Dignity (Determination Trilogy 1), page 14
And he still does.
With three fingers worked inside me, he hits that sweet spot just right and nearly makes me come.
Then the bastard uses his fingers around the base of my cock to make me hold back. “Not yet.”
I whine before I even realize I’m doing that. I need him. This feels like I’m about to have my first honest orgasm in over twenty years.
We finish in the shower and he towels me dry first, then himself, and leads me to the bedroom.
Out of his bag comes his phone and a speaker. This one’s a modern Bluetooth speaker, better sound quality than the one back then, a different phone, obviously.
He pulls me down onto the bed, on top of him, as “It’s a Hard Life” by Queen starts playing.
He sits up, dragging me over his lap and spanking me with his bare hand. I’d forgotten how sweet that first sharp, stinging slap feels. We started every morning together that week with a spanking and he introduced me to the addictive allure of subspace. There’s little I wouldn’t have done for him when I dove headfirst into that welcoming mental haze.
All this comes back to me now as he mixes squeezing my ass cheeks with more impacts, back and forth until I’m nearly frantic with need.
He pulls me off his lap and rolls on top of me again, all his weight on me. “I missed our morning spankings,” he says.
I grin. “Me, too.”
“Good, because you’re going to get them again.”
“Yay!”
That makes him smile in a way that lets me see the boy he was twenty years ago.
“Let Me In Your Heart Again” by Queen plays, as if reading my mind, before we’re treated to REO Speedwagon.
We stretch out on our sides and kiss, hands stroking, him on top of me, back and forth but Chris allowing nothing more than kissing and exploration. “Save Me” by Queen follows a medley of other songs from the ‘80s and ‘90s. When the opening strains of Queen’s “Love of My Life” plays, I realize he’s looking over at the phone with an undecipherable expression.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “That’s your playlist, right?”
He finally turns back to me. “No,” he quietly says. “That’s Pandora. It’s random. It’s not even the Queen station.” He fists my hair and pulls me in for a kiss, rolling on top of me again.
I can’t help laughing when his cock enters me to “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy,” and he’s still slowly fucking me, drawing this out as “You’re My Best Friend” takes over immediately after.
He’s kissing me while we get a ZZ Top interlude, but then Queen’s “Too Much Love Will Kill You” starts playing.
He stops moving. “Goddammit,” he hoarsely says, reaching for it.
I catch his hand. “No, leave it. Please?”
I’d forgotten how green his eyes are in real life. They shift and change, depending on the light and what he’s wearing…or not wearing. Right now, in my dim bedroom, they’re back to emerald and pine, and focused on me.
“I love you,” I say. I feel like I can’t say it enough, now that he’s back. What if he’d died without me able to tell him one more time? “I have a playlist with all the songs I remembered on it. Including these.”
A sad sigh. “I couldn’t,” he says. “After a while, listening to these just made me cry.”
* * * *
I softly groan when I awaken the next morning feeling like I’ve been run through a wringer.
Because, of course, I have.
The wringer himself still sleeps next to me, an arm and leg possessively draped over me, pinning me to the bed, unless I awaken him to get up.
Which…I really don’t want to do.
It’s nice waking up with him again. I want to savor what little time we will have together like this, now, while I have it. After burning through these two weeks, over the next two years we’ll be forced to rely on stolen moments here and there. Whole nights together will probably be rare once she officially declares and begins her campaign.
It makes me regret even more I didn’t call him way back then and choose a different path in life. The calm, sweet peace filling me now is the ethereal thing I’ve hopelessly chased ever since that week.
A peace I thought I’d never feel again.
Although, then again, once Samuels hits the campaign trail, it might be easier for Christopher to snag alone time time in a room with me than it will be in Washington. We could always claim we’re trying to save the campaign money by staying together.
Except what if he gets reassigned by Secret Service?
I know I shouldn’t worry about that, because he told me not to, but I can’t help it. It’s a fact of life. He can say all he wants that won’t happen, but he can’t promise me. Not really.
He’s sweet to say it, though.
Thanksgiving Day, we’re the beneficiaries of a warm spell in Florida, and we sit on my lanai in shorts and eat our small feast in the sun.
I’m sitting with a slightly sore ass, because yesterday Chris received an order there at my house. The package included several paddles, canes, and other objects.
I’m also sitting there with a semi-erect cock, because my body happily remembers pain and pleasure are entwined, and both are better for it.
“This is delicious, thank you.” Once again, it’s Chris cooking for us. He’s teaching me how to cook. Yes, I managed to survive on my own all these years, but DC has great takeout, and Lauren takes great pity on me.
Hey, I make a mean salad, thank you very much. And I’m a discriminating connoisseur of cereal.
“You’re welcome.”
There’s something so…domestic about all of this.
I’m terrified it won’t last once the next step begins.
“What happens after the election?” I ask. “If she wins?”
He shrugs. “I guess you’ll be chief of staff, right?”
“What about us?”
“I don’t understand the question.” He forks a piece of turkey into his mouth.
“Are we still going to be together?”
