Sheik Down (5 page)

His cock strained for attention and Lucas hadn’t consciously meant to hold his breath, yet he did.

“You were a natural on the cross. Let’s see how you are in chains,” Raid suggested.

Lucas looked nervously at the hanging, heavy bindings. He’d built them, so he knew how secure they were. He also knew how impossible it would be to free himself once in the restraints. That hadn’t been a problem on the cross, but it was after their argument. The argument where Raid refused to be equally invested with his emotions.

At least kneeling on the floor with his hands behind his back, Lucas could choose to get up and leave.

“What’s the problem?” Raid asked.

Lucas eyed them one more time before committing to go through with Raid’s request. “Red, yellow, yes. They still apply right?”

“Of course.”

“You’ll still stop if and when I ask you to,” Lucas added for his own benefit.

“Immediately. Nothing has changed.”

Lucas snorted. “You’re wrong, Raid. Everything’s changed. I’m giving myself to you, body and soul, in exchange for whatever scraps you throw my way.”

Raid tightened the first wrist restraint severely. “My cock is not scraps.”

“I can get
cock
, boss-man. I have no problems finding available
cock
. It’s the rest of you that’s locked in a box without a damn key to open it up.”

The second restraint went on as tightly as the first.

“Damn, Raid. Any tighter and my hands will lop off.”

“Do you want me to release you?” Raid asked.

Lucas thought about it as he stared Raid down. “No.”

“Good.”

Raid strapped down Lucas’s ankles. “You put up a fight but I think we both know you like being dominated.”

“No.” Yes, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

Raid smiled knowingly. “You do. You like being used, made to come. You like the pain and someone giving you permission to choke down a cock.”

Raid disappeared behind Lucas. Lucas strained to see him. A sharp slap hit his ass and Lucas flinched. His butt stung, but he decided that he kind of liked it.

“You like sucking balls. I bet you like eating ass too. Tell me,” Raid continued in his dark litany. “Do you like sex as rough as I think you do? Was that blowjob a hint of how you want me to take you?”

Lucas didn’t know what to answer first. Another slap hit his bottom. His sore balls jiggled between his legs and he couldn’t stop the low moan from climbing his throat.

An unseen finger traced his spine, dipped into his crack and suddenly hooked in his hole, pushing in and tugging back. He gasped, meaning to complain, yet complaining meant Raid might stop. He didn’t want it to stop.

A hand wearing a black leather workman’s glove reached around his waist. The ones he hadn’t returned after the last time Raid had him strapped up in the dungeon. The supple leather closed on Lucas’s dick.

“Do you remember what I said I wanted to see you do?” Raid asked in a low rasp.

The words rubbed over charged nerve endings like a heated caress. “Other than
take it
, and
suck it
?”

Raid swatted Lucas’s ass. Lucas jumped, hissed.

“Remind me,” Lucas suggested.

“I wanted to see you jack off for me.”

“Oh, right,” Lucas said, feeling warm all over at the prospect of Raid’s gaze eating Lucas up.

“I’ve changed my mind.”

Raid’s leathered fist began to pump. The other finger pushed into Lucas’s hole, pulling at the tight ring of muscles, working him open for a second finger. Raw, unlubed, and uncomfortable, Lucas writhed with barely restrained pleasure.

“Don’t fight me,” Raid barked. “Take it like a man.
Own
what you’re feeling.”

“I’m
feeling
your finger,” Lucas snarled.

Raid stopped stroking him. He stuck another finger in. “If you want it, take it,” Raid told him.

“Now? Now you decide to change the rules?”

“Consider it a compromise. I want to see you jack off but I want to participate. I also want you to stop hiding what you’re feeling. It’s yours for the taking. Take it,” Raid repeated.

Lucas experimentally moved his hips, rubbing his cock in Raid’s leather-gloved hand then pushing back against his fingers. He swore softly as his mind warred with his body. It felt good, amazing, yet there was an inkling of humiliation in fucking yourself on someone’s fingers when all he did was stand there and insist you do it.

And it was hot. Like,
hot
.

He’d never considered work gloves to be an erotic tool, but he’d never look at his gloves again and not think about Raid’s unique use of them. Riding Raid’s fingers, the use of the glove was impersonal, made all the more conflicting since being chained up was
extremely
personal. Balance.

