Safe Harbor

Chapter Twelve

The next morning, Clarisse leaned against the kitchen doorway and watched Mac wash dishes. Weird. What did it say about her that she’d quickly come to see a naked man in a collar washing dishes as a normal fixture in her world?

“What’s on your mind?” he asked, startling her.

“What?”

He turned from the sink, that playful smile on his face. “What’s rolling around that pretty brain of yours, kiddo?”

From the heat in her face, she knew she was blushing.

“Honestly?”

His smile faded. He dried his hands on the dishtowel and leaned against the counter. “Always. Total honesty, you know that. It’s law in this house.”

She tried to keep her eyes off his cock and her mind off how she’d dreamed about it plunging deep into her…

Clarisse sat at the table. “How can you let him do this to you?”

“Do what?”

“Treat you the way he treats you?”

Mac pulled out his chair, the one he kept a towel on, and sat across from her. His voice softened. “Treats me how?”

With his cock safely out of sight under the table, she met his eyes.

“You’re his slave.”

A hint of a smile returned to his face. “That’s sort of the whole point. You hadn’t guessed that by now?”

“How can you do that? Let him run your life.”

“I love him.”

“How do you know he won’t throw you out one day?”

Mac shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t. I don’t know that any more than he knows I won’t up and leave one day. I’m not held hostage, if you haven’t noticed. I’m here willingly. We trust and love each other.”

With the questions coming, she couldn’t stop. “The things you let him do to you, like at the party and even the everyday stuff. Doesn’t that make you feel…used?”

He grinned. “Again, that’s sort of the whole point. For me, at least. I want to serve him.”

She didn’t know what worried her more, that he seemed so okay with it or that of late her fantasies were of letting Mac tie her up and do some of them to her. “He beats you!”

“Not nearly hard enough sometimes, doll.”

At her shocked silence, he grinned. “I love this. Don’t you get it? I trust him. Including last night, I think I can count on one hand the times I’ve had to safeword for something other than equipment issues.

Sully, he’ll call a scene a lot faster than I will. He doesn’t go nearly far enough for my liking sometimes. He’s a worrywart.”

More stunned silence from her.

He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, hands clasped. “I like the pain. Haven’t you noticed how sometimes I’ll goad him so he’ll have to punish me?”

She nodded. She’d watched Mac’s eyes twinkle all the times Sully held up fingers denoting strokes after an infraction. It had been her suspicion, but she hadn’t wanted to voice it, didn’t know if that was a taboo subject or not.

“He knows I do it. Sweetie, I love him. More importantly, I trust him. There’s been times he’s taken me further than I thought I could stand and I didn’t safeword and I’m damn glad I didn’t. Usually if I safeword, it’s because of an equipment malfunction or I get a cramp or I know something’s seriously wrong. I rarely safeword because of what he’s doing to me.”

“But he hurts you.”

“Yeah. Isn’t it great?” His playful smile melted her.

She shivered. He reached across the table, just enough his fingers brushed the back of her hand. “Not everyone gets off on pain. Like Doreen last night, she’s not a pain slut, she likes the bondage and forced orgasm play. I enjoy pain. Vanilla sex doesn’t do it for me. He gets off on the control. He needs it. He gives me what I need, and I give him what he needs. It works for us. Every person in the lifestyle is in it for a different reason and practices it in a different way.”

He leaned back again, withdrawing his hand. “I mean, I like my turn in the driver’s seat every once in a while, too. That’s why he decided to let me have him when we’re out on the boat. He trusts me as much as I trust him, and every so often he digs doing that.”

“But he’s using you!”

“Fuck yeah, in a good way. It’s what I want. He’s using only me.

He’s not going around getting his rocks off with just anyone. He needs me as much as I need him.”

“What about last night? Doreen.”

He shrugged. “He helped out. That doesn’t bother me. It gets me off knowing he trusts me as much as I trust him, which is why he lets me be in charge on the boat. I’m the only person he trusts like that.

And it mixes it up, gives him some downtime in a way he can safely enjoy it.”

“Why not at home? Why don’t you take turns?”

Mac’s expression turned sad. “He’s been hurt in a lot of ways, and not just the shooting. It’s not my place to tell his secrets. I can say he’s had a damn good reason to not want to trust. I don’t blame him. I was there for him to help pick up the pieces, and I was lucky enough to prove to him he could trust me.” He looked at her. “He trusted me enough to believe me when I offered myself to him.”

She couldn’t process that. “You asked him to make you his slave?”

