It’s funny how my posture appears to be the epitome of relaxed anticipation, but I immediately feel the strain of keeping my hands still as Ash’s hands find my fly. I jolt as the backs of his fingers brush against my erection through my pants and I can practically hear him smile.
“Don’t move,” he warns, his sure hands tugging my zipper down, down, down.
“And what happens if I do?” I ask, grabbing the couch frame behind the cushions to keep myself from touching him, from reaching for his cock or reaching for my own.
“Consequences.” The word is a no-man’s land between playful and deadly serious, and I shudder with undefined want. I haven’t had premeditated consequences in a very long time, and I’m surprised at how viscerally the idea excites me. “Now, no more words out of your mouth unless it’s to say thank you, Sir or please, no more, Sir.”
I snort. “Will you actually stop if I say please?”
“No.” Now I can definitely hear the smile in his words. “Take off your shirt, Embry; you are allowed to move for that. Then put your hands back where they were.”
I obey, and the minute I settle back to where I was, the sharp snap of a rubber band stings across my left nipple. I gasp.
“Guess what else was in my desk?” Ash says in an amused voice. A second snap against the same nipple and I’m arching my back, the pain sizzling quickly into a very different kind of heat. “Those were warning snaps. Any more lip from you and I will see how red those nipples can get. And there are worse places I can use this rubber band, Embry, don’t forget.”
I make a show of pressing my lips together. “Good boy,” Ash says, and his hands return to my pants, parting the fly and tugging my pants and boxer briefs down far enough to release my dick. I’m so stirred up that even the caress of the air-conditioned air is too stimulating; I resist the urge to squirm, knowing there will be consequences, although I almost wish for them.
“Historically, monarchs would give faithful servants gifts upon their return. Sometimes it was land or a castle or a ship; the Anglo-Saxon kings would give their retainers rings and necklaces of gold. Sometimes even a night with the queen.” A firm hand wraps around my shaft and the sensation shudders through me. “But I don’t have any gold, and you already get to share my wife. So what could I give you? For serving me so well? For rescuing my queen?”
The hand glides down and then back up, whispering over the taut, silken skin of my erection. A low groan rumbles through my chest. Fuck, that feels good.
And then something unexpected happens: my tip is engulfed in something warm and wet.
“Oh fuck,” I groan and then realize my mistake. “Sorry, sorry, sorry—don’t—”
It’s too late and the rubber band comes back, stinging across my nipples and down my stomach, snap snap snap. I freeze in paralyzed pleasure-pain, mentally begging the rubber band not to go any lower and half hoping it will.
It doesn’t, and a soothing hand runs up my stomach, warm and rough against the small welts. “Nod your head if you want to keep going,” Ash says, and when he speaks, I can feel his breath on my dick and stomach. It takes everything I have not to shove up into his mouth, but knowing him, he’d deny me altogether if I did that, so I hold still. Barely.
I nod my head, feeling a faint trickle of sweat run down from my temple into the tie. My skin is alive with welts and want, my body begs for his touch.
And then it happens again, a slow, almost tickling warmth. So wet. So fucking wet and hot, and then his lips close over my crown and he sucks.
“Mmphh,” I moan, managing to keep it from being a word at just the last moment. “Mmphh.”
He laughs, the laugh vibrating through my cock and deep into the pit of my stomach, which clenches in response. He draws me deeper, and God, how I wish I could see him! See that dark, proud head bent over me, those broad shoulders folded in between my legs. He claims he isn’t a true sadist, but denying me this sight, this visual memory, is more than enough evidence for a healthy sadistic streak.
He takes me so deep that I feel the back of his throat, and then when I begin rocking my hips against his face, he settles a forearm across my lower stomach to hold me still. Pinning me down so that he can suck me the way he wants, take his time licking around my base and swirling around the tip, mixing in nips and kisses and gentle fingertips against my perineum. As if even when going down on me, it’s still for him. All for him.
He moves my pants farther down so he can run a wandering hand across the skin of my inner thighs, trace the lines of muscles and tendons around my upper thighs and stomach, pinch the juts of my hipbones. He lets me squirm now, lets me roll my hips against him. There’s a brushing noise and it takes a moment for me to realize that it’s the sound of my shoes against the carpet as my legs move restlessly around him.
He keeps at me though, refusing to let my desperation dictate his pace. In fact, he goes even slower, sucking me in long deep pulls, licking up with the flat of his tongue, and holy fuck, it’s such torture not seeing this. Not being able to capture it in my memory forever, because he’s jerked me off countless times, fucked me just as many, and there were a handful of times when he’d put his mouth on me to tease me or edge me, but never has it been this. Never has it been this tender or thorough or drawn-out.
“This is my thank you,” I hear him murmur. His mouth drops kisses on the muscled lines of my belly, on my hips, my navel. “My appreciation.” A quick hard suck on my tip leaves me panting. “My eternal, bottomless gratitude.”