Page 24 of Fire & Ice

“Color,” Lee demands, his fingers stilling inside Tripp while the hand on his back bears down more firmly and Tripp grins into the bedsheets, forgetting that Lee can’t see him.

“Green,Sir,” he replies enthusiastically, and Leander’s answering murmur of acknowledgement sounds positivelypredatory.

“You’re still fairly loose from last night,” he declares, and Tripp fists his fingers into the sheets, somewhat embarrassed by that announcement, although Lee seems pleased. “Very fortunate for you, since I’m not in the mood to reward your brattiness with careful prep.” Despite his words, Lee lingers where he is, scissoring his fingers and running them along the edge of Tripp’s hole. It’s partly perfunctory but mostly teasing, which Tripp only realizes when Leander dips his fingers in far enough to brush intentionally over his prostate, making him gasp and jerk.

The laugh Leander lets out at his expense is low and dark, and perhaps for the first time, Tripp wonders if hereallyknows the man at all.

The insistent weight of Lee's knees against his thighs vanishes suddenly, alongside the fingers toying with his ass, and the mattress shifts as the Dom moves away.

“Stand up,boy,” Leander demands, and the way he says it makes both the hair on Tripp’s arms and at the back of his neck prickle and raise.

Disobedient mood aside, something tells him to stow his bullshit, at least for a minute. As such, Tripp scoots backward off of the bed without a word, turning to find Leander wiping his hands off with a towel and scrutinizing him with focused interest. He steps forward, well into Tripp’s space, and touches a finger to his own lips, his other arm wrapped across his naked chest. Cocking his head to one side, he says nothing as his eyes search for something in Tripp’s face, in hisposture, and fuck if Tripp knows what the hell he might be looking for.

Shifting uncomfortably beneath Lee's gaze, Tripp does manage to keep his mouth shut, but it’s a close thing. As Lee's eyes continue to roam, he struggles not to blurt out, “See something you like?” Or, “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” but he does think about it. If the glint in Lee's eye is any indication, he knows it, too.

Fuck that,Tripp thinks, obstinate. If that’s what Leander wants to provoke, he’ll fuckin’ give him the opposite. After several minutes, though, the silence gets to be too much for his emotional energy, and he breaks.

“Sir?” he asks warily, struggling to maintain eye contact and not glance away from Leander’s unrelenting, unapologetic stare.

Abruptly, the tension in the room breaks, Leander’s reaction to Tripp’s unsure question entirely unexpected—he grins. Finger still tapping against his lips, Leandergrins,and yeah, Tripp was right about the laughter, because that sound isdefinitelypredatory.

“Oh,nowit’s ‘Sir’?” Leander taunts, rocking back on his heels before stepping forward so that they’re toe-to-toe. He relocates his finger from the pad of his lips to the middle of Tripp’s chest, just lightly touching.

Barely two inches shorter, Leander tips his head up, and he’s so beautiful, he’s almost ethereal. Dark eyelashes contrast softly against his cheeks, blinking wide to reveal rings of dark blue that Tripp’s stupid brain wishes he could drown himself in forever. He’s close enough now that Trippcouldlean forward and kiss him, but in all honesty, Leander’s never felt more untouchable, never seemed more out of his reach. He’s all effortless power and control in the way he holds his body, emanating confidence and security that Tripp can’t even fathom owning for himself.

The way Lee is looking at him right now, Tripp wouldn’t lift his hands from his sides for all the money in the world.Thisversion of Lee—from the way he moves, to the way he speaks, to the way he pins Tripp in place with just his gaze—is something a guy can’t help but respect. To Tripp’s surprise, he finds his bratty attitude evaporating like an early morning fog, replaced by the pure, burning desire for Leander to give him another chance to kneel.

Fuck, he really wants to kneel for this Lee.

“I could make you submit,” Leander says softly, so quietly that Tripp almost misses it. “Icouldand I will, if that is truly what you desire. But…” He hesitates, cupping Tripp’s jaw with a surprisingly gentle hand, considering the still-throbbing print it recently left on the side of his face. “For today, at least, I’d prefer if you’d go willingly.”

