An Excerpt from Bound To Please

In celebration of my return to the blog, and the completion of my second novel, I’d like to share an unedited excerpt from Bound To Please which will be published by MLR Press.

Brought together for pleasure, bound together by love.

Blurb

Jason doesn’t do monogamy, and as a much sought-after Dom he doesn’t have to, since on any given night he has his choice of potential playmates. So when he gets the chance to play with Benny, a sweet young thing who wants only to please him, it’s game on.

Benny tells himself that a chance to serve the sexy Dom is all he needs. But when the rules change and they’re playing for keeps, it’s love, not leather, that’s bound to please.

***

Benny sipped his drink and scanned the crowded lounge. Rumors of the impending knife play were spreading like the proverbial wildfire. Small knots of partygoers drifted toward the door, no doubt on their way to the fish-bowl.

As usual with the bimonthly members bashes, tonight’s festivities were very well attended. Despite the current exodus, the dance floor remained packed. Sweaty, half-naked bodies writhed together in twos and threes to a vintage Nine Inch nails track, pumped through the club’s excellent sound system. Men danced with other men, women with women. Large groups formed and broke apart seemingly at random, the dancers not caring what music played as long as it was loud and constant.

From the corner of his eye, Benny caught sight of a commotion at the far end of the room. A familiar figure, clad in only a black jock-strap, stood atop the bar. His bright blue hair fell in wild waves around his shoulders and cascaded to the middle of his back.

Rain. Jesus, he really was a show-off.

Side-stepping glasses and ashtrays, Rain pumped his slender hips and flailed his arms in what looked, at least to Benny, more like an epileptic fit than a dance. Still, the crowd at the bar didn’t seem to care. They hooted and cat-called. A hand reached up and tucked a bill in his jock. Further down the bar, several others waved money in the air.

Rain flailed and swiveled his way along the dark wood surface, accepting the attention of his audience like it was his due. He flirted outrageously, collecting tips and blowing kisses.

“Man, he is such an attention hound.” Adam dropped onto the couch beside Benny, a glass of orange juice in his hand. “How’s it hanging, Benny? Good party.”

Benny shrugged. “It’s okay. Pretty much like all the other parties.”

Adam eyed him over the rim of his glass. “Maybe if you got up and danced and mingled a little you’d have more fun, instead of sitting there like a wallflower.”

“I’m working.”

This got him an eye roll but no comment.

“Where’s Jimmy?”

“He’s up at the bar talking to Rod Grinnell about municipal bonds or some boring crap like that.” He sipped his drink. “So what’s the matter? You look like somebody just pissed in your Diet Coke.”

“Nothing’s the matter.” Benny watched Jason watching Rain. There was that same intensity in the look that Benny recognized from earlier, a connection that made him ache inside.

“Rain is like the worst dancer ever.” Adam laughed. “He’s a good model though, and a really nice guy. Give you the shirt off his back if he happened to be wearing one.”

Benny hummed noncommittally. Rain did seem like a nice guy and he was an awesome kisser, a thing he probably didn’t need to mention.

“I talked to him for a while earlier when he came in the office looking for Jason. He showed me his web site.”

“The porno site? It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it? You should see his movies. Man, he’s done things in front of a camera that I never even dreamed about.”

At the bar Jason leaned over and said something to Shannon who nodded. They both glanced around then back up at Rain who was much closer now.

“He says he isn’t doing porn anymore.” The ice cubes rattled in Benny’s glass. He set the empty on a side table.

“I know. Did he tell you why?”

“He said he’s tired of it, that you can only fuck for money for so long.”

“That’s not the real reason, that’s just what he tells people.” Adam leaned close, his voice dropping to a confidential tone, barely audible over the music. “The real reason is that a good friend of his got HIV from somebody on a set. The guy, the one who gave it to him, was working somewhere out of the country for a couple years, South America or somewhere, I think. Anyway, when he came back, he did a film with this friend of Rain’s. Then when he got tested they found out he was positive.”

Benny’s jaw dropped and his eyes went wide. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

“What about Rain? Is he–”

Adam shook his head. “No, Rain’s fine. But it shook him up pretty bad. And he hasn’t made a movie since.”

“Wow. For real?”

“For real.” Adam sipped his drink. “It caused a shitload of trouble between him and the guy he was living with, his producer, manager, whatever he was. He kicked Rain out.”

“Did he tell you all that?”

“No, Theo told me. I don’t think Rain knows I know so don’t say anything.”

“Are you sure he’s clean?”

“Why? Is he trying to get into your pants?” Benny hesitated and Adam laughed. “Dude, he tries with everybody. It’s not like you’d be kissing and telling.”

Still up on the bar, and not ten feet from where Jason and Shannon sat, Rain pulled the money from his jock and tossed it in the air. Bills showered down around him and several people laughed.

He leapt off the bar and landed on all fours, lithe as a cat. For a moment he stayed just as he’d landed, head down, hair obscuring his face, ass in the air. Then he dropped to his knees and began to crawl toward Jason and Shannon.

Maybe it’s not Jason he wants. Maybe it’s Shannon or somebody else. Please let it be someone else.

Even as he had the thought, even as he sent up his little prayer, Benny knew he was only fooling himself. Of course it was Jason Rain played to. Who else would it be?

He recalled Rain’s words from that afternoon. Did it make you jealous, watching us?

Was Rain trying to make him jealous? And was his pining for Jason so obvious that a near total stranger had seen it?

Benny licked his lips as if it had been he, rather than Rain, who had given Jason that blow-job earlier. His mouth, rather than Rain’s, that Jason had fucked with such gusto. His tongue that had tasted the silky steely length of Jason’s cock.

