31.

THIRTY-ONE

Dominic

I turn on the shower when I hear the bedroom door. When Rafael walks in, still marked by my bloody handprints, the tension eases from my shoulders. I don’t like being separated from him. I know I’ll have to get that under control, but I’m not ready to work on it just yet.

I grab him and pull him close. He holds onto me and strokes the back of my head, like I’m the one who needs it.

Maybe I am. I fucking hate being in this house.

Neither of us is hard anymore, so when Rafael unbuttons my pants as I unbutton his, it’s not sexual. His build is a little lighter than mine, so my jeans hang low on his hips, showing all of that sexy tattoo on his lower abdomen.

I can still appreciate then even when I don’t plan to fuck him. Right now, I just want to get clean and feel everything wash away.

I’m hungry too, but I’m mostly tired. I want to rest. With Rafael.

We shuck off our pants and get in the shower. The blood has dried, so we do a lot of scrubbing. There’s some kissing too. We both get a little hard, but it’s mostly affection. We just need to be close.

I’ve never been affectionate with anyone, but I love taking care of Rafael. I love washing his hair. I love touching him for no reason. I love how he leans against me.

We finish showering, dry off, and get in bed. It’s mid morning, and we’re both exhausted. We curl up together and fall asleep.

***

There isn’t any fresh produce or milk in the kitchen, but there are plenty of pantry staples and frozen foods. Shrimp thaws fast, so I set it in a colander under running water and look up a recipe for cocktail sauce.

While the shrimp sautés in olive oil and butter, I make the sauce.

“You told me you could only make waffles,” Rafael says inaccurately.

“I told you that I could make waffles, not that I could only make waffles.”

He pokes at the shrimp with the tongs. “How do you know when these are done?”

“When they turn pink.”

“Oh. What?” He glances at me. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

I shake my head, embarrassed.

“ What ?”

“You’re just … weirdly adorable sometimes.”

“Because I don’t know anything about cooking?”

“Yes. Give me those tongs. Move.”

He yields the tongs and moves, but where he goes is right behind me.

“You keep standing behind me,” I observe. “And you’re touching my ass more. I’m not asking you to stop, but it makes me wonder: do you want to top me? Is that what it’s about?”

His chin rests on my shoulder. “I don’t know. I really, really love when you top me, but … I guess it’s an impulse.”

“Because you’ve mostly topped in the past?”

“How did you know that?”

“I can tell, Rafael.”

“But I like bottoming.”

“I can tell that too.”

“I guess I kind of want you to experience it. I mean … um …”

Willingly , is the unspoken word.

“I know what you mean,” I say.

“It feels good,” he tells me and starts kissing my neck. “Do you think you would ever want to?”

Oh, fuck. I should’ve known better than to introduce this topic. Heat blooms in my face as I admit, “I … might.”

I can’t believe I’m having this conversation in this house. Jesus Christ.

He’s surprised by it. He’s pleased.

“We’ll try some things maybe?” he says. “Sometime.”

I can’t quite make a verbal response to that. I just relax against him and hope he understands. The way he settles against me says that he does.

How did I get so fucking lucky to have someone like him? Someone I can be myself with, someone I can try things with. What a strange freedom I’ve stumbled into. I can’t imagine it with anyone but Rafael.

Some of that freedom vanishes as he and I are forced to separate while we plate the food. The walls close in again.

Rafael looks around. There’s no table in the kitchen. He peers out into the dining room.

My stomach twists. I don’t want to sit out there. It reminds me of all those dinners after my father brought me back here, how he’d make me sit there and eat with him, how I’d be shaking the whole time. I once threw up on the floor out there. He beat the shit out of me for it.

Rafael sits on the kitchen floor with the plate of crackers.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Eating,” he says and picks up a cracker. “Put the shrimp down.”

“We could go upstairs.”

“I don’t want to walk back upstairs. I’m hungry.”

I look at him sitting there in a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, eating crackers. He didn’t say anything about the dining room, but he remembered our conversation.

God, he fucks me up sometimes. I don’t know if that shows on my face or not as I join him on the floor. Even if it does, he just lets it be. With him, unlike with me father, I don’t have police myself every fucking second. I’m allowed to feel things.

As we eat, we discuss what needs to be done before we head back to the city. There are quite a few bodies to dispose of. Noah went back to get some equipment, but he’s returning to help Rocco. We also have Rafael’s wrecked bike to deal with.

There’s the possibility, too, of someone connected to the Collector looking for him. We have a name now, though Rafael said he didn’t want to know it. He