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  Jack was somewhere in between. When he’d subbed for Mr White (and Nate had too, back then) he’d fit as neatly as he could into Mr White’s ideals of what a ‘real submissive’ should be like. But they’d all known Jack wasn’t submissive, not really. He’d pretended well enough, but what got Jack off was definitely on the domination side of the scale, so eventually Mr White had taught him to be dominant.

  He’d done the same for Nate, only Nate had discarded a lot of what he said as unimportant. Nate didn’t need someone to polish his shoes and iron his clothes. He didn’t need someone to make his coffee exactly right every morning. He didn’t need to micromanage, controlling every aspect of someone’s life until they no longer remembered who they were without him. No, Nate needed someone who would scowl in his face and call him an asshole and enjoy it when Nate bent them over his knee.

  Someone like Ewan, who was even now scowling at his shoes as Nate rang the bell at the front of Mistress Celestina’s.

  “All right?” Nate murmured.

  “I hate this place,” Ewan complained, scuffing a foot along the ground. “Feels dead posh.”

  Nate tended to agree. The Academy grounds were extensive but overgrown, the house itself a vine-covered Beaux Arts brick of a thing, cluttered with later additions. It was like something out of gothic horror, perverted into a sex dungeon. And Nate gave it points for theming, but frankly it wasn’t his style.

  Still, Ewan was hating life, and that was always entertaining, so Nate smiled at the serving staff and walked Ewan into the party with a bounce in his step.

  The party was out in the atrium, amid a riot of carefully tended flowers. Willows draped themselves over benches and ponds, the air warm and rich with moisture. There were just short of a dozen Dominants (and their pets) arrayed in a circle of stuffed armchairs and sofas. Nate nodded to the ones he knew, smiled at the ones he didn’t, and found Mr White.

  Ah, Mr White. He was a silver fox in the European style, exquisitely dressed and clipped and pomaded. He smelled masculine, intimidating. He smelled like money, but not the kind you could earn, the kind you could only inherit through generations of privilege.

  “I’m late,” Nate said, spreading his hands in a helpless plea. They were, by fifteen minutes. Nate had been counting, after all, tucking the knowledge away like a gift to give Ewan later.

  Mr White was wearing one of his stern faces. “You are. But only barely. I never had much control over you, in any case.”

  “I was good,” Nate said. Well. “Mostly.”

  Mr White’s mouth twitched into the faintest hint of a smile. “Mostly. And who is this?”

  He meant Ewan. But they were at a play party, so Ewan wasn’t strictly ‘Ewan’ anymore.

  Nate put an arm around his shoulders. Ewan stubbornly didn’t move, so Nate propelled him forward. “This is Mac. Mac, this is Mr White. But you can call him ‘sir’.”

  Ewan—Mac, now—looked Mr White over sullenly. He didn’t seem to care for what he saw, but he said, “How do you do?” about as nicely as Nate could have asked for.

  “How do you do?” Mr White gestured for a girl in a maid uniform to come over—she presented him with a plate of colorfully decorated lace cookies. “Nathaniel, darling, does your Mac deserve a treat?”

  “Not a bit. But go on,” Nate said, enjoying the flash of belligerence on Ewan’s face.

  Ewan accepted a cookie, mumbled a thankyou, and quietly tucked himself back into Nate’s shadow.

  Should it have been reassuring? Because it wasn’t at all. Nate enjoyed the tension, however, and found a seat next to Jack, who had Channon kneeling at his feet.

  “Down,” Nate said, tugging on Ewan’s tie, and Ewan folded to the ground between Nate’s knees, settling heavily against his thigh. Nate turned to Jack and flashed him a grin. “Hi.”

  “Good morning.”

  Jack was lounging in an armchair, looking exactly as put together as Nate would expect him to be at a party like this. He had Channon kneeling alongside, in a truly horrendous wool vest, looking every part a schoolboy dragged along to a party he didn’t want to be at.

  They looked good together. Channon was young and glowing with health, handsome in the way fit young men were handsome when there was nothing actually wrong with them. He was a complement to Jack, who had the kind of chiseled good looks that became sublime with the judicious application of money and effort. Both of them were black haired and light eyed, well groomed, dressed in clothes tailored to suit their muscular frames. Jack was twice Channon’s age, and like enough in coloring that there was something enticingly familial about the pair of them together. You could mistake Jack for Channon’s father, if you ignored the way Channon looked at him like he was the most wonderful thing in the world.

