16. Alex

CHAPTER 16

ALEX

Dylan was in a miserable mood by the time we got back to my house, but if he thought I was going to fuck his salty little attitude out of him, he had another thing coming entirely.

Earlier in the week, he’d gotten tested and provided me with clear test results. I’d given him the same in return, but I’d yet to fuck him again. Even if I jerked off thinking about how good it would be to take him again, I wanted to make sure we were on the same page with everything else before I let myself take that step again. Maybe I was too soft of a man at heart.

To say the few days since we’d agreed to be together were tense would have been the same as calling a hurricane a rainstorm. Dylan came inside with the force of the former, slamming my front door behind him and dropping his guitar case near the door. I scratched my cheek, content to watch him tantrum himself further away from the one thing he thought would fix it all.

“You were really good tonight,” I said after he’d licked his shoes off, both of them thumping against the wall before landing in a pile beside my shoe rack.

“Was I?”

“I’m not a liar.”

He grunted, ready to stalk past me, but I reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt in my fist. Dragging him to a stop, I yanked him against me, my lips pressed against his jaw. “What is your problem, pet?”

Dylan scoffed, fighting against my grip on his shirt. I tightened my fingers into the cotton. The only way I was going to let go was if he used his safe word and he knew that. I think part of him liked that he could argue and fight me, knowing I wouldn’t leave.

“This isn’t what I signed up for,” he said, repeating his earlier complaint.

I let go of his shirt and moved him in front of me, his back to my chest. He still struggled against me, but went slack when I banded one arm around the front of his chest and undid his zipper with the other.

“What did you sign up for?”

“More than this.”

“I can’t do much with you if you’re not alive, Dylan. If you’re not whole.”

His heart hammered against my forearm, and I kicked the back of his ankles one at a time so I could walk us into the kitchen. Once there, I let go of him and shoved him down into one of the chairs. Leaning back against the counter, I crossed my arms in front of my chest and stared down at him. The petulance leaked out of his pores and I had to fight every urge to take him into the playroom and spank him senseless. I needed it, and he probably did too, but I couldn’t reward his bad behavior.

“All you’ve done is tell me to not drink and to eat,” he grumbled.

“The absolute basics that shouldn’t even need my involvement.”

“I thought the point of this was you taking—” Dylan snapped his mouth closed, swallowing back whatever he’d been about to say.

“Taking what?”

“Being in control,” he said, abandoning whatever statement he’d been ready to make.

“I told you before, Dylan, I’m not an easy man. You’re not meant to like all of this.”

Maybe I’d been wrong about him, about what he needed. I’d misjudged him…somehow. Misjudged myself and what I was capable of.

“Do you like this?” he shot back, glaring up at me with nothing but defiance in his eyes.

“Not especially.” I palmed my flaccid cock, the hard press of my hand doing enough to make it twitch to life. “But I can make myself like it if I want to.”

Dylan’s mouth contorted into a grimace, his cheeks burning red.

“You do like it, though,” I said softly.

“I hate it.”

“Take your cock out of your pants and prove it.”

“No,” he choked out.

I arched a brow. “Are we green?”

Dylan cursed under his breath, lifting up enough from the seat to undo his pants and take his nearly fully erect cock out of his pants. Even in the dim light of the kitchen, it was easy to make out the shine of precum against his tip, the uncomfortable stretch of skin for how hard he was.

“Happy now?” he snapped.

“I knew what we’d find there,” I told him, my own cock quickly plumping up against my thigh. “You’re the one trying to pretend you don’t like it.”

“I didn’t say I don’t like it.” He jumped up and threw his arms in the air. “I said it’s not what I wanted.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to do what you said!” Dylan stepped forward like he was going to push me, but thought better of it before his palms connected with my chest. “I want you to take care of me!”

“Aren’t I?”

“No! You’re making me do it all.”

I sighed, cheeks puffing out on the exhale. Pushing my weight off the counter, I closed the space between us and gave Dylan a shove back down into his seat. He landed and stayed put, glowering up at me like he wanted me dead. I didn’t blame him. Trying to make sense of the things he wanted and needed compared to what made him hard had to be a lot. All of that on top of the situation with his finances and his parents…and his passions.

“I’m not making you do anything,” I reminded him. “Did you want to talk about Juilliard?”

“I’m not going to safeword,” he told me.

“I’m not going to fight you forever,” I countered, notching myself between his spread legs so I towered over him. I was so close I had to look straight down to see him, and he had to crane his neck toward the ceiling to keep glaring at me. Which he did. “It’s fine and it’s fun in moderation, like all things, but you have to want this.”

“I do, but you’re being mean.”

