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Chapter one
Aaron had long since figured out Kenny’s game.
He couldn’t live with a master of the mind for two years and not learn a thing or two. Not that he minded playing, either. But the thing was, Kenny could have him on his knees with a single look if he wanted. He didn’t need this slow-burn build-up, drawn-out performance he favoured like his pair of old comfy slippers. Aaron would crawl for him, no coaxing required. Kenny knew that.
Which was precisely why he made him wait.
Why he dragged it out.
Which was exactly what he was doing right fucking then.
Arsehole.
Aaron got it. This was Intro to Psych. Foundation fucking year. Fuck it, they taught this at GCSE level. Conditioning. Positive reinforcement. Classical fucking Pavlovian seduction. That’s what Kenny was doing. Aaron knew it. As a fucking graduate of the forensic persuasion and taught by Dr Kenneth Lyons himself for most of it, he was smart enough to know what was going on in his own fucking house. By his own bloody boyfriend. Because Kenny was a sadist. Used affection like a scalpel. Precise. Deliberate. Calibrated to elicit a reaction. Not praise for the sake of it. Not needy, or desperate. Oh, no. Kenny gave compliments the way he gave orgasms. Intensely, and only when earned. And because of that, they were addictive.
Aaron knew what Kenny was doing.
Knew the game. The psychology. The profile. Aaron could write the lecture himself. And he heard his own bored, mocking delivery in his head as he sat here, at the dining room table, the window beside him rattling faintly in the sea wind while he scribbled his fake name and fake shit all over the bloody Disclosure and Barring BS forms.
“Seduction through strategic withholding. Operant conditioning through delayed gratification. Control through softness.”
Outside, the coastline sulked beneath a heavy grey sky, the winter tide chewing quietly at the edges of the beach. Gulls wheeled lazily above slate-coloured waves, and somewhere beyond the dunes, someone’s dog barked into the wind. But inside, the cottage was all warm wood and dimmed lamplight, radiator ticking under the windowsill, the air thick with the faint scent of Kenny’s coffee and whatever ridiculous vanilla candle Aaron had accidentally come to like. Cosy. Lulling. A scene set by Kenny to orchestrate a patient undoing.
Still he fell for it.
Every fucking time.
Even though Aaron could see the strings, he still danced. Still trembled under the subtle brush of fingers that shouldn’t mean anything. Like earlier, when Kenny had walked past the dining table, spouting something about his A Level lecture prep—Freud or Jung or whatever other long-dead daddy complex bore—and as he passed, he stroked the back of his finger up Aaron’s neck. There. Beneath his ear. Hardly touched him, really. But it was enough to make Aaron freeze mid-form, pen stuttering on the line, because that was how it always started.
Kenny’s opening move.
His first piece in their private game of seduction chess.
And that nothing touch made Aaron hyperaware of every inch of skin he had.
Kenny didn’t even look back as he did it. He wandered off into the kitchen as if he hadn’t set Aaron’s nerve endings on fire, phone still at his ear, talking about “attachment patterns in borderline presentations” as if he wasn’t currently dismantling Aaron with the same technique.
Aaron dropped his pen. Slumped back in the chair.
Fuck.
It was starting.
And he hated it.
Hated how much he loved it. Craved it. Was a fucking slave to it.
A sharp snap of fingers from the kitchen had Aaron jerking his head up, glare already loaded. Kenny’s eyes met his, brows raised.
Aaron mouthed a defiant, What?
Kenny pointed at the unfinished forms without breaking stride on the call. “Yes, absolutely, I can expand on that.”
Aaron flipped him the finger.
Kenny didn’t break eye contact, but his voice stayed smooth for the phone. “Yes, I’ve got significant first-hand observation of oppositional defiance and aversion to perceived authority. Fascinating how it plays out in real time.”
Aaron poked his tongue into his cheek and made the wank sign.
Kenny cocked his head, arching an eyebrow but his tone never wavered. “No, I agree. Discipline is often the only effective intervention.” He curved his lips the faintest fraction as he said it, a private smile meant only for Aaron.
Aaron snorted. Turned away. He should be immune to all this by now.
He wasn’t, though.
He was pathetic.
Because part of him—the shameful, sick part that was utterly Kenny’s through and through—craved the authority. The attention. The affection given only when earned. And the delicious ache of anticipation.
He wanted the fucking reward.
The praise.
Cause when Kenny finally breathed that, “Good boy,” and shoved him down, touched him like he bloody meant it, Aaron turned to the gooey, grovelling mush Kenny had made him and wanted him to be. For him only. He became a fucking walking Crème Egg of a man. Split wide, soft in the middle, shell cracked for Kenny to lick him clean, lapping up every sweet, fucked-up inch until Aaron melted on his tongue and stayed there.
