Page 17 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded (Rogue Bonds #2)

Zeke

I woke up in the morning, feeling surprisingly refreshed, given that Dax had had to wake me from a nightmare. I hadn’t dreamed any more after he’d climbed into the bed with me – or at least not that I remembered – and then I’d woken briefly when he’d slipped out of bed around seven in the morning. He’d wandered off to make breakfast, or clean the kitchen, or whatever it was he did at that hour of the morning, while I’d drifted off for another snooze, waking up properly at a quarter past eight.

I sat up, stretched, then yawned. Sunlight was filtering in around the blinds, though the weather prediction was for rain in the afternoon.

Dax must have heard me moving about, because he appeared in the doorway a moment later, a cup of coffee in hand. “Good morning, sir,” he said, coming forward to set the cup on the nightstand, along with my usual pill. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah, I did,” I said. But even as I was speaking, I could feel a frown settling on my face. “Are you okay?” I asked him. “You look nervous.”

A look of near-panic crossed Dax’s face… and then he abruptly knelt on the floor beside the bed, his head bowed. “I have disobeyed you, sir,” he blurted out.

“Whoa, whoa, hold up,” I said, hastily shimmying over to the side of the bed. His whole body was trembling. I put my hands on his shoulders, tugging him up to face me. “What the hell is going on?”

A ripple of bright violet fluttered across his collarbones – a sign of agitation? It disturbed me that I didn’t know how to interpret any of his signals. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I disobeyed you last night. I did not intend to… but nonetheless, I understand that I should be punished.” He ducked his head again, while I felt a cold wave run through me. What the fuck was happening? Was this something to do with asking him into my bed? Oh god, how badly had I fucked up this time?

“What did you do to disobey me?” I honestly wasn’t the slightest bit worried about whatever it was. Dimari were compelled to obey their masters, so I expected it to be some minor slip-up – forgetting to order the groceries, for example, or buying the wrong brand of shampoo.

“I climaxed in my sleep.”

I sat there, stunned, replaying the words over in my head. He couldn’t mean what I thought that meant. Was there some odd cultural nuance at play here? Was my translator glitching?

“What do you mean, you climaxed in your sleep? You mean you…” Fuck, was I actually going to have to say this? “You had an orgasm?”

“Yes, sir,” Dax said, his head dipping lower. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Did he mean he’d been rutting against me in his sleep? I wasn’t thrilled about the idea… but then again, if he’d been asleep, then it was hardly his fault. “In my bed, do you mean?”

He shook his head vigorously. “No, sir. In my own bed. Before I woke you.”

Okay, now I was thoroughly confused. How was that disobeying me? And what the hell did he expect me to do?

“Um… right. Well, I’m… I’m not angry, Dax,” I said gently. I had no clue how dimari were trained, but that sounded a lot like some of the strict purity laws I’d read about in the depths of human history – people banned from masturbating, ostracised for having sex, or shamed for enjoying the act. I considered what to say next. Aiden had impressed upon me the need to avoid saying certain things to Dax – such as the fact that I was not his intended master – and given how well the past few days had been going, I didn’t want to screw anything up now. But I had no idea what an appropriate response was. “I’m going to need to talk to Aiden about this,” I said eventually. “How about you go and make us both some breakfast, and we’ll talk about this more later?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, climbing to his feet. The glance I got of his face as he turned to leave was a picture of abject misery.

I reached for my comm, sitting on the nightstand, and strapped it to my wrist. I dialled Aiden without hesitation. He’d said I could call him at any time, and given Dax’s level of distress, I didn’t want to leave this stewing. Then, on second thought, I scurried out of bed and closed the bedroom door. Dax probably didn’t need to overhear this conversation.

“Morning,” Aiden said, when he answered the call. His face popped up in a hologram above my wrist. “What’s up? Shit, did you just get out of bed?”

I glanced down at myself and groaned. I didn’t have any clothes on aside from a thin pair of sleeping shorts and my hair was likely a mess. Thankfully, the comm wouldn’t be projecting anything below my shoulders, so that should stop Aiden from getting an eyeful. “Yeah. Something happened last night, and I have no clue what to do about it.”

Aiden was irritatingly put together for this hour of the morning. He was dressed, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and had no doubt already had his first cup of coffee. The image swayed a little, as if he was walking around, then it settled. “Tell me everything,” he said, with serene aplomb.

