Page 10

Mal looks like he’s considering it. “Nah. We’ll keep shit pretty vanilla for tonight.”

Rowan nods, thinking that even anal beads are pretty vanilla. Actually everything they’ve looked at so far seems vanilla. Though he knows from the experience he does have that you don’t need toys to have filthy, kinky sex, they certainly help.

They move on to the next cabinet, this one containing cuffs, collars, and gags.

“Prob’ly get a lot of use outta these,” Mal says.

“Yeah?”

A shrug from Mal. “I like bein’ restrained. Got my own set of cuffs that I like better, though. I’ll bring ’em with me.”

“What’s different about yours?”

“They’re fur lined. The plain leather’s hot as shit, but after a while, the chafing gets to be too much, and it takes me outta it. The club doesn’t really keep any toys with fabric like that since it’s hard to clean in between uses.” He gestures to a cabinet to the right that they haven’t looked at yet. “’Cept the ropes, but those are easy to wash.”

“That makes sense.” Rowan looks around at the other toys in the cabinet. “You like being gagged?”

Rowan swears he sees Mal’s eyes flash. “Yeah.”

“Any in particular you like or don’t like?”

“Can’t go wrong with a ball gag. I like the breathable ones, though,” Mal says, pointing to one gag in the selection of at least ten that has a bright red ball perforated with small holes.

Rowan nods. “What about with clothing?”

The look Mal gives him is somehow appraising and feral all at once. “You got a thing for ties or somethin’?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

Mal quirks his eyebrows at him but doesn’t inquire further, then moves on to the next cabinet, which has every type of crop, whip, cane, paddle, tickler, and flogger that Rowan’s ever seen, and more than a few that he hasn’t.

“Jesus,” Rowan says, ogling the collection. He picks up one paddle, seeing that it’s smooth on one side and metal studded on the other. “You ever use stuff like this?”

“Early on, when I was figurin’ shit out. Told you last time, but I don’t like a ton of pain.”

A thought strikes him then, given the intensity of some of the toys. “I thought the club had a no-blood policy? Some’a this shit would definitely make someone bleed if you used ’em hard enough.”

“Yeah.” Mal taps on a placard inside the cabinet that Rowan hadn’t noticed until now. A review of the rules, it looks like. “Kinda gotta be on the honor system that you won’t do it. Not like Clover comes in and inspects all the subs before they leave.”

Rowan snorts a laugh at the image of the professional, buttoned-up Clover checking for rule-breakers every night. “Makes sense. Kinda gross to use some of the same equipment with that being possible, though.”

Rowan’s far from a germaphobe, but his standards for cleanliness have skyrocketed since leaving his home in the South End, and he’s not keen on going back.

Mal nods in agreement. “Yeah. ’S why I bring a lotta my own stuff. All theirs is treated leather or synthetic shit that’s easy to clean, but I don’t trust some’a the dickbags that go here, even if the club cleans everything themselves regularly.”

That puts Rowan somewhat at ease. He has a small collection of his own toys that he’d be willing to bring as well, though he suspects that everything he has, Mal does as well.

“So when we get to using this stuff,” Rowan starts, “do you usually pick out what you wanna use in the beginning, or pull them out as you go?”

“In the beginning. Makes it easier to keep the scene going rather than stoppin’ to look for specific toys.” He pauses, eyes scanning the various cabinets. “I know where pretty much everything is, but it’s not practical to take me out of it to explain which cabinet a certain toy is in.”

Take me out of it. He’s talking about subspace. Talking specifically about Rowan getting him into it .

Fuck . It might not happen tonight, it being their first time alone, but the thought of getting Mal so lost in pleasure that he reaches that high? Fucking delicious. It happened once at the gangbang, briefly—a tiny glimpse of that hazy fog of pleasure in Mal’s eyes that Rowan’s been thinking about nonstop since.

Rowan’s cock stirs in his jeans. He’s thankful for the tightness of them, otherwise it’d be embarrassingly obvious.

