Bad Behavior (Bad in Baltimore) (18 page)

“Bad news?” Tai asked as they started down South Streeper. Might as well bring it up since even the dog knew.

“Just news.”

It was almost full dark. Tai decided they’d only do the block. David would have to leave to make his curfew soon enough.

“Your daughter is very cute.”

“She is. Though I guess my mother told you I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

David shrugged. “I think personality plays a lot into a person’s attractiveness. And that is nurture, not nature. She lights up a room because she knows she has a lot of people who love her. That happiness makes her beautiful.”

All the things he told himself, that his mother and Gina had said about him still being part of Sammie’s life, none of it had the impact of David’s words. Sammie was who she was because Tai was there, not because he was her real father.

David went on, “Broken wrists aside, she’s a lucky kid. Three parents. Security to spare.”

“I guess. Though as she gets older, I’m sure she’ll be sick of it. I don’t think Josh and I will ever be ready to consider her old enough to date.”

“She’ll need help from her mom and your mom when she gets there, then.”

For a second, there was a pause in the street noise of cars and stereos and TVs, enough for Tai to hear the tapping of David’s cane. He eased back on the pace. Both Sammie and Jez were energetic walking companions, and Tai had managed to forget about David’s scarred leg.

The moment of quiet was swallowed up by an SUV with a sound system that echoed from pavement to skull. When the echoes died away, David said, “So why do you call your mom Tina if her name is Kara?”

“It means mother in Samoan. She said my father called her
tina la’ititi
—little mother—all the time when she was pregnant with me. And he called me
la’u tama
when I was a baby. He died before I was one, so we use the words to remember him.”

“Not a lot of security.” David’s voice was barely audible over the whine of car brakes from a sudden stop at the corner. They rounded the block.

“No. But mom was awesome. And I had my mom’s dad for a bit, until he died.”

“Your father was from Samoa? Have you ever been there?”

“American Samoa. And no.” After what had happened with Sammie, he understood now why his mom had cut them off from his father’s relatives, could relate to her fears about the pressure of losing him to his father’s huge, tight-knit family. But it still felt like half of his identity was a shadow, waiting to come to light. “Maybe someday.” If he found which of the twelve hundred Tau Fonoti records he’d turned up would lead him to the right family.

“And your mom—”

Tai felt the corner of his lip curl in a smile. He’d take David’s hedging over people’s blunt
what are you
s any day.

“Is black. You can say it. It’s not an insult.”

“No, of course not.”

“If you were curious, why didn’t you ask?”

“Where I grew up, who you’re related to is the most important thing about you. I’ve only ever considered lineage a factor in picking a racehorse.”

“So who are you related to?”

“No one worth mentioning.” David’s voice was flat. They turned back on to South Streeper in silence. “And I thought the conversation in the car was awkward. Who do you think will win the Davis Cup this year?”

“Tennis isn’t really my sport.”

“Damn.” David’s laugh was all air and no joy. “I’ll have you know I actually have a reputation for being good at this.”

“At what?”

“Small talk. Charm. I’ve been known to sweep people off their feet.”

Tai didn’t know why delving into family history—which was apparently painful for both of them—would be considered small talk. But charm? David had that to spare. Thick hair and sun-creased eyes and dimpled chin and an ability to laugh at himself. Not to mention the sweet, yielding submissive under it all. They reached Tai’s door. “There’s plenty you’re damned good at, David.”

Good wasn’t necessarily the word Tai would have chosen to describe things upstairs. Jez grabbed a nylon bone to chew on in her corner under the a/c, but David bounced from hall to living room to kitchen.

“Come here.” Tai sat on the couch and looked back at where David was scrutinizing the cabinet over the stove.

“For?”

“Because I asked you to.”

“Oh. Are we—?” David’s tone shifted from uncertainty to lilting and sly. “What if I don’t?”

Not
what if I don’t want to
, Tai noticed. He’d see how David intended to play this out. “Your curfew is in two hours, and I want to spend some time with my submissive.”

David shrugged and leaned back against the kitchen counter.

Another time, Tai might have enjoyed the challenge or even encouraged it with a teasing response, but after everything that had happened, he’d wanted to lose himself in the way David opened to him, let Tai reach in to take them both out of their heads and back into that space where the connection burned away everything else.

