14. Chapter 14

Not even with my Dom, did I have so much sex. I was lucky to have him twice a month. All this started two months ago with angry sex and now we couldn’t stop. Ajax was insatiable. Honestly, while exhausting, I obsessed over the attention. I felt… wanted and cared about, even by my worst enemy. But he wasn’t my enemy anymore, right?

I lay in his bed, panting and sweating, with Ajax half on top of me, also breathing heavily, feeling his heart beat so hard and fast against my chest. His dense body was like a comforting blanket. I pressed my nose into his hair and inhaled his shampoo, which smelled as spicy as his body wash. God, why was I sniffing him?

After every session, the emotions consumed me. It’d been like that before with my Dom, but not to the extent with Ajax. My Dom would’ve been displeased had I cried afterward or been upset because it would’ve shown him he failed in my aftercare, and he never liked to fail at anything. But around Ajax, it was the only time I felt safe to let them out. Well, not at first, but eventually, he’d just let me… feel, without shaming me.

I also didn’t trust my emotions when I tried to grasp my growing feelings for Ajax—feelings I didn’t want to have. I didn’t want to know or hear how much I wasn’t wanted again or to be abandoned by someone I cared about. It was better this way. Staying silent protected every facet of me. Regardless, any residual hatred for Ajax was long gone.

He lay on my arm, but I lifted my free hand, hovering it over his back before touching his cooling skin. We were never intimate, except with the aftercare, but I suddenly had this urge to be so now. I wanted to fight it because intimacy led to the emotions I fought so hard against.

Regardless, my fingers had minds of their own as they trailed along his back, covered in silky-smooth skin, making goosebumps rise. I smiled at the reaction, like he enjoyed my touch so much, it affected his entire body.

“Mmm, that’s nice,” he said, his deep voice muffled in the pillow.

He rolled over, kissed my cheek, and climbed out of bed, pulling on his underwear. He walked over to his fridge and pulled out two bottles of water, handing one to me. I sat up, wincing at my sore ass from the spankings and fucking, and grabbed the bottle. I drank mine down, not realizing how thirsty I was.

“It’s nice outside. Put on your underwear… or not and let’s go to the rooftop for a smoke.”

“Okay.”

Ajax grabbed his smokes, lighter, and the spare blanket on his bed as I pulled on my underwear.

We stepped outside his apartment and took the stairs up to the fourteenth floor. I huffed and puffed, exhausted after the sex tonight. Ajax didn’t seem to be doing much better. In fact, as I climbed the stairs behind him, I could see he was still getting thinner. His ribs were more pronounced. What was going on with him? He needed to eat more. Maybe we could go out on a date or something to get him fed.

A date ?

Fucking stupid. We didn’t have that sort of relationship, and he could very well feed himself. But like he took care of me after one of our… moments, I should take care of him to make sure he had the energy to do this.

My stupid, irrational voice wanted a date, though—something beyond our sessions. I squashed the thought. No one ever wanted me like that.

We stepped through the door, hit with cool air, but not so cold that we needed hoodies, although we probably should’ve gotten dressed.

Ajax spread the blanket out on the ground as I leaned over the barrier, staring out at the city. He came over to stand next to me and handed me a lit cigarette. I grabbed it between my fingers and took a drag.

“I love this spot. Even when it’s loud, it’s peaceful, like I’m on the outside looking in instead of being in the middle of all the chaos.”

I looked at him, unsure of what to say, but I managed something pathetic. “Seems nice.”

“I work two jobs just to be able to afford this piece of shit place. Meh, it’s not so bad. There are worse places… And I did it on my own.”

Ajax dropped his cig over the side, tugged on my arm, and led me to the blanket. When I sat next to him, he pulled me down again, so we could lie together on our backs, staring up at the dark sky covered in puffy clouds reflecting the light of the city.

I used his upper arm as a pillow, and he trailed gentle fingers along my arm as I finished off my smoke. Where did this affection come from? This was new for us, and I didn’t know what to make of it. Usually, when we wrapped up the aftercare, I just headed home.

“My mom took her life years ago,” he said out of the blue. “I was already an adult by then, but I was still living at home.”

Fuck, what did you say to that? “I’m… sorry.” My words felt inept. God, I was terrible at consolation.

“Me, too. I miss her at times. She had some really good days, and you’d never know she was hurting. Then, there were days she could barely get out of bed. I didn’t understand why she was like that. I guess she suffered from depression or something. It must have been bad enough to feel so hopeless that death was better than living. There are days I can barely breathe because I miss her. Then there are days when it’s easy to shove aside and move on with my life. ”

Giving words of empathy was hard for me. I’d never had to do it. I had enough awareness that I knew how selfish I could be. Sometimes I didn’t want to be. Sometimes I didn’t care. It was hard after not being raised with kindness and empathy while having everything you could ever dream of handed to you without conditions. Mostly, I was just ignored, and I would act out for attention. Instead of saying words I didn’t have, I rolled onto my side and wrapped an arm around his torso.

Ajax rolled to his side and tucked some of my hair away from my face. “Thank fuck, I didn’t find her. That was all my sister.”

“You have a sister?”

“Yep, Jenna. She’s seven years older than me. Wow, I guess that makes her thirty now. She was pretty like our mom.” He chuckled. “You’d never know we were siblings. She had dark blond hair and green eyes. She was tall, though. We got our height from our dad. He left years ago, unable to deal with Mom. Soon, he forgot us, too.”

