"He collected old photographs of the musicians and the bands he saw."
I stopped in the center of the room and glanced around before my gaze came to rest on him. This was the Drake I was coming to know. Besides surgery and D/s, his father and music were at the core of his identity.
I went to him and slipped my arms around his waist, leaning my head against his chest. He inhaled and embraced me back and the feel of his arms around me ignited my desire. I snuggled against his body, which was so warm and firm under his coat.
"I like this Drake Morgan," I said, looking in his eyes. "I'm seeing him a bit more clearly now."
"Oh?" he said, his eyebrows raised. "And what have you seen?"
"You seem so self-contained."
He sighed and squeezed me more tightly. "My mother had me after my brother died, so I was an only child."
I pulled back. "I never knew you had a brother who died."
Drake nodded and ran his fingers through my hair. "We've never talked much about personal things."
"Tell me."
He exhaled. "He died before I was born from a very rare and aggressive form of leukemia. My mother never recovered, even after she had me. I had to be independent after she left. I think I was a little too independent for married life and that's one reason why Maureen and I split. I was also reluctant to have children because of the chance of passing on the mutation that caused my brother's leukemia, and that was a sore point between us. As soon as she left me, Maureen had a child with her new boyfriend."
"Oh, Drake, that’s so sad." I pulled him more tightly into my embrace, my heart swelling that he felt close enough to me to talk about his late brother and admit that he had been a bad husband. "What was your brother's name?"
"Liam, after my father."
"How old was he when he died?"
"Five."
We stood like that for a moment, his warmth penetrating through his jacket, comforting me.
He sighed and ran his hands over my hair. "I don’t want to think about the past," he said softly. "Right now, I only want to think of me inside of you."
"I thought you had a patient..."
"I'll go later," he said and picked me up once more, carrying me into the bedroom at the back of the apartment, flicking on the light switch as we entered. He let me slide back out of his arms to a standing position, and then he took off my coat, leaving me standing beside the bed in his room while he went to the closet in the entry.
The room was huge, the décor modern, the wood dark, the coverlet luxurious. Heavy drapes fell to the hardwood floor but a sliver of moonlight flooded in through a part in the drapes.
On a table by a huge double-door closet was a thick photo album. I opened the cover to a black and white photograph of a naked woman, gagged, blindfolded and tied up in thin black strips of leather, the strips tied in intricate patterns over her body, surrounding her breasts, between her thighs, framing her shaved labia.
Drake had a book of bondage.
My pulse increased as I flipped a few pages. The photos were of various angles on the same woman, her long blonde hair falling over the end of the bed, her wrists tied together and held over the edge.
In one, a naked man leaned over her, a hand squeezing one breast, his face just out of the image. Although it was almost impossible to tell who the man was, I could see it was Drake by his chin with its characteristic scruff and square jaw. His cock was inside her, her knees bent and spread wide, each of her ankles attached to leather straps that were fastened to the foot of the bed.
These were Drake's subs. These were photographs of his rope work and of him having sex with them. It surprised me that he'd have a book like this, given his desire to protect his identity, but if you didn’t know it, you couldn't tell it was Drake. His face never appeared in any picture.
I felt like I was snooping, but I also couldn't stop turning the pages. The photographs were artistic, the lighting careful, the angles intended to create interesting shadows and compositions on the page. It was really very beautiful, despite the explicit content.
Drake entered the room with two shot glasses of vodka and came to an abrupt halt just inside the door to the bedroom.
"Oh," he said, his voice a bit hesitant. "I see you've found my book."
CHAPTER FOUR
I nodded without saying anything, unable to stop turning page after page. In one taken from the side of the bed, a man – Drake – straddled a woman who was blindfolded and tied up hands and feet to the bed frame, his erection between her lips as he leaned against the wall, his hands spread wide. The muscular cheeks of his ass were clenched as if he were thrusting. My body responded to the blatant sexuality, my muscles tensing. Yet, my throat was choked with jealousy.