then lubed Aiden’s entrance, making a soothing noise as
Aiden winced from the cold. “Ready? I’m going to slide
it in.” He positioned the small nozzle at Aiden’s opening
and slipped it in. Aiden’s breath caught. Keaton rubbed
Aiden’s back. “Doing fine. Okay, I’m going to start it
flowing now. Deep breaths. Try to relax.”
“Yeah, right,” Aiden muttered.
Keaton unclipped the tube. There was a slight
gurgling noise as the liquid passed through the tube.
Aiden lay tense and trembling, then jerked suddenly as
the first gush entered him. He was very quiet, making an
effort to breathe deeply. Keaton rubbed his hip and
murmured to him.
“That’s too much,” Aiden said suddenly. “I’m full.”
“About half to go.”
“Keaton!”
“Shh, kid. It’s all right.” He hated that Aiden was
uncomfortable, but he loved that the boy inched closer to
him, wanting his touch, his reassurance.
The bag finally went flat, and Keaton removed the
nozzle. A small amount of water spilled out of Aiden
onto the towel, and Aiden mewled.
“I’m sorry!”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Keaton assured
him. “That’s just what happens when the nozzle comes
out.”
“Now what?” Aiden asked in a small voice.
“Hold it as long as you can.”
“Shit. Fuck, it’s hurting. Keaton—”
“Just a cramp. Breathe through it. It’ll pass.”
Keaton rubbed circles on Aiden’s belly, easing the
tight muscles.
“I have to go,” Aiden whispered.
“Can you hold it just a couple more minutes?”
“I’ll try.”
“Breathe.” Aiden did. “Such a good boy.”
“It’s cramping again.”
Keaton rubbed his stomach until the cramp passed.
Aiden shuddered.
“I hate this.”
“Is it really so bad?”
Aiden nodded.
“You’re being very brave.”
“I’m a wimp.”
“Cut it out.” Keaton tapped his hip. “Being
respectful means respecting yourself—not just me.”
Aiden ducked his head. “Keaton, don’t punish me
now. It’s not fair; I already hurt so much.”
Keaton frowned. His poor brat was lost somewhere.
This experience—the discomfort, the intimacy, the
humiliation were all too much. “Of course I’m not going
to punish you. I just don’t want you attacking yourself.”
“I have to go—really!”
“All right. Let me help you up. Slowly. Moving
quickly can make the cramps worse. That’s it—lean on
me.” Keaton guided Aiden to the bathroom and lowered
him onto the toilet.
“Are you going to stay?” Aiden asked, looking
panicked.
“If you want me to, I will. If you want privacy, I’ll
go.”
“Privacy, please. I really appreciate—I just need—
oh God.”
“No problem. I’ll be out here when you’re done.”
Keaton closed the bathroom door and went back to
the bed to collect the equipment. He was surprised
Aiden had found the experience so intense. Aiden had
experience with many different elements of kink, and
Keaton had assumed the boy had received an enema
before.
The toilet flushed. Keaton heard the shower go on.
Ten minutes later, Aiden emerged from the bathroom,
still pale and a little shaky. He tried to smile at Keaton.
“I feel ten pounds lighter.” He got into bed and curled
up next to Keaton. “I can’t believe you did that for me.”
“Of course. I’ll always give you what you need.”
“Always?” Aiden sounded confused.
“As long as you’ll let me.”
Aiden was silent for a while. “My subletter’s
contract is up next week.”
Keaton felt like a rock had been dropped down his
throat into his stomach. “And you’re moving back?”
“He asked if he could take over the contract and
“And you said—”
“I don’t know. I can’t afford the place. But where
else would I go?”
“You could stay here,” Keaton suggested, trying to
remember how to breathe.
“For how long?”
Forever would be nice. “As long as you want.”
“I still don’t have a job.”
“I still don’t care.”
“Keaton.” Aiden sighed. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t
you get pissed, having me mooch off you? And I’m
really—I keep getting in trouble, and I’m needy and
moody… ”
“I want you here, Aiden. It’s as simple as that.”
Aiden was quiet. “I like it here,” he said at last,
very softly.
“So stay. And we’ll figure things out from there.”
Aiden yawned. “I’m too tired to argue with you.”
“Good. Now go to sleep. We can talk in the
morning.”
Aiden obeyed, tucking his body against Keaton’s
and closing his eyes. Keaton stroked his hair until the
boy’s breathing deepened and he slept.
Chapter Eighteen
It had seemed like the perfect solution five minutes
ago, but now Aiden sincerely doubted the wisdom of
what he’d done.