“Yeah.”

She still found that difficult to believe. “You’ve got nothing.”

“I have Sully. He’s my Master. That’s everything I need. He’s all I need. If I have him, he’ll take care of the rest. That’s all I need to know.” The look on her face must have showed her disbelief.

“Besides, you’ve seen for yourself not everything we do is Master/slave stuff. A lot of it is normal. Do you know what he bought me for our first Christmas together?”

She shook her head.

He smiled. “I got up that morning, and yes, we were full-on slave and Master at that point, and there’s a Corvette sitting in the driveway. Not new, but in great shape.”

“But whose name was it in?” She struggled to understand, to reconcile the new longing in her soul with the stubborn balking in her mind.

“His. He owns me. Everything that’s mine, so to speak, is his.

Here’s the thing, I never asked him for a new car. We’d been at a car show the weekend before and I saw one there. I was looking at it. I never said I wished I had one, never offered an opinion on it. I spent a few minutes looking at it, and while I knew in my heart I wished I had one, I never told him.”

Confusion set in. “So how did he know?”

Mac grinned. “That’s the point! He knows me better than I know myself sometimes. He knew from watching me that I wanted one. I didn’t even consciously do anything. He just knew.”

She thought about the VW in the driveway. “Is that how he knew about the Bug?”

“Naw, that was me. I’ll admit I gave him the idea. I knew he’d been planning on getting you a car, and I told him what you’d said about them.”

Part of her felt uplifted that the men cared enough about her to do that for her. Part of her felt…disappointed. Sully hadn’t read her mind after all.

She shoved that last twinge out of her thoughts. “What if he kicks you out with nothing?”

He shrugged. “He could, but he won’t. Legally we have an agreement that if we separate I’ll get certain things.”

“The Dilly?”

“That’s one of them.”

“It doesn’t scare you?”

“Why should it?”

Wrapping her head around the issue wasn’t happening as she hoped it would. She stood and paced the kitchen. “How do you know?

How do you know you won’t get screwed? In the bad way,” she added.

“I don’t.”

“So you’re perfectly okay with him having all this control over you? Faced with the very real possibility of having to start over?”

He shrugged. “I can always get a job, go back to school for my master’s degree, something.”

It struck her how little she knew about the men. “You went to college?”

“Yeah. Sully made me take advantage of my GI Bill bennies. I had no interest in going to college. He ordered me to. I enlisted in the Army the week after I graduated from high school, went to boot camp a few weeks later. I had no interest in college.”

“What’s your degree in?”

“Marine biology. Sully said I could pick any major I wanted, but I had to earn a degree in something.” He smirked. “So you see, I’m not some poor, dumb asshole without options. I was offered an internship at Mote Marine. I turned it down despite Sully wanting me to take it.”

“He made you go to school?”

He grinned. “Yeah, how horrible is that? Fuckin’ sadist.”

Clarisse tried to process that. “You’re a marine biologist?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “No. I’m a slave.”

She blinked, trying to make sense of that. “Why would you give up a career to do that?”

“I trust him. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life, to serve him.” He studied her. “Have you ever really trusted anyone?”

She started to answer, then stopped, thinking about it.

He picked up the conversation. “I trust him to blindfold me, strap me to a cross, and whip the shit out of me and not let anyone else touch me. I trust him to pay the electric bill and buy me food. I trust him not to sell the Dilly out from under me. I’m not saying that level of trust magically appeared overnight. We didn’t start out from day one the way we are now. We started out with pretty elaborate boundaries. Eventually, over the years, we dropped almost everything and replaced it with safewording. At some point you have to take the leap and trust you’re going to be caught. In exchange for that, I’m perfectly happy to serve him.”

The war waged within her. “He was a cop. How do I ever trust one of them!” An old argument and one she knew wasn’t valid anymore, but it remained her mistrustful brain’s fallback position.

One her mind could comfortably wrap around even while her heart disputed the truth of that belief.

“Not all cops are like Bryan,” Mac said. “Most of them aren’t.

Most of them are decent, caring guys dedicated to their jobs. I’m not saying they’re not human and don’t make mistakes, but the majority of them don’t hurt people.”

She crossed her arms in front of her. “He’s still a fucking cop.

They stick together. Sort of like the Mafia, isn’t it?” Any excuse, any lie she could tell herself to deny the new and conflicting feelings struggling to take over.

Anything to stall having to admit the truth to herself.

