by Piper Scott
“I want to play,” Adrian whispered. His hand traced from Sterling’s shoulder over his neck, then along his jaw. Deprived of sight, Adrian felt the bones there, savoring all of Sterling’s sharp angles and rugged features. He needed to shave, and his stubble scratched Adrian’s skin. “Will you play with me?”
“Now?” Sterling whispered back. “Gabriel is down the hall.”
“It doesn’t matter. It just means you’ll have to be quiet.”
Adrian let his fingers trail along Sterling’s face until his thumb found Sterling’s lips. It slid along his bottom lip smoothly, teasing it down so Adrian could run its very tip along Sterling’s teeth. The hard, smooth enamel was a delight to touch, and Adrian sucked in a tiny breath as arousal twinged in his stomach and diluted his difficult emotions.
He could drown it out with sex. If he tried hard enough, he could make himself forget. All he needed to do was work it out just like any other time. It was a temporary fix, but temporary was better than feeling like this forever.
The sheets moved. Sterling changed position, and as he did, he dragged Adrian forward. Adrian took his hands away from Sterling for safety and allowed himself to be moved, and when Sterling settled him back down, he found himself seated on Sterling’s lap. A budding erection pushed against the bottom of Adrian’s pajama pants.
“How do you want to play?” Sterling asked. “If we have to stay quiet, we don’t have many options. I have toys we could use. A vibrator, maybe. Restraints—”
“No.” Adrian found Sterling’s face again, and he reintroduced his thumb to Sterling’s lips. Sterling fell silent, and Adrian took the time to curl his hand beneath Sterling’s chin as he worked his thumb across the row of Sterling’s teeth. “I want it to be like before.”
Gentle pressure parted Sterling’s teeth, and Adrian introduced his thumb into Sterling’s mouth. Instinctively, Sterling’s lips closed around it, and he sucked while Adrian worked the digit back and forth.
It wouldn’t be long now before Sterling was his.
A shiver was born between Adrian’s shoulder blades and tumbled down his spine to the small of his back. In slow, meaningful movements, he worked his thumb across Sterling’s tongue, then pulled out until the tip rested on his front teeth before penetrating his mouth all over again.
“You’re so fucking hot, sucking me like that,” Adrian whispered. He’d leaned forward, and his cheek brushed Sterling’s even as he owned his mouth. “Did you like sucking my cock? You took me so deep you had to have liked it. So fucking dirty of you…”
Adrian found Sterling’s earlobe. He dragged it between his teeth, then nipped. Sterling sucked in a breath around his thumb, a delicate little thing that made Adrian’s cock throb. Sterling’s erection pushed up against him in response.
He wanted it.
“How badly do you want it?” Adrian asked. He drew his thumb back and traced it across Sterling’s lips again. Sterling rewarded him with a low moan. “What lengths will you go to in order to get it? What will you suffer for me, Sterling?”
“Anything,” Sterling uttered.
“Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep.” Adrian pinned his lip down, then brought his index finger up to pinch it. Held between his thumb and his finger, Adrian tugged. There wouldn’t have been much pain, but the move was suggestive enough that he knew Sterling would understand its meaning.
It was a warning of things to come.
Sterling did not back down. He tugged his head to the side, but in the next second his cheek met Adrian’s hand, and he nuzzled against it. “I don’t say anything I don’t mean.”
“And I’m going to make you regret that.”
Adrian leaned forward and tilted his head to the side. His lips met Sterling’s, the contact made all the more stunning by the deprivation of their sight. In the dark, all they could count on was touch.
So Adrian put his hands to good use.
The kiss cemented. Sterling kissed him hard, and Adrian kissed back with equal desperation. His hands trailed down Sterling’s body, over his shoulders and along his chest, until he found Sterling’s hardened nipples. For a little while, Adrian pinched and stroked, never pushing Sterling beyond the point of pleasure. The cock beneath him was now hardened in full, and it pressed against Adrian’s ass as if begging to be let in.
It wasn’t going to be that easy.