Prick.
Aaron stared at the kitchen doorway. Kenny was still talking. Still wearing those jeans. That fucking shirt and jumper combo that made Aaron want to peel it off with his teeth. Hair down, glasses on, looking like the world’s hottest moral dilemma.
The bloke could say it.
“Hey, baby. Wanna fuck?”
Aaron would drop the forms, bend over the table, and let him have at it. No hesitation, no buildup, no need for preamble. Kenny knew that. Knew exactly how easy it would be. But that wasn’t his style. Oh, no, no. That was too easy. Too ordinary. Too normal.
And Dr Kenneth Lyons had long since walked away from the illusion of normalcy, peeling it off like an old skin the moment Aaron entered his world and made control feel holy.
And this—the teasing, the praise, the unbearable waiting—was who Kenny was now.
Not the man who asked.
The one who made Aaron ache until he begged to be undone.
And Aaron would.
Every time.
Eyes wide open, crawling to the edge to feel Kenny pull him back by a single whispered word.
Sure, over the year or so they’d been here, living in this quasi-normal domesticity on the Isle of Wight, they’d had the occasional fast and filthy. Moments when the control snapped, and Aaron clawed at him ‘cause he thought the world was ending and the only thing that could ground him was skin, sweat, and cock. Kenny’s cock specifically. He’d climbed onto Kenny’s lap before the man could protest, rutted through layers of clothes, dragging feral lips along his throat, yanking his hair, begging without saying a single bloody word. And Kenny, when he read him right, let it happen.
Because that was the point.
It wasn’t about surrender, not in those moments.
It was about rescue.
Intercepting whatever spiral Aaron was mid-fall through and giving him something solid to hold onto. Something real and unfiltered. Kenny didn’t give in because he lost control in those moments. Oh no. He gave in because he saw Aaron and knew when he needed rough over ritual.
So on those occasions, Kenny had unzipped himself, pulled Aaron close, and fucked him hard. Right there. On that sofa there, the one in front of the roaring open fire. Curtains wide open, no nets, anyone could’ve walked by on their way to the patch of the beach that was a dog walker’s heaven.
They had been hot fucks.
But more than that…they were his lifeline.
They’d done it in the kitchen a few times, too. Kenny mid-stir of some sad bastard dinner and Aaron was antsy and needy. He’d ground himself over the counter, give a sultry dance or two to the classics being played on the jukebox, like the one that was playing right then, Peggy Sue’s Fever, and Aaron would whisper filth until Kenny shoved him over the worktop and gave him a stuffing with the oven timer still ticking.
And once—fuck, yeah—once Aaron had crawled under Kenny’s desk and sucked him off while he marked some dead-eyed student’s half-arsed essay on Erikson’s psychosocial stages, Kenny’s red pen trembling with every bob of Aaron’s head.
But see, those weren’t the norm.
They were lapses. Cracks in Kenny’s carefully constructed control. Rare enough to be treasured. Dangerous enough to be addictive. Because most of the time, Kenny made him wait. Made him want. And the fucker made him beg.
Fuck, he was so fucking horny right now.
He shoved the forms aside and clicked his pen closed. More for dramatic effect than actual productivity. Chaos, ever the loyal golden retriever who left his side even less than Kenny did, huffed at his feet, reshuffled himself, then promptly fell back to sleep. Aaron glanced up to Kenny again, leaning against the counter mid-phone call, all calm and businesslike, talking rotas and lecture prep unbothered that he was dismantling Aaron’s will to function.
And that fucking hand.
Not the one holding the phone to his ear. The other one. Resting there. Fingers long and elegant, tapping the rim of his coffee mug. Those fingers had been inside him. Knuckle-deep, curling slow, ruthless. Stroking that spot again and again until Aaron was sobbing, tears spilling down his cheeks, begging for more, for anything, for everything. Until he didn’t know where the pain ended and the praise began.
And now, over the next few days, those same fingers would trace a languid, ruinous path across Aaron’s body as part of this sadistic little edging routine Kenny had him trapped in.
Aaron knew the order. Had memorised it.
He’d counted them. Those chess moves. Subtle touches. Every place Kenny touched him during this gradual, exquisite torture. As if it was science. A bloody forensic exercise.
Fifteen. At least.
His inner wrist, where he now had a new tattoo. A Scorpio glyph inked in fine black lines curling into a barbed tail with the feint outline of a moth inked above the curve. It was a quiet nod to the part of him that still chased the light even when it burned. Kenny liked to press his thumb there and say, “Steady.”
The notch at his collarbone, where praise turned to punishment.
The back of his knees. Who even knew?
His ankles. Psychosomatic now; a single stroke and Aaron twitched as if shocked.