“Dylan.” I scrubbed a hand down my face, sucking in a much needed lungful of air. He was going to give me gray hairs and send me to an early grave.

“I thought it would be different.”

“I see that.” I reached down and brushed his hair back from his forehead. As soon as my fingers touched his skin, he went soft. His eyes closed and he swayed forward, pressing his cheek against my stomach and wrapping his arms around the backs of my thighs. I sighed and continued to stroke my fingers through his hair. “And it will be different, when I can trust you to keep it together on your own.”

“Maybe my dad was right,” he mumbled into my shirt. “Maybe I am useless.”

“You’re far from useless,” I assumed him. “But I’m going out of town in two weeks and I need to trust that you can manage on your own for two days while I’m gone. I don’t mind dictating the basics to you, Dylan, but I’m not going to reward you for doing the bare minimum.”

“Are you trying to say we’re only going to fuck if I do something good?” He wiggled his shoulders and dug his feet into the ground, pushing himself away from me.

“There’s plenty of ways to reward you.”

“But you haven’t fucked me,” he said. “I got tested like you wanted, and you still haven’t.”

“I asked you to quit drinking and you still haven’t,” I shot back at him.

He narrowed his eyes, working his jaw back and forth. His hands were fisted in his lap, and I wondered how close he was to springing up out of his seat and punching me in the mouth. I’d take it if that was truly what I had coming, but I didn’t think it would come to that. At least, I hoped.

“Put your dick away, Dylan.” I sidestepped out of our standoff to get a bottle of water from my fridge. I drank half of it in one go, then grabbed a second bottle for Dylan, who cursed my name behind me while he put himself back together. “You can say whatever you want about me, but the punishment you want is not the one you’re going to get.”

“Whatever.” He threw himself back into the chair, and I questioned every decision I’d ever made in my whole life.

Subconsciously, I understood why he was pushing the way he did. He needed to know that I wasn’t going to give up and walk away, that I wasn’t going to go back on my part of the deal. But damn if I didn’t miss the easy submission that came from my days with Carter, or even the times when I was paying Dylan to keep his mouth closed and do what he was told.

“You’re acting like a child.”

“No wonder you had to pay for sex,” he said next, words so quiet I almost missed them.

I set both bottles of water down on the counter and shoved my hands into my pockets so I didn’t go back on my promise of the right kind of punishment. “Excuse me?”

“No wonder your ex married someone else.”

His comment was designed to hurt, and hurt it did. The sentiment landed like a barbed baseball bat against my sternum, and I looked down as if the words on their own should have been enough to draw blood. I found myself physically unscathed. The wounds were all invisible, but still fatal.

“Red,” I said calmly, holding my hands up in surrender.

“What?”

“Red, Dylan.” I blinked rapidly, my glasses starting to fog from the wall of tears that were building in my eyes. “You win.”

“What does that mean?”

“This isn’t going to work.”

I hated myself as much as I hated him in that moment, as close as I was to falling in love with him. It pained me to be another self-fulfilling prophecy for him, but there had to be a boundary. I would take his arguing and his complaining, but the low blows were far out of bounds and I’d already told him not to be an asshole. It was my only limit, and he’d doubled down with the intent to take me out at the knees.

It was one thing to prove your reliability to a person. I’d put up with his protests and his whining—none of that was enough to scare me off. But I drew the line at deliberate maliciousness, which was where his comment came from. I knew it, and when his face crumpled, I was certain he knew it as well.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, tears already slicking down his cheeks.

Grimacing, I shook my head, walking away from him so I didn’t also say something I’d regret. I headed for the door, where he’d left his shoes and his guitar. Dylan pushed the chair back and the feet dug against the wood. He chased after me, again falling short of physically grabbing me. I stopped, my hand on the doorknob, my chin seconds away from giving up how upset his comment had truly made me.

“I asked you to quit drinking and quit being an asshole,” I reminded him. “I would have given you anything, everything, if you’d kept up your end of the transaction.”

“I thought this was a relationship.”

“It’s a figure of speech.” The doorknob slipped against my palm.

“No.” He frowned, shaking his head. “You had it right. It was a transaction, but I was stupid enough to sign up for it again without getting paid.”

I pushed my fingers against the bridge of my nose, rubbing away the weight of my glasses before letting them fall back into place.

“You’re being deliberately cruel, Dylan.”

“And you’re not?”

“I told you I’m n?—”

He cut me off, “Not easy. Sounds like an excuse to be a prick.”

I wiped the corner of my eye with my knuckle, not caring if he saw my tears or not.

I opened the door.

“Good luck with life, Dylan,” I said, staring at the street while he shoved his feet into his shoes and grabbed his guitar from the floor. “You’re going to need it.”