Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 81518 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 408(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 272(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81518 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 408(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 272(@300wpm)
It was fucking insane how easily this boy captured my chest in a vise.
“That’s good, because we won’t allow it.” I hugged him to me and kissed his neck. “From now on, you’re going to come to us as soon as the doubts creep in. We’ll talk things out and devise a plan to get through this together. How’s that?”
He nodded against my shoulder. “Yes, Sir.”
River asked him to tell us the specific types of pain he’d sought out—the ones that felt like punishment—and in the meantime, I started thinking about a reward system for Shay. To earn rewards, he had to complete tasks.
“It was mainly a combination.” Shay burrowed closer, as if he wanted to hide. I assumed it was the topic. “Requesting physical pain and degradation from a Sadist who’s agreed to skipping aftercare makes the pain unbearable. Like, pain I’d otherwise enjoy.”
My jaw ticked with tension, and one glance at River told me he was just as bothered as I was.
“Basically, each hit was a reminder that I wasn’t worth aftercare,” he finished quietly.
I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath through my nose.
Somehow, we had to punish him for this. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell we could give him a pass and risk him thinking his infraction hadn’t been that bad. Quite the fucking opposite; he’d treated himself like trash, and right now, I couldn’t think of anything worse he could do.
The punishment had to fit the crime, but it couldn’t be anything that made him feel worse, so… Off the top of my head, I was thinking community probation, consensual slave labor—Santiago would be the perfect Dom to ask for advice since he was a high-protocol Daddy Dom—and Shay could definitely count on delivering personal apologies to August and the other Sadists in our circle of friends whom he had approached.
“You’re tense,” Shay said apprehensively.
“Damn right.” I cleared my throat. “There will be consequences for you, Shay. We’re… I can’t even describe how pleased I am about you opening up to us, but we can’t let this slide. You’ve hurt yourself, pushed yourself down, and you…are someone we care about a great deal. So when all this is over, there won’t be a shred of doubt in your mind as to whether or not we’re okay with you treating yourself that way.”
“Crap,” Shay whispered.
“You’ve mistreated our property,” River concluded.
“Double crap,” Shay groaned. “But I’m really sorry.”
Not yet, but he would be. One day.
“Come on.” I patted his thigh. “Time for bed. That punishment will require some fun planning for River and me. Tonight is still all about cuddles.”
He huffed. “Fine.”
One week. Tonight, specifically, would mark one week since Shay had approached our table at the White Rose event. Seven days.
I shouldn’t have bitched about the pressure in my chest yesterday. Shay had sent a picture of himself and his brothers on a baseball field, and it’d left me feeling all weird and irritated the rest of the day. Then leave it to River to smack me in the chest and go, “It’s called developing feelings, you moron. We miss him, that’s all.”
So now I had to deal with that shit.
Feelings. What the fuck.
I was good with affection, care, and platonic love. It separated things very clearly from the only bone-deep, all-consuming attachment I’d ever felt, and that was to my brother. The rest could be categorized into family or friends. But Shay was hovering somewhere in his own space and causing reactions in me I didn’t know how to handle.
River stirred next to me, and I glanced over as he checked his phone on the nightstand.
“Christ,” he whispered groggily. “It’s five thirty in the morning. Go back to sleep.”
I frowned at the back of his head. “I haven’t said a single word.”
“I can hear you thinkin’,” he grunted.
I rolled my eyes and moved closer to him. “How are you so chill about all this?”
He knew what I was talking about.
“Why freak out about something I have no control over?” He yawned and pushed down the duvet past his hips, and I shivered in contentment when I pressed my chest to his back. He was perfectly warm. I tended to kick off the covers in my sleep.
“Walk me through your own realization.” I pressed a kiss to his shoulder, needing his input. His perspectives never failed to center me, because we were almost always on the same page.
He joked about being “six minutes” faster than me sometimes. Six minutes faster at running—which was horseshit, for the record—six minutes faster at drawing conclusions, six minutes faster at noticing when someone did something out of character, and so on. Six minutes faster at being born…
“I guess it was two things,” he responded sleepily. “The other day, I refrained from getting in the shower when you were there because I wasn’t sure how Shay would react.” Understandable. It wasn’t normal for two grown brothers to shower together, to share a bed, to lie close like this, to hug as often as we did, to share a home, a life.