Page 15 of Reckless

He’d said something similar the first time we’d met, and in exactly the same calm, unaffected tone he was using now. Except this felt completely different, because while his voice was soft, his gaze was sharp as a blade. It cut right through me, and all the air in my lungs rushed out the gash it made. My voice rasped when I spoke. “What happens if I don’t?”

“Nothing happens,” he said. “We go back downstairs and I make you tea. If at any time you want to stop, then we’ll stop.”

I lifted my chin. “Aren’t there supposed to be words for that? Special words?”

“Safe words,” he said. “I think ‘stop’ will work for now, don’t you?”

My face burned. “I don’t know.”

“Well, let’s see how it goes.” He didn’t say anything else. Just stood there, the curtains behind him, and watched me.

My heart skipped a few beats and then picked itself up from its stumble and started to run. I realised he hadn’t said anything else because he was waiting for me to make my move. And he’d told me what that was.

I took my T-shirt off. Something I’d done a million times before, but it had never felt like this. Alastair’s gaze was like a phantom touch as the soft fabric pulled over my skin. I dropped the shirt on the floor and bent down to take off my boots. I felt big and clumsy, and my face burned again from that. I felt more naked than I’d ever felt in my life, which was stupid, because half the time on the farm I wandered around with no shirt on. And I’d sure as hell never been shy about getting naked in front of anyone before. Then again, I couldn’t remember anyone ever giving me more than a cursory and mutual ‘he’ll do’ glance. Alastair’s gaze pressed me like the slides of a microscope.

I took my socks off, embarrassed by the hole in the toe of one. Then I straightened, unable to look at him as I unbuttoned my jeans and tugged the zipper down. I’d never had any complaints about the way I looked or the size of my dick, but I’d never had anybody study me like this. I both loved and hated the flutter in my gut as I pushed my jeans and boxers down.

“Thank you,” Alastair said. “Now I’d like you to stand on the rug.”

I wanted to snort at all his pleases and thank yous and his offers of cups of tea. It should have felt ridiculous, but it didn’t. So I stood on the green rug, my toes digging into the soft, knotted strands, my body on high alert, every nerve singing.

“Thank you,” he said, and the words hit me like a warm wave, the sort you’d let carry you anywhere. “Kneel, please.”

My jangling nerves were back, but that warm wave was still washing over me, and so I knelt. Weirdest fucking thing I’d ever done for another bloke, and I’d done a lot of stuff. I stared at the rug, aware of Alastair approaching. His leather boat shoes, his khaki pants. Then, when he was standing in front of me, he put his hand on my head and carded his fingers through my hair. Scratched my scalp with his blunt nails the way I scratched Gerty, and it felt better than anything had a right too. My eyes closed of their own volition, and I leaned into his touch.

“Good,” he said softly. “You’re doing very well, Robbie.”

“Not doing anything.”

He hummed and rubbed his thumb along the bone behind my ear. He probably knew what that was called and everything. “I think you are. All you have to do right now is feel, and you’re doing that.”

For a hot second, I wanted to fight him as hard as I’d ever fought those guys who were rough with me. I wanted to fight and to lose, and to pay for it, because that’s how it was supposed to work. He’d tricked me, because by not fighting him I was fighting me instead. And I reckoned he knew it too. Except his fingertips felt so good rubbing against my scalp that I didn’t want to ruin it.

I blinked my eyes open and stared at the green rug under his feet, under my knees. I felt warm and numb, like I’d been doing shots for hours and was three sheets to the wind. I felt like my brain was floating away, its anchor line broken. The rest of me was starting to float too; I had to snag the rug with my fingertips to make sure I was still kneeling on the ground.

“That’s it,” Alastair said. “Good.”

I was vaguely aware that the last time I’d been on my knees for someone, I was giving head. But Alastair wasn’t shoving his dick in my face, and he’d said I was doing what he wanted, so I closed my eyes again and allowed myself to drift. I was warm, my skin tingling. My dick was hard, but my arousal was like someone else’s music playing a few doors down. I was aware of it, but it was background noise. Everything else had shrunk into this moment where nothing existed but being warm and floaty, and the pleasant scritch of Alastair’s nails against my scalp. I couldn’t even remember the worries and anxieties I’d carried with me into this room. They were gone, peeled off the core of me like curls of old paint and turned to dust.

I was drunk on his touch, on being naked in front of him on my knees, drunk enough not to care that I felt as though I’d slipped away. I don’t know how long I knelt there. I lost the connection between my mind and my body to the warm current that flowed through me from his touch, surrounded me, made me weightless. It could have been a few minutes, it could have been a lifetime. I didn’t know.

“Okay,” he said. “Are you with me, Robbie?”

I managed to nod. “Mmm.”

“Okay.” That same soft, knowing tone that had dragged me under was slowly drawing me up again. “I want you to look at me. Can you do that?”

I lifted my gaze to his.

His mouth twitched in a smile. “Good. Let’s get you onto the bed, okay? You can rest there for a little while.”

Rest? All I’d done was rest. I was fine. I⁠—

I swayed like a drunk as he helped me to my feet and over onto the bed. I lay on his doona, face down, arse up, and waited in my dozy, lazy state for him to fuck me. Except all that happened was he shook out a woollen blanket over me, and then sat beside me and ran his hand up and down my spine in slow, steady movements. I felt like a jittery cow getting her first go on the milking machine, needing to be calmed the whole way through. Wouldn’t have bloody minded a go on something like that right now. I snorted into Alastair’s doona at the thought.

“What’s that smile for?” he asked.

“You don’t want to know.” I felt weird. I hadn’t even done anything, and yet all my muscles were as weak as if I’d run a marathon. My body was warm with arousal, and I didn’t have the energy to do a damn thing about it. I should have been pissed off, but it didn’t feel urgent enough to worry about. Nothing did. I just liked the way that Alastair was touching me, sliding his palm up and down the knots of my spine like he’d been doing it for a thousand years and would do it for a thousand more.