Page 116 of The Menagerie

He watches how Mal coils it, following suit until they have three neat bundles of rope. Mal takes all three and heads toward the front.

Each couple dutifully places their coils of rope—some neatly tied back up, others in hellish crumpled balls—in a separate bin to be cleaned. Half have marks on their skin and indents in their clothing that mirror the ones on Mal, and Rowan can’t help but wonder what the other pairs are going to get up to now that class is over.

As Mal comes back from the front after a brief exchange with Camilla, Rowan feels a swirl of accomplishment and can’t wait to tie Mal for real.

But for now, he’ll be content with getting him naked again.

With getting inside him again.

“You still up for a scene?” he checks, though they’d already planned on it.

“Yeah,” Mal nods and leads the way to the staircase.

ROWAN’SBUZZINGas they make their way to the Gold Room. He hasn’t felt this eager since his first scene alone with Mal.

As usual, Mal sets out the cuffs on the bed, the clinking of the D-rings and clasps making Rowan’s cock twitch in some kind of perverse Pavlovian response.

They hadn’t planned on using anything else tonight, but Mal’s thumbnail rakes rhythmically across the zipper of his bag, and he stares down into it. His gaze is far away, like he’s not lookingatsomething, but rather seeing straight through the bag to some unknown point in space. Rowan opens his mouth to ask if something’s wrong, but then Mal is stuffing one hand inside and tossing a box of condoms on the bed. It makes only the tiniest hollowthumpagainst the thick leather pad, but it might as well have been a gunshot with the way it sends a searing pain through Rowan’s chest.

“Oh….”

He’s not even sure if Mal hears it with how small and pathetic it sounds to Rowan’s own ears. Hell, he’s not even sure any sound came out at all with the hollow ringing all around him.

He stares at the black-and-gold box for far too long before he feels Mal’s gaze on him. When their eyes meet, it’s… fuck. Rowan wishes he could see the dark sheen of regret coloring those gold eyes, but there’s nothing. No sign of guilt or empathy or anger oranythingthere beyond a silent dare to raise the question that’s currently burrowing into Rowan’s head and taking over all his thoughts.

It doesn’t mean anything.Of courseMal has every right to go out and fuck whoever he wants, whenever he wants. Rowan had thought about doing the same only a couple of hours ago. As long as they use condoms until enough time has passed and they get tested next. That was the deal they made. The deal Rowanagreed to.

But it fuckinghurts.

The initial pain of the shock fades quickly, but the ache it leaves behind when he regains his senses is like a week-old bruise. Only really hurting if he pokes it. If he thinks about it too much.

He should stop the scene. Heknowshe should. That’s what agoodDom would do. A good partner in general. But the thought of getting a half-mewling Mal underneath him again makes it hard to say no. Impossible, even.

Time passes in slow motion, but Rowan manages an astonishingly unaffected sounding, “’Kay.”

And with frustratingly shaky fingers, he opens the brand-new box of Magnum Trojans and rips one off the strip, immediately hating how the foil feels in his hands. Knows how much worse the rubber is going to feel around his cock and how dull every sensation will be when he’s used to feelingallof Mal.

That’s exactly what it is, Rowan thinks. A dulling. They’d gotten too close for the parameters of the relationship they’d established, and Mal thought it necessary to pull on the reins. And his way of doing that was fucking someone else. The sour bite of betrayal fills Rowan’s chest even though he knows he hasn’t earned the right to feel that way. Definitely not yet, if ever.

Rowan’s always been quick to anger, one of the many things he hates about his brain chemistry. He’s got a pretty low frustration tolerance and tends to lash out as soon as that threshold is met. But he doesn’t want that with Mal. Doesn’t wanna punish him any more than he would normally for being a brat. Instead he wants to show him howgoodit can be between them—how goodhecan be.

He thinks back to the diner all those weeks ago, how he’d told MalI don’t like to shareand made him backpedal and state bluntly that they weren’t exclusive. The thing is, sure, he’s possessive, he knows he is, but like at the gangbang, something about watching others wreck Mal and knowing that he can do it better—longer, harder, faster—gets him endlessly hot.

And they’d planned on a longer spanking session this time—more than a few errant swats like Rowan has done when Mal has been particularly mouthy. So it’s going to be hard to make it feel like itisn’ta punishment.

But Mal hadspecificallyrequested it. Only two days ago. And Rowan can’t help but wonder if he’d slept with whoever else he did before or after that fact. Hell, he could have fucked someone immediately after he’d driven away from the diner last Saturday night and Rowan would be none the wiser. He also can’t help but wonder if Mal only chose the spanking to do a complete one-eighty from their last session—the slowness and gentleness of it, relatively speaking—this time wanting something at the other end of his kink spectrum.

More dulling. More pushing away, even though it’d felt like they made progress earlier tonight.

He has to remind himself once again that they’re not here for progress. Not the emotional kind, anyway, no matter how badly he wants it.

“Strip.”

It’s shockingly easy for Rowan to slip back into the role of Rowan Campbell, Dom, as if last week he didn’t nearly fall apart at the feeling of Mal’s lips on his own.

“Make me.”

Mal dips back into his own role as if last weekhedidn’t get so overwhelmed by Rowan’s words and whatever was going on in his personal life that he’d let himself cross one of his major boundaries.

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