“No,” I whisper. “It’s not a problem.”
6
Sidney wants to wait until the next day to start, much to my painful, physical frustration. Every part of it, from holding hands to him licking his thumb for the mingled taste of whisky and my mouth, has me so hard that walking back to my room is uncomfortable, much less showering and trying to sleep.
But like any good sadist, he wants me to choose his cruelty with a clear mind and after a full night’s sleep.
“Anyone might say yes like this,” he told me before we rejoined the others. He gestured to the snow and the fire and the books. “It’s easy to say yes like this.”
Meaning, I suppose, that it’s harder to choose pain and shame while the sun is shining on every crack and flaw in the room. I admire his caution, although I admire it less as I burn alone between my sheets because, of course, his only prohibition as my provisional Dominant was to forbid me to come.
Dammit.
Luckily, the specter of Proserpina Markham, whoever she was, had Auden so agitated last night that he and Cremer seemed wholly unaware of what Sidney and I shared by the window, and when I bump into Auden in the kitchen this morning, he seems distracted and not at all like he suspects I’m going to his library to be spanked by his art surveyor.
“Everything okay?” I ask as I get some water. I’m too nervous for coffee and I’d rather wait to eat until after Sidney’s used my body.
The young master of the house just pulls on his hair a little. “Everything’s fine.” He gives me a forced smile. “I’m fine.”
“Ah. Okay. Let me know if I can help with anything?”
“No one can help,” he murmurs, as if to himself. And then he tries a cheerful change of subject. “Should be a quiet day. Cremer left early to get to London, even though the roads are still terrible, and the weather’s too awful for the renovation work to continue. I’m planning on holing up in my study all day to work, if you need me for anything.”
“And you’re not going back to London for Christmas?”
“My parents are dead,” Auden says bluntly, so bluntly that I almost miss the glimpse of shy pain in his eyes. “And the rest of my life is . . . complicated. I think I’m just going to stay here and go to Mass.”
“Mass?” I say. I didn’t expect to encounter another Catholic out here in the British countryside. “Are you Catholic?”
Another forced smile. “Also complicated.”
“Ah.”
I want to ask him more, I want to ask him about Proserpina Markham and why his life is so complicated, but I also really, really want to be alone with Sidney. So I take my water and take my leave.
The narrow corridor leading to the library is lined with arched windows—one side facing the front of the house and the driveway, and the other facing an inner courtyard with some lonely benches and a fountain. Everything is blanketed in storybook bluffs of snow, thick and white and blinding.
But there’s no storybook prince behind this door. Only a man with a snow-cold heart and a voice like ice.
I can’t wait.
When I push inside, Sidney is predictably already at work. Today he’s in another turtleneck and trousers, but his sleeves are pushed to his forearms and I can see a large watch glint on his wrist. Next to him on the table are a bottle of water and a necktie. And next to those are his leather gloves, their presence both playful and ominous.
“Close the door, Ryan,” Sidney says without looking up from his work. “And put those door wedges against the inside of the doors so they can’t be opened from the outside. Then come here.”
Last night, he came to my bedroom after everyone retired to bed, and he sat in the corner chair and made me answer all kinds of sordid questions. Did I like spanking? Whipping? Bondage? Did I like to crawl and beg? How did I like to be praised? How noisy was I when I came? What were the things I imagined when I jerked off that I didn’t want anybody to ever, ever know about? Could I describe them in better detail? Would I move forward into the light so he could see my ashamed blushes as I did?
We talked for nearly two hours, deciding on the common green-yellow-red system of safe wording, since Sidney admitted that he’s not unaroused by discomfort and protests, and this would allow him to enjoy the occasional plea for mercy while still giving me a way to safe out. And we also decided on an adaptable but mostly full-time arrangement . . . at least for the next couple of days. After spending so many years as a body man, I find the idea of moving from power exchange to normal lover time and back again unnerving. I’d rather stick to the former and then have some grace and flexibility around the edges.
So I already know as I approach him that I’ll be safe, that he won’t demand of me anything I’m not willing to give, and I can be present in the moment. I can be horny and vulnerable and excited and nervous and ready.
I can just be me.
“I’d like to work by the fireplace,” Sidney says once I reach him. He still doesn’t bother to look at me. “Will you carry my work over to the wingback chair?”
He’s uncomfortably beautiful from this angle. His hands, large but sophisticated, look like a lover’s hands. The tip of his strong nose is caught with the morning light while shadows gather in the tiny well in at the top of his upper lip. He’s the kind of beautiful Ash was, the kind Embry and Greer and even Auden Guest are; it’s the kind of beauty that compels devotion not because it’s visually flawless but because it promises untold mysteries beyond itself. The beauty is only a gate, a threshold to a secret inner world only a privileged few ever get to see.
I arrange Sidney’s work into batched piles, which I stack in perpendicular sections so he won’t lose any of the organization he’s done. I can see that he notices this and is pleased by my care, and that has me smiling as I set it all on the table next to the chair
