AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it,” I said, letting out a breath.
Avenel tensed in my embrace, which made me frown slightly.
“Well, the first thing you need to learn is not to say things like that,” Jace laughed. He nodded to Avenel. “Pups—real pups, not the kind who Peter is absolutely right to fight for—get nervous if your feeling of control wavers.”
That had me sitting a little straighter. I glanced to Avenel—who had lifted his head and was looking at me questioningly—then to Jace. “I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I said, figuring that if I was going to confess my inadequacies to anyone, Jace was the right person to confess to. “This all happened by accident.” Avenel tensed again, so I rushed on with, “But it feels really right too.”
“Of course it does,” Jace said, grinning at me like he wanted to tease me about something. “I should have seen it in you sooner, really. You’ve always been extraordinarily responsible and confident when the Sons have been together. I think being a pup yourself held you back from embracing your true potential, but now that I think of it, it was always there.”
“It just feels—” I stopped myself from saying that it felt wrong to own another man. Jace was right, whenever I said something like that, it made Avenel nervous.
In spite of being submissive, Avenel was the one who had initiated this relationship. He was the one who wanted to be a pup. That was something Peter didn’t really understand, but I wondered if I was letting myself understand it fully too. The other half of Avenel wanting to be a pup was that he wanted me to be a master.
“It feels like I have a natural aptitude for, let’s say, kickball. But I need to practice and refine my skills before I’m really good at it,” I said instead.
Jace huffed a laugh. “That’s a good way to think of it. And honestly, I’ll tell you anything you want to know about living this way.” He glanced to Gennadi just as Gennadi lifted his head to stare at Jace with one eyebrow raised. “Even though I’ve barely figured it out myself,” he finished, laughing harder.
Gennadi gave him a look like he had damn well better figure it out, then went back to sprawling across Jace’s chest.
I peeked at Avenel to see what he thought of the way Jace and Gennadi interacted. Someone somewhere could probably argue that the scolding look Gennadi gave Jace wasn’t submission at all. But then, sometimes Avenel honestly knew better than I did, particularly when it came to practical, everyday matters of keeping a house.
But I supposed that the sort of relationship that we had—and that Jace and Gennadi had—wasn’t a constant thing.
“It changes based on mood and circumstance, doesn’t it,” I finished my thought aloud. I wasn’t certain how much time I’d actually get to spend around Jace and Gennadi, so it was best if I didn’t hold my questions for later. “It’s not just me ordering Avenel around every moment of every day.”
“God, no,” Jace said. “Genny pushes me around as much as I control him. That’s the whole point. It’s a relationship, not a dictatorship. But I always have the final say, and I always control everything sexual, whether we’re playing or just normal fucking.”
A small shiver passed down my back at that, and again, I looked at Avenel. I’d mentioned what playing meant to Jace and Gennadi to him before, and we’d both decided that wasn’t something that appealed to us. But the rest of it—the control, the dominance and submission, me having the final say, as Jace put it—that definitely appealed to both of us.
“I want to try to make Peter understand somehow,” I said, surprising myself a little. I tore my eyes away from Avenel and looked at Jace again. “I think we have to make him see that we’re not betraying him by seeing pupdom in a different way. I…it never occurred to me until Avenel came into my life that there are so many good things about the relationship between a pup and master. Now I have this feeling like we could actually make pupdom into something really good, something that helps people and makes them feel safe.”
Jace continued stroking Gennadi’s back through everything I said, which had helped Gennadi slip into some sort of semi-catatonic state. Gennadi looked happier and more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. Which proved my point about making Peter see another way.
“If you ask me, Peter is more scared by what he saw tonight than angry,” Jace said.
“Scared?”
Jace dragged his gaze away from Gennadi and grinned wryly at me. “It’s a long story, but Magnus is letting Peter and I play together again, though it’s not a frequent thing. Peter likes being tied up and caned and fucked. He likes it a little too much, if you ask me. He says it’s just a bit of fun now and then, and it is, but I’ve seen the look in his eyes when I’ve got him high on sensation. He wants it on a much deeper level than I think he’s willing to admit to himself.”
Jace paused, frowned in thought, and said, “I think it has something to do with when he was Sascha’s pup. He doesn’t talk about that time at all anymore, but way back at the beginning, and when Peter, Neil, and I were locked in the dungeon up there for weeks with nothing to do but talk, he mentioned one of his other packmates back then, Dmitri, and how Dmitri made him feel when they fucked. He called it cathartic, but I think it runs even deeper than catharsis with him.”
“Do you think he would have loved it if Magnus had made him his pup or do you think he would have chafed, the way he eventually did with Sascha?” I asked.
Jace laughed. “Both? I think he and Magnus and Neil have the perfect relationship for them.”
I hummed and nodded, then smiled at Avenel again. He’d drooped to rest his head against my shoulder, and I could tell he was fighting sleep. I would have been as relaxed as that too, but I felt a little too guilty gossiping about my friends behind their backs to rest easy.
“Honestly,” Jace went on, “I like living in Magnus’s house with the three of them, and Nadia. It feels very much like a family.”
A twist of guilt of another sort pinched my gut.
“I’m sorry about your family,” I told Jace in a quiet voice. “I could tell when you arrived that your hopes were high. And I could tell by the time the meeting started that they’d been…disappointed.”
Jace lost all trace of easiness and peace. “I should have known,” he said in a glum tone. “I should have guessed that my mother would have reacted the way she did. Father knew about me, like I’ve told you all before, and he didn’t care. Sai was a prick about it when we were in the dungeon this winter, but he’s obviously come around.”
“Your mother will come around too,” I said, more out of hope than certainty.
Jace kissed Gennadi’s head, causing him to stir a little, then shook his head. “She won’t change her mind,” he said, gloomier still. “I know my mother. She’s always been stubborn.” He glanced to me with an attempt at a smile. “Where do you think I got it from?”
