“I’m putting my trust in you.”

Leather cracked through the air and found taut skin, reddening tanned flesh in an instant. A muffled cry stopped by clenched teeth and masculine pride followed the sound of the impact. Mark twisted in his bonds, crying out as the tall man with the silver temples brought his muscular arm to bear yet again in a ritual they had both come to need.

“You’re going to look after Bobby,” Angelo Vitali intoned cutting another harsh stroke against Mark’s buttocks, red flashing across two red rises. “You’re going to run the operation as I would, without hesitation. Our strength will rest in your hands, understand?”

Mark’s hands clenched into fists, his wrists bound with leather wrapped around his thick forearms several times and attached to opposite posts of the bed. His eyes squeezed shut, their brilliant blue hue hidden by the grimace of pain as the founder of the House of Vitali laid into his lover with all the vicious passion Mark had come to expect and crave from him.

Angelo was dressed impeccably in a suit made for his precise proportions. Black cashmere wool woven tightly over silk lining, shoulders broad, arms long, waist narrow.

Mark did not have the luxury of clothing. This audience with Angelo was undertaken naked, his muscular body flexing under Angelo’s lash. Red stripes ran over his shoulders, his back, his ass, and his thighs. Only his lower back, the location of his kidneys, had been spared Angelo’s affectionate wrath.

“I understand.”

“Yes,” Angelo said. “I think you do.”

He couldn’t see the look of pride on Angelo’s face, but he could hear it in the man’s words. It was no small thing to be entrusted with near total control of the Vitali empire.

Angelo stood with legs spread, head high, shoulders thrown back, the belt wrapped around one hand, the tail of it clasped in the other. He let the end go and whipped it down again, a satisfying CRACK echoing around the palatial bedroom. Not a thing was out of place among the rich mahogany and gold decor, aside from the Egyptian cotton sheets rumpled and sweaty from Mark’s struggles.

“This is your first test,” Angelo said. “Life has been easy for you, Mark, you’ve been living in luxury, spared the harsher decisions. But they will have to be made in my absence. Above all, don’t let Bobby get out of line. Make sure he understands who is in charge. A moment’s insubordination from him belies hours and hours of plotting, do you understand?”

“Yes,” Mark gritted out. “I’ll keep him in line.”

“I’m trusting you, Mark, more than I’ve ever trusted any man.”

“I know.”

The lash landed hard again, punishment accompanying praise. Mark could feel nothing but the sting and the heat, the ache and the swelling. Angelo knew how to give an effective beating. He was never rushed. He took his time. Made an impact. Every single one of the many dozens of welts Mark was wearing right now had been laid with devilish care.

Angelo didn’t ask for submission. He demanded it. If you didn’t want to give it, all the better. He’d hold you down and drag it out of you, leave you screaming and begging to be his.

“What are you Mark?”

The tip of the leather traced a dangerously casual path down the center of Mark’s rear. It was a question with a myriad of potential answers and yet only one right one.

“I’m yours.”

“Yes,” Angelo purred. “You’re mine. An extension of me. I will be gone, but my hand will operate through yours. You know how I operate, Mark. You understand me better than any man in this world.”

“What about Bobby?”

“Bobby understands Bobby,” Angelo purred. “Bobby is an animal. A wild beast. Never mistake him for a man, Mark. If you do that, he will rise up and he will destroy you in a heartbeat.”

A muffled sound in the corner of the room made Mark smile. Bobby wasn’t in his eye line right at that moment, but he could see the young man in his mind’s eye. Naked. Bound. Gagged. Watching.

Angelo didn’t operate in secret. He didn’t talk behind one lover’s back to the other. Bobby was present because he needed to understand what was happening, just like Mark did.

“Are you ready to prove your understanding?”

“Yes,” Mark breathed.

Angelo made a sound which indicated he wasn’t convinced, but could be. He stepped forward and loosened the bonds keeping Mark’s hands in place. As the leather relaxed and then uncoiled from his wrists, Mark pushed up from the bed.

“Show me,” Angelo said, handing the belt to Mark with both hands, a moment of meaning.

Mark took it in both hands too, his head dipping in a reflexive bow. The leather was warm where it had been beating his skin. As he stood, he felt the taut, heated skin complaining at the motion. The pain was bearable however, because it had meaning.

It was tempting to look at Angelo. In any room, Angelo drew all eyes. But he was asking for something else right now. He was asking for Mark to provide leadership none other than the erstwhile terror of Brooklyn, Bobby Vitali. Perfect, sweet, vicious Bobby.

He looked so innocent with those big brown eyes melting above the thick black fabric gag. He wasn’t innocent. He was even more vicious than Angelo.

Mark reached down and picked the younger man up with one arm. Twenty four years old, Bobby was younger, smaller, and physically weaker. None of that would matter if he got the sense he was capable of taking control. Honey Badgers and Tasmanian Devils had nothing on this young man.

Bobby had his hands tied behind his back and his ankles tied as well. He’d been hogtied so it was easy to use the bindings of all four limbs as one easy handle for tossing him around as need be.

“Knife?”

Angelo produced one. A sharp blade was never far away in the Vitali household.

With sure strokes, Mark sliced the ropes binding Bobby’s arms and legs.

“Hold still,” he ordered, grabbing Bobby’s luxurious hair in his fist, he held the man’s head still and ran the back of the blade down his cheek, cutting the gag. Bobby spat it out and gave Mark a smirking look.