Real resistance is always purposeful. And never convenient.
Nic had had plenty to say on that subject. But for the subs Tai had played with for a few hours, it had only ever been part of the scene, a make-me attitude part of what got them off.

Tai deepened his voice. “David, you will go into the bedroom, take off all your clothes and wait for me.” After a moment of staring David down, Tai turned away, taking out his phone to stare blankly at the home screen.

The air behind him was alive, full, swelling with the pressure of whatever was driving David so hard. The minute Tai had decided to wait ticked by, stretching, growing heavier. Then it crashed as David’s sandal flew to land in Tai’s range of vision, rolling to a stop under the coffee table. Jez jerked up her head. David’s other sandal landed sole down and skated under the couch.

Jez shook her head until her ears flopped then got stiffly to her feet and stalked into the bedroom carrying her bone.

In the silence that followed, Tai heard her settle in her crate.

David’s shorts came next. Balled up, they sailed over Tai’s head to hit the coffee table and tumble off the end. The guy had excellent aim. His shirt landed on Tai’s shoulder, soft, rich with the smell of David’s body. Sweat and sex and the faint rain-sweet echo of his aftershave.

Tai awaited the next move. David took the long way around, to the kitchen end of the sofa and then strolled between the coffee table and the TV, around the side where Tai was sitting. Just as David was past him, Tai stood, snatched a wrist and jerked him back. He was about to flip him over the couch arm and spank the brat out of him when he remembered. He sat back down, dragging David close, pinning him against chest and thighs so he sat on Tai’s lap.

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“You said get naked. I got naked.” David didn’t struggle, but he held himself tense.

“I told you to go into the bedroom first.”

“Same result.”

With one arm keeping David tight and close, Tai grabbed David’s chin, turning his head so their eyes met. “You are being disrespectful and challenging me.”

“Yes.”

At least it was clear David knew what he was doing.

“Tell me why.”

David shrugged as much as Tai’s hold permitted. “What are you going to do about it?” David yanked his chin out of Tai’s grip.

If he knew David better, the punishment would be to deny him the punishment he was so sullenly demanding. But there was something different working here.

An intensity inside him as still and weighted as the eye of a hurricane, breath held for the next explosion. It wasn’t difficult to track where the storm had started. Would the mention of his father drive David deeper inward or shatter the potential for them to get somewhere?

“It sounds like you’re asking me to punish you.”

“You keep talking about it. But you never do anything.”

“And I told you I would decide when. Now I want you to tell me why you are acting like this.”

David gave him a look, eyes half-lidded with boredom, mouth and nose pinched in contempt, as if it was all too difficult for Tai to understand. He dumped David onto the cushion. “Do you have any allergies? Anything your skin reacts to?”

“No.”

Tai went into his closet. Impact was out, but there were other sensations.

He came back and put the empty burlap bag on the seat of his desk chair. David hadn’t moved, except to right himself into a slouch. Pulling a few sheets from the printer, Tai moved his keyboard out of the way and set up paper and pen on the desk. Rather than turn this part into a battle, he tugged David to his feet and led him to the chair.

“You understand you still—”

David cut him off with a sneered, “Have a safe word. I get it.”

“Good. Sit down.” Tai pushed him onto the burlap. “We’ll start with one hundred.”

“One hundred what?”

Tai leaned over, picked up the pen and wrote,
I trust and respect you, Sir.
“One hundred times. The whole sentence at once. Both of your hands stay on the desk.” He took David’s wrists and lifted both onto the desk. “Start now.”

David picked up the pen and moved it slowly through the first repetition. He looked up as if expecting something from Tai, but he only watched until David started the next one. As he wrote, Tai went into the kitchen and found the spray bottle he’d used to get Jez’s attention when he was training her, refilled it from the tap and came back in.

David twisted his head around to look.

“Focus on your work.”

David pressed the pen harder through the third line.

“Spread your legs,” Tai said as he reached for the edge of the rough cloth on the seat. After David complied, Tai tucked the material over David’s balls and dick then sprayed it with water to give it weight enough to stick. David jumped as the first round of drops hit. The cold and clammy part was a bonus. It should encourage him to complete his task in a hurry. And maybe help him think before asking for this again.

