5. Theo Glass

Chapter 5

Theo Glass

I had made a grave mistake.

I realized that the second I allowed Jace to push his cock into me.

Something I never allowed. Never truly craved. But tonight, things had changed. I saw him and knew. Somewhere deep down in the chemistry of my brain, somewhere in an unlocked part of my body, I knew I had to have him inside me.

And I did.

And I fucked up.

And now, I stood across the street from him, rain pattering on my cap. Pedestrians rushed by me to avoid getting wet. Trying to catch their train rides home, trying to go to their midnight shifts. Sinners and saints and all those in between. A river of people who should be asleep, washing over me, past me. Completely unaware of the turmoil that coursed through my veins .

I had told him my name.

I had fucked up.

And I wanted to do it again. Again and again.

What happened in that bathhouse? Why had this man completely rewired the way my thoughts worked? Why had I allowed myself to give up control in a way that could end me? Not even sexually. I’d allowed the detective hunting me down to know my name.

To know my body.

It couldn’t happen again.

Yet, that was all I wanted.

I stood in the shadow of a skinny tree, the lamppost nearest me having gone out sometime earlier in the night. I stood in the darkness. He had no idea I watched him push his key card against the entrance pad of his building. Didn’t know that I watched him walk past the hallway window, backlit by a surgical white fluorescent light. He looked handsome, even when outlined by nothing but ugly, bright lights. His strong shoulders and broad chest drew me in. I felt like a moth that was ready to furiously bat my wings and slam myself against glass, over and over again, leaving nothing but a bloody mess in my desperation to get to him.

He lived on the seventh floor. The light in his living room turned on as he walked in. His curtains were drawn, but I could tell that was his shape. The shape I had hunted down in the bathhouse.

Why? What made me forget about my code? About my protections? I knew what it took to find people. The trails they left, unknowingly and yet so obvious. Especially nowadays. A single post online had enough information to discern what that person had for breakfast, where they sat for lunch, who they fucked for dinner. It was all there. Whether in the background, the foreground, the tags, the metadata, the caption, the hashtags. There were breadcrumbs all throughout, and I knew how to follow them right to the front of someone’s doorstep.

So: why. the. fuck .

Was I leaving those exact same breadcrumbs?

I wiped the rain from my eyes with the back of my hand. I had to go. This had gone too far.

This sea of pedestrians appeared to part for me as I walked through. I was the only one without an umbrella. I kept my head down, my cap lowered. My body still thrummed with leftover energy from the bathhouse. Fuck. My hole was sore. Tender. It throbbed. I looked over my shoulder. He had fit so perfectly inside me, his thrusts so well-timed. His balls felt like heaven slapping against me. I had never come as much as I had from him filling me with his load. It was still inside me.

I reached the stairs to the subway station. No one was around. I reached behind and slid my hand into my pants. My fingers rubbed over my leaking hole. His cum was warm, dripping out of me.

Fuck.

I’d made such a huge mistake.

I had to control myself. My entire life swirled around being in control. So how had this man made me lose all of it? And out of all the men, it had to be the detective working on the case that was specifically set to hunt me down?

The subway station had a few others waiting for the train. None of them noticed me leaning against the steel column, hand stuffed in my pocket, holding down my stiffening cock. All I could think about was Jace. All I could focus on was his scent, the way he felt breaching me, stretching me, unloading his balls inside me.

I had to shake him somehow. I had to get home.

The train reached the station and came to a screeching halt. There was graffiti scrawled across the side, bright blue block letters turning from a blur to an actual script. I ignored it. There was a homeless man sprawled out across the seats by the back of the train. I took a seat across from him, then pulled out my phone and tried to distract myself from my spiraling thoughts, but all that did was make me think about the mistakes I had made tonight.

Fuck, fuck, fuck .

My chest started to tighten. Panic attacks weren’t a new thing for me. I’d suffered from them since I was a kid. My mother would need to stay awake with me until the sun came up because of how the fear would eat at me from the inside, always made worse by the monster who harmed me in the first place.

My own father. Flesh and blood. He’d made me suffer, over and over again.

The locked bathroom door, the drinking from the toilet to keep alive, the beatings, the yelling, the nights spent awake, worried that every little noise was him coming to my room to smack me again. I carried a lot of trauma, all of it poisoning me like an oil slick coating a previously serene oceanfront view. It was impossible to wash off. The panic became a part of my DNA, leaving me in a near constant state of dread.

He’d broken me, damaged me in a way that left my soul itself scarred, battered, bruised.

Therapy sessions never helped; anxiety medication did, especially when chased down with a shot or two of tequila. Currently, I had none of that at hand.

I watched the walls of the subway whiz past me. A drunken couple sat giggling to my left, completely unaware of who they sat only feet away from.

What a joke this life could be, no one aware of who they brushed past, of the stories they would never read, never know the ending to.

A complete joke.

The train halted to a stop. My panic attack didn’t. My breaths sliced into my lungs, sharp as knives. My palms were wet, clammy. My throat was tight. I stood and walked past the knocked-out homeless man, past the giggling couple. No one was aware of the fact that I had murdered someone this morning or that I was close to being discovered by the evening.

I lived on the penthouse floor of an apartment building in Midtown Manhattan. It was a bustling and central part of town. Fashion boutiques and bodegas abound. The apartment wasn’t large by anyone’s standard, but I had a small balcony, it allowed pets, and I had a beautiful view of Central Park. A privilege given to me from my lucrative day job: marketing director at a tech startup flooded with money. I had worked hard to attain my title and to afford something larger than a walk-in closet in the city. I was proud of it. One of the few things in life I was proud of.

