Page 43 of On Your Knees

“Then eat the meat from it. You need the protein.”

Levi stills. His expression is hard to read. I don’t know exactly what he’s feeling, but I can tell that he’s upset. When I reach out and pet his hair, tears spill down his cheeks.

He swipes at them. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

But as I keep petting his hair and more tears spill, I figure it out. And really, it’s pretty fucking obvious.

Taking his glass from him, I set it aside with mine. When I tug at him, he spills into me. He’s half in my lap with his face against my neck, shaking and trying to stop crying.

A weird mix of hot-cold sensations goes through me. I feel sick and twisted up inside. I feel an echo of that strange, sad emotion I felt during our session in the playroom. I feel like I want to scream. Instead, I squeeze my eyes shut and let Levi’s awful, desolate emotions seep into me, trickling down to the place where my own live, dormant and buried under other things. For some reason, it feels terrible and soothing at the same time. Slowly, Levi relaxes, and so do I.

When he’s quiet, I ask, “Why has no one ever taken care of you?”

It startles him. He tries to pull back, but I don’t let him. If he fights me, I’ll overpower him and force him to answer.

But he doesn’t fight me. There’s no fight in him right now.

He settles against me and says, “I don’t have anyone.”

I pet his hair. “I know. I’m asking why.”

Levi is silent for a long time, but he’s not fighting, so I don’t force him. I let him drag up the words from whatever deep, dark place they live in.

When he speaks, his voice is quiet. “My mother couldn’t take care of me. She didn’t really want to.”

A dark, ugly feeling sweeps through my body so hard that I shudder. Images try to form, but I don’t let them. I make the feeling pass on and away before it can connect to anything.

This isn’t about me.

“And your father?” I ask.

“It was just me and her. Sometimes. When she was clean enough. Sometimes I was in homes. Back and forth. Then she died. Then I aged out.”

I pet his hair, feeling the bleakness of all the spaces between his words. From my own experiences, there’s a lot that I can fill in. My jaw starts clenching. My fingers curl, pressing into Levi, pulling his hair.

“God, I hate people,” I mutter.

Levi’s head lifts. He looks up at me. I can see that much at the edge of my vision, but I’m too upset to meet his gaze, so I’m not ready, not expecting it, when he kisses the underside of my jaw. It startles me. It’s not the headspace I’m in. But he kisses me again. He nuzzles me too, like he did with my chest earlier. God, that fucked me up. This fucks me up too.

I don’t quite like it because I’m not initiating. He’s doing something that I haven’t commanded, and yet… I’m panting, and my cock is hardening.

I get hard a lot if I don’t wear a cage, but it’s not usually when something like this is happening—because things like this don’t happen. I don’t let them.

But I’m letting it happen now. I’m closing my eyes as Levi presses harder into my throat. He crawls more into my lap and straddles me. His hard cock rubs against mine. His fingers curl into me. He grinds on me.

It’s too much.

I grip his hair at his scalp and pull him away. My teeth are gritted as I tell him, “That’s not how this works.”

I pull his head back, exposing his throat, making a point. But there’s no point to make. His eyelashes flutter. His lips part. At his easy submission, my need to punish him recedes.

I tilt his head up and release his hair. His gaze locks softly with my hard one. In spite of everything I did to him today, in spite of everything I could do right now, he isn’t afraid of me. He’s comfortable with my darkness, even relieved by it. He’s relaxing into his own darkness, like he’s never realized that it’s allowed.

I grab his chin and force my thumb into his mouth. I stroke his tongue until his eyes start to close, then I drag my thumb out slowly, pulling down his lower lip.

“Tomorrow I’ll teach you how to suck a cock.”

His thoughts gather slowly, then he says, “You could teach me now.”