Bound by Lies (33 page)

“No,” Brayden protests.

“Liar.”

“It’s… aerodynamic….”

“Fuck your aerodynamic,” Jenner grins. “Your ass belongs to me now. I control who gets to see it. Not you. You can swim, but only when I’m in the building, so that if anyone acts
inappropriately
….” Teasing the tip of his index finger back over Brayden’s sac to his hole, Jenner rubs in circles around it until Brayden tries to spread for him. “I can deal with that myself. Agreed?”

“Mm-hmm,” Brayden grunts, his voice lilting. “A-a-agreed. Sir.”

“Slut,” Jenner whispers.

“Fuck me,” Brayden pleads, made wanton by the pain, blindfold and bondage.

“No.”

“
Please
.”

“
No
. One more thing.” All over the caramel-colored expanse of Brayden’s chest and around his pinkish-brown, hardened nipples is a light dusting of golden chest hair. Jenner scratches through it, leaving pink lines in the wake of his short nails. He tries to pull at it, but it’s too short to get hold of. “Who waxes you?”

“Shit,” Brayden groans, focusing on the play of Jenner’s fingers on the hair beside his nipples. His chest rises and falls more quickly. “Me. Or someone at a salon a few miles from here. I guess you don’t approve.”

“What do you think?”

“Goddamn, you’re a control freak.”

“You say that like you’re surprised. Or disappointed. You’re
mine
, slave. That’s true whether you’re actively spreading for me or not.” Catching Brayden by surprise, Jenner yanks away the blindfold, letting it fall to the floor. “Look at me and tell me that you wouldn’t get off on having me pour hot wax all over your body. I’ve noticed you wax everywhere. Chest to ankle. Arms. Legs. Groin. You like to be slippery as a fish. I’ll let you choose. Au natural or you can lay there, princess, and let me do you.
Look at me
.”

There’s real embarrassment in the tightness of Brayden’s expression. He refuses to look at Jenner, so Jenner hooks a finger under Brayden’s chin and lets his silence speak of his determination for obedience. With a slight roll of his shining, wet eyes, Brayden reluctantly gazes up at his Master.

“Is it just for swimming?” Jenner asks softly.

“No, Sir,” Brayden confesses so quietly Jenner has to strain to hear.

“Louder, slave.”

“No, Sir,” Brayden repeats more forcefully, but now with defiance like he’s waiting for Jenner to be cruel, like they’re just teenagers at opposite ends of the popularity spectrum. Part of Brayden will always see him like that, Jenner realizes. No matter how old they get. His gaze darts to the side as he blinks tears away.

“This isn’t something to be ashamed of,” Jenner tells him.

Brayden turns his head sharply away from Jenner.

“Talk to me.”

“There isn’t much that I’m not ashamed of, and you know it. Hearing you call me on it…” Brayden shakes his head, closes his eyes and seems to recede back into his own head. Just by paying attention to small cues like the furrows in Brayden’s brow, the delicate crinkle of his eyes as he squeezes them shut, the pace of his breathing, Jenner can tell Brayden is going to a dark, bad place.

“Brayden…” Jenner beckons, trying to coax Brayden back to the light.

“Don’t you know how hard it is to hear you call me on all of this stuff? How you make me feel, all the time? I’m not strong. I’ve
never
been strong, but I still have to pretend like I am, for my family, for my job, for everyone who thinks that they know me and doesn’t. But you… Ever since you’ve done this to me… made me weak… made me want to be nothing but yours… It’s so much harder to pretend and it’s not fair. It’s easy for you to point out all of the ways I’m screwing up, isn’t it? Because no one’s pointing out things about you that you don’t want them seeing or talking about, are they? You’re still the one who automatically gets respect, without trying. But you’re ashamed too,” Brayden accuses. “Scared of your family finding out you’re queer, of everyone in town knowing. They’d look at you and know what you do with me. They’d
talk
, the way they already talk about
me.
You try to hide it, but all of that fear doesn’t go away even if you try to act like this is about me, like I’m the only one who needs to admit they’ve been wrong. I know I’m a freak. I’ve
always
been a freak. Well, surprise, Jenny,
you’re
a freak too. At least I only hurt
myself
instead of the people I
love
.”

