“This is bullshit,” I grumbled as I pulled down the long, winding driveway that led up to my house. “This is the very reason I don’t do this shit.”
I hated where my head was at. Hated that the cowboy had put me in that predicament yesterday. Hated myself for falling for it. I had kissed him in an effort to taunt the pretty boy and it had backfired in my face. I found myself daydreaming about kissing him again. Tying him to my bed, letting loose on his body while I took my own pleasure. He would give himself freely because that was the agreement we’d made.
And all the while, he would be looking at me and wondering if I preferred the pretty boy.
Truth was, I didn’t have a preference. I wasn’t supposed to have a preference. I wanted them equally and for different reasons. The pretty boy struck my sadistic fancy. I wanted to explore his pain, to see how deep it ran. However, when it came to the cowboy, I didn’t see his pain as the end goal. Sure, I’d spanked his ass and used various torture devices on him, but I could tell the hurt wasn’t what got him off. He enjoyed the humiliation.
Perhaps that was the reason he’d set himself up for failure? Seeing something that wasn’t there. Or was he a cuckold? Was he secretly enjoying the humiliation and degradation that came along with believing his boyfriend was being unfaithful?
When I pulled up to the house, I put the truck in park and stared out into the twilight. I let out a dull roar, angered by the situation. I needed to take back control. That was the only way I could operate effectively. If they thought for a second I might be caving, they would lose all respect for me.
After all, it had happened before.
With him. The last fuck toy I’d taken as my own. He was the reason I knew I would never fulfill anyone on a deeper level. I was as much a sex toy as the masochists were. He’d told me as much. I didn’t have a heart, only a deep-seated need to inflict pain. I wasn’t allowed to feel, to want more, to need more. If I ever stooped to that level, I was defying my role as the big, bad wolf, the evil lurking in the darkness, the alpha male, the primal seeking his prey, the man most men feared.
And that was what I was supposed to be.
According to him.
I wasn’t a man who needed love, a man who wanted to wake up to someone else in my bed. I wasn’t allowed to want those things because it negated my very purpose.
Over the years, my brain had worked diligently to blank out his face until he was merely a body I’d used for eighteen months. It had worked for him and for me.
Right up until I realized I’d fallen for him.
I’d given him more of myself than he’d ever wanted. When I called him my fuck toy, his eyes lit up with excitement. And when I called him by name, he shut down and sulked. He didn’t want to be mine in every sense of the word. He merely wanted me to use and abuse him. I wasn’t allowed to take more than I’d initially agreed to. And the day I told him I loved him, that I wanted every piece of him in return, he had sneered back at me, telling me I was weak and pathetic, just not in so many words. I wasn’t allowed to love because I was a monster. That hadn’t been the deal.
For a year and a half, I’d thought I was building something real, something lasting. I gave him what he needed and in return he gave me … nothing.
And that was the reason I couldn’t allow this to go any further. The cowboy was already seeking more, looking deeper than the surface. Jealousy was an emotion I couldn’t allow. It provoked feelings, desires that went deeper than pain. I had to end this before it went too far. I could never be what either of them needed.
They wanted the Sadist, not the man beneath. They were content with each other and I had to respect that, not come between them. If I ever made the mistake of wanting more again, I would quickly learn my place.
Once had been enough for me.
It was time to move on. Back to the lackluster scenes, the submissives who didn’t want anything other than the pain I was capable of inflicting. That was my worth, the value they’d put on my head.
No one would ever love me, because if they did and I loved them back, I would no longer be the nightmare they dreamed about.
At that point, I was merely human.
