moment, and then he nodded—suddenly, decisively. “Go down the hall, take the fourth door on your left. I will join you in—say, ten minutes. Prepare yourself for me.”
Mike felt fear tingling through him like the rising bubbles in a glass of champagne… but this time, the fear was cut, not by rage or indignation, not by despair, but by pure desire. His pulse beat hard in his throat, and he was sure Alastair could see it like the predator he was.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
***
The room wasn’t what he’d expected, and yet, perhaps he should have expected it.
There was a bed in it. No surprise there.
There was also a hanging display of toys on the wall: floggers, canes, and whips of every description, and below them a chest—a toybox, probably. There was a ring hanging from the ceiling with a pair of padded cuffs dangling from it, and what Mike recognized as a sex swing next to it. There was something that looked for all the world like a saddle—an expensive, highly-polished leather saddle—mounted at waist-height on a wooden frame. And there were things he didn’t even have a name for.
He swallowed a lump of sudden what-did-I-get-myself-into fear. ‘Prepare yourself for me,’ Alastair had said. Mike stripped and hid the messy pile of his clothes in a convenient basket. He could figure that much out, at least. But what else might it mean?
Should he lube himself, prepare himself to be fucked? The thought was at once humiliating and exciting. He hunted around, and in the toybox he found (among other things…) a whole collection of types of lube. For the moment he chose to ignore the varieties—cooling, heating, flavored, even infused with narcotics—and picked out the simplest he could find.
He’d never done this for himself. Alastair had done it for him, every time: sometimes roughly, sometimes with a suavity that was very nearly gentle, always thoroughly. The idea was pretty simple, though; he was sure he could manage.
His face heated as he spread lube on his fingers and reached around to press them to his own asshole. His touch skated over the opening at first and then angling his wrist to push in, opening himself up.
It was hard to relax, he realized, standing in the middle of the room, his arousal only beginning to grow. His own probing fingers were nothing like as clever as Alastair’s. After a moment of fumbling, he realized that he needed a new position.
Face flaming even though he wasn’t observed, he bent himself over the conveniently waist-height saddle, propping one foot up on the frame. The angle was better like that, and after a moment the sensation of his own lubed fingers stopped feeling strange and started feeling good. The stretch was a familiar hot ache, the pressure slowly ceasing to be odd, becoming pleasure. He closed his eyes and relaxed into it.
The door swished open behind him, and his whole body tensed again. He slid his fingers out but didn’t dare trying to stand up. Behind him, he could hear Alastair’s chuckle, amused and… pleased?
“You decided to be thorough,” Alastair said. “I wasn’t sure whether you would.”
Mike decided to say nothing.
“As much as I like that position, I have something else in mind,” Alastair continued, his feet carrying him cat-quiet to where Mike was still bent over the saddle. Mike didn’t move until he felt Alastair grip his wrist, wipe the lubed fingers clean, and then pull him upright.
Mike let himself be led over to the ring and cuffs danging from the ceiling.
“Arms above your head,” Alastair said mildly, and then stepped up with agile ease onto the lid of the toybox—as though it was a stepstool and not a choice piece probably worth more than Mike made in a year. Alastair pulled both of Mike’s hands up, a bit roughly, and fitted them to the cuffs. Mike swallowed when he heard them click shut.
With his wrists locked into the cuffs, he could stand, but barely. He wasn’t quite on tip-toe, but his heels couldn’t rest comfortably on the ground, and the muscles in his arms, chest, belly, and thighs had to tense and strain to hold him steady. He knew that the position was making his back arch, making his abs and pecs and the muscles of his buttocks stand out; no doubt that was the point. Probably also the point: the fact that it kept him off-balance. Mike realized with a sudden jolt that the cuffs were so perfectly positioned, exactly at the right height to hold his body taut like a bow, that it couldn’t be a coincidence. Alastair must have had them hung at the right height for him specifically. Had he already had this planned? Had he known that Mike would come back—or at least suspected?
Hoped?
Alastair took a step back and circled him, as if he was a prize racehorse. “Very nice,” he said, and then—as if reading Mike’s mind—he added, with a smirk, “Good conformation.”
“I’m not sure whether I should say ‘thank you,’ sir, or whinny.”
Alastair laughed. And then, just as quick, he was standing at Mike’s back, his voice hot in Mike’s ear: “Your offer pleased me. But I’m still angry. Don’t forget that.”
Mike swallowed, and wished that the words didn’t make his cock even harder. “No, sir.”
Alastair stepped back. “It did please me, though,” he said, musingly. When he circled back into Mike’s line of vision, he was swinging the new flogger, its braided lashes swaying in time to his steps. “I always planned to do this with you.” With, Mike noticed, not to, and felt another flutter of hope. “But I didn’t expect you to offer it first.”