“Does your sister live here in Baltimore?”

“No idea. Jenna took off shortly after she found Mom. She couldn’t take it, I suppose, leaving me behind to deal with the aftermath. I not only lost my mom, but I lost my sister. At least she fucking helped me with the funeral arrangements.”

I understood all too well what it felt like to be abandoned. Not only did Ajax and I have sex in common, but now we had abandonment and being forgotten in common.

“Have you tried to find her?”

Ajax sat up and lit another smoke. “Nope. I’m not sure I care enough to.” He huffed a laugh and wrapped his arms around his folded legs. “That’s a lie.”

I sat up and rested my chin on his shoulder. I sure was being fucking touchy tonight, and I had no idea why. No, I knew why. Those emotions I always avoided tried to force their way in.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It means I don’t want to know that she never cared about me. I don’t think it had even been about me, but she left me just the same. Mom left us, unable to take life anymore. Rationally, I saw she was hurting and that it wasn’t about us, but still, she left us behind. My dad’s gone… My entire family left me behind. It took me a long time to come to terms with that. Knowing Alpha and making friends has helped… a lot. They helped me not feel so alone.”

I pressed my forehead against his shoulder, wishing I had words of wisdom or advice. I was no Cueball. Hell, I was barely a good person. Cueball would’ve had something helpful to say, but I was an idiot when it came to emotions. All I could do was communicate with touch instead of words, hoping Ajax understood I cared.

“Why are you telling me this?” I was truly curious. He’d never talked about himself like this before. Why now?

Ajax shrugged. “I’m… honestly not sure.” He suddenly scoffed. “All this shit damn near affected my relationships—or the lack of them. It’s not that I’m allergic to getting close, but I just haven’t been exactly driven to find someone, either.”

I instinctively moved away when the ever-present fears of not being wanted hit me. It was clear he was telling me he didn’t do relationships, and it was stupid to believe Ajax would even want me like that. How could he? We’d hated each other for so long. I wasn’t stupid enough to assume that sex fixed all our shit. And I was smart enough to know that to fix it, it required communication, something I was terrible at.

He must have noticed my withdrawal from him because he turned to face me and lifted my chin. “You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a relationship… Aiden.”

My breath caught before he pressed his lips to mine. What did that fucking mean? God, I was too chickenshit to ask.

We pulled away, and I coughed back the growing emotions I didn’t want to feel. “What were you like as a kid? Have you always been an ass?”

I mentally face-palmed for ruining the moment, but Ajax smiled crookedly and chuckled. “I’m only an ass with you.”

I smiled back, unable to meet his eyes, feeling awkward and shy, which wasn’t like me at all. Fuck, I hated all these confusing feelings.

He rested his forehead against mine, another intimate gesture I didn’t understand.

“I had a relatively happy childhood despite my father leaving. Whenever Mom felt good, we did a lot of fun things. She was pretty independent, worked hard, and earned enough to take care of my sister and me. I went to a public school, played football, had a lot of friends, skateboarded, and made okay grades. I was a very typical and ordinary teen… except for being gay.”

“Were you open?”

He shook his head, which was still pressed to mine. “Nah, I didn’t want to lose my friends, and Mom had enough shit to deal with. My sister knew, though, and seemed okay with it. She supported me in a way that she never talked about it, but she didn’t hate me or anything.”

Fuck, Ajax seemed so… together. Normal. I hadn’t expected that. He seemed to have dealt with his trauma healthily. Meanwhile, I was a complete fuckup, still angry and resentful at being kicked out of my house and turned away by my Dom after all those years and his fucking promises… falling in love with him. It was like I refused to get a job just to spite them, which was beyond irrational. God, I was a fucking mess.

“Aiden?”

Why did he keep calling me that? His saying my name outside of sex required me to invest in feelings.

“Yeah?”

He lifted my chin with his index finger again to make me look at him. “I like where this is going between us. I didn’t expect to, but… I see this different side to you—a side I like. You’re so vulnerable and trusting with me when you shouldn’t be. I’ve never given you a reason to. At first, it was just about the sex, and yeah, it still is. I’m fucking needy and constantly horny, especially when you’re around. It’s weird because while I love sex, I haven’t been this into it before.”

What did he mean? Was he developing feelings for me? This was only supposed to be about the sex and getting what I needed out of it. But if I was being honest with myself, I was developing feelings, too—unwanted feelings.

“I’m seeing you so differently, Aiden. You’re so beautiful when you’re raw and open. Like all that anger you have washes away whenever we’re together. Like you open yourself up just for me. I mean, I’m not an idiot. I know it’s about our sexual dynamic, but I like this, and I like you. Stay with me tonight. Don’t go home yet. ”

I pulled away and abruptly stood, unsure I could take falling for someone and having them turn away from me again. I’d invested my fucking soul in that asshole, only for him to crush me with barely a second glance. For three years, I invested all my heart and emotions into him!

Ajax couldn’t want me. Why would he? I was such a fuckup. My soul was fucking black.

I leaned over the barrier and looked down at the street below. It was late now, and there weren’t many people out. They all had homes to go to, families, people who loved them—all the things I didn’t. Sure, Cueball was a good friend, but he only put up with me. Fuck knew why. It wasn’t like I offered anything in return.

My gut twisted, and my heart beat too fast. God, I wanted so much for someone to want me. While I was vulnerable during sex, Ajax really didn’t know me at all.

“You don’t want me more than what we already have, Jaxon. You don’t want to know the real Blaze.”