Tai sat back on the couch. “Keep going. If you don’t finish before you have to leave, we’ll do this tomorrow. And we’ll start at number one.”

C
hapter Fourteen

B
each traced over the
I
in his next line, carving deeper into the paper. This was stupid. Uncomfortable, childish and stupid. Which was pretty much punishment in a nutshell. Wasn’t that the whole penal system too? You were naughty, you got caught, publicly scolded, and made to suffer in uncomfortable situations with fewer rights than a child.

The penal system that Beach would be extremely familiar with if the DA was able to make the felony charge stick.

Exactly how much fucking help do you think you’ll be able to give me from jail?
his father had said on the phone.
For once, I thought I could depend on you. That you could be the son I needed.

Beach dashed off the rest of the pointless phrase. He should have known from the homework of a checklist that all this D/s stuff was too much like school.

With the addition of a damp,
itchy
diaper. He knew exactly what he’d been doing, poking at Tai. Begging for something to stop the maddening urge to do the first thing Beach could think of that would violate the damned probation. Not that he needed the high from risk or drugs, he needed to know he was still who he’d always been. The life of the party, the man people wanted to be around. Not the complicated problem, a freak who showed up at the emergency room with a light bulb up his ass, the way he saw himself reflected in Gavin’s eyes. Or as incompetent and useless as his father saw him, until the man needed something.

Just call your uncle. Is that too much fucking responsibility for you, David?

He tilted his hips to press his balls harder against the scratchy fibers. If he ground down enough, focused on that unpleasant prickle, maybe he could stop feeling like his skin was on wrong. Tai was supposed to give Beach that. Hold him here. Shove him into a cold shower, force pain and pleasure into him with his hands, his cock, his mouth and his strength.

Even the wadded burlap, with the burn that spread from taint to ass to dick, would have been okay, good even, if he knew it was something for Tai. Beach could deal with the itch that had him squeezing his left hand hard against the desk to keep from digging and shoving the cloth away. Hell, maybe it would turn him on if he knew Tai was paying attention. If he seemed to care.

But he moved around the apartment silently, as if he were alone. Puttering in the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. How long had Beach been staring at the pointless words on the paper?

He threw down the pen.

“Finished?” Tai was immediately at Beach’s shoulder.

“I can’t.”

Tai looked down at him. “You already made your choice when you threw your shoes. You added to it by refusing to explain why. This is what you asked for.”

Unless you ask for it.
“No. It isn’t.” Beach moistened his suddenly dry lips and then said the words in a rush. “I want you to spank me.”

The words hung there long enough for Beach’s lips to dry out. Tai studied him, as if waiting for Beach to take it back with a
just kidding.

When Beach licked his lips again, Tai lifted him out of the chair and the burlap and sat on the couch with Beach standing next to him.

“Get over my lap.”

Beach wasn’t sure how he’d expected it would go down when his brain seized on something that would guarantee Tai couldn’t ignore him. It wasn’t as if Beach had never been spanked. There had been a few bruising encounters with fraternity paddles during hazing, but the alcohol blurred the edges of those memories. Probably more familiar was the occasional swat on the ass during sex. Women had done it from a missionary position, and men from doggy style. He hadn’t minded the sting, the spread of warmth. But this was different from either. First, there was the whole idea of punishment versus sex, emphasized by Tai being dressed and Beach naked. But there was a huge gap between sex slaps and his other understanding of corporal punishment, which involved a peach tree and bending over a back-porch railing.

Staring at the dark green material of Tai’s cargo shorts, Beach tried to will himself to comply with Tai’s demand. This would be much easier if Tai dragged Beach where he was supposed to be. He glanced up at Tai’s face. No anger there, no distance either, his eyes alight with whatever it was that made Beach yearn toward him, want to get back to that place where being open and ready was easy. Not this gut-knotting tangle of fear and frustration.

“You need to show me this is what you want. That you accept what’s going to happen.” When Beach didn’t move, Tai’s deep, dominant voice solved the problem. “Now, David.”

It was more awkward than Beach could have imagined, leaning down and climbing across Tai’s lap. Beach’s junk was in the way until he got it dangling in the space between Tai’s concrete-hard thighs. Beach’s feet stayed on the floor, his torso and sweaty hands stretched across the seat cushions, pulse loud as the bass of a club speaker in his ears, heart so high and swollen in his chest he was surprised he could still breathe.