“I guess you didn’t really need me to give you a flogger,” Mike said, and was rewarded by Alastair’s laugh.
“I appreciate getting a gift, though,” he said. “I get plenty of gifts, but generally they are not quite so personal.” And while Mike was still laughing, without any warning, Alastair struck him across the ass.
Mike, unprepared, gasped alo
ud. The blow both stung his skin and thudded against his muscles. To his surprise, there was both pain and pleasure: the sting faded quickly, the thud was almost akin to a very aggressive massage. While he was still processing that first blow, a second fell—partially overlapping the first. Then a third, before the sting of the second could fade, multiplying it as the blow fell on still-sensitive skin. A fourth.
A pause.
“Wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into?” Alastair asked, and though there was a note of humor in his tone, there was also a steely edge.
Mike groped for words to describe what he wanted, how he felt. Exposed, yes. Humiliated, yes. Hard as stone—that too. But mostly….
“Punish me, sir,” he said, and heard the hissed indraw of Alastair’s breath.
After that, the blows of the flogger fell like rain—and like rain, they were unpredictable. First there was a light shower that left him, ironically, relaxed and warm. (Or rather, he would have been relaxed were it not for the strain in his muscles from holding himself in this position, chained to the ceiling and on display.) Each gentle shock from the lashes seemed to go straight to his groin, making him tighter, harder, more needy. Then there was a break, when Alastair’s cool fingers caressed his heated ass and thighs. He felt every nerve in his body wake up to that: the satin-smooth cool touch of Alastair’s fingers on his hot, abused skin. The brief moment of care after the punishment. Soothing after pain….
And just as he was relaxing into that gentle touch, Alastair pulled his fingers away and assailed him with a thunderstorm of blows that rocked him to his core. Each one was like a strike of lightning—falling on his awakened nerves, lashing down to his aching cock, up to spark behind his eyes. He moaned aloud, even as his body—entirely against his will—tried to twist away. He wanted respite. He wanted more. He wanted—
“What do you want, Michael?” Alastair said.
Mike couldn’t respond—was literally incapable of responding. He choked on his tongue and his own saliva even as his mouth tried to find common ground between ‘please stop’ and ‘please more.’ He shuddered and groaned, inarticulate.
Another sharp flick of the flogger. “Answer me, Michael.”
He swallowed thickly. “Please,” was all he could manage. “Please—” His body arched, rising up on his toes, drawing to a tight bowstring of pain-pleasure-tension.
Alastair chuckled, low and soft as thick velvet. “I think I know what you want,” he said. Then he stepped closer, the heat from his body seeming to soak into Mike’s skin even though they weren’t touching. “I think I know what you need,” he continued, and he reached up to free Mike’s hands.
Mike staggered as the tension from his bindings finally came loose. And Alastair took advantage of that—took advantage of his momentary disorientation. He grabbed Mike’s shoulders and turned him around, gave him a sharp push that knocked him off balance. Mike grabbed for something to catch his fall—
—and ended up catching the saddle.
“Up,” Alastair said, smugly, behind him.
Mike shuddered, imagining what he would look like—imagining what Alastair would do to him. But even worse would be to disobey. He shimmied up onto the saddle, straddling it and leaning forward over the pommel.
In one smooth motion, Alastair pulled his arms down on either side of the mounted saddle and bound them together beneath it, leaving Mike belly-down on the saddle, his hands bound, his ass tilted up.
He couldn’t stop himself from shuddering helplessly at the thought of Alastair taking him like this, fucking him like this, making him come with his rock-hard cock pressed tight to the polished leather. He couldn’t stop himself from rocking his hips, just a little, just to feel the smooth friction—
“Have you forgotten,” Alastair said from somewhere behind him, “that this is a punishment? That you asked me to punish you?”
Mike froze, his mouth going desert-dry. “No,” he said hoarsely. “No, sir.”
“Good,” Alastair said. He stalked around to where Mike could see him. He was tapping the flogger against the heel of his hand. “I liked your present very much, Michael,” he continued.
“I’m glad,” Michael said. “Sir.”
“But you are a difficult case,” Alastair continued. “I think you need more than this.” He dropped the flogger and reached up, running his fingertips over a selection of floggers, whips, crops, and canes. His fingertips landed on a riding crop, two feet of dangerously whippy leather. He pulled it down. “I think you need to truly know who is your master.”
Mike couldn’t stop himself from moaning with desire, but he tried to swallow the sound.
Alastair turned, raising an eyebrow and tapping the crop lightly against his skin. “What did you say, Michael?”
“Yes, sir,” Mike said—moaned—moaned shamelessly. He couldn’t help himself. “Please, sir.”
