Exposed Exposed (Dom Nation #1) - E. Davies Page 0,21
the gate incident. He wanted to touch me—even if I was a skittish thing. But all he radiated was calm.
We stepped inside. Almost without looking around, Rex said, “Cute house.”
Suddenly my throat was tight. Was he on autopilot? Did he invite himself to boys’ houses all the time to walk through a script that ended in my agony and his ecstasy?
And if so, did I care? After all, I’d gone to Dom Nation tonight to seek out the very feeling I’d found on my knees on the concrete.
I’d gotten what I wanted. Now it was his turn, right? And I wanted him to be pleased. Dammit, I wanted to put aside my own needs and offer every piece of me up to him.
I loved being used. That was the stark truth. So if he was here to say his patter and get what he wanted…
I didn’t hate that idea.
God, I did hate these tiny shorts, though. Every wave of arousal that swelled my cock also pinched my head and pinned my shaft against me. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to get a Pavlovian response of wincing at every passing boner.
As if he’d read my mind, Rex took his shoes off. “Go get changed,” he told me.
He’d left his leather apron back at Daddy Cakes, and now he wore a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up his slender forearms, his black trousers hugging those long, lean legs.
Like a butler who’d sprung out of my very fantasies to torment me. Did that make me the maid? Wait, was that something I could be into?
Right. Get changed, I reminded myself as I realized I was staring again. “Yes, sir,” I whispered, experimenting with the words as they fell from my lips.
Seeing how right they felt. How they stirred my blood, yet settled my soul, the very weight of their meaning pressing into my bones.
I think I like Daddy more. How fucking weird is that?
Instead of psychoanalyzing myself, I hurried upstairs. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Rex alone downstairs with my stuff. But I wasn’t used to having strangers in the house. For all that I trusted him with my body, letting him into my space to look at my pictures and sit on my couch? That was different.
I rushed to my bedroom. I couldn’t even pretend to myself that I didn’t wish he was following me. I wanted to hear soft footfalls on the steps behind me and a whisper-soft scrape of a palm gliding up the railing.
If I’d been asked at that moment my deepest wish, it would be this: to be the prey bounding ahead of the hunter, hardly daring to look back.
But I rounded the corner, looked back, and my breath rushed out all at once. The stairwell was empty.
Patience, I told myself, frustration welling in my belly. I didn’t bother closing the bedroom door as I stripped, tossing my clothes in the laundry basket.
I hesitated, naked but for the harness, my hands resting on the buckle. I pinched the sides in, slowly teasing the metal apart.
What if I go downstairs just like this?
But the Daddy I so wished could be my Daddy hadn’t ordered it yet, and I wasn’t brave enough to see what happened.
I wasn’t brave at all.
Hands trembling, I unfastened the harness and pulled it over my head. Then I threw it on the bed, my chest heaving with a silently raging battle of emotions I couldn’t place.
No, I knew exactly what they were. I was just terrified of the combination of grief and desire. Mourning who I could have been, and who I’d ended up becoming. Wishing so fiercely that Rex would pick me up and fix me.
But I was just some random middle-aged guy who had let time slip out of his grasp, and Rex still had all the best parts of his life to look forward to.
He’s just being kind. Kind, innocent, and naive. If he thought I was a project, he was badly mistaken. He’d never stick around if he knew the truth about me.
That I didn’t want a tame, vanilla sex life. And I didn’t want a man who’d ask my permission and stick to the scene rules.
I wanted to be used and grovel and beg, but if I could find a way, I wanted to pretend not to want it, so that it would hurt even more. I wanted no to mean harder and yes to mean hurt me, and what did that make me?