“Your whore? Your coach? Your Dom on Friday nights and only Friday nights?” His hand came down again and rested on Spencer’s neck, and more than a few muscles in Spencer’s torso relaxed beneath his touch. “I’ve been staying away the last two weeks because I thought I shouldn’t be doing this.
And maybe I shouldn’t.” He laughed dryly. “In fact, given my line of work, I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t. But when I saw you with that other Dom tonight, I panicked even more than I did when I kissed you last time, because this, what we’re doing now, seems like the only thing we can do.”
Spencer had no idea what to say.
Nick stood, but kept the skin contact, one hand on Spencer’s shoulder, then walked around him and put the other hand on his back, tracing the line of his spine underneath the skin.“As unblemished as when I first met you.” Nick scraped his fingernails right down the middle, making Spencer gasp with the unexpected, intense pleasure. “I don’t think that should continue.”
Spencer shook his head.
“Ready to try the single-tail?”
It was an actual question. The tone was much lighter than the one Nick normally used before he started hurting Spencer.
“I thought . . . I thought you said we were keeping things simple.”
“We are.” Nick grinned. “For me.” He arched an eyebrow.
“So are you ready or not?”
“I’m . . .” The single-tail was terrifying. He’d seen videos, and that crack and snap would most definitely send him screaming. After a break of two weeks, would his body be able 118
to adjust to it? He doubted very much that getting used to it was even an option. “I’m scared.”
“You’re a smart man,” Nick said.
Oh, damn.
“But you think I can do it . . .?”
“What do you think?” Nick raked his fingernails across Spencer’s skin again, creating electric currents that col apsed and converged back onto those red hot streaks.
Spencer closed his eyes and took a deep breath, centring himself. “Safeword is still ‘Bonaparte’?”
Gentle fingers ran over his hair. “Still ‘Bonaparte.’”
The safety net was still there. Of course it was. Nick would never put Spencer up on a wire without one. In spite of the money that had been exchanged—the way the business transaction should’ve kept this superficial and fake—Spencer had always trusted Nick. If the pain got too intense, it was in Spencer’s power to stop it. If there was anything left he was afraid of, deep down, more so than getting in over his head with the pain, it was Nick getting scared again and calling it off.
Bonaparte. Nick’s voice echoed in his ears.
If the two of them could get through a scene like this without that word being spoken again, then maybe . . .
maybe this ran deeper than sex and cash, deep enough to go all the way.
“Well?” Nick urged him, his tone teetering between impatient and the slightest bit uncertain. “Single-tail? Or not?”“Yes.” Spencer swallowed. He turned his head towards the sound of Nick’s voice. “Yes, I want to.”
The breath Nick released was heavy and long, shuddering a little, like the damning evidence of a shiver he’d tried to keep out of sight. “Stand up and strip.”
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This time, it was Spencer who shivered, and he didn’t even try to hide it. He stood and started on the buttons of his shirt.
Anticipation made his mouth water as much as apprehension made his hands shake. He didn’t care if Nick noticed. Nick got a charge out of his nerves, a thrill from putting him off-balance, so Spencer didn’t hold any of it back.
As Spencer undressed, Nick unzipped the bag he’d brought with him. Spencer was used to the sounds of a search within that bag: clinking, rustling, clattering. As he set his neatly folded clothes on top of the dresser, he glanced at Nick, and it was at just that moment Nick found what he was looking for. He withdrew it, stood, and looked at Spencer.
Spencer couldn’t decide what turned him on—and freaked him the fuck out—more: the long, black whip coiled in Nick’s hand, or the sadistic, predatory grin that curled those thin lips and crinkled the corners of his narrow green eyes. Fuck.
With the whip, Nick gestured at the floor in front of the footboard. “On your knees.”
Spencer hesitated.
“Now. ” The word came out as sharply as a whip crack, and Spencer damn sure obeyed.
Naked. In front of the footboard. On his knees.
Waiting.
Ready.
He glanced behind himself from the corner of his eyes, and how Nick held the whip struck him. It seemed oddly fluid, graceful, hip-high, arm relaxed and shoulders down.
Nothing vicious about it, which seemed incongruous with the whole concept of whipping a man. Whipping him.
Nick swung it twice into empty air, and it cracked on the second one, which made Spencer almost safeword. But hell, 120
fear was always worse than the pain, wasn’t it? He’d learned that much.
The whip touched his back. Spencer understood why people said “licks”—it was a long touch, almost languid, drawing a sharp line across his back. Not horrible. No different from, say, a flexible cane. Maybe more pleasant.