“What about sound? Neighbors?” he had to ask.

Over Beach’s shoulder, the television buzzed to life. A few clicks and it landed on something with a laugh track rolling every few seconds.

Beach strained to hear the dialogue, to figure out what it was, but the blood in his ears was too loud. No matter how he tried to distract himself, all of his senses kept focusing on his ass. On the way Tai had raised his knee so that Beach’s ass was tilted up higher for whatever Tai was about to do.

Spank him.
Get your head around that, Beach. He’s going to hit you. And you asked him to do it.

Hyperawareness warned him, a shift in air currents across his ass had him tensing, but all Tai did was place a warm palm on Beach’s cheeks and start rubbing. The massage went down under the curve that met his thighs, fingers dipping lightly into the crack, and Beach’s dick woke up to notice the friction of a fold in the cotton of Tai’s shorts.

“Do you feel secure?”

For an instant Beach had thought Tai was going to ask if he was comfortable, and a nervous laugh blew past his lips. Comfortable, no. Secure? Tai’s non-ass-massaging hand held Beach tight at the waist, close to Tai’s hips. He didn’t feel like he was going to fall, so he guessed secure was the right answer.

“Yes.”

A smack landed hard and sharp, the imprint of Tai’s hand written in sizzling nerve endings. “Yes what?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Tai’s hand rubbed the site of impact, turning the burn pleasant.

But that wasn’t what Beach was here for, though he could see what Eli had been talking about. Under the right circumstances it wouldn’t be a bad warm-up for sex. The way Tai’s hand spread out the sensation made Beach’s dick strain for more friction.

But as his body started to shift into arousal, shame coiled around his guts. What was wrong with him that something that scared him as much as this did made him want to get off? And sex, even as amazing as it was with Tai, wasn’t going to be enough to fix this crazy urge rising in his chest. The need to tear free of everything holding him here.

“So is this foreplay or punishment? Sir.”

The sound from Tai might have been a laugh or a growl. Beach felt the vibration more than heard it. Then Tai’s grip tightened around Beach’s waist, and it started.

No rhythm or pattern, only the slam of Tai’s palm into Beach’s ass. Some slaps stung, some thudded, and always more. Heat spreading into his skin, aching deep underneath.

It hurt, but not in a way Beach couldn’t handle. Every so often Tai would nail the same spot three or four times with enough force to make Beach wince, but right when Beach felt like he had to jerk away from it, Tai would leave that spot alone. All the tension in Beach’s stomach melted. This was nothing like slices of skin being stripped away by the switch, his silent, disgusted uncle behind him. It was Tai. His strength everywhere, pushing the sensation Beach craved into him while keeping him safe and anchored.

Much better than the stupid burlap diaper and the dull repetition of words on a page.

“Good,” Tai murmured, barely audible over the background noise of one-liners and laugh tracks. He pressed his forearm against the small of Beach’s back. “That’s it.”

Beach let the pressure tip his hips, his ass lifting toward Tai’s hand.

“Yes,” Tai encouraged, landing a few smacks near the tops of Beach’s thighs, a new kind of sting, but also one that made his dick fill.

Tai stopped spanking and rubbed. It made the burn and sting spread out, the flesh absorbing the pain until it didn’t hurt anymore, leaving a tingle like arousal over tight, hot skin. Beach would love to get fucked now, transfer that ache into the scrape and stretch of Tai’s dick driving in, his hips smacking into Beach’s ass. He wouldn’t even mind a few more cracks of Tai’s hand to keep the warmth lasting longer.

“That’s the warm-up, David.”

Beach had gotten lost in a fantasy of being fucked and smacked until he came, so Tai’s words didn’t make a lot of sense.
Huh
didn’t seem to be the right answer, so he went with something safer. “Yes, Sir.”

“What are you being punished for?”

“Throwing my shoes and clothes?”

“We’ll start there. One minute.” Tai handed his phone to Beach with the timer function set to a minute. “Press
start
when you’re ready.”

All of the tension and dread came rushing back as Beach stared at the screen with the 1:00 blinking back at him. He didn’t want to press
start
. He was pretty sure he wanted to press
end
.

