If It Drives (Market Garden, #7)(49)

Cal walked slowly at James’s side, ready to step in if James fell, keeping his own jaw tight at the expression of pain and the harsh breaths. A couple times, it looked as if James couldn’t go on, but he gathered himself every time.

When he’d rounded the second corner, he was sweaty and shaking, but his determination to follow the order made Cal’s chest swell with pride.

“Down.”

James looked back into his face for a long moment. Something almost cracked in Cal—compassion, and something deeper, too vast to be expressed. Thank God, James bent over and took the same position he’d held on the other side. He winced when the weights shifted again, but obeyed.

“Good, sir.” Cal stroked James’s hair, and the man relaxed, almost melting against the table. “Legs further apart.”

James could only spread his legs so far with his trousers still around his ankles, but Cal enjoyed watching him try. And he did try, pushing his feet as far apart as he could.

“Good. Now stay just like that.”

Nick was still on the other side of the table, and he slid the condom and lube closer to James’s face. James gulped. When Cal picked up the condom, James closed his eyes, but he didn’t make any comments, whispered or otherwise.

Cal set both the lube and the unopened condom on James’s back. Then he stepped behind him and undid his trousers. He pushed them over his hips, boxers and all, and when they landed at his feet with a quiet thud, James sucked in a hiss of breath.

Across the table from them, the overhead light casting an interesting glow on his face, Nick grinned. He was visibly hard, a thick ridge pressing against the front of his leather trousers just above the edge of the table. Cal had a feeling that Spencer wouldn’t know what hit him later this evening.

Cal peeled off one glove and dropped it on the felt. James squirmed, making the weights and chains jingle again. The second glove landed beside his face, and James closed his eyes and exhaled.

Cal picked the condom up off James’s back, tore the wrapper, and rolled on the condom. When he picked up the lube, James’s back bowed slightly, as if he were searching for the dull weight that had been there for a minute or two. The bottle’s top clicked. James bit his lip. Cal did the same, if only to keep himself in check. No faster, heavier breathing. No reaction to anything—not the lube, not the anticipation—because he had to appear to be in absolute control.

He dropped the bottle of lube on top of his gloves. When he put his bare hand on James’s hip to steady himself, he somehow kept from gasping at the first skin to skin contact they’d had all night. He took a slow, deep breath, then let it out just as slowly, and guided his cock to James’s arse.

He was tempted to tease James with his fingers, but James liked it when he f*cked him this way. He enjoyed the burn and the stretching. Obviously he wasn’t opposed to pain; though he winced every time the weights tugged at his cock and balls, he was anything but miserable.

Cal pushed against him. James bore down and pushed back, and he gasped as Cal breached him. Cal worked his way in, perhaps with more force than usual, and the low groans told him James loved it. There were whimpers of pain in there too, but Cal couldn’t tell where the pain ended and the pleasure began. Or if, for James, just like Spencer, they were one and the same.

Once he’d hilted himself completely inside James, he picked up speed. He f*cked him hard enough to make the pool table groan beneath them. James clawed at the felt; he tried to thrust back against Cal, but in this position, there was nothing he could do but stand there and take it. Take it fast, take it slow. Deep strokes, shallow strokes. It didn’t matter if James wanted it slow and easy or hard and fast, he’d get whatever Cal wanted to give him.

Cal gritted his teeth and f*cked James hard, and then he slapped him on the arse.

“Oh, God!” James bucked against him, nails digging into the table as he sought some kind of purchase on the flat surface. The weights jingled in time with Cal’s thrusts, and James had to be painfully hard by now. His moans sounded more like sobs. Alarm almost slowed Cal down, but he glanced at Nick, who nodded, grinning at him.

“Good thing that cock cage won’t let you come,” Nick taunted. “Bet you’d like to come with him f*cking you like that, wouldn’t you?”

James moaned, his body almost completely limp on the table.

Cal grabbed James’s hair and jerked his head back. “He asked you a question, sir.”

“I can’t . . .” James’s knuckles were white, his voice broken. “Think. I can’t think.”

“Just answer the question.” Cal slowed down, because damn, he was close himself and ready to lose it any moment now, and he didn’t want to come before James had yielded just that little bit more. “Do you remember the question?” He tightened his fingers in James’s hair, pulling hard enough to make him wince.

“Yes! Yes. Ohgodpleaseletmecome.” The words came out as a tortured release of breath.

Nick slowly walked around the table to their side, tilted his head to study James like a curiosity and nothing more, though the bulge in his trousers really messed with that illusion. “That’s not exactly what I asked.”

James needed a few moments to gather his concentration before he made another attempt at answering. “Yes. Yes I would. I’m so close. Please tell him . . .”