Before Adrian could let that happen, he needed to let go of his guilt, his hurt, and his poisonous thoughts. He needed to cloud his mind with desire and overshadow his weakness with power.
He needed to take control.
The fingers pinching Sterling’s nipple tightened, and Adrian twisted one to the side. Sterling gasped, but his pain was muffled by their kiss.
So Adrian cranked again.
Like this, he owned Sterling. With a single flick of his wrist, he could bring the most powerful man in The Shepherd to his knees.
The exchange of power was intoxicating.
“Hurt for me,” Adrian whispered through the kiss. His teeth clacked against Sterling’s, but it only made him want more. “Take it. Take all of it. Take it inside of you.”
The only response was the broken moan Sterling fed into his mouth, hitched with pain only seconds later as Adrian pinched and tugged at his nipple. Sterling’s body arched toward him. He shook. He stifled his pain through clenched teeth.
But still, it wasn’t enough.
Adrian broke the kiss and released Sterling’s nipples. As Sterling struggled to catch his breath, Adrian pushed him down onto the bed and held him in place with a flattened palm. Through the darkness, he groped for Sterling’s thigh, and when he found it, his hand made its way upward until it found the leg of Sterling’s silk boxers. Adrian tugged them out of the way until the elastic lay loose around Sterling’s knees. Boxers gone, Adrian’s hand resumed its course.
Sterling’s balls were his.
“Look what I’ve found,” Adrian whispered. He palmed both of them at once, allowing his fingers to roam over Sterling’s heated skin. “What do you think I want to do with these, Sterling?”
The only feedback Adrian received was a sharp inhalation.
Adrian’s fingers tightened, but not enough to cause pain. With a hum of contentment, he imagined the look on Sterling’s face. The golden-haired god dethroned, features contorted in agony and excitement, eyes squeezed shut and lips sealed tight. How beautiful he’d look with the muscles in his neck strained. The red in his cheeks would spread to the tips of his ears, maybe even down his chest…
“You have a safe word.” Adrian bit down on his lip, eager to share his pain with Sterling, then do away with it entirely. They were so close. “If it’s too much, if you’re hurting and you really want me to stop, all you have to say is ‘fern,’ and I’ll bring you back down.”
“Okay.” Sterling’s voice wavered.
Adrian let his head fall back. A smile bloomed across his lips. Gradually, his hand tightened, and with it began the end of his internal turmoil—the only solution that had ever let him forget who he was, even if just for a little while. “Then let’s begin.”
18
Sterling
Pain.
Searing, agonizing, excruciating pain.
Sterling’s mouth fell open, and he lifted his hips to meet the hand that slowly clamped around his balls. The attempt was of little use. As soon as he perked his hips, Adrian changed tactics, carefully tugging the loose skin so it was taut. The reason he did what he did was clear—if Sterling chose to fall back onto the bed, he’d hurt himself in the process.
Adrian had done this before, and it bothered Sterling more than it should have. Through the waves of pain and the acute spikes of pleasure that made his dick tremble in anticipation, Sterling had the presence of mind to reflect on what Adrian had said. A Dom’s true pleasure in seeing a submissive suffer through cock and ball torture was the gratification on a submissive’s face—the knowledge that pain was welcome, and that it filled
the submissive’s need to submit and please his Dominant in any and every way possible.
But that wasn’t how Adrian operated.
Hurt for me. Take it. Take all of it. Take it inside of you.
The redemption that Adrian sought wouldn’t be found like this. He could turn Sterling’s balls blue and still he wouldn’t feel any better—at least, not in the long run. Knee-jerk reactions done in desperation only led to more pain, more hurt, and more misunderstanding.
What Adrian needed was what he fought hardest against.
He needed to let it all go.
Adrian’s fingers tightened, creating pinpoints of pressure that made Sterling see stars. He breathed out through his teeth, the sound hissed, then did his best to prop himself up against Adrian’s hand. All Adrian did was pull farther away, stretching Sterling’s scrotum until new, blindingly bright stars appeared before his eyes.