Yesterday he’d finally completed a draft of his
personal statement that he felt satisfied with. Using
Keaton’s prompts, he’d cobbled together a five-hundred-
word overview of his past experiences, goals, and
unique qualities that—while far from spectacular—was
better than anything he’d have come up with on his own.
But when he’d read over the statement today, he realized
there was nothing good about it at all. It sounded
cloying, clichéd, and no admissions director in his or her
right mind would look twice at it.
So he’d deleted the document from his computer
and shredded his only hard copy. It was no worse a fate
than the tripe deserved, except now he didn’t have a
personal statement, and his applications were due in a
week.
He sighed. He didn’t want to tell Keaton. Really
didn’t want to tell Keaton. But he felt confused and
stressed and angry, and according to Rule Five, these
were all conditions he was required to report.
The lousy personal statement was partly Keaton’s
fault. Aiden hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything
in the last few days except his increasingly puzzling
feelings for the man. They’d gone out to dinner last night
to celebrate Aiden getting the job at Zippy’s Pizza, and
Aiden had been unable to stop staring at Keaton,
wondering at how Keaton could make getting hired at a
crappy pizza chain feel like a real accomplishment.
Aiden had found Keaton attractive from the
moment he saw him, and he’d appreciated Keaton’s
kindness in giving him a place to stay and distracting
him from the memories of his traumatizing encounter
with Scott. The discipline relationship, silly as it had
sounded at first to Aiden, ended up being exactly what
he needed to get his life back on track. He owed Keaton a
great deal, valued his friendship with the man, and was
more than a little grateful to be having the best sex of his
life.
But lately his feelings had become even more
complex. The idea of not having Keaton in his life was
like a raw wound, too painful to touch. He felt a silly,
fawning devotion when he looked at Keaton, and wanted
to run to him, throw his arms around him, crawl inside of
him, and live safely under his skin.
Love.
Was he in love with Keaton Hughes? He’d pushed
the idea aside. Of course he wasn’t. He was overly reliant
on Keaton’s guidance. He’d grown needy and clingy, to
the point where he feared leaving the safety of Keaton’s
house and the certainty of Keaton’s rules.
But Aiden had a nagging suspicion that even if
Keaton lived in a cardboard box on the street and had no
clue how to administer a spanking, Aiden would still
want to be with him.
Don’t think he feels the same way about you, Aiden
warned himself. You’re one boy out of dozens, maybe
hundreds, he’s done this with. You have plans anyway—
grad school, or else a move to a big city. It’s never going
to end happily ever after. So why bother fantasizing?
Aiden checked the Recycle Bin on his laptop one
more time, in case by some miracle he hadn’t wiped his
personal statement from the computer. No such luck. He
shut the laptop and headed upstairs. Better get this over
with. He had to be at Zippy’s in an hour, and his butt
would need time to cool after Keaton was done with
him.
Keaton was in his studio, hands dark with clay,
classical music playing on the radio. He wore an apron
splattered like a butcher’s, but with gray instead of red.
He didn’t hear Aiden come in, so Aiden waited by the
door, watching him, a mix of tenderness and despair
tightening his chest. Keaton was beautiful. So beautiful.
So calm and confident and content. What did Aiden have
to offer someone like Keaton?
Keaton finally noticed him and smiled. “Hey,” he
said, turning down the radio.
“Hey.” Aiden went to him, threw his arms around
him, and nuzzled the crook of Keaton’s neck and
shoulder.
“I’ll get clay on you,” Keaton warned.
“I don’t care.”
Keaton’s arms closed around him. Aiden savored
the moment as long as he could, then pulled away.
“I did something bad.”
Keaton waited patiently.
Aiden stared at his feet. “I deleted my personal
statement from the computer. And I shredded my print
copy.”
“Oh?”
“I was reading over it, and I just… hated it.”
“I looked over the statement yesterday and thought
it was great.”
“Yeah, I thought it was okay. But it wasn’t.”
“Do you think it might have been a good idea to
talk to me before you deleted it?”
Aiden flushed. “I didn’t know I was going to delete
it—it just sort of happened.”
“What are you going to do now? Write another
one?”
Aiden didn’t know whether to be relieved or
frustrated that his foolishness hadn’t prompted
immediate outrage on Keaton’s part. “I don’t know. Now
I wish I still had the old one. It wasn’t that bad.” To his
horror, he felt tears stinging his eyes. No way was he
going to start crying over this. What was he, a little kid?
Normal twenty-three-year-old men didn’t behave this
way, he was sure of that.
“No, it wasn’t,” Keaton agreed.
“So what happens now?”
“Well, you’ve got another—what, two weeks?—to
write one you like better.”
“Aren’t you going to punish me?”
“We’ll deal with it when you get home from work.”