Like thrusting into a hand and burying fingers in his ass with each drag. Balance. Forward into sizzling tight heat. Backward into penetration and clawing need. His movements were awkward at first—keenly aware of Raid’s eyes on him as Lucas stripped himself down to absolute vulnerability.

Raid watched, losing nothing of himself. Lucas clawed toward orgasm, his body straining to find it with Raid even though Raid did nothing more than hold steady. Not a word, a breath, not even an expression since he stood behind Lucas.

Lucas might as well have been alone, and he wondered if that was purposeful. Had Raid realized how difficult the impersonality of fucking himself would be and kept his involvement minimal because of it? Or was it punishment? Was it to make his need for Raid’s participation grow?

A third finger entered Lucas’s hole and he cried out against the delicious pain. Raid’s hand squeezed tighter and now that pre-come slicked the leather palm, Lucas moved easily in the hold. Tired of thinking through Raid’s motives, Lucas gave over to the shimmering of orgasm just within reach. His head dropped back on his shoulders. Sweat trickled down his temples and spine. His abdominals cramped with the concentrated solitary efforts of his torso and hips to take the climax he was offered.

Lucas jerked his hips forward, shoved his ass back. Raid pressed hard on the hidden node in his ass and Lucas’s nerve endings leapt into overdrive. He no longer cared what he looked like, who watched him or how weak his neediness made him, he simply felt. His shouts were for no one but himself.

Heat built. His muscles protested but something greater drove him forward.

“Own it,” Raid whispered.

The sudden sound nearly distracted Lucas, but it reminded him of Raid’s eyes on him.

Raid moved around beside him, ducking under a lifted, bound arm. Raid kept his hands steady. He straddled Lucas’s thigh. The ticklish rest of balls on his skin, the changing pull on Lucas’s ass and the occasional nudge of Raid’s moist tip sent Lucas over the edge. He shouted as come shot out in ropey pearls.

Lucas jerked a few more times and Raid covered Lucas’s cock with his gloved hand.

“Fuck you!” Lucas seethed. “Fuck you for making me do that!”

“Did I, or did
you
? One word would have changed that session completely. Do you remember the word?” Raid prompted.

Lucas glared at him. Of course he remembered the fucking word. “Did you have fun humiliating me like that?” he snapped.

“Humiliating you?” Raid stepped around him so that they were face to face.

“You watched me come, forced me to fuck your hands. I call that humiliation.”

Raid stood with his legs shoulder width apart. He took his erect penis in the same gloved hand he’d used on Lucas and jerked himself, moaning slightly. His hips pushed forward and his chest muscles tightened as his hand moved faster and faster.

With a grunt, he came, shooting his load on Lucas. It hit his abs with a thick, hot splats and Lucas decided that watching Raid come would never get old.

Raid milked himself a little more. Licking his lips through the a breathless rasp he asked, “Was
that
humiliating?”

“No,” Lucas admitted. “It was gorgeous.”

“So were you,” Raid finished softly. “Gorgeous. Erotic. Sexy. What I just did only finished what watching you started.”

Lucas’s arms ached but more than that, he wanted to touch Raid. “Release me from these things. Red or whatever.”

Raid chuckled but he loosened the restraints. Ankles first, then wrists.

Lucas rubbed his wrists thoughtfully. “When do we switch roles?”

A guarded look entered Raid’s black-eyed gaze. “We don’t.”

Lucas looked around the room. “Maybe not in here, but you have a few lessons to learn too.”

“Like?”

Lucas crowded closer. He caught Raid’s hips and pulled the man flush against his body. Lucas ducked and nuzzled Raid’s neck. He smiled when Raid’s shoulder came up instinctively.

“Like,” Lucas began, “I’m not the only one who needs to lose some inhibition.”

“I told you, that’s not how this works.”

“Sure it is. I might start to take offense otherwise.”

“How?” Raid murmured, tipping his head to give Lucas access to his neck.

Lucas took it, scraping his teeth on the skin before soothing it with a lick and an open mouth kiss. “Do you really think that I’m going to feel good about getting strapped down when you won’t show me a little of what makes you tick? Letting go—” he pressed another sucking kiss to Raid’s shoulder, “—isn’t easy to do for someone who doesn’t respect what I’m doing enough to do it himself.”

