This story features Blake and Vadim from Pledged, but it can be enjoyed as a standalone. Content warning for harsh S/M including CBT. If you don’t know what CBT is, it might not be for you!
Technically, Blake made it to the Delta Iota Kappa house in plenty of time. He hung out on the stone wall in the courtyard with some of the guys from his pledge class, whiling away the last few minutes before the mandatory house meeting. November had the sun fading quickly, a visual reminder that the clock was ticking. Xiang stood up with a joke about the consequences of being late, and rather than follow him inside, Blake dallied long enough to stroll into the meeting so far past starting time that his tardiness couldn’t help but be noticed. His goal? To receive exactly the consequences Xiang had joked about.
Today that goal would be realized. Blake was about to be paddled.
Last year the paddling would’ve been administered by his very own boyfriend, Vadim. But then last year he wouldn’t have had to act out to get what he needed. Vadim had happily administered punishments in his room nearly every single night—intimate over-the-knee spankings, sharp swats with a ruler, an occasional session with the belt or whatever other implement Vadim happened to come across.
Last year, Blake had been a very happy freshman. School was interesting, pledging a fraternity was fun, and Vadim was everything he’d never known he wanted in a boyfriend—sadistic and sweet, arguing baseball stats or coaching him through a weight-lifting set one minute, turning him over his knee to send him on an erotic journey to heaven the next.
But Vadim had up and graduated. He’d decided against grad school, which was the option Blake had been rooting for, and had gotten a job. He hadn’t moved far, thank God—Blake had been absolutely panicked by some of the job offers Vadim received—but he lived off campus now. And that changed everything.
Over Blake’s strenuous arguments to the contrary, they only saw each other on weekends, because Vadim was determined that should Blake have what he called “the full college experience” which meant not running off-campus to his apartment every night. Sure, there were spankings on the weekends, but it wasn’t enough, not when Blake had gotten used to it as a regular thing.
He didn’t want to wait three years to live with Vadim. He’d gladly drop out of school altogether if school was going to keep them apart. The hell with the full college experience. He’d rather get spanked and fucked and curl up with his boyfriend to watch basketball on TV than hang out with a bunch of straight dudes in the frat house den or attend mandatory house meetings.
But since Vadim wouldn’t let him quit the frat, he could at least take advantage of its best feature: its Chief Punishment Officer, which this year was a mild-mannered junior named Claude.
Just being in the reception room, looking at the rows of chairs laid out to face the paddle hanging on it ceremonial hook, had him grinning. He’d taken one the most intense punishments of his life in this room when Vadim gave him ten of his worst, right on his bare ass with the entire house watching. One of the strokes had brushed against the back of his sack by accident. The next one landed square on his balls—not at all by accident. Blake had nearly passed out and nearly come, both in the same heart-stopping moment.
Today wouldn’t be anything like that. Assuming Claude stuck to his usual routine, Blake would receive his punishment with his clothes on, and judging from what he’d watched other brothers take, the blows would be no better than middling-hard. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers.
He lurked in the back corner as the reception room filled with spectators, too excited to mingle. His dick was chubby from anticipation, his stomach a mix of excited and unsettled. Intentionally getting in trouble might not have been the best choice, but fuck he wanted the punishment he’d earned.
If Vadim would take care of him more often…
If Vadim would let him move in…
If Vadim weren’t standing in front of him right now—
“Something you forgot to tell me?”
“Vadim!” Blake’s voice came out in an undignified squeak. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Are you filling in for Claude today?” That would be perfect, exactly the best thing that could happen.
“That might’ve been possible if you’d told me this was happening. What did you do, Blake?” Vadim crossed his arms in that way that made his biceps bulge.
“I was late to a house meeting.”
“Why?”
“Sometimes life happens?” He couldn’t bring himself to lie about it. Being late on purpose was bad enough.
Vadim looked like he’d figured out the on-purpose part. He had his sunglasses on, as he always did outside his own dimly-lit apartment, but Blake had learned to read his expressions without the benefit of being able to see his eyes, and this expression was hurt.
He’d never hurt Vadim before. Sexually, the pain only went one way, and though at times he acted out instead of communicating in a grownup fashion, Vadim with his three extra years of maturity had always been patient with his mistakes. Frustrated sometimes, punishing always. But patient.
