Indifference of Heaven

  Caleb’s smile widened as he squeezed Boyd’s cock. “If that’s what Sir wants.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Sir wants, but Sir also doesn’t want to get either of us fired.”

  He led Caleb into the living room, to the couch. “Normally,” Boyd continued, “I’d expect you to be naked when we’re alone at home.” He sat and pulled Caleb down with him, snuggled in his lap. “Except we need to talk, and I can’t talk to you when you’re naked. Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  He smiled. “Because my cock demands to be inside you when you’re naked, that’s why.” His smile faded. “And I’m not strong enough to say no. Not anymore.”

  Boyd stroked Caleb’s cheek, cupping it, and Caleb laid his hand over Boyd’s. “I don’t want you to say no, Sir.”

  “That’s why we need to talk.” Caleb didn’t interrupt, instead focusing on Boyd’s blue eyes, struggling not to spin deep into the memories of how great he was in bed.

  How everything Boyd had done to him had exceeded any expectations or fantasies he’d ever had.

  “I want to start over from the beginning,” Boyd said. “Talking. Expectations. All right? We skipped all that, and that’s not how I like to do things.”

  Caleb nodded but didn’t speak.

  “I need you to talk to me, to say no and negotiate if you need a change. This can’t be one-sided. Not if we want it to last for life. To clarify, I do want this to last for life.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Boyd smiled, his thumb stroking Caleb’s cheekbone. “God, I love hearing you call me that.”

  “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to call you that, Sir.”

  “You really had no clue it was me that weekend?”

  “No, Sir. I thought it was a great coincidence you both had blue eyes. I threw myself into the weekend and what I was feeling.”

  “You didn’t recognize my voice?”

  Caleb felt himself blush. “I might have thought it was even better that you sounded very similar, and I pretended Sir was you.”

  Boyd chuckled. “I nearly had a goddamned heart attack when I pulled your blindfold off that night.”

  “You hid it well, Sir.”

  “Yeah, well, we both need to be good at hiding things for now. You have to keep your apartment. But once we’re at a place with your job where we can be open, we can get rid of it.”

  Boyd went quiet for a long moment, staring down at him. “How much of a problem will your family be?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yeah, it kind of does.”

  “No, it doesn’t. They’re probably going to disown me when they find out I’m gay. I’ve already accepted that. It’s another reason I wanted out of there. I was hoping to find a job far enough away from them that I wasn’t within a short drive.”

  Boyd laced fingers with him. “I don’t have any family. No close family. No siblings, and my parents are dead.”

  “You have your daughter.”

  “Not really. She’s ghosted, and I still don’t know what kind of relationship she wants with me. From the looks of it, she doesn’t.” He brought Caleb’s hand to his lips and feathered them over Caleb’s knuckled. “I want to take you to munches and collar you in front of all my friends. I want to marry you and blast it all over Facebook, but I can’t yet. And that fucking sucks.”

  Caleb tucked his head under Boyd’s chin as the man wrapped his arms around him. “I’m happy for whatever we can have now, Sir. I’m patient. The rest will happen.”

  “Weren’t too patient to wait for Sir, hmm?” But he could tell from Boyd’s amused tone he was only teasing.

  “I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to go through with it,” Caleb admitted. “He kept telling me I could safeword without hard feelings. But from the way Kent was talking, I really hoped you’d show up.”

  “And save you?”

  “Claim me.”

  “And if I hadn’t?”

  “I probably would have safeworded. It felt like Kent was trying to get me to. Maybe he would have called it off first, I don’t know.”

  * * * *

  Boyd should have known the sneaky motherfucker wouldn’t have gone through with it. Especially from the way he was talking to Boyd Friday afternoon.

  In retrospect, Kent was setting it up to ensure Boyd showed up in time. “He was dressed for a date.”

  It didn’t seem to surprise Caleb. “So that’s what he was doing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After I was tied up on the bed, he left the room for a minute, said he’d be right back. Told me to yell if I needed him. After that point, when he came back, he never touched me, just kept talking to me.”

  Sneaky motherfucker. “I need to know what your hard limits are. I meant it when I said I don’t want this to be one-way.”

  “What we already talked about. Just the two of us. That’s it.”

  “And you’re okay going to Kent’s parties as a spectator only? It’s okay to say no.”

  “As long as it’s just as spectators, or we’re only playing with each other, yes, Sir.”

  What he wanted to do was propose to Caleb right then, except they’d rushed things enough already. It was time to start doing the hard work that no amount of good, frantic fucking could make up for. “You don’t know much about me.”

  “Kent knows you. I trust him. And I do know you.”

  “From work.”

  “I know I’ve been in love with you.”

  Boyd ran his hand through Caleb’s hair. “We’ll use our time between now and when we can get you transferred to get to know each other. To really date the right way.”

  “I’ve never really dated before. Not a guy.”

  “What am I going to do with you, boy?” He stroked Caleb’s hair again. “I don’t want to be your biggest regret.”

  “You’re not.” He sat up and kissed Boyd. “Not now, you’re not. You came back for me. I’ll never regret being with you.”

  His certainty simultaneously thrilled and terrified Boyd.