And that would have been enough. Tripp absolutely would have dropped to his knees right then and there, but Leander apparently isn’t done.

As soon as he stops talking, he leans forward, one hand on Tripp’s shoulder and the other on his waist as he presses an impossibly tender kiss to his lips. It’s so in contrast with the threat, with what Trippexpectedto happen next, that he’sessentially rendered powerless to do anything except kiss back. The only thing Tripp manages to keep control of in the situation are his hands and his feet, which he onlybarelystops from first grabbing Leander by the sides of his face and then walking him backward towards the bed.

Focus, Truett,he scolds himself internally, keeping his eyes closed for a moment in order to gather his shit while Leander steps away. When he opens them again, Leander’s staring at him in amusement, tapping his mouth and pointedly raising his eyebrows.

“If you’re ready,” he says, the ghost of a smile flitting across his lips, there and gone. “Over on the mat, next to the armoire. Kneel and face me.”

Taking a deep breath in and letting it out slowly, Tripp complies, this time without argument or complaint. How could he not, after all of that? As he walks over, he digests the way the mat is pushed all the way up against the wall, the way the enormous dildo is secured only a couple of feet—not even—off of the ground, and then it clicks.

Oh.

Unable to fully believe how slow on the uptake he’s been, Tripp fails to control the flush in his cheeks when he thinks about the scene that Leander is setting. In fact, for once, he’s struggling tonotallow the litany of questions currently flying through his head to fall from his lips, but on the other hand, he reallydoesn’twant to worry about any of it. So, instead of leaning into the rising anxiety and mounting anticipation, Tripp simply turns away from the dildo and faces Lee, sinking to his knees and letting it all go.

One more deep breath: five seconds in, five seconds out, and Tripp is ready.

“Very good,” Leander praises, and Tripp—with his eyes closed—lets him, nearly sighing with relief when he feels Lee's hand in his hair after that wave of jittery apprehension. “There’s my good boy. Now, get down on all fours.”

The vinyl of the mat is cool against his palms, slightly sticky on his skin, and Tripp already knows that if he’s stuck in one place for a long period of time, he’s going to be peeling himself off of this thing later. Whether that’s an intentional slight on Leander’s part or not, he has no idea, but he works himself into place without a word. No longer in the mood for games, Tripp doesn’t make any bones about spreading his legs and backing himself up into position, the wide head of the silicone cock bumping against an ass cheek as he does.

“Do you like it?” Leander muses, the question obviously rhetorical as he trails a hand over Tripp’s shoulder and down his back, grabbing the fake cock and teasing it into his crack, but no further. “It’s screwed to the wall, so we can be as rough as we like, it won’t come off. I’ll bet you didn’t notice the various mounting hardware I have all over the place, hmm?”

It’s clearly a suggestion and Tripp obliges, opening his eyes to glance around the room from this new angle. From down here, he sees what Leander is referring to—an assortment of inconspicuous, tiny holes in the wall interspersed with screws sticking out less than an inch, all at varying heights. The display is not as intimidating as his friend maybe means for it to be, but Tripp forsuremakes a mental note to ask Lee to reviewin detailall of the shit he has hidden around this room at some point. Preferably soon.

For now, though, Tripp’s got other things on his mind, like how the fuck that giant cock is going to fit inside his ass. Lee is big, and his fingers this morning felt like nothing but a good time, but the fake dick-on-a-stick is no joke. While Leanderrummages in an upper drawer of the armoire to his left, Tripp works on breathing and centering his mind, understanding fully that relaxation is going to be the key to making Lee's plan work.

Strangely, he’s not nearly as concerned about the potential pain or discomfort as he is with the possibility of disappointing his Dom, or worse, giving Leander the idea that he’s not actually trying. Nowthat’saterrifying thought. Thankfully, Lee returns to distract him, hovering above his back to prod some more at his rim, and Tripp reflexively jerks away when he feels an item being inserted. It’s not the dildo, though—it’s something thin and slick that barely registers, except that Lee uses it toinject something coldinside of him.

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