32. Alex

CHAPTER 32

ALEX

For what might have been the first time since I’d met him, Dylan looked at peace. Sitting across from me in the back yard, sipping his coffee and staring at the stone fountain against the far wall. His shoulders—including the injured one—were relaxed and there wasn’t a single frown line to be seen around the corners of his plump lips. He closed his eyes, unaware I watched him, tipping his head back and letting out the quietest sigh. His throat worked as he swallowed, and I clicked my pen closed, setting it on top of my nearly finished crossword.

“Are you happy, Dylan?” I asked.

He didn’t move, but he smiled softly. “Yes.”

“Your shoulder is getting better,” I said, which wasn’t news to either of us. My observation brought his chin toward his chest, his eyes crinkled in worry as he locked his eyes on mine.

“Yes.”

I licked my lips, reaching for my coffee.

“I can start with the guitar again soon,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Maybe some shows,” he said next, “some gigs again.”

“Whatever you want, Dylan.”

He angled his head to the side, and it blew my mind how different he looked from the man I’d met at Tryst. Even with his hospitalization and physical therapy, he’d put on weight and gained some color in his cheeks. Not that he was unhealthy before, but he looked better taken care of now and it was impossible to ignore the way pride swelled in my chest at the change. Dylan bit the tip of his tongue, working his jaw back and forth while he watched me, and I found myself curious to know what he saw in me…besides my money.

I took my glasses off and rubbed the bridge of my nose.

“How long are you going to pay my rent in Chelsea?” he asked after I set my glasses down on the table.

I would have preferred to see him for that question, but the strength had mysteriously gone out of me. “Until you tell me to stop.”

Dylan looked down at his hands, tracing the edge of his thumbnail over a callous on his middle finger.

“You know,” he said after taking a slow drink of his coffee, “that apartment was supposed to be the start of my life.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“It feels like I’ve just been backsliding.” Dylan smiled at me weakly before looking back to his hands. “I didn’t want to be beholden to my dad and his money and now I’m beholden to you and yours.”

I knew there had to be a right thing to say to that assertion, but the words were lost to me. Dylan kept talking before I could even bother to weave a sentence together, but I wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a curse.

“It doesn’t bother me the same way, though.”

“No?”

He huffed a laugh. “Sometimes I feel like it should, but you’re nothing like him.”

“No, I’m not,” I agreed. I didn’t need to know Russell Lang personally to know that.

“I love you.” Dylan scrunched his nose.

“I love you.”

“I don’t trust it, though. Like…” Trailing off, he drummed his fingers nervously against the edge of the table, the words and thoughts abandoning him.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek to stop myself from pressing him on the statement. The wheels were turning and I could tell he was close to talking himself around to a revelation that would either make or break us.

“Before, the first times, when you were paying me…that made sense because there was an even exchange.”

“I’d hardly call the money I gave you an even trade for what you gave me.”

Dylan snorted, rolling his eyes. “What did I give you?”

“A second chance.”

That seemed to stop us both, and I fumbled my glasses back on while he sucked in a breath heavy enough to lift his shoulders toward his ears.

“Agree to disagree,” he said, continuing before I could object. “It was a transaction, either way. And then I was so cruel to you?—”

“Already forgiven.”

“So cruel, Alex,” he repeated, leveling me with a sharp look that let me know he still carried immeasurable guilt over that argument we’d had before I used a safe word with him. “Then when I got hurt…that was also…”

“Taking care of you after that was me doing right by you.”

“Charity?”

“Selfishness,” I corrected him. “A way to get what I wanted.”

Another swallow, another click of his jaw, and I found myself desperate to know what song he was playing against the edge of the table with his trembling fingers.

“Whatever it was, I’m almost done with physical therapy now.” As if to demonstrate, he gave a slow and short rotation of his left shoulder. “So, what next?”

“I suppose that’s up to you.”

“I thought you were the one in charge. You’re the Dominant.”

“I am. It’s my job to make sure you have what you want. What you need.”

