IT HAD BEEN a long, long time since Steve had flogged a lover.
Tightening the last of the leather cuffs, Steve scanned Chenco’s restraints then checked them again. He knew the cross was properly anchored and stable enough to handle the most violent recoils, but the compulsion to be completely sure was too strong to do anything else. They’d done extended play, they’d done rough play, but they hadn’t yet done both together. Tonight this would change.
After making one final round of checks, when he knew his boy was as safe and secure as could be, Steve admired the beauty of the young man spread open and naked before him.
God, but Chenco was gorgeous. He still had the youthful, rangy appearance saying boy, but naked and exposed like this, Steve could see this was a man before him, not a child. The latter wasn’t an appearance as much as a carriage, a self-possession flickering against the backdrop of insecurity. He didn’t cringe from it, though—he faced it boldly, shoving his unease aside.
The idea of tearing down the fragile wall, of stripping Chenco down to raw—of watching him surrender to pain for real, being part of his transformation—the thought alone made Steve hard.
Steve took a swig of water and examined Chenco’s naked back, trying to decide if he wanted to blindfold him. Probably best to do so, he decided, and fished a mask out of the drawer. He knew a fleeting yearning for a cigar as he spied them on a shelf—normally he would indulge during a scene, but Chenco took health so seriously, and Steve couldn’t bring himself to poison the playroom’s air. It was a consideration he would only give Chenco, he acknowledged, as he tied the leather mask into place.
Once he’d secured it, he examined the scene one last time and went to his flogger cupboard.
Steve weighed his options as he took in the racks of carefully stored and meticulously cared-for implements. Chain was out, as was rubber. He wanted some thud, wanted to knock Chenco so hard if he wasn’t secured, he’d go across the room. At the same time, he wanted a stinger handy. Something to hold in reserve, so when Chenco was used to the big blows, a new sensation would come at him. That’s when he’d come undone, when there’d be nothing between them but the pain. It had to be good. It had to be perfect.
Steve chose the twenty-inch bull with seventy tails, and the kangaroo. After closing the cupboard, he turned on some low, slow-burning alternative music. He dimmed the lights enough to suit his mood while still allowing for safety—low enough that when he removed Chenco’s blindfold, it wouldn’t be too jarring. Putting the bullhide flogger in his right hand and the kangaroo in his left, he took up his position behind his lover and drew in a few centering, focusing breaths. He turned the bullhide around a few times, warming up his arm, letting the tails hit the floor occasionally with a soft slap. He grinned as each little sound made Chenco jump.
Moving silently, he stepped closer to Chenco, took aim, and thudded the right cheek of that beautiful, bare brown ass.
Chenco yelped and jerked. Steve grinned and enjoyed the shock as it moved through his bottom’s body like liquid silver. Yeah, it hurt different than anybody thought. Not as bad and yet worse at the same time. Steve had put a lot of work into getting the trick of it. The right implement helped, but there was a skill about the wrist, the shoulder, the timing.
This is just a taste of what I can give you, baby, he thought, and hit him again.
Chenco was fun to torture—he clung so nobly to composure before folding with the grace of a queen. Steve could knock him off balance in thirty seconds, reduce him to sobs and begging and pleading, but he liked to draw things out, to toy with his prey and really mindfuck them. Liked to let them think they might make it, run them out to the edge of endurance, and then up the ante with the clear message he had hours of torture ahead.
He could also drive someone into their safe word, and after a solid two weeks of learning Chenco’s limits, he knew exactly where the boundary lay. Sadism wasn’t about taking people too far. It was about taking them almost too far. It was about not asking for but assuming control. It was about being strong and sure, a huge wall of absolute his sub crumbled against. It was about getting another human being to voluntarily submit to his will, knowing they could trust him with it. It was about, for an hour or two, playing God.
