Page 107 of Necessary Space

“I wasn’t hiding.”

He stood up and opened his arms to me, offering more than just a hug. He offered himself. I was certain of it in the way he wrapped his arms around me. I leaned into him easily, resting my chin on his shoulder with a huff.

“You should have been,” I murmured, trailing my fingers down his arms until I reached his wrists.

“What?”

“Should have been hiding.”

I tugged his arms down, bringing his wrists together in one hand at the small of his back. His chest puffed out, and his stare flickered toward the tawse on the table inside.

“You should have been hiding,” I said again, turning him around and marching him back into the house. “Because I haven’t forgotten that you took one of my most favorite toys and tried to hide it from me.”

“It wasn’t like that,” he protested, but the denial was weak and we both knew the truth.

“No?” I snatched the impact tool from the table and pushed him onward. Instead of detouring to my bedroom—our bedroom—as had been our usual for the past three months, I walked him straight into the playroom. I didn’t bother closing the door because the place was ours now. No visitors. No interruptions.

“I’m too old for this,” he huffed.

I gave him a gentle shove forward and he bent over the bed, spreading his legs to support his weight as his chest landed against the sheets.

“Too old for games?” I dropped the tawse on the bed beside his hand and reached around, working open the fly on his jeans and shoving them down to his ankles. His underwear followed, leaving his bare ass exposed. “Too old to be a liar?”

“Sir.”

I almost growled at that. The honorific got such little use that when the word did leave his mouth, it meant the world.

“Are you a liar, Hendrix?”

“No.”

“Are you lying now?” I brought my hand down against the back of his thigh, barely a spank but far more than a slap.

“Yes,” he was quick to answer that time. “Yes, Sir.”

“Why did you hide it?” I landed another swat, this time against his ass. The tawse was a serious toy and I didn’t want to hurt him. At least, not permanently.

“I liked it too much,” he answered. “I didn’t think I was that much of a masochist.”

His response made me laugh, so instead of hitting him again, I went to my knees. I wanted to pink his ass some more, but there were more pressing things to start with.

“I knew you were,” I whispered, spreading his ass apart to expose his hole.

He hated when I did it, but he loved what came after.

“I know exactly what you need and when you need it, don’t I?”

I waited for him to answer, then silenced him with a long drag of my tongue from his balls to his hole. His confirmation turned into a moan, and I kissed his hole the way I kissed his mouth. Spearing my tongue into him and sucking, I moaned happily while I licked my tongue around his puckered rim. I got so lost in eating his ass that I didn’t notice Hendrix had started humping the bed.

The shameless way he jerked his hips forward, trying to get friction from the sheets against his erection was almost laughable. I let him, though. I pretended I didn’t see him chasing after a release he didn’t have permission for. The sight of it made my heart swell even bigger than my cock.

He’d come so far.Wehad come so far. Together, on this journey of understanding that things we liked in the past didn’t need to be the things we liked in the future. Hendrix and I had tried new things in new ways and come to an understanding of what worked best for us, and what worked best for usnow.

I wasn’t bold enough to assume that Hendrix would always let me suck his hole this way or that he would be willing to get on his knees for me in the kitchen, neglecting whatever meal he’d been trying to prepare, but he did it now.

He loved me.

Now.