  Now Jack eyed Nate sidelong. “You look like you’re going boating later.”

  Nate grinned wider. “I don’t know what that even means. So, do we know what’s going to happen today?”

  “I’m sure Sir has something planned,” Jack said.

  Ugh, of course he still called Mr White ‘Sir’. Jack was hopeless. “How’s the boy? Behaving himself?”

  Jack smirked. “Of course he is.” Jack stroked Channon’s hair, and Channon turned his face in against Jack’s thigh, practically purring under the attention. God, he was so sweet. It was a little too sweet, actually. Nate did his best not to roll his eyes. He wound his fingers in the back of Ewan’s collar so his tie pulled tight across his throat, until Ewan choked a little, blinking at him with a sullen, betrayed look on his face. Oh, he looked mad.

  Good, Nate thought, loosening his grip. Mad was good. Mad meant today might not be completely boring after all.

  Chapter 2

  The tea party was exactly as tedious and pretentious as Ewan had thought it would be. Mistress Celestina was a prim Victorian headmistress on a power trip. Nate’s ‘Mr White’ was a posh bastard with a riding crop and a superiority complex. Ewan knew blokes like him and didn’t think much of them. He imagined Mr White shooting something helpless on the moors. Yeah, sounded about right.

  To make things worse, Jack Nash was there. Just the sight of him put Ewan on edge. He looked every inch the billionaire CEO he was, in a suit that probably cost more than Ewan had spent on clothes in his entire life. Even his haircut was offensively expensive, the watch peeking out from beneath his cuff so obnoxious it made Ewan’s teeth hurt. Everything about him was rich and groomed and shiny in a way that seemed designed to make Ewan feel small and dirty and insignificant.

  And then there was Channon, kneeling at Nash’s feet. While Nash must have been approaching forty, like Nate, Channon couldn’t be more than twenty, his cheeks as soft and luminous as an Instagram model’s. He glowed with health, his hair so black it was like ink against the cream of his skin, his mouth pink and wet and full.

  Kneeling beside Jack Nash’s perfectly polished leather shoes, he gazed up with a look of abject adoration. Ewan’s gut tightened at that look. It was familiar, but in no way comforting. He knew how it felt to look at someone that way, to put them on that pedestal and worship at their feet. He knew that feeling. He’d lived for that, once, and now he knew it was something he’d never have again because he would never, ever let anyone treat him like Gary had.

  He wasn’t envious. That wasn’t it at all. But he felt something savage stir in him at the sight of such perfect devotion.

  It won’t last, he told himself, willing Channon to understand that. You can’t stay perfect forever, and when you fuck it up, he’s going to show you exactly why you can’t trust him.

  Watching Channon walk that knife edge, unaware of the danger, was only one of the shitty parts of this stupid party. There were games. There was Blind Man’s Buff and Find the Lady, and Ewan was done with it before it even started.

  It felt wanky, a kind of pretentiousness that he couldn’t stand, the, ‘Who’s been a bad boy and needs his bottom spanked?’ sort of thing Ministers of Parliament got up to when they wer
e cheating on their wives. It was the whole reason Ewan avoided blokes in top hats when he picked up at the Club—when he’d used to, rather. He didn’t do that anymore. Now he had Nate.

  He snuck a glance at Nate to see if he was equally bored. Nate, handsome in a blazer the same blue as his eyes, seemed to be pretending not to be, his angular features schooled into an expression of polite semi-interest. It was his ‘team meeting’ look, the one he sported during dull presentations he had no interest in but didn’t want to discourage other people from listening to. Ewan knew this because in those same meetings Ewan watched Nate like a hawk, tracked every flicker of expression in his face, imagining what he could do to get that expression to shift into something real.

  That was exciting, making Nate react to him. Getting his attention, sharp and immediate. Being the focus of his whole world.

  Ewan got off on that, got off on making Nate look at him, making Nate punish him. Making Nate do anything was a thrill, and one he relished particularly.

