Time Out of Mind (Suncoast Society #43)(52)

Mevi’s reward was a lunchtime orgasm he had to beg for.

It didn’t matter if it was their new relationship, or finally feeling like he was actually living, but Mevi’s mind raced in good ways, coming up with material he knew wouldn’t have been accessible in his brain months ago.

He felt like he’d slipped into a perfectly shaped place where he belonged.

And he realized he hardly ever craved a drink anymore. On the rare times he did, he immediately stopped what he was doing and found Doyle, kneeling next to him so Doyle could stroke his hair. If Doyle was on a phone call, Mevi waited for him to finish before speaking what he needed.

If Doyle wasn’t, he waited for Doyle to ask him what he needed.

Usually, a session over Doyle’s lap, a quick spanking, and Doyle’s voice whispering in his ear what a good boy he was.

Those times completely drove the urge to drink out of his mind, something he never thought possible.

Time out of mind wasn’t just a euphemism for him anymore. He could achieve it with Doyle’s help.

That wasn’t his only coping technique. He started doing tai chi with him every morning, as well as learning how to meditate, and then daily exercise helped, too.

As the time for them to head to Chicago grew closer, some of Mevi’s anxiety returned, and he worried what would happen during the times Doyle wasn’t there, knowing the man couldn’t travel with him forever.

“How am I going to do this without you, Sir?” he asked.

Doyle cupped his face in his hands. “You’ll do fine. You’re my boy, and I have faith in you.”

“What about when you aren’t there, Sir?” Mevi asked him, hating that he felt borderline whiny but still wanting Doyle’s comforting presence there. “I’ll wear your collar or whatever you want to give me as a collar. Or tattoo it on my flesh. That would be even better, Sir.”

Doyle palmed his cheek. “This means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”

“It means everything, Sir.”

Seeming to think about it for a moment, Doyle said, “Hold on.” He walked over to his computer bag and dug through it, returning with a black permanent marker.

Taking Mevi’s right hand, he turned his wrist over and inked two symbols there, a semi-colon and something that looked like a rune, familiar, but Mevi couldn’t place it immediately.

“We’ll redo those every day,” Doyle said. “Several times a day, as needed, so they don’t fade. When I’m not with you, you draw them on yourself and keep refreshing them.”

“What do they mean?”

“The semi-colon is used to indicate that your story isn’t over. Where you could have inserted a period at any time, ending your story, but you chose to keep trying. The other is what’s called a binding rune.”

He dug his personal keys out of his pocket, and that’s when Mevi saw the pewter charm on his keys.

Of course. He’d seen it before but hadn’t paid much attention to it.

“It’s a mix of two runes, Raido, which is for travel, and Algiz, which is for protection. Safe travel. This was my mom’s.”

Doyle brought Mevi’s wrist to his lips and pressed a kiss over the marks there. “Let’s get you through the tour first. We’re not going to have a lot of alone time together until it’s over. It’s only a few months. Then we can take a break together, go somewhere alone, and decide what we do from there.”

Panic threatened to set in. “Don’t you want to be with me?”

“Absolutely. I’ve risked a lot because I love you. However, I also don’t want you to do something you can’t take back. If you get to the end of the tour and decide you don’t even want to look at me anymore, I don’t want you resenting me because I put a permanent mark on you. Plus there are times I can’t be with you because I need to work.”

He pulled Mevi in for a kiss. “Use these marks as a reminder, as a new habit, as a meditation. Do it every morning and several times throughout the day. Tell everyone you need a few minutes alone to center yourself. They’ll understand. They know what you went through.”

It became part of their daily ritual, Mevi even getting hard when he took the marker to Doyle, knelt, and presented it and his wrist to him to re-ink them. While he desperately didn’t want to be without his Sir, Doyle was right that he could focus on this, think of him.

And he desperately wanted to be Sir’s good boy and make him proud.





Doyle knew it probably wasn’t healthy, but he took all of his issues, securely bagged them up, and chucked them into an unused mental room where he locked them away behind a door labeled Look at Later.

Right now, Mevi was the important one. Getting him on the tour, getting him through the tour.

Doyle knew he had trust and abandonment issues of his own to work through, and this wasn’t an ideal situation, but he had to trust Mevi.

Mevi certainly trusted him.

If it couldn’t be a two-way street, they’d be doomed before they even started.

The afternoon before they were supposed to leave for Chicago, Doyle set up a surprise for Mevi. In what had been Mevi’s bedroom, he arranged his implements from the toybag and called Mevi in.

Now that they were together, Mevi hadn’t played with Tilly again, even though they’d had dinner there several times and still went over nearly every day so Mevi could exercise. Doyle had also spaced out their own play sessions to about once a week, not wanting to burn him out and wanting to give him time to heal up between them.