“Please what?”
“Please,” Mike said, and shivered, and ground against the saddle. “Please, please let me—”
“Let you what?” Alastair’s eyes narrowed with amusement and pleasure.
“Please let me come.”
Alastair’s mouth curled up into a wicked smile. “You haven’t earned it yet,” he said. “First you must be punished. Then you may earn your pleasure.”
“Then punish me,” Mike said desperately—and as soon as he did, the crop came down across the hyper-sensitized skin of his ass and thighs.
The lash played across his nerves like the bow across a violin’s strings, making him squeal—making him sing—with an exquisite mix of pleasure and pain, tension and release all wound together in the narrow line of the whip. He threw his head back and dragged a ragged breath, and before he could even think about making a noise (gasp, moan, scream) there was another deliciously precise stroke that drove the air from him in a sob. And then another. Another. Each fell exactly where the prior strip lay, driving him higher and higher. Each set fire to his nerves and then tuned them with wind-bright notes of sensation, as though he were an instrument in Alastair’s hands.
Which, he realize as light burst behind his eyes and pleasure/pain throbbed through his entire body, was exactly what he was.
“Sir,” he groaned. “Sir!”
“You are mine,” Alastair said, whipping him again with the crop. “In mind, in body, in soul. Mine.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Your flesh and your breath and your spirit.” Another blow, burning intense and undeniable as the sun.
“Yes!”
“Mine, for all time.”
“Yes! Please! Yes!” Mike said, shuddering, shockingly close to orgasm.
Behind him he heard the clatter as Alastair dropped the crop, and then the swish and rustle of pants being unzipped and shoved down.
He was suddenly glad he’d prepared himself with the lube.
Alastair’s body covered his, all slim and hot against his back. Mike was naked and Alastair was still mostly clothed—he could feel the crisp whisper of Alastair’s shirt against his spine—but he could feel the heat of Alastair’s skin pulsing into him. Alastair’s hands spread him open without preamble, and then there was the head of his cock, nudging Mike’s entrance, opening him up—
“Mine,” Alastair breathed, and Mike groaned his assent as Alastair filled him with one deep, hard thrust.
He couldn’t stop himself from sobbing aloud, arching into that first deep stroke—that first deep stroke that filled him so completely, rendering him wordless, mindless with need. He curled his hands into fists where they were bound beneath the saddle and threw his head back. The noise that he made was uncontrolled, animal.
He’d joked just moments before about being Alastair’s beast, but I this moment it was true.
His only consolation was that Alastair sounded no less affected, gasping above him. For a moment Alastair’s slim, hot weight pressed him down into the saddle, so that all he was aware of was Alastair above him (the heat of his skin, the crisp press of
his expensive linen shirt, the hard solid presence of his cock filling Alastair so thoroughly) and the saddle beneath him (the slick, cool leather against his bare chest, the pommel pressing against his cheek, the unyielding line of stitching along the edges).
He would never, later, be sure whether what happened next was real or a product of his fevered imagination. But whether it was real or not, still, he treasured it when Alastair pressed his mouth to Mike’s shoulder and hissed, “Exactly what I need” into his ear.
Then Alastair began to move, and Mike was lost to the deep pleasure, the heat, the rhythm of it.
As always, with each stroke Alastair drove shocks of pleasure through him—shocks that arced up his spine, rendering him boneless and mindless against the tide of pleasure. But his ass and thighs were now hyper-sensitized by the tingling heat of the flogger—and as Alastair’s still-clothed thighs rubbed against him, Mike felt shivery warmth radiate through him, a pleasure akin to that of sitting before a roaring fire.
And where the riding crop had fallen so precisely across the skin of his buttocks, now he could feel the heat still, like a touch—like a brand, and with every thrust Alastair marked him again: mine, mine, mine.
He moaned and shuddered aloud, gritting his teeth against the intensity of the sensation and yet still giving in to it, giving in to it completely because he was helpless to do anything else.
Mike felt his pleasure rising cresting—and then he heard Alastair say, “No. Stop.”
As if by instinct, he clamped down on his rising tide of arousal, even though it cost him—even though he had to dig his nails into his palms and cut himself nearly bloody to do it.
“Come when I come,” Alastair commanded, and Mike could do nothing but nod—could do nothing but comply, even though he wanted to come from the roots of his toenails all the way to the clenched molars of his jaw.
He hung on with everything he had—hung on even though his cock was a railspike in his pants, a burning length of iron, rubbing against the leather of the saddle and ready to blow. He hung on as Alastair gasped and shuddered above him. He hung on as his nerves buzzed and screamed with the need to come.
The Billionaire's Bodyguard: Complete Collection Page 7
