by J. A. Rock
But I’d taken a deep breath and let it out. Had forced myself to smile. “Maybe you could teach me. To be more elusive.”
He’d raised one unkempt eyebrow. “Train my own opponent?”
“Why not?”
He’d thought about that for a moment. “It would be an interesting experiment. Myself versus I. Like one-man chess.” He’d set the paddle down. “All right. I will train you.”
So he had. And as annoyed as I was with him, there was nothing I enjoyed more than being trained by D. He’d taken me out to some woods near the mall rather than his land, since he felt that practicing on the actual hunting grounds was cheating. He’d taught me to walk softly, even on the dry leaves left over from winter. To blend in with my surroundings. To cover my trail. We’d gone over wildlife: rodents, insects, small game. He was particularly into birds. Bluebirds, grackles, wrens . . . you name it, D knew its plumage and its call. He’d taught me to recognize kestrels—the silent hovering hunters. And corvids—clever, subversive, highly social.
“You’re like a kestrel,” I’d told him. “And I’m a corvid.” He gave me a long look I couldn’t quite read. “C’mon. Kestrel versus corvid. Amiright?”
No response.
He’d also taught me some skills I probably wouldn’t need for the slave hunt, like fire starting and hunting small game with a slingshot. I’d been pretty hopeless at first, which pained me to admit. But with encouragement in the form of some rather enjoyable outdoor belt spankings that were all the more thrilling because I could see Sears through the trees, I’d become pretty fucking one with nature. Also I’d killed a squirrel with the slingshot. Mostly by accident. I’d cried for twenty minutes over its body, while D eyed the carcass like he wanted to take it home and cook it. I made him help me hold a funeral instead.
Anyway, now I was ready. Ready to elude. Ready to leave no trace. Ready to win.
He looked me over, eyeing my camo pants. “Those are extremely tight.”
“To avoid wind resistance.”
He shook his head, but didn’t say anything else.
“I can move in them,” I insisted. “You’ll see.”
He stood, setting the knife down. “Let me get a better look.” He shambled toward me.
I pushed my hips forward, giving him a look at the bulge up front. “Which view do you prefer?” I thrust my hips back and arched my spine.
“Mm. Both have their merits.” He stepped behind me, and I froze, trying not to laugh. He brushed the back of my neck with his fingertips. “I look forward to tying you to that whipping post.”
I leaned against him. “Oh yeah?” I smiled and closed my eyes as he slid his arms around me. “Hypothetically . . . what would you do to me once I’m up there?”
His paunch pressed against my back, and his strong hands gripped my forearms. I squirmed as his mustache tickled my neck. His breath was warm, smelled like mouthwash. I loved this asshole. Felt a thousand times better and safer and happier when he was holding me.
“That—” he kissed my shoulder “—is a surprise.”
I leaned away from the scratch of his ’stache. “Can you give me a hint?”
My dick hardened as he pushed his thumbs firmly against my wrists. I tried, playfully, to pull free, but he didn’t let go. My heart started hammering, and my ass flexed involuntarily. He took my arm and led me over to the table. Tugged me to his right side, then over his lap. I tried once to rise, but he held me down with a hand splayed between my shoulder blades, his other arm draped over my hips.
I grunted. Kicked, spreading my legs, then clamping them together. I tried to wriggle into a position where my crotch was against his thigh, but he kept his legs wide enough that I couldn’t get contact.
He slapped my ass.
Oh hell yes.
I grabbed his pant leg. His big hand clapped down on my ass again with a thwack barely muffled by my pants. Heat rushed to my groin.
I snickered.
“You think this is funny?” he deadpanned, delivering three hard swats. My ass throbbed.
“D—”
“How funny will it be when this happens to you in front of everyone?”
I went still, my dick straining against the front of my pants. The deal was that if he captured me, he’d spank me in front of everyone. Like, the kind of show people would talk about for years to come. And if I eluded him, he had to do whatever I wanted tonight.
I had zero shame, so I wasn’t really embarrassed by the idea of an audience. Yet, I’d spent the last two and a half years playing exclusively with D, in the privacy of this house. And, like, I got into it during a spanking—yelling, crying, fighting—all of it. Dignity, we hardly knew ye. So maybe I was a little nervous about other people witnessing that. My friends witnessing that.
We’d had a talk, the four of us, back when we’d all signed up for the slave hunt. We were very close. And we used to play at the same clubs, so we’d all pretty much seen each other naked, knew each other’s kinks, had stood by one another in sickness and in health and all that . . . but this was the first time we’d committed to an event where we might all get stripped down and beaten, like, side by side. I’d been the first to say I was cool with that, but now . . .
Moot point. Because I’m not gonna get caught.
D gave me a few light swats, and I drooped, loving the warmth building under my pants, the familiar weight of his hand when he stopped spanking to rub.
“That’s all you’ve got?” I murmured, plucking at his pant leg.
“I’m conserving my strength.” His voice was low, and there was a note of affection in it that made me smile. He flipped my T-shirt up and rubbed the small of my back, and I went completely limp. Wasn’t aware of anything for a few moments except the rhythmic press of his belly against my side as he breathed, the way my skin tingled each time his palm stroked over it.