Mac sadly shook his head. “No, babe. Not even close. Not like that.” He closed his eyes. “If Sully could have killed Betsy’s husband with his bare hands, he would have. It ripped him up nearly as badly as me when she died. He didn’t even know me then. I was the victim’s brother. He came to the hospital every day and sat with me and my brother, talked with us. When we finally took her off life support, he stood there with us when it happened. He was there for us during the trial and the asshole’s conviction.”

He opened his eyes. She noticed they looked too bright, like maybe he was close to tears. “Maybe that’s the answer to your question. How can I trust him? Because he walked through hell with me when I was still just part of the job to him. How can he trust me?

Because when our positions were reversed, I walked through hell with him and refused to let him give up.”

He pushed away from the table and left the kitchen.

Sully departed early the next morning for a conference. Although Clarisse didn’t revisit the topic, her brain still struggled to make sense of it. Modern women were supposed to be strong and independent and not want to be under anyone’s thumb, right? She’d struggled for years under Bryan’s anger, chafing under his control and abuse.

So why did she want to throw herself at Mac?

And Sully, to a lesser extent.

By the next day, she couldn’t take it anymore. After lunch, she sought Mac out in the study off the living room, where he sat in front of his computer—naked, of course—working on paperwork for the Dilly.

Mac looked up as she walked in. She felt a cautious mask descend. Something she’d never felt from him before.

“Can I interrupt you?” she quietly asked.

He nodded.

“I want to understand. About you and Sully. Why you can do this with him.”

“Does it matter? Sully’s told you, you can stay here with us as long as you want. When he says that, he means it. I agree with him.”

He laughed. “See? He did ask my opinion on that.”

She took a deep breath. “I want to understand what you two have.

I want to be able to get it.”

“Why? It’s between me and him. We’ve already told you we’ll never force you to be part of us like that. As long as you let us do our thing, respect what and who we are, it’s okay.”

Her face felt hot, flushed, throbbing as her pulse pounded. “I want to understand,” she carefully said, “because I don’t understand it. But I want to.”

He watched her for several long, silent moments. Her face heated even more under his steady gaze. “Close your eyes,” he softly commanded.

She did.

“Don’t open them,” he said in that same soft, steady voice.

She heard him push his chair back and stand. She tried to listen for him, but his lack of clothing made it impossible.

Then she felt his breath against the back of her neck. When he whispered near her left ear, she flinched. “Trust doesn’t happen overnight.” He stepped away.

Her breath came in ragged gasps she struggled to control. Where would he be next? What would he do?

Then in her right ear, “Do you trust me not to hurt you?”

She nodded.

His fingers softly brushed up her left arm, making her shiver.

“Don’t move,” he whispered. “Don’t speak until I say so.”

His fingers disappeared. Then he repeated the action along her right arm and withdrew his fingers.

For a long moment, nothing. No sound, no movement, no hint of breath.

She jumped when she felt the gentle caress from his lips, warm and moist, along the back of her neck, above her neckline.

Her pulse thrummed in her throat.

His mouth disappeared.

“What do you feel?” he asked. “Tell me.”

She struggled for an answer. “I don’t know. What am I supposed to feel?”

“I can’t tell you that. What do you feel?”

“Horny.” She blushed even deeper, but his soft, amused chuckle warmed her further.

“I imagine you do.” Then he caressed both arms with his fingers.

She fought the urge to moan. “What else?”

“Scared,” she blurted out.

His fingers hesitated. “Of me?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s a good place to start then, isn’t it?” His fingers disappeared, and she sensed him step back. He next spoke from in front of her. “Fear prevents trust. You have to learn to trust, even if it’s only one step at a time.” She heard him sit. “You can open your eyes.”

He now sat at the computer again and stared at the monitor. She felt frozen, incomplete, on the edge of something and she didn’t know what.

“That’s all?”

“What do you mean?”

There should be more, shouldn’t there? “You didn’t…there wasn’t…”

He grinned. “I already earned myself ten with the cane.”

Clarisse fought and lost against her frustration. “Dammit, I want answers, not fucking Yoda!”

He leaned back. She glimpsed a frown, a hint of the expression he wore on the boat. “You have to learn when to appropriately trust. You can’t have everything your way. I’m not saying trust everyone all the time or even in the same way.”

He turned toward her. “If you’re saying you want me to take you to bed and fuck your brains out because you’re horny, I can’t do that no matter how badly I want to. Sully and I have boundaries in our relationship. We don’t cross them without discussing and agreeing first. That’s part and parcel of having trust in each other.”