Oh god. I’d called Aiden without really thinking about it, but now that I had, I had to explain to him what Dax had said. And the more I thought about it, the more confused I was getting. “Dax came and knelt in front of me this morning and apologised for disobeying me. He seemed fairly distraught about it. He said he’d…” How was I supposed to phrase this? “He was apologising for having a wet dream.” It was as neat a way as I could describe it, while still being clear about exactly what had happened.

Aiden’s reaction was nothing like I’d expected. I’d been expecting a simple dismissal, accompanied by some brief explanation about dimari culture or training, and perhaps a bit of advice about how to get Dax to calm down. But instead, Aiden covered his face with a hand and the microphone picked up a muted, “Oh, fuck.”

My gut sank. “How bad is this?” I asked, my heart rate picking up. And I’d asked Dax to climb into my bed afterwards? How severely had I fucked this up?

Aiden’s expression was uneasy. “For him, not terrible, depending on how you reacted. For you, it’s probably a bit more…” He sighed and shook his head. “I’d really been hoping we’d have more time to let you settle into things before we had to deal with this.”

I took a slow breath and braced myself. “What exactly are we dealing with?”

“Before we get to that, what have you said to him about it so far?”

“I said I wasn’t angry, and that I needed to talk to you. That’s it. And then I sent him off to make breakfast.” I’d discovered very quickly that giving Dax tasks to do tended to calm him down.

“Good response,” Aiden said. “But you are going to have to address it with him again. But that means that… Ah, shit.” He chewed on a thumbnail while he thought about it. “How have you been going with the whole praise and affection thing?”

I didn’t entirely see how the question was relevant. But even so, the first part of my answer was easy. I’d been a good boy and done as instructed. I detailed the brief efforts I’d made yesterday to praise Dax and to touch him, culminating with the cuddling session on the sofa. “Dax was quite clearly delighted with it all,” I finished, glad to see that Aiden was looking reasonably pleased as well.

“Hmm,” he said, nodding slowly. “It was probably the cuddling that led to the wet dream. After a year without much physical contact, he’d be pretty easy to trigger. Good work, by the way. It’s a big improvement from the last time we spoke.”

“There is something else I should tell you,” I rushed on, wishing I didn’t need to tell him this, but knowing that avoiding it might only lead to more problems. “I had a nightmare last night, and Dax woke me up. I’d asked him to, if he heard me struggling. And then I didn’t really want to go back to sleep, so I…” I felt my face flush bright red. “I asked him to sit in bed with me for a while. And then we both kind of fell asleep…”

Aiden’s eyebrows rose for a split second, and then he schooled his face into a carefully neutral expression. “He slept in your bed with you?”

“Is that bad?”

He hesitated a moment too long. “No,” he said, but I couldn’t tell whether he meant it or not.

“Don’t play games with me,” I said, working hard to keep my tone even. “If I’ve screwed something up, tell me.”

“You haven’t screwed anything up,” Aiden told me. “Quite the opposite. That might make our next conversation a fraction easier. But even so, I think what I have to say next is still going to shock you.”

How many more times was I going to have to brace myself for bad news? “Okay. Hit me with it.”

“Have you had much of a look at Dax’s operations manual?”

I cringed. “I hate that term. He’s not a fucking washing machine. I barely looked at it.”

Aiden was unfazed. “When you have a moment, take a good read of it. Because dimari aren’t just trained for domestic duties and manual labour. And this comes back to the third type of reward you can give a dimari. The one we weren’t going to talk about yet,” he added wryly. “They’re all trained extensively in how to give their masters sexual pleasure. And sex is the most powerful and meaningful reward you could possibly give him.”

I blinked at him. There was no way in the world he could mean what it sounded like he was saying. But before I could come up with any sensible questions, he carried on.

“Dimari are not permitted to experience any kind of sexual release without their master’s permission. Ever. If he did so in his sleep, he would be feeling horrendously guilty about it. And he’s expecting you to punish him for it.”

I felt my lip curl in revulsion. “I’m not going to punish him for-”

“No, no, of course not,” Aiden agreed quickly. “I’m not saying you should. I’m just saying he’s expecting you to.”

The rest of what he’d said was still catching up with me. “So he’s been trained to…?”

Aiden looked apologetic. “This is the part that most people stumble over. Given our own laws and morals on sexual liberty and consent, the dimari’s training comes as quite a shock.” He waited, giving me ample time to get my head around that.

