Read Online Crossing the Lines by M.Q. Barber - Free Book Online Page A

sponsored me if I wanted to join as a dominant. So I did pretty much the stupidest fucking thing a person can do.”
    “Jay, you’re not that boy anymore.” Henry’s chide carried no more sting than the feathers. “You know better now. Your friend ought to have taken responsibility for you. To have dropped you naked in a new playground…”
    Jay nodded and opened his eyes. “I know, Henry. You’ve said. And I believe you. I do. I just…” He stared at her as if willing her to understand. “I came into the club the next weekend when my buddy was on an out-of-town account, ’cause I didn’t want him to see me being…submissive. I asked for a green ribbon, sure I was up for anything. Got offers for all sorts of things.”
    He grinned. “Turned out I had a real knack for sucking cock. Who knew?”
    She laughed because he wanted her to, but her stomach flipped. His eyes wouldn’t focus on hers. He’d hit the verge of whatever had made him safeword so often. Maybe she didn’t want the image of Jay in pain in her head. Maybe Henry was wrong and she couldn’t handle it.
    “I had a blast for about three months. Or thought I did.” He frowned, rolling his head. “I loved pleasing anyone who asked. Hardly ever turned anyone down. Then I finally saw the guy from the hotel. Cal. I went right up to him and waited to speak to him. We played a few times. It was good. I thought he…I thought we’d clicked. I stopped saying yes to other offers. I trusted him. But it was—I was…”
    Henry smoothed Jay’s hair and rubbed his neck and shoulders. “Take your time, sweet boy. Only as much as you’re comfortable sharing, hmm?”
    Jay took another deep breath. “It got out of control. With…with a whip. I was tied, I couldn’t… There was nowhere to go. I was, umm, bleeding, and it hurt, and I, I used my safeword for the first time. But he didn’t stop.”
    She slammed her teeth together to stop a shocked gasp from escaping. Not that Jay would notice anyway. His gaze went past her, or through her, or into his own head. If reality came anywhere near what she pictured, she didn’t envy him the memory of it.
    “I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me. But then it was…I knew he wouldn’t stop until he wanted to. I was, umm, crying, and shouting, I think, and he…” Jay cried silent tears, no sobs.
    She ached to reach across Henry and touch Jay’s face, but she feared his flinch. Her touch might be unwanted while these memories dominated him.
    He cleared his throat. “That’s when I met Henry. Heard his voice first.”
    She understood in an instant. “He stopped things.”
    “Yeah. I could’ve…it might’ve been bad. Really bad, I mean, if Henry hadn’t insisted Cal stop. I got pretty fucked up. But that didn’t—I was still healing when I went back the next week.”
    A breach of trust that had to have felt like a rape, whether it had been or not, and he’d gone straight back for more. Jesus Christ. Poor Jay.
    “I was a pathetic mess. Physically, emotionally, whatever. Everybody saw it. Nobody would touch me.”
    “They were right not to, my boy.” Henry rested his hand against the muscle sloping up toward Jay’s neck. “What you needed wasn’t something they could give you in a single night.”
    “I couldn’t help myself, though. I practically begged for someone to let me please them.” He’d hated himself. His voice bled raw contempt. He squeezed his eyes half-closed, and his lips curled like he’d smelled something foul. “It was disgusting. I was—”
    “No.” Henry wasn’t to be contradicted. “You were neither pathetic nor disgusting, Jay. You were in need, yes, but the urge you have to please others, to seek their approval, is not wrong, my sweet boy. It’s simply you . And you didn’t know what to do with it because no one had taught you. That’s all it was.”
    Doubt hung in the lines of Jay’s face. Henry loved him and wanted him to feel good about himself. But Henry had such