Fuck her brains out? She swallowed to form spit. That’s exactly what she wanted him to do, God help her, and the fact that an immediate flood of moisture pooled in her sex confirmed it. “I didn’t ask you to do that,” she said. But dammit, she wanted him to.

He smiled, a slight, knowing curve to his lips. “You didn’t have to.” He turned back to the monitor. “When you can trust—really, deeply trust—then maybe we can talk more.”

“Can’t you be my…whatever? My Dom? Can’t you play with me the way Sully played with Alex and Doreen?”

“Is that something you want?”

She couldn’t say it. She nodded.

“Maybe one day.”

He didn’t say anything else. From the way he focused on his work, she realized the conversation was over. On shaky legs, she walked to her room and closed the door.

After she left, Mac leaned back and let out a deep breath. His cock throbbed, harder than ever. He didn’t dare touch it, not even to scratch, for fear of exploding. That would earn him an extra twenty-five in addition to the ten he’d get for what he had done with her, for kissing the back of her neck.

He’d like nothing better than to walk into her bedroom and order her to strip and spread her legs and spend all night there with her.

He closed his eyes and took several long, deep breaths to steady himself. Because he wanted to, that’s exactly why he couldn’t. He wouldn’t risk what he had with Sully.

They had trust. He wouldn’t betray it.

Sully called from the airport a little before midnight. When he walked into their bedroom shortly after one o’clock, Mac was waiting, naked, on his knees, the cane on the floor before him.

Sully pulled up short as he closed the bedroom door behind him.

“What’s going on?”

Mac didn’t lift his gaze. “I owe Master ten strokes.”

Still watching him, Sully walked around him and started removing his shirt. “What did you do?”

Mac inwardly winced at the cautious tone in Sully’s voice. The guarded fear. He closed his eyes and related his discussion with Clarisse. How he’d kissed the back of her neck.

Well worth ten. Hell, it was worth twenty-five to do it again. It wasn’t, however, worth putting Sully emotionally on edge over it.

Nothing was worth that.

Sully’s voice sounded soft and firm. “On the bed. Ass over the edge.”

Mac rushed to comply. He’d barely moved into position when Sully struck him, hard, across the ass with the cane.

He closed his eyes and anticipated the second stroke, but it didn’t come. Instead, Sully’s hand, warm and gentle on his flesh, stroking the mark. “That’s all that happened?”

“Yes, Master—” Whack!

Mac braced himself. The strokes felt harder tonight, but not as fast. Sully would draw it out.

Sully’s hand again, stroking. “How did that make you feel, kissing her like that?”

“I couldn’t touch my dick for an hour, I was so fucking hard.”

Whack!

The way his cock rubbed against the bedspread now didn’t help either.

“Are you hard, slave?”

“Yes, Master.”

Whack!

Six to go and his eyes already stung with tears. Damn!

“You could have taken her to bed right then, couldn’t you?”

“Yes, Mast—” Whack!

Mac struggled to control his breathing and his willful cock.

Dammit, he was so fucking horny he could barely stand it.

“You want to come, don’t you?”

“Yes, Master!” He tensed, anticipating, but the strike didn’t come.

“Stand up.”

Mac didn’t have time to consider the change in routine. He complied.

“Grip your cock. Both hands.”

He did.

“Start stroking, but you don’t come until I tell you or you’ll get an extra fifty.”

Mac fisted his cock, trying to keep his eyes on Sully.

Sully stepped behind him and took another stroke. Mac’s rhythm faltered as he struggled to hold back.

In quick succession, the rest of the strokes fell. “Now,” Sully ordered.

Mac’s climax exploded, his juices coating his hands as the pain in his ass drove him over the edge hard and fast.

Sully stood beside him. “Show me.”

Trembling with exhaustion and release, Mac lifted his hands.

“Lick them clean, slave.”

Mac did, wishing it were Sully’s come and struggling not to get hard again.

Sully reached over and tugged on one of Mac’s nipple rings, then the other. “You’ve been a good boy for me, have you?”

“Only that, Master. What I told you.”

Sully stroked Mac’s cheek in a softly tender way. “That pleases me. You know honesty is always rewarded.” He stood in front of Mac and unzipped his slacks, freeing his cock. “I know what you want. Go ahead. On your knees.”

Mac fell to his knees, grabbed Sully’s hips, and greedily sucked his cock. The feel of his lover’s hands tightly fisting in his hair, holding on as he fucked his thick cock down his throat only intensified Mac’s already growing need.