Tonight he played deity for Chenco, and tonight he was in the mood to knock flat the ridiculous paper wall Chenco had around himself. He’d show Chenco that this idea he could protect himself from the world by hiding behind petty fears wouldn’t stand up to a mild wind. He’d lift the dark fear Chenco had himself wrapped in, to see the Chenco underneath. He’d watch the man rise up and overcome it all.
He’d knock that man down too, send him trembling into Steve’s arms. Fuck him hard and long and beautiful, make the strong, amazing man his for a day—completely, utterly his. He wanted, when it was over, for Chenco to thank him for the ride.
He hit the same spot on the right ass cheek, three sharp successive blows taking Chenco up to the edge of wanting to get away, made his mind insist he not allow it to happen anymore. Steve grinned as his lover tensed on the third strike—he’d known that one was coming—then readied himself for another. Steve drew a breath, pretending it was his cigar, waited another half-beat to get out of the rhythm—and struck Chenco on his left thigh.
This game went on for twenty minutes. He peppered Chenco’s body with slaps of varying weight, establishing a rhythm and pattern only to break it and switch to a new area. He would focus on Chenco’s upper back and his arms, letting the whoosh of air taunt but never touch his face. He teased the falls against Chenco’s tender, vulnerable sides then struck them roughly enough to choke out a cry. He focused twenty, thirty lashes in succession on the now very red and tender ass, making Chenco shout and buck and try, in vain, to move away.
Steve watched his lover battle the flogger blows, watched his face screw up in determination, watched deeper strength take hold. Steve admired it.
Then he gave Chenco his first real blow.
The cry tearing through his lover’s body was so beautiful—a perfect mixture of surprise, fear, and true agony. Steve gave him another, so close to the edge he listened for the call that would slow or stop their play. None came.
Chenco was determined not to bend. It had nothing to do with Steve, he knew, and everything to do with life teaching him over and over again how bending led to bad, bad things. It had everything to do with a personality which, while it craved authority and attention and enjoyed playing with pain, was not as duck to water with submission as Sam Keller-Tedsoe or Gordy. No, someday Steve was fairly sure Chenco would wield a whip of his own.
Not today. Today, Chenco still had a great deal to learn about pain, and Steve was his teacher.
The bullhide flogger was his pen, and Steve wrote Chenco’s lessons across the tender, over-sensitized surface of his lover’s skin. Pain was only part of the problem. Pain was what everyone who heard about BDSM thought they feared, but they were wrong. It was the loss of control, giving up to pain. Any fool could endure. It took a real man to deliberately walk into fire.
Chenco likely felt as if he were in flames—his skin was so raw and crazed Steve could skim ice down his back and it would burn. If Steve put the flogger down and fucked Chenco, the sensations of his skin would blend with the spearing of his flesh, and the rough pounding would turn into strange bliss only accessible during this kind of play. But Steve didn’t put the flogger down and fuck Chenco. He whipped him harder, bringing the blows closer together as they became more and more erratic. He drew deep into the place inside him aching for a cigar between his teeth, smoke burning his eyes—this part of him turned the handle.
He stepped closer and slid the falls along Chenco’s balls, his perineum, pushed the handle a few times over the crease hiding his hole. Chenco jerked and whimpered, a shiver of new fear whispering over him with a gossamer touch. Steve sucked it down like honey. Yes, love. I could hurt you there too. I could hurt you anywhere. He let Chenco swim in the knowledge, let him anticipate Steve’s hand on his balls, his cock, his fingers teasing at his hole.
Moving away without sound, Steve resumed flogging.
The music had shifted into something with a heavy backbeat, and Steve thrummed Chenco’s body in time so he could feel it in his skin, his blood, his soul. He became so regular he knew Chenco had forgotten Steve’s love for varying technique. He went on in rhythm so long that, when he paused, only Chenco’s deepest subconscious was ready for the return.
Steve drew another breath, a toke on his imaginary cigar.
He raised the kangaroo flogger and brought it down with crushing force on the raw skin of Chenco’s lower back.
Chenco screamed.
