A/N: So people had some issues with this chapter, and to be fair I understand why, so I've decided to tweak it a little (late, I know, but better than never, eh?) For this reason some reviews might not make sense, but hopefully not enough to put anyone off! O_O

(Also I just accidentally deleted the chapter, hence 18-20 have just been re-uploaded, sorry for the spam!)

Ianto's head throbbed as though he'd spent a long night out on the town, and he had to blink at least a dozen times before realising that his vision wasn't actually blurred; he was just extremely close to whatever he was looking at.

After that initial problem had been solved, Ianto became aware of pressure against his cheek, the unforgiving sensation of something solid beneath his face. He lifted his head slightly, wincing first as pain struck his temples like a hammer, and then again when his skin reluctantly peeled away from the smooth surface.

"Uhn," he groaned, mind reeling as he tried to remember what the hell he'd been doing to end up sprawled across a...desk? He squeezed his eyes tightly shut before checking again, but his impromptu bed remained an inanimate piece of office furniture.

Confused, he tried to push himself up, only to find his arms wouldn't obey the command. He frowned, staring blearily at the dark bands of...something...that wrapped about his wrists before disappearing over the edge of the desk. A quick tug confirmed that this was the source of his immobile limbs and whilst one part of his brain was searching his memories for the origin of these curious restraints, another part was helpfully pointing out that he was fucking tied up!

"What?" Ianto asked helplessly, trying again to straighten up, despite knowing full well that it was impossible. He redirected his attention to the rest of his body, realising that if the top half was slumped over the desk, then the rest of it was hanging off the side.

Still fighting the cotton wool in his head, Ianto shakily regained his feet, feeling the pull of strained muscles from the unnatural position, along with a rather different pull from another set of restraints about his ankles – restraints which held his legs uncomfortably wide apart.

"Jack," the Welshman said, though the 'J' got caught in the dryness of his mouth. He swallowed, licked his lips, opened them again to call the man he presumed responsible for this, but the word never came out.

All thought of speech vanished from his mind as he realised the arms he'd been staring at were bare. He cast his eyes down at himself. His chest was bare too. He twisted to look further down and...yep, his legs, his feet, his god-damned everything was bare.

Ianto pulled a face and tried to ignore the mental image of himself naked in such an indignant pose. "Jack," he said again, forcing out the name instead of the multitude of curses that jostled for freedom.

Every tiny detail of the confrontation down in the archives flooded back into Ianto's head and panic finally started to set in – because, apparently, waking to find he'd been tied up just wasn't alarming enough anymore.

"Fuck," he muttered to himself, pulling hard on the restraints. "Untie me, Jack!" he said, louder this time as he turned his head to search the room for the older man. He couldn't allow this to happen, couldn't let Jack do this to him, no matter how much he ached for it.

The Captain appeared silently before the desk and Ianto craned his neck to look up, eyes sweeping over the familiar greatcoat towards his lover's face, but faltering when they reached his hands. Jack was wearing black gloves, the fitted kind that spoke of quality leatherwork, and he was holding a – dear lord – a riding crop. Ianto frowned; where the hell had he got a riding crop from?

Jack apparently noticed the focus of Ianto's attention and slapped the tongue of the crop against his empty palm, the sound jolting the young Welshman out of his daze and causing his wide eyes to dart immediately to Jack's face.

Once there, Ianto suffered another shock as he saw, perched firmly upon Jack's head, a cap that matched his nostalgic outfit perfectly. Ianto's mind almost went entirely blank; almost, because he was suddenly very curious as to how Jack could have owned such an item without Ianto ever having seen it before. It had certainly never made an appearance in any of their previous...costume-related encounters and, judging by the knot forming low in his stomach, that was a very disappointing thing indeed.

Ianto felt his cheeks warming, becoming even more flushed than they already were, as he realised with shame that he was allowing himself to be distracted by the man who stood before him, when he should be fighting with everything he had to escape this situation.

"Untie me," he forced himself to say, pulling harder on the bindings as he tried once more to straighten up.

Jack grinned at him, teeth and eyes flashing with almost feral brightness. "No." He slapped his palm again with the crop. "I like this view."

"Jack, I'm not kidding."

"Neither am I." The Captain began to pace across Ianto's field of vision, hands behind his back and the riding crop sweeping like a tail in his wake. "It seems to me we've reached an impasse," he said imperiously. "You refuse my help and I refuse your refusal. Therefore only one course of action remains." He glanced sidelong at Ianto, the grin still upon his lips. "That would be this course right here, in case you were wondering."

Ianto glared at him. "Oh really?" he asked, with all the calm he could possibly muster. "Well I think the only course is for you to untie me right now and let me leave the Hub. On my own."

