Room at the Top (21 page)

“You’d be in the dark, listening to me, aware of the smallest shift in my position, hearing the rustle of paper, the
click
of keys as I typed. You’d be so angry with me for ignoring you. That’s definitely one of your triggers, Jay. You don’t resent the time I spend with Austin, no, because you love him and you want him to get what he needs, but you always do something to draw my attention if you think I’ve forgotten you.”

Jay gasped as Liam used his ponytail to pull his head back, a slow, relentless tug. Liam did that a lot, knowing Jay enjoyed the way it made it harder to breathe, the control Liam was exercising over him.

“I never forget you, Jay,” Liam said, his mouth close to Jay’s ear. “Never.”

He would have bitten his lip, but the position he was in made it too hard. Instead he let his feelings be known with a slight whimper, which earned him a more vicious tug.

“Such a bad boy you can be sometimes.” Liam turned his head so that when he spoke his warm breath moved over Jay’s skin. “You think I can’t tell the difference between when it’s an accident and when you’re doing it on purpose?”

Jay was allowed to answer a direct question. “No, Sir.”

“I hope not. Because I’m perfectly aware of how smart you are.” Tugging at his hair, Liam forced Jay to tilt his head until their eyes met. “And I know when you’re deliberately defying me. I always know.”

I love that you do
. Jay wanted to tell him. It was such a fucking turn-on knowing he couldn’t hide from Liam, that more was exposed than his expectant skin. He tried to get some of what he was feeling over with his eyes, but he really needed words for that.

Or the opportunity to touch Liam, and that wasn’t going to happen.

“I wait for you to do it,” Liam said, and it sounded like a confession, putting them, for a brief, disorienting moment, on the same level—two men, each wanting something so much it colored their lives, haunted their dreams. Liam smiled, a thin, anticipatory smile, and he was Jay’s dom again, the man he tried so hard to obey—mostly. “I left something out. Maybe I plug your ears too, so you’re kneeling with nothing to let you know when I’m going to remember you exist and just…touch you.”

Okay, that would work. Oh God, yes, it would
. Jay tried to swallow, his head tilted so far back that it was an effort. Liam saw him struggle and ran his fingers over Jay’s throat, but didn’t ease off. The back of Jay’s head was burning where the hair was pulled taut.

“You’d jump when I did,” Liam told him. “Austin would be so deeply into obeying me that he’d let me do anything and not break my command to stay still, but even the lightest touch would make you react.”

The hand on his throat moved down his chest, Liam’s fingernails scratching at his skin, a long, slow spiral that ended in the hollow of Jay’s hipbone. “And if it wasn’t a light touch, if I did something that made you scream through your gag, you’d most certainly move. But tell me, Jay, would you move away or get closer, begging for more?”

“C-closer.” He couldn’t take a deep breath. Hell, he could barely speak, but he knew the answer to that one. The pull on his hair slackened, and he took advantage of it. “May I ask a question, Sir?”

Liam had drummed it into both of them that
can I
wasn’t good grammar and would never get a
yes
. The lesson had stuck. “You may. Just one.”

Jay gasped as Liam began to tug at his right nipple, playing idly with it, plucking it and pinching it until it stung. “What would you do to make me scream?”

“Hm.” Liam tightened his grip on Jay’s nipple and kept it there, like his fingers were a clamp designed to do nothing more than drive Jay crazy. “There are so many things that can be pushed into someone’s arse. I could think of half a dozen that would make you scream.” Without letting go of his nipple, Liam shifted around behind him. “Is that what you really want, Jay? For me to make you scream?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“What if I were to whip you?” Liam’s other hand slid over his hip and around to the curve of his ass, stroking it so gently it made Jay tremble because he knew something painful was lurking. “I think a riding crop. With enough strength behind the blows, the skin splits open like butter. Yours is so smooth. I can picture what it would look like covered with thin welts, blood. I could slide my fingers through it and over the rest of you, cover you with my fingerprints, painted in your own blood.”

Jay’s hips rocked helplessly, his cock hard and hanging between his legs where it couldn’t get any physical stimulation. The thought of being marked with Liam’s fingerprints was new and shocking.

“Then,” Liam went on dreamily, not sounding like himself at all, “I’d use those same fingers, slick with your blood, to open you up. Push them inside your arse while you gasped and cried.”