Steve hit him again.
It felt, Steve knew, like the sharp sting of cold snow on an already frozen face. Those blows were tiny bites beside a deep, throbbing ache—one or two slaps were bad, but in succession, they were maddening. Pain? Fuck pain, this was sensation now, leaving behind words such as bad and good and forcing Chenco into whole new atmospheres. His body was so thick with endorphins he had to leave it to make room for the subsequent rounds.
Except there was one problem. Chenco had to cling to those walls. He couldn’t let go because only the walls were safe.
With throbbing pleasure, Steve burned those barriers down.
He was in a rhythm again now, alternating sting and thud, hard and soft, heavy, and light. He gave nothing but patterns—bull, kangaroo, kangaroo bull for six bars, then kangaroo, kangaroo, kangaroo bull for eight more. He taught Chenco’s body all it could crave about sting and thud, beating him into headspace, forcing him to leave everything else behind.
Chenco screamed, sobbed, swore—he struggled against the leather cuffs, tried to lift the cross off the bolts securing it to the floor. He shook. He cried, a terrified, little-boy sob. He fought Steve tooth and nail, with the conviction of one ready to go to the absolute edge—until Steve took the stinger up to the same second notch he’d already taken the bullhide. Steve teased him with a deeper level still, showing him, at the edge of Chenco’s exhaustion, that Steve was just getting warmed up.
Chenco gave one last cry, a defeated gasp. Then he let go of the ruins of his walls, gave himself over to Steve—and soared into space.
They traveled to heaven together now—though they stood feet apart, Steve had never felt closer to Chenco. He moved through the air, through the music, through the haze of Chenco’s pain as if they were living things he could manipulate. With his floggers, Steve conducted the orchestra of pain and pleasure, of sensation and surrender.
Time fell away, the world fell away. Division fell away. Chenco’s skin was Steve’s skin, his canvas, his space to carve and mold. Each gasp, each cry, each arch into the next blow felt like crystal etched in beauty only he could see and only Chenco could feel. In this separate space and time, Steve could see the future, could see the limits of Chenco’s endurance as he’d never known them before, could see their stages and their progression. The chain flogger would come out someday. The rubber one too.
Not yet. Not now. But the potential was there. Chenco would want it all. Steve found himself aching at the thought, ready to do anything to be the one Chenco was with when it happened.
When a wind-down song came on, Steve sighed at the upcoming loss, hating that the roller coaster had to go back to the station. Chenco was tired—Chenco wouldn’t call him to a stop, not now, not until he collapsed in a faint from exhaustion. He was so high he’d keep going until he burned against the sun. Steve brought him down slowly, expertly. He took Chenco a bottle of water—the kind fighters used, an angled straw bending into the mouth so Steve could squeeze a liberal amount inside. He murmured under his breath as he did so, stroking Chenco’s sensitized skin with the falls.
Steve set the floggers on a nearby table and drew the table closer, balancing some lube and a heavy metal plug within easy reach. He stroked Chenco’s side, murmuring his pleasure, then went to another drawer, coming back with a small clamp. He greased his cock, took more lube and pressed between Chenco’s cheeks with insistent fingers. Around the edges of the mask, he could see Chenco’s face. His lover was serene, lost in his headspace, drifting down from the highest planes, still strapped into the roller coaster.
One more time around.
Steve closed the clamp over Chenco’s nipple, pushed his cock inside, and bit Chenco’s neck.
He groaned in chorus with Chenco’s cries, feeling them reverberate inside his own body as he drove them ruthlessly back up—this was the edge, the thinnest blade of it, and Steve gloried in the rush. He fucked hard, twisting and turning the clamp until Chenco’s sobs were incoherent pleas, until his own thrusts were so rough they stole Chenco’s voice. He let go of the clamp and jacked Chenco’s cock, teasing inside the slit with his index finger as if he could extract the ejaculate by force. He took Chenco to the furthest point he’d ever taken anyone, and when he knew he could go no further, he gripped the clamp and pulled it taut.
