In a word, the office was bare. Almost minimalistic in nature. As though Zeke didn’t spend any time in here and when he did, it was simply to work and nothing else.
“You didn’t scare us off, Zeke,” I said when it was obvious Case wasn’t going to respond.
“Yet.” He sounded as though he truly believed we might be gone on the next strong breeze. In fact, I got the feeling Zeke did his best to get people to run far and fast away from him.
Despite my curiosity about the man, I hadn’t asked around the club for fear word would get back to him. I couldn’t imagine it would go over well if Zeke found out we were trying to get the lowdown on him. When most people said his name, it was either in awe or pure terror.
Personally, I felt a significant amount of both when I was this close to him.
Yet I couldn’t even fathom walking away.
FOUR
ZEKE
I SHOULD’VE TOSSED THEM THE keys when they appeared in the doorway. In mere seconds, they could’ve been on their way and I could get back to doing the shit I needed to be doing. It would’ve been the smart thing to do.
Despite my college degree and my rather high IQ, no one had ever accused me of being smart. Most of the adjectives associated with me were in line with enormous, mean, sadistic, and intolerant.
Enormous and sadistic, sure. I would admit to those. Mean and intolerant … no. I didn’t see it. Nor was I a glutton for punishment.
Which begged the question: what the hell was I doing entertaining the notion of fucking these boys’ lives up by getting involved with them?
Unfortunately for all three of us, I didn’t have an answer.
I could only think it had everything to do with that scene I’d interrupted at Dichotomy. When I’d whipped the pretty boy until he was flying so fucking high I feared for a moment he would never come back down, a strange obsession had followed. Watching him mutter and moan as the tails did all but split his skin wide open had fueled me in a way I hadn’t experienced in quite some time. Seeing my stripes on his back had stirred the beast within and now he was taking over.
I’d dreamed about it since. Strapping the pretty boy’s beautiful naked ass up and beating him black and blue, pushing him harder until he whimpered and cried, pleading for me to stop. Only then would I give him enough to send him over the edge. Admittedly, I’d been surprised by his pain threshold. Once I’d witnessed it for myself, I had wondered whether anyone before me had ever given him what he needed.
As for the cowboy … I’d had some rather interesting thoughts about him, too. Most of them consisted of me laying him out, burying my fingers in his ass, and fucking him so goddamn hard he was crying out with the need to come. My cock always followed my fingers as I chased my release, brutally nailing him as hard and as deep as I could. And every damn time, they were both begging me to never stop.
It wasn’t until I’d found them fucking in the shower that I realized the two of them had a relationship. Not that I cared. As long as they were willing, I didn’t give a fuck what they did in their spare time. I didn’t give a shit who their parents were, whether they had a good relationship with their siblings. It didn’t matter to me if they’d graduated from high school with honors or by the skin of their teeth. I couldn’t care less if they called their mommas every damn day or hadn’t spoken in ten years. I didn’t need to know anything about them personally and that was the way I liked it.
Entertaining the idea of dominating them made sense. I needed it. They needed it. Being on a first-name basis with them was not on the table.
I could see the fear in their eyes, the terror warring with excitement. I knew they wanted the unique brand of pain I could give them, which had me curious as to how two masochists—one with a ridiculously high threshold for pain—had ended up together. It was a question I would ponder but never ask. I had no desire to get to know them. I wasn’t here to be their friend or their lover.
I could offer only one thing: to make their deepest, darkest fantasies come true. In return, they would offer me one thing: complete and total surrender.
“I can practically hear you thinking,” I said when the silence had beat on for a few minutes. “The wheels in your heads are spinning. You’re curious as to why you’re sitting there silently while I stare at you. It doesn’t make sense, does it? This strange hold I have over you?”