“I want you to remember this,” Adrian uttered. His voice had changed pitch, like he was dropping off into another state of consciousness. It wasn’t subspace, but whatever it was, Sterling hoped it brought him joy. “I want you to remember how it feels to have my hands around your balls—your life in my hands. How does it feel to be weak? To be nothing?”
Sterling’s lungs were empty. He drew a ragged breath and did his best to maintain his position on the bed, but Adrian made doing so difficult. Sterling’s thighs already trembled from trying to keep his lower half lifted and as close to Adrian’s hand as he could manage. The muscles in his core were so tight that he already ached.
If this was going to continue, Sterling would have no choice but to forcibly part from Adrian by falling back on the bed—and to accept all the pain that went with it.
He only wished that pain meant more to Adrian than it did.
Adrian bent forward. Sterling only knew because Adrian was still straddling him, and he felt the movement in Adrian’s thighs. When he spoke next, he was so close to Sterling’s face that Sterling felt the heat of his words on his cheek. “This is what it feels like to be me.”
Adrian’s hand squeezed. Crushing pain blinded Sterling to the world, and he clamped a hand over his mouth to muffle the scream that ripped from his lungs. Mercifully, Adrian released him immediately, and Sterling took the chance to fall onto the bed and gasp for air.
As he caught his breath, he found the will to speak. What he had to say was too important to let slip by. “You don’t have to feel like this, Adrian.”
The change in posture was remarkable even though Sterling couldn’t see. The tension in Adrian’s legs changed, and Sterling could have sworn he heard a sharpened intake of breath.
“You don’t have to hurt. This doesn’t have to be what you feel like all the time.”
There was nothing. Then, Sterling choked back a shout as Adrian twisted his nipples. Compared to the ball torture he’d just been through, the pain was nothing, and he rode it out.
“You don’t have to shoulder this all on your own. I don’t know where you’ve come from, or what others have expected of you in the past, but this doesn’t have to be who you are.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Adrian accused in a hushed hiss. “You don’t know what I’ve had to deal with. You don’t know how many people I’ve hurt.”
“And out of all the people in the world, I’d be willing to bet that you’ve hurt yourself most of all, haven’t you?”
The tension shattered. Adrian sat on Sterling’s stomach, but he said nothing.
“You don’t have to keep it all to yourself,” Sterling told him. Power was shifting between them once more, transferring from Adrian back to Sterling. “You don’t have to fight this battle alone. But if you don’t let me in, I can’t help you. No one can.”
The silence in the room was disconcerting. Sterling waited for something—anything—to happen, but Adrian was still and silent.
“All you need to do is trust me,” Sterling whispered. Cautiously, he ran a hand along the outside of Adrian’s thigh. “I can help. It’s all I want to do.”
A single sniffle was his reply. Then, carefully, Adrian lifted his ass and climbed over Sterling. The bed shifted, and Sterling spread his arm as Adrian settled at his side.
Adrian’s hand found Sterling’s chest, then wandered to his neck, then his jawline. Their lips met not long after, and Adrian kissed Sterling with startlingly sweet intensity. It was the kind of kiss that apologized—the kind of kiss that came from a place in Adrian that Sterling had never seen before.
Pain would fade. Injuries would scar and scab. Emotional turmoil would lessen. But this? The tenderness they shared in that moment would last.
For the first time since their paths had crossed, Adrian bared himself for Sterling to see. Not even the darkness of the night could steal that from Sterling. He saw Adrian from the inside out.
“I’m sorry,” Adrian whispered against Sterling’s lips. The kiss came and went like waves lapping at the shore, and Adrian’s voice tumbled like the letter in the bottle caught in its currents. “I’m sorry.”
Sterling grinned, letting Adrian feel it. He lifted his hand and ran it along the back of Adrian’s hair, brushing back the soft hairs he found there. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”
“I did it again.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“I hurt you.”