The next cabinet is filled with neatly coiled ropes in all colors and lengths, as well as various hooks, clips, and bindings. A quick glance to the ceiling shows what looks like an adjustable bar lined with hooks, presumably to tie someone to. It sends another bolt of desire through Rowan, as does the long coil of cherry-red cotton rope that catches his eye among the plainer colors. He’d love to see the color against Mal’s skin, digging in and breaking up the pale expanse of his chest and arms and legs.

“You ever use rope?” Mal asks, as if sensing what the image is doing to Rowan.

“Yeah, but nothing fancy. Just some wrist and ankle restraints.”

“There’s a workshop comin’ up in a few weeks on it.”

That piques Rowan’s interest. “Like shibari?”

“Yeah.” Mal pulls a mass of black rope from the hook that had been badly coiled and expertly untangles and coils it in quick figure-eight motions. He looks almost like he’s offended at whoever used it last having put it away so poorly, and Rowan can’t help but agree. “One of next month’s special events. We can go if you’re interested.”

Rowan’s stomach flutters wildly at the thought of learning a new skill, especially a new skill that would greatly benefit them both. And at the thought of spending more time with Mal, though he doesn’t know if it would replace his usual session with him or be in addition to it. Either way, he’s a thousand percent in.

“Yeah, I’d like that. Lemme know when it’s coming up and we can figure it out.”

“I’ll text you the details later.”

Rowan watches Mal wrap the end of the rope around itself three times, securing the effortless loops he’d made. He tugs both ends, as if checking his work. Then he looks up at Rowan through his dark lashes, rope pulled taut between his hands, and wets his bottom lip with a quick flash of his tongue.

All at once, there’s a shift in the air, an electric charge lingering between them. It drives Rowan to move, a magnetic pull he couldn’t resist if he wanted to.

Rowan steps forward, plucks the rope from Mal’s fingers, and places it back on its hook, never once breaking eye contact. He’s much more interested in the way Mal’s lips part and his eyes rake him up and down.

God, Rowan wants to kiss him. How the hell could he not? Plush lips parted ever so slightly, pink against his pale skin. And it’s such a natural buildup to sex that without it, it feels like he’s revving a car engine while it’s still in park. Not going anywhere. But it’s firmly off the table, and Rowan’s going to have to find another way of working Mal into a frenzy.

Without the help of nine others.

The challenge of it spurs Rowan into action.

“Get undressed,” he says, voice low.

He feels his back straighten of its own accord, raising him to his full height. Legs hip-width apart and weight evenly balanced between them. Chest puffing out slightly. He doesn’t know if there’s a word for it, this feeling of getting into character, but it feels natural. Feels like if he’s keenly aware of how his body looks and feels, if he has control over it, then he’ll have full control of his mind as well. And, hopefully, Mal’s.

Mal’s eyes flash, and a hint of a smirk graces his lips as he toes off his shoes and socks and kicks them to the side. He locks eyes with Rowan and grips the lapels of his vest, slowly shrugging it off first one shoulder, then the other. As much as Rowan would love to see Mal do a slow, sexy striptease for him, he’s been dying to get his hands on his skin again for a week now.

“ Faster .”

A huff of a laugh through Mal’s nose is his only response. He reaches behind him to tug his shirt off over his head, taking even longer than he had with the vest.

So that’s what kind of night it’s gonna be.

Not on Rowan’s watch.

The second the fabric clears his head and that shit-eating grin sees the light, Rowan grabs his arms—still swathed by his shirt—and pulls him flush against his chest.

“Can’t even trust you to follow a simple fuckin’ instruction, can I?”

“Guess you’ll have to—”

Rowan shuts him up with a sharp squeeze to his biceps through the soft fabric, enjoying the firmness of them. “When I want you to answer something, you’ll know .”

He doesn’t give Mal time to say something else shitty, spinning him in place and then walking him the two steps to the bed before shoving him forward onto it with a whump , arms pinned underneath him, ass perfectly aligned with Rowan’s crotch.

“ Nnng —” the soft moan is barely audible from where Mal’s face is pressed into the mattress, but it’s beautiful.