“But that’s not fair! I can’t work for six hours with a
spanking hanging over my head.”
Keaton kissed his forehead. “Go on. Get ready.
Don’t fret so much.”
Well, this is a new one, Aiden thought as he left the
studio. He’d expected Keaton to go ballistic—well,
ballistic for Keaton. He’d anticipated a very thorough
spanking, a lecture on not sabotaging himself, and
possibly some time plaster gazing in his favorite corner.
He suddenly grew suspicious—was Keaton going
easy on him because his audition for Case was this
weekend? He grumbled his way to work. Keaton didn’t
have to baby him. He knew full well when he’d done
something wrong, and what he deserved.
Work passed slowly, and Aiden grew more upset
about the essay. He really didn’t want to rewrite it.
Maybe there was some way he could collect the pieces
from the paper shredder. Ha. Not likely.
He tossed pizza dough and tried to take some
consolation in the fact that his audition might not be a
complete disaster. He’d given in last week and let
Keaton see his monologues. Keaton had been genuinely
impressed—not the fake impressed you had to be when
you didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. And it had
helped Aiden to have someone to deliver the
monologues to—especially his Shakespeare monologue,
which dealt with the nature of love. Not that he loved
Keaton. Nope. Not even a possibility.
He arrived home, unsure what to expect. Keaton
had salad, chicken, and rice on the table.
“I ate at work,” Aiden said.
“You sure about that?” Keaton asked cheerfully.
“Fine.” Aiden grumbled, sitting down.
“How’s your stomach been lately?”
“Okay.”
After dinner, Aiden did the dishes, wondering if
they were, in fact, going to “deal with” this morning. He
went to the bathroom, and when he returned to the
kitchen, there was a typed copy of his personal statement
on the table, along with a notebook and a pen.
“You’re lucky,” Keaton said. “I printed out a copy
when I read it yesterday.”
Aiden eyed the notebook apprehensively. “That is
lucky.”
Keaton clapped him on the shoulder. “But just in
case you should shred this one in a fit of pique, I’d like
you to copy it out by hand, twenty-five times, please.”
“The whole thing?” Aiden demanded.
“The whole thing.”
“That’ll take forever!”
“Not only will you have twenty-five copies, but
you’ll have it committed to memory. No danger of losing
it again.”
Aiden sat in the chair, dreading this as he’d
dreaded little else in his life. A spanking would hurt, but
at least it would be over quickly. Copying a five-
hundred-word statement twenty-five times would take
hou
rs. And he was already tired from work…
Don’t act like you don’t 100 percent deserve this, he
told himself, picking up the pen. He wrote out his own
words, hating them, hating himself. But as he wrote, he
found little corrections to make here and there. By the
third copy, the statement sounded much better.
Editing lost its novelty around copy four.
By copy six, Aiden wanted to die.
Copy ten. His hand was cramping and his eyes
were blurring when Keaton entered the kitchen.
“How’s it going?” Keaton asked.
“Fine,” Aiden muttered, attacking the paper
furiously with his pen, determined to get through this.
“Why don’t you take a break?” Keaton said gently.
Aiden glanced at him, incredulous. “A break? From
a punishment? Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?”
Keaton took the pen from his hand. He sat down
beside Aiden and massaged Aiden’s wrist. “You’ve done
enough for tonight.”
“I’m not even halfway through.”
“You’re done for tonight,” Keaton repeated firmly,
leading Aiden out of the kitchen and upstairs to the
bedroom. He settled Aiden on the bed and retrieved
something from the back of a dresser drawer. As Keaton
approached the bed, Aiden saw that it was a large
wooden hairbrush.
“Jesus, Keaton.” Aiden sat up. Deleting the
document hadn’t been that horrid of a crime. And he’d
written the lines, just like Keaton had asked…
“Shhh,” Keaton said. “Put your head in my lap.”
Aiden did, heart pounding. Keaton ran the brush
through his hair. The bristles were soft, scratching his
scalp just enough to make his body tingle. He sighed
and closed his eyes as Keaton brushed his hair using
long, slow strokes. “I thought you were gonna spank me
with that.”
“I just thought this might feel nice,” Keaton said
softly.
“It does.” Aiden sighed. “You’re always nice to me,
even when I’m bad.”
“You’re not bad. Sometimes you make mistakes,
and I correct you. But you’re not bad.”
Aiden stretched and buried his face in Keaton’s
thigh. “I love you,” he murmured.
Keaton paused midstroke. “What did you say?”
Aiden tensed. “I didn’t—I just meant… I really
appreciate how good you are to me.” He raised his head.
“I see.”
“I shouldn’t have said that.” He tried desperately to
read Keaton’s face. “I know there’s no way—I mean,