Jenner sneers then stifles it, knowing what this is, that it’s Brayden pushing back. After all of the rules, all of the changes in his life, and finally, after Jenner’s test of Brayden’s loyalty, daring him to think Jenner cruel and heartless, to leave and give up on them, Brayden is fighting back. He’s shackled to a table and baiting his Master’s anger, daring him to unleash it.

“Come on!” Brayden shouts angrily, curling forward a little, as much as the bonds will allow as he eggs Jenner on. “Come on! Do it!
Do it
!”

Grabbing Brayden by the balls, pulling on them hard enough to make him chase up off the table to relieve the strain, Jenner tugs sharply then squeezes. Brayden’s nostrils flare and he shudders with pain. With his other hand, Jenner begins to stroke Brayden’s cock. It causes Brayden to whine back in his throat. But then he barks, “MORE!”

“You want more?”

Jenner steadies Brayden’s cock and the feather, making sure the wand is fully embedded, and begins to pump his penis, hard and fast. Brayden lets out a ragged yell that sharpens quickly. He tenses from head to toe, trying to shake Jenner off, but Jenner doesn’t let go or stop.

“No. FUCK. Oh god...”

Softly, calmly, with all of the deep-seated regret from seeing others in pain and saying nothing for so long, Jenner finds his voice and says, “I know who you are. I know how this feels. I know that you’re scared. I know that you trust me. I know that you love me. I know it hurts. I know it’s a lot. But despite the fact that so many people have failed you,
I will not fail you
. I’m not going anywhere, Bray, and I’ll say it as many times as you need to hear it. I’m yours.”

Brayden convulses violently, his eyes rolling up. With a whimper he thrusts hard against Jenner’s hand. Swiftly, Jenner pulls the feather completely out and it’s chased by a thick milky jet of spunk as Brayden comes with a cry of excruciating bliss.

A tear falls from each of Brayden’s eyes, squeezed from the corners as he stares up at the bright light and ceiling rather than look at Jenner. Vocalizing the torment of sensation until he has no air left in his lungs, he’s strung tight as a bow until Jenner swallows him down, sucking Brayden to the root.

A fresh yell wrenches free. Brayden’s hips twitch up into the soft, hot, gripping, wet suction of Jenner’s mouth but Jenner pulls off only to wriggle the point of his tongue into the stretched opening in Brayden’s dick. Brayden moans hard. His skin beats with the rhythm of his pulse as it pumps out every drop left in him and Jenner licks it away. Flushed and tensed from his fingertips all the way down to his toes, Brayden’s body sings as he battles through the orgasm. It’s there in the quivering clench of his stomach, buttocks and thighs. Jenner’s tongue wraps him, his cheeks hollowed out. After a few more deep pulls, Jenner sucks the sense from Brayden’s mind.

The cuffs are opened, but Brayden doesn’t know what to say and can’t move. He’s stiff and boneless at the same time. If he had more energy, he might have protested when Jenner scoops him up in his arms and carries him from the table back into the bedroom, laying him out on the bed. There, the blood is rubbed back into Brayden’s lower legs, arms and hands. When he’s comfortable, Jenner wipes him down and dries him off.

“Rest for a while,” Jenner tells him. Brayden realizes that Jenner is intentionally ignoring the demands of his own body, refusing himself the release he seeks probably as some sort of penance after putting his lover through so much.

“Yeah, okay,” Brayden says, curling up to a seated position then sliding from the bed to his knees in front of Jenner.

“Bray…” Jenner sighs wearily.

Stubbornness gazes up from the depths of Brayden’s deceptively sweet eyes as he laces his hands behind his head, pressed against his long, golden brown hair. Glistening with a post-coital flush under his warm bronzed skin, naked, willing, he licks his lips wet and opens them in a wide O. Tongue pushed forward, Brayden gazes up readily at Jenner, giving permission.

He doesn’t have to wait long. With a hard grunt, Jenner pulls out his cock and feeds it into Brayden’s mouth. At first, Brayden struggles to take it, but when Jenner grasps the sides of Brayden’s head under the jaw, and begins to move himself in and out, it gets easier.