With a firm push to Mal’s lower back, a silent command to stay , Rowan sinks to his knees and hooks his fingers in the waist of Mal’s jeans. The fabric is almost too tight for him to fit his hands under on either side, but he manages enough to give a firm tug downward over the swell of Mal’s ass. He’s expecting the same black briefs Mal wore last time, maybe a different color.

He’s not expecting to be met immediately with bare skin.

But it’s not bare skin. Not completely. There’s a thick black band stretched across Mal’s lower back, sitting below his dimples, another band wrapped around each cheek, framing his ass perfectly.

Fuck.

He hadn’t thought he’d get to see Mal in a jockstrap so soon. It throws him off completely, keeping him frozen in place for far longer than it should, to the point where Mal shifts above him, hitching his hips back.

Rowan snaps out of it, yanking the jeans down to Mal’s ankles. Naturally, Mal moves to kick out of them, but Rowan stills him with a firm grip to his calf, the idea of him being bound by his own clothing far too tempting to pass up.

“Tell me if you need to move, understand?”

“Y-yeah.”

God, hearing the hitch in Mal’s voice so soon shouldn’t be that hot. If he needed any confirmation that Mal likes being pushed around, this is definitely it.

Now, with Mal where Rowan wants him, he can focus on the smooth expanse of his ass, accentuated by the dark straps. Rowan notices a tattoo he hadn’t seen before on the back of Mal’s left ankle, two small snakes serpentining up nearly to his calf, one larger than the other. It looks older than some of the others, ink starting to fade into the cracks of his skin. He brushes his fingertips over it briefly, then runs both hands up Mal’s legs, pausing a moment when he passes the tattooed band of lace with the knife on his right thigh.

Rowan never thought he’d be one of those people obsessed with tattoos, but something about Mal’s strike a chord with him. They look good against his skin, like they’re part of it, where Rowan’s always thought his own single tattoo looks pasted on. If he didn’t have a job to do—making a wreck out of the other man—he could spend hours tracing the ink with his fingers and, if Mal would let him, his tongue.

But now he continues his trail up Mal’s legs to his ass. Last time he hadn’t gotten a chance to properly worship it. This time he’s gonna make up for that.

He slides his hands past the straps and curls them around to take a cheek in each hand… and squeezes . The firm flesh gives under his grip, dimpling and turning white where his fingertips dig in. He kneads Mal’s ass, fully enjoying how it feels in his hands, the perfect size. The feeling of it and Mal’s quiet hums from above have his cock hardening in his jeans, and for a moment, he’s tempted to pull it out to relieve some of the pressure, but if he does this might be over far sooner than it should be.

So he settles for spreading his own thighs as best he can, careful not to kneel on Mal’s jeans pooled on the floor, keeping his legs in place.

Under his hands, Rowan feels Mal clench his ass, the cheeks tightening and making Rowan lose his grip. A “Get on with it,” it seems. But Mal’s in no position to be making demands.

Smack!

Rowan slaps his right cheek hard , red immediately blooming across pale skin, a gasped “Mmm!” coming from the bed.

He spanks Mal again on the other cheek for good measure, feeling goose bumps pebble up as he smooths his hands over the heated skin. One of these days, now that he knows Mal’s penchant for spanking, he’s going to turn his entire backside red.

But now—now, he finally spreads Mal’s cheeks apart, revealing the tight pink hole that Rowan’s been dying to get inside of again.

He hears his own breath hitch, which means Mal probably does too, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. Maybe cutting him a little slack for being eager.

“See somethin’ you like, Firecrotch?”

Maybe not.

To add insult to injury, Mal clenches again, hole winking, enticing him to touch. Enticing him in . Fucking taunting him.

Rowan rises up, slips one hand under the back band of Mal’s jockstrap and the other under his chest, and hauls him up swiftly so his bare back slams into Rowan’s clothed chest. He drags his hand along Mal’s chest, trailing fingertips up the cords of Mal’s neck to grip his jaw and turn his head halfway toward himself. Lips and nose pressed against his ear, Rowan can smell his shampoo, something minty and sweet.

“Call me that again,” he says, tone measured, “and I’m gonna get that fleshlight and make you watch me get myself off while you sit here, hard ’n empty. Got it?”