But it wasn’t. And it wouldn’t ever be.

It was Rain. Just as it would be Rain, not him, who would no doubt share Jason’s bed tonight. If he’d had a farm he would bet it.

Rain had reached Jason’s feet and prostrated himself. One cheek pressed to the top of Jason’s boot, a long hank of hair hiding his expression.

Jason said something to Rain, No doubt chastising him for his boldness. He didn’t allow subs to touch him without permission.

Rain lifted his head, not quite looking directly up at the Dom. Another no-no. And as Benny and everyone in the room watched, he licked a long wet line up the arch of Jason’s boot.

Jason nudged him away, a clear if subtle reprimand, more of a game than a real correction.

Beside him, Shannon reached over with her own stiletto-heeled boot and gave Rain’s bare shoulder a far less gentle shove. He stopped his boot licking as she spoke to him.

Though Benny couldn’t hear what she said on account of the distance and the music, he watched her lips. He missed some of it, but the ‘pushy little slut’ part came through loud and clear.

Rain would have to stop now.

And stop he did, rolling over onto his back like a submissive dog. Flipping the hair out of his face, he smiled up at Shannon. One hand went to where his erection pushed out the front of his jock. He stroked himself. He got another sharper nudge from the mistress’s foot and he stopped.

Jason got to his feet. He said something to Shannon who in turn spoke to her own sub who knelt quietly beside her barstool. The man rose and together with Jason headed for the dais at the front of the room. Rain rose to his knees, but when he started to get to his feet Shannon shook her head. She gestured after the other men then pointed to the floor. You can go, the gesture said, but on your knees.

Rain returned to all fours and crawled after Jason and Hainey.

A wave of anticipation rolled through the room. Clearly something was going to happen and everyone knew it. Maybe Shannon was going to whip Rain for his impudence.

Benny’s cock stirred at the thought. He’d never been whipped himself, couldn’t imagine it, not in reality. Still there was something exciting that happened when a skillful Dom Prepared to take a willing sub to that transcendent place. An electricity filled the air as the assembled spectators held their collective breath.

Shannon’s sub led Rain to the flogging post on the dais and cuffed his wrist above his head.

Jason said something to Hainey who went to the glass-front case that held a dizzying array of whips, canes, paddles and floggers. He opened the case and removed a slender and very flexible rod. He returned to Jason, knelt and held it out on his raised palms.

The music was turned off and the room grew quiet.

Jason took the cane, examined it and nodded. Hainey rose and returned to his mistress as Jason turned to Rain. He ran a hand down Rain’s back and murmured something for Rain’s ears alone. The man nodded and Jason stepped back.

The cushion shifted as someone sat down on Benny’s other side. He tore his gaze away from the compelling scene at the front of the room.

Mario smiled. He rested a hand just above Benny’s knee, leaned in close and spoke directly into his ear. “It’s exciting, isn’t it? The moment just before a scene begins?”

Benny nodded. He watched Jason give the cane several experimental flicks, testing. He could feel the heat of Mario’s hand on his leg, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Jason.

The cane whistled through the air and cracked across Rain’s ass. The white horizontal stripe formed a red welt almost instantly. Rain tensed, a visible shudder racing through him. The assembled spectators sighed.

The cane fell again and again and again. A criss-cross of angry red stripes appeared on Rain’s pale flesh. His tension was clear as he hunched in on himself, seeming one minute to shrink from the blows and the next to anticipate them.

“He isn’t there yet,” Mario breathed in Benny’s ear. “See how tense his shoulders are, how he braces when he hears the sound of the rod? He hasn’t yet accepted the pain. He craves it and yet he fights it still.”

The hand on Benny’s leg began to rub small circles, not a caress exactly, but … something, like Mario was soothing him.

Benny realized that he’d been holding his breath. That indeed, his shoulders were hunched up tight as if in sympathy for the man being caned, for Rain.

A movement from Benny’s other side pulled his attention away from the scene and from Mario. Adam was watching him, not the scene, but him. His dark eyes dropped to where Mario’s long-fingered hand stroked Benny’s thigh but he said nothing. He didn’t have to.

His friend had been pushing him for months to tell Jason how he felt. And for months Benny had resisted. Now Adam was watching him with Mario, the unspoken question as clear as if it had been blaring over a loud-speaker.

Benny looked away.

“Watch him, Benny. He’s nearly there.” Mario leaned forward, his fingers flexed on Benny’s leg, his breath quickened. “Ah yes, there it is. So beautiful.”

Rain moaned wordlessly. The tension ran out of his body and his knees gave out. He slumped against the post, his wrists the only thing holding him upright.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Mario whispered. “Isn’t it beautiful, boy?”

Benny swallowed. “I … I guess so, sir.”

Mario chuckled softly. “Do you ever think about it, Benny? Do you ever imagine submitting and feeling the kiss of the lash or the sting of the rod?”

Benny tore his gaze away from Rain and Jason. He met Mario’s dark eyes. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Certainly you know if you’ve thought about it.” Mario’s tone was unflinching despite that they spoke only in whispers. He would brook no evasions.

“Yes,” Benny admitted, dropping his gaze. “I’ve thought about it.” He was suddenly flooded with shame as if he’d confessed to something dreadful.

But Mario only smiled and nodded. With one finger he lifted Benny’s chin, forcing him to meet his eyes. “I know you have. And it’s all right.”

Written by Kimberly Gardner

As early as the seventh grade, Kimberly remembers slashing her favorite rockstars and reading romance. So it’s not surprising that her two passions, romance and putting pretty boys with other pretty boys, should come together in her writing. Moliere said, “Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, then for a few close friends, then for money.” Kimberly is delighted to finally be doing it for money.
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