The pacing continued whilst the immortal made a show of considering the request. "Again, no," he finally replied. "You see, I've realised the mistake I made this past week. I kept expecting you to give in and ask me to help with this little issue of yours." The thoughtful expression turned wry as Jack came to a halt and loomed over Ianto. "Naturally I was wrong to ever assume you'd do any such thing. Of course you wouldn't ask for help, you're you. The point of this is to have control taken away from you and having to beg for my assistance wouldn't really fit that criteria, would it?"

Ianto could feel himself trembling, from the awkward position mostly, but also an intriguing mix of irritation and - though he was loath to admit it even to himself – excitement.

"I would never beg," he informed the other man, determined not to yield despite the fact that something in the Captain's blunt assurance, the power that he portrayed with only a few words, stirred the secret part of Ianto's heart that had yearned for this precise situation.

"Oh, come now," Jack purred, leaning over so Ianto was forced to twist his neck even further to keep eye-contact. "I've heard you beg plenty of times." Ianto said nothing, merely glowered at him, and the older man chuckled warmly in response. "Okay, fair enough, those were rather different circumstances."

Jack brought the riding crop out from behind him and ran the fingers of his free hand along the thin rod. Ianto's eyes were drawn to the movement, the slow stroke almost hypnotic, and when Jack flicked the crop's tongue with his fingertips, Ianto twitched, imaging the leather striking his bare skin. He cursed silently, hating that his body reacted so easily when his mind so ardently wished against letting Jack win.

It felt as though months had passed since he'd last been able to fully let himself go in a safe environment; that his last visit with Alex had ended so badly only made it worse and the fact his colleagues and friends now knew his secret meant the past twelve days had been a personal kind of hell for him. Everything had conspired to push and push at his defences and as a result he was now walking a very fine line between resistance and utter submission.

Jack finished fondling the crop and let his gloved hand drop to Ianto's arm, fingers brushing over his skin with the same slow motions, tracing a winding path from elbow to wrist. "I hope I've tied these tight enough," Jack said casually. "I know you're going to struggle." He stroked the back of Ianto's hand lightly before returning to the coarse material of the bonds. "Although the more you fight, the more you'll mark your own skin."

The words struck Ianto hard, the vision of enduring red bands wrapped around his wrists filling his mind with an alarming thrill of need. Evidence of his previous activities had always been hidden on his back, with only the occasional glimpse of colour around the side of his chest, but never had he allowed Alex to use anything other than padded restraints on so visible an area as his arms. To be marked in such a way that would leave telling signs that lasted for days, if not an entire week, was a notion that managed to set the young man's heart racing even faster than before.

Jack made his way around the end of the desk, trailing his fingers along Ianto's arm to his shoulder. Spurred into action by the movement, Ianto placed his hands flat upon the desk and pushed himself as far upright as he could manage. Jack's caressing continued, unhampered by the young man's wary shifting, leather gloves gliding over the quivering muscles of Ianto's back to the opposite shoulder.

The position meant that Jack now leaned into his side, face close to Ianto's own, though the Welshman refused to look at him at such a distance; fearing that – as often happened – mere eye-contact would cause Jack to kiss him.

"You may be surprised to hear this," Jack told him. "But I haven't actually done this kind of thing much in the past." His warm breath swept over Ianto's cheek as he laughed softly. "And when I did, it wasn't for any psychological reason, so you'll have to tell me if I'm not doing it right."

Ianto swallowed. "And what if I tell you to stop?"

"Try it and see."

The tongue of the short whip traced over Ianto's bicep; the dark leather contrasting with his pale skin. Ianto watched it moving, absently aware of the other gloved hand creeping towards his neck. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

There was a part of him that wanted to throw a full-bodied tantrum, to yell out and yank on his restraints, to turn and bash his forehead into Jack's nose. At some point, in the past day or so, he had apparently pushed the older man too far, and now Jack seemed determined to make things right by forcing the issue.

And yet on the flipside, there was another part that knew he needed precisely what Jack was offering. Though there had been a rather satisfying encounter at the shooting range, where Ianto had regained the upper hand for a brief delicious moment, the stress of the last few weeks had simply been building and building. It was clear, even to himself, he wouldn't last much longer before a complete breakdown had him begging for help, but he really hadn't wanted his lover to be the one to administer the treatment and that lack of choice struck him as both ironic and frustrating.

"You've been a very bad boy recently," said Jack, abruptly pulling back and breaking all contact with Ianto's body.

The young Welshman barked out a weak laugh at the clichéd line and the loud slap of leather against skin echoed around the office. Ianto jumped at the sound and a second later the sting of a sharp blow registered upon his hip.

