The cab got to their place too soon (not soon enough? Nate wasn't sure). Sully paid, and they got out.
Most nights, if they came back to Sully's where Nate now lived—Chloe's home was still unknown to both men—they would stroll up the stairs, ride the elevator in friendly conversation, and lounge around Sully's main room until the pressing need for sleep broke up the party. Nate sometimes fixed them drinks, sometimes read or watched TV, often fell asleep on the sofa while Sully and Chloe were talking. It was all about hanging out in that comfortable way one did with friends where hours of relaxation slipped by unnoticed.
Now, he stood stock-still at the curb while the cab pulled away, waiting.
"He's a little overwhelmed," Chloe noted.
"I came on kinda strong in there," Sully admitted. "We'll do more talking inside."
They each took his hands and tugged him forward. The intimacy of that—one hand inside Sully's big, rough fingers that easily covered his and the other in Chloe's soft, long fingers—increased Nate's heartrate. They led him along like a little boy, a toddler you couldn't trust not to run out into the street. But he held on, just like he had held his brother's hand as a small child when scared on the streets of the city.
Was this infantilization? He could only think about the possible logic of that as they took him inside and stood to wait for the elevator. In the reflective metal of the closed doors, he looked with wide eyes at their reflection as if staring at an unusual scene.
Sully all square and tall and in command in a dark suit with his rugged handsomeness, Chloe in a dark red dress that clung to her curves, and her hair pulled up to frame her dark eyes, and black high heels on to give her a few more inches. Between her heels and Sully's height, they were both taller than him. In his own suit, Nate's muscular arms and strong shoulders were hidden, and his brown hair (always kept back and straight with strident hair gel that wasn't supposed to let it move) had started to curl at the edges. The sweaty bits around his ears had broken loose and softened, making him look younger than ever.
But it was their grip on him, the nonchalant way they held his hands and refused to let go that was the most fascinating part. He stood between them, and they held his hands as if they were protecting something precious and vulnerable.
Was this trust? If you let someone top you and make you feel things, there had to be a level of trust. Right?
He thought back to what they had done to him in the cab. That wasn't what you did with a child. That was all adult, three adults playing with the boundaries of correct behavior when out in society. Yes, cab drivers were familiar with their clients being drunk, frisky, swearing, making out with sloppy bodies in scanty clubwear, but what Sully and Chloe had done to him wasn't expected in the normal way adults acted out when on the town.
They had dominated him, and the intimacy and level of trust that domination demanded when someone decided to submit as he had – most cab drivers would have been uncomfortable witnessing that kind of behavior.
"He's thinking too much," Chloe noted as the doors slid open, and they went into the elevator that was, thankfully, empty.
"We'll take care of that," the amusement in Sully's tone made Nate blink to try to clear his head.
"He hasn't said anything to me since we left the restaurant. Anything to you?"
"A few pleads, but quiet for the most part. I'm enjoying it," Sully reached with his free hand and soothed back Nate's hair. "If we let him talk too much, he might get distracted."
"As long as he isn't spacing."
"I'm not," Nate finally said. Their talking about him in the third person while he was standing between them sent another jolt of pleasure through his body. They were about to do more to him, to give whatever they thought he needed, and he would take it because he couldn't stop them.
Nate stumbled a little over the threshold, but once inside, they let him go, backed him up to sit in a chair, and stood over him with concern.
"Are you still with us?" Sully tapped the side of his face.
"Yeah," Nate nodded. "I'm here."
"You look a little drunk," Chloe said.
"I had one drink, and it was hours ago. I'm busy feeling stuff. And I keep thinking which I don't really want to do but I'm stuck thinking because it's my brain, you know?"
The words sounded silly when spoken, but they both nodded.
"Okay," Sully said, "we're going to keep going. But you have the power to stop us anytime you want. Green means you're fine, yellow we slow down, and red we stop. Where are you right now?"
"Green," Nate breathed out the word.
"So eager," Sully grinned at Chloe.