Eventually he pulled me up to sit on his lap. The camo pants almost split.
I nestled into him, and he put his chin over my head, his arms loose around me. My gaze fell on the painting on the wall—one of Ryan’s: a Friesian horse in full military costume. He’d done a series of paintings for us after D and I had moved in together last year.
I glanced around the room: at the wall of implements. At the framed piece of leather that was the first hide D had ever tanned. At the red wooden school desk that I remembered too well from my earliest sessions with D. Sometimes I still missed the duplex I’d shared with Gould. Change was hard for me—even good change.
D traced my fly with one finger. The waistband of my pants was painfully tight above my hip bone. As though reading my mind, D forced a stubby, callused finger under the waistband, stroking the already raw skin underneath. “These are not good pants for this event.”
I kissed his jaw. “I don’t care. My ass looks amazing.”
He couldn’t argue with that. After a moment, he patted said ass. “My protégé. It’s time for you to show me all you’ve learned.”
“Kestrel versus corvid.”
He leaned back slightly. “I prefer to think of myself as a bald eagle.”
“Oh my God. What would you do if you saw an eagle?”
“Pee myself.”
The words were so incongruous coming from him that I laughed. “You would, wouldn’t you? Have you ever sighted one?”
“I have never been so fortunate.”
I slapped his chest. “I can’t believe I never realized how complete that would make your life. Bald eagles are like the Friesians of the sky.”
“I suppose they are.”
I craned my neck to look at him. “I hope you see one. I really do.”
He rubbed the back of my neck. “I’ll settle for a corvid.”
I snuggled closer, feeling his heartbeat against my side, his breath shifting my hair. “I love you,” I told him.
He hesitated—I hated the way he always hesitated—then said, “You too.”
Like, he couldn’t even get all four words o
ut: I love you too. He’d asked me to move in with him. He’d told me he wanted me and only me as a sub. He made it clear in a lot of nonverbal ways that I mattered. But sometimes, I wanted to hear the words.
“All right.” I tried not to sound disappointed.
We got up.
I waved good-bye to my seven-year-old son on my mother’s porch, with the rather trepidatious sense that I was headed off to war. Pulse racing. Mind scattered. My hunt sweater already appreciably damp at the pits.
Zac turned away from me, hiding his face against my mother’s leg. He wasn’t speaking to me. Weeks ago, I’d apprised him of my intention to play paintball with some of my friends. He’d wanted to join. I’d been forced to explain that this was grown-up paintball, and he had, for all appearances, accepted this.
This morning, however, he was being what my partner, Drix, referred to as “a Gloomy Gus.” Over breakfast, he had expressed a deep displeasure at my temerity in going to play paintball without him.
“Zac?”
He turned, not quite looking at me.
“I’ll see you later, okay?”
He didn’t answer.
I might have lingered a bit longer, gazing at my son’s perfect face: smooth, dark skin and eyes like blown glass—the richest, glossiest brown, with so much life in them that a single look could stun me. But my mother nodded at me to go on.
“Good-bye, Zac,” I tried once more.
He slipped past Mom and into her house without a word. I met Mom’s gaze, embarrassed. “He’s in a bit of a mood this morning. I apologize.”
My mother—imperious, regal, intimidating—stared back at me. “You don’t have to apologize for your kid being a kid.”
I nodded tersely. “Yes, well.”
“Go. He’ll be fine.”
I nodded again. I knew I had a tendency to be a bit collet monté. I was working on it. “I’m wondering . . . in light of the fact that he’s angry with me, perhaps it would be prudent of me to pick him up after the event, rather than leaving him here for the night.”
Her mouth set in a wide, flat line. “Baby. I’m about to tell you where to stick your prudence in a minute. Go have fun.”
I swallowed, unsure how to adequately express my gratitude to her. While she didn’t know the specifics of “the event,” I had a feeling she understood what sort of event it was. My coming out kinky to her over a year ago had not gone particularly well, but since then she had made a genuine effort to be kinder about it.
“Thank you.” I stuck my hands in my pockets and turned to go to the car, where Drix was waiting.
“Miles?” my mother asked.
I faced her again.
She held out her arms.
I hesitated, then stepped forward. She hugged me with such firmness that I had no choice but to take my hands from my pockets and hug her back.
“Have fun,” she repeated, with a hint of a warning.
Fun. Yes. I could do that. It wasn’t exactly my forte, but I would manage.
I went to the car and climbed into the driver’s seat.
My normally affable partner was not faring much better than my son. Drix had been in an unpleasant mood since I’d picked him up this morning. And moving through this world with a dour, six-foot-seven vampyre by your side was not my idea of a good time.
As we drove toward the hunt site, I attempted to make small talk. “The vaccination form has to be sent to Zac’s school. I paid the student fees, but we need to purchase supplies for the school. They’re in desperate need of paper towels, which the teachers will have to pay for out of pocket if the school doesn’t receive enough donations. I’m thinking on the first day, we’ll need to swap cars, since you’ll likely have a class that morning.” Drix taught body-awareness courses to members of his vampyre coven. “So I’ll take the donations to school in the SUV at six fifteen.”
