Page 43 of Forfeits

“You are so fucking beautiful. I can’t even stand it,” he said.

My heart pulsed with love for this man…and submission.

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t allowed to speak unless I need to safeword. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, a different face stared down at me.

I gasped at the concerned look in Aiden’s dark brown eyes, so different from Daniel’s blue ones.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I blinked rapidly and swallowed. “Yes. Only, it’s been a long time.”

Understanding dawned in Aiden’s eyes, and he took his hand away, then nodded.

“You look good on your knees.”

I smiled.

“That’s what…” I cleared my throat. “That’s what Daniel always said.”

Aiden regarded me with such affection. “Probably because it’s true.”

“Probably.”

“Tell me if anything I’m doing is upsetting you—or use your safeword. Either is fine. All right?”

“All right. Is it…?” I wanted to ask something, but I wasn’t sure what his answer would be. “Would it be…acceptable…if I started to cry…at some point, Sir? Because I can’t promise I won’t.”

Aiden frowned but then smiled. “Fletcher, you can react however you need to. You’re safe with me. I promise.”

I sighed, and it felt like years of tension leaving my body.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

My arousal had not flagged at all through this, and I was reassured that I wanted Aiden, that I wanted this, and that I could think of Daniel—remember Daniel—and that was all right. It wasn’t his ghost, but it was a part of him that would always be with me…and that was a good thing.

“All right. Come with me,” Aiden said, beckoning me to stand and follow.

The gesture was something different. Daniel would have simply told me to follow. But Aiden used a familiar motion to show me what he wanted. I needed to stop comparing them, but it was difficult not to, when Aiden was only the second man to have taken me in hand like this.

He walked me over to the Berkley Horse.

“Stand there. Keep still.”

I felt Aiden’s hand drift down from my shoulder blade, over my back and the curve of my ass.

“Fuck, you are so perfect.”

He gave me a swat—hardly anything, really—but the way he delivered it, with casual intention, then moved on, made me shiver. It sent me to a place that was familiar and welcome. I was drifting on endorphins and need already, and hardly required anything else.

Oh, but I wanted to be strapped to the Berkley Horse.

“Here we are,” Aiden said, and in a moment he’d wrapped leather cuffs around my ankles and wrists. Soon I was strung up on the historical piece of equipment with my genitals and chest and face accessible from one side, and the entirety of my back available from the other, for whatever he desired. The polished surface of the wood was cold on my bare skin but it would warm up soon.

I tested the strength of the cuffs while I stared at the floor through the face hole and tried to remember how to breathe.

“Okay?” Aiden asked, stroking my ass again. I loved that he couldn’t keep his hands off me, especially how focused he was on my ass.

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