“Don’t know.” Nick looked at him, all innocence and angel wings with those lifted eyebrows. “I may have neglected to declare them at customs. Got them at a specialist event.”
Specialist event? Did toppy rentboys with a pile of interrogator tools have their own trade fairs?
“Not sure what I’d tell customs, anyway.” He looked thoughtfully at the stick in his hand. “Declaring myself in possession of ‘evil sticks’ seems like it would just raise eyebrows and”—he waved his other hand—“I can’t be bothered.”
Can’t be bothered. Right. “Evil sticks? Seems . . . apropos.”
67
Nick shrugged. “That’s what the vendor called them.”
“Mm-hmm. Those can’t be covered by the Geneva Conventions.”
“Sure hope not.” Nick grinned. He cupped Spencer’s face in one hand, the firm but gentle touch sending a shiver through him. “You’re cute when you’re freaked out. We better get to business.”
Business. Which involved getting him aroused as all hell and then crashing him down to earth, though he hadn’t felt the impact last time. Only when Nick closed the front door behind himself, that part was bad. Still had several more hours before that was an issue, though.
“Here.” Nick dangled the blindfold from his outstretched fingers.
Spencer took it and put it on. Nick vanished from view, but the smell of leather was still there. So was Nick’s hand.
Spencer relaxed and was tempted to rub his face against Nick’s thigh. Didn’t, though.
Nick took his shoulder and pulled, indicating he should get to his feet. When Nick pushed him towards the bed, Spencer stretched out a foot to make sure he wasn’t stepping on anything.
“Just trust me.”
Just. Right.
“Here.” He took Spencer’s hands and placed them on the footboard of the bed. “Hold onto that. ‘Bonaparte’ or the double-tap stops everything.”
Everything. Spencer nodded, closed his fingers around the edge. He had to bend forwards, but the position itself was comfortable and stable.
Nick pushed up against him, his leather-clad groin brushing Spencer’s arse. He tapped the inside of Spencer’s right leg. “Open further.”
68
Spencer slid one foot over the carpet and couldn’t believe he was doing this.
Absolutely not, he heard himself telling a boyfriend a year or two ago. No blindfolds. No fucking way.
But now there was a blindfold on his face, and he was obediently making himself vulnerable for a man who gleefully carried around something called an evil stick.
Nick drew him out of his thoughts by running a hand— warm, soft, light—down the centre of his back. His spine straightened one vertebra at a time, like Nick was switching on electrical charges all the way down from Spencer’s neck to the small of his back. There, the hand stopped. Paused. Lifted away.No movement. No sound. No contact.
Spencer swallowed.
Crack.
A hand hit Spencer’s arse so hard his eyes fluttered behind the blindfold.
“Shit.” The word came out as more of a grunt than anything.
“I don’t recall saying you could talk.” The razor sharp edge on Nick’s voice jolted him more than the slap had. “Unless I ask you a question, or you’re using your safeword”— crack— “you won’t speak. Got it?”
Spencer nodded.
Crack.
“Got it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what I thought.” The edge dulled slightly, enough to untie the muscles below Spencer’s neck.
Nick’s body heat moved, gathering off to Spencer’s left side, leaving his right side cool and exposed. Then, once again, 69
the entire room was still and silent. He imagined Nick slipping in and out of his tangible, flesh-and-blood form, flitting from solid to ghostly and back just because he fucking could. If not for that warmth beside him, he might have believed that was exactly what was happening.
Snap.
“Fuck!”
The evil stick bit in just below Spencer’s nipple. Everything behind the blindfold flashed red for a split second, and he ground his teeth to keep from cursing again.
“You aren’t supposed to speak.” Crack. “Right?”
“Right,” Spencer said through his teeth. “Sorry.”
Silence. Stillness.
Snap.
Spencer bit back a curse. Held his breath until he was sure it wouldn’t slip out. Then he exhaled slowly, and realised he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to rub the stinging red hot spot inside his forearm. Probably not. Asking might get him a slap on the arse, presuming might get him an evil stick across the knuckles.
Snap.
Under the shoulder blade this time.
Spencer breathed slowly and evenly. The tiny focal points of pain still glowed on his nerve endings, like stars coming into view one by one in a dark, bare sky. One by one—in the middle of his buttock, just below his col arbone, on the inside of his thigh—more stars came into focus, each glowing brightly at first before settling into the same intensity as the ones before, slowly forming a constellation.
Spencer braced against the bed and forced back tears that were increasingly from pleasure more than pain.
70
Pleasure? From—
Snap.
God, yes.