14.

FOURTEEN

Dominic

Unconscious in the swing, Rafael is bound and at my mercy for the second night in a row. Like last night, he’s vulnerable and beautiful, but I like this better than when he was in my killing cell.

His spent cock lies thick against his hip. His crossed arms and lower belly are smeared with his cum. My cum drips from his hole.

As for me, I’m also painted with his cum and still dizzied by my release. Holy shit, I thought I would never stop coming. My cock kicked and spurted inside him as my orgasm seized control of me.

I push my thoughts aside and start cleaning up Rafael and the equipment. I release him from the restraints. He murmurs, half waking as I pull him up. I get him hoisted onto my shoulder and carry him to the door at the back of the playroom. It’s another strange, altered echo of last night.

A set of spiral stairs with elegant track lighting leads to another door, which opens onto his bedroom. For the second night in a row, I lay his unconscious form in his bed. I pull the blackout curtains shut, then I slide in behind him. I pull him into my arms.

As he murmurs and settles, I get a strange, unfamiliar feeling. I don’t know what it is, but it feels, somehow, right .

***

I wake entwined with Rafael. He’s still asleep, so I lie still and listen to him breathe.

His arms tighten around me as he wakes. He needs me. I know that he does. The thing is … I might need him too.

He said it last night, and I couldn’t respond. I let myself interpret it sexually, but it wasn’t exclusively sexual.

He’s pulled me off balance. He’s shifted things inside me.

I was going to kill him because of it, so I could go back to how I’ve always been. I didn’t do it because I couldn’t bear for him to be gone from this world. I didn’t do it because, when I saw that path opening before me, the return to my life before him, before my father died, I felt only a cold bleakness. I felt my own death as much as his. A living death, but still a death.

So I chose to own him instead—and I hope that he never realizes the truth: it’s him who owns me .

He stretches lazily. His head lifts from my shoulder. The blackout curtains render the room dark, but I can still tell he’s squinting at me.

I wonder if he has a headache. He’s had some rough days.

“Don’t leave,” he says raspingly.

He’s thinking about the moment that I left after sucking him off. How I panicked.

I’ll cut off your cock if I ever catch you acting gay again, you fucking faggot.

I mute my father in my head and promise, “I won’t.”

He’s still squinting, but he smiles. How can he be so depraved and so innocent at the same time?

I’m half hard and so is he, but I don’t want us to fuck right now. He doesn’t either. He crawls over me, stands from the bed, and stretches with a groan. I can’t see any detail with the blackout curtains, but I can imagine. I know his body well.

What it looks like. What it feels like. How it responds.

My cock twitches.

“Shower?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“M’kay.”

He goes into the bathroom when he sees I’m not getting up. I just need a second.

When he’s gone, I close my eyes. I reach down and touch the thin scar at the base of my cock. Images try to form, but I don’t let them.

Fuck the old man. He’s not taking this from me.

I hear the shower and get up.

The bathroom is as beautiful as the rest of this place. Modern looking but not cold. Spacious. Luxurious. Good lighting.

There’s a packaged toothbrush sitting on the counter. I open it and brush my teeth, highly aware of Rafael’s form beyond the cloudy glass.

When I go to join him, I can see in his eyes that, despite my words, he thought I might leave. He’s happy that I didn’t. Seeing that puts a weird feeling in my chest. It’s so unfamiliar that I don’t even know if it’s good feeling or not.

I take the soapy washcloth from him. As much as Rafael craves touch, this sort of thing seems to make him uncomfortable. That first night in the play room, he tried to escape before I could clean him up. But, for some reason, I like doing this.

I scrub the cloth along his arms and shoulders, then down his chest to his abdomen. I pause at the bruising. Anger wakes up inside me. I back Rafael into the shower wall.

I gently sweep the cloth over the bruise. “Did you understand me last night? About shit like this?”

His stomach contracts. His stiffening cock twitches. I sweep the cloth lower, across that hot-as-fuck tattoo, but I don’t touch his cock. It hardens fully, lifting toward my hand. My own cock is stiff and aching.

“Answer me, Rafael. Do you understand that you’re not going to do shit like you did the other night?”

I watch his throat move as he swallows. He looks away.

I wait him out. He needs to answer me.

He tries. “Sometimes I … don’t know how else to …” He swallows hard again.

It’s my fault. He was coming apart and I knew it. I let it happen. I won’t do that again.

“I have control of you now,” I tell him.

His gray eyes come back to me, and they are so fucking vulnerable that I drop the washcloth and bring my body against his. He shudders and relaxes. We stand there for a while, still except for our cocks twitching against each other between our bodies.

