The fighter an mm romanc.., p.9
The Fighter: An MM Romance, page 9
I walked slowly toward the door, unsure what to do, not knowing what set off Tav and unsure if he’d go further. I didn’t even care if he hurt me at this point. I didn’t want him to hurt himself.
When I reached the door, I pulled the curtain aside, shivering at the frozen air creeping into my apartment. Tav stood holding onto the black, wrought-iron balcony railing. His back was heaving with every inhale, his legs braced far apart. He was trembling, an all-over shudder that chilled me to the bone. It could have been eighty-degrees outside, and I would have frozen solid at the sight of his terror.
Before taking a step outside, I reached over and grabbed a blanket off a chair near the door, and then I hesitated. Tav’s hair whipped around his head as I pushed the door open wide with a soft whoosh. With one great inhale and exhale, his head dropped forward, and he fell to his knees with a groan. I didn’t think this time, I just acted, coming up behind him, wrapping the blanket around his shoulders and then falling to my knees beside him. He was hunched over, his head in his hands, shaking uncontrollably. I hated seeing him like this, when not long ago he’d been at such peace. What had I done? I wrapped my arms around him, forcing his head into my neck. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please tell me what I did wrong and what I can do to fix it. Please.”
He didn’t speak, but his arms came around me, clutching my shoulders, his breath hot at the base of my throat. I held him tighter, carding my fingers through his hair, rubbing his neck, his back, his biceps. Anywhere I could reach, I touched, hoping my apology came through if not in my words, then in my hands.
“I’m sorry, Tav,” I whispered.
He shook his head and when he finally spoke, his voice sounded like broken glass. “Not your fault. This is why… fuck, I’m a mess.”
I pulled back a little and reached for his wrists. I moved the rope aside and grimaced at the raw skin. “Please come inside. I need to take care of these.”
He started trembling again, sucking in gulps of cold air.
I cupped his cheek. “Let me take care of you. No more rope, okay?”
His breath hitched, and those two-toned eyes watched me as I catalogued his body, checking for new hurts. He’d come to me injured, and I’d only succeeding in hurting him further.
“Okay,” he said, finally.
“Okay.” I pulled the blanket tighter around him, and then we rose to our feet. Tav walked with his head down, his shoulders slumped.
I shut the door to the balcony and locked it, then motioned with my head down the hall. “Go on into the bathroom. I want to get you warmed up in the tub.”
He made no sound but did as I asked. I followed him, realizing my hands were trembling from adrenaline but also from the cold. When I reached the bathroom, I turned on the faucet to fill the whirlpool tub, then began to strip out of my clothes. Tav watched me from under his lashes, the blanket still wrapped around his massive shoulders. I reached for his hands and untied the rope, dropping them in the trash. When the tub was mostly full, I stepped inside and then motioned him to follow me.
I rarely took baths. In fact, I usually used my tub for towel storage. The occasional bloody clothes when a Soto job went south. But today, with Tav still shaking, his eyes still darting warily, I was so glad I had it installed. I sat him on the bottom and then began to massage his muscles, working the water into the cold skin. It pinked up quickly as he warmed.
I turned off the water and grabbed some soap and a washcloth and began to wash him. When I reached his wrists, I dabbed at the tender skin. I thought about how to word what I wanted to say to him, what I wanted to ask. And I hoped I didn’t trigger any other extreme reaction. “If you ever want to see me again, I need to know why you lost it.”
I lifted my gaze to his face. His eyes were downcast, watching my ministrations to his skin. I waited, moving on to the other hand, figuring he’d tell me when he was ready. I was rinsing his wrists when he spoke. “I like when you tie me up. But I like it when it’s my choice. When I give that control to you.” He spoke slowly, staring at the water. “But when you said about not letting me leave… it flipped a switch. It was no longer about my choice…” He chewed on his cut lip and raised eyes to me. “Does that make sense?”
It did. It made a whole lot of sense. “There’s a difference, between granting permission for it to happen and having it happen to you.”