Sterling cupped the back of Adrian’s head, and for a while, he let each kiss he gave answer for him. There was soft, sweet nothingness between them, a tenderness that soothed Sterling’s need for aftercare following Adrian’s ball busting.
“Do you really think you hurt me?” Sterling asked only when his lips tingled from their kiss and his heart was full enough to tackle the subject in earnest. “You need to trust me. If you’d really hurt me, I would have said the safe word, right?”
“Not always.”
“No. Always.”
The kiss resumed, sweeter and more delicate than before. Sterling’s hand brushed through Adrian’s hair and came around to trace along his cheek. Damp trails of wetness streaked his skin—silent tears. Sterling ended the kiss they shared so he could kiss them away.
“You never have to be afraid around me. Whether that means the freedom to be yourself without worry, or the reassurance that I’ll be honest about my limits in our bedroom play, it doesn’t matter. You can be you without bars, so long as you help me honor whoever that man is, and whatever his true desires are.”
“Why are you doing this?” Adrian’s voice quivered, like he was on the verge of tears. The walls were falling, and Sterling was granted his first peek at the man Adrian hid from the world. “Why are you being so nice to me? I haven’t done anything to earn this. I ha—”
“I like you, Adrian.” Sterling didn’t mince his words. If Adrian didn’t already know, he needed to know now. “I like your spirit and your lashing tongue. I like the way you test me, and I like the way you stand so proud all on your own. I’ve never met a man like you before.”
“If you knew who I really was, you wouldn’t say that.”
“Then try me.” Sterling kissed Adrian’s cheek, then allowed his kisses to flutter, following the memory of Adrian’s voice until he kissed the corner of his mouth. “If you think the you that you are is so horrible, let me know him, and then I’ll be able to pass judgment for myself.”
“I don’t know if I can.” Adrian sounded so frail that Sterling was afraid the courage he’d found might snap and his walls would go up all over again.
“Then let me find him for you. Let me nurture him back to health. I promise I’ll take care of you, Adrian. I’ll take care of you and our baby for however long you want me to.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Sterling’s lips found Adrian’s fully, and he kissed him one last time before his hand moved down Adrian’s side to support his hip. “All you need to do is trust me. I can’t promise I can take the pain away, but I can promise that whatever it is, I can help you
shoulder it.”
The dreamy sigh from Adrian’s lips marked the fall of the last barrier. With it, Sterling took the power Adrian struggled so hard to wield and brought it back into himself. Tonight, he’d need every bit of it he could find.
To get rid of his pain, Adrian would need to forgive himself—and if he couldn’t do that on his own, Sterling would do it for him.
19
Adrian
“Lie down, Adrian.” It was a command, not a request, but there was no aggression in it. The underlying sweetness in Sterling’s voice bordered on affectionate, and Adrian found himself compelled to listen.
He parted from Sterling’s side and repositioned himself on the bed, resting amongst the bedding. The same negative part of his brain that had spun out of control and brought him to seek Sterling out now told him that this was a bad idea—that what he needed was to inflict the pain he felt on others in order to truly get it out.
Adrian’s heart said otherwise.
With no way to see what was about to happen, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to embrace the inevitable. Whatever Sterling was about to do to him, he couldn’t predict or prevent. If Sterling wanted to get even with him and torture him like he’d tortured Sterling, Adrian wouldn’t have been surprised.
But the torture Adrian expected never came.
A drawer slid open. A cap clicked. Adrian was sure that wet, slick fingers were about to find their way beneath the band of his pajama pants to meet his hole with rough insistence, but instead, a scent filled the air. Adrian opened his eyes, but was greeted with shadow.
Lavender, rosemary, and tea tree perfumed the air. Sterling’s hands met his bare shoulders, and Adrian allowed a single, uncertain gasp to mark the space between them. Sterling hadn’t gone into the drawer to find lube—he’d found massage oil. And now, hands firm and movements confident, he worked the oil into Adrian’s shoulders.
The gasp turned into a pleased sigh, and Adrian closed his eyes.
