Virgin Territory (10 page)

Danny clenched his hand into a fist at his side and scanned the crowd a little more desperately.

When they’d said good-bye in the early hours of the previous Sunday morning, Aaron had said, “I’ll see you in the club next Saturday”.

It was Saturday. That meant Aaron had to be there. Aaron wouldn’t let him down.

Danny had survived for an entire week, all alone, without anyone to tie him up or screw him, or order him around, or do any of the things that he’d suddenly realised were so essential to his sanity.

“It’s Saturday.”

Danny spun around. For several seconds, he couldn’t say a word. He couldn’t even smile. He just soaked up the sight of Aaron. He probably owned something apart from those well-worn leathers, he probably wore other stuff to his office, but no one would ever be able to tell that when he was at the club. He smelled like leather and petrol and sex.

Danny had no idea what showed in his eyes, but Aaron chuckled. He slid his hand into the longer strands of hair at the nape of Danny’s neck and pulled him forward until his ear was just a fraction of an inch away from Aaron’s mouth.

“I want you.”

No words had ever been sweeter.

Danny closed his eyes. He nodded, pulling against Aaron’s hold on his hair as he gave his answer.

Aaron lifted his head. He said something to the guy Danny had been talking to at the bar. Danny didn’t know what. He didn’t care.

Aaron was there and the world was a glorious place.

They stood there in the middle of a crowd of men, not saying a word to each other, their bodies almost on the verge of touching, and suddenly Danny realised that he’d made one important error in judgment.

Tension raced back into his body. He’d spent most of the week thinking about his mouth surrounding Aaron’s cock, Aaron spanking him, each of them ploughing into the other man’s arse, and a whole host of other fantasies, but it hadn’t occurred to him to develop an actual plan.

He’d spent the best part of seven days looking forward to seeing Aaron again, but he hadn’t thought beyond this point—not in a realistic way. Now that he stood face-to-face and toe-to-toe with Aaron, Danny had nothing to say. No small talk. No big talk. He just stood there like a bloody lemon.

There was submission and letting the other guy take the lead, and there was acting like a pillock who didn’t have a single thought of his own. Danny needed to get back on the correct side of that line as soon as possible.

Aaron chose that moment to step back and release his hold on Danny’s hair. Danny opened his eyes. Aaron nodded, as if he understood everything Danny wasn’t able to express.

“Come on.”

They walked out to the front of the club in silence. The other guys, the carefully cultivated atmosphere, the leather, the steady thump of the music, it all faded into the background. Outside beneath the yellow glow of the streetlamps, that part of the world inhabited by other people seemed to be far away.

Aaron was the only thing Danny could make out in a world devoid of all familiar signposts.

“Any newfound objection to riding pillion?” Aaron asked, unlocking one of his panniers and passing Danny his spare helmet. His words were clear and crisp. They cut through the buzzing in Danny’s ears with ease.

He took the helmet and climbed onto the bike behind Aaron, letting his actions speak for him. As Aaron started the engine, Danny thought about gripping the metal handhold behind his seat.

No.

He didn’t know how many times he’d be able to wrap his arms around Aaron. He wasn’t prepared to waste this opportunity. He held him tight, like a newbie who was afraid he’d fall off every time they turned a corner

Danny closed his eyes as they pulled out onto the road, trusting that Aaron knew how to ride and didn’t need anyone looking over his shoulder or checking both directions at the junctions.

It seemed like only a few seconds passed before they rolled to a stop. The engine noise faded from the air. Aaron leaned back in the saddle and took off his helmet, but Danny kept his arms around him and silently refused to do the same.

Aaron took off his gloves. Resting his helmet on his thigh, he pushed his free hand through his hair. He didn’t seem in any rush to get off his bike. When he took a deep breath and slowly let it back out, Danny felt every movement of Aaron’s rib cage.