For good measure he grinds his cock into Mal’s ass, letting him feel exactly what he would be missing out on.

He feels Mal nod, ear brushing his lips and sending a tingling sensation through Rowan.

“Good.”

With that, he shoves Mal back down on the bed and returns to kneeling behind him, snapping the bands of the jockstrap on his way down. And while he doesn’t love the idea of rewarding him for being a brat, he’s tired of waiting. He spreads Mal’s cheeks again and licks a hot, wet stripe from the edge of the jockstrap up to his hole, the clean musky scent spurring him on as much as Mal’s gasped, “Hah!”

He repeats the movement several more times, Mal’s noises fading to little more than contented sighs as he acclimates to the sensation. Which means Rowan needs to change it up.

He squeezes Mal’s asscheeks, pulling them apart as much as he can, pressing his face in between so he can suck on Mal’s hole. That gets Mal breathing heavy again. Beautiful. Rowan wants to keep him vocal, so he alternates between sucking, licking with the flat of his tongue, and tracing around it with the tip.

From past experience, he knows he’s capable of bringing someone to tears with his tongue, but tonight’s not the night for that quite yet.

Still, he can’t help wanting to tease Mal.

He pulls back to run the pad of his thumb over his hole, watching it quiver under his touch.

Suddenly he’s bombarded with images of Mal’s hole dripping with other men’s come as it had been last week. And fuck if it doesn’t turn him on knowing he’d been filled to the brim, fucked empty and filled again and again, loving every second of it.

He needs to get something inside him right now. Rowan pries apart his hole with his thumbs and delves his tongue inside, the phantom taste of come he imagines almost masking the taste of his own spit as he works his tongue deeper inside.

“Fuuu- uhhck !”

He wishes his tongue was longer so he could hit his prostate. But with how hard Mal’s clenching around him, practically cutting off his circulation, he doubts that he would be able to push in far enough even if his tongue was sufficiently long. He withdraws his tongue and licks over Mal’s hole, tiny kitten licks to give him a breather.

A breather that Mal evidently doesn’t want.

“Come on ,” he growls, shoving his hips back.

Smack!

Rowan’s hand connects with Mal’s asscheek in a sharp spank that echoes in the room.

“Hah!”

He runs his hand over the pink skin, warm to the touch. Feels the skin pebble up with goose bumps under his fingers.

“You said you wanted me to eat you out, so quit bein’ ungrateful.”

“I’m not—”

Smack! Smack!

Two quick blows, one on each cheek, and Mal is gasping a bitten-off moan instead of whatever lameass excuse he was going to give for mouthing off again.

“You are. Now shut the fuck up.”

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Rowan dives in again, sucking and licking Mal’s hole like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. And fuck, it might be. He pulls back for a brief moment to catch his breath, then spits directly on Mal’s hole, watching the thin white trail run over the rim and down the back of his balls. He thinks again of last week when Mal had been leaking, lets a groan escape that he hadn’t planned on, then licks up his spit and imagines it’s his own come, and it feels filthy but somehow hot as hell at the same time.

Mal’s already so pliant under his tongue, almost fully relaxed despite the position and despite this being their first time together, and it sends a pulse of heat through Rowan as he continues to work him over. And by the time Mal’s full body is shaking, nearly vibrating with the tenseness of his muscles, and Rowan’s jaw and knees are starting to hurt, Rowan knows it’s time to move on.

God, he needs to get inside Mal again. As much fun as he’s having teasing Mal, he’s teasing himself in the process, knowing there’s a warm, wet hole in front of him that he gets to sink into once he’s prepped.

Lube.

He needs lube right now.

“Stay,” Rowan tells him with a firm push to his lower back.

He crosses the room to the supply table, grabbing a new travel-sized bottle of lube—a white-and-green bottle with Good Clean Love bio-nude printed on the front. Definitely not the KY he’s used to, but this brand touts that it Works the Way You Do thanks to some sort of Bio-Match technology, and Rowan’s a little skeptical, but he figures if anyone’s gonna have good quality lube, it’s gonna be a sex club.