Dimari weren’t allowed to… how had he phrased it? ‘Experience any form of sexual release’? “You mean that in a whole year, he’s never…?”

“He hasn’t had an orgasm in a year. Up until last night.”

“Bloody fucking hell.” It was a wonder he hadn’t gone insane. “So I’m supposed to give him permission to… masturbate?”

“No, absolutely not!” Aiden all but yelped the answer. “Right now, that would be the worst possible thing you could do.”

“But if he hasn’t…”

“Sex isn’t just a physical need for a dimari. It’s a reward,” he emphasised again. “He doesn’t experience desire in the same way as you or I. He wants to receive that reward from you . If you go and tell him to take care of it himself, he’s going to reach the conclusion that you consider him too much of a disappointment to bother with, and that you’re never going to properly reward him that way. And given the extremely tenuous state of the rest of your relationship, that could be just about enough to tip him over the edge.”

“So what the fuck am I supposed to do?” My voice came out unnaturally high pitched. Aiden couldn’t possibly mean that he expected me to…

“He wants you to have sex with him.” Aiden paused, watching my reaction carefully.

I stared back at him blankly. “That’s… No. That’s insane.” No wonder Aiden had wanted to wait longer before telling me this. Up until yesterday, I’d barely been able to put a hand on Dax’s shoulder. And now Aiden wanted me to…?

“If your own orientation is going to be a problem for that, then there are some creative ways you can work around it,” Aiden said, no doubt trying to be helpful, and if it was possible, my face got even redder. I was about to be given ‘the talk’ by another military officer? “Ask him to blow you, if you don’t think you’ll enjoy anything else. Ask him to masturbate while you watch. Or ask him to watch you. Hell, you can even watch porn together, if that’s what it takes. It doesn’t have to be penetrative sex. Dimari are trained to respond to a wide range of desires on their master’s part. The key components are that he needs to see that you’re enjoying yourself, and you need to give him permission to climax as part of the process. If you don’t give him permission, he won’t come.”

“I think my brain is about to explode,” I muttered, pulling back on a strong temptation to simply end the call. I could not deal with this, not on top of everything else that was going on at the moment.

“For the sake of clarity,” Aiden went on, completely ignoring my impending panic, “ is your orientation going to pose a problem? I never really asked you before.”

“Is my…? No. I’m bi,” I blurted out. “My orientation is… Jesus Christ, Aiden, I can’t…” I clamped my mouth shut in a hurry, my brain catching up before I blurted out something I really didn’t want to tell him. Now, I felt cold, rather than hot. “Are you sure I can’t just tell him to go jerk off and let that be the end of it? You’re saying sex is the ultimate key to a happy dimari, right?”

“Exactly,” Aiden said. “No, it’s not optional, and no, you can’t just tell him to take care of it himself.”

Aiden was way too calm for this conversation. And only a slight amount of contemplation made me realise he must have had this exact same conversation with a dozen other dimari owners. And if he took his mission as seriously as I believed he did, he’d somehow managed to convince every single one of them that sex with a dimari was a good idea.

“Wait a minute,” I snapped, as another thought occurred to me. “Do you… Do you have sex with Kade?”

“Yes,” Aiden replied, without the slightest attempt to prevaricate.

“But he can’t consent.”

Aiden smiled, a wry, affectionate expression. “Actually, he can. We’ve had some long conversations about that. It’s not as straight forward as it would be with most people, but it is possible.” The image flickered, and then my comm beeped as a document came through. “There’s a list of instructions, and some orders that you need to give Dax. Like I said, I wasn’t going to cover this with you yet, but now we’re here, this is all stuff you’ll need to know. One of the important ones is you need to order him to tell you if you’re hurting him. He cannot and will not ask you to stop, if you’re doing something he doesn’t like, but there are ways around that. I made the point very clearly with Kade that I have no intention or desire to hurt him during sex, so if I do, he needs to tell me, so that I can do things differently. With a bit of practice and reassurance, most dimari become quite comfortable with giving their masters subtle hints and cues about what they do or don’t like. And from what I’ve seen so far, I get the impression that Dax is quite capable of making his feelings known. If you’re responsive to what he’s implying, then there’s rarely a problem.”