“And what’s that?” he asked, voice low and cracking.

“I can’t make that decision for you.”

“What about what you want?” he asked, dropping his hands into his lap. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“It counts for everything. Just like what you want.”

“And what do you want?”

“You,” I said, pushing the chair back and standing up. I jerked my head toward the door and Dylan shoved his chair back.

Following me inside without another word, I listened to the way his feet shuffled against the wood floors as we headed upstairs to the playroom. I was still half-hard from the enthusiastic blow job he’d given me earlier in the morning, and even as he’d sat at the table and dribbled his heart out between us, the bulge between his legs hadn’t yet faltered either.

“I want you,” I said again, giving the waistband of his sleep shorts a yank down past his knees. He stepped out of them silently, standing naked in front of me. Dylan was so much more sure of himself now than he’d been before. Even with our history between us and the weight of his worries bearing down on our shoulders, none of that seemed to matter within the four walls of my playroom.

But I needed them to not matter everywhere else.

“How can I make you believe that you’re it for me?” I asked. “What do I need to do?”

He squeezed his eyes closed, shaking his head quickly, a tear escaping from the corner of his dark lashes. “I don’t know.”

Scrubbing a hand down my face, I looked around before making a quick decision to change course, and I hoped it was the right one.

“Out,” I said, frowning. “Up to the guest room.”

“I don’t want to play piano.”

The set of Dylan’s jaw made it clear to me he was itching for a fight again, and I was happy to oblige him. I knew now that he didn’t fight me because he was really angry or unhappy with anything; he did it because he wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to walk away from him when his mind got the better of him.

“Shut up.” I dropped my pants onto the floor beside his and then grabbed his good arm, hauling up out of the room and up the next flight of stairs toward the guest room.

“Ouch,” he grumbled, knocking into the banister.

“Green?” I asked.

“Not not green,” he muttered.

I kicked the door to the guest room closed behind us, giving Dylan another shove across the room. There weren't a lot of furnishings in there—a queen size bed, a nightstand, his piano, and a full length mirror tucked into the corner beside an overstuffed arm chair. Walking around him, I moved the mirror from the corner to the wall so it faced the side of the bed, bringing Dylan’s weary scowl into focus.

I pulled lube from the nightstand and sat down on the edge of the bed, wetting my hand and stroking my cock. I held his stare in the reflection, his entire body swaying as he watched me jerk myself off.

“I can do this with you every day if it’s what you need, pet ,” I said, emphasizing the endearment that had felt so natural with him. At the sound of it, he shivered, his erection slapping against his stomach. “But I’d honestly rather we get to a point where you understand what I mean when I tell you I love you.”

He licked his lips, and I shoved the lube across the bed toward him.

“Come over here,” I demanded. “Get yourself ready for me.”

Dylan picked up the lube and came around to a spot between my spread legs. His cheeks were dark pink as he slicked the fingers on his right hand, reaching around to tease them through his crack and around his hole.

“Bend over so I can watch.” I didn’t give him a chance to make the move on his own, instead threading my fingers through the hair at the back of his head and shoving him face first into my lap. His hot lips and stubbled cheek dragged across my thigh, but my attention was caught on the mirror, the reflection of his fingers pushing into his hole and prepping himself for me.

He moaned quietly when he pushed all the way inside of himself, and I tightened my fingers into his hair.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Finger fucking my asshole.”

“Why are you doing that?”

“You told me to,” he rasped.

I hummed, petting down the hair I’d tangled at the base of his skull. He was knuckle deep into his hole, the sight enough to make my dick leak against his cheek.

“That’s all you need to do to keep me happy,” I whispered. “Just do what you’re told.”

“Yes…” He went quiet, the hiss of an unspoken word dying off with his silence.

“Say it,” I prompted, pulling him up and spinning him around on my lap. With one hand on him and one on my shaft, I replaced his fingers with the tip of my cock, slowly lowering him down onto my lap. “Just do what you’re told, pet. That’s all I want.”