At the same time he released Chenco, Steve whispered, “Come.”
He dropped the clamp and fucked into Chenco as he came apart, holding himself back until Chenco fell, his body too over-sensitized to take any more pounding. Steve made him take more anyway, undid him until he was nothing but frayed bits, and then he came too, pumping himself deep into Chenco. He pushed the plug tip inside before he pulled out completely, straining Chenco, claiming one last gasp before shoving the toy home, wedging it deep inside.
The plug stayed in all night. He held it in place himself as he drew Chenco down, scooping him in and carrying him to the bed. As he gave Chenco more water and told him how proud he was, how beautiful Chenco had been, he nudged at the base, reminding Chenco he was still inside him, fucking him to keep the edge of over-sensitization alive.
He kissed Chenco, stroking his body, pinching the abused nipple. When Chenco was stable enough, he collected a set of clamps from the playroom—he wanted them on all night, all day, there for him to tease until this long, sweet scene was completely done. Chenco emerged from his haze enough to complain he had to pee—Steve made him hold it, keeping him semi-aroused so the need to piss became another edge to claim. When he did let him up to pee, Steve came along, holding the plug in place.
Then he had Chenco bend over the sink, and he removed the plug to fuck him again.
“That’s two of my loads in you now,” Steve reminded him as he led a wobbly-legged Chenco back to bed. “I’m going to keep filling you all day. I’m going to fuck your mouth, your ass, feeding you until my twenty-four hours are up.”
Chenco purred and curled beside him, but he held on too, burrowing his face in Steve’s shoulder, his fingernails sharp points of the anxiety Steve knew damn well shouldn’t be left.
“I don’t want to leave you,” Chenco whispered. “If the show goes well, I don’t want to leave you.”
The confession felled Steve. His walls came down too, toppled with the barest breath from Chenco. “I’ll go with you. Wherever you go, I’ll go too.”
For the first time since the flogging, Chenco tensed. “You can’t. You can’t promise me that.”
Chenco wasn’t the only one who’d been undone by their scene. Steve rolled Chenco’s nipple between his fingers. “Don’t you tell me what I can’t do.”
Chenco cried again, but it wasn’t because of the pain in his nipple. “Nobody does this. Nobody cares about me like this.”
Steve slid his hand down to Chenco’s cock and gripped his balls possessively. “They do now.”
Chenco wept, and Steve kissed him and fondled him, stoking their fires slowly, languidly, until they were hard once more. He jerked Chenco off, then turned him over and fucked him long and slow—he was so loose, so sloppy now inside he’d need a strap to keep the plug in place, and Steve would get him one.
He shoved Chenco’s knees wide to the point of aching, teased his too-tender cock, dug his fingers into the welted flesh of his ass, and rode his precious hole until he leaked spunk and lube.
Mine.
Steve fucked until his cock went limp and raw. He put the plug back in, went to the playroom to find a strap, and locked the metal and his fluids in place.
Mine. For as long as you let me, boy, you’re mine.
He wrapped his body around Chenco, knowing he was falling too hard, too fast, knowing there was no way he could ever keep someone like Chenco forever, knowing with certainty heartbreak was absolutely on his way.
He let himself fall anyway.
THE DAY AFTER his flogging was the most sacred day of Chenco’s life.
It was a dirty, deliciously gritty day. He’d never thought he’d wanted something so raunchy, but everything they did, he loved. This was playing, they were boys, and sometimes boys played gross. They were little boys who knew exactly what to do with their penises and their holes, and they did all the fun, naughty things they could make them do.
Jesus, did they play with Chenco’s poor little hole.
Once upon a time Chenco had looked up all the wicked, taboo gay sex terms on the net, and now he hadn’t only read about them, he’d done them. Felching? Yep. This came with one hell of a hygiene regimen first, but yes, it had happened, and Chenco got hard just thinking about it. Fisting? Had happened a few days before the flogging. Today Steve put a ball with a string on it inside Chenco and played his fucking ass like a violin. Chenco came with such force he knocked the table over.