Today Vadim looked neither patient nor mature nor like he was about to go up to the front of the room and take down the ceremonial paddle and apply it unceremoniously to Blake’s ass. He just looked hurt.
“Go on, then.” Vadim uncrossed his arms and tucked his hands into the back pockets of his faded jeans. “They’re calling for you.”
“I don’t have to.” Now he wished he didn’t.
“You do.”
“I could quit the frat.”
“Go get your paddling, Blake. You wanted it, you earned it. Go get it.”
Blake was accustomed to doing what Vadim told him. Aside from that one topic of living on-campus versus spending time at Vadim’s, Vadim never steered him wrong. And the whole room was waiting for him to walk up there and accept his punishment. What choice did he have? He trudged up to the front of the room, trying to remember why this was sexy.
Claude was up there waiting for him, dressed in preppy clothes that would’ve been equally at home in the 1950s and holding the paddle like it was a badminton racquet. He told Blake to bend over and brace his hands on the table, as if Blake didn’t know exactly what position to assume, as if he hadn’t jealously watched a half dozen other men assume it since the term began. In Vadim’s day, he would’ve had his pants around his ankles, maybe even his undershorts, but Claude didn’t play that way. Which was why Blake had worn a pair of lightweight track pants with only a jock beneath them—the better to feel what Claude dished out.
The first blow was a warmup, calling his ass to order. The second spread smooth fire across his cheeks—the glow of pleasure yet to come. Claude didn’t have Vadim’s strength, but the wood of the paddle was harsh and unyielding, and it landed with a satisfying crack that had Blake’s dick thickening and his brain flipping over into that space where pain was pleasure.
The third strike delivered just a hint of that pleasure. His body tensed, eager for more, alert to the sounds behind him—the rustle of people moving, a light current of laughter and conversation. The remembrance of that day when Vadim had used him so harshly and openly in front of the whole house flooded him. His cock grew hard as he waited in breathless anticipation for the next blow.
“We’re done here,” Claude said. “You can stand up now. You look a little silly bent over like that.” He hung the paddle on its hook and came around to help him up. “Did I hit you too hard?”
Blake tried to shake off his buzz, feeling edgy and unsettled and needing so much more. “It was fine.”
“All right, then. Don’t be late again. You think I like having to paddle people?” And Claude winked, because he probably did like it. He walked away, joining his brothers in a mass exodus, no one caring about Blake now that the spectacle was over. No one except Vadim.
“Did you enjoy that?” Vadim asked.
“Not really.”
“Got your dick hard though, didn’t it?”
“Bet it got yours hard too.”
“You think watching my boyfriend cheat on me turns me on?”
“How was I cheating on you? You’re the one making me be part of this fraternity, and those are the rules. As long as I’m a DIK brother, I’m going to get paddled sometimes. Just like you were paddling the hell out of everyone last year, Chief Punishment Officer.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“Because we agreed to it, for one thing, and because we both enjoyed it, for another.”
Those were true facts. Vadim had offered to resign, knowing Blake didn’t really like the idea of him paddling other people, but in the end they’d settled on some ground rules, the most important being that any resulting arousal would be worked out on Blake’s body. Punishments were foreplay, and Blake had thrilled to know he was the only one who could take what Vadim really had to dish out.
“And because you did it on purpose,” Vadim added with a weariness that tore at Blake’s heart. “How would you have felt if I’d gotten some brother in trouble just so I could have the thrill of paddling him?”
“Terrible.” He couldn’t even quantify the level of betrayal that would’ve been. “But I don’t have a thing for Claude. Promise.”
“Any arm will do, I guess.”
“It’s not like I’ve been getting yours!” There. He’d admitted it. He’d intentionally sought out punishment from another man because he wasn’t getting enough from Vadim, and now that he’d said it, he could see how it sounded like cheating. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t fix it.”
“Then punish me. Hurt me. I’ve been a bad boy, and I deserve it.”
Vadim shook his head. “That’s not how this works. I don’t spank you because I’m mad at you. I spank you because I want you, and right now, I don’t want you.”
“Vadim, wait.” Blake watched in horror as Vadim walked away. He sprinted after him. “Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“Can I come?”
“I’m going to need time, Blake.”
“Time for what?”
“Time to figure out whether or not I can forgive you.”
