“Master,” he whispered, running his fingers over my chest. “My Lee bear?”
Christ.
“Master.”
I threw an arm over my head and wondered if I had the energy to gag him.
“Master?”
“For the love of—”
“Oh good, you’re up!”
“No.” No, I fucking wasn’t. “Go back to sleep, Tate. We’ve slept like three hours.”
“How would you know? You haven’t looked at the clock.”
“I know what time the sunrise is.”
“Oh.” He yawned. “I suppose that’s clever.”
“Go back to sleep.” I wove my fingers into his hair and brought his head back down on my chest. “We need a few more hours.”
“Fine.”
“Master?”
Still no.
“Master, I’m sorry, but my back hurts a lot.”
Shit. I shot straight up in a seated position, disoriented as fuck, and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Lemme see.”
He sat up, too, and faced away from me.
Goddamn. His back was a work of art. Underneath the defined crisscross pattern Colt’s cane had left were a bunch of blotchy bruises and marks, angry and ranging in colors of purple, red, and pink.
“Is it pretty, Master?”
“Unbelievably.” I ghosted my knuckles over his spine. He was warm to the touch, and of course he was in pain. “I’ll be right back.”
I dragged my naked ass out of the bed and went for the bathroom first. There, I dampened a washcloth and retrieved two painkillers. In the kitchen, I grabbed a bottle of water and the cooling lotion we kept in the fridge. Then I returned to the bedroom and instructed Tate to lie on his stomach.
His ass was a beautiful color red too, with a few darker bruises here and there.
I bent down and kissed the fleshiest part of his ass, and it was possible I annoyed him with the scruff on my chin.
“Really, Master?” he complained.
“Can’t help myself sometimes. I love this cute little ass.”
Kneeling next to him, I flicked on the lamp on the nightstand; it wasn’t entirely bright out yet, and then fanned out the damp washcloth across his upper back.
“Hhhhhhoooh.” He shivered violently at the chill of the cloth.
His skin hadn’t been punctured in as many places as I’d thought. There was one spot in the middle of his back, and I remembered the cause. At the first station, I had forced his body upward through the grid of rubber barbed wire, and one of the spikes had scratched his skin.
“For the record,” I said. “If you apologize for needing care again, I’ll make sure your thighs look like your back. Am I making myself clear?”
“Yes, Sir,” he replied quickly.
“Good.” I poured some lotion into my hand and began applying it carefully over his lower back. It was the only skincare routine I gave a damn about, and I bought the best shit that wasn’t even on the market. A kink friend in Baltimore worked as a dermatologist, and she’d created the lotion herself. It rehydrated. Natural oils kept the skin nourished, and it had a cooling agent.
We went through a few bottles every year.
Tate sniffled into the pillow.
“Try to relax, baby boy.”
Once he was done, I rubbed the residual lotion into my arms. They hadn’t been so scratched up since I’d been a kid in Hawaii. My mother had adopted a cat that’d hated me.
“Sit up carefully.” I tossed the washcloth on the floor. “I have painkillers for you.”
The initial shock from the temperature change on his skin had worn off, and he looked almost dopey when he sat up and smiled at me.
“Feel good?” I grinned faintly.
“So much better,” he sighed. “It’s when the skin is dry that it hurts so much.”
And the inflammation, I added internally. The inflammation caused the skin to feel warm and irritated.
I handed him the painkillers and the water, then crept under the duvet again. “Last night, the boys in Kit’s group discussed the differences between a Dom and a Sadist. Kit said a Dom will make you run an obstacle course and reward you afterward for a job well done. A Sadist will chase you across an obstacle course and then complain you were slow.”
Tate laughed and took a gulp of water. “That’s funny.”
With the water returned to the nightstand, I got comfortable on my back and gathered my boy in my arms, making sure his back was exposed to the air.
“What station was your favorite?” I asked.
He hummed and drew aimless circles on my chest. “The wrestle—but it was so late by then. We were exhausted.”
I was with him on that. The conditions hadn’t been optimal for this event. We’d planned in secret, Colt had been missing for much of it, and River and Reese had been busy too. Combine that with few available dates to actually go through with everything.
I yawned and kissed the top of his head.
“Man, Colt pissed me off up on the cliff.” Tate yawned too. “Those marching chants he had us do…?”