“Do you have something to add?” Tai said.

Beach had known he was asking for punishment when he kicked his sandal into the living room. And he’d very specifically asked to be spanked. He’d said he liked having his choices taken away. Tai had given him all that. There wasn’t anything to say.

“No, Sir.” Beach pressed
start
.

Tai spanked. His hand thudded on Beach’s already sensitive skin, like boiling water on a sunburn. At least he thought it was Tai’s hand. It was hard enough, dense enough to be a canoe paddle, but Beach hadn’t seen him get a weapon. His breath rushed out of his lungs, eyes squeezing shut at the explosion of pain from the solid, rapid slaps. He sucked in a breath and opened his eyes. Fifty seconds left. Fifty? He couldn’t lie here and take this for fifty more seconds.

He didn’t make a conscious decision about it. His body did. One hand reached back to protect his ass while his hips tried to flop him out of the way of the blows that kept ratcheting the pain higher and higher. Tai caught Beach’s hand and pinned it to his back, and all the flopping did was get the swats to land on the more sensitive sides of his hips where there was no cushioning. And there were still thirty seconds to go.

“I can’t.” His voice sounded like he’d run up twenty stories.

Tai kept Beach’s hand clamped against his back but shifted them so that Beach was folded over one leg, the other trapping him in place, and all the time that heavy hand kept crashing into his skin. Tai attacked the spot at the crease of Beach’s thighs now. Hard and steady, the same spot until his eyes watered and his teeth ground together.

“Please,” he hissed out, but he might as well have been begging the seconds to suddenly tick by because Tai didn’t stop, didn’t ease up. Fifteen. How could there still be time left?

The smacks came and the pain built and his breath rasped against his ears. When the alarm buzzed, Beach yelled, “Time,” but Tai was already rubbing, much more gently now.

“Okay. It’s okay.” Tai kept repeating it, but it was almost impossible to hear over the force of Beach’s breathing. The hand on his back was free, but he was too tired to move it.

Tai’s hand slid down Beach’s back, making him aware of how slick with sweat he was. “How are you?”

His ass was hot and swollen, and his throat ached from panting so hard. But the pain that had been impossible to think of enduring for another second was gone. “I’ll live. Sir.”

Tai chuckled, fingers tickling across Beach’s ass. His dick had gone soft, but the teasing touch made blood throb at the base again.

“Why were you spanked, David?”

Beach remembered the shower. How he didn’t get out until he found the right answer. “For challenging you, Sir.”

“Good.” Tai took his phone back. “There’s another behavior we have to address. Your disrespect.”

“I take it back. I’m sorry, Sir.” It wasn’t only to avoid what he already knew was coming. He was sorry. Sorry that he’d been so absorbed in his bad mood that he’d been rude.

“Thank you, David.” Tai’s finger stroked through Beach’s hair. But when Tai handed back the phone, there was another minute on the timer.

“I don’t think I can take it.” A tremble vibrated through Beach’s body. He knew the pain didn’t last long, as bad as it seemed while it was going on. It was hardly unbearable torture. Most days, his leg hurt worse than his ass did now.

“You don’t have a choice.”

But in the way back of his mind he knew he did. One simple word would stop it. Everything about what Tai was going to do right now was Beach’s choice.

“I’ll hold your hands for you again,” Tai said, “but I need you to press the
start
to show me you accept this.”

Beach nodded and tapped the screen. The pain was different this time. Sharp stings, like Tai was finding new nerve endings to send the screaming message to Beach’s brain to make it stop. Like it had last time, his hand obeyed the instinct and shot back, and Tai caught it.

Fifty-five seconds left and already Beach’s eyes were watering. What the hell had he been thinking? It was much worse. He was insane. His body went into a full-on rebellion, bucking and shifting away from the relentless smack of Tai’s hand.

Red.
That one single word grew huge at the back of his brain. All the promise in it. No more pain. Get out of jail free. Skip over the consequences.

Tai adjusted his grip, taking away even an ability to squirm, and then his hand fell on Beach’s ass with enough force that everything up to now had been a love tap. Beach couldn’t think. Couldn’t watch the timer. Couldn’t do anything but feel pain bursting again and again on his skin. His body tensed like he was heading into an orgasm and then he collapsed onto Tai and just took it.