Free Tough Love by Heidi Cullinan Page B

course.” Steve cleared his throat.
    “What else would you do? Right now, if we were in a relationship?”
    Goddamn if he wasn’t half under this kid. This sweet, smart young man who was just finding out he liked pain. “I’d want things to be all about you, about putting you at ease, making you feel good. I wouldn’t use pain right now. This is about comfort. Not sex, even if that was part of our BDSM relationship.”
    “You mean some people have BDSM relationships without sex?”
    “Yes. More than you probably think. But as I said, this isn’t about sex. I’d praise you, remind you of your punishment, and then…” He scratched his beard. “Then I think I’d pull up my chair and pet you.”
    “ Pet? ”
    “Yeah.” Steve mimed stroking a submissive’s hair, as if the sub knelt between his legs. “Pet. Bad as you got shaken up, I’d let you lean on my thigh, nice and close, my legs surrounding you. Making your world narrow for as long as you needed. Something tells me there hasn’t been a lot of touch in your life for a while, and never anything so safe and simple with another man.”
    Chenco stiffened, the observation clearly hitting close to home. “I’d just sit there? Leaning on you?”
    Steve could see it in his head, so beautiful it made him ache. “While I stroked your hair and said you were a good, smart, strong boy. Yeah. That’s what I’d do.”
    Chenco stared at him a few seconds. “Could we…could we do it now?”
    No, the last sane part of Steve whispered, but sanity died under Chenco’s dark, beautiful gaze. Steve smiled, the rug not only pulled out from under him but rolled up and put away. “Absolutely.”
     
    Chenco hadn’t planned on asking Steve to pet him, and knowing it was going to happen freaked him out. A lot. It also made him shake, he wanted it so much. Which freaked him out more. He wanted this ? With this guy he’d known for ten minutes? What the fuck ?
    Except yeah, he really did.
    If Steve knew how nervous Chenco was, he didn’t let it show. Chenco worried he’d shout “on your knees” or something and wreck it, but Steve simply kept watching Chenco, like he had all the time in the world. When he finally spoke, his voice was so gentle it made Chenco ache.
    “Nothing will happen which we didn’t discuss. Is there something, though, you’d rather not do?”
    Chenco had no idea he wanted any of it to happen. Only one thing stood out as a potential danger zone. “What about the punishment part?”
    “I don’t know you well enough to give you a punishment yet. But if you want me to take it over for you, if you trust me to read you and judge correctly, then yes, I’ll take the responsibility for it and get back to you when I figure it out.”
    Never, not in a thousand years, would Chenco have thought he wanted someone to punish him, but holy shit, he did. It tore him up inside knowing maybe his brother wasn’t the monster but rather the family he’d dreamed of, and Caramela had slammed her stiletto into the chest of his brother’s best friend. If Steve could make the heavy regret and guilt go away? God, yes. Except… “Is it stupid of me to say yes when I barely know you, agreeing only because I really want to?”
    There it was again, the vulnerability. Steve faltered, a weird look of guilt and unsteadiness all over his face. Which made no damn sense. Chenco was the one potentially getting the scolding or whatever. As he had before, Steve recovered quickly, going back into ice, ice baby mode. But Chenco couldn’t unsee the moment when Steve, counter to his big, bad persona, had not been entirely in control.
    “That’s something only you can answer,” Steve said at last.
    Nice evasion, but Chenco truly needed this sorted out. “But what would you do, if you punished me? Let’s say I said yes and you’d had time to think about it. What’s a for-instance?” Chenco bit his lip. “I hope you get I don’t like to be embarrassed, especially in front of