Out of the Ashes (The Game 5)

“You take my breath away, Tate.”

He shuddered violently. “I surrender.”

I inhaled deeply, feeling him grow harder and harder against me. “You put up a good fight. But you need your Master now, don’t you?”

He nodded jerkily. “So much.”

I kissed him softly and brushed my thumbs over the metal around his wrists. We wouldn’t find a single scratch on them. My ownership of this boy was indestructible.

“I’ll take care of you,” I murmured. Then I eased off him and helped him to his feet. And an absurd amount of frustration flared up within me because I couldn’t kiss his skin. He had mud everywhere except some parts of his face.

“That’s five minutes!” Reese wheezed out.

I hugged Tate to me and glanced over at the others. The third and fourth groups were waiting, along with a handful of spotters. Ella lay on her back in the mud, panting heavily. Shay was seated comfortably on Reese’s stomach, and one of them was smirking smugly. It wasn’t Reese.

I grinned.

“One point each for the girls,” River said, catching his breath.

“One point five for Tate,” I said. “Like the other boys, he got a glowstick, but I took it back.”

“I’m giving this li’l fighter two points.” Reese coughed. “He didn’t get far with the glowstick, but…”

“You’re on your back where you belong, Daddy.” Shay looked like a very satisfied mess of mud.

“Go Shay!” Cameron hollered from the sidelines.

Unfortunately, the brats had one more station to go to, and we were already running behind on time. On the flip side, I was going in the same direction as Tate’s group. Three groups remained, with the last two only including three subbies, so a spotter would take my place with the third group, and then River and Reese would handle the last two on their own. In order to stay “outnumbered.”

“Shay, Aiko, Ella, you can head back the same way,” I told them. “Greer is waiting on the beach. I’ll bring Tate myself.”

Ella and Shay catcalled as if they hadn’t just exhausted themselves.

Young people and their energy…

“Where are we going?” Tate asked quietly. I noticed he was reluctant to let go of me, and that mirrored what I was feeling perfectly.

“We’ll swim there. It’s just around the bend.” It would take us two minutes at most. With an extra minute for making out.

“Fuck yes, let’s wash off some of this grime.” He locked our fingers together and pulled me toward the water. “I think I have mud in my ass. Like, deep inside.”

I chuckled under my breath. “We’ll do a romantic breakfast tomorrow with waffles and an enema.”

“Legit,” he laughed.

The mud got really annoying maybe ten feet outside the play zone, because that was where the water took over and turned the mud into batter. My boots sank down with every step until I could dive in.

I stayed under several seconds in the complete darkness, and I removed my T-shirt. The temperature wasn’t actually that low. The pool at the house was colder on a hot summer morning.

When I resurfaced, I pushed back my hair and tucked my tee into the back of my pants. Tate was…wriggling something underwater.

“What’re you doing?” I started swimming slowly, wanting to put some distance between us and the twins’ station. The next mud-wrestle was about to begin, and their voices carried.

“I’m spreading my ass cheeks like any normal person.”

The boy knew how to make me laugh.

He hissed at something. “I think I have a million tiny cuts all over my body. Is the water safe? Because I’d rather not get blood poisoning.”

“We decided to wing it. We could’ve bought tests and had the water analyzed, but we were like, nah. Fuck it.”

“You’re mocking me,” he stated. “That’s nice.”

I smiled.

With a few long strokes, we were out of sight, out of mind, out of earshot from others. A stolen moment where it was just the two of us.

Tate sighed contentedly and eased onto his back. “Tonight’s been a riot, but I gotta be honest, Master. My anger’s been way too contrived. It’s literally made me tired to try to maintain it.”

I released a breath, feeling something fading within me. Something I hadn’t even known was there. But his words resonated. I was beginning to suspect that was why I’d been so numb earlier. I’d tried to force strong emotions in a place where I simply hadn’t felt them.

“Same with me,” I admitted.

“Really?” He abandoned his reclining position and faced me in the darkness.

“Really.” I swam closer to him and gathered his legs around my hips. “I like what we’re exploring with Franklin—I don’t wanna end that.”

“Me either,” he was quick to say. “As fucked-up as it sounds, I wanna dig deeper into that jealousy. But it’s because I’m discovering that it’s so fleeting. It becomes a chore to cling to it past playtime.”

“I’m with you.” I kissed him chastely. “The anger disappears even faster. So maybe we save it for a possessive round in the sack here and there, but we stop trying to use it as fuel for other kinks.”