If there was a game to be had with his ass, he was pretty sure he’d played it. And yet there was one taboo, one secret, terrible thing he had not yet done, something that had nothing to do with his ass at all.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the contract, about what he’d confessed he wanted. For the first time, however, he wasn’t ashamed, wasn’t afraid. Not about this—not with Steve.
Chenco couldn’t do anything but feel safe and protected with Steve. There was no room for shame. Steve wouldn’t allow it. Never had Chenco felt so owned. He had in fact, outside of Steve, never allowed anyone to feel they’d owned him even in the slightest, but everything about being with Steve was a category all its own.
There was something so bone-deep, achingly pure about Steve not asking what Chenco wanted, just taking from his body. He felt like a junkie, yearning for his next fix of contact, of play, of degradation or pain or whatever Steve wanted. The acts and any social meanings attached to them were gone. Everything now was about serving Steve, honoring that space he made for Chenco. Every surrender was another chance to be free.
Beyond that liberation, however, was another gift, one he never would have expected to find in being so rough and raw—Steve’s caretaking. While Chenco was so high on his freedom he’d happily throw safety and smarts out the door, Steve was ruthlessly attentive to his care. Yes, he teased sensitive skin, but more than once he told Chenco no, they needed to rest for a bit before continuing to play. All the water wasn’t just to torture his bladder, either. Twice Chenco had been delirious with begging, feeling lightheaded and happy, but something must have been off because Steve stopped play, grabbed water and made him drink it.
He stopped often to make Chenco eat too, always light things, but they ate a lot. Crackers, hummus, veggies, fruit. It was almost sexier than the actual sex, being fed. Sometimes he had to eat from Steve’s sweaty, sexy skin.
Steve made food part of play too—Chenco’s body was disgusting, and the bed was an unholy mess, stained with crushed strawberries, littered with cracker crumbs, damp with spunk and sweat and God knew what else. The hedonism, the wickedness of their play, made Chenco want to purr. Sometimes he did.
By the afternoon, Chenco had drifted down a little, and Steve encouraged him to nap. Once he woke, however, they were back at it—Steve took him into the playroom, where he shoved a cock gag deep into Chenco’s throat. Chenco didn’t flinch and was mostly annoyed he had to hold a hanky in his hand to drop as a replacement safe word. Even four hours ago, he might have refused to try the gag on. It was a nasty thing, ugly looking and uncomfortable, designed to humiliate, which Chenco still hated—except right now he wanted it. It was yet another way to serve Steve, to honor himself. Honor them both.
He thought again about what they had not done, that line in the contract, a dark, silky whisper in the back of his mind. The watersports permission he’d granted. The last line to cross, the thing he now wanted to happen today more than anything, the thing he was no longer embarrassed about or scared of. He only craved it, ached for it with a barren, hedonistic shamlessness he refused to self-examine.
Piss on me, Steve. Oh, it would be so perfect, in the middle of all this nasty, frothy mess. No one ever had to know, but he’d know. Steve would too. He didn’t have to be ashamed. Steve was here. It would be safe. He would be okay.
It didn’t happen, though, not yet anyway. Chenco did get a real cock at least—Steve took out the gag and gave him long, slow, deep fucks into his throat which never stole his air, though now that he thought about it, Chenco kind of wanted that. Another forbidden act I can give to you. Please, cariño, let me give it all to you.
Steve’s smile said he could read Chenco’s desire, and the love in his eyes said patience, baby, I’ll let you.
He pulled out and came all over Chenco’s face. It wasn’t much of a spray—Steve’s balls had to be in overdrive at this point—but it was enough to soothe the savage beast that had risen in Chenco.
Part of him, anyway.
Bending into a crouch, Steve stroked Chenco’s face, his hair, his raw and ragged throat.
