8. Alex

CHAPTER 8

ALEX

After the night at The Black Door, Dylan stopped answering my messages. He read them, but never replied, leaving me at a loss for what to do next. I wanted to see him again, but I didn’t want to chase him down at Tryst for a second time. In a much more reasonable response to being ignored, I pulled some strings and got him a job at The Black Door. I put in his name with the owner and if fate called for one of his shifts to overlap on a day I happened to be there, I wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth.

He didn’t have to take the job, but…I hoped he would.

I lost count of the days, but on a Friday night my app pinged with an incoming message. My heart caught in my throat when I realized it was from Dylan. I’d subconsciously known that my body had been primed and waiting for him to get back to me, but there was also part of me that hadn’t ever expected it to happen. Instead of a message asking to hook up or meet, it was two simple words.

Thank you.

I was certain he didn’t intend it as an opening, but I took it as one just the same.

I could have messaged my friends, talked to Brooks or Ford or even Kale. They were all worried about me, but I didn’t want their sympathy looks or their pity drinks. It was easier to pretend I hadn’t lost anything when Carter left than to try and minimize the loss of him in their company. I’d seen Ford for drinks at Tryst before Dylan ghosted me, and I’d had lunch with Brooks on more than one occasion. They weren’t being deprived, and besides, I knew I wasn’t the best company.

I silenced my phone, got dressed, and headed to The Black Door.

It was a decent crowd for how early in the night it was, and it was easy to find Dylan behind the bar in the back of the main room. He was feet away from the room I’d spanked him senseless in the last time we were together, and seeing him there…I could feel the pull. I wanted to take him in the bathroom, rough fuck him against a wall just to remind myself how good it felt to be inside of him, but things were different.

This was his job now.

And I didn’t know much about what had led to the circumstances that pushed him into my bed, but I knew he needed the money. If he wouldn’t take mine, I wasn’t going to interfere with the ways he chose to find it. I had a membership to The Black Door and it wasn’t a mystery that I had a hand in getting him hired. He had to have taken the job expecting to run into me sooner or later. If the look on his face when I stepped up to the bar was any indication, he was just as relieved to be back in my company as I was to have him in mine.

“Thank you,” he said to me instead of hello.

“I just put your name on their radar,” I said. “You got yourself the job.”

“You know what I mean.” He worked his jaw back and forth like he was chewing on his cheek. “Can I get you a drink? It’s on me.”

“I can pay,” I reminded.

He rolled his eyes. “Martini?”

“Yes, Dylan. Thank you.”

His nostrils flared, but he turned and grabbed the gin from the top shelf and set to work mixing me the dirtiest martini I’d ever seen.

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” he said softly when he delivered me my drink.

“You could have called.”

“I didn’t think it was appropriate.”

This felt like a gray area, and it seemed we both knew it. Every time we’d been together, it had been a transaction. Money for sex. But the interest I felt for him and the desire that burned in my chest every time I thought about him was far beyond reasonable for the unspoken limits of our relationship. It was the main reason I hadn’t reached out to him either.

“I still have marks,” he said, seeming to change the subject.

“This long?”

His mouth twitched in the corner. “I keep poking at them.”

“Did you want more?”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said, glancing sideways as a man I recognized and knew far too well made his way to the bar. “But are you?—”

“You look like you’re in a good mood,” Brooks said, stepping up beside me at the bar.

“My favorite bartender from my favorite bar just got a job here,” I said, and just like that, a mask slipped over Dylan’s face and he was back in bartender mode, the same way I’d met him. He made easy conversation with Brooks, made him a martini almost as filthy as mine, and paid him no mind when Brooks ushered me away from the bar and out toward the elevator.

On the rooftop, I entertained his twenty questions about Dylan, making it clear we had history together without going into the sordid details he was trying to get out of me. The night turned far more interesting when Dylan’s best friend showed up, and we all learned Brooks had been a scoundrel, stealing the man’s virginity without so much as a call the next day. It was far too much excitement for me, considering I hadn’t even wanted to see anyone besides Dylan that night, so I left Brooks to clean up his mess with Tate. I’d get hell for it later, but I’d manage.

I didn’t bother saying goodbye to Dylan, which felt shitty of me, but his voice hadn’t quit echoing in my head.

I don’t know if that’s a good idea, but are you…

Brooks had cut him off before he could finish his sentence, and if the final word had been paying, I would have thrown myself off the roof. Because yes, I would gladly pay for a chance to get him into my bed again, but I didn’t want to pay. I wanted him to want more from me, to see me for the man I was or could be for him and more than just a way to get his rent paid easily.

I went home, put on a pair of lounge pants, and collapsed on my couch with a bottle of red wine. I fell asleep halfway through, the half-drank glass falling out of my hand and shattering on the floor. The wine spread out like a pool of blood, my own personal crime scene. In a way, it was—or it should have been—because I needed to cut Dylan out of me once and for all or it would kill me.

I could not handle another loss if it wasn’t on my own terms.

I stared at the wine spreading across my floor, every part of my tired and buzzed brain so focused on the stain that I almost missed the way my phone screen flashed to life on the arm of the couch. I’d silenced it before heading to the club, which meant I had a dozen text messages from Brooks that I’d ignored, and one unread message from Dylan.

“Can I come over?” he asked.

No.

“Yes,” I told him.

I confirmed he had my address, understanding it was going to be impossible to be rid of him unless the feeling was mutual. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I lost my head around him. If I told him I wanted to fuck him for free, would it scare him off? Would it bring him closer? I didn’t know which one I wanted…which outcome was better. My mind raced, palms sweating as I ran through every possible scenario and ending, and by the time Dylan arrived on my porch, I wasn’t myself.