The soft indent at the base of his spine.
His ears, where Kenny whispered filth in that calm, clipped tone of his, and Aaron would melt.
The arch of his foot. Fucking hell.
The underside of his cock. Naturally.
His hipbones. Bitten, not kissed.
His throat. His mouth. His scalp. The curve of his jaw. The insides of his arms. And right beneath his navel where Kenny sometimes rested a hand and waited.
It wasn’t anatomy. It was psychology.
Kenny knew which touches soothed, which ones sparked arousal, and which ones made Aaron fold in on himself with a shudder and go pliant in his hands. Because he’d learned them. Over time. Piece by piece. Each one studied, tested, refined.
Bollocks. He adjusted his jeans.
Then watched Kenny end the call, set his phone down on the counter and pick up his coffee, gaze settling on him. Aaron felt it in his bones. This was going to be one of those weeks. He could see it in his fucking eyes. The glint, the restrained smirk, the languid lift of that stupid coffee mug to his lips without once breaking eye contact. They were two opponents in the ring. Psychological warfare through praise and delayed gratification. Waiting to see who cracked first.
Well, fuck that bollocks.
Aaron shoved the chair back with a sharp scrape, and Chaos scrambled to his feet a second later. Conditioned too now, poor thing. He recognised the signs of a full-blown Aaron episode. One glance and he clearly clocked that Aaron was making a beeline for the main daddy in the house, so he kept his distance.
Smart boy.
Aaron stormed into the kitchen, heat coiling in his gut, fists balled in the sleeves of his hoodie, armed with half a plan and no fucking clue what to do with it. Rage and want tangling behind his ribs like barbed wire.
He stepped in close, invading Kenny’s space, toes lined up in challenge. “You’re doing it on purpose.”
Kenny arched a brow. “Drinking coffee?”
“That’s not coffee. That’s psychological manipulation in a mug.”
Kenny smirked. “You say that like it’s not delicious.”
“It’s not. It’s vile.”
“Not from me.” Kenny then clamped his hand around the back of Aaron’s head, firm and possessive, tilting him until their mouths hovered a breath apart. He didn’t kiss him. Aaron knew he wouldn’t. No. He let the distance ache, voice dropping to a low command, “Open.”
Aaron obeyed before he could think better of it, instinct and want tearing through him, and Kenny swept his tongue across his, bitter coffee seared into the taste. Their lips never touched. Aaron leaned in anyway, chasing it, desperate. But Kenny released him, leaving nothing but the sting of absence.
Kenny’s eyes glinted with triumph and the sound tearing out of Aaron was pathetic. Half-growl, half-groan. He surged closer, dragging his mouth across Kenny’s throat, licking through the coarse beard, desperate to leave something—anything—of himself behind. His tongue, his teeth, his trembling body. A mark. A claim. A plea.
Two can play this game.
He could force Kenny to react, to feel.
Except Kenny didn’t falter. He raised his cup, sipping his revolting coffee as if Aaron weren’t spiralling against him. As if the frantic licks and ragged breaths were nothing but static noise. The humiliation scorched through Aaron’s chest, hot and unbearable. He was trembling, undone, while Kenny stood steady, untouchable.
Aaron bit his earlobe harder, punishment and prayer tangled in the act, and his voice cracked against Kenny’s skin, stripped bare of pride. “Fuck me.”
It wasn’t defiance anymore. It was surrender, raw and humiliating, the need spilling out of him no matter how hard he tried to hold it back. And Kenny, smirking, coffee in hand, hadn’t even needed to kiss him to bring him there.
“You’ve got forms to finish.”
“And you’ve got me on the verge of causing a national incident. You can’t expect me to sit and fill out boring arse forms when I’m this fucking hard.”
Kenny tilted his head. “But I need you soft, baby.”
Aaron bristled. “I am soft. Look at me. I’m a walking, throbbing marshmallow, pathetic enough to melt at your feet if that’s what gets you off.”
“You’re very pretty when you beg, I’ll give you that.” Kenny took a sip of his coffee, the reflective slurp somehow infuriating and refined all at once. Obnoxious, but maddeningly him.
“Fuck you.”
Kenny arched a brow. “See? That’s not soft, baby.” Then—fuck him—he cupped Aaron’s erection over his jeans. “That’s hard. Rock hard.”
Then he walked away.
Aaron stayed rooted, vibrating with frustration, cock aching, pride stinging raw. He could feel the victory hanging in the air, smug and absolute, and it made his skin crawl. No way was he letting it end there. Not without pushback. Not without something. If he rolled over too easily, Kenny won. And, fine, okay, maybe Kenny already had. But Aaron wasn’t about to let that be the last word. Not when the heat in his body was screaming for an outlet, and his chest tightened with humiliation and overwhelming need.