He ground his molars together, head falling back as he sank down fully around my erection. When he was fully seated, I took a moment to admire the shape of our reflections. My chin on his shoulder and his head thrown back so he didn’t have to see us at all. I admired the way his skin was paler than mine, how his legs were more slender. Reaching around, I traced my finger along the place where our bodies joined, and Dylan groaned, shivering and clamping down harder around my shaft.

“Look what you do to me,” I whispered, waiting until he looked at our reflections to lift him off my lap. Inch by inch, my cock slid out of him until only the tip remained sheathed. “Look how hard you make me when you let me love you the way you need me to love you.”

A shiver tore through him, shaking me down to my bones.

I’d told him once I would only give him what I could afford, and there was a time when my heart might not have made the list. Any chance I had to save myself had come and gone with the fleeting quietness of the way he moaned and breathed in his sleep, when he was beneath me. There was no cost that was too great now.

“I love you,” I promised him, “and that means more than you know.”

Dylan swallowed, another tear leaking out from the corner of his eye. Using only our reflections to find my way, I reached up and swiped it away, sliding my finger into my mouth to taste him.

“And I will keep loving you until you know it,” I swore, “until you understand.”

“Why?” he croaked.

I slid him back down until he was once again fully stretched around my cock.

“Why not?”

“What’s in it for you?” he asked, voice watery.

“This.” I leaned back to rest on my hands, keeping sight of us both still in the mirror. “Ride me. Oh, fuck. My perfect little pet, so desperate to be loved. To be needed.”

He shook his head, more tears falling, but he lifted up and slowly started to fuck me, sending shockwaves up my spine every time he sank down around me.

“I will never not love you,” I whispered into his ear. “My heart is not returnable, Dylan. This is not a transaction.”

He didn’t need to speak for me to know the thoughts racing through his mind, and he didn’t need to tell me he understood because the change in his body was proof enough. Heat flared through him, radiating out like a lava spray over every inch of my skin where we were connected. He picked up his pace, stare still locked on mine in the mirror. I shifted up, reaching around and collaring my hand around his throat to slow his pace. He was too hot, too sweet, and I wasn’t ready to come yet.

“I am in love with you.” I kissed the words against the shell of his ear. “I will pay rent in Chelsea as long as you want me to, but this is where I want you. In my home, on my cock.”

Dylan’s chin quivered, hips stuttering.

“I will remind you every day until you believe it,” I said, “until you trust it.”

“I do trust it.”

“Until you believe it,” I corrected myself.

Dylan screwed his eyes closed and opened his mouth, a low wail falling out as his cock went rigid and spilled over his stomach.

“Watch,” I warned, waiting until he pried his eyes open and forced his attention back to the mirror.

His stare darted from his face to mine, down to the way his cock was still spasming and shooting out jets of cum. I grabbed his hips and lifted him, snapping my own hips up roughly into him. Dylan cried out, catching my gaze in the reflection, and the wide-eyed hope that poured out of him was enough to send me over the edge. I slammed him back down onto my lap, fingers digging into his waist as I came inside of him.

Still in the overpowering throes of my own release, I sank my teeth into his ear until he shivered on my lap, and then I said, “I love you, and there will never come a day when I don’t.”

He blinked hard, licking his lips.

I ran through the conversation we’d just had, realizing that with Dylan’s shoulder on the mend, he was expecting the other shoe to drop. Every other relationship he’d had, save for Tate, but including his parents, had been a transaction or a trade. He wasn’t expecting that from me because of any shortcomings on my part or his, but only because it was all he knew. I needed to show Dylan what the next stage of our relationship would look like, when we were together freely and by choice, not by need.

Regretfully, I lifted him off my lap, using my fingers to push any cum that had leaked out of him back inside. A last burst dribbled out of my cock, and I swiped it clean and pushed it inside of him for good measure before giving him a gentle push toward the door. He kept his eyes on my reflection for as long as he could, turning to face me directly when I’d pushed him too far from the mirror.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” I told him, giving my shaft a squeeze and pushing myself to my feet. “We’re going out.”