Just a Bit Ruthless (Straight Guys 6)

Yawning, Luke stretched and sat up. His muscles felt a little sore but nowhere as bad as he had feared. His eyes fell on the nightstand and widened. There was a big tray with food there. With all sorts of food. There were even fruits and vegetables.

Luke grinned, his stomach growling.

Nope, shower first, Stomach.

His mood much improved, he padded into the bathroom, glanced at the mirror and went still, noticing what he was wearing. A long-sleeved, white shirt. It clearly belonged to someone taller and wider in the shoulders than him: it came down almost to his knees. Was it Roman’s?

A shiver ran up his spine at the thought. Normally he wouldn’t have cared—he would’ve just been happy to get out of his dirty clothes—but after last night’s surreal experience, wearing the man’s clothes made him distinctly unsettled. Not to mention that he was naked under the shirt.

There was another door leading from the bathroom. Luke stepped to it and listened. Nothing.

He pushed the door, but it didn’t budge. Locked. Of course. Even if he really was in Roman’s own rooms, as Roman had implied, he would hardly be left alone, free to wander around as he pleased.

Sighing, Luke started undressing. He needed a shower. He needed to relax and stop thinking about last night.

But as he stood under the stream of warm water, Luke’s thoughts kept returning to it. Something about it bothered him a great deal.

It wasn’t like Luke was clueless about disciplinary punishments and everything they entailed: contrary to his appearance, he wasn’t an innocent, inexperienced boy. Far from it. He was actually pretty familiar with that kind of lifestyle thanks to his second boyfriend, Alan, who was into BDSM and had convinced him to try it. In the end, after they experimented a little, Luke had told Alan that, while he respected his lifestyle, he didn’t like being whipped, chained, and flogged. Alan hadn’t exactly been happy to hear that, and Luke still winced every time he thought of their ugly breakup. But the thing was…He and Alan had done it by the book—they had used safewords and everything, they had trusted each other enough—but it just didn’t work. It didn’t do anything for Luke. While he had liked some of the stuff they had done—like being held down and fucked roughly—mostly he had found “punishments” annoying and silly rather than arousing, and he had never really felt impressed by them or particularly submissive. So the whole thing with Alan had convinced Luke that stuff like that did nothing for him.

Until this morning.

He wasn’t sure how appropriate it was to compare last night’s experience to his experiments with Alan. He and Roman certainly hadn’t been playing. There had been no safewords involved. It had been a real punishment—punishment that had reduced him to genuine tears—and the experience hadn’t been sexual at all. Yet it shook him to the core.

Luke knew BDSM didn’t always involve sex or even whips and chains; sometimes it was a little more complicated than that. The truth was, last night’s punishment and what happened afterward had felt far more intense and intimate than the kinky sadomasochistic sex he’d engaged in with Alan. Luke’s memory of last night was pretty disjointed for obvious reasons, but the feeling of utter vulnerability, of being powerless, was clear and sharp even now.

And it made him uncomfortable as fuck—because for a few minutes, it had felt good. It had felt good to cry in Roman’s arms and seek comfort from him, which was just…just fucked up. He didn’t trust the guy one bit. How could it feel good? Was he touched in the head?

Frowning, Luke turned the shower off. Uneasy to remain naked longer than necessary, he briskly toweled his body dry and slipped back into Roman’s shirt, for the lack of any other options. His clothes were nowhere to be seen.

He stared in the mirror again, doubts clouding his mind. Whatever happened last night—or rather, this morning—couldn’t be allowed to happen again. He was ready to play the role of a vulnerable good boy to lull his captor into a false sense of security, but play was the key word.

Only an utter fool would make himself truly powerless and vulnerable with a man like Roman Demidov.

* * *

Luke wasn’t sure what had woken him up. He became aware he was lying on his side, the sheets tangled at his feet. Something told him not to open his eyes, so he didn’t. He listened, straining his ears, unsure and anxious, goosebumps running down his arms.

It was still night: he could hear an owl hooting in the distance, an eerie sound that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. But there was something else. Someone else.

There. The barely audible sound of breathing.

Keeping his own breathing calm and even, Luke opened an eye slightly. He had left the bedside lamp on when he’d gone to sleep, so he had no trouble seeing his surroundings. Except whoever was in the room with him—and he knew who it was—stood on the other side of the bed and Luke’s back was turned to him.