Danny knew he was making a fool of himself, clinging to a casual hook-up that way, but he couldn’t make himself stop. He couldn’t make himself feel casual. Aaron didn’t say a word. He didn’t even seem surprised. He didn’t ask Danny to get the hell off of him, he didn’t order him to do that either. He just sat there straddling his bike in the brightly lit street outside his house, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for the guy he’d brought home for a quick screw to morph into a limpet along the way.

With a grunt of effort, Danny managed to unfurl his arms and release Aaron. They got off the bike. Once he took off his helmet, Danny felt so much more exposed. It seemed to him that the only thing stopping Aaron from reading his mind now was the confusing jumble of his thoughts. There were no nice, neat sentences for a psychic to read. There weren’t even any complete words.

His mind was more like a heap of Scrabble squares than romantic prose. He had no idea if he’d be able to make any sensible syllables from the mess. The chance of him hitting a triple-word-score tile was severely limited.

“Drink it straight back.”

Danny jerked back into the here and now. While he’d been wrapped up in his thoughts, Aaron had led him into what appeared to be a rather elegant sitting room. It looked far more like something owned by the accountant Aaron said he was from nine to five than the sort of room anyone would guess the leather-clad version of Aaron might inhabit.

Aaron was there too. He stood directly in front of Danny, holding out a glass full of perfectly clear liquid.

“Go on,” Aaron ordered. “It’s not drugged.” He took a swig himself, as if to prove it.

Danny accepted the glass, not so much afraid that Aaron would drug him, but already feeling as if he’d been drugged up to the eyeballs. His heart raced, his thoughts barely crawled. Lifting the drink to his lips, he tilted his head back and swallowed the contents down in one.

It was so cold it was a wonder that frost hadn’t formed over the surface.

He gasped at the shock to his system. The chill of it burned all the way down his throat and settled in his stomach.

Suddenly, Danny found a clear and complete thought. “I didn’t think you were trying to drug me,” he said. “You wouldn’t do that.”

Aaron nodded as if that were a perfectly normal response. “It was just cold water—to help clear your mind. Good job you don’t have sensitive teeth, or you might have slugged me one.”

“My brother’s a dentist,” Danny said. He shook his head. “You don’t need to know that.”

Aaron remained silent as he nudged Danny to sit on his sofa.

“I’d never hit you,” Danny said. The idea of it made him sick to his stomach. He had to push it out of his mind before he brought back that icy water, all over the nice blue rug in the centre of Aaron’s living room.

“Maybe not in anger,” Aaron allowed. “But neither of us knows what your kinks will turn out to be.”

Danny met Aaron’s gaze square on, for the first time that night. “Everyone else seems pretty damn sure,” he said.

Aaron smiled. “The whole virgin equals sub thing? That’s just wishful thinking on the part of certain doms.”

That was great, but it only actually addressed half of the problem. Danny took a deep breath and stared past Aaron at the books on the shelf behind him. Apparently Aaron really liked to read stuff about gardening. Knowing that did nothing to help Danny find the appropriate words for the situation.

“Danny?” Aaron prompted.

“Everyone else seems to know what they are into,” he said, far more softly than he intended.

“Bollocks. Real life is never that simple.” Aaron sat on the arm of the sofa opposite him, looking so at ease with the world Danny was almost willing to reconsider the thing about never hitting him in anger. “Yeah, sure, some guys are damn near born knowing they are sub, right down to the bone,” Aaron went on. “Some doms are wired that way too. But even those guys have to work out the details as they go along. Most guys will try a bit of lots of things before they settle into their own skins.”

Danny glanced up. Aaron sounded serious, but he was being so forgiving and understanding about it all, Danny couldn’t help but look for the catch.

“A guy might try out twenty different fetishes and hate two, fail to see the point in ten, like five and love the ones that are left,” Aaron added.

“I can’t even think of twenty different fetishes,” Danny muttered.

Aaron grinned. “I can.”

His joy at that fact was contagious. Danny couldn’t help but smile.

