14. Alex

CHAPTER 14

ALEX

I made Dylan take a shower and get dressed. Made him drink a glass of water and eat a piece of leftover pizza because it was all they had in the fridge. I ordered Chinese takeout and sat him down on the couch, hoping and praying I hadn’t made the biggest mistake of my life since Carter.

“I want to be very clear with you,” I said, tracing the sharp tip of my canine tooth with my tongue while I tried to find the right words.

“No more sex work,” he said, lips pursed.

His hair was wet, flopping a bit in his face and dripping down his forehead. He had bags under his eyes, but he looked more relaxed than he had when I’d shown up. That was probably on account of the orgasm, not anything I’d said or done. But it didn’t matter. At least, not really.

“I don’t care about sex work,” I clarified. “What I care about is exclusivity. I don’t share my toys, Dylan, and I won’t share you.”

He swallowed audibly.

“So if you want to be with me, then you’re with me.”

He dipped his chin toward his chest and looked up at me from beneath the lush fan of his dark lashes. I didn’t know if he intended to look the part of a coy submissive, but he was hitting all his marks just the same.

“I understand.”

“And I have rules.”

He nodded.

“For you.” I tilted my head to the side, appraising his expression before I gave him the first one. “No drinking.”

“I don’t have a drinking problem,” he interrupted.

“I didn’t say that you did. I simply said that if you’re with me…for now… you won’t be drinking.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to.” I held my hands out, palms turned halfway toward the ceiling. “Because what I say in this relationship goes.”

“Sounds like a dic tatorship.”

I caught his emphasis on the first syllable, and I leaned over to pick my cell phone and money clip up from the table. I pulled a hundred dollar bill out and let it fall, willing to at least pay for the dinner I wasn’t going to get to eat.

Dylan scrambled onto his knees, crawling to my side of the couch and grabbing my hand before I could get any of my belongings into my pocket. His face was frantic, wide eyes and heaving breaths. “Where are you going?”

“My second rule is that you aren’t a fucking asshole to me.”

“You hadn’t said that one yet,” he grumbled, folding his arms over his chest and collapsing back onto the couch.

My phone was heavy in my hand, my palm sweaty. “It should go without saying.”

“I’ve never done this kind of thing before,” he said.

“Well, I have.” I set my things back down on the table and sat down next to Dylan, closer than before. His knee pushed into the side of my thigh, his fingers drumming nervously in his lap. “And I know what works for me and what doesn’t.”

“What if it doesn’t work for me ?” he asked.

“Then we go our separate ways.”

Dylan let out a long breath, slowly walking one of his hands to the point on my leg where his knee dug into my muscle. He didn’t quite rest his hand on my thigh, but he definitely touched me. I went ahead and pulled his hand up over the hump of my leg, and his fingers splayed out overtop of my thigh, almost like his hand was dissolving into my skin.

“Why do you want this?” I asked him the question I’d been avoiding since I showed up at his apartment earlier in the night.

“I would have fucked you for free,” he said quietly, “the first time.”

“You didn’t fuck me at all.”

“You know what I mean.”

”Go on,” I prompted.

“You were sad and handsome and I wanted you, but you made the comment about paying for sex…” Dylan trailed off and he tried to take his hand away from my leg, but I covered it quickly, pressing his palm down flat.

“And you needed money.”

“I took advantage,” he offered.

“I paid far less than you’re worth, Dylan.”

That seemed to take the fight right out of him, his fingers digging into the inside of my thigh.

“I…after we….” His cheeks burned a dark red and he looked at the wall, the couch, his feet, anywhere but me. “The first time…I didn’t think I would like some of those things.”

“But you did?”

“Yes,” Dylan whispered, nodding. “Very much.”

“Then why didn’t you answer my messages?”

“I didn’t want to make a habit of trading my body for money,” he muttered.

“But you needed more?”

“You know about my dad.” Dylan’s body reeled back, like he wanted to physically get as far away from the conversation as he could without actually moving away from it.

“I’m not trying to rehash the same conversations over and over,” I assured him. “I just want to make sure you and I are on the same page going forward.”

“No more sex work, no more drinking.”

“No more being an asshole when your feelings get hurt,” I added.

Dylan scrunched his nose, startling when the building buzzer rattled through the shoebox of an apartment.

“The food,” I reminded him, plucking the loose hundred dollar bill off the table and handing it to him. “Go get it.”

It wasn’t a test. At least I hadn’t meant for it to be one. Dylan getting the delivery from the door was probably the smallest thing I’d ever ask of him over the course of our relationship, and I needed to make sure he really understood what it meant to be with me. I was already far too invested in him and I didn’t want to dig myself in deeper if the novelty of this dynamic was going to wear off on him.

