Page 50 of My Skin Begs You Please

“All right,” I agreed.

He wound his arms around my arms, helping me to hold him. We were silent for a long time, letting our breaths sync up, letting our skin cool down.

“It probably sounds stupid to you, but I want to stay here in this room forever,” he said eventually.

I ran my eyes over the implements, the bench, the table, and the cross on the wall.

“It’s not stupid. This room is a safe place.” Or it had been, until tonight. Now I felt like this room wasn’t the place of control it’d always been for me. Minty’s past made it a dangerous room with dangerous play.

Minty laughed. “Oh, God. No, it’s not. This room is terrifying. But here…”

“Here, you’re not in reality.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s an addictive feeling. I know.” Had I gotten him hooked on something that now I didn’t know if I could continue to deliver?The nausea ramped up, and I hoped I was hiding my discomfort. “Unfortunately, I have to go to work, and you have school, so…neither of us can stay here forever.”

He chuckled, that same dark noise I’d heard over the phone. “I’d be willing to drop out. Live here with you. Clean your house. Suck your cock. It’d be a great job. And I could love you,” he said softly, turning in my arms and clinging to me a little shyly. “I think I already do.”

I remembered what Barry had said, warning me the kid fell in love with someone new every day and would probably fall for me too. He’d confessed to it himself, hadn’t he? I rubbed Mitchell’s back some more and said, “That’s a pretty dream. Why don’t you think about that while you fall asleep right now? When you wake up in a few hours, we’ll need to go our separate ways.”

“Or I could just stay here,” he said again, his fingers digging into my skin. “Wait for you to come back from work…”

Despite my doubts, I was tempted. Minty was such a gorgeous sub. When he was in pain, he shone with it, and it did all kinds of wonderful things to my libido. Hell, spending more time with him might even be therightthing to do, given the kid’s upset earlier.

But I also knew if I said yes now, it’d just lead to Minty thinking this relationship was going to be more than it was. More than I was thinking it would ever be possible to give him. I wasn’t going to be enough for him, not with all the baggage he was carrying around.

I was scared, and that was no place to Dom from. I needed time to think.

“You’ll go back to your dorm,” I said firmly. “There’ll be no more talk about staying.”

He went still at my side, his breathing halting for a long moment. He sat up and gazed down at my face, but after a few moments he murmured, “Yes, Sir. I promise.”

“Good.” I tugged him to my side and cuddled him close,wondering if this would be the last time I held him.

***

Minty

“What do youthink love is?” I asked, sipping the beer my best friend Daniel had brought with him along with the takeout pizza he’d picked up from Stefano’s on the Strip. I figured if anyone knew the answer to my question, it’d be Daniel. He was newly in love, and he had a good idea of how to be a boyfriend, how to treat someone the way they deserved to be treated.

Ha. The way I “deserved” to be treated? What even was that anyway?

“It’s desiring the other person’s happiness above your own,” Daniel said. He made it sound so simple and obvious that for a moment I felt dumb. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m considering falling in love for real.” I bit into the pizza, the cheese sticking to the roof of my mouth and burning it. Another injury to go with the bruises Luke had left on me.

Daniel took a swig from his own beer bottle, and I could tell he was calculating a response. This was one of the reasons I’d been avoiding him lately—not returning his calls, not answering the door when he knocked, and never going out to his house in Kingston. Not even when I was in the area visiting my mother. Daniel was just toogood. It was annoying.

“Is this about the guy Barry has you seeing?”

I bristled. “I’m not a child. I’m not being sent off to sex therapy by my daddy.”

Daniel raised a hand. “I didn’t say you were.”

“I just wanted to know about love. Don’t make this aboutthat.”

“About what?”

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