I take his face in my hands, brushing my thumbs over his bruises. “Do you understand?”

I half expect him to say no, to fight me. I’m sure he knows that if he does, I’ll force the point. I’ll turn him around, get rough, fuck him into submission. Usually, that’s what he wants. Usually, that’s what I want.

But right now …

He nods. I close my eyes and start rolling my hips, stroking my cock against his.

“ Ahhhh, ” he breathes as I frot him. “Shit. Yes .”

I open my eyes to watch him. His pupils are blown. His lips are parted. His wet hair is slicked back to bare every delicious feature of his face between my hands.

“Get the soap.”

He reaches blindly for a bottle, grabbing whatever is closest. I leave one hand lightly on his jaw and neck. I hold out the other. He squeezes something into it. It’s creamy and slick.

He tries to put the bottle back but drops it when I reach between our bodies and take our cocks in a loose grip. I don’t squeeze. I want to feel my dick gliding against his. I want to feel every pulse that makes his cock twitch against mine, that makes mine answer in kind.

“Just let it feel good,” I tell him, not sounding like myself, not even sure whether I’m actually talking to him or to myself.

It does feel good. His cock and mine twitch and pulse and glide. My whole body lights up with the sensations. My balls draw up tight, aching. My ass flexes with every thrust. His face is inches away.

While my right hand traps our cocks, my left drifts to his throat. His eyelashes flutter at the light squeeze. His lips part. I kiss him.

He moans into my mouth as I take full control of his body. I taste and nip and explore him, squeezing his throat every time he needs it. I tighten my grip on our cock to increase the pressure.

Of everything we’ve done, this feels the most intimate. I need to own him. I need to dominate him. I need to be violent. But this …

I like this too.

He grabs my hips, pulling me hard against him. His hands roam, tugging at my lower back and my ass.

It triggers my aggression. My pin him harder against the shower wall. He squeezes my ass. I’m not used to being touched there. I don’t know if I like it, but it does turn me on. I roll my hips, rubbing the head of my cock against his within my slick grip.

The kiss breaks and I even lose most of my hold on his throat as I bring my face alongside his and frot the shit out of him against the wall. I start sweeping my thumb over our cockheads.

“Ah, fuck,” Rafael gasps, his body tightening, his hand grabbing hard at my ass. “Fuck. Fuck! Dominic— hnnn! Hnnn! ”

His cock kicks against mine as he comes, triggering my own orgasm. We both cry out as we spill all over each other.

I stay against him through the aftershocks, loosening my grip on our dicks but not letting go. His hands skim upward over my slick back. Like it has a mind of its own, my thumb strokes his jaw as I draw back.

I retrieve the washcloth and go back to work. Neither of us say anything through the rest of the shower, but there’s something different in the way we touch. Something far more tender.

Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting in Rafael’s kitchen/bar, shirtless but wearing a pair of his sweatpants, as he runs the espresso machine. He’s wearing sweats too, plus a t-shirt. Except for at the gym, I’ve never seen him dressed casually. Comfortably. It’s sexy as hell.

He brings me a double espresso and sits down with his own cappuccino.

“I guess you don’t cook much,” I comment.

He has a microwave and stove, but there are no ingredients to be seen. When he opened the fridge to get the milk, I spotted a number of boxes that suggested meal delivery.

“Ha. No. Never. Do you cook?”

I sip my espresso. “Yeah, sometimes.”

“Really?”

“Why are you surprised?”

“I guess it’s just not what I imagined. Torture, murder, whip up a lasagna.” He shrugs.

I give him a pointed side eye. His lips twitch. He’s teasing me. It’s so weird to me to be teased like this. I think I like it.

“So what’s your specialty?” he asks.

“Torture.”

He laughs. “Obviously. I meant food-wise.”

“Waffles. At least, that’s what I most like making.”

He rolls his eyes. “Breakfast. Typical man.”

“You can eat waffles any time of the day.”

“I suppose. How’s your espresso?”

“Great, but it’s not food.”

“You must hungry. You’re talking about food and getting cranky.”

His insight startles me. I guess it’s small, but I’m not used to people noticing small things about me.

I don’t know what to say, so I just grunt in annoyed acknowledgment.

Rafael sighs. “Can I at least finish my cappuccino before you have me slaving away in the kitchen?”

“I’m just going to look and see what you have.”

“Hm.”

Ignoring Rafael’s indirect protest, I take my espresso and go to snoop through his kitchen. When I find eggs in the fridge, I look over my shoulder at him.

