Selfie (38 page)

“Aw
man
!”

The
crack
of his hand on my ass was enough to make me clench, and that was good. He grabbed the little paddle, just a strip of leather on a stick, really, and I had hopes. It would hurt. The pain would ground me, the pain would make me come.

The first swat stung, and I hummed deliriously. Oh
yes
! The second and the third came in quick succession, and I wiggled my ass in the air, hoping for more.

He denied me, soothing the hurt with his hand and then his tongue, and the tenderness undid me, made me groan when the pain had not.

“Noah!” I complained, and he ignored me. “Sir . . .”

He reached in front of me and brushed my cock so lightly with his hand that it almost hurt.

“What?” he said, tracing a finger over my warmed back, making a design in the tiny patterns.

“You’re teasing me,” I told him breathily.

My reward was a smack with the paddle, a tiny sting, and then another, and another, across my ass, my upper thighs, my backside, and one tiny one, flicking my balls.

“
Yes
!” I groaned, rutting against the comforter. “God, yes, please, keep . . . please . . .”

Then he stopped, the edge of the paddle dancing slowly on my stinging ass.

“
Noah
!”

“What?”

Oh my God, everything ached with need—my cock, my balls, my clenching asshole, trying so hard to hold on to something that wasn’t there.

“I
need
!” I almost sobbed. My ass and back stung, but the sting was fading. “I . . . I need—”

“What do you need?” he asked, leaning forward and grinding his outsized cock against my stinging bottom. “Because I’m not giving you any more pain.”

I almost sobbed. Something . . . “Oh God, something. Please, Noah . . . something . . .”

“What do you want, Connor?” he whispered, hand going down to tease my testicles again, to stroke my bound cock slowly, with steady pressure. “What do you want?”

No pain? What did I want without— Oh, oh, oh, oh! He’d just squeezed my cockhead and my world almost detonated. It was swollen to the point of pain, but I didn’t want the pain, not there, not even in my asshole. That’s not how this had started—that’s
never
where sex started. It had
never
been about the pain.

I started to weep, suddenly understanding the emptiness that had driven me this last week. “Please, Noah,” I begged. “I need to come.”

“Yeah, baby,” he whispered, covering my tingling back and ass with his body. “Yeah.”

His fingers fumbled with the snap on the cock ring, but the plug came out with almost no tugging at all. In a heartbeat, really, he was sheathed inside of me and thrusting, hard and evenly, his body stretching me, not to the point of pain but just past pleasure, and still he thrust, fucking me strong, and sure.

I moaned into the bed, weeping with relief. Blood surged through my cock, and he had me push up so he could reach my hands. He undid the knot at my wrists with a quick jerk.

“Touch yourself,” he told me. “Make it happen, Con. It doesn’t need to hurt.”

My hand on my own body was blissfully gentle, then a little rougher but still—it was all the pleasure, all the sex, and I squeezed and jerked and moaned. My back and ass were suffused with warmth, not stinging, mostly tingling, and Noah’s hands on my hips felt solid and warm and real. And still he thrust evenly, and I begged some more.

“Please, sir, harder!”

Noah threw his hips forward, and he slapped right up against my bruised ass. Once, twice, a third time, as hard as he could, and I screamed, the orgasm rolling up through my body, crashing through my blood, rinsing me clean of all the bullshit that had cluttered my head when Noah had sent me up here. I spewed semen on the comforter and cried with the beautiful, blissful release of climax, and the terrible purge of all the garbage in my brain that had held it back.

Behind me, Noah let out a roar and pistoned into my clenching asshole one final time. I felt him, hot and liquid, shooting inside me, and the thought made me tremble.

Inside me. Filling me up when I was empty. It was all I wanted.

And still I wept, the relief, the blessed, blessed relief of pleasure without pain.

I drifted there for quite a bit.

I was vaguely aware of Noah, murmuring sweet things into my ears, kissing my reddened shoulders softly, telling me I was beautiful, and he would take care of me.

Lovely things, if only I’d believe.

He left and came back with a soft cloth. He didn’t wash me
too
thoroughly, but he did mop up the comforter. Then he pulled the covers down and let me slide into bed.

He slid in next to me and held me for a long time while I flirted with an afternoon nap and came back.

“You okay?” he asked finally.

“Yeah,” I said, still in the vestiges of subspace.

“You know what I was trying to tell you, right?”

I nodded, too clean and empty for tears.

“It’s not about the pain,” I said, this lesson working hard to set itself in my heart. “You and me, we don’t have to hurt.”

“God,” he said, his voice rough. “I thought you’d never get it.”

“I’m only a little stupid,” I said.

“Not stupid,” he murmured. “Not at all.”

He was quiet, but it was the kind of quiet where I could hear his gears turning.

“What?” I asked.

“I just wanted . . . You are so used to . . .” His voice cracked. “Look, I’ve got to say something.”

“I’m in a perfect mood to hear it,” I mumbled, half laughing. Nothing was gonna hurt me here.

“Baby, I know you’re still mad at him, but the more I get to know you . . .”

“What?” I couldn’t be that bad, could I?

“You . . . you are
terrifyingly
ready to be somebody’s sub. I mean, I’m glad you’re mine, but there are some unscrupulous motherfuckers out there, and they would not care for you the way I do. Or the way Vinnie did. He may have had a lot of flaws, and he may not have given you
this
, but I’m just . . .” He wiped his face on my back, and the dampness on his cheeks stung. “I’m so grateful, Connor. He took care of you. You guys were kids, and I know you were the grown-up most of the time, but he didn’t let anything bad happen to you, and it could have. I’m so glad you had each other. I’m just so damned glad.”

My tears were like his—not sobs, and not violent. Just a gentle extension of the cleansing of orgasm.

