Zack asked questions where he was curious, but shrugged most of it off. Aaron recognized this not as indifference, but as someone accepting him at face value.
No wonder I feel uncertain around nearly everyone else, he thought to himself.
“I have a question,” Zack said after dinner. “Which you can totally say no to, as I realize the timing is either bad or romantic... in a pervy way.”
Aaron barked with laughter. “What is it?”
“You seem to like the bondage thing,” Zack said.
Understatement. “I do, but that’s not a question.”
“I bought some proper rope for doing some proper work with it. If you’re interested. I mean, it’s right before camp, so if you’re not or not now I super understand....”
Zack was babbling, and Aaron was aware he found it quite cute. He was also aware that his whole body suddenly felt pulled towards Zack with a force he couldn’t control.
“Yes,” he said.
Zack blinked at him, startled.
“Did you think I was going to say no?” Aaron asked.
“I didn’t... I wasn’t thinking at all,” Zack said. “Most of the people I’ve dated, if we were doing stuff like this, I met them in spaces where it was a given they shared the interest. So, you’re exciting and new and I am out of practice.”
Aaron smiled. He liked the idea that Zack sometimes felt as out of place as he did. He found it reassuring and flattering.
“I like being exciting and new,” Aaron said. “Now tell me what’s next.”
AARON GOT UNDRESSED as Zack laid out the different lengths of rope and explained how they could make this about art or sex or some of both.
This is why I like you, Aaron thought as he stretched—that was the reality of skating. Every moment that he moved, he was either looking for more mobility or to work out some stiffness from his training.
Zack stared him, clearly fascinated.
“What?” Aaron asked, coming up from a standing backbend.
“How long can you keep your back arched like that?” Zack asked.
Aaron squinted at him. “With my head upside down, not that long.”
“But if you were lying on the ground?”
“You mean like this?” Aaron said. He dropped onto his stomach and reached back to grab his ankles in a yoga bow position. “Pretty much indefinitely. Why?”
“Can I tie you up like that?” Zack asked. “You would be so beautiful and strange.”
ZACK MADE AARON GET up on the bed for the actual project.
“If my idea works,” he said, “it will be more convenient later, trust me. For now, close your eyes.”
Aaron did as he was told. He felt himself drop out of the world as soft rope was looped around his ankles with a knot tied sharply between them. The ropes then found his wrists, and Zack wove and coiled and knotted them up his arms, explaining softly about the different types of rope bondage that existed in different cultures and how he had taken what he had learned in terms of art and pleasure and safety but was also making things up as he went.
Aaron, trapped now in the bow until Zack released him, absorbed maybe half his words.
Zack seemed to sense how far away he was and ran his fingers through Aaron’s hair and across his face. Aaron whimpered slightly, and stretched to capture one in his mouth. He could feel his cock getting hard under him, which felt good now and was going to be torture later. He would surely struggle against his bonds and the bed to get release, and would no doubt only obtain it when Zack said he could.
Zack touched his hands. “Can you feel this?”
“Yes.”
“No tingles, all normal?”
“All good,” Aaron said impatiently, annoyed to have to deal with the world again for the moment.
Zacks hands moved to his feet. “And here?”
“They’re fine,” Aaron nearly snapped. He understood the concern, truly he did. But his circulation felt fine. He’d had pairs of skates that were worse for him than this.
“Good. Then, I’m going to add more rope.”
Aaron hummed and dropped his head forward, as Zack laced rope through the harp-shape formed by his legs, and hands, and back. He tried to picture it, like the cables of a suspension bridge, and while the image pleased him, he still wished he could see it for himself.
“Take a picture?” he asked, breathless. He needed to know and to see what this thing was that he had fallen into with this man.
“Are you sure? I can’t imagine you want anything like this floating around.”
“I trust you,” Aaron said, “and we can delete it later.”
Zack tied a final knot and tucked in a tail of rope. As he stepped away from the bed to get his camera, Aaron felt a moment of desperate fear, not that he would be abandoned like this, but that he would be made to wait even further for his pleasure.
But Zack was back in a moment, caressing his back and his face and his ass, gentling him, the wild animal he was.
Zack’s hands left again, but then there was the click of the camera—once, twice, another handful of times as Aaron threw his head back to make the position look perfect.
The motion sent him rocking on the bed, forward and back over his hard dick that was pressed into the mattress under him. He groaned.
And Zack chuckled.
“You’re very clever,” Aaron managed.
“You have not,” Zack said, “seen anything yet.”
Aaron heard the sound of the snap and zip on Zack’s jeans and opened his eyes to Zack pulling his cock free and jerking himself off.
“Yes, please,” Aaron breathed.
“Oh good.”
Zack stepped closed to the bed. He placed one hand along Aaron’s throat and under his chin to coax him into lifting his head. Immediately, Aaron opened his mouth to take him in. He needed this—the taste, the smell, the thickness on his tongue and the way it drove all the rest of his life away.
Zack placed one hand in Aaron’s hair and
