“I’m going to hurt you badly. I’m going to take a paddle to your ass until you beg me to stop, and I still won’t. I’m going to make you cry.”
Tobias’s lips curved into a furious, almost wild smile. “You can try.”
“I’m going to fuck you until you can’t do anything but take it.”
“You can try.”
“I’m going to be so sweet to you—”
“Don’t you dare patronize me, you fucking—”
Sullivan squeezed Tobias’s jaw until he writhed, a low pain noise coming from his mouth. Sullivan spoke over that sound even as it made him harder. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”
After, then. There’d be room for sweetness when Tobias had gotten this out of his system and he could let himself grieve and refortify for whatever consequences his choices had stuck him with. Then Tobias would be receptive, probably in need of comfort and support, and in all honesty, if this got as rough as he was expecting it to, Sullivan might be in need of some, too, so yeah, he could see a lot of cuddling in their future.
But first he needed to fuck Tobias up. And then just fuck him.
* * *
His jaw ached.
Long after Sullivan released his face in order to take his arm and drag him up the stairs, the bone throbbed, and Tobias focused on that as he struggled, as he made Sullivan work for it. He made Sullivan put his back into it all the way down the hall into the bedroom, where Sullivan threw him bodily onto the bed. By the time the world righted, Sullivan was pulling a trunk out of the closet and shoving the lid open. Tobias slid off the bed slowly, wondering what Sullivan would do if he ran for it. He thought Sullivan would come after him and haul him back, but he wasn’t entirely sure, so he stayed put.
He didn’t want to get away.
Sullivan pulled out a mess of black leather and silver chain, tossing it on the bed, then took off his T-shirt. His tattoos stood out stark against his skin in the afternoon sunlight coming through the window, and his face was rigid with aggression. He was visibly hard in his jeans, and Tobias wanted to touch him. He wanted to lick him and touch him and fight.
“List the colors,” Sullivan ordered.
Tobias didn’t—God, he didn’t want all of this crap. These limits—they were the opposite of what he wanted. But he could see from Sullivan’s expression that he wasn’t getting around this one, so he said through his teeth, “Green means I want more, yellow means I’m close to my limit, and red means stop now.”
“Good. You can throw as much of a temper tantrum as you like, but if you try to kick me, you won’t like the consequences.”
“I’m not throwing a tantrum.” He watched as Sullivan turned the mass of leather into two wrist cuffs with silver buckles and a short chain.
“Turn around,” Sullivan said.
“No.”
“If I have to make you, you aren’t coming tonight.”
Tobias’s breath caught. He—he was so angry already, and the idea of having to go along with it chafed, but his blood was on fire. He turned around.
Sullivan wrapped a cuff around each of Tobias’s wrists, then used the chain to bind the cuffs together at the small of his back. He gave it a few seconds before touching Tobias’s fingers. “How’s that feel? No numbness or tingling or anything?”
“Are you going to pull this babysitting crap all night?”
“I’m going to do whatever the fuck I feel like.” Sullivan went back to the trunk and this time came up with a piece of wood roughly the size and shape of a large, square hairbrush, albeit without the bristles. A dozen holes had been drilled into it except on the narrow strip that would function as a handle.
A paddle.
He tossed the paddle onto the mattress, and sat down on the bed, perched on the edge as he had the night before. Nothing else was the same though, not the hum in the air or the way Sullivan wrenched Tobias down and over his legs. It wasn’t a comfortable position by any stretch—he felt a bit like he might fall, at least until Sullivan’s left hand wrapped around his wrist, centering him.
“Spread your legs,” Sullivan ordered, using one foot to nudge at his calves, leaving Tobias both more exposed and more stable with the wider stance.
Sullivan spanked him with his bare hand. Once, twice, three times. The blows kept coming, and Tobias’s frustration grew. His chest tightened. His urge to sit up and quit the whole process became impossible to ignore. His head was heavy and he was just—he didn’t like it. It didn’t feel like last night, when it’d been fun and he hadn’t been thinking, hadn’t felt on the verge of shattering. He didn’t like it at all and now he was mad at Sullivan for not making this work on top of everything else. He didn’t want to do it like this—no, he didn’t want to do any of this at all, didn’t want to be on his belly like this, like some low, subservient thing, spanked like a child, like he couldn’t manage his own adulthood, his own life or choices. His whole body vibrated with unspoken denial and the blows kept coming, stoking the fire and it hurt, it just hurt, there was nothing arousing or fun or dirty about it, he wanted to yell and fight and...and...
“For a sub on the verge of throwing a fit, you’re pretty fucking hard,” Sullivan said, sounding calm and amused and so smug, and Tobias had somehow, weirdly, sort of forgotten that Sullivan was there, that he was the one committing these spanks. This wasn’t something that was happening to him, this was something that Sullivan was doing to him, that Tobias had asked for, if not in so many words. Tobias was suddenly aware of two competing realities, realities that