  Right now, Nate was bored. Ewan itched to fix that, but he was supposed to be ‘not irritating’ today. He rested his chin on Nate’s thigh, gazing up at him with the best puppy eyes he could muster.

  When Nate met his eye, though, his mouth twisted into a smirk. “Aw, you bored, baby?” He ran his fingers up behind Ewan’s ear, and then tweaked the lobe of it hard. “Or just hungry?”

  All they had were finger sandwiches and cakes, insipid little quiches and iced biscuits. Ewan made a face. “No,” he said, not bothering to hide his pout.

  “You sure?” Nate glanced over to where they were dividing a cake, passing the plates around for a new game. “It’s chocolate.”

  Ewan rolled his eyes. The game was to eat the cake as quickly as possible without using your hands. Or getting your face dirty. Which was of course impossible, and just another excuse for someone to take a punishment.

  It was just so dull. Ewan didn’t mind being punished for things he had control over, didn’t mind punishment for breaking a rule or being generally a fuck up, but when it was like this it seemed so arbitrary, so forced. Fine for the kind of ‘funishment’ Nate sometimes doled out, but for a public ‘you’ve been a naughty boy’ scenario? No fun at all.

  It made Ewan feel fake, and when he felt fake, he didn’t enjoy it anymore, just put on a brave face and pretended to.

  And of course Nate hated that. Because Nate, for some inexplicable reason, wanted Ewan to just be himself, and didn’t need him to pretend to be anything else.

  Now Nate was looking down at him, asking, “Are you in?” out loud, while his eyes said, You don’t have to, if you don’t want.

  Well, that made it a challenge. “I’m in,” Ewan said, coming up on his knees.

  Nate grinned and accepted a plate of cake, which he settled directly on his crotch. He spread his thighs wide, beckoning Ewan between them. “Hands behind your back, baby boy. Let’s see how much you can fit in your mouth.”

  Ugh, he was awful; he had to know exactly how awful he was. He was taking the piss, and it made Ewan mad, a stubborn determination coming over him. He’d win this stupid game, one way or another, and then Nate could shove his smug grin up his arse.

  Except, the moment they were told to begin, Nate wrapped his hand around the base of Ewan’s skull and smashed him face-first into the slice of cake. Ewan yelped, barely managed not to inhale any of it, and then he was furious. He gobbled the cake as fast as he could, and then he sat back to glare at Nate hard enough that Nate should rightfully have burst into flames.

  Nate grinned. He removed the plate and swiped ganache out of the corner of Ewan’s mouth, licking his finger clean. “Nice,” he said. “You’re a mess,” he added fondly.

  “You’re an arsehole,” Ewan hissed, quiet so no one else would hear. If anything, it just made Nate grin harder.

  It wasn’t funny! God, he was fucking infuriating. Ewan ground his teeth, vowing he’d get Nate back somehow. Something messy. Something embarrassing. Something—

  He realized Mistress Celestina was inspecting him, and he glowered at her, baring his teeth.

  He didn’t like her at all, didn’t want to play her boring games, and especially didn’t want to play along with a boarding-school fantasy that did nothing for him. All his fantasies of being caned ended with Nate fucking him over a desk, and Mistress Celestina was the last person who’d fuck anyone on a desk. He had a sudden vision of her pegging a middle-aged banker—telling him he’d been a very bad boy and deserved to be treated as such—and recoiled sharply.

  Mistress Celestina’s eyes narrowed. She snapped her fingers. “On your feet, boy.”

  Oh, good. He dragged himself up, aware that something was coming, something he wouldn’t like at all, but he was determined not to let her see how much he hated this.

  “What a dirty face,” she said, and then she tried to clean him with a wet wipe.

  The indignity of it was intoxicating. Ewan hated her, the burn of it rising in the back of his throat and all his muscles locking for one frozen moment. Then— “No!” The word came out of him without thought, exploding into the quiet of the afternoon like a firecracker.

  Everyone went instantly silent. Ewan could feel them staring at him. His face flashed hot with embarrassment. What was Nate going to say? God, was Nate—

  But when he looked at Nate, he found him leaning forward, lips parted, eyes bright with something that made Ewan’s knees feel weak.