“I’m a dom. It’s different.”

“In here, you’re a dom.
Upstairs
, you’re Raid.” Lucas lifted his head to look at him. “And right now, we both need a shower so going upstairs would be a good start.”

“Upstairs is for relationships.”

“We have one of those.”

“We have a working relationship during the daytime. We have this, in the playroom. I don’t have boyfriends,” Raid explained patiently.

“Good. I’d get jealous. Boyfriends wouldn’t be okay with me, since I’d be your only boyfriend-slash-lover-slash-sub-slash-carpenter.”

Raid pushed back. “You’re asking for more than I want to give you.”

Lucas brows rose with his surprise. “Wait. You want to be able to get me naked, make me come, fuck me sometimes when you feel like it, tell me what to do, and jerk off for me, but you don’t want to share dinner and a cuddle on the couch?”

A wry smile lifted Raid’s lips. “No strings.”

“Just chains,” Lucas added just as flatly.

“And whips.”

“Keep talking, dirty boy, I’ll get hard again,” Lucas teased.

“Which I’ll take care of as many times as your cock lifts its pretty pink head.”

“So you just want ownership of my dick and not my heart.” Lucas frowned. “I’m not sure how I feel about that, especially since that’s what you first told me.”

“Then I wasn’t clear enough. I’ll take care of every physical need. We’ll break down your barriers together, and it will be enjoyable for both of us. What I want of your heart is your dedication to your role and your complete trust that I’ll take care of your submissive needs.”

Lucas ran his fingers through Raid’s thick black curls before cupping his cheek. He slid his thumb along Raid’s bottom lip. “What are you afraid of?”

“Crashing economies.”

“Nice try, but you can’t dodge the question. What is it about giving your heart over to
love
that scares you?”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Raid said tightly.

The answer took Lucas aback as insight dawned. “That wasn’t the question. The fact that it’s still your answer means that I am
exactly
what scares you. Are you falling in love with me, Raid?”

Raid snorted with disdain and extricated himself from the man’s hold. “I have to clean up.”

“This isn’t over,” Lucas said.

“It’s over because I say it is. Use the guest bathroom on the first floor to shower if you need to. Then go home.”

Raid heard the carpenter’s truck start and pull out of his driveway. He sighed, breathing deeply for the first time since Lucas had started in on his game of twenty questions. Raid knew the tall blond wanted more from him. He saw it in his beautiful blue eyes every time the discussion opened, Raid just didn’t want to talk about it.

He picked up the silver-framed picture of his parents. A wave of nostalgia washed over him. He pushed it away. He’d never have his father’s love. The best the prince had done was to give him Kanz after his mother died. Granted, the first decade had been run by the prince’s right-hand man, but the lion’s share of the profit went into Raid’s trust until he was old enough to take over.

He supposed that for a hands-off guy like his dad, that was the best he’d be willing to do for the one legitimate child of many bastard children he’d fathered. The only reason Raid had gotten as much as he had was because of his father’s love for Raid’s mother. And look where that had gotten the prince. A son he could put in boarding school and raise with nannies, and a dead wife.

Logically, Raid knew he’d made himself off-limits a long time ago. It had been a risk letting Lucas get to know him as much as he did already after years of renovations. But when he’d first noticed that Lucas looked at him differently than other men did, Raid had been intensely flattered by the attractive man’s interest.

Once he’d seen it, there’d been a huge weight lifted off Raid’s shoulders to know that Lucas was gay. It made wanting the blond and having him a simple transaction of time and effort.

Tonight had almost changed that.

Raid turned on the shower, letting steam build up before he closed himself in the huge glass stall. The heat melted away the tension in his muscles. It did nothing to clear his mind. He kept seeing the clear disappointment when Raid capped their relationship off to sex games and work. The truth was, he’d been weaker in that moment than he could remember being in years.

Rejection was a part of life. You either fell in love forever, with one of you dying in the end, or you broke up. Either you took what you wanted while you had control of it, enjoyed it and moved on, or you lost everything in the fight to keep having the impossible. There existed no middle ground.