“I, too, sometimes make breakfast,” he admits.

“Typical man.”

He snorts.

I find granola and some other basics in the single, tall cupboard beside the fridge. The pasta canister sticks out like a sore thumb. There are no jars of sauce or ingredients for making sauce.

Hm. I pop the top and look inside. I fucking thought so.

Rafael hustles around the bar and snatches the canister of drugs away from me. He scowls. “It’s almost like you’ve been in here before.”

“You know I have.”

“How did you get in here the other night? When you brought me back.”

I pin him against the open cupboard. “When I brought you back here with your cock under my control?” At the fear that flits through his eyes, a wicked grin spreads across my face. “Are you afraid I’ll cage you again?”

“I don’t want it,” he answers indirectly.

“I’ll only do that when you’re very bad. But I think you liked it, in the end.”

He doesn’t reply, but I know I’m right. I rub my nose against the shell of his ear.

“You did really well last night,” I praise him. “You were such a good boy. But this …” I take the canister from his hand and ease back. “This is bad.”

His hand comes up, reaching for the canister, but I bypass him to return it to the cupboard.

“You need to be more careful,” I tell him.

He’s not listening to me. He’s just relieved that I put it back. I did that because he would only replace it if I didn’t. But he needs to listen to me.

I grip his throat, squeezing lightly until his eyes focus. “I mean it, Rafael. Show me you understand.”

He gives the slightest nod. I want more than that, but it’s enough for now. I’m sure we’ll discuss this again.

“Okay,” I say and pull him away from the cupboard, smacking his luscious ass on the way so that he understands the discussion is over. I grab the granola because there’s really nothing else breakfast-like.

Rafael opens the fridge. “I’ll make eggs. You’ll still be hungry and cranky if you eat nothing but that.”

“Hmph.”

“That can be your first breakfast,” Rafael suggests.

“Now you’re just being a pain in the ass.”

“You, sir, are the pain in the ass.”

“Mm,” I murmur, pulling him toward me with the carton of eggs in hand. “Sir. I like that.”

“That was a joke—and that’s not fucking happening.”

I chuckle and slide my hand inside his pants between his ass cheeks. I massage his hole with my finger. “Are you sore?”

He curves into me. “Don’t you dare make me drop these eggs.”

I take them from him. “Answer the question.”

“Yes, I’m sore.”

“Good. I have work to do today. I don’t want you to forget that this ass belongs to me. Every time you sit down, I want you to feel where I’ve been inside you.”

“Fuck, Dominic.” His hands latch onto my sides.

I squeeze his ass then step away from him. “Your cappuccino’s getting cold.”

“That’s your fault.”

“No, it’s your fault for interfering with my search.” I push him away. “Go sit down. This kitchen inspires no faith in your cooking skills.”

“Look what you did.” He points at his cock lifting against the front of his sweats.

“The cage would solve that.”

He walks off, grumbling, and returns to his seat. “Cold,” he complains when he sips his drink.

I shrug. “Like I said. Your fault.”

“You never answered my question.” He sets the cup down. “How did you get in here the other night?”

“Do you remember your little murderfest or were you too high?” I guess I can’t quite let it go yet. But what if I hadn’t been there that night? What he did was so fucking dangerous.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “You came in with me.”

“It was very easy to look over your shoulder when you punched your code in.” I add sharply, “You could barely stand up.”

He sighs and picks up his cup.

I find a pan on a shelf under the counter and set it on the stove. “Do you do that often?”

“What do you care? You kill people too.”

I turn on the heat and grab the olive oil from where it sits beside the liquor shelves.

“I’m a lot more careful than you.”

“I’m usually careful too. I mean,” he shrugs, “more careful than that.”

I frown. “So what was different about that?”

He glares at me. “You have a lot of questions.”

“So answer them. You know what I do to people who don’t.”

Because he’s a fucking psycho, that makes him smile. The smile fades as he says, “It’s been a rough couple of months.”

I swirl olive oil into the pan and start cracking eggs into it. The time frame lines up with him and Dante coming after my father. That can’t be coincidental, and I don’t want to get into that subject, so I let it go.

“Behave tonight,” I tell him. “I’m busy until late.”

“It’s Friday. I run a sex club.”

“Rafael,” I warn as I adjust the heat.

“Be reasonable.”

“Be have .”

“Or what?”

“Nothing’s changed, Rafael. You’re not safe from me.”

A smile tugs at his psycho lips as he sips his cold coffee.