I walked into my building and into the elevator bay. The cleaners had just been here. It smelled like lemon and pine. It only made the tightening sensation in my chest worsen. I wanted to vomit. Tonight had been a mistake.

Fuuuuuck.

I took the elevator up to my floor.

“Oh, hey there, Theo.”

The friendly face appeared between the doors like a smiling ghost. It was Billie, my neighbor. He was an easygoing guy and fun to talk to, but I didn’t have it in me to make small talk.

“Hi, Billie. Sorry, I’m in a rush.”

“No problem. Maybe come by later for some wine. I’ve got a new bottle of chardonnay you might want to try.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“Everything okay?” Billie asked as he swapped places with me in the elevator.

“Yeah, yeah. Everything’s fine.”

He gave me a tense smile. I managed to volley one back to him. The elevator door closed, and I rushed to my apartment.

I fumbled for the keys in my pockets, the metal nearly slipping from my wet grip. I put it in the lock and turned. The door opened, and I stepped into my home.

Dark, full of shadows, and safe.

Once inside, I shut the door and slammed my fist into the bare white wall. My hand stung with the impact. The thin skin around my knuckles turned bright red. I embraced the pain. It grounded me. Pain was good. It was real. Panic was not. Panic was the monster under the bed, eating from fear that was never founded.

Immediately, I was greeted by a purring comet of fur.

I crouched down and let Luke nuzzle into my face. I gave my cat a kiss on the head, right between his ears. He was a tabby cat, fur a dusky brown with black stripes and a bright white chin. He was missing an eye and had a bite taken out of his left ear, and he was the most perfect soul to have ever walked this planet. He was the balm to my anxiety, and I used him liberally. His purrs were an antidote. I’d protect him with my own life if I needed to.

My panic attack began to subside. My emotions still weren’t settled, but my thoughts were becoming less clouded. I rose from the floor and turned on the lights. My apartment had been professionally decorated and designed by an interior designer I had found online. There were pieces from Italy and France—a coffee table worth two thousand dollars, a cloudlike couch worth triple that—with original art that took up the tall brick walls and blankets that were hand stitched and bright pillows that popped with different accent colors. None of it felt like mine.

I went to my bedroom, leaving the light off as I sat at my desk. The glow of the screen filled the room. I squinted until my eyes adjusted.

I had shit to do. I wanted to start my hunt for the next person who I’d make pay.

But that could wait. I instead opened up Google and searched for the agency where I knew the detective worked .

Stonewall Investigations.

They had multiple branches open. I clicked on the two they had in New York City. Each site had a list of detectives. It took me seconds to find Jace and his last name: Holloway.

I opened another window and searched his full name. I found an old LinkedIn account that hadn’t been updated in years, but it must have been his. He was in the same location and had listed his education as only having a high school diploma. There was an email linked to the account. I grabbed the first part of the email and plugged that into social media.

Bingo. I found his Instagram. It was pretty barren, with a few sepia-drenched photos of random furniture and coffee cups. But there were a handful of photos showing Jace. Smiling. Handsome. One of him during a hike, his shorts high, sweat beading across his forehead. His backpack straps were tight around his shoulders. His shirt had a sweat stain underneath his pecs.

I pulled off my pants. I wasn’t wearing any underwear. My cock was already hard, but I ignored it. I clicked to another photo showing Jace sitting on a bench at Central Park. He leaned back, relaxed, an arm thrown over the seat. I wondered who took these photos. A boyfriend? Girlfriend? Sister?

Another photo had Jace in just a bathing suit, walking out from the clear blue waters of somewhere in the Caribbean. A happy trail disappeared down underneath the light blue shorts. His complexion was slightly more sun-kissed, less pale .

My cock throbbed. I fisted it. Squeezed. His body looked even better in the sunlight. I could picture the heavy balls that were just underneath that thin layer of fabric. Balls he had unloaded inside me only hours earlier.

He didn’t even know me. Didn’t know I was currently jerking off to his pictures. He likely had no idea I’d even be able to find him.

I needed lube.

Instead of spit, I reached between my legs and pushed my fingers inside my still-tender hole. Cum coated my two fingers as I pulled them out. I tilted my head back and gripped my cock. Stroked. I enlarged the photo of Jace at the beach. I envisioned the way he’d feel underneath me, my knees braced in the sand as he teased my hole with the head of his thick cock. Earlier in the night, he’d been gentle at first. But I didn’t like gentle. I wanted it rough. Wanted him to use my body like a toy. Wanted him to find his pleasure in the absence of mine.

A guttural moan rose from my chest. The slick sounds of cum and skin rubbing on skin filled the room. I squeezed my balls. I’d already come three times today, twice before heading to the bathhouse.

I yelled out, keeping my eyes on Jace’s as my fourth orgasm struck me like lightning. I leaned forward. My body crumpled into itself. My toes curled into the floor as cum shot across my stomach, dribbling down my cock and balls onto my office chair. It mixed with Jace’s cum.

God. That release was a waste.

I wanted to reach through the screen and yank Jace into my room by the throat. I wanted him here, licking me clean. I wanted him getting hard again so he could plow me into the bed frame using his own seed as lube, same as I had.

“Oh, Jace Holloway,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “What have you started?”

And, more importantly, how would it all end?