If It Flies (16 page)

down the side of Spencer’s face. “Always the sub, aren’t you?”

“That’s what you want. Isn’t it?”

“Absolutely. And I knew from the beginning you were a

sub.” Nick curved his hand around the back of Spencer’s neck

and leaned in for another kiss. Just before their lips met, he added, “Just never realised you’d become
my
sub.”

When Nick broke away again, Spencer licked his lips and

said, “But I’ve been your sub from the beginning. That was

the whole point.”

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Nick shook his head slowly. “No. You were my client. I was

your . . .” He gestured sharply, like he couldn’t find the word.

“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

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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,

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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.

The second hit was much the same, just from the other

side as Nick mirrored the motion and the strike. Spencer

shuddered, but this was all right. The worst about this was

what he imagined people might be thinking if they knew—

Crack.

Spencer jumped, but managed to stay on his knees when

the whip hit him hard high up on the arse. The pain was

actually bad. Really bad. An explosion of pain like getting

zapped by a Taser, minus the drooling and cramps.

“Kneel up, hands on the footboard.”

That would bare his arse, his thighs, even the backs of his

knees to the whip.

Spencer nevertheless obeyed when the whip cracked

in the air, right next to his ear, it felt like. Damn, but Nick’s precision did impress him, though it freaked him out. What

if Nick missed?

The tail bit him on the arse, hard, like an indignant,

tangible response of
Miss? I beg your fucking pardon?
A second later, as if for emphasis, it hit the exact same spot on the

opposite side.

Then his shoulders. Left one, then right. Intense beads

of pain, red hot spots and stripes, formed everywhere the tail met, everywhere Nick decided to form them.

The stars are coming out.
Spencer closed his eyes as his mind started sliding into that dark delirium, where the only

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light seemed to come from the glowing red constellations

that Nick brought to life one bright snap at a time.

His only connections to anything besides Nick, the whip,

and the pain were the carpet beneath his knees and the cool

footboard he occasionally arched into, brushing against it and drawing himself back to earth for a second or two at a time.

Those returns were short-lived. All of them.

Another strike—shoulder, arse, thigh, he never could

predict where or when or how hard—would draw him right

back into the dark.

Nick wasn’t holding back. Either Spencer’s sense of time

had slipped, or there were fewer seconds between hits now.

Enough time for the initial bite and the deeper pain that

followed each time, but the next strike always came quickly.

Sometimes two or three in rapid succession, so he couldn’t

grab onto a single one of those fiery focal points.

His grasp on the footboard weakened. Muscles simply

didn’t know what to do anymore. Sweaty palms didn’t help.

His hand slipped, and the whip narrowly missed his elbow,

but he corrected quickly, and Nick stopped. Spencer cringed,

expecting a punishment, an admonishment,
something
, but after a short while—thirty seconds, maybe?—the whip sliced

through the air a heartbeat before its tail bit into Spencer’s arse cheek again.

On some distant, visceral level, he was aware that the pain

was far more intense now than it had been with those first

few strikes. His skin burned in places, throbbed in others.

Unscathed flesh tingled with anticipation, and his head spun

a little faster, took him a little deeper into somewhere else

every time Nick laid that tail on him.

It hurt more, but he didn’t cringe or flinch away from it

now. If anything, he arched into it. Sought it out. Silently

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begged for it. He may have even begged out loud; he thought

he tasted the vibration of speech on his own tongue, and the

air thrummed with something besides his heavy breathing and

the sharp cracks and the whistle of leather cutting through the air, but he couldn’t remember what he’d said. Maybe he’d just

moaned.

Something in the room changed. Movement? Lack of

movement?

Spencer tried to open his eyes, but every time he did,

the light overwhelmed his already overloaded senses, so he

squeezed them shut and tried to figure out what the hell

was—

Gentle fingers on slick skin.

His neck. The side of his neck.

Soft fingertips sliding over sweaty skin.

That featherlight touch reverberated through him, all the

way down the length of his spine.

Movement again. Leather creaking softly. Cool breath on

damp flesh. And a whisper, “You’re amazing like this, Spencer.”

The words were like a soft warm glow he could sense all

over his body, inside and out, and he drifted in them like in

a smal , perfectly safe space. Nick’s voice. Nick who’d never

been quite that gentle before. This was the difference between
before
and
after
. He could taste the affection, the extra care, the gentleness—all in a man who’d just worked him over with

a whip, turned him into complete contentment. In this space,

nothing else mattered.

“I didn’t do anything,” he protested like in a dream.

“You’re just not aware you did, but that’s fine. You’re

beautiful like this. Riveting.” A touch to his arm, and Spencer realised he was sweating, possibly bathed in sweat. What for?

Nothing to be afraid of.

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“You did so well,” Nick said next to his ear. “I’d really like to fuck you.”

“Sure.” Spencer needed a few moments before he realised

that he could possibly have said no, but he didn’t want to.

Why would he?

Nick took him by the shoulder and elbow, led him around

the bed, though Spencer shuffled on his knees, somehow not

coordinated enough to stand and walk. He pushed up a bit

and managed to flop across the mattress, opening his legs

almost in afterthought.

“Roll onto your back,” Nick ordered, so Spencer obeyed,

sucking in a hiss of breath when his raw skin met the

bedclothes. Nick pulled off his own trousers while Spencer

got used to the throbbing burn that felt no different from

abrasions, a whole body full of them, and he guessed he had

to be covered in welts. And maybe that was the reason why

Nick wanted him on his back: it would hurt more.

But Nick had given the order, so he didn’t resist or hesitate

much. It was a constant sting rather than the blooming pain

after a hit, no surprises, no anticipation.

Nick climbed onto the bed, preparing himself. He

prodded Spencer’s legs apart, and Spencer let him, not aware

of arousal or pain, though he figured there had to be both of

them. They just didn’t seem to matter.

Nick moved on top of him and started to push in; Spencer

gasped at the blunt sense of pressure, the steady burn, but he knew by now how to take Nick, and Nick had used plenty of

lube on himself.

“Look at me.”

The hard part. Spencer pried his eyes open with sheer

obedience rather than determination. Nick’s young sharp

features were flushed, green eyes gleaming with mischief,

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maybe, or pleasure, as he slid all the way into him, triggering that electricity again and hilting himself completely. Spencer couldn’t help it—he smiled.

So did Nick. And then Nick leaned forwards. Down.

As soon as Spencer realised what Nick was doing, he raised

his head and met him halfway, grabbing onto the back of

his neck as Nick crushed his mouth in a demanding kiss. No

holding back now. No pretending they shouldn’t or wouldn’t,

just giving in and letting go, and kissing him like this was the way things were supposed to be.