“You’re such a good boy. You were so strong, but you gave it up to me, letting me have all your strength to play with. You’re pushing your body so hard, right to the edge, but you’re trusting me to keep you safe. You make me so proud, holding my loads, wearing one on your face. You’re raw but you’re letting me fuck you because you’re such a good, obedient boy. You don’t want to let go, but you do with me. You’re so beautiful. You make me burst, I’m so proud.”
Chenco started to hum in the middle of Steve’s praise, a low, deep sound of pleasure and contentment he couldn’t stop, and he nuzzled Steve’s neck. He was so raw, he burned, but he wanted to burn more, longer.
Just one more thing, Papi. Please.
He needed an act wrong, forbidden, something only Steve was allowed to do. Something that would wash away the hurt of his mother’s rejection, the fear that he wouldn’t be good enough to make it out of the valley. Something that took the wounds the world gave him, turned shame and degradation on its ear, and made them communion.
He looked Steve in the eye, naked all the way to his soul. “Do it, Papi. Please, please give it to me.”
Steve’s countenance darkened in pleasure and power. He stroked Chenco’s cheek. “Say it. Give me the words, boy.”
Chenco knew no shame. None whatsoever. Only need.
“Piss on me, Papi. Please, Papi. Give it to me.”
Bending down, Steve kissed him, crushing, claiming, biting.
Then he stood back and, gaze fixed on Chenco’s face, set his stance, and aimed his cock at Chenco’s face.
As the warmth hit him, Chenco wept.
Part of his brain acknowledged the care Steve took—nowhere near his eyes, mostly on his chin and cheeks, his chest—but mostly Chenco reeled from the knowledge that he’d let this happen, he’d let another man piss on him, he’d allowed this…and it undid him. It was ten thousand times more vulnerable than anything he’d let Steve do to him yet, more humbling. It was the kind of thing his father would have expected him to do. Fucking faggots, always pissing on each other. Demeaning, debasing. So few people would understand why he would let anyone do this to him. How disgusting. How debasing.
How free are you right now, Crescencio Ortiz? What is left now for you to hold onto in this world but your own life?
He sobbed, his cries rushing out from the depths of his bowels, this release sacred in a way nothing else in the world could be. I am this person. I have gone here, I have sung this song. Though Steve had crooned praises all day, for the first time Chenco felt that pride, a river of power inside him, filling him with holy fire.
I am the one who has allowed this. I have faced this mountain, this judgment.
I can face anything.
He floated through the next hour. Steve led him to the shower and washed them both down, bearing Chenco up, kissing him, murmuring sweet things, but mostly he was quiet, acknowledging the sacred space Chenco had found. Once they were clean, Steve took an hour to pamper Chenco’s skin, applying lotions and oils, checking welts. Every single inch of Chenco was stroked and loved, every part of him studied to be absolutely, completely sure the damage to his skin was what Steve had intended and no more. All the while Chenco drifted in the sweet, beautiful place he’d found.
The place Steve had shown him how to find.
Steve tucked Chenco into freshly made sheets and brought him food Randy had made for them—fragrant gyros and fruit and vegetables and hummus and pita bread and juice. Every bite tasted so sharp and perfect and wonderful Chenco felt like he could slip into subspace again.
When he woke in the morning, Chenco rose from the deepest, longest dream he’d ever had. Colors seemed brighter. Smells seemed sharper. He could feel, in a way he never had before, his center, his weighted anchor in the seat of himself, a small red fire burning with surety, telling him yes, everything was about to change, but he would be fine. He knew certainty with a conviction he’d never known before.
He shut his eyes and swam in it, grateful to Steve, to himself, to everything.
Caramela slid into place inside him, her strength and power coming back. It was time, she whispered to him, to rehearse. To plot. To plan. To blow Crabtree’s mind clean out of his head. To take over the whole goddamned world, just like they’d always planned.
Chenco smiled. He couldn’t wait.