God, no.
No.
What had he done?
It’d just been a few swats. He’d been selfish, thoughtless, only thinking about the way his nerves crawled restlessly beneath his skin. He hadn’t intended to hurt Vadim, never mind push him away.
With shaky fingers, Blake composed a long, hardly coherent text of apology, but the only response he got in return was Friday.
~~~~~
The week had never passed so slowly. He’d been having a hard time concentrating without a daily dose of Vadim’s hand against his ass, but that was nothing compared to how rootless he felt with Vadim refusing to even talk to him. There was a black hole where the center of his universe used to be.
He rushed over to Vadim’s as soon as his last class ended Friday, knowing Vadim wouldn’t be home for another hour and not caring. He camped out on the stoop with his hopefully-packed backpack and waited with tears in his eyes until Vadim’s beater of a car pulled into the parking lot and Vadim, as hot in business casual as he was in denim and Doc Martins, climbed out of it.
The sunglasses were firmly fixed in place, but Vadim graced him with a tentative smile as Blake scrambled to his feet. Vadim was a bit shorter than he was but he felt taller, now more than ever.
“Missed you,” Vadim said as he came in for a kiss.
Blake collapsed against him, trying to crawl right into Vadim’s mouth as he kissed back.
“Still need to talk,” Vadim said as he separated himself to unlock the door. “But I missed you too much to give up on you, even though you’re an impulsive little prick sometimes.”
“I didn’t mean it. I swear I didn’t.”
“I know. You just don’t think before you act, but this was a really bad one. I’ve got to be able to trust you.”
“I swear you can. I never thought about it like cheating.”
“But you get it now, right?” Vadim turned down the hallway at the top of the third floor. They were both breathing heavily as they walked down it together, Blake apologizing and groveling and swearing he understood the whole way. He’d been so monumentally stupid to risk losing Vadim. He would never do anything like that again.
Knowing him, he’d probably do something regrettable, but not that.
When Vadim opened the door to his apartment and gestured Blake inside, Blake felt like he’d been readmitted to heaven. It wasn’t much—one bedroom with a tiny living area opening into a tinier kitchen—and it was always kept dim in consideration of Vadim’s photophobia, but he’d rather be there than anywhere in the world.
“My ass is yours and only yours,” he promised.
“Then get it out for me.”
While Blake stripped, Vadim discarded his sunglasses and positioned a chair in the middle of the room. That was Vadim’s spanking chair. It had a wide wood seat and a curved back and looked exactly like the chairs in the dining room at Blake’s parents’ house, which gave him a weird thrill. Getting off on being spanked in a chair that reminded him of his parents was so dirty and wrong that he got off twice as bad over it.
Vadim made Blake stand naked in front of him while he sat still fully dressed. Vadim’s business casual clothes were a lot like Claude’s preppy ones—a button-up chambray shirt and khakis—but the sadistic gleam in Vadim’s eyes made all the difference.
“You really pissed me off,” Vadim started.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re going to be.” Vadim opened his hand and showed Blake the leather cord he’d had clenched in it.
“What’s that for?” Seemed like the cord was too thin and supple for a whip, but he was prepared to be taught otherwise.
“I know you get off on having your ass spanked.”
Blake nodded. Not only were they both well aware of that fact, but so was most of the frat.
“But not today. Today you’re paying for your fuck up. Today I get to use and abuse you however I like, and you’re not getting off at all.”
“Okay.” Blake swallowed, not as intimidated as Vadim meant him to be. He wasn’t sure which ran deeper—Vadim’s sadism or his own masochism—but he was willing to find out. “How’re you going to keep me from getting off on it, though?”
Vadim swung the cord like a hypnotist’s watch until Blake caught on.
“Yup.” With a few quick wraps, Vadim had the cord wrapped securely around the base of his cock. Another couple of twists separated and bound his balls until they were hard and throbbing, confined tight to his body.
“Hurt?” Vadim asked as he ran a thumb over the tops of the reddening orbs.
“No.”
“Not yet,” Vadim corrected. “It’s going to hurt plenty, believe me.” He flicked one more loop around both balls and yanked the cord tight enough to make Blake yelp. “That’ll do to start.”