I mean…I was , but far from the best version of myself.

I had five hundred dollars cash upstairs on my dresser, and if all Dylan wanted me for was my money, I was going to make him earn it.

“Thank you for the job,” he said again, and I didn’t know if he was talking about The Black Door or about fucking me.

I sniffed, scrunching my nose and stepping out of the way to let him inside. He toed his shoes off just inside the door, his stare raking over my bare feet, up my legs, and across my naked torso and chest before landing on my face. He looked tired and halfway hopeful.

I didn’t even know what time it was.

“Strip,” I said, stepping out of the way so he had space to get out of his clothes. Why did he smell so good all the time? Like lemons and limes and sweat, all of it living just beneath the surface of his skin.

Dylan smelled like spring.

He’d only done it for me twice, but he folded his clothes so neatly in a pile, like he didn’t want to exist in my home without explicit permission. It made me want to cry and scream and slam him against a wall. He was so perfect for me, it was unfair. Everything I wanted in a person, and he didn’t even know it. He didn’t understand.

I’d make him understand.

“I spilled my wine by the couch,” I said. “Go clean it up.”

He opened his mouth to argue. I saw the fight flash across his face, but he snapped his mouth closed and shuffled past me. Upstairs into the kitchen and down the hallway into the living room. I didn’t follow after him, but the house was deathly quiet and I listened to the broken glass clink together as he dropped it into a pile, heard him spray cleaner onto the floor, his bare feet padding back into the kitchen and putting everything away…

His hesitation as to what came next.

So he waited.

I climbed the stairs, using the banister to haul myself up because my feet felt like lead. Knowing I would find Dylan naked in my kitchen, it was unfair. The biggest cruelty of my life, short of losing Carter to Dalton Fox. At least it had been, until I found Dylan in my kitchen, just as I’d expected, except his cock was hard.

Maybe losing Carter hadn’t been such an injustice after all.

“What now?” he asked, and I wished I had an answer.

“Show me your ass,” I said. “You told me you were still bruised and I want to see it.”

Dylan turned around slowly and bent a little at the hips, jutting his ass out toward me. I leaned against the wall and folded my arms in front of my chest so I didn’t touch him.

“I don’t see anything,” I said.

He reached behind himself and pressed his finger into the fold between his thigh and his ass. He knew exactly where the bruise remained, and I imagined it was only there because he’d been fucking with it the longest.

“Go to the playroom. Get on the bench and wait for me.”

Dylan sucked in a sharp breath and disappeared toward the playroom. I took the time to compose myself, my earlier buzz from the bar long gone. It was nearly five in the morning, and I should have been in bed. Nothing good had ever come from being awake with a man an hour before sunrise.

Just the same, I got my cash from my bedroom and went back to the front door, tucking it in a pocket of Dylan’s jeans before heading into the playroom. I was never prepared for the sight of him, bent over furniture he didn’t have names for, fighting against arousal he didn’t understand. He looked like an angel, tense and pale on the back of my black spanking bench, ass in the air.

“Use the handles,” I said, stepping into the room.

He stretched his arms down and curled his fingers around the handles I’d had installed above the O-rings. I appreciated the psychology of kink as much as the physicality, and sometimes it was fun to restrain partners, sometimes it was better to make them do it themselves.

I picked a thin leather riding crop out of my armoire and joined Dylan at the bench. I didn’t get condoms or lube because I had no plans on fucking him again. If I dared to put my cock back into him, there was not going to be any coming back for me. Head over heels, ass up, whatever you wanted to call it. I would have been done. Instead, I stood behind him and pulled my dick over the waistband of my pants, giving a slow stroke up my hardness.

“Green?” I asked.

“Green.”

Tucking the crop under my arm, I braced myself with one hand against the small of his back and began to stroke my cock, not bothering to hold back my moans or sighs.

“You’re trouble, pet,” I whispered, lining the tip of my cock up with the bruise he’d poked in the kitchen. “You’re no good for me.”

“Yes, I am,” he argued.

“I wasn’t asking for your opinion.”

I came on the back of his leg, jets of cum streaking over the barely visible bruise, the only evidence that we’d ever been together. Dylan’s whole body went rigid, his head jerking to the side. It didn’t give him an angle to see me, though, and the fact he kept his hands on the bench was enough to push another stream of cum out of my dick.

He really was the best listener.

The tightest hole.

The most willing submissive.

After my orgasm settled, I tested the crop in my shaking hand, then cracked it down onto his skin. I focused on the spot he’d shown me, the place I’d just marked him with my cum. Over and over, I spanked the same spot with the biting leather tip of the crop, hitting him until there was definitely a fresh bruise and my release had been pushed straight into his pores. Dylan humped himself against the bench, undoubtedly chasing after an orgasm he didn’t have permission for.

“Stop it,” I warned, finding the last bits of strength in my arm to hit him six more times before letting the crop fall onto the floor.

“Green?”

He whimpered, “Green.”

I helped him up off the bench, rubbing my fingers over his white knuckles, trying to work blood back into them. There was precum smeared across the bench and over his stomach, his cock impossibly hard and angry between his legs. Once he was on steady feet, I gave him a onceover and stepped away.

“Can you walk?” I asked.

“Yes,” he rasped, flexing his hands at his sides.

“Good.” I nodded, tucking my cock back into my pants. “I’ll call you a car.”