"Don't laugh at me," Jack commanded.

Ianto blinked in surprise, having never truly believed Jack would hit him until that moment, but beyond the shock was something far more overwhelming; his reaction to that tone of voice, the Captain-voice. His breath caught to hear it at this precise time, whilst he was tied up and helpless, and blood rushed to stain his cheeks with a deep flush of shameful delight.

"You've been a very bad boy," the immortal said again, and this time Ianto made no noise at all. "You've caused all kinds of trouble. Do you know how selfish you've been recently?"

Ianto remained silent, half-convinced he could resist if he didn't give into the game.

"I asked you a question, Ianto." The crop struck his hip again, a blow that was made more effective through humiliation rather than just pain. "Do you know how selfish you've been?"

"I wasn't doing anyone any harm," declared Ianto in defiance.

"Don't lie." Another hit landed across the top of his back. "You know very well how you've caused Tosh to worry. Even Owen's been troubled by your behaviour. And as for me..." Jack moved behind Ianto, leaning into his other side before he continued. "I've been torn between concern and fury."

"Fury?" Ianto echoed the word to himself; of all the emotions he might have expected to awaken within the Captain, fury was not one of them. Jack was rarely spurred to anger, much less rage, so to think that his actions of late had managed to do just that... Ianto gulped down a sudden lump in his throat. How had he allowed this situation to get so out of hand that others were suffering because his own weaknesses?

The leather whip slapped almost playfully, yet firmly, down Ianto's spine to the swell of his buttocks and the young man flinched in memory of Alex's spanking, his heart pounding in his chest. Jack leaned over to speak into his ear again.

"You need to be taught a lesson in humility, Ianto Jones," he said, lips brushing against Ianto's skin. The leather tongue slipped into the crack of his ass and Ianto's entire body jerked as it passed over his hole.

"Ah!" he cried out in sudden alarm. "No!"

The crop continued downwards, over the sensitive perineum, until it rested against his testicles. "Yes," Jack corrected, almost as an afterthought.

"No, no," Ianto chanted, screwing up his face as though he could block out the sensations that way. "Not there, never there."

He jerked again when the tongue started to move, rubbing at his balls. He shook his head as his body responded swiftly to the stimulation, the leather hard and unyielding and a silent threat of pain.

Jack tilted his head in feigned confusion. "Never?" He clicked his tongue. "You told me yourself he touched you here. In fact, I even saw it for myself, didn't I?"

"It wasn't about sex!" Ianto wailed, his voice lifting in desperation. He'd always feared Jack wouldn't understand his motivation and now it seemed he was right to have worried.

"I know that," the immortal assured him. "It was about humiliation and vulnerability. Now tell me, as I'm doing this to you, you're embarrassed, aren't you? You're vulnerable."

Ianto dragged in a huge breath – he refused to acknowledge it as a sob – as he recognised that statement as almost exactly what Alex had said to him during their last full session. It might have sexual overtones, but Ianto couldn't deny that the current situation certainly robbed him entirely of control.

The only problem was that when it had been Alex's hands upon him, he hadn't felt even a fraction of what he now felt with Jack's ministrations – Jack, who wasn't strictly even touching him, and yet who had him hard and aching from a few restraints and a riding crop. He whimpered pathetically, sensing his resolve unravelling before him, spiralling away into a black hole from which it could never return.

If he allowed Jack to finish this, he knew for sure there would be no going back.

Ianto realised with a start that, as he'd been lamenting, his hips had begun to rock with the movement of the leather tongue, urging more pressure against the delicate skin surrounding his balls. Jack was chuckling hot breath into his ear, his free hand lifting to pinch Ianto's nipples.

The young man gasped and tried to move away from the firm touch, only to be brought up short by his bonds. He let out a cry of panic, the sound made hoarse by his escalating pleasure. "Stop! Red! RED!"

The entire scene froze at his cry; the crop still pressed to his testicles, the gloved fingers splayed on his chest, the heat of Jack's body burning along his left side.

"Red?" Jack repeated thoughtfully. "Is that your safeword?"

Too mortified to speak, Ianto merely nodded.

"Hmm, red for 'stop'. Clever. I guess green means 'more' then, yes? What's yellow though? 'You're pushing your luck if you think I'm going to do that'?"

Ianto didn't respond. His arms were beginning to shake from holding himself up, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the desk, but he knew if he allowed his body to move an inch it would cause the crop to rub against him once more and he'd be done for.

Jack laughed at his own joke, the sound warm and familiar. It was one Ianto had heard many times in the past, sometimes even when he'd been sprawled half-naked across this very desk, but never had he imagined hearing it whilst he was completely trussed up like this.