Sully shrugged out of his coat, and Chloe stepped out of her heels, but Nate just watched them.
"Up you go," Sully grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him up to stand.
Before Nate could speak, they had hands on him again, pulling off his coat, working at the buttons on his shirt, tugging the fabric free while he stayed still. With each piece lost—his shirt, right shoe, undershirt, other shoe—it felt like they were pulling down barriers that guarded him, that kept him from them.
Thank goodness he had taken a shower and put on deodorant before going to dinner because he was a bit sweaty all over. The air felt cold to his flushed skin, and standing in only black fitted shorts, he felt even more exposed and vulnerable.
"Beautiful," Chloe murmured.
"Wait 'til we get him tied up," Sully said.
A length of soft white rope appeared in Sully's hand, and Nate would have sworn the older man was a wizard because he had not seen that rope in the apartment before.
Tied up meant putting his wrists together and having Chloe wind the rope around them in an intricate pattern where he could twist his hands back and forth with ease but couldn't pull them apart more than a few inches.
"We thought about a blindfold," Sully was back to whispering in his ear which made Nate jerk and open his mouth to draw in a long breath. "But we both wanted to see your pretty eyes."
"And," Chloe whispered in his other ear, so soft and quiet that Nate balled his fists up to keep from moaning, "we don't want a gag either. We want to hear you. We want," she put a hand on his side, just below his rib cage, "to see you try to handle everything we give you."
She lightly scraped her nails over his skin there, and Nate drew back with pure instinct to get away from the maddening touch.
"Ah, ah," Sully scolded. "No trying to avoid us. We're going to make you feel lots of things, and you are going to be a very good boy and appreciate each of them."
They helped him in the bedroom where Sully's bed was made but the pillows had been removed. A large metal ring protruded from the headboard, only a few inches above the light green comforter.
Before Nate could ask, they had him lie faceup on the bed with his ankles hanging off the end. His bound hands were pulled above his head, and he obliging bent his elbows so they could secure the edge of the rope to the metal ring.
A length of rope was wound around each of his ankles, and then he opened his legs to a V so they could tie each ankle to a footpost at the end.
"Now, he's beautiful," Sully admired their handiwork. Chloe nodded, her eyes wide with delight.
Nate took in a deep breath. The adrenaline rush at this next bit of bondage spun over him, and he wished he had a mirror to see himself on the bed, helpless and unable to run, unable to move more than a few inches.
Sully sat down on the bed and placed his hand on the flat plain of stomach just above his navel. "When we start, you are going to want to move. That's okay, but you may not jerk hard enough to hurt your ankles or your arms. I don't want you wrenching your shoulder out of whack. If you start getting rope burn, we're going to stop. But -"
The room felt close, tight, full of tension as Sully said in a lower tone that was equal parts threat and promise, "If you make us stop on the bed, I'm going to have Chloe hold you down over my knee while I spank you. And then we'll come back to the bed to start all over."
Nate drew a long, shuddering breath as he stared straight at Sully. Nate could feel that heat in his cheeks, the unbearable thrum of excitement under their care which would be lacking in mercy for him if going by their looks and words.
"I'm going to spank you anyways," Sully made his voice soft and touch gentle as if he were petting a small animal, "but this would be a spanking before your spanking, and -" he reached up to caress the soft skin just under Nate's jawbone, "-you really don't want a spanking before you get one. Because," he gave a smile that Nate could only describe as gleefully malicious, "I spank really, really hard."
The hand against his throat felt massive, and Nate rode the spike of fear that shot through him. Now there was something he had to do: stay still.
"But," Chloe came to the other side with a bottle of water, "feel free to scream all you like."
She tipped the bottle up to his lips. He wanted to refuse, but under Sully's stern look that indicated he better obey, Nate gulped down a few mouthfuls. She dabbed at the extra water that dripped down his face and recapped the bottle, proclaiming, "I think we're ready."