His expression brightened a little, and my heart tripped over itself. “Yeah, that’s it. I don’t like to feel trapped. It’s too much like—” He cut himself off and blinked his eyes. “I can’t handle that, Con.”
I drifted over so I was straddling his lap. I cupped his face. “I’m sorry, Tav.”
He shook his head. “You didn’t know. It’s not your fault. I know you didn’t even mean it, not really, but I couldn’t seem to stop the panic.” His eyes drifted to the side. “It was… all-consuming.”
“You had a panic attack. And I take some responsibility for that. I understand the difference, and I should have watched your body language more closely.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Really?”
“Yeah, really. I’m not a sadist, Tav. I like to be in control during sex, but I want that control given to me. It’s a gift and the last thing I want to do is break it.” I brushed my lips over his. “I thought I broke you.”
He pressed into the kiss, his hands circling my waist to rest on my lower back. Then he shoved his face into my chest, licking up a drop of water. “You probably could break me, Con, but it’d take more than that to do it.”
I didn’t respond to his words because I didn’t know how. He’d just given that to me, that power to break him. Part of me didn’t want it. I should have climbed out of that tub right then, told him to put on his clothes and walk out. Never come back.
But I didn’t. I squeezed my eyes shut and held him closer, thankful it was me who held that power, because I didn’t trust anyone else with him. I ran my hands through the wet strands of Tav’s hair as his breath coasted over the wet skin of my chest. His big body was at rest now, muscles loose. His fingers rubbed slow circles on my lower back, and every once in a while his tongue would dart out to lick at my nipple, which made him murmur in contentment. Eventually, he closed his lips around the hardened bud and sucked softly with his eyes closed.
Something had shifted inside of me when I’d spotted him huddled on my balcony. Despite the glaring alarm bells surrounding Tav, I didn’t care anymore. I’d spent the last ten years saving people, and sometimes I forgot why it mattered. I often wondered if I was making any sort of difference in the end. I didn’t believe in heaven or hell, but I believed in my own soul or at least I used to.
Tav was a soul I could save, and I was no longer willing to sit back passively and wait for him. He said I had the power to break him, but he had the power to break me too, already. I was past the point of getting out of this with my sanity. I’d lost it to Tav that first night. So he didn’t get the choice to run from me anymore, at least not for good. I’d give him time, but there would be no more ultimatums. I’d claw his secrets from his chest until he was an open wound that only I could fix. Until I owned every part of him. Until I didn’t need rope because Tav was tied to me with invisible bonds.
Yeah, Tav was a soul to save. But I was pretty sure that he was the only way I could save my own soul too.
Tav
He took the same care with my wrists that he had with my face, coating them in antibacterial ointment before wrapping them with gauze and tape. They weren’t even that bad, not really. I’d had worse wounds with no care. But he seemed to want to do it, to need to do it, so I stayed silent.
Con’s face no longer had that hard edge to it. He looked younger in the soft light of the bathroom, wearing a pair of low-slung pants and nothing else. He was well-built but slight. He’d worn a suit that first day I met him, and he wore it well, like he had them tailored to fit him. And based on where he lived, I assumed he had the money to custom-make a dozen suits.
I’d spent a lot of my youth thinking if I had money, I’d have everything. And now… well, I hated it. Money was why my life was shit. So I didn’t care about where Con lived, or what he did, or what kind of watch he wore. He treated me like I meant something for who I was, not what I could do with my fists, and that was rare in my world.
When I was wrapped up, he led me to bed, urging me under the covers. I slid inside, my naked skin slipping on the soft sheets. Con turned off the lights and settled beside me.
It took a minute for my eyes to adjust and when they did, I rolled over. Con’s blue eyes were shining with the reflection of the moonlight. “So you’ll be here when I wake up?”
“I’ll be here when you wake up,” I said. “I can’t stay much later than that though.”
