Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66863 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66863 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
We finished eating, and Kieran said, “Take both of our plates into the kitchen. Rinse them and you can leave them in the sink and then come back here and sit down.”
Rinsing the dishes was the least I could do for him after he’d made this meal.
I took both of our dishes into the kitchen and did as I was told. I considered putting them in the dishwasher but Kieran hadn’t instructed me to do that. Maybe the dishes inside were already clean.
So, I left them in the sink and went back to him in the dining room. The whole time I told myself this was it. That I didn’t need or want to play this game with him. My life was too busy and I didn’t want to be his boy. I was a grown man who knew how to take care of myself.
“You’re unsure. You have needs you’re just discovering and that scares you. It makes sense that it does, but it’s there, Jared. I won’t pretend it’s not, even if I likely should. I wouldn’t have gone this far with you, if I didn’t see it. It’s okay to want these things. To need them…and it’s okay if you realize it’s not for you.”
“I don’t need anyone other than myself,” I told him. I’d made sure of that, because you could never truly depend on anyone anyway.
“Don’t you? You admitted some of the things you desired earlier. Don’t lie to yourself and don’t lie to me.” He sighed as though he was getting frustrated. “I heard you while I was on my balcony, Jared. You have to know that, even if you haven’t admitted it to yourself. I heard you crying. I heard the porn. I heard you come while you were watching it. There’s nothing wrong with needing the things you do.”
I felt my face pale. I shoved away from the table. He’d heard me? Spied on me? Listened while I’d masturbated? It felt…intrusive. “That’s why you asked me to come over the first time?”
“Yes,” Kieran answered simply. “I know we can give each other what we need.”
I shook my head. “Even if…even if I got off to that, it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean I need it.”
He shrugged. “Maybe you don’t. Maybe I’m wrong about you.”
I tried to walk away but Kieran reached out and grabbed my wrist. “You do what you want this week. No schedules. No responsibilities. No dinners or movies. If you don’t want it, fine, we won’t do it, but if you do, I want you here, at my place, at five thirty Friday evening. You’ll have a bag with toiletries and clothes, though you likely won’t need the clothes. We’ll leave, spend the weekend outside the city and, for the whole weekend, you’ll be my boy. You’ll do what I say. And when we get home Sunday evening, if it’s not what you need, then again, it’ll be done and we’ll walk away. But I know you, Jared. I hear you. I see you in a way no one else ever has. I can and will give you what you need.”
My chest hurt. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.
Kieran pushed to his feet. “You can let yourself out.” He turned and walked down the hallway…away from me.
It was a few moments later before I could make myself move. My shoes were still here somewhere but I didn’t care. I walked out, with no plans to ever set foot in Kieran’s condo again.
CHAPTER NINE
“You were brutal today,” Blaine Simpson, one of the partners, told me. Hearing it from him made my gut twist strangely—a mixture of excitement and dread.
“Thank you. The witness was full of shit.”
“I think you made that obvious.” He chuckled, so I chuckled but I really just wanted this conversation to be over. It was the end of the day. I wanted to go home and…well, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I should want to be there more than I wanted to be here.
But here, I had a plan, at least. I… I shook my head. I didn’t need a plan to know what to do. Those were Kieran’s words trying to play tricks on me.
You felt that way before Kieran said it…
How would I have made it this far if I needed what he said?
“You okay, buddy?” Blaine asked, and I had to assume he’d said something I didn’t hear.
“Yes, sorry. I’m not feeling too great. I think I’ll head home.” My words were stilted again as the strange disconnect I often felt to my own life set in.
But I didn’t go home. I drove around Chicago because I didn’t want to run into Kieran at our condo. How fucked up was that?
I pulled over in Boys Town and logged into Grindr. This was the only place I came to hook up and I always met the men somewhere. I’d never been public about it…but maybe I could now. I could meet someone, go fuck a man who didn’t want me to call him Sir or Daddy. There were guys close. There were always people close, but I logged out of the app without using it for its purpose. It was because I wasn’t the hookup kind of guy, I told myself. I wasn’t interested in meeting random men on an app and screwing them on a regular basis. That was only when I really needed to get off, to be fucked. I was better than that. I had too much going on in my life to do that.