“Me too,” I said, and for the first time in forever, it was true. I was so glad I’d had Vinnie. So glad we’d been there for each other. Yeah, there’d been problems. But so much of it had been good.

My tears stopped, and I drifted some more, until Noah, bless him, gave me some direction.

“Here. Let’s nap, and when we wake up, we can fix dinner, okay? We’ve got all day tomorrow—you up for a bike ride?”

The clean, cool air on my face? My body pitched to hold the bike steady and maybe screaming down a hill?

“Yes,” I said, holding his arm at my waist. “Yes.”

Thank you, Noah. Thank you.

I was surprised that he didn’t answer in my head, and I had to make myself say it out loud.

“Thank you, Noah.”

“I love you, Con.”

“You too,” I mumbled.

I’ll say it someday. I promise.

But that, I didn’t say out loud.

The
Vogue
people came, and the evisceration for the interview was uncomfortable at best. This interviewer asked, “If you and Vinnie
weren’t
an item, where were you finding your ‘companionship’ over the last ten years?”

To which I replied, “So, if I was straight, it was okay to be a one-night-stand bachelor, but since I’m gay, we’re going to make that a thing?”

The reporter’s smile never wavered, and the interview went on.

So yeah—at its worst, it was as invasive as an anal probe to check my tonsils.

But I did it with a smile, and I posed for the excruciatingly framed outdoor shots in clothes that I suspected were actively trying to geld me.

By the time they were done, and I’d showered off the makeup and the invasive emotional procedure, Noah had to force me downstairs to eat.

And then he’d forced me upstairs and ordered me to suck his cock, because I’d wandered off midbite of leftover noodles and started wondering about the island again. I couldn’t put into words what that island meant to me, how badly I wanted to swim to it—not boat, mind you, swim, like some sort of primal rite of passage.

The fact that Noah was right, and the odds of me making it there alive were practically nonexistent, only made my yearning stronger.

That week as we finished shooting the first part of the season, before we left for Comic-Con, the only two things that got me up in the morning were my curiosity about the island and Noah’s hands on my skin.

Noah was getting increasingly frantic.

“
Con
!” he snapped one morning when I wandered off in the middle of a conversation about what to pack. “Damn it. Where the fuck did you go
before
you went to that
fucking
island?”

I looked back at him in surprise.
That
was a really good question. How
had
I spent the previous year?

Oddly enough, I couldn’t remember what I’d
done
, really—but I remembered what Jilly
said
I’d done. And I tried not to confess that at first.

“I watched a
lot
of old movies,” I said, because
duh
, “most of them Vinnie’s,” because also
duh
, “and shotgunned a fuck-ton of old Netflix stuff.”

“Besides that,” he said suspiciously.

I caved, because it was
Noah
, and he saw me naked, bound, and screaming for his cock and cum almost every night. He only got the raw, unfiltered Connor Mazynsky, and the last three weeks in his bed had made that more than habit—it was now reflex.

“I watched my video file,” I confessed. “The one with all the unedited pictures in it.”

Noah looked at me distrustfully. “The what?”

Well, he had a right to be skeptical. I hadn’t watched it once since I’d arrived here. At first it was a conscious act; I was moving on, and I had to not be lost in the past—the
magical video perfected
past, actually—so I hadn’t even opened the computer.

And then I’d been busy, and then I’d been . . . well, with Noah.

I couldn’t look at that past with Vinnie when Noah was in the house.

Vinnie, I can’t be unfaithful to you.

Wasn’t
my
cock in your ass last night.

Vinnie! You said I could move on!

Yeah—weird how I keep waffling about that. Maybe you should rely on your own judgment, Con, ya think?

“I haven’t opened it since I got here,” I told him, and Noah frowned, like this was shameful.

“I don’t expect you to stop loving him just because we’re together,” he said frankly.

I got up and left the room.

Noah found me on the back patio, looking across the sound.

He slid behind me and pulled me against him, and I went liquid, lolling my head back against his shoulder.

“I can’t—”

Hey, Connor!

What?

Guess what day it’s gonna be?

Shut up.

“You can,” Noah said, but his voice sounded thready and fragile. “You can deal with this, Connor. You have to.”

C’mon, guess!

Not now, Vinnie!

“Not now. We’re leaving in two days, and you know where we’re staying?”

“In your house.”

“We’re staying next to Vinnie’s house,” I corrected, because that seemed important. Really important.

“So,” he said after a moment, “tell me how that worked.”

“How what worked?”

“You and Vinnie, in the two houses.”

I thought about it. “Well, I cooked. If we had company and we had to sleep apart, Vinnie would always be in my house in the morning for oatmeal and fruit. And once he showed up I’d shower, and we’d meet over breakfast and decide what to do. Between shoots, of course, you know, so it was like . . . like three or four months out of the year we’d do this. Sometimes we’d do publicity stuff, or meet with people who had to be seen or whatever. See movies, go to parties, go shopping. I mean, I guess all our time together was essentially vacation time, you know? Jet skiing, surfing—we’d go on trips together, which was great, because we could get a suite.”

Noah grunted. “Okay—so, you’d spend most of your time at your house when you weren’t out and about?”

I shook my head. “No—meals, because I’d cook—but, see, all the stuff we bought together, you know, as a couple? That went into Vinnie’s house. Because it all went together, right? So my house is all white curtains and hardwood floors and matching towels and stuff. I had the home gym and the big-screen television and the conversation pit. Vinnie had the piano with feet and the comic book prints, and we painted his walls all different colors. He had the area rug with Harry Potter on it and the matching throw that said Hairy Otter. The Precious Moments figurines that looked like us. The turquoise couch and club chair—that sort of thing. If we had parties, we had them at his house because, you know—”