Keeping the end of the cord wrapped around his hand in a way that made Blake very nervous, Vadim maneuvered him over his lap. The tail from the cord ran up between his legs and through the crack in his ass. Vadim gave it a firm tug, confirming Blake had been smart to be nervous when the cord tried to pull his sack up through his legs. Unfortunately, his sack was very firmly attached to the front of his body. Sandwiched under it, in fact.
He yelped again, not bothering to disguise how much it hurt since Vadim wanted it to hurt. The tightness of the constriction made every touch reverberate through his balls like a kettle drum being beat. Vadim landed a blow on his ass, and the impact communicated itself right to his already tortured sack.
He attempted to wiggle himself into a position where his balls didn’t have the weight of his whole body on them but any attempt at movement only tugged on the cord, sending another blast of pain through him.
One sharp smack after another rained down on him, right where Vadim knew he liked them best, in the crest between his ass cheeks and the tops of his thighs. His cock rallied to the beat Vadim laid down, still hard despite the torture or maybe harder because of the torture. It begged for relief—not from the tug of the cord or the press of his body or the smack of Vadim’s palm—but from the ache of arousal pulsing through it.
He’d never been so close to orgasm, so impossibly close that he didn’t understand how he could stay in this space just adjacent to it without achieving it, but the thong around his balls overcame the friction he was getting by rubbing himself against Vadim’s thigh.
“Vadim,” he begged. Vadim only grunted a reply. “I’m so close. You’ve got to—”
He screamed when his request for satisfaction was met with a particularly sadistic yank. It felt like his balls were halfway up his ass. They were harder than his cock, so full and taut and pulsing with pain.
“Oh, please,” he begged harder. “Oh my God, I can’t.” His head swam in a sea of pleasure and pain. Shocks of still-higher arousal ran through him like electricity, and it was that he couldn’t bear. He rutted mindlessly against Vadim’s khaki-covered legs, fucking himself into them, scraping the tender, tortured flesh of his cock over the rough fabric in a greedy bid for relief that never came.
Slaps smacked into him like baseballs from a pitching machine—hard and fast, one after another, striking with crushing force, all in the same place, that place he loved so much but that couldn’t get him there today, not with that cursed tie wrapped around his cock.
This was his favorite thing. He should be coming—great spurts of satisfaction jetting from him, Vadim pleased with him for taking it and liking it, but Vadim was angry at him and this was his punishment, to remain hard and hungry.
And he deserved it. He’d used this thing that meant so much to them to hurt Vadim, and now Vadim was showing him how it felt when physical lust was at odds with emotional satisfaction. All the urgency for orgasm left him. He was reduced to sobs, begging Vadim for forgiveness instead of relief.
“Shh. That’s enough.” Vadim stood him up in front of him, releasing the cord so the binding loosened into something more supportive than punishing. He marched Blake over to the corner and left him in it with a stern, “You can spend some time thinking about what you did.”
With his nose pressed to the wall, Blake couldn’t see where Vadim went, but he could guess from his footsteps that he was probably on the couch, maybe scrolling through his phone, maybe admiring his red ass. For once, it wasn’t his ass that burned brightest. It wasn’t even his balls, still throbbing in the loosened stricture. It was his cock, rock hard from the way the tie trapped blood in it and from the war between shame and arousal coursing through him.
As soon as Vadim told him his corner time was over, he threw himself onto the floor in front of him and kissed his black loafers fervently enough to polish them clean.
“I love you,” he told the ground between Vadim’s feet.
“Come up here and say that.”
“I love you,” he told the fabric of Vadim’s shirt from a more comfortable spot nestled in his lap.
“Try again.”
“I love you,” he told Vadim, this time to his face.
“I love you too, Blake.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” Vadim sighed a little with the word.
“Soooo… can I come now?” His erection pointed up at the two of them in an urgent way.
Vadim rolled his eyes. “I haven’t even come myself. Who’s the top around here?”
“Want to top me then?”
“Fuck yeah.” Vadim dumped him off his lap and ran to grab the lube. They’d stopped using condoms when they’d agreed to be exclusive and had started saying I love you right around the time Vadim graduated. Blake knew it ought to be enough for him, that he shouldn’t have to live with Vadim to feel wanted and cherished and settled and stable. He just missed him.
