Something in the Way He Needs (Family 1)

Asher shot forward and grasped Nicholas’s wrist before he could connect with Daniel’s body. Daniel folded into him, pressing his face into the side of Asher’s neck, wrapping his arms around Asher and clinging to his back with his fingers.

“Interesting,” Nicholas said. Then he yanked his hand out of Asher’s grasp. “I’ll follow you to the back.”

He should have told Nicholas to fuck off. He should have asked Daniel what he was doing at the Lounge. But several men were gathered around, looking at Daniel lecherously, and Asher knew that if he walked away, he’d never hear the end of it from Nicholas. Before he realized what he was doing, Asher was standing next to a St. Andrew’s cross and gripping Daniel’s arm.

“I wonder if pretty boy looks as good out of his clothes as he does in them.” Nicholas sneered as he spoke. Darwin, his sub, was kneeling at his feet, head bowed, the perfect picture of submission. It would have been more believable if Asher hadn’t seen the man ass-up, begging for a fucking while, as it turned out, his Dom was out of town, oblivious to his sub’s proclivity to cheat.

“Ash?” Daniel whispered, the question obvious from his tone and expression. “What… what—”

“Have you trained this boy at all, Asher?” Nicholas interrupted. “Because it seems like he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. Or is it that you can’t control him?” He scoffed and looked around, trying to catch the eyes of the men standing around him. “Figures. Like I’ve always said, smoke and mirrors.”

Asher refused to acknowledge Nicholas’s barrage of digs, but it wasn’t easy, not after the week he’d had. He was running on very little sleep, a lot of stress at work, and a night that left him feeling shaken and off-balance. Asher needed to regain his control. He looked at Daniel.

“Strip,” he ordered.

Daniel looked dismayed, his eyes wide as saucers, his mouth open, but after several heartbeats, he obeyed, moving his hands over the buttons on his shirt until it hung open. He paused and looked at Asher, then pulled it off and laid it on a nearby table. When Daniel’s shaking hands went to the button on his pants, all Asher could see were hungry eyes staring and waiting. Nothing about this scene felt comfortable or normal, but he didn’t know how to make it stop. By the time Daniel was standing naked in front of him and a dozen other men, Asher realized he had never felt less in control.

“Arms spread, wrists in the buckles,” he said reflexively. He was on autopilot, going through the motions, the words spoken by rote. It wasn’t until he was starting to clasp one of the buckles around a skinny arm, and he noticed Daniel trembling, that something in Asher awoke. This was a man who had hated a hard slap from his hand. How would he react to a whipping? Terribly, that’s how.

“What’re you doing here?” Asher whispered quietly, talking to himself more than Daniel.

“You were here,” Daniel answered. “Where else would I be?”

Asher squeezed his eyes shut. He clenched and released his fists, and then he straightened and spoke in a louder voice. “Change of plans. We’re leaving.”

There were grumbles of disappointment, but most of the men standing around disbanded. Unfortunately, most did not mean all.

“So that’s it, then. You can’t even make a man take a simple whipping.” Nicholas spoke much louder than was necessary. “Never thought I’d see the day Asher Penaz went soft.”

“Not every sub gets off on pain,” Asher snapped. “Daniel isn’t a pain slut. He’ll take the whipping if I order him to do it. Hell, he’s my sub, so he’ll do whatever I say. And I say we’re leaving.”

“Oh, please,” Nicholas scoffed. “That man isn’t your sub—he’s your boyfriend. Face it, Asher, you’re no Dom. Never have been.”

Really, why had Daniel followed him to this club? It wasn’t bad enough that he had spent the night flaunting his body in tight clothes, that he had let men who Asher had no idea were a part of his life touch him like he belonged to them, that he had lied to Asher about everything from the first day they’d met? Now he had to come to Asher’s club and undermine him in front of dozens of people, including the one man who’d never let him hear the end of it.

“I’m a better Dom than you’ll ever be,” Asher responded. “I think Darwin proved that when he came onto me, asked me to cane him, begged me for my cock.” He was taunting Nicholas, he knew, just aggravating an already tense situation. But he couldn’t stop himself.

The two men glared at each other, and then Nicholas’s eyes narrowed in triumph. “Good point. And since you took my sub, I think turnabout is fair play don’t you?”