He should have gotten the lube before they started, given what Mal told him earlier, but they kind of went from zero to a hundred, both clearly eager to get on each other again. Next time, Rowan tells himself, he’ll be better prepared.

From the short distance away, he takes one more moment to admire Mal, upper body still pressed into the mattress, thick legs straight except a tiny bend at the knees so they don’t lock and risk him passing out. He’s fucking beautiful, and Rowan’s dick twitches in his pants at the sight of him waiting for him.

He doesn’t look as long as he wants, but long enough to commit the sight to memory to jerk off to later.

When he takes his place back behind Mal, he runs a hand along his lower back, above the jockstrap, and asks, “You good?” to check in.

“Yeah,” Mal replies.

“Good.”

And as much as Rowan likes him in this position, with his legs still so close together, he can’t open him up as much as he needs to.

He nudges the back of Mal’s thigh with his knee. “Take ’em off,” he says, though Mal had already clearly received the memo, as he steps out of his pants, pushes them off one foot after the other, then kicks them to the side.

As soon as they’re off, Rowan grabs the back of Mal’s right knee and hauls it up on the bed, stretching Mal wide and giving him much easier access to his ass. And Mal goes with it, huffs out a breath of air, maybe of surprise but definitely not of anything resembling disapproval.

Rowan wastes no time in running a palm between Mal’s cheeks, over the slick hole he’d had his mouth on minutes ago. And the other man all but whimpers at the contact, much firmer than Rowan’s tongue had been.

“Fuckin’ love this, don’t you?” he asks rhetorically.

He’s not expecting a reply—he doesn’t need one to know what the answer is—but Mal makes another one of those strangled “ Mmm !” noises that makes Rowan’s dick twitch.

“Yeah. Course you do.” He huffs out a laugh, preps two of his fingers with a generous coat of lube, and circles his hole with his fingertips. “Bet you couldn’t fuckin’ wait to feel me again. Bet the second your ass went back to normal after the gangbang, you shoved every toy you had up there, just to see if any of ’em felt like me.” Rowan punctuates his cocky rant by sliding his index finger in to the last knuckle.

“ Hnnng !”

“I know they didn’t.”

Rowan pumps his finger in and out slowly, letting Mal adjust despite his already shoving his hips back to get Rowan deeper. Perfect. He indulges him after a few moments, adding in a second finger if only because Rowan would have done the same thing if he owned a fleshlight. Tried to mimic the feeling of Mal’s ass around him, only to realize that nothing could beat it.

“You said it yourself,” he continues, squeezing Mal’s asscheek with his free hand and feeling Mal jerk in response. “You prefer the real thing.”

He can barely see it from where he’s kneeling, but he glimpses the back of Mal’s head bob twice in a nod. Hears his breath practically echo in the room with how hard he’s breathing from two fingers.

“And you know what, Mal?” Rowan asks as he scissors his fingers, spreading them wide to help stretch Mal’s rim and inner walls. He lets the question dangle in the air, lets Mal ruminate on it for a minute as he works him open, delving deep inside.

Finally, when he senses Mal is nearly ready for another finger, Rowan crooks his two fingers up and spears them directly into Mal’s prostate, with a swell of pride as he finds his mark perfectly and rips a keening moan from Mal’s throat.

A loud “Hah!” turns into a low “Ohhhh!” as he presses harder into the sensitive gland.

Rowan barely contains a moan of his own as he promises, “I’m gonna fuckin’ ruin you for everyone else.”

And Mal’s whine grows impossibly louder as Rowan continues petting over his prostate in long, firm strokes that he knows would drive anyone wild. “Yeah. Wanna hear you,” he croons.

With his free hand, Rowan tugs down the fabric of the jockstrap covering Mal’s cock, the material damp from how much he’s been leaking. And fuck if that isn’t the hottest thing. He pulls out Mal’s cock and balls, feeling the weight of him in his hand as he pumps him, firmly but rhythmically, in time with the press of his fingers against Mal’s prostate.

It’s a weird angle, but Mal mewls and twitches in his hand and—

“Fu-fuck, I’m gonna—”