“Kev, nothing we do changes us. Logistics might change, or we might end up apart for short stretches of time during the election, or even after.” He indicates me and him. “Nothing about us changes. Can I tell you where we’ll be living? No. Can I tell you exactly what we’re telling people after that point? No. Do we need to be careful and discreet? Yes. I don’t want my business splashed all over DC, and neither do you or Shae. No, Secret Service can’t fire me for being bi. Yes, they can reassign or terminate me if they feel my private actions interfere with my job.”
Never try to bullshit a reporter. “That’s not answering the question.”
“Yes, it is, in the best way I can. I don’t want to tell you yes, we’ll be living in my condo, when we end up moving somewhere. I can’t foresee the future. She might lose and then I retire and you and I end up moving to California because I get a job with a security contractor. Or we move to New York because you get hired by a network once your non-compete has expired.”
That answer mollifies me. That he included an option of us moving for my job. “Who told you about that, anyway?”
He shrugs. “Ask Shae. She’s the one who had the intel.”
“You’re the Secret Service agent.”
Another shrug. “She’s a senator who has a lot of connections. I don’t ask for her sources, and she doesn’t ask for mine. If you really want to know, ask her.”
“Can’t you tell her to tell me?”
He grins. “I can, but I won’t. Not that I think she’d tell me anyway.”
“You could order her to.”
“No. Doesn’t work like that.”
“Wait. I thought that’s how it works with us?”
He sets his fork down to give me his undivided attention. “Work is work. Will I give you some orders that overlap work but won’t interfere with it? Yes. But one of the reasons what Shae and I have has worked for so long is because work comes first. She has a lot to lose, and so do I.” He picks up his fork again. “Besides, she’s just my submissive. She hasn’t given me that kind of control over her.”
It leaves me feeling a little confused, but I don’t want to derail what has been, so far, a beautiful day. We watched the parade on TV, we cooked together.
We made love.
I decide to shelve the conversation, because I’ve wasted enough time in our lives. I don’t want to waste a moment of this precious time together.
* * * *
It’s the next Thursday night at dinner when Christopher presents the ask. He showed me how to pan fry steaks, a private celebratory dinner before tomorrow begins our descent into political madness.
I’m hesitant to leave this cocoon.
We eat sitting on my couch, with the TV on and me sitting on the floor, naked, next to his feet. Chris prefers me that way any time it’s feasible, and it’s now a standing order.
I enjoy doing it. I love resting my head against his leg and feeling his hand settle on the top of my head.
Early tomorrow morning, we fly out to Dulles. He’s already booked our flight.
During these two weeks, I’ve laughed, cried, bit back screams of pain, and begged for more of it.
These two weeks have proven to me that week wasn’t a fluke, it wasn’t just a one-off.
It was real.
And during these two weeks, Christopher has allowed a little of the sadist’s mask to slip enough to prove to me that our separation was as hard on him—or harder—than it was on me.
“We need to talk,” he quietly says.
I know this is the ask he mentioned that first night. I look up from where I’m sitting, waiting for his next words.
“I want you for life,” he continues. “No matter what public forms that has to take to protect what we have. I’ll spend the rest of our lives together protecting you, loving you, taking care of you. Again, no matter what public forms that has to take. But I ask a few things in return, and they are not negotiable.
“You belong to me. You have work, obviously, but all other aspects of your life belong to me. I won’t deny you friends. I won’t forbid you from spending time with your ex as friends. This means if I tell you to wear something, you wear it. If I tell you to do something, you do it. If I give you an order, or tell you something will be done a certain way, there is no negotiation. You also lose control of orgasms from this point on. If I tell you no, then it’s no. No masturbating without permission. I do promise I won’t be an asshole in that regard, but there will be times I withhold orgasms for punishment, or just because I’m a sadist. You also don’t get to tell me no for sex. If I want your body, you give it to me unless there’s a physical harm issue. You can tell me something will interfere with work, and I will adjust accordingly. There are no other exceptions—work, or physical harm. I might make new rules, or change existing ones at my whim.
“Being with me means accepting unconditionally that I am in absolute charge, and willfully disobeying or refusing me will result in punishment. You belong to me, my slave, and when we’re alone, or even when we’re not and it’s safe, you will call me ‘Sir.’
“This means you don’t argue with me, you don’t get to ‘safeword,’ unless something in our play is physically harming you, or it will negatively impact your job. Other than friends, there will be no one else besides you in my life but Shae, and those circumstances are limited by my schedule and hers, and will not interfere with the relationship you and I have. There’s no negotiating on that point, either. If she ever decides she’s done with this, there will be no one but you. Or if I decide that I can’t continue my relationship with her, that’s it, no others. Friends are outside of that restriction. Questions?”
I realize I’m on deck. I need a moment to process. “What if I ask you to spend time with me but then you make plans with her?”
“Scheduling will be flexible, and has to be. You know what a politician’s life is like. I will do my best to work around plans that we make. But over the next two years, what you and I have will be very…low-key, in public. I can’t retire until I’m fifty. Then I can get my pension.”