"I don't even know – ah!" Nate tensed up, raising his head off the bed a little as Sully dug into his right leg above his knee. It was much like Chloe had done in the cab to his other leg, but Sully's fingers were bigger, and he moved up and down in millimeters, kneading the muscle.
Tickling had never made Nate laugh. He had smiled and squirmed when Sam did it to him as a child, but whenever tickled by an adult on a date when they got a little tipsy from the wine, Nate had mainly smiled in fondness over the feeling.
Now his face broke into a huge grin, but the noises he made were closer to pleading than laughing. "Oh, no, Sully, Sully – wait! No, I can't. Ah, ah – no!"
"Don't pull your arms too much, kid," Sully warned, going up an inch to keep kneading that poor muscle which sent sparks of panic up down his entire leg. "You really don't want a spanking."
How could anyone want a spanking as a punishment? Nate wanted to yell, but he couldn't articulate anything while Sully kept – kept (Nate searched wildly for the right word) brutalizing his leg. Sully would start pressing into the muscle, that sensible bit of length that let Nate run fast and did not need to be touched at all, and then Sully would knead down with tight precision until he hit the right spot to make Nate jump or yelp.
In pure maddening results, the muscle felt better each time Sully moved up or to either side of his leg. In those split seconds of relief, the muscle felt looser and better stretched like he had gotten a deep tissue massage. But then Sully dug in again, and the agony was back.
"Chloe! Chloe, please!" Nate looked at her in desperation for help.
"Tell me," Chloe sat on the other side of the bed, "which feeling is better? His or mine?"
She brushed her fingers over his midriff above the hem of his shorts, staying on his left so Sully had full access to his legs. She began moving her fingers with just enough pressure to awaken the nerves there, a slow tickling that stayed on top of the skin and left the muscle beneath alone.
Nate whooped and tried the crouch away from her, able to bend over his side a few inches though she easily moved with him. Not to be outdone, Sully grabbed his leg with two hands and dug in.
Nate let out a piercing shriek at the sensation of both touches, and his one coherent thought was, Do not jerk too much!
Chloe's hand started trailing up his torso, closer to his armpit, and Sully kept a hand tormenting his right leg and clamped down on his left leg at just the same spot.
"Ah, ah, eee!" Nate babbled nonsense. He grabbed the rope overhead that was tied to the ring and held it as he tried to express the depths of what he was feeling. He would start high-pitched giggling that bordered on hysteria when Chloe felt for each of his left ribs, but then Sully would dig in a tad stronger and those tormented leg muscles would switch him to deep, throaty groans as he tried to squirm away.
Ready to match the challenge of her fellow tormentor, Chloe began tickling his other side with her other hand, both hands crawling up and down to stimulate the skin stretched over his ribs.
"There's some debate," Chloe spoke calmly over the frenzied noise coming from their captive, "about what tickling is. Some say it's an evolutionary process that alarms the brains."
"Ay! Please! Oh, please. No-no-no, Sully. Not so – ahhh!"
"Some say it is the mixture of pain and pleasure. They still aren't sure why you laugh. Or even why some people are ticklish."
"Not there! Not there!" (Chloe had found the dip under his last rib that could not stand a soft scratching from the tips of her nails.)
"Interesting." Sully pressed in hard with both hands, but instead of moving his fingers, he tilted his hands inward and outwards together, rotating the hold on both legs to create an even flow of pressure/release, a steady rocking back and forth to create maximum effect on exhausted muscles underneath. This would make the muscles feel better later, but right now Nate couldn't seem to comprehend the extent of Sully's thoughtfulness.
The sweet boy's cries were getting more frantic and desperate when he burst into wild laughter. Sully glanced up to see that Chloe was tracing the ridges around the hollows of Nate's armpits. Nate gasped and tried to blow off her fingers with puffs of air in between laughs, his lips trembling to make the proper O for blowing as he needed to smile so badly. She smiled down at his cute attempts, but Sully frowned and shifted his hands up again to see if he could distract Nate from that silliness and coax the boy to return to his assigned task of bearing the unbearable.
