Page 9 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 9-12 (The Residency Boys #8)

Bare feet on the floor, Damian went to Richard.

Heavy leather cuffs went around Damian’s wrists.

Richard fed the grip bar into Damian’s hand, giving him something to hold.

They’d learned years ago that Damian did better during long sessions if he had something to pull against other than his wrists.

The cuffs and the bar together clipped above Damian’s head to the beams of the cross, one wrist to either side, spreading Damian in an upright X facing the wall, his back to Richard.

Damian braced his feet, spreading them apart.

The large hands of his dom passed over his skin, checking him for injury, sore muscles, and bruises. He found a few, pausing over Damian’s hip. Richard paused, pressing gently along a line that ached.

“Railing of the staircase, when I moved Jun.”

“When Howser…?”

Damian nodded. Richard said nothing but cupped the area of the injury protectively.

He would remember and avoid it. There was another mark on one of his arms and a bite mark on the side of his neck.

Richard rumbled with approval as he traced the outside of Jun’s mark. “I’ll keep this clear,” he said.

“Thank you, sir.”

Richard eased Damian’s pants down his legs, checking his lower half with the same attention, picking up Damian’s feet and running his thumb across the arches, measuring the tension.

Satisfied, Richard stood and stepped back. He went to one of the cabinets. Damian focused on the sound of his own heartbeat, on what he wanted to leave behind in the coming sweat and tears. Whatever Richard chose, he was content with it. His dom knew him inside and out.

Richard’s heat spread across Damian’s back. His dom had come right up to him. “Ready, Pup?”

“Yes, sir.”

Richard pressed his lips to the side of Damian’s neck, the opposite of Jun’s teeth marks.

“Just let go. This is warm-up.”

Richard stepped back. The sound of a long, soft leather flogger swished through the air.

Damian’s skin bloomed under the first fall of the strands. Damian groaned, not in pain but in relief. He pulled back, chasing their touch. Richard didn’t make him wait. Stroke by stroke, he brushed Damian’s skin, shoulders to waist and along the backs of his arm, keeping away from his face.

Soft warmth spread through Damian’s center. The strikes grew deeper, focusing on the fleshy parts of his back. Richard painted the flogger across Damian’s buttocks and down his thighs.

Damian let his forehead rest against the pad on the wall specifically meant for protecting his face. His body opened up under long practice beneath Richard’s attentions. He needed more, but Richard would take him there safely.

When there was warmth everywhere, Richard stepped toward him, pressing his hips against Damian. He pressed another kiss to Damian’s shoulder.

“This isn’t a punishment, Pup.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m going to ask you questions as we go. I want you to answer as honestly as you are able.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t care how ugly the answer, boy. I don’t care who it implicates. I don’t care what someone outside this room might think of what you say. This space is sacred, just you and I, Pup.”

“Yes, sir.”

Richard pressed his lips to Damian’s skin again in a benediction.

This time when Richard stepped back, Damian expected pain, and it came, a hard strike of soft leather falls across his upper back. It rocked him forward. He gripped the bars curled under his fingers inside the restraints.

More. He needed more. Pain, bright and clean or dark and deep, either had the power to bring clarity and cleansing.

Tension spread back through his limbs. Strike after strike, a steady stripping away the outer facade, the performance, the poise, the control, revealing the man beneath.

Richard approached, his hand skimming over Damian’s warm skin. “Color, Pup.”

“Green,” Damian breathed.

Richard ran his hand over Damian’s bent head. “We’re going to start with Howser. You said there is guilt. Tell me what you could have done differently. Enumerate your transgressions toward him.”

Damian ran his tongue around his mouth to gather saliva. Transgressions? Wasn’t it obvious?

“I left him behind, sir.”

“When?” Richard moved a few steps away.

“When I left the house.”

“How old was he?”

Damian’s hand tightened around the handles. “He wasn’t born, sir.”

“So that is a false accusation against my boy, isn’t it.”

“If I hadn’t left Dalia, then he might have never been born.”

“Dalia’s choices are her own.”

“Are they?”

Richard ghosted his hand across Damian’s buttocks. Damian tensed. The skin was warm there, sensitive now.

“She’s broken, sir.”

“Even broken people make choices. She had the same choice as Armada.”

“Armada isn’t broken.”

“Then who broke Dalia, Pup? Was it you? Who was older?”

“I saw clearer.”

“Clarity does not equal power. You gave her a choice the day you fought your father. She could have sided with you, then all of you would have been free. You opened the window, boy. She was the one who wouldn’t fly. The accusation is false.”

