The Foster Family (36 page)

“It’s what you do after I’m bound,” Charlie replied. To his credit, though, he only turned and waited, arms loose at his side, for another order.

“Let’s see if you’ve been keeping the faith.” Malcolm held his breath as he reached into one pocket of Charlie’s robe and felt a small bottle there. The breath came out in a relieved sigh. “Lube?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He reached into the other pocket and found a small silicone ring. But it wasn’t a simple cock ring. This one had a length of tubing and three small balls attached. He pulled it out.

“Well, well, well. What have we here?”

Charlie shifted his weight

“Hopeful, are we?” Malcolm asked.

There was only a slight pause before Charlie whispered, “Yes, Sir.”

“When’s the last time I took you, Charlie?” Malcolm pulled the toy out and fingered it. “Not including the gazebo, because that was—”

“It’s been awhile,” Charlie blurted.

“Specific?”

“Couple of months.”

“Okay.” Malcolm got up and wrapped his arms around Charlie from behind, spreading his hands over his chest. “Try this again. In your own words, how long has it been since I had my cock up your ass?”

Charlie’s weight bled into Malcolm a tiny fraction and he moved his hands, encouraging him to relax. That he didn’t was only a sign that Malcolm had been doing things wrong. If Charlie felt the need to have autonomy from him in life that was one thing, but not being able to relax now was something else entirely.

“Talk to me,” Malcolm whispered.

Charlie bowed his head, and his body twitched between pushing more firmly into Malcolm’s palm and relaxing against his chest. It only created more tension. More strife within his lover.

Malcolm moved back, trailing his hands over Charlie’s shoulders and down off his arms, taking the heavy terry cloth robe with him. The tension was the physical manifestation of the chaos in Charlie’s head, the skittering thoughts Malcolm knew seldom quieted. It was the curse of Charlie’s brilliant brain that he had that constant motion inside his head and no way to release the energy it produced.

He worked with his hands in the dirt, and that brought him peace. He took pictures, drawing with his camera the images that cascaded around inside him, but the rest, the incessant worrying and fretting and planning and contingencies that made him a stellar personal assistant, had nowhere to go now. Mere days after he’d left the gallery, the strain was showing. Charlie relied on Malcolm’s bindings to hold him still, focus him on one thing and let all that crap and extraneous noise in his head drain away.

And Malcolm had let him down.

“I’m here now,” Malcolm assured him. “Give me your hands.”

Charlie complied instantly, holding his arms behind his back and waiting, just as still as before, for Malcolm to do whatever he would do.

“I’m going to make this right, now, Charlie.” He wrapped the belt around one of his lover’s wrists, then the other, doing it a few times to create a figure eight, then wrapping one end of the belt around both wrists together, then the other over the cross, before tucking them both snugly into the space between wrists and binding. No knots. Just the wrapping and tucking.

Charlie clenched his fists and tested. His muscles bunched and loosened a half dozen times. He clutched and reached, and Malcolm ran soothing hands over his skin, waiting for him to decide it was real.

When he finally stopped, Malcolm praised him, and Charlie hissed out a breath in a shallow noise of uncertainty.

“You didn’t answer my questions, lover. How long?”

“Months,” Charlie said again.

“Not calendar time,” Malcolm said, laying a hand in the center of Charlie’s bare back. “Charlie time.”

Charlie shook his head, a sharp, abbreviated gesture, and shuffled forward a step until his knees touched the edge of the couch cushions.

“You’ll get there,” Malcolm said. “Kneel on the couch.”

Charlie did, balancing, twitching to catch himself and remain upright without his arms for balance. Probably trickier than it looked, because the cushions were soft. They had a lot of give, and he had only his knees and shins to use as support.

Malcolm took his own time, standing back to admire the flex and adjustment of back and butt as Charlie balanced. The man had not lost one iota of what attracted Malcolm to him fifteen years ago, when they were just kids. He was as fit and beautiful physically as he had ever been. The signs of the years rested well on him, and the fact Malcolm knew how kind and generous and understanding he was only enhanced his outer beauty.

“I love you,” Malcolm said, still keeping his physical distance, trying the words out when he wasn’t intimately tangled up in Charlie’s body. “God, I love you.”