  They spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon sitting there and talking. Despite how Boyd wanted to take him to bed and make love to him again, talking had to happen.

  They’d not only done things ass-backwards in terms of how they got together, but they had the extra stress of keeping everything secret for now.

  Caleb wasn’t just smart—which Boyd already knew because he’d hired him—but he was sweetly funny, too. Besides BDSM, they had a lot in common. Caleb loved to read, and they had similar tastes there, too. Music, TV, movies—they were a perfect match.

  “I can be a homebody at times,” Boyd warned. “Especially when work gets crazy, and all I want to do at the end of the day is curl up on the couch and not brain. Some weekends, I don’t want to do anything or go anywhere. I’m not into partying or clubbing. Not counting Kent’s parties, or the play parties. I mean like going out dancing or something.”

  “That’s fine with me, Sir. I’m not really into that scene, either.” An adorable scowl filled his face. “Had a taste of that, and that was more than enough.”

  “Sounds like a story.”

  He shifted position in Boyd’s lap and stared up into his eyes. That was another thing—Caleb felt perfect in Boyd’s arms and had been happy to lay snuggled with his head in Boyd’s lap during their talk.

  “I went up to St. Pete one weekend, to the Toucan. Do you know about it?”

  Boyd nodded. “I’ve been there before.”

  “I’d been down here, in Florida, a couple of weeks at that point. I didn’t sleep with any guys while I was up there, although I guess I probably could have. Got my first blow job, and gave a couple, but I realized that I was in over my head. I wasn’t ready to randomly play around.”

  “And yet you ended up at Kent’s private party.”

  “That was later. If I hadn’t met Kent, I probably would have ended up at the Toucan again. Eventually.”

&
nbsp; Boyd brushed Caleb’s hair away from his face. “Glad you didn’t.”

  He smiled. “Me, too, Sir.” His hand curled around Boyd’s. “I’m glad you were my first. You were perfect.”

  “I’m just a guy. I’m going to screw up. We both will. That’s part of life and being in a relationship. The important thing is that when we do screw up that we admit it, work through it, and move on and learn from it.”

  Caleb’s green gaze stared up at him, as if there was something he wanted to say and couldn’t.

  “What is it?” Boyd gently asked.

  “This is so different from how I was raised,” he softly said. “I wasn’t allowed to be…me. What if I’m too screwed up to have a good relationship?”

  “The fact that you can ask that means you aren’t,” Boyd assured him. He stroked the man’s cheek. He couldn’t get enough of touching him, assuring himself Caleb was really there in his arms.

  “Maybe you’ll regret being with me.” Caleb almost sounded convinced of it. “You don’t know what my family’s like.”

  “Since they live in Virginia, and we live here, it doesn’t matter to me what they’re like. They aren’t a part of our lives, and I won’t let them make your life miserable. Period.”

  He snuggled against Boyd again, almost as if trying to burrow inside him. “I’m really scared. I mean, good-scared, but scared. I don’t want to screw this up.”

  “I’m scared, too, boy. That means we’re doing something right. I’d be worried if you weren’t scared. And you should be worried if I wasn’t.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next Friday, Caleb made it back to Boyd’s before Boyd did.

  Which was okay, because he had his own key now, and an alarm code. Boyd also had a key to Caleb’s apartment, just in case.

  Not that Caleb needed to go home much. He’d already cleaned out his fridge, and had a lot of his clothes stashed in Boyd’s spare bedroom.

  They hadn’t spent a night apart since last Saturday, and Caleb hoped he wasn’t dreaming.

  Or if he was, that he never woke up.

  The past six days, literally, had been the best of his life, because he wasn’t alone anymore.

  They were extra careful at work to make sure they didn’t even give so much as a hint of something going on between them. Despite Caleb’s teasing, he didn’t call Boyd “sir” at work—capital S or lowercase. They hadn’t even had lunch again together.

  But every night, Caleb was happy to do what he was doing right now—strip naked at the front door and don the set of leather collar and cuffs Boyd had given him to wear. They weren’t the final set he’d wear, they were a set Boyd already had.

  Boyd had ordered a set specially for him. They’d be arriving early next week.

  Every night that week, after work they’d returned to Boyd’s, where they cooked dinner together and spent the evening talking, making love.

  Playing.

  It was sweet torture sitting down at his desk the first thing every morning and feeling whatever marks Boyd had left on his ass the night before.

  Or even, as in the case of today, that very morning. Before Boyd let him get dressed, he’d put ten cane strokes across his ass, leaving him hard and horny and wanting to be fucked.

  It had amused Boyd to leave him needy and wanty and send him to work like that.

  At work, with the county commission workshop looming in their near future, it wasn’t too hard to focus on his job if he wasn’t within visual distance of Boyd.

  The only direction he had about tonight, however, was a text Boyd had sent him from his personal cell.

  Don’t start dinner. Wait for me. We have plans.

  Caleb had no clue what those plans were. If or when he was supposed to know, Boyd would tell him.

  Letting go to the man, submitting to him, was the most freeing feeling he’d ever experienced in his life. Even beyond the sex—which was amazing—was the dynamic they were quickly building between them.