The warmth of Jack's close proximity abruptly vanished as he stepped back, removing both hand and crop. Ianto found he was still frozen, not entirely sure what he felt about the loss, and when Jack's fingers reappeared in his eyeline to unbuckle the cuff around his right wrist before disappearing again, he couldn't even move his newly released arm.

"Okay," Jack said, setting the crop down on the desk. "If that's what you want."

Then he was walking away and Ianto was alone, head spinning and mouth dry.

His arousal throbbed persistently and he couldn't say for certain that he was glad for the turn of events. He'd been presented with the opportunity to free himself from all his current tension, in a manner that was almost assuredly going to be wonderful, and he'd just turned it down.

Every nerve in his body screamed for release, unable to bear it any longer, and even should Jack let him not only untie his bonds but allow him to leave the Hub as well, he wasn't sure how he could find a solution to his problem. Or perhaps he should say a solution that wasn't falling upon his knees before Jack and pleading for him to help.

The edge was near, not the crest of pleasure but the precipice of a pit he suspected had no bottom and it seemed it had become time to choose whether he step forward or back.

Ianto bit his lip, his eyes fixed on his right hand. Unfettered, and shaking slightly, it looked so innocuous against the dark wood of the desk, so alien that he wondered if it was truly attached to his body. He could move the fingers, meaning it clearly belonged to him, and he could feel the scratched surface beneath his palm, the hard edge of the leather thong beside his little finger.

Could he do it? Could he surrender? Was it possible?

His little finger twitched, then it was moving, sliding across the loop so the rest of his hand was forced to follow and fold around the newly discovered toy until the unforgiving leather dug into his skin.

A heavy footstep marked Jack's return and Ianto gasped quietly as he realised his time was up. He turned his head, dragging his gaze away from his hand to look up at the man standing just inside the doorway. Jack was still dressed in coat and hat, and he ran his eyes over Ianto's body until they settled on the fist clutching the crop. His lips twisted upwards and he stepped closer, stooping slightly to pick up the abandoned cuff from the floor.

Ianto waited for him to speak, expecting to be questioned on why he hadn't moved, but instead Jack merely held open the restraint within Ianto's reach.

The younger man swallowed, considering the cuff briefly before making himself meet Jack's eyes. There was an openness there, a final offering of refusal, but also an intensity that Ianto knew in his gut would cease to exist if he called a halt right then.

Perhaps it could work. Perhaps he could keep everything separate. Jack seemed a master of that trick some days, and Ianto had been pretty proficient himself before all the mess with Lurrelia, so maybe, if he tried hard enough, he could reclaim that ability.

Licking his lips, Ianto opened his hand and lifted it slowly, warily reaching out until his wrist sat atop the black band.

Jack smiled as he buckled the cuff, retightening the cord that linked it to one of the desk's legs until Ianto was immobile once more. After a sharp tug to test the resistance, Jack nodded and moved around behind him again, picking up the riding crop in one hand and trailing the other up over Ianto's arm as he moved.

Struggling to keep a hold of his reactions, Ianto was hyper-aware of every place Jack touched, his anticipation so great that his skin even burned ahead of the Captain's gloved digits. When the head of the crop returned to its earlier position beneath his balls, a moan erupted from his lips and he pushed back against the invading item just once before he managed to stop himself.

Fingers curled around Ianto's weeping cock, the leather cool and smooth, and his hot flesh twitched eagerly at the contact. Ianto bit back another moan, determined not to let his body betray him so easily, but when the crop started to move again, synchronising with the pumping of the Captain's hand, Ianto yanked at his restraints, gasping aloud at the mix of pleasure and pain. After only a few tugs, he came with a sharp gasp, as fast as a teenager who'd just discovered the wonders of his own fist.

Jack continued to work Ianto's cock, milking it, covering it in the thick liquid he'd caught in his hand before stroking the rest of the young man's seed up over his bare chest. The touch of the riding crop disappeared again as Jack abandoned it to instead cup Ianto's balls tightly, squeezing as he twitched and shuddered his way down from the abrupt orgasm.

"Are you happy now?" Ianto managed to say a few minutes later. He might have given in, but he wasn't going to let Jack have an easy ride of it. If he wanted to take on the responsibility of dominating the younger man, then Ianto was damned sure he was going to get his proverbial money's worth. "You got to dress up and help."

Jack removed both hands from the other man's body and absently licked one of his fingers, unperturbed by the snide comment. "I don't think I've helped much yet," he said, "so no, I'm not happy. Maybe when you give into me completely I will be." He peeled off his gloves and let them drop to the floor with a damp slap, then leaned over to press his lips to Ianto's shoulder.

"I promise I won't stop until then," he murmured against the sweat-slicked skin.