Liam leaned to the left, trailing his thumb down the seam of Jay’s body to his hole, rubbing over it. Jay did his best to stay completely still and quiet because he didn’t want to break this spell. Liam had never touched him there before, not with his hand—with a plug, of course, and once with a long, thin dildo, but never like this. Against his hip, Jay could feel the solid press of Liam’s erection.

It didn’t matter that he knew Liam wouldn’t do any of those cruelly enticing things to him. When he was jerking off, darkly violent fantasies painting the blackness behind his eyes red, he knew they weren’t real either, but he still came hard. And with Liam’s finger breaching him—a dry, rough thrust, shallow enough to make Jay’s muscles lock with the need to push back, get more—anything felt possible.

Liam bit Jay’s shoulder, not a token bite, a love nip, but a bite. Jay felt the pain burrow inside his flesh and spread out. He was panting now, every breath audible, close to the line when exhaling would become the sounds he’d been forbidden to make.

A fingertip inside him… How did it feel for Liam? Jay guessed that Liam had done it to himself—but to another man? Maybe not. Given everything Liam had done to them, it was such a small act, but it felt significant in a way Jay was too strung out to puzzle over.

“You’re thinking again.” Liam licked the skin he’d bitten and kissed it, the softness of his lips lost in the second bite that did draw a cry from Jay. It hurt, a raw pain that made him want to submit, roll over, expose his belly to the wolf savaging his flesh. His small disobediences, his rebellions—they were all meant to force Liam into subduing him, but Liam always pushed them aside as irrelevant, working at his own pace.

They’d told Liam no blood, no scarring, and his trust in Liam was strong enough for him to know without looking that no blood would be welling up from the teeth marks. But God, he wanted it to.

“If I let you say one word, what would it be?”

Jay picked one from the dozens swirling through his head. “Harder.” Then he added “Please, Sir,” even if he knew he’d pay for it.

“If I bite you harder, you’ll bleed. And those two extra words will cost you, Jay.”

“I don’t care. Make me,” Jay whispered and closed his eyes, waiting for the storm to break, because Liam had really strong views on subs who tried to top from the bottom.

“Make you bleed or make you care?” Liam kept returning to the bite mark he’d made, scraping his teeth over it, digging them in. His finger slid free, and Jay whimpered with loss.

“Both, Sir. Sir,
please
—”

His cock and balls hung heavy between his legs. He wanted to sink to the floor and rub along the soft nap of the carpet, abrading the sensitive skin until, yeah, until it broke and bled, staining the carpet so that Liam would look at it and remember…

“You’re talking too much,” Liam told him. “Scream instead.”

His hand slid between Jay’s legs, an intimate caress that ended with Liam’s hand cupping, then crushing Jay’s balls.

God, it hurt, and Jay
did
scream. He couldn’t have kept from screaming no matter how hard he’d tried. It was the deep, stomach-twisting kind of pain that made him empty his lungs and his abdominal muscles turn to stone. The scream tore at his throat, and he lost the ability to support his weight, arms collapsing and dropping him face-first toward the floor. Somehow Liam managed to get an arm under his chest and catch him, keeping him partially upright.

Jay turned his face to Liam’s upper arm and breathed against the finely woven shirt, openmouthed, the fabric dampening with moisture. He couldn’t keep from moaning softly as the pain faded; he knew from previous experience that it was the kind of hurt that went from agony to moderate discomfort and then a steady ache that would last for an hour or more regardless of whether he was allowed to come or not. There were tears on his cheeks he couldn’t remember having shed, and his dick felt hot and touch starved.

“Ssh,” Liam murmured, and Jay realized he was still crying.

A twitch of his hips brought the head of his cock into contact with Liam’s hand. He shuddered and made the motion again, knowing he’d be punished for that too. It just felt so good, and he needed to feel good.

Liam didn’t move at first. Then, after a long moment, he rotated his hand so the palm was upward and lightly cupping Jay’s cock. That felt even better, and Jay whined. “It’s all right,” Liam whispered and closed his fingers around Jay’s erection.

If nothing else, Jay had done what Liam wanted him to do—stopped thinking. He was too busy losing himself in the sensation of Liam’s hand on his cock, stroking slowly from base to tip. Too slowly, but when he tried to get Liam to move faster, he ended up with another bite on his shoulder, this one lower than the last. He was going to have a whole collection of marks, beautiful marks left on him by Liam’s hands and teeth. God, he was going to come.

