Page 27 of Balance

“Those are amazing.” I told him, kissing the corner of his mouth. His jaw. My body had a mind of its own now that he was in my arms, and it wanted to touch, to taste, to explore. It didn’t want to talk about underwear or anything. It certainly didn’t want to examine the way Troye had entered my life and slid under my skin like he’d always belonged there and was just waiting to come home.

“I have others.” His words were breathless and barely there as I kissed my way down the column of his throat. My hands mapped the curve of his back and the smoothness of his skin. I wanted the heat of my hands to brand him as mine. I wanted everyone to look at him and know that he was mine.

My fingers skimmed along the waistband of his ridiculously perfect taco cat underwear and a strange kind of joy fluttered in my soul. Troye trusted me enough to break his routine, to come over here even after he’d been tucked into bed at home. And he trusted me with this part of him. Because the taco cat underwear had been noticeably absent in the hotel room.

The sound of Troye whimpering made a growl rumble in my chest. His little whimpers unmade me. I was no longer this completely composed man. Now I was more beast, more feral, suddenly half desperate and out of my head with need.

Pulling him close to me, so close neither air nor light could pass between us, I slanted my mouth over his. Troye swooned and submitted to me, letting me lead the kiss. When I slipped my hand into the back of his underwear and skated my fingers over his ass, Troye pressed himself closer to me, grinding his cock against mine.

I liked that we were a pretty even match when it came to height. It made it so all the important parts lined up effortlessly, like he was made to fit against me. I grabbed a handful of ass cheek and squeezed, and Troye let out a sharp whine, yanking his mouth away from mine.

“You said we could negotiate.”

I might have been worried that I did something wrong were it not for the way he pressed himself against me, seemingly trying to climb inside me.

“Do you want something? Tell Daddy.”

Troye bit his lower lip, and I felt him shift nervously.

“I can’t give you what you don’t ask for.”

“I—”

He paused and took a breath, and I saw the determination flicker in his gaze. The same sort of look I’d witnessed before he dropped himself into my lap.

“Do I have to… be bad… for you to spank me?” He said the word bad like it didn’t belong in his mouth. Like the idea of being bad was so off-putting that he almost couldn’t bring himself to say it. His body seemed to reject the idea too, like he didn’t want to be bad so much that it made him jittery.

He hadn’t minded misbehaving on that plane, and he hadn’t minded the consequences later, but that was before he knew what they were. Before he knew what I was. That was back when I was nothing but a stranger with a firm hand.

“You don’t have to misbehave to get a spanking, my little jitterbug.”

Troye wrinkled his nose at the name but didn’t address it.

“So you’d spank me just because I asked? I mean… if I asked. Theoretically speaking.”

“Theoretically…” I let the word hang between us, silently calling it out for the lie it was. “Yes. I’d spank you just because you wanted it. Spanking doesn’t always have to be corrective. Sometimes it can be a prevention, like I’ll spank you now so you remember to behave later. And sometimes it’s neither of those. Sometimes we want that release we get from it. And sometimes we just want it because it hits the right buttons inside of us. We want it because it gets us off, and that’s fine too.”

Troye let out a breathless laugh. “I don’t even know why I liked it so much.”

“If you want one, all you have to do is ask me nicely.”

Did I want him to ask? Hell fucking yes, I did. Would I be disappointed if he wasn’t ready for that yet? Yes, but the way he looked at me gave me hope that it wouldn’t be long before I earned that kind of trust from him.

I didn’t want to stand there and stare at him and wait for any kind of answer, so I went back to kissing him. His lips had the lingering taste of toothpaste, minty and fresh. His jaw had the slightly rough texture of day-old stubble breaking free from the surface of his skin. I knew from his streams that he usually kept himself cleanshaven, but I secretly thought he’d be sexy as hell if he rocked a bit of a beard.

I’d made it as far as his neck when he spoke. And as he did, I felt the weight of his words and what it cost him to say them. The vulnerability was palpable, pouring off him in waves.

“Will you spank me… Daddy?”

My heart cracked in half and shed its old shell so it could grow three more sizes to fit Troye inside of it where I could keep him safe forever.

“Of course, I will, sweetheart. Let’s have a seat for a minute.” Reluctantly, I let go of him and sat on the edge of the bed. I patted my lap, indicating that’s where I wanted him and his silly taco cats to sit.

He shuffled over and gingerly placed himself in my lap. I wrapped my arms around him and kissed his bare shoulder. “There’s rules for fun spankings too.”

He huffed out a breath like he was already exasperated by hearing about rules, but they were too important to let him avoid.

“The rule is that you need a safe word. Because sometimes when we’re in the moment, you might want to say stop, but you might not want me to actually stop.”