So he did what any self-respecting brat with a praise kink and no patience would do.
He popped the button on his jeans.
Shoved them down just enough.
Fisted himself.
“Wanna watch me come without you?”
Kenny stilled. Nothing more than a slight tilt of his head as if this were simply a psychological event to observe. Aaron half expected him to keep walking. Vanish down the hall, step by deliberate fucking step, and shut himself into that sanctified room of his and catalogue the moment in neat, clinical notes, leaving Aaron to fall apart alone.
But he didn’t.
He turned. Slowly. With grace. And a control that made Aaron want to scream.
Then Kenny spoke, cool and precise. “If you make yourself come, that’ll add days onto this. Plural.”
Aaron froze his fist on his cock, breath catching. Pavlov’s fucking dog—that’s what he was, conditioned down to muscle and bone. One command and his body betrayed him. He swallowed, heat crawling up his throat, and snapped back anyway. Because Kenny loved him more when he did that.
“Maybe I want more days. Maybe I wanna see how long you can keep this up before you bend me over the table and fuck me so hard you break your own spine.”
Kenny lifted his coffee cup, lips curving around the rim. “You underestimate my agility.”
Aaron held his gaze. Kenny sipped his coffee. And it was Aaron who broke first, breathing out a laugh, shaking his head, looking away even as he felt the quiet rumble of Kenny’s amusement under his skin. Fuck, he loved this man. Especially like this. When he put Aaron in his place, held it all with irrefutable ease, and found the whole thing amusing.
But the game wasn’t over. Not yet. Aaron slid his foreskin back, circling his thumb through the slick at the tip, then raised it to his mouth. He sucked the taste off with a low hum, eyes locking back on Kenny.
Yes. That landed.
Kenny crossed the room with quiet certainty, eyes never leaving Aaron’s.
Aaron’s heart thumped with the naive, hopeless spark that maybe Kenny might drop to his knees and take over.
But he didn’t.
Of course he didn’t.
And worse? Aaron didn’t even want him to.
Kenny curled one hand around Aaron’s wrist, steady and sure, then wrapped the other around Aaron’s cock and stopped him. Held him still with unbearable tenderness.
“Behave, baby.” Kenny pressed his thumb where his pulse thudded. “You’re nearly there.”
Aaron’s knees almost gave out.
But Kenny took his cock from his hand, and Aaron let him tuck him back inside his jeans, all slow and sweet and infuriating. He didn’t fight it. Why would he? This turned him on more than anything he had ever known in his entire fucking life. So he stood there and let him, heat in his cheeks and something fierce and aching blooming in his chest.
Because it wasn’t about the orgasm.
It was about Kenny choosing when Aaron got to fall apart.
And telling him he was good for waiting.
Good for wanting.
Good.
Kenny lingered a moment longer, drifting his gaze over Aaron’s face, then he leaned in, close enough for his lips to brush the shell of Aaron’s ear, and breathed it out, smooth as silk. “Good boy.”
Aaron nearly fucking came.
Two words, spoken with that quiet authority Kenny used when he wanted Aaron wrecked without ever laying a finger on him. A reward. A benediction. A promise wrapped in satin and precision.
He trembled. His cock throbbed in his jeans. And a whimper scraped the back of his throat.
And Kenny—fucker—knew.
Of course, he knew.
Smug and satisfied, he stepped back. Turned. Walked away as if nothing had happened and left Aaron standing there, wrecked and buzzing and trembling in the ruins of his restraint.
Aaron blinked after him, stunned and soaked in heat.
Then, breathless, hoarse, because of course he was Aaron, and because Kenny loved him for never going down without a fight, Aaron shouted, “Masochist!”
Kenny chuckled. “Think you mean sadist.” Then he raised his coffee in a lazy salute and climbed the stairs, leaving Aaron in the wreckage.
Chaos padded in a moment later, tongue lolling, tail wagging, and barked at Aaron’s feet. Aaron crouched, ruffled the fur between his ears.
“You wanna go for a walk, huh?” He grabbed the lead from the hook on the wall. “All right then. C’mon, boy.” He clipped the lead, scratched gently behind the dog’s ear, and said, “Good boy.”
Then froze.
Rolled his eyes.
Groaned.
“Fuck praise. Fuck edging. Fuck fucking psychology.” Then, as he walked to the door, he yelled up the stairs and raised his middle finger. “And fuck you!”
“Could you grab some stamps while you’re out?” Kenny called down. “Need to send these Christmas cards.”
Aaron cursed under his breath, then yanked the door open.
Kenny’s voice trailed down the stairs. “That’s a good boy.”
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