Liam took his hand away, and that hurt worse than anything he’d ever done to Jay, anything anyone had ever done. His body hung, suspended between the onrush of pleasure and the memory of pain and unable to move in any direction because Liam wasn’t fucking touching him.

Even in that moment when he wanted to lash out and
make
Liam touch him, Jay retained enough awareness of what Liam was to curb his tongue. “Please, Sir, please. I’ll scream for you. I’ll beg. I’ll lick your feet.” He’d wanted to do that an eternity of moments ago, cloud the polished surface of Liam’s shoes with his breath and feel that sense of rightness clear his head as he abased himself.

“I know. I can make you do all of that any time I want it from you.” Liam’s hand was still there, hovering as if he didn’t really want to take it away.

The implication was clear, or at least it seemed so to Jay, drunk with lust and pain. Liam wanted something he couldn’t order Jay to do—but there was nothing Jay wouldn’t have agreed to right then. His body was on the rack, his mind crammed full of Liam’s fantasies as well as his own until he felt like he was going to shatter like cold glass in hot water if someone didn’t do something to him soon.

So instead of taking, he gave, twisting his body around and dropping lower, kneeling with his head in Liam’s lap and the thrust of Liam’s cock right there to be mouthed through the fabric of his pants as eagerly, as adoringly as Jay would have licked Liam’s shoes.

Liam froze, and for a second or two, Jay thought he would be pushed away, reprimanded, maybe even sent away from Liam’s house and life. This was a line being crossed, even if Liam had crossed it first by wrapping his hand around Jay’s cock.

Then Liam groaned and grabbed on to Jay’s hair at the nape, keeping him where he was, and that was all the permission Jay needed. He pressed his lips to Liam’s zipper, blew hot air through the fabric until Liam shuddered. He used his mouth—mostly teeth, but a bit of tongue—to unfasten the top of the finely woven trousers and slide the zipper down. It was awkward, but he didn’t care. He wanted to taste Liam’s skin, cock, balls, inner thighs.

Liam growled. He tugged at Jay’s hair, pulling him away, and Jay made an imploring sound, but all Liam was doing was shoving his pants down. “Tell me this is what you want,” he said harshly.

“I want this,” Jay gasped. “I want to suck you, Sir,
please
.”

“Do it.”

Apparently Liam had decided it wouldn’t be domlike to make noise, because he was totally quiet even when Jay swallowed him down. His breathing did some interesting stuff, though, so Jay took his cues from that, focused on listening to each little hitch and sigh. He licked all around the head, bathed the shaft, sucked on each ball in turn. Liam tasted kind of bitter, in a good way, and Jay was determined to get Liam off.

It had been a while since he’d had any cock but Austin’s in his mouth, and the memory of the two of them doing this for Patrick after their sessions had faded over the months. Nothing about this reminded him of those blowjobs anyway, given gratefully, respectfully, accepted as an unexpected but welcome gift.

Liam wasn’t going to pat his head afterward and murmur a mildly flustered but pleased thank-you.

Jay squirmed so that his cock dragged over the carpet, the soft-rough rub of the fibers spurring him on to be inventive. He loved sucking Austin’s cock, spinning out the experience until his lips were slick and numb, his jaw aching, sensations that he could take with him for hours, long after his body had forgotten and forgiven. This wasn’t going to take as long. Liam was so hard, so hungry that Jay guessed the only thing holding him back was the unfamiliarity of it being a man’s mouth on him.

No…his sub’s mouth. That, Liam had to be used to, right?

Jay took Liam in deep, then choked when Liam unexpectedly jerked his hips, driving his cock a crucial inch farther, the smallest of sounds finally escaping his mouth. He felt the darkly erotic threat to his ability to breathe again. As when his hair had been gripped tightly, the threat was open-ended, not a closed box, but it still thrilled him. He could always safe word, and if that failed him… But it wouldn’t, not with Liam.

He wasn’t sure what it was about this that got to him. Maybe it was the idea of someone having power over his most basic need, the inescapable necessity to draw air into his body every few seconds.

He relaxed, accepting Liam’s wish to fuck his mouth, encouraging him with soft moans, made so that Liam would feel their vibration along his shaft as much as anything. Liam thrust a few times and came, a rush of heat and salt flooding Jay’s mouth. He swallowed, licking at his lips to catch the taste. He could kiss Austin when he got home, slide his tongue along Austin’s and let him taste Liam too, share the sharp, powerful tang until Austin could get it firsthand at their next session.