The expression around Aaron’s eyes softened even though his voice remained gruff. “There’s no rush, kiddo. Sometimes it’s not about working out what you want to do for the rest of your life. It can be about deciding what you want to do tonight, or in this hour, this minute.” He leaned forward. “If we could do anything, right here, right now, what would it be? Who would you be tonight?”

Danny opened his mouth not knowing what words were about to leave it. “Spank me?” He couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d expressed an interest in running naked through stinging nettles.

Aaron just nodded as if it was a perfectly reasonable thing to say. “Keep going. Throw some details at me. Is it a punishment or are we having fun?”

“Fun,” Danny said. “It’s not an
I’m a naught boy and I need to be punished
thing. It’s…” He rubbed his forehead. “It’s… You’re in charge and you’re doling out orders, but I’m not your slave. I’m obeying you because it’s hot, not because I’m so submissive I can’t do anything else.” Danny growled with frustration. “I’m not making any sense, am I?”

“You want someone who’ll boss you about and play rough, but who doesn’t expect you to kiss his feet or polish his boots,” Aaron suggested, leaning back and resting an elbow on the back of his sofa. “Sounds reasonable to me.”

Danny peered down into his empty glass. It sounded like a confused mess to him.

“Want to try it out?”

Danny’s gaze snapped up to Aaron’s face. “What?”

“Do you want me to spank you, right here, right now?”

His tone of voice was perfectly polite. To the causal listener, it might have just sounded like he was ordering a coffee, but his words went straight to Danny’s cock. Half-hard ever since the bike ride from the club, Danny’s shaft now pressed painfully against the inside of his fly.

“Yes.” Saying no to an offer like that would have been a sacrilege.

“Do you want the rest of it as well, for me to take control?”

Danny swallowed. “Yes.”

“Then get the hell off my sofa and drop your jeans.” There wasn’t a touch of anger in Aaron’s voice. He had every right to be impatient, but he didn’t sound at all pissed off.

It didn’t seem to be a
you’re a piece of dirt and I don’t let slaves sit on my sofa
kind of statement. It felt more like a case of
hurry up, kiddo, the whistle’s blown, let’s start the game
.

Danny stood and reached for his belt. His hands worked entirely on automatic pilot. There was no time for him to get nervous in the few moments it took for him to undo the buckle.

Blood pounded through his veins, laden with more energy and adrenaline than he knew what to do with. By the time he’d undone his fly, Aaron had moved to the sofa where Danny had sat and settled himself in the centre seat, his arms spread out across the back cushions.

Danny pushed down his jeans. His cock sprang free from the fabric and curved up toward his stomach. It was a relief to get out of the tight denim. He needed all his self-control not to reach forward and stroke himself in celebration, but Danny kept his hands to himself and his eyes on Aaron.

Aaron grinned when he saw how turned on he was, but a moment later he raised an eyebrow. “Well, don’t just stand there.” Aaron looked down at his lap. His fly was stretched taught by his erection, but when Danny followed his gaze, it was his legs that held him fascinated.

If Aaron had just pulled him over his lap it would have been easy. Danny would have had an excuse. But there were moments when Aaron did a bloody good impression of a complete bastard.

Danny took a deep breath. God help him, but if he wanted this, he had to take it. He allowed himself no more time for doubts. He scrambled into position.

His ability to move gracefully when turning himself over his lover’s knee for the first time was not helped by the way his jeans bunched up around his ankles.

“It would have been better if I’d taken them off,” he muttered, speaking entirely to himself as he mentally made a note of the fact for next time.

“No.”

Already lying over Aaron’s lap, Danny tensed as he looked over his shoulder.

Aaron didn’t meet his gaze. His attention remained firmly on Danny’s bare arse, but that didn’t take any power from his words. “If I’d wanted you to take them all the way off, that’s what I’d have told you to do.” He brought his hands to rest on Danny—one on the small of his back, the other on the back of one thigh. “I like them where they are.”