Time Out of Mind (Suncoast Society #43)(38)

He did, getting into position.

Tilly’s demeanor changed as Doyle watched his old friend shift into Top mode.

Mistress Cardinal.

He couldn’t count how many times he’d seen her in this mode over the years. It was almost a physical transformation, her face intense, her posture straight. Mevi held on to the cross and she walked up to him, tracing his spine and his shoulder blades with her fingers. He knew what she was doing—seeing how much meat he had on him before actually going after him.

“Keep your head down and your face turned away from me,” she said, Doyle noting the change in her voice but not sure if Mevi would.

From the way Cris and Landry watched, standing with their arms crossed, he knew the two men were in Dom mode as well.

Doyle felt out of place, wanting to be a part of this instead of an observer but knew he couldn’t cross that line with Mevi.

No matter how much he might be tempted.

Tilly took several gentle test throws with the singletail, both to judge her distance and to get Mevi used to it. Then she started stepping it up, always on target and barely touching him. Moving in slightly, she left slightly pink marks behind that made him flinch.

“How you doing?” she asked.

“It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt.”

“Give me a yellow as soon as you can’t take it. Don’t be a hero.” She kept it up, the marks getting redder and darker, until he finally jumped.

“Yellow,” he said.

She immediately coiled the whip as she stepped in, caressing his back and speaking to him in soft tones.

When she reached up and stroked the back of his head, Doyle had to force himself to stay in place, not get up off the stool he’d settled on and go over and swat her hand off his boy— What. The. Hell?

He couldn’t call red on this. This wasn’t about him. It was about Mevi, and letting him have a chance to safely explore something that might very well help save his sobriety, if not his life.

A part of himself Mevi had never been able to examine before.

But Doyle hated seeing his friend being able to caress Mevi and he couldn’t.

After a moment, Mevi stepped away from the cross and turned. Doyle immediately spotted the tent in the guy’s shorts, as well as the glazed look on his face.

Cris had already spread a towel out on the kneeler. Mevi shoved his shorts down and off, exposing a nice cock Doyle wanted to wrap his hands and lips around. As Mevi climbed up on the kneeler, Landry leaned in so he could whisper in Doyle’s ear.

“What happens after the contract ends?”

Doyle stared at him.

Landry arched an eyebrow, leaning out, his question not in doubt to Doyle.

After…

It wasn’t like he was acting as Mevi’s psychologist, an actual patient. That’s why he was very careful to call them clients. Sure, a degree of counseling happened incidentally during his SC gigs, but it wasn’t all that he did. Because by its very nature, some of what he did as an SC would be ethically prohibited as an actual counselor, the personal, private nature of his work and degree of involvement and control he had over some of his clients.

If he wasn’t, however, under contract to work with Mevi…

Maybe.

Mevi hadn’t expressed a physical interest in Doyle. Not that he could tell, anyway. He might hate Doyle’s guts come Chicago. His job was to be both nanny and nagger, with contractual control— Dom.

I’m his Dom.

Shit.

No, he technically wasn’t Mevi’s Dom, but where Doyle had privately and jokingly thought of himself as “domming” some of his clients, in this case, that line was now blurred permanently with the knowledge out in the open.

Tilly started by warming Mevi up with her hands, spanking him, then floggers. From there she moved to slappers and paddles, not hitting him too hard, definitely playing at a far lighter level than she was easily capable of. The woman didn’t hit like a girl, and he knew that from personal experience letting her try a new paddle he’d bought on him so he could see what it felt like himself.

She packed a wicked punch.

And with every impact, every heartbeat throbbing through him, Doyle knew the painful truth he could never admit to Mevi. Not while they were under contract, anyway.

I’m not just attracted to him. It’s more.

Way more.





Mevi felt a delicious, sweet haze take control and fill his brain as Tilly worked him over with her hands and the implements. Some of them hurt worse than others, but nothing he couldn’t tolerate. It felt like his brain had untethered itself from his skull and floated free.

The music and words and mental noise he usually heard stilled, silenced.

Time out of mind.

That’s what this felt like.

Like he’d stepped into a blissfully quiet sensory deprivation room and his brain no longer interrupted what his body felt.

As she stepped it up, finally building to a couple of cane strokes that made him call a yellow, he realized this was something he had to have in his life.

Had to.

He didn’t know how to keep having it—

Doyle.

As someone wrapped a throw around him and helped him sit up, he opened his eyes to see Doyle there, his arm around him, an unreadable expression on his face.

It was all he could do not to lean up and kiss him.