I’d spent so many years not understanding my own needs, living a half-life until things with Carter had crossed that line. Some nights, I stayed up later than I should, wondering what my future would have been like if not for Dalton Fox, if not for Kale being a pushy piece of shit in the first place. But all the cards for Carter and me had fallen at the same time, so one scenario didn’t exist without the other.

Dylan returned with the food and my change, which I had no intention of taking back from him. He set it on the table and, without being told, opened up the food and served helpings of each entree onto the Styrofoam plates the restaurant had provided. I wasn’t hungry—it was all for him—but I didn’t stop him from the dual servings.

I also didn’t have to tell him to eat, which was a relief.

He sat down on the couch, just as close as he’d been before with his knee pressing into the outside of my thigh, plate balanced on his lap. I scratched an annoying itch on my ribs, and Dylan dug in, shoveling chow mein and spicy chicken into his mouth like it was the first hot meal he’d had in weeks. My own food sat untouched on the table, and if he noticed, he didn’t say anything.

Watching him eat made me hard because, for what might have been the first time since I’d met him, he was doing what he needed to do without being told. Maybe there was hope for the two of us after all.

I waited until his pace had slowed, more than half his plate cleared when I said to him, “Ask me the question now.”

He looked up, confused, but he must have seen the explanation in my face.

“Why did you want to pay for sex?”

“I fell in love with one of my closest friends.” Saying the confession out loud for the first time gave my feelings for Carter an unexpected weight, and as soon as the words were between us, it was like I could breathe. My lungs didn’t burn the way they always did on the inhale, my ribs didn’t feel like they were going to shatter. “His name was Carter…everyone else called him Beamer, uhm, I…we…he ended up marrying someone else.”

At that, Dylan surged forward so fast the plate tumbled off his lap and straight onto the floor, spilling sweet and sour sauce all over my left foot. He cursed, jumping up from the couch and running the few feet to the kitchen for a sponge and a towel and then he was back, on his knees at my feet, picking up noodles with his bare hands and wiping up the sauce.

It was one more thing he did without being told, and when he stood to carry the mess into the kitchen, the front of his basketball shorts sported an obvious tent from the growing erection between his legs. He turned after dropping everything in the sink, shifting his weight nervously.

“Why does this happen?” he asked.

“I can’t answer that for you.”

He sat back down, noticing for the first time I hadn’t touched my food. He took my plate and set it on my lap, waiting with a fork in hand until I took it from him. Something twisted around the middle of my chest, a thorny and dangerous kind of pleasure that I hadn’t felt in months.

“Why did he marry someone else?” Dylan asked.

“They were better suited.”

“But you loved him.”

“Dalton loved him more,” I said, stabbing my fork into a piece of the sauce-covered chicken. “Loved him better.”

Dylan made a thoughtful sound after I put the chicken into my mouth, leaning back against the couch with a groan that sounded a lot like disagreement. His knee was still boring into my thigh, burning hot.

“Back to us,” he said.

“Please.”

“Everything you’re saying sounds very imbalanced.”

I twisted my mouth up at the corner, expression wary.

“You’re doing so much for me,” he whispered. “Who does anything for you?”

I lifted the plate a few inches off my lap before setting it down and taking another bite of the savory chicken. “Looks like you are.”

“But you’re still in charge.”

I exhaled, taking one more bite before setting the plate back down on the table beside the still very full paper takeout boxes. “That’s complicated.”

“I know I make dumb choices, but I’m not stupid.”

“None of this exists with you,” I told him. “If you change your mind, if you use your safe word, that’s when everything stops. So, it sounds like you’re the one with all the control.”

“But you’re in charge?”

“Yes.” I nodded slowly. “You have to choose that, though.”

Dylan’s lower lip quivered and he scratched the shell of his ear, again diverting his attention away from me. He stood up slowly, smoothing his hands down the still visible bulge between his legs.

“I need to piss,” he said, stepping over me instead of going around me.

The bathroom was close. Everything in the apartment was close, but it was toward the front near his bedroom and I watched him go, not relaxing until the door locked and the water turned on.

I dropped my head back and stared up at the ceiling, praying that I wasn’t making the second biggest mistake of my life with Dylan. Not only did he not fully understand this lifestyle, let alone the dynamic, he was hard up for money which put us at a massive disadvantage.

Even though he wasn’t even making it paycheck to paycheck, I recognized his father’s name and knew he’d grown up with not just one, but probably a dozen silver spoons in his mouth. With me, he’d be adjusting not just to being poor, but also to being submissive. I worried it was too much for him to take on all at once, but that kind of stubborn resilience that oozed out of his pores wasn’t something that men like Dylan and I could shake.

The bathroom door opened and he headed back to me, shoulders squared, eyes hooded. He was horny and he was certain, a dangerous combination. I knew from experience. But Dylan was willing to lose everything he’d ever known for the one thing he loved, and selfishly, I thought…maybe one day I could be the second thing.