  “No?” Mistress Celestina said, frostily stern. “Then you’ll take your punishment in disgrace.” She produced a wicked looking bundle of birch twigs and offered it to Nate. “Master Nathaniel? Would you prefer to administer this punishment yourself, or shall I?”

  An old-fashioned birching. Of course.

  Ewan saw the way Nate smiled, and he thought: No. If he was going to be punished, it was going to be on his terms, not because some corseted bitch had delusions of grandeur.

  So, “You’ll not touch me with those,” he spat, stepping back, and just like that, it was on.

  Nate lunged out of his chair. Ewan flinched, arms flying up to cover his face, but Nate’s hand closed in his hair and he was yanked hard against Nate’s chest. He yelled, tried to kick Nate in the ankle, but Nate pinned him under one arm, squeezing him hard in warning.

  “I’m so sorry,” Nate said to Celestina, sounding far more amused than sorry.

  “Fucking get off me!”

  “Shut up!” Nate hissed, pulling hard enough on Ewan’s hair that his eyes watered. “Is there somewhere I can take care of this?”

  And then he was dragging Ewan out of the atrium and into the house.

  Ewan didn’t make it easy for him. He fought every step of the way, called Nate every foul thing he could think of. A door slammed; Nate threw Ewan on the rug, and when Ewan twisted to glare, Nate grabbed him by the shirt collar and yanked him to his knees. “You had to make this hard on yourself, didn’t you?”

  “Fuck you,” Ewan yelled. Nate’s eyes lit with something dangerous. He cradled Ewan’s jaw almost tenderly in the palm of one hand, and then smacked him hard across the mouth with the other.

  It shocked a yelp from Ewan’s throat, heat rushing through him and flooding his cock. God, every time Nate did that it made Ewan feel so…so fucking used, like he didn’t deserve to be treated any better than this, and that turned him on more than anything.

  “You’re an embarrassment,” Nate said, watching Ewan with that intense focus, like Ewan was the most important thing in the room, maybe the world. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” he added, but he didn’t sound like he meant it.

  “You’re the one who shoved cake in my face,” Ewan spat, and Nate’s expression rippled, not anger but something much, much better.

  He dragged Ewan by the collar across the room—they were in a parlor of some kind, with old-fashioned bookshelves and expensive polished furniture, a desk and some armchairs and end tables—picked up a jug and dumped the contents in Ewan’s face, leavi
ng him spluttering. Water, it was just water, but Ewan inhaled some of it and had to cough it up, and then Nate was dragging a handful of tissues over Ewan’s face, roughly cleaning him.

  It made him feel about five years old, grotty and in disgrace, and his throat choked hard on a lump of shame.

  Maybe Nate saw it. Maybe he just had good timing. “You know what you have to say to stop this,” he murmured. “You know what I want to hear.”

  Ewan knew there were two things that could stop this. One was, ‘I’m sorry. Please forgive me.’ And if he said that, Nate would make him grovel and beg and maybe suck his dick, all of which Ewan would love to do but hate himself for doing, exactly the way he liked. But that wasn’t what Nate wanted. Nate wanted to punish him, and Ewan knew he could give Nate this, could offer the gift of his reluctant submission, please Nate by being the victim of the sadistic streak Nate worked so well to keep hidden.

  The other thing was ‘red’, of course, but there was no way Ewan was about to say that now, not when things were just starting to get interesting.

  So he lifted his chin, looked Nate straight in the eye, and said, “Go to hell.”

  Nate closed his eyes for a moment, breathing out, and when he opened them again, the look on his face was diabolical.

  “I’m so happy you said that.”

  One hand in Ewan’s hair and the other in his collar, Nate hauled him, half dragged and half scrambling, onto the desk. He pressed Ewan’s face into the smooth-polished wood. It smelled of beeswax and cloves. Ewan braced his shoulder on it, struggling against the grip Nate had on his wrist as his arm was shoved up behind his back.

  Outside the sun was shining through the gray clouds. Ewan could make out voices beyond the French doors. They’d be able to hear everything through the misty curtains. Ewan determined not to make a sound.

  But Nate had Ewan’s trousers open and down around his thighs, there was the click of a buckle and the snick of leather pulled free of belt loops, and Ewan braced himself for what he knew was coming.