Charlie’s twitching subsided to the occasional adjustment and he was fluid again, almost relaxed as he waited.

“Will you answer my question now?”

“Does it matter?” Charlie asked. “Really?”

Malcolm approached and laid one hand on one of Charlie’s forearms. “It matters because I need to hear it, baby. Kerry was right. I need to hear what’s inside you.”

“Mal.”

“If my feelings are hurt by your answer, it’s because of my own actions, Charlie, not yours. Pretending I haven’t hurt you won’t heal anything. Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to show me since I got home last night? Pretending doesn’t make any of the shit go away? So tell me the truth so we can fix it.”

While Charlie was no longer tense and unbalanced, he wasn’t relaxed, either, and his voice when he spoke was tight and edged. “Too long,” he said. “Just too long. Can we drop it now?”

“Right after you tell me how I can make this up to you.”

“We can’t go back. There is no making up.”

Malcolm’s heart stopped. His blood froze. “What?”

“There’s no do-over, Mal. There’s just… do right from now on.”

“Start over instead, then?” Malcolm asked.

“Start over,” Charlie agreed. “Start over and be real about it.”

“Meaning?”

“I want to submit to you, Mal. I want to
be submissive to you
.
I want that. I want the title… the commitment. I want to know that’s what you want from me. That it’s real and true and what we are. I want it to be out loud from now on. I want you.”

“Exclusively?” Malcolm asked.

“Not necessarily. But I won’t screw anyone without your approval. I’m not going to sneak out of your bed for someone else’s again, ever, and I’m sorry I did that. If you don’t want him back, then he won’t come back and I’ll stop pushing….”

“Stop talking.” He heard Charlie’s teeth clack together.

What his lover asked for was a good deal more than a bit of bondage and some household rules. He wanted formality and ritual and all sorts of things Malcolm had never shared with him, however much he knew he had need of those things in his own psyche, and even had in his own life. After all, the cutting had never been random. It had been ritual and rote and precise.

“That’s a lot,” Malcolm said out loud.

“Yeah. It’s a lot.”

“It’s… like a proposal.”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

“And you are on your knees.”

“Don’t make it a joke.”

“Never.” Malcolm cupped the back of Charlie’s head and encouraged him to turn a bit. “It’s not a joke. It’s a big deal. And if it’s what you want, I can give it to you. Anything you want. You’ve always known that.”

Charlie’s eyes, gazing up at him, were big and bright. “Only if it’s what you want.”

“It’s what I’ve always demanded, isn’t it?” he asked, seeing the truth. “What I’ve always demanded without telling you what the parameters really were. I made you guess and try and fail so many times. We’re starting over, Charlie, and starting for real. If and when Kerry comes back, it will be to a real home where he’ll have a real place. A defined one, same as you and me.”

Charlie nodded against his palm but said nothing. His eyes, deep and liquid, though, spoke for him, and they were begging. For touch and possession and proof that it was all real.

“You are not the only one who needs this, Charles Alexander Stone.” Malcolm moved in and kissed Charlie with as much possessiveness and command as he had at his disposal, as much love as he’d felt for all of fifteen years spilling into the simple touch. The groan Charlie let out was reward enough for his efforts, and when he pulled away to look again, Charlie’s eyes were closed, his face turned up. The sight of him, bound and naked and blindly trusting, slightly arched because Malcolm supported his weight with the hand cupped at the back of his head, took his breath away. He was lean muscle, firm as he held his balance, and it made Malcolm’s knees weak to see it.

“I don’t deserve you, baby,” Malcolm whispered. “Thank you for being mine anyway.”

Charlie murmured something unintelligible, but otherwise, he was pliable as putty in Malcolm’s hands.

“I’m going to let go now. Stand nicely so I can get this cock ring in place.”

Charlie nodded and blinked and got to his feet to stand between the couch and the coffee table.

Malcolm slipped onto the couch in front of him. “God, I do love this thing,” he said, gently tugging on Charlie’s cock.

Charlie groaned and ground his teeth. “Then do something with it.”

Malcolm stopped touching and waited until Charlie met his gaze.

“Enough of that now, lover. You had your day in the hot seat. Now you get what I give.”

Charlie stared at him, hot and intense before squeezing a “Yes, Sir,” out between clenched teeth.

