Page 66 of Edged
“Is that what I am?”
“I don’t know, Owen.” He squeezed my cock and used his hips to bump me toward the door. His own cock was hard against my ass, and I groaned on reflex. “You tell me.”
Archie walked after his friends, leaving me in the hallway in front of the private room. His departure didn’t feel like a dismissal, but the intent of his words was clear to me. He was in this with both feet, and he needed to know if I was too. And I mean, I was for the next few days. Because what was the point of being in California with him if not to enjoy everything he had to offer, but after Monday…
There wasn’t anything for us tobein.
Adjusting my erection behind the waistband of my underwear and my jeans, I went after him and the rest of his friends. The trophy doms. It was a ridiculous, if not fitting, name for the group of them. They were undoubtedly rich, unfairly classy, and unnervingly commanding. Not that I hated any of those things about any of them, especially not Archie, but they were a lot when they were together. I admired Grayson’s ability to hold his own around them, even though I expected there was more to their story than met the eye.
“I don’t think I caught your name last time I caught your load,” a voice said in my ear, and I startled. Turning with one hand against my heart and the other still over my dick, I found a friendly and recognizable face topped with a well-coiffed mop of blond hair.
“Val.” I smiled. “I’m Owen.”
“Nice tomeet you, meet you,” he said with a grin. “I’ve heard your name and I want you to know if I’d known you were Archie’s—”
I cut him off. “I’m not Archie’s anything. We’re not…It’s complicated.”
He threw a glance over his shoulder toward the group of men gathered in the corner of the loft.
“I know what it’s like to be complicated.”
“They all speak fondly of you,” I said, falling into step beside him and walking toward the far corner where Archie and the rest of them had taken seats. There was another man there I didn’t recognize, but his stare searched Val out like there was a string between them that no one else could see.
“And I’ll always say the same about them. I’m sure I’ll see you around, Owen.”
We’d reached the group, and Val headed past me, going straight to the fifth man I assumed must be Barclay.
“How are you doing?” Archie asked, reaching up and brushing his fingers against the top of my hand.
“If you want honesty, I can’t think about anything besides my cock.”
He reached behind him and pulled a pillow out from behind his back and tossed it on the floor beside his feet. “I know I said inanimate objects, but you can use my leg if it gets too bad,” he offered.
“I told you I’m not a submissive.”
“There’s nothing submissive about getting off, Owen. We all do it.” Archie gave a dismissive shrug and pointed toward the St. Andrews Cross in the opposite corner. “Did you want to watch?”
There were two men over near the cross, and they didn’t look to be part of Archie’s friend group. One man, older and blonde with gray hairs peppered near his temples, worked with quick skill to spread a much younger man in front of the cross. With his arms up and his legs out, his body mirrored the X-shape of the furniture, a thick and black leather blindfold covering his eyes matched the heavy-looking black cage around his cock.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Everybody knows somebody,” he said. “That’s Richard and his husband, Sam.”
I watched Richard select a riding crop and use the folded leather tip against the inside of Sam’s thighs. The attachment points on the cuffs rattled, audible over the low hum of conversation and the reverberating bass from the dance floor. The two of them were captivating to watch. Richard moved like he knew Sam’s body as well as his own and watching Sam moan and writhe against the cross only served to make my cock harder than it already was.
Rapture should have been a scary place for me because, while I was down for rough sex and the occasional spanking, a lot of what happened was extremely far out of my comfort zone. I didn’t know what I would do if Archie tried to put my cock into one of those cages, but I also knew it felt like a natural extension of the things we already did together.
“What are you thinking about?” Archie asked, again brushing his fingers against the top of my hand.
The pillow still rested at his feet and I stood beside it, rooted in place.
He knew what I was thinking about.
“Is it the crop?” He leaned forward and pulled my hand into his lap. He was hard, and he lifted off the couch to push himself into my palm. “The cage? The blindfold?”
“It’s the trust,” I said, looking at the way my fingers curled around his length of their own accord. “The knowing.”
Archie licked his lips, the tip of his tongue lingering in the corner of his mouth while he held my hand steady over his cock. Slowly, he nodded up and down, like his head weighed a thousand pounds, carrying the understanding of my answer.