It took a few moments for me to convince my jaw to close. To buy some time, I opened the document and had a quick skim through it. And yeah, it was fairly comprehensive. There were things about physical discomfort, checking in to see if a dimari had any health complications – a stomach ache, perhaps, that might make them disinclined to have sex at that particular moment. There were ways to ask a dimari to express a preference for one type of sex act over another, and physical cues that might indicate a desire to continue, versus a degree of disinterest.

I looked up again, to find Aiden watching me. “So what do you think?” he asked finally, when I didn’t say anything.

I didn’t know whether to blush or cringe. “This isn’t going to work,” I said, my tone flat.

To his credit, Aiden didn’t automatically launch into another sales pitch. Instead, he sat back, a slight frown settling on his face. “Why not?” There was no judgement in the question. Just gentle curiosity, an invitation to voice my opinions.

I sighed, then decided to just blurt it out. “I haven’t been able to get it up since I got back from Ixralia.”

Aiden nodded slowly, and damn the man to hell, he looked completely unruffled by the announcement. “If I may ask a personal question, do you know if that’s a physical problem or a psychological one?”

I rolled my eyes, using annoyance to disguise embarrassment. “A bit of both, most likely. The venom I got in my leg probably spread upwards and caused more nerve damage further north. And at the same time, I’m just… not in the mood, if you get my drift. I mean, I could ask Dax to try a few things out,” I rushed on, ignoring for the moment the fact that the chances of me actually taking that leap were miniscule. “But would it be worse for him to be asked to try, and fail, or not to be asked at all?”

Aiden huffed out a breath. “Fuck. That’s always a sticky question. And it’s not the first time I’ve been asked it. But in your case, I think the answer is to ask Dax to try, but explain to him that you have ongoing nerve damage, and that that has certain physical consequences. Don’t talk to him about the psychological side of things, because that gives him licence to blame himself for any result. Let him try, give him permission to come in the process, and at the end of it, if it hasn’t worked, then make sure he knows that you still enjoyed it anyway.

“And while we’re on the subject,” he went on, “that’s actually a perfect excuse to explain why you haven’t asked him to touch you so far, and why you’re not angry about him coming in his sleep. The short version is that you know he wants sex, but you’ve been too concerned about your physical injuries to take the risk of branching out.”

I scoffed. “Won’t he see through that? I mean, it’s a pretty flimsy excuse.”

“And yet, it’s also mostly true. All except the bit about you knowing that he was waiting for sex. Dimari are certainly not stupid, and I would caution you against taking any of these deceptions too far. But at the same time, they’re also surprisingly determined to think the best of their masters, and will usually latch onto any excuse that justifies the point of view they’re trying to maintain. To a certain extent, yes, that is manipulative on our part. But given the limitations of a dimari’s free will, I’ve yet to find a workable way around that.”

I narrowed my eyes at Aiden, through the comm link. “Kade’s not listening to this conversation, is he?”

Aiden barked out a laugh. “God, no. He’s in the kitchen cooking breakfast.” A momentary look of sorrow crossed his face. “There are some things I tell him, and plenty of others that he’s just not able to understand.”

The look on Aiden’s face made me reevaluate my opinion of him. Based on what he was saying, he was not some divine sage who had cracked the code of dimari happiness. Rather, he was cobbling together bits and pieces of lore that had the desired effect of minimising pain on both sides, while at the same time, acknowledging the very real gaps in his strategies. It was oddly reassuring to realise that he didn’t have all the answers – perhaps only because it gave me more leeway in making a few mistakes of my own.

“I don’t want to hurt him,” I admitted, trusting that Aiden would take my concerns seriously. “And I think it’s going to take a little while to get my head around the whole sex thing, but I don’t want to take advantage of him in the process.”

“I know. And I’m glad. But sometimes, not hurting him involves doing things that delve into morally grey areas, as far as Alliance ethics is concerned.” He gave me a smile that was half resigned, half encouraging. “Read through the document I sent you. Have a think about how it all applies to your particular case. And good luck. Feel free to call me back anytime. I’m always here to help.”

I sat on the bed for several long minutes after I ended the call, letting my eyes drift over the document. Sex with Dax. Getting naked with Dax. Letting someone touch me, when hardly anyone had, since the day the surgeons had put me back together. It was tempting to sweep the whole idea under the rug.

And yet, if I did, Dax would have absolutely no avenue for sexual release, and a huge black mark in his interpretation of my opinion of him. That was unacceptable.

Oh, fucking hell, I was really going to have to do this, wasn’t I?