“It’ll be tough enough to get this ring on here already, you know. Should have done it before you got hard.”

“Shouldn’t have kissed me like that,” Charlie muttered. “Or said… oh… God.”

Malcolm had taken Charlie in his mouth, all the way back, and swallowed hard, letting the tip of his lover’s cock slide a bit down his throat before backing off. It shut him up and made it easy enough to get the cock ring on, though Charlie’s upper body and his thighs were rock-hard with tension once he was done.

“Almost over, lover,” Malcolm assured him. He licked and sucked on his cock and balls a bit before he moved off the couch.

“You’re killing me,” Charlie complained.

“In the best way possible.” Malcolm picked up the lube from the table and squirted some on his fingers, which he used to grease up the balls dangling from the ring. “Bend forward, now. All the way so I can get at you.”

Charlie lowered himself until his chest thumped against the back of the couch.

“Now that is exactly what I’m talking about.” Malcolm cupped Charlie’s ass and caressed the fine hairs there, kneading and prying between his cheeks, taking his time and enjoying the sounds he was milking from deep in Charlie’s chest.

“You just love this, don’t you?” he asked, and Charlie’s response was an extra-hard rock, back into Malcolm’s prodding. “Take it easy. We’ll get there.”

“Before or after I have a heart attack?”

Malcolm laughed and prodded at his hole. “I guess that remains to be seen.” He loved playing with Charlie like this. It was another thing he’d neglected over the past months, and not just since Kerry had entered their lives. He’d neglected Charlie far too much lately, and he was ashamed of that. “I will make this up to you, Charlie,” he whispered before planting a small kiss on one ass cheek. “I swear.”

Charlie grunted.

“You’ll see.” He stepped back just enough to have comfortable access and picked up the end of the short string of balls, then pressed the first to Charlie’s hole, pushing until he opened to accept it. It popped in and Charlie groaned as his ass swallowed the toy.

“That’s it,” Malcolm encouraged as he fed the tube in and then the next ball, and the next until all three were well seated and the tube leading to the cock ring was resting nice and snug between his balls. “How’s that feel?”

The tube itself was smaller than the diameter of Malcolm’s little finger, the balls no bigger than the knuckle of his thumb. Accepting them hadn’t been much of a stretch for Charlie, but that wasn’t the point.

The point was, now that they were in there, every move Charlie made, he’d feel them inside, and it would drive him nuts.

“Looks pretty,” Malcolm assured him with a firm tap to one cheek. “Get up now.”

Charlie maneuvered himself off the couch and stood, then turned to face Malcolm. “Thank you.”

Malcolm blinked at him, bemused at being thanked for what was going to be a half day of torture for the man. “You say that now.” He grinned and moved the coffee table far from the couch with his foot. He pushed his own boxers off his hips, then tossed them over the arm. It was his turn to sit on the couch, and he tossed a throw blanket over the leather for comfort. He guided Charlie to stand between his legs as he sat.

“Kneel.”

Charlie did, graceful now, even with his hands bound. He was more in his element, and the turmoil behind his eyes diminished a little bit more with every breath, every order complied with, and every reassurance Malcolm was going to look after him.

“You’re going to blow me now,” Malcolm told him. “Remember the first day Kerry was here and he watched you?”

“Yes.” Charlie continued to watch him, gaze focused on him, though his eyes were dark and dilated, and Malcolm wondered what was going on in his head exactly. There seemed to be less and less room there for anything but Malcolm and Malcolm’s wishes.

“We’re going to work on your technique until he gets back, because when he does, and he’s lying on our bed waiting to be taken, he’ll be watching you, Charlie. What do you think he’ll think of seeing you bound and plugged and collared and sucking my cock down your throat?” He caressed Charlie’s cheek. “Would you like that?”

Charlie’s eyes glowed, dark light brimming with need and desire. “Yes, Sir.” His voice was deep and gravelly, as it got when he was on the verge of having no power of speech at all.

Malcolm cupped his chin and leaned down for a long, heady kiss that made Charlie moan and got his heart pummeling his ribs with a vengeance.

“Good.” Malcolm spread his legs and guided Charlie in. The view, as his cock was taken into that hot, wet haven was spectacular.