  It felt…natural. Easy.

  Right.

  Submitting in every way to Boyd soothed Caleb’s soul and settled his mind. He’d slept better the past week than he had in his entire life, without his mind spinning in a thousand directions as he struggled to fall asleep.

  Boyd hypothesized it might be due to all the endorphins, between their play and sex.

  Caleb didn’t care why. All he knew was that he’d do whatever he had to do to keep this feeling of peace permeating deep within his soul.

  He felt like he belonged. Not just to someone, but like he was where he had always been meant to be.

  He texted Boyd back.

  Yes, Sir.

  Boyd quickly replied.

  Good boy. :)

  Even that made Caleb smile. Always did.

  While he awaited Boyd’s arrival home, he started a load of laundry and did some cleaning around the house. Boyd insisted on a division of chores, not turning Caleb into nothing more than a house slave. Caleb didn’t even mind doing all the chores, but he was even more intent upon following his Sir’s rules.

  And Sir insisted that he would do some of the chores—Caleb would be his good boy and not argue.

  * * * *

  Boyd knew Caleb had to be wondering what he had up his sleeve for their evening plans, but he didn’t want to spill the beans too soon. They’d spent the past week hiding out in Boyd’s house, when they weren’t at work.

  Yes, he was a homebody sometimes. Yes, he wanted to spend every free waking moment playing with or making love to Caleb.

  But they needed more than that. They needed to come up for air and be a couple. It wasn’t fair to Caleb to do nothing but snuggle with him and not be able to go be a real couple and enjoy doing other things.

  Except for the problematic issue of Sarasota being a relatively small city. It wasn’t even how many people he knew personally, but how many people likely knew him from their contact with the county, or seeing him at commission meetings when he had to speak, or any other number of encounters.

  People he might not even know who knew him.

  He couldn’t risk their jobs like that.

  The perfect idea had hit him that morning, and a quick search on his phone had given him the answer.

  When he arrived home, he found Caleb exactly where he should be—naked, cuffed, and collared, and kneeling in the entryway.

  Peace filled Boyd as he smiled and walked over to him, even before setting his things down. He stroked Caleb’s head. “Good boy,” he softly said. “Very good. Take my things.”

  Caleb stood and took Boyd’s laptop case and lunch cooler from him. Boyd leaned in for a kiss, smiling. “I’ll lay out your clothes. Wash my lunch stuff, then come get changed.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He headed off, not even a question about what their plans were.

  Dammit, I love that man.

  Whatever he wanted to do, Caleb was right there, eager and ready.

  Trusting.

  In the master bedroom, he quickly changed from his jeans and collared polo shirt with the county logo embroidered on it into a pair of slacks and a button-up dress shirt. Before he even buttoned his own shirt, he walked over to the guest room and found slacks and a shirt in Caleb’s closet, bringing them back to his bedroom and laying them on the bed.

  He wouldn’t need briefs.

  He was allowed to wear them at work, but when they were alone, that was Boyd’s decision. Frankly, he loved the sweetly anxious discomfort on Caleb’s face, watching him trying to adjust to the feeling of going commando.

  It also amused Boyd to see that Caleb was far more comfortable being naked than commando.

  He was working on his tie when Caleb joined him in the master bedroom and spotted the clothes laid out.

  The exact moment Caleb realized he was being denied briefs appeared as adorable pink spots on his cheeks.

  “Problem, boy?”

  He shook his head. “No, Sir.”

  “Cuffs and collar
off. Leave them on the bed.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He also had a little surprise he’d picked up for Caleb after lunch that day, on his way back from a meeting down in Venice at the southern admin center.

  Twenty minutes later, they were in Boyd’s car and heading for I-75 north. “Questions?”

  Caleb smiled and shook his head. “No, Sir.”

  Boyd squeezed Caleb’s thigh, where his hand was resting, Caleb’s on top of his. “Good boy.”

  St. Pete was less than an hour north, and easily accessible from the Interstate. They were just missing the tail end of the evening rush hour. After Boyd found them a parking spot in a garage next door to the Sundial complex, they were soon on their way over to a steakhouse just across from the movie theater there, holding hands the entire way. They were even ten minutes early for their reservation.

  Once they’d been seated at their table, Boyd smirked. “Order what you want, boy. My treat.”

  “Yes, Sir. Thank you.”

  Boyd reached across the table and laced fingers with him. “This is only part of our evening.”

  “Part, Sir?”

  “When we finish here, we’re going to go see a movie and not have to worry about anyone recognizing us enjoying ourselves.” He brought Caleb’s hand to his lips and kissed it, feeling free, reveling in the ability to actually publicly show his boy how he felt.

  Caleb’s adorable smile filled his face and cranked Boyd’s cock right up. “That sounds wonderful, Sir.”

  * * * *

  Caleb hated feeling like a rube, but the steak house was nicer than any place he’d ever eaten before. The food was delicious, and it was nice sitting there, talking with Boyd, and not worrying a single time if there was anyone around who knew them.

  They could be a real couple.

  Like when they’d walked over from the car, they’d held hands the entire way.

  That wasn’t something he’d ever thought he’d be able to do with anyone.