Page 180 of Haunted

Butch was aware of the blood pounding in his ears, the quiver of something unfurling in his belly.

“I gotta ask a question here. Do you do stuff like this with every guy you fuck?” Before Sol could respond, he added, “I guess what I’m asking is… is sexalwaysa Dom/sub thing with you?”

Sol cocked his head. “Can I ask you something first? Have you liked what we’ve done so far?”

Butch swallowed hard. “You already know the answer to that.”

Sol nodded. “And when I tell you what to do, how does it make you feel?” He didn’t break eye contact. “Do you hate it?”

“No!” He hadn’t meant to shout, but he couldn’t hold back.

Sol walked around the bed to stand before him. “Does it confuse you, that you want to obey my instructions? You take orders every day, right?”

Butch frowned. “Yeah, but notthesekinda orders. And as for how it makes me feel… I… I like it, but it confuses the fuck out of me.” That fluttering in his stomach would not quit, and he felt as though he was starting to overheat.

Sol took a breath. “Okay… whatyouwant to know is, am I always a Dom when it comes to sex?” He looked Butch in the eye. “The answer is yes. Do I tie up or flog every guy I fuck? No, but I do call the shots. I can’t turn off that part of myself. And yes, sometimes itcanbe an all-night fuckfest where I tie him to the bed, cuff his ankles to a spreader bar, and make his hole mine, his body mine.” He paused. “But it can also be as simple as telling him how I like to be fucked, drawing out his pleasure…”

Butch could live with that latter part, but it opened up all kinds of questions in his mind.

One in particular that he had to have answered.

“And where do I fit in? I know you said I’m trying something new, something different, but it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

Sol gestured to the bed. “Will you please sit down, just for a minute?”

Butch sat on the edge of the mattress, and Sol joined him. He got the impression Sol was as conflicted as he was, as though he was struggling to find the right words.

Sol let out a soft sigh.

“I’m giving you a taste of what I’m like—what Sol the Dom is like—with a guy he’s interested in. And Iaminterested in you.”

An unexpected lightness suffused his body, and his mouth dried up.

“But…”

That one word sent a tremor through him.

Sol met his gaze. “When you think of BDSM, you see someone wielding a whip or a flogger. I wanted you to see the manholdingthat whip. I wanted you to seeme, learn aboutme—my likes, my fantasies, what turns me on, what gets me off.” That tilt of his head again. “You want to know why that was so important to me?”

Butch couldn’t speak, he could only nod.

“Because I wanted you to open up and give me the same back. Yes, I’ve shown you new stuff, yes, you’ve experienced feelings you’ve never felt before. But then I needed you to decide if you wanted more of them.”

Butch’s head was spinning, his mind racing.

“You said I take orders every day. That’s true, but I never saw that as being submissive. And as for how I am with a guy, if you’d asked me, I’d have told you hell no, I’ve always been the dominant one.”Dammit, when did breathing become such a fucking chore?He took a moment to force calm into himself, because what he had to say wassofucking important. “But with you…” He raised his chin and looked into Sol’s blue eyes. “You tell me what to do, and it turns me on. You treat me like one of your subs—and it turns me on. It’s as if you flicked a switch inside me, one I didn’t even know existed.” Another hard swallow. “And now I have to decide if I’m gonna leave it switched on or not.”

And there he was, at the heart of the matter, at a fork in the road with two routes ahead of him, and not a fucking clue which one he was going to take.

Sol took Butch’s hand in his. “I have so much I want to tell you, share with you… but there was something I needed to see first before I did that.”

The feel of Sol’s fingers laced through his made him yearn for more of that connection.

“What did you need to see?”

Sol lowered his eyes to stare at their joined hands. “Whether you were doing what I asked simply to please me, or…”

“Or?” Butch pressed.

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