Page 63 of Redline Baby

"Your yes only matters to me if your no is safe too."

His eyes close. His throat moves around a swallow.

"Yeah," he says. "Okay. Yes, please."

"Say the rest of it too, if you can." His eyebrows pull together slightly. "I want to hear what you're agreeing to. Out loud. Not just yes to something vague."

Kit breathes in.

Holds my eyes.

"I'm agreeing to therapy."

A pause.

"Actually going. Actually staying."

I wait.

"And to you calling me on it when I'm doing the loud thing instead of being real."

Another breath.

"And to the consequences."

His cheeks color again.

"Including the spanking."

The smallest ghost of a smile touches his mouth. "I'm not gonna pretend I don't want that part too. I do." His eyes stay on mine. "And I want you to actually follow through. On all of it."

And it’s just Kit. Choosing me.

My boy.

Chapter 17. Kit

Three weeks later, my stitches are out and my shoulder finally moves like a shoulder again.

Not perfectly. There's still a dull pull if I reach too far behind myself, and the skin along my forearm is new and pink where the road took the old layer off, but I'm mostly functional. More importantly, Soren has declared me functional. He refused to do this while I was still properly injured.

I argued that my ass had survived the crash completely unscathed and therefore remained available for disciplinary purposes.

He stared at me for so long that I eventually apologized to the concept of medical recovery. Apparently consequences can wait. Healing can't. Which is how I end up here now.

The room is warmer than I expected. A wide couch with a dark throw blanket draped across one arm. A single floor lamp in the corner casting amber light over the floorboards and up the walls. No clutter. No dust. Nothing out of place, but nothing cold about it either. Just a man who keeps his things where they belong. That's Soren.

And now I'm here, letting him put me where I agreed to be. Which is a thought I absolutely cannot examine for too long if I want to remain capable of standing upright. I still can't believe I agreed to this after swearing off dynamics entirely.

Technically, we haven't even built a full dynamic yet. We've agreed to try. Accountability. Honesty. Consequences. Soren calling me out when I'm doing the loud thing instead of the real thing. Tonight is the first time we're finding out what any of that looks like in practice.

I'm standing in front of him with my arms crossed over my chest. Soren is seated on the couch. Elbows on his knees. Hands loose between them. Watching me with the same unhurried patience he's been watching me with since the beginning. His face is calm.

He looks really fucking hot.

Which is inconvenient.

My mouth has been running ahead of me since we got here. Something about the drive. Something about the weather. A joke about his furniture that wasn't funny enough to deserve the amount of explanation I gave it. Soren hasn't taken any of the bait. He sat down. Looked at me. Waited. Eventually, I ran out of words.