The thin, cold line of a cane stung Damian’s ass. “One strike for false accusation, boy.”

Damian trembled in the restraints. “I could have done something.”

Richard said nothing. The cane lifted away and came back, fast and sharp.

Damian screamed into the pad on the wall. The cane was fire in his warm skin. Sweat broke out on his shoulders.

Richard stroked fingers over the burning line in Damian’s flesh. “Do you still feel guilt, Pup?”

Damian groaned. “I could have killed him.”

“Killed whom?”

“Thaddeus, my father.”

The cane snapped across Damian’s ass again. “Then I wouldn’t have had you, Pup. Jun never would have met you.”

“But Armada wouldn’t have been touched.”

“And Jun would have. Sins can’t be traded like options. They’re actions, always owned by those who commit them.”

“But I knew .”

The cane struck again.

Damian screamed, baring his teeth against the pain. He was raw now. And yet he still needed to argue his case. “No one else knew.”

“They did, Pup. They did.” Richard stepped closer, his arms coming around Damian, his hands pressing against Damian’s heaving belly and chest. “They were simply okay with it, and you were not.”

How could they be? Damian screamed, pulling at the cuffs, rattling the bolts in the woods.

“You were not even eighteen, boy. They laid the blame at your feet because then you were silenced.”

Tears of rage coursed down Damian’s cheeks. “They couldn’t have known what was happening in that house, not like I did.”

“Almost all your wounds were defensive, boy. Your body was marked with so many scars, old ones.” Richard ran his hands down Damian’s body, over the scars, old marks of an angry man, burns on his thighs, cuts on his chests, and the white nicks of belt buckles over his back and legs, faded now.

“Your body told them all they needed to know. They chose not to look. Anyone at the detention center who searched you or saw you shower could read the journal of his sin written in your skin. Anyone familiar with abuse could have seen the way Dalia’s eyes flicked to Thaddeus in the courtroom when she was on the stand.

We barely saved you; they wanted so badly not to hear you. ”

Roaring from the inside of Damian’s head pounded in his ears. “It hurts, sir. Thinking about this. Make it stop, please. Get it out.”

Richard stepped back. The flogger came down again, not the sharp fire of the cane but deep and heavy now, the weight of Richard’s arm coming through each stroke.

Damian’s body rocked forward against the cross.

He stood on his toes, leaning into the pain, gritted sounds coming out from between his teeth.

“So beautiful, boy. Your struggle is beautiful.” Richard ghosted his lips over Damian’s ribs and danced over Damian’s buttocks. “Scream, I know you need to.” He gripped Damian’s ass and squeezed.

Sensations, hot, sharp, overwhelming—the rawness of breaking skin mixed with pressure—seared through Damian’s nerves.

He came down from the rush, the words tumbling from his lips unbidden. “Why didn’t they?”

Richard seemed to understand the words he didn’t say.

“Because it wasn’t their pain. It wasn’t their skin.

Because if you were silenced, you were anunfortunate event, but if Thaddeus was taken down, it was a communal shame.

Because they could cling to tradition and rules and the assumption of no knowledge. ”

“I should have made them listen. I should have figured out how.”

“You were a child.”

“I haven’t been one in years.”

Richard squeezed Damian’s other ass cheek. Damian jerked and stomped, rolling with the storm of sharp aches and burning pressure.

“You’ve become the man who could have made them listen, Damian. You’re everything now that you needed then. You’re painting the crimes against Jun like an artist for the world to see, one layer at a time. But you were not that man then.”

“That’s not what I see in their eyes.”

“Whose eyes, Pup?”

“Betti’s. Howser’s.”

Richard held him in silence, absorbing his words.

When he spoke, it was low and soft and slow.

“You’re not responsible for who they hate, Pup.

The wounded will always find a scapegoat: themselves or someone else.

Our human souls require it. They’ll rage at the safest one, not the most dangerous, the most guilty.

So why is it safest, even now, for you to accuse yourself? ”

Cold poured through Damian’s veins.

“No, you’re wounded. And the antidote is right there; you just refuse to drink.”

“It’s poison.” Damian shuddered, eyes closing.

That lake inside him glimmered in a deep dark place, brimming up toward the surface, the color of blood in shadow under a night sky.

“The moment I believe she could have done better, I’ll hate her, I’ll become her.

I saw her, the way she looked at me. I CAN’T be HER!

” Damian flung himself against the cross, striking out with his feet.