He sighed. It was unnerving when somebody who was perpetually good-natured and laid-back sighed with such displeasure.
“What?” I glanced at him. “I’m just reminding you.”
“Miles. Can we please try to have a fun day and forget about school and what car we’ll take where at what precise second?”
I focused on the road, flexing my fingers on the wheel. “I’m not sure why you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
“You’re not happy.”
“I didn’t sleep great. Do you remember what I was telling you last night?”
“You told me you’re being deposed in that assault case.” I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.
He shrugged, his hands pressed together between his knees.
“What?” I wasn’t in the mood for guessing games.
“I’m just stressed is all,” he said with exaggerated patience. “You know that investigation was tough for me.” He paused. “I still don’t know if I was right to take the job. But she was so smart and funny, and I just . . .”
“I know.”
“I knew the guy was an abusive asshole. But she was so worried about him. I don’t want to think about that case, or remember it, let alone tell the court she ended up in a hospital for weeks because I helped her find him.”
Drix hadn’t cared much for his previous job as a private investigator—mostly because it was dull—but I remembered him citing this particular case as an example of the wrong sort of exciting. The client’s abusive boyfriend had gone AWOL; she suspected he’d gone on an extended bender, and hired Drix to help her locate the guy. He’d done it despite the red flags. Two weeks after he found the asshole, the client was in the hospital with a fractured arm and a luxated eye that had to be replaced in its socket.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I assured him.
“Regardless. I’m not looking forward to this.” His tone indicated that the significant discrepancy between my academic intelligence and my social intelligence was showing.
“And when is the deposition?” I tried to sound sympathetic. I was sympathetic. I’d just never been skilled at offering people comfort.
“Early May.”
“You told me this already, didn’t you?”
“Last night.”
I took a deep breath. “Hon. Last night was a mess. Zac was throwing a fit about cleaning up the Lego, and then my sister came over, and I just— I was distracted when you called.”
He laughed and rolled his head back. His nose nearly brushed the roof of the car. “I try so hard to get mad at you, and then you go and do something like using ‘Lego’ as a plural.”
“That’s the proper—”
“I know. I just don’t know any American who says it that way in conversation.”
I stole a look at him. His long, dark-blond hair was extra wavy from the humidity, and he had his violet contacts in. His mouth was open slightly, and I could just see the filed points of his canines. I felt such a rush of love for him that my voice stalled for a moment. “You could have come over, you know.”
He tipped his head toward me. Smiled, with fangs. “I wasn’t sure you wanted me.”
“I always want you.”
He didn’t answer.
I had, for some months, been politely and guiltily maneuvering around an elephant in the room: Drix was over at my house at least five nights a week. He was a second father to Zac. I loved him. I wanted him to be a continued presence in Zac’s life—and in mine, of course. And perhaps I felt some pressure to cohabitate, looking around at my friends: Kamen and Ryan had leased a place together after dating only four months. Dave had moved in with D after two years. Gould didn’t officially live with GK and Kel, but it was only a matter of time.
Drix and I had been together just over two years, and I had yet to even bring it up. At first I’d told myself that he probably didn’t want to live with me. He had a perfectly nice house with lovely quartz countertops, and the nonobnoxious sort of contemporary art on the walls. But this past summer, he’d mentioned a willingness to sell his house, which I got the feeling was a not-so-s
ubtle hint that he wanted us to live together in mine.
I put a hand on his knee. Squeezed.
He placed his hand on mine. Ran his thumb along the side of my pinkie, a gesture that, no matter how many times he did it, still made my throat tighten with its simplicity, its gentleness. “I’m sorry. I said we should enjoy our day without talking about stressful things. And then I brought this up.”
For the record, Drix was not the sort of significant other who demanded a great deal of attention or reassurance. He was admirably independent—a refreshing break from my friends—and rarely got angry or fretful. He was a very comforting presence. It was unfortunate that he’d received bad news the night before what was supposed to be our first stress-free, childless day together in weeks. “I’m sorry I’ve been so distracted.”
We shared a glance.
There were moments I swore we could read each other’s mind. Maybe Drix’s vampyric, energy-sharing theories weren’t complete mumbo jumbo. I pulled onto the side of the road, put my hazards on, and leaned across the console to kiss him. I pressed my tongue against the points of his filed canines, feeling his warmth, his sweetness. He was a gentleman when he kissed, except when I demanded that he be a rogue, and right now I tangled my hand in his long hair and forced his mouth hard against mine until he took the hint and started stabbing my tongue with his fangs and bruising my lips with the pressure of each kiss.
We stopped, panting slightly.
“Do we even have to hunt?” he asked. “I just want to stay in this car and fuck you all morning.”
Heat slashed me like a blade. “We need the prizes,” I reminded him. “The vac bed.”
When the idea of the hunt had first been presented to me, I hadn’t so much as considered giving an affirmative. I was not a slave, nor was I particularly submissive, and the notion that I would want to spend two hours in the woods while strangers and acquaintances shot paintballs at me was laughable. Even more laughable was the notion that I would then allow those strangers to amuse themselves with my body on the whipping posts.