“What about after the election?”
“I told you, I can’t make specific plans for you because I can’t predict the future. The only constant is that you belong to me, and there will be no one in my life but you, and Shae, if she still wants to be in my life like that.”
There still hasn’t been a specific…ask.
It takes me a moment to digest everything. “So what’s the question?”
He sets his plate aside on the coffee table and slides to the floor next to me, on my right. From the tone of his voice to the fear in his eyes, I know he’s stripped himself emotionally bare in this moment.
“I will take care of you, Kev. I will love you. I will protect you. And you will be first in my heart, maybe the only one in my heart, if Shea leaves. I will ask everything of you, and I demand unquestioning obedience. If you can’t give me that, for life, then don’t tell me you can. These two weeks have shown me I absolutely still love you, and I cannot lose you again. But twenty-plus years have left me changed. The question is, can you accept all of those conditions, and me, as I am right this minute, for life? If you can, if your answer is yes, then you have to ask me to make you mine. I’ll give you until—”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. Maybe I’ll pay for that later, but I lived in fear for far too long. “I want to be yours, only yours. Please make me yours.”
He studies me for a long moment. “Kev, I’m going to give you until—”
“Now,” I say, desperate. “Please make me yours now, Sir. I’ve had over twenty years to think about this. That’s long enough.”
I don’t want you to think the past two weeks have been nothing but sadism and brutality, because that’s not the case.
We’ve made love, we’ve laughed.
We’ve cried.
But some things are not mine to share, even if I was there for them.
Suffice it to say these two weeks have shown me that I need this man in my life, and there are very few things I won’t do or endure to have him.
If it means occasionally sharing him with a senator who’s now my boss…well, so be it.
“Wait here,” he says. He stands and leaves the room. When he returns a moment later, he’s holding something in his hand, but I can’t see what it is.
He retakes his spot on the floor, takes my right hand in his and turns my palm up so he can kiss it and then tuck my hand against his chest. “I’m not the man I was,” he quietly says.
“Neither am I.”
“Being owned by me will be tough, at first, Kev. I’m not going to lie.”
I shake my head. “Bring it, Sir. I will take you at your worst if it means I get you at your best, too.”
He kisses the inside of my right wrist, then fastens a bracelet around it. It’s a beefy stainless steel chain made up of smoothly rounded box-shaped links. There’s some weight to it, but I can already see it won’t trigger questions, and I can even hide it up under my shirt cuff, if need be.
With it fastened there, he holds my hand again, tucked against his chest. I feel his heart beating under my palm, strong, sure. “Then you’re mine,” he says. “Forever.”
Chapter Eighteen
Early the next morning, two weeks after Christopher walked back into my life, I’m wearing my glasses, my hair is mussed the way Chris prefers it, four days’ of scruff darken my cheeks, and no one appears to recognize me as we sit at the gate in Tallahassee International and await our flight to Dulles. I fight the urge to shift and squirm in my seat. Before we fell asleep last night, Chris striped my ass and the backs of my thighs with a riding crop before we fucked each other nearly to exhaustion.
Every movement reminds me of that play, and the other play from these past two weeks, and makes my cock chub in my jeans.
The bracelet is fastened on my right wrist. Unless he orders me otherwise, I’m only allowed to take it off for flying, or security checks. But already, I like the feel of its weight on my wrist. It’s a comfort.
It reminds me of his touch.
“Nervous?” he asks without looking up from his Kindle.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t be.” His lips barely move as he speaks and his voice is low. I realize what he’s doing, but I hate that in this way we can’t even be a normal couple.
“Easy for you to say. No one knows who you are.”
He eases his left hand onto my thigh, squeezes, and leaves it there. The action is concealed by his jacket and mine, and that we’re sitting in the last two chairs closest to the windows.
“What’s the plan for the rest of the day?” I ask.
It’s annoying that he won’t look up from his Kindle, but on the other hand, if someone does recognize me, it’ll be harder for them to say we were talking to each other if he keeps up the act like this. “Uber to my place to get my car. Then we have errands to run before we go to your place.”
“What errands?”
“You’ll see.” From the way the corner of his mouth twitches, I know he’s amused.
And that’s the last I get out of him about our plans.
The flight to Dulles is easy, and at least we can hold hands during the flight, with his jacket covering the armrest. I’m terrified I might be recognized once we touch down in DC. To the point that I put on a baseball hat and keep my head down and keep my gaze focused only on Chris’ ass as I follow him to baggage claim, and then out to get in the Uber.
DC is cold, grey, slushy, and a far cry from the sunny sixty-two degrees we left in Tallahassee.
I’m already missing Florida even more than I usually do when I return to DC.
I want to be back there, tucked away in my house, with Chris, and forgetting about the world outside.
He lives in a small condo building in a midscale area about twenty minutes outside downtown, but we don’t even go inside the building. Instead, once the Uber drops us off, we head straight for the parking garage, put our bags in the back hatch of his black Toyota 4Runner, and off we go again.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
