His first concerns were far more immediate.
“Kane. Kane!”
Everet grappled for a hold on Kane’s hair with his other hand. Finally, he managed to turn Kane’s head toward him. He held him still, trying to force Kane to meet his gaze.
“I’m not going to let you go. Stop struggling. You’re just going to tire yourself out.”
Either Kane saw sense or, more likely, he was already exhausted. Either way, he fell still beneath Everet. He stopped trying to scream against Everet’s bloodstained hand.
Everet waited a few heartbeats, and carefully removed his fingers.
“You booby trapped the door!” Kane accused.
“Yes,” Everet agreed.
Kane stared up at him in shock. He opened and closed his mouth a few times before he finally settled on something to say. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t want you to sneak out while I was asleep.”
Apparently that kind of logic didn’t appeal to Kane. He started to wriggle again. “Let me go.”
“No. You’re mine.”
The pronouncement made Kane freeze. This time, he looked at Everet voluntarily. Their faces were so close together, Kane looked more than a little blurry, but Everet could still see that something about what he’d just said appealed to the other man.
“You’re mine,” he repeated. “Did you start doubting that?”
Kane said nothing. The answer was still obvious.
Everet dropped his head until his forehead rested against Kane’s temple. “There’s no need to be scared,” he said. “You’re mine. I won’t let you wander off.”
Kane took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. “Why did you let me sleep with you in your bed?” As calm as he’d somehow managed to make his voice, confusion still infiltrated every syllable. Each word was carefully spaced out. The answer to the question was important.
“Because I wanted you there,” Everet whispered, keeping the words just between them, a wonderful little secret they could keep entirely to themselves. “That’s the only reason anything happens in that room, isn’t it? I wanted us to sleep curled up close, because I knew it would feel good—for both of us.”
Another deep breath shifted Kane’s torso. “It wasn’t just to stop me from running away?” Suspicion filled each word.
Everet let out a chuckle. “Sweetheart, I think my early warning system was the only thing I needed for that. It let me know you were leaving in plenty of time to catch you, didn’t it?” Everet lifted his head so he could look down at Kane and see him more clearly.
The little magpie nodded his agreement.
“Did you like sleeping in my bed with me?” Everet asked.
Kane offered him another little nod.
“Do you want to go back to bed?”
Kane hesitated.
“You’re still allowed,” Everet said, the moment he guessed the reason. “Nothing that happens in that room can be taken away as punishment, remember?”
Kane graced him with one more nod.
Everet smiled encouragingly as he pulled himself painfully to his feet and helped Kane to stand alongside him.
The magpie was dressed. Everet was stark bollock naked. When he tore his attention away from Kane, Everet noticed that there were several men leaning against the railings that looked down over the staircase.
“Show’s over,” Everet said, his tone very different to the one he’d used with Kane. “I suggest you all go back to your beds.” Hand in hand with his magpie, he walked up the stairs and past the group.
“No one would have blamed you if you were trying to kill him.”
Everet turned on his heel. It was impossible to tell which one of the group had spoken. “I’ll put any avian who hurts a man under his protection into the bird cages,” he told them all. “And I’ll see to it that he grows old down there.”
He might not have looked like the head of the new internal-security department at the nest, but he bloody well was. Any avian who forgot it would have to deal with him—naked and whipped, or otherwise.
He spun away from them and led Kane back to the apartment. The siren that went off if anyone opened the door after he’d sealed it for the night had obviously been a very good precaution.
When Everet closed the door behind them this time, he once again pressed the button on the discreet little device fitted high up on the doorframe, reactivating it just to be on the safe side and, more importantly, to make sure Kane knew that he still cared if he left or not.
“Come on,” Everet said. “We’ve still got a few hours before we have to get up. Back to bed.”
The moment Everet sat on the edge of the bed, his body presented him with the bill for all that energetic chasing around. It was to be paid immediately, and in throbbing discomfort. He bit down upon his tongue as the first wave of it ripped through his body. A thousand needles stabbed into his back, burying themselves deep in his flesh along the lines where the whip had left its marks.
Everet closed his eyes, sick to his stomach. It took several minutes before he was able to risk opening his eyes again. Moving very cautiously, he looked over his shoulder.
Kane sat on the other side of the bed, uncertainty radiating from his every pore. “I could put more ointment on your back, if you like.”
Despite it all, Everet managed to smile. “Yes, that would be good. Thank you.” Anything to do with Kane’s first ever attempt to offer a man something other than sex to make up for something he’d done wrong was fantastic in Everet’s book, even if it involved letting someone touch his back when every logical bit of his mind protested at the top of its voice.
Logic couldn’t compete with either instinct or his desire to be a good master to a man he cared for more deeply by the day.