“Over the couch,” Vadim ordered. He liked Blake upended like that, especially if he’d just reddened his ass, and Blake had no objection to the position as long as the cord came off. But when he went to remove it, Vadim swatted at his hands.
“What did I say?”
He’d said Blake didn’t get to come today, but that’d been before they’d made up. He didn’t still mean Blake didn’t get to come, did he?
Apparently he did, because Blake found himself bent over the arm of the couch with the cord tight in Vadim’s hand, accepting his boyfriend’s cock, which so didn’t make him any less hard. Vadim took him roughly with only the lightest of prep, laughing as he fucked him, fighting back against Blake’s angry jerks as the cord kept him from achieving the satisfaction he wasn’t allowed.
He called Vadim every name he could think of, but that only made Vadim yank harder and fuck faster until he buried himself with a satisfied grunt. He dropped the cord and wrapped both arms around Blake’s torso, hugging him bruisingly close as he pumped himself empty.
“You’re such a good fuck, little brother.”
Since Vadim wasn’t in DIK anymore, the only justification for him continuing to call Blake little brother was that it got them both off. But nothing was getting Blake off today, apparently. He twitched in Vadim’s embrace, not bothering to reach for his cock because he knew Vadim wouldn’t allow it anyway.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” Blake said when Vadim withdrew with a last loving tap on his ass.
“That was incredible. I wish I could’ve seen your balls while I was fucking you though. They’re gorgeous.” Vadim evaluated the purpling orbs—separated, lifted, engorged. “Do they hurt?”
“You know they do. Ah!” he added when Vadim crushed one of them in his hand. “Oh, fuck.” His knees almost gave out from the pain coursing through him, not to mention the fact that half the blood in his body was trapped in his cock.
“I’ll make a deal with you.”
“Shit.” He knew it was going to be bad. He also knew he’d agree to it. He always agreed, because the way Vadim got off on hurting him got him even hotter than the pain itself.
“You get to come today if you can come from getting your balls beaten.”
“No one can come from getting their balls beaten.”
“XTube would disagree. And, you know, I think you actually could.” Vadim eyed him speculatively, as if Blake’s torture was a science experiment whose outcome he’d hypothesized. “Wanna try?”
“I wanna come.”
“So you do wanna try.”
“What, um…” His mouth was so dry and his cock was so hard. “What would you beat them with?”
Vadim jiggled first one ball, then the other, considering the question. “A ruler.”
He grabbed for Vadim’s biceps, needing something to keep himself upright. “A ruler,” he whispered, no strength left to do more than repeat Vadim’s words at half volume.
Vadim gathered him close, holding him up while continuing to tease one hand over his ripe balls. Blake shivered as Vadim murmured into the skin of his neck. “You’re going to come so good, little brother. I’m going to be so proud of you. How many times, do you think? How many times do I have to slap your nuts with a ruler before you spurt all over me?”
Blake shook his head. He didn’t know. He only knew that every strike would be agony.
Vadim laid him out full length on the couch and went off in search of the ruler. Since he often applied it to Blake’s ass, it wasn’t far, and he was soon back with it in hand. He knelt next to the couch and tenderly ran his tongue up the shaft of Blake’s rigid cock, then took the end of the cord that’d been left dangling and gave it another tight wrap around the base of Blake’s balls until they threatened to explode from the painful buildup of come teeming in them. He laid his palm over the tip of Blake’s erection, shielding it as though he would never, ever dream of striking Blake there, and raised the ruler to shoulder height.
“I’ll count,” he said, relieving Blake of that burden. The ruler sliced through the air, landing perfectly across the top of Blake’s throbbing sack. Blake screamed and grabbed for his groin, agony racing through him in convulsive waves.
“Maybe I should’ve restrained you,” Vadim said with a frown as he returned Blake’s hands to his sides. “Pawing at yourself is cheating.”
“You think I’m jerking myself off? That fucking hurt.” The pain hadn’t subsided. It sung through him, making him dizzy with anticipation. This was going to hurt so bad.
“That was one.” Vadim’s voice was almost businesslike, but his cock, which had been left dangling out of his dress pants, wasn’t dangling anymore. It’d perked up to half plumpness. “Here’s two.” And with no more warning than that, the ruler descended again.