Nate tried to stay still, but he bucked with the sensations, kept trying to get them off him. The thoughts were fleeing from his head, and he hung on for dear life and felt it, felt every twinge, every flared nerve, every bit of their torment. His eyes were scrunched tight and his face hurt from smiling, but his mouth made nonsense sounds of gasps, shrieks, short laughs, and "Ah, ah, no-no-no-no!" without pause.
"You're pulling too hard," came the stern warning from above him.
The hands on his legs had moved up to the hem of his shorts and were sending lightning flashes of pain and excitement into the upper thigh muscles they found there. Sully's torture was so close to his crotch, and Nate's brain couldn't concentrate long enough to know if he wanted the strong hands closer to his privates or farther away. The soft hands with the nails on his torso had moved to tease around his navel, especially the soft skin that rarely felt the touch of anything, let alone acute tickling fingers.
The world blurred into a paradox of multiple contradictions. The hands were superfast, yet agonizingly slow. They were too hard and too soft, and they were in the wrong place but he dreaded every time they moved. He wanted to lie still and feel it, but he had to move and thrash about.
Each second dragged on forever, but as soon as the hands moved, it was over too soon.
He wanted to sigh in pleasure and scream in pain.
They must stop.
They must never stop.
He couldn't bear another second.
He wanted it to keep going.
Were his screams ones of despair or appreciation? A desperate, tortured man on the brink of insanity or a very grateful little boy loving the attention from his devoted doms?
"And stop," a voice said.
The hands lifted, but Nate's gasping went on for a moment. His face was all sweaty, but oddly enough, his upper legs felt great, the muscles having been tortured into relaxing under Sully's knowing fingers.
"Talk to us," Chloe insisted. "Give us a color."
"Gr-gr-green," he squeaked before scrunching his face up as if he were still feeling the tickling. He gave a few chuckles into the side of his arm as he tried to calm down.
"Such a good boy," Sully praised.
They let him breathe for a second, and then Chloe insisted he drink some more water.
The haze was starting to lift, his thoughts starting to rise up out of the subspace, a subspace that he had only half entered before, when Sully looked down at him with displeasure.
"We're going to check your wrists and ankles," Sully's stern tone matched his face and crossed arms as he looked down oat his younger companion. "If I see red or chafing, you best prepare yourself for a good spanking. I picked up a wooden hairbrush in case I need help, and there's always the standby method," his hands went to his waist where a thick black belt lay, "just in case a naughty boy requires a lesson to remember how to behave himself."
Despite having just gulped down water, Nate's mouth went completely dry. The humiliation turned his cheek pinker, and he wanted to duck away in embarrassment.
"I've found," Chloe reached down to stroke his sweaty hair off his forehead, "that a good, long spanking does wonders for a boy whether he's been naughty or not."
"Settles him right down and gets him to focus," Sully agreed.
Nate could understand how a spanking might settle him down from the hysteria of being tickled, but he wasn't sure what he should be focused on. Yet, he didn't dare ask as both their expressions indicated they were looking for a reason to give him a spanking, searching for an excuse to turn him over Sully's knee so he could get what a naughty boy deserved.
He couldn't even begin to process if he wanted a spanking or not. Yes, he was getting one that night regardless, but did he want two? What if Sully spanked as hard as he tickled? But if they didn't spank him, did that mean more tickling? Chloe had been eying his feet, but that thought nearly spun Nate back into hysteria, and he didn't know what to beg for as he couldn't stand any more tickling but he couldn't bear for them to stop playing with him. He needed their attention, their dominance, their dedication to his suffering. He craved their gentle brutality harder than anything he had ever wanted anything before, but – but –
He looked back and forth in anxious twists, careful not to pull on the ropes as Chloe went to his captured feet and Sully approached his bound wrists. The ropes didn't hurt anywhere, but he had no idea of what they would find considering all the endorphins crashing through him that would overpower any feeling of friction or skin irritation, and he couldn't angle himself right to see either up or down to judge for himself.
Instead, he had to wait in nervous anticipation for their reports.