Chapter Eleven
“Just out of curiosity, how pissed off at me are you?”
Everet blinked and tried to focus on the world around him. His brain was still more than half-asleep. The signals it sent out were sluggish after a night where his back had made even dozing difficult, and deep slumber impossible.
Kane really had picked the worst possible day to decide he wanted to be a morning person. The magpie was wide-awake, sitting upright and cross-legged on his side of the bed. The blankets were pushed back. He was completely naked.
Focusing on the view became more of a priority. Everet’s morning erection quickly stiffened further. His brain stumbled into action at a far more leisurely pace and pointed out that Kane had asked a question that he’d yet to answer.
“I don’t remember saying I’m pissed off at all,” Everet said. His voice sounded thick with sleep. He yawned, thought about stretching, and checked that idea before it even made it out of the gate. While he lay very still on the bed, his back was only moderately sore but he was sure any kind of movement would change that very quickly. “What time is it?”
Kane’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t have to
say
you were pissed off. I’m not an idiot. I can put one and one together.”
Everet looked up at him. “The time, Kane.”
He huffed, but he looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table. “Ten past six.”
Everet relaxed slightly. He still had plenty of time to get Kane to work punctually. “Thank you. And, to return to the original subject. You might not be an idiot, but you are wrong. I’m not mad at you.”
“I ran away,” Kane said.
“I remember.” Everet knew he’d never forget that heart-stopping moment when the alarm went off and he realized Kane no longer lay at his side.
“I broke the rule about leaving the apartment,” Kane pushed.
“Yes, you did.”
“Well?” he demanded.
Everet took as deep a breath as he dared. The skin on his back complained, but it didn’t burst into flames, he’d apparently calculated an acceptable lung capacity correctly. “We do need to talk about that,” he admitted.
However, he was damn sure that wouldn’t happen while he lay face down on the bed. Some conversations required easy eye-contact and he had no doubt this would prove to be one of those exchanges.
“Have you been in the shower yet?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You can have the bathroom first,” Everet said, ignoring the anger in the other man’s voice. “Go on. We’ll talk in the living room once we’re both dressed.”
Kane huffed, but he also did as he was told. Everet listened to doors open and close. If he strained his hearing, he could just about make out the sound of the shower and Kane splashing about in there.
Everet risked a slightly deeper breath and winced as the skin across his back drew against the whip marks.
It was like the biggest sticking plaster ever invented, and there was only one way to deal with removing it. Kill or cure. Everet jerked himself into a sitting position, pulling that sticking plaster off in one harsh movement.
His head spun. His stomach heaved. He braced himself with his hands on the mattress in front of him and waited for the worst to pass. How anyone could find a whipping erotic was beyond him. How anyone could put up with the after-effects just to get off, baffled him.
He shook his head slightly. It took every scrap of courage he could pull together to make himself shuffle across to the edge of the bed, alter his position and drop his feet onto the floor.
“You can do this,” he muttered, and forced himself to stand. Each new movement made him wish he could claw the skin off his back and fling it out of the window, pitching it as far away as his strength would allow.
Standing wasn’t easy while dizziness ruled his world, but he managed to stay on his feet. He thanked any god who listened that Kane wasn’t there to see him take his first tottering steps that morning.
A shower was out of the question. The idea of water falling on his back made a cold sweat break out across his skin. Everet moved shakily to the wardrobe and grabbed a pair of jeans.
He wasn’t sure if the pain signals from his back became less frantic, or if the worst of the pain dissipated once he’d made his first major movements of the day. It was quite possible that the sheer bloody mindedness, that most people considered the hallmark of a raven’s psyche, had kicked in.
It really didn’t matter to Everet what it was that helped him complete his self-assigned tasks for the morning. He cared about ensuring that, by the time Kane walked back into the room, he had forced his body into a clean set of clothes.
Black jeans, black boots, black T-shirt. Everet nodded to himself. He was ready to face the world, or at least ready to square off against a magpie in a bratty mood.
Kane didn’t knock before he walked into the bedroom, but Everet felt the other man’s gaze on him announcing his presence, loud and clear. Kane was even more wary now. He couldn’t have proclaimed his fear of retaliation more plainly if he’d cowered in the corner with his arms raised to shield his head and fend off the blows he clearly expected to rain down upon him. He’d obviously been whipped often enough to know how a man felt the following morning.
“Get dressed and join me in the living room.” Everet walked out, making sure he held his head high and kept his spine straight, no matter how uncomfortably his T-shirt rubbed against his back.
He only had a few minutes to settle himself on the sofa, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees in an effort to spare his back any contact with the sofa cushions. It was just enough time for him to decide what his first question should be.