Blake howled as perfect pain raced through him—expected now, even craved. Vadim said three, and the ruler whistled as it came, striking sharply on the meat of his balls, bouncing them within their containment. Vadim had an arm braced across Blake’s chest, trapping his arms which strained with every strike to reach the cock dying to come.
Blake’s hands opened and closed as his mouth did the same, beyond screaming as strikes four and five came even harder. Either Vadim was increasing the force behind his swings or Blake’s balls had grown more tender, more engorged, more taut. Each blow landed with a resolute fierceness, pinging off his balls with a sharp reverb.
The ruler tapped now, quickly and lightly, running up and down his shaft, and the taps felt like the sweetest strokes of love until one landed right on the head of his cock, right where Blake had known Vadim would eventually go, and Blake felt it—the orgasm welling up in him. Despite the binding, despite the agony. He would come.
“One more,” he begged.
Vadim raised the ruler and flashed it down. More than one. One to the head, two to his shaft, three to his trapped balls which convulsed, spitting out their contents at last, forcing semen past the constriction, out the tip of his cock, and everywhere—high enough to reach his face, wide enough to paint his shoulders. Over and over, his balls convulsed, desperate to unload, and Blake thrust his hips up to aid them, aiming straight for the ceiling, straight for the sky.
The sudden release of the tie that bound him was almost as sweet as the orgasm. His cock settled, drawing back to meet his balls where a languorous ache throbbed like the best afterglow.
Blake turned his head lazily in Vadim’s direction to find him stroking himself. “I suppose you want your dick sucked.”
“You just lie there, handsome. You’ve done your job.”
Blake couldn’t resist giving Vadim’s balls a light squeeze, cocking his head to suggest he could squeeze harder. Vadim wasn’t into pain—not into receiving it—but he must’ve liked the reminder of how intensely he’d punished Blake’s balls in comparison to how cautiously Blake was treating his, because he gurgled out a helpless curse and came.
Blake made room for him on the couch, having just enough energy to manage that. They cuddled together with Vadim’s hand cupped comfortingly around Blake’s package.
“Do you forgive me now?” Blake asked.
“Yes, but not because I beat you. I wouldn’t have beaten you if I hadn’t already forgiven you.”
Blake considered everything that’d happened in the last few days. He’d made some mistakes—both in angling for punishment and in not confessing what he’d done as soon as it happened—but there’d been a reason behind his mistake, and if the two of them didn’t address that reason, he might find himself so jammed up he’d do again. And Vadim wouldn’t forgive him next time.
Explaining his feelings wasn’t his best skill. He’d done a lot of whining about their new living arrangements in the last couple of months, but he hadn’t communicated—hadn’t laid out the intensity of everything he’d been feeling. The loneliness of sleeping alone, the fear of not being wanted anymore, the itch of restlessness that a good session always quelled.
“So you’re saying I fucked up too,” Vadim said when he finished.
“I didn’t say you fucked up.”
“No, that’s okay. You can say it. You’ve been telling me all along you wanted to live here, and I didn’t listen. I thought I was doing the right thing by you. Being a DIK brother was a big part of my college experience.”
“I get that, but the point of a fraternity is to find your people, and I already found mine. You’re my people. I’ve never belonged anywhere as much as I belong here.”
Vadim hugged him hard enough to hurt but, as usual, Blake didn’t mind. “I’ve missed you too. If it’s not selfish of me to have you here, then you can stay. But you have to promise you’ll hang out on campus too, spend time with your friends, do some activities. Not just come straight here after class every day.”
“Promise.”
“But when you are here…”
“Yeah?” Blake waited while Vadim went into his bedroom and came back with a flouncy bit of black fabric he made Blake try on. The excessively ruffled black skirt was nowhere near long enough to cover the red swell of his ass or keep his swollen balls from peeking out beneath it, and the top was no more than a set of suspenders that framed his pecs.
“There,” Vadim said approvingly. “My own live-in maid. Just what I’ve always wanted. And you know what I’ve been thinking?”
Blake shook his head. Whatever Vadim thought up, it was sure to be good.
“We should have some of the guys over. You could wait on us.”
“Like this?” Blake squeaked, even though he already knew the answer.
“Yeah, just like that. Red ass and all. Though it might not be red to start. Should we do that, little brother? I wanna make sure you get the full fraternity experience.”
Now that was the experience Blake had signed up for.
The End