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“It’s different with the bikers,” Genie told them. “If you fuck up and need to be punished, you have the option of walking out at any time. You’d never be able to come back, but you can leave, rather than be punished. They tell you what’s about to happen, and you either submit to it or walk out. Even once it’s started, you can safeword and stop it. You’d still have to leave and not be welcome back, but you could stop it.”

“Not entirely true,” Dev said. “If you do something minor, like refusing to give a blow job, that option is available, but if you found out one of their secrets and went to the cops, you’d feel their wrath without an exit option. Depending on what you knew, it could mean a painful death and not merely a disfiguring punishment you’d live with for the rest of your life.”

“What bikers?” Ezra asked.

Dev let Genie explain her deal with the bikers to him, along with why she’d made the original oath to them in Chattanooga. Dev already knew everything she told him, and yet, her tone of voice told him she didn’t feel as if she needed them any longer. Whether she knew it or not, she was no longer thinking of walking away because of Brooke’s actions earlier in the evening.

But Dev was smart enough to let Genie figure that out on her own.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Elijah had no idea how long it had taken to write all the damned lines to whoever was looking them over’s satisfaction, buteverythinghurt — his balls, his knees, his asshole, the tops of his feet, his hand, his back, his neck. Even his eyes hurt from having to look at the damned blue ink on the white motherfucking paper. And it wasn’t just that his asshole hurt from the burn of the oils and the stretch of the way it was held open, but the damned thing was fucking heavy, so even the muscles of his insides were tired from being forced to hold all that weight inside.

And with the bloody motherfucking bracelets on his wrists, there was no way for him tochangeand heal.

He had to admit, making him decide between writingcoterieorsocietyhad been fucking genius, though, because he’d writtencoterieat first, but then changed his mind and wrotesocietya while, gone back tocoterieafter he changed his mind that he didn’t want that much freedom, and then changed his mind yet again because he wanted out from under the people who could make him write motherfucking damned lines in a humbler, with rice on the shitty concrete floor.

When all the pagesfinallypassed muster, Dev was the one who removed the plug, released the lock on the humbler, and oh-so-gently opened it. He lifted Elijah from his kneeling position, strong arms cradling him against the larger man’s chest. Elijah hurt so bad, he didn’t protest being carried through the lowest level, onto an elevator, and finally into Dev’s suite, where a bath was waiting for him. Rice fell off his knees as Dev walked withhim, and it occurred to Elijah that past punishments had ended with he and his brother cleaning up the mess made by punishing them, with no one there to carry them away from the pain and humiliation.

He very nearly cried when he was gently placed into the warm water, Genie already there, naked, waiting to hold him in the safety of her arms.

“I am beyond mad at you for even thinking of killing that raccoon,” she told him, her hands on him gentle despite the heat in her words. “But Dev and Ezra have told me you’ve been punished and I shouldn’t add to it. I still want to know why you were going to kill him. How would you feel if you allowed someone the use of your room, and you returned to find out they’d killed and eaten Ferocious?”

The kitten was on the vanity, as far from the water as he could get and still see his humans.

“The raccoon is a pet?”

“Why else would a raccoon be alive in a giant honey badger’s domain?” Genie asked.

“I hadn’t thought of it.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” his brother told him, walking into the room with only a robe on. He sat on the side of the tub and put his hand in the water. “You’re my brother and part of my soul. I’ll always love you and I’ll always be here for you, but I’m done with accepting punishments because you can’t see ten feet in front of your face.”

Genie’s hands on him were soft, which helped, but Ezra was really angry with him, and his brother had never been angry with him in front of others. Dev had put him in the tub and left, though, so at least he wasn’t witnessing it.

“Do you want to brush the rice away, or do you want me to?” Genie asked. “I’ve had to kneel on rice before, but never for over six hours. I can’t imagine how badly it hurts.”

“Dev made you kneel on rice?” Elijah asked Genie.

“Oh, no. Another boyfriend, years ago. He tried to stretch our agreement, so he had control over me outside of scenes. Ten minutes in, I realized what he was doing, and I safeworded, stood, put my clothes on, left, and never saw him again. We’d only been seeing each other a few weeks, and if he was already trying to push for more than I was willing to agree to, it was a huge red flag.”

No one said anything, so she explained a little more. “We talked on the phone a few times, where I explained to him, again, that I’m only sexually submissive, and he hadn’t had the right to punish me for smarting off to him outside of a scene. Somehow, though, he’d made me forget that. Probably because it was the next morning and I was already naked? I don’t know how he did it. Maybe it was because I hadn’t had coffee yet.”

“My guess,” Dev said, returning to them without his clothes on, “is if he’d spanked you and turned it into a hot scene, you’d have overlooked it, but he made it a true punishment, and you came to your senses because it clearly wasn’t part of a scene at that point.”

“You’re right,” Genie told Dev as she watched him step into the tub and lower himself into the water.

Dev lifted Elijah’s feet, sat where they’d been, and settled Elijah’s feet into his own lap before Elijah could jerk them away. “If you want that kind of autonomy,” Dev told him, “so you’re only submissive in scenes, then you’re going to have to make better decisions, little cat.”

Littlecat? Elijah was a mighty mountain lion! He wasn’t a little cat, like his precious little Ferocious.

But it was Elijah’s inner cat who pointed out that, to Dev’s snake, they were little, because the snake could eat the catandthe human whole without thinking twice about it. The cook hadtold them about the time he’d seen Dev’s snake eat a buffalo whole after constricting it until it was dead.

“The water should’ve gotten under the rice enough, it shouldn’t hurt so bad to brush it away now,” Dev told him. “Your choice of whether you want to do it yourself, or let me or Genie do it.”

Elijah shook his head, leaned forward, and went to work removing each piece, one at a time. Brushing it away was too painful, but he could get the edge of his thumbnail under the pieces and kind of pop them off.

Ezra got into the tub and squeezed in beside him, so Elijah was between his brother and Genie, and the three of them were facing Dev.