Brayden lets Jenner lead and take what he needs, while doing his best to make it feel good. It thrills him to give Jenner such pleasure, after being so overwhelmed by the decadent freedom Brayden experienced on that table. To have Jenner so intimately, to give over to him so completely—it’s incredible. Wishing he had more experience to work from, Brayden tries to anticipate what he thinks Jenner would like, trying not to gag when the thrusts get harder and deeper. Tears stream freely from his eyes, nose and lips. Jenner stares down at him, visually groping his conquest.

With a gasp and a grunt Jenner unloads, holding Brayden still as he startles, his brow furrowing as he struggles to swallow the huge load of come dripping down his throat.

“Come on, that’s it,” Jenner coaxes, caressing Brayden’s cheek and the side of his neck as it works around his girth. “Good. So good….”

Once spent, Jenner pulls back, watching Brayden suckle just the head. He falls from between Brayden’s lips, just before Brayden moves to hide his face against Jenner’s thigh.

“I love you,” Brayden rasps hoarsely, grateful for everything Jenner has given him—pleasure beyond his wildest dreams, safety and understanding. Their bond has been strengthened by the fact that Brayden said such things to Jenner, trying to provoke him, wanting Jenner to hurt him with either pain or abandonment, but Jenner didn’t rise to the bait and stayed steadfast in his devoted care. Never before has Brayden been able to be so completely, brutally honest, to purge the dark thoughts simmering in his head and be subsequently accepted, darkness and all. He feels that he owes Jenner so much for that gift alone.

Jenner clutches Brayden to him, then falls to his knees as well and closes him up in a close hug. “Love you,” Jenner whispers back. “So much.”

Brayden’s hands grip Jenner’s back with trepidation and trust.

“Everything’s gonna be okay. You’ll see.” Jenner’s strong hand cups the back of his lover’s head as he breathes Brayden’s scent into his lungs. It makes Brayden feel wanted, like he’s perfect just the way he is. And that’s amazing.

“Okay,” Brayden nods, choosing to believe it, as impossible as it may seem.

The couch thrums with the noise seeping up through the floor. Slouching back into the cushions, flicking aimlessly through the channels on the TV, Brayden keeps shooting glances at the phone on the table he’s so recently been shackled to, waiting for it to ring. Jenner has already called once since going downstairs twenty minutes ago, trying to talk Brayden out of staying up to meet Enrique and go to sleep instead.

It hadn’t worked. Brayden craves some contact with his old life and the people in it, as well as the person he had grown to be before everything changed on him. It’s inconsequential that he’s exhausted, sore and not feeling very sociable. Enrique had wanted to meet at a bar or cafe, but Jenner forbade it, and Brayden wasn’t up to travel anyway.

There’s a knock on the door and, without getting up, Brayden shouts, “Come in!”

“B-man, you in here?” Enrique calls, peeking inside the apartment and looking around. It’s still mostly empty, sparse with only a few pieces of furniture and no decorations.

“Yeah, over here, dude.”

Brayden stands, grimacing at the stretch and movement. He has to stop himself with effort from cupping his crotch. He’s wearing a soft, worn pair of light grey sweatpants and a white cotton shirt. Hair stringy wet from being washed, it falls around his shoulders, dampening them.

“Did I wake you?” Enrique smiles with a confused tilt of his eyebrow.

“Nah, man. Just trying to be comfortable. Have a seat. There’s beer in the fridge if you want it. Please, help yourself.” Hooking a finger around the opened bottle he has in front of him, Brayden takes a swig and settles back down into his spot on the couch with a small groan. “Sorry about blowing you off before. It’s been a little crazy around here.”

“No worries,” Enrique says, hesitantly going over to the fridge. Brayden urges him on with a raise of his eyebrows, gesturing to the kitchen. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, go on. Apologies for not being a better host and all of that.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just a little um… banged up. Been a rough day.”

“Oh yeah? You wanna talk about it, or…?”

Brayden dismisses the offer with a wave of his hand, pushing his wet hair back from his face with a slightly nervous gesture. After finding a beer and popping the cap off, Enrique joins him on the couch.