“You’re not in charge of me, I don’t give a fuck who says you are.”

“Oh, but I am, boy, and we both know it.” Mark smiled. Bobby had just seen him take a beating, which would have embarrassed most men, but beatings were just part of the day to day activities in their sprawling country mansion home.

Bobby gave him a rebellious stare. This was as much a point of pride for Bobby as it was anything. He didn’t want to be at the bottom of the pecking order. In the outside world he wasn’t the bottom of anything. It was only between Angelo and Mark, he was a contained force for evil.

Mark smiled. God he loved this. Bobby’s rebellion was what made it worth taking him in the first place. He could be such a good boy when he wanted to be - he just so rarely wanted to be. Mark felt himself getting hard, looking at the pale expanses of delicate skin. Bobby’s musculature was softer than his - he didn’t put the effort into working out that Mark did.

“Turn over,” Mark said softly.

Angelo was watching. They could both feel his judgement. Mark saw Bobby’s eyes flicker from his face then go off to the side and focus behind him where Angelo was standing.

“Eyes on me,” Mark said sharply, putting more bass in his voice.

Bobby looked at him, a smirk on his face, as if to say that Mark didn’t really have any control. He was just a proxy for Angelo, that was all. But Mark wasn’t content with that, and it wasn’t true either. It wasn’t Angelo who was hard in that moment. It was him. He wanted to break Bobby in properly - though he had a sense it wouldn’t happen fully now. Once Angelo was gone, they’d have to do this again - and then they’d really see which of the Vitali boys held the power.

“Yes, sir,” Bobby smirked.

“Turn over,” Mark repeated. Having to say it again was already a loss of face. Little shit was making his job a hell of a lot harder than it had to be.

“Make me.”

Bobby wanted it rough. He was going to get it rough. Mark grabbed him by the arm and threw him over onto his front, moving over Bobby to pin him on the bed. He could feel the younger man’s body tense beneath him. There was resistance and rebellion as always. Bobby never submitted.

“I’m going to make you do a whole hell of a lot, boy. You’re not going to put so much as a hair out of line, you understand?” With his hand on the back of Bobby’s neck, Mark worked his knees between the thick thighs.

Bobby’s legs spread for him, the hot little bud of his ass winking. Mark’s cock was getting rampantly, painfully hard, but this wasn’t about fucking him. This was about asserting control in the most primal way possible.

Sliding his hand down from Bobby’s neck, Mark clenched both Bobby’s generous buttocks one in each hand, spreading them apart. There was a groan from Bobby, but Mark knew he wasn’t yet doing anything to touch Bobby where it mattered - his rebellious mind.

“You want me here, don’t you?”

He let his finger drift over the soft skin of the inner cheeks of Bobby’s ass.

“No,” Bobby lied. Mark smiled as he heard the little rebellious grin in Bobby’s voice.

“Well, I guess you want the leather instead,” he said, drawing back and cutting a hot lash across the dead center of Bobby’s cheeks.

He knew exactly how it hurt, and at the same time he knew that it didn’t really pain Bobby all that much at all. In the state Bobby was getting into, there wasn’t really pain per se, there was just sensation. Rebellion, fear, desire. They all changed the way a man felt and acted.

Mark repeated the treatment over and over again, working his arm back and forth, using similar motions to the ones Angelo had made when turning the leather on him - but using more force because Bobby’s ass always took a little more getting used to than the average human.

“Okay!”

“Okay what?” Mark punctuated the question with a hard lash, bursting over Bobby’s already deliciously red cheeks.

“Okay I guess you can fuck me.”

Mark snorted and whapped Bobby’s butt again. “You guess I can fuck you? That’s not really good enough.”

He could see Angelo out of the corner of his eye, watching with a smirk. Angelo was so devilishly attractive and so delightfully cunning. He knew what was going on here better than either Bobby or Mark did. He knew this was little more than a ritual display.

Mark had taken Bobby a thousand times before, but Bobby always maintained an edge of assertiveness. Angelo wanted to see that gone before he left. He wanted to see Mark break him.

It was going to take more than a belt to do that.

Mark tossed the leather to the side, and picked up a tool from the bedside drawer. A vibrator with a capacity for high speed vibration, a wand capable of forcing orgasm after orgasm with the devilish little attachment which never failed to find the prostate.

A little lube, and Mark pushed it inside Bobby’s bright red butt. He turned it on and listened with a smile as Bobby started to wail like a girl. That precious internal bud was being stimulated with the force of thousand cocks all fucking him at once.

“Mark!”

He could hear the desperation in Bobby’s voice as his seed was milked out of him, a wet patch appearing under his body as his cock leaked seminal fluid. Mark reached out and grabbed Bobby’s wrists, pinning them behind his back and forcing the younger man down against the bed as he kept the wand vibrating inside.

“Mark! Oh god! Mark!”

Bobby was barely coherent in minutes. This tool was viciously effective and practically brand new.

“You know what I want to hear,” Mark said calmly as another orgasm raced through Bobby’s twitching body.

“You’re in charge! I’m yours! I’m fucking yours! Now let me gooooooooo!”

Mark kept the probe right where it was and glanced over at Angelo. “Good enough?”

“Good enough,” Angelo smiled.

“Good,” Mark smiled back, turning his attention back to the red assed brat in front of him. “Now, I think you’ve got a little cum left, let’s see, shall we Bobby?”

“OOOOOOoooooooOOOOooooo!”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”