He nodded, content with that. When he kissed me, I let him take control, not wanting to think anymore. I wanted him to make me forget about my panic attack, make me forget about the feeling of being trapped, helpless.
He ran his hands over my body, fingering the scars on my skin. He prepared me with skilled fingers and entered me slowly, facing me. I gripped his wrists, which were planted in the bed on either side of my head and moved with his rhythm, clamping my knees around his hips.
“Feel me, Tav?” His lips glistened, wet from our kisses.
“Yeah,” I said, as he changed the angle of his hips, brushing my prostate with the tip of his cock.
“You let me in here. Remember that,” he whispered. “You gave this to me.”
Something about his tone fired off a warning shot in my head. His conviction speared through me with every thrust of his cock in my body. But I was too weak tonight to resist anything that came to Con.
My voice sounded more like a sob than a pleasured moan as I gave in. “Yes.” I strained as the orgasm began to build.
“And I’m taking it,” he said, his face lined with determination. “I’m taking it all, and I’m keeping it.”
He couldn’t know what he was asking, that I didn’t have enough to give him and still keep myself alive. But in that moment, I couldn’t speak. I could only feel. He was filling up the husk of my soul, and yet I’d never felt so light.
We came with muffled groans, him in my neck, me in his hair. After he disposed of the condom and crawled back into bed with me, I tugged him to my chest. We fell asleep with tangled legs, pressed together, breathing in each other’s air. I should have been panicked over his words, but instead I convinced myself he only meant sex, that he wasn’t claiming any other part of me but my body. And I rationalized that maybe I could handle that. Maybe I could somehow live half a life if it was with Con.
ELEVEN
Conrad
When I woke up, it was to a strange sensation. Something was rubbing my belly, something course. I squirmed and a blast of hot air washed over my groin as I lay on my back. I lifted my hands to rub at my eyes.
Wet heat engulfed my cock. I opened my eyes to the site of Tav’s dark head between my legs. He was on his stomach, large feet hanging off the end of the bed. The covers were pushed aside into a balled heap, and he was sucking me down like he needed me to breathe.
He took me to the back of his throat, and I nearly levitated off the bed as a shudder coursed down my spine to pool into my balls. He pulled back to suckle on my tip before he once again took me to the root until his nose was pressed into my groin.
I wasn’t prepared for this. It was too early for me to manage any level of dominant decorum. My dick was in Tav’s mouth, and I wanted to come.
I placed a hand on his head, fingering the dark hair, which had curled slightly in the humid air of the tub last night. It was adorably rumpled. His muscled ass flexed as he humped the bed with short thrusts while he bobbed his head on my cock. And he made greedy noises the entire time.
Maybe if my brain was working, I’d take over and grip his hair tight to control the pace. Maybe order him not to come. But I could barely function right now, and my cock was hard enough to poke a hole in the back of his skull.
He pulled off and tongued my slit before letting his saliva drip from the corners of his mouth to slide down my shaft and trickle over my balls. He looked up my body and his eyes, those unique eyes were swirling, and he looked so damn happy, so damn content, that I let the orgasm build. “Go on, Tav,” I said. “Suck me. Swallow me down.”
He plunged deep, working hard now, sucking like his life depended on it, and I closed my eyes, arching my back and rearing my head as the first shot of cum hit his throat. He moaned, drinking me down as I continued to shoot. A hand left my thigh, and I knew when he squirmed that he was coming too as his hips punched into the mattress while he blew into the sheets.
He pulled off when my cock had stopped pulsing and rested his head on my thigh. He looked up at me, the corner of his mouth tilting up into a smile, so his dimples showed. “Good morning.”
I groaned and tried to run my fingers through my hair, but my muscles didn’t work right, and all I succeeded in doing was flopping my arm over my eyes. “Fuck me, Tav. Not sure I’ve had a morning that good in a while.”
I peeked at him from under my arm as he hopped up from the bed and grabbed a tissue, dabbing at his release on his skin. After getting rid of the tissue, he stood at the edge of the bed, nearly bobbing on his toes like a boxer. I could hardly believe this was the sullen man I’d first invited to my apartment, or the anxiety-stricken lover who I’d chased out onto the balcony last night.
His face was open, his eyes bright underneath his too-long hair. “So, uh, you want breakfast? Because I can make eggs and stuff.”
This was not the way I saw this morning going. And I didn’t hate it. I raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to make eggs and stuff?”
He blinked. “Yeah.”
I raised onto my elbows. “Okay, then go do it.”
He grabbed his sweatpants off the floor and slipped them on, sans underwear, and then walked to the bedroom door. He was one step into the hallway when he slapped a hand on the doorframe and leaned back in. “Con?”
I was sitting on the edge of the bed now, trying to recover from having my brain sucked out through my dick. “Yes?”
“Do you like eggs?”
I needed to ask how old Tav was. When I first met him, he’d walked with the weight of a veteran who’d been through three wars. This morning, he seemed twenty-one. “I like eggs. Make whatever, and I’ll eat it.”
He flashed me a grin. “Okay.”
I showered, and as I pulled on a pair of sweatpants, the smell of eggs cooking and coffee brewing filtered down the hallway from my kitchen. I didn’t bother with a shirt and padded down the hallway.
Tav stood at the stove, a towel flung over his shoulder, a spatula in his other hand. His head bobbed, like he was humming to himself. He was absolutely beautiful, his entire body a work of art, from the ink on his skin to his muscles to the way he moved—all fluid like an athlete. I could get used to this, waking up every morning to a beautiful man in my kitchen, wearing nothing but sweatpants, cooking me breakfast.
He turned around and startled when he saw me. “Oh, hey. I made omelets because, uh, you have a lot of shit in your fridge.”
“I have a lot of shit in my fridge?”
He shoved a piece of bacon in his mouth and chewed. I didn’t know I had bacon. “Yeah, lotta shit that was gonna go bad soon.”
“Oh, okay.”
He cocked his head. “You don’t cook?”
“I have a housekeeper who shops for me, and a cook that comes in and makes my meals ahead of time for me.”
He stared at me like I had three heads. “You have this kitchen and don’t cook in it?”
“Well, someone cooks in it,” I muttered, unsure why I felt the need to be defensive about this.
He frowned, then shrugged. “It’s a great kitchen, Con.”
I had truly never cared about my kitchen, but in that moment, pride swelled in my chest that I had something that made Tav happy. I sat down on a stool at my kitchen island and ran my hand over a dent in the marble that Nik had put there when he’d dropped my coffee carafe. “Thank you.”
After asking how I take my coffee—black—he poured me a cup and dropped the paper in front of me. The doorman brought it up every morning and left it outside my door. How Tav knew it would be there was a mystery to me, but I didn’t bother asking. I took a sip of my coffee and felt more like myself as the caffeine fired up my brain. “Do you like to cook?”
“Yeah, I mean, my apartment doesn’t have…” he waved the spatula in the air, his back to me. “…Amenities.” He said the word with a vocal affect, like I suspected he would talk about my Bentley. His shoulders heaved with a breath and when he glanced over his shoulder at me, he was smiling again. “But I’m a pro with a hotplate and an air fryer. Oh, and a rice cooker.”
“Oh yeah? What’s your favorite thing you make”
“Smash burgers with fried onions and mustard. When I wanna cheat meal.” His arm twitched, and I got the feeling even that was more than he wanted to admit to me.
“How old are you?”
His smile faded, and he squinted at me. “Is this an interrogation?”
I huffed a laugh. “No.” Not yet. “I ask because this morning you seem younger than I’d originally thought.”
He twisted his lips to the side, and for a moment I thought he wouldn’t tell me. Then he turned around and flipped something in the pan. “Twenty-five.” I’d thought a bit older but thank fuck he wasn’t twenty-one. He dropped a steaming pile of eggs on a plate and turned with an eyebrow raised. “That what you thought?”