“Swallow every drop, slave,” Sully ordered.

Sully fucked his face, hard, ramming his cock into Mac’s mouth.

Mac stayed with him, not missing a beat, careful not to hurt him with his teeth and finally giving up the fight to keep his own cock soft.

Mac closed his eyes and enjoyed every second. Harder and faster until he sensed the change in Sully’s pace.

“Now, slave.”

Mac sucked, hard, swallowing, moaning at the taste of his Master in his throat. Sully fell still, the hard, firm grip in Mac’s hair changing, loosening, tender strokes along Mac’s scalp as Sully’s thick member softened against Mac’s tongue.

Mac would kneel there all night like that if Sully let him.

No, Clarisse wasn’t even close to understanding why he could give himself to Sully. He strongly suspected her submissive needs came nowhere close to his. He also knew she wasn’t a switch. She would want soft and snuggly, easy sensual play that slipped into cuddling when all was said and done.

Could she ever truly live the way they lived? Were they even capable of giving her what she wanted and needed?

Sully finally patted the top of Mac’s head. “Very good. Good boy.

Release me.”

Reluctantly, Mac did, giving his cock one last kiss before sitting back on his heels and looking at Sully.

“How will you explain the marks?”

“The truth, Master. I already mentioned to her that I’d earned myself ten.”

“But not why?”

He shook his head.

Sully’s eyes dropped to Mac’s lap, where his stiff cock bobbed in the air. Sully smiled. “Go get your wrist cuffs.”

A surge of excitement raced through Mac as he jumped to do it.

Sully finished undressing, put the cane away, and turned off the lights. Moonlight filtered through the blinds, enough to see by. It only took Mac a moment to securely cinch the cuffs around his wrists and stand at the end of their bed.

“Lie down. On your back.” Sully held something behind him.

Mac had been too distracted by the unexpected command to fetch his cuffs to notice what Sully had picked up. Once Mac was secured on the bed, Sully showed him the vibrator. Not the largest, but enough.

His cock throbbed.

Sully laughed as he knelt between Mac’s legs. “You know what I’ve got in store, don’t you?”

“I hope so, Master.”

Sully grinned. “You know damn well honesty is always rewarded.

You’ve been a very good boy. You could have easily not told me what happened. I never would have known. But you did, knowing I would punish you.” He thumbed the control and the vibrator clicked to life. Mac’s breath caught as the hum filled the room. “I never want you to have a reason to not tell me the absolute truth.”

Sully cupped the top of Mac’s rigid cock in his left hand as he used his right to apply the vibrator to the sensitive spot on the underside of the head. Mac’s hips involuntarily jerked, but he didn’t take his eyes off Sully.

“You may come,” Sully softly said.

Mac closed his eyes and threw his head back as the sensation overwhelmed him. Sully knew damn well Mac never could hold back very long like this, and as Sully worked the vibrator along the underside of Mac’s cock, his release rapidly built.

“Tell me when you’re coming,” Sully ordered.

Mac’s eyes squeezed tightly shut, his world ending at the feel of his cock lying in Sully’s warm hand and of what the vibrator did to him. In another minute, he was there. “I’m coming, Master!” he gasped as the explosion ripped through him. Sully pressed the vibrator tightly against the underside of the head, drawing another cry from Mac as his climax seemed to increase, double in size. After what felt like forever, the pressure relented until Sully finally withdrew the vibrator and shut it off.

Drained, spent, Mac lay gasping on the bed. Then the feel of Sully’s palm against his lips. He opened his mouth and licked his lover’s hand clean without opening his eyes. As Sully pressed his fingers between Mac’s lips, Mac lovingly sucked them, working his tongue over Sully’s hand as if it were his cock.

After a moment, the hand disappeared, but he felt Sully unsnap his cuffs from the bed. Then Sully’s arms encircled him and pulled him close. Mac cuddled tightly against his side, the cuffs still around his wrists.

“I love you, Brant,” Sully whispered.

Mac squeezed him in a tight hug. “I love you too, Sul. Jesus, you have no idea how much I love you.”

A soft breath escaped Sully. Mac interpreted it as relief. He knew Sully still struggled with his own fears sometimes. He also knew he’d do whatever he had to, for the rest of their lives, to keep proving to Sully he would never betray his trust.

Sully kissed the top of his head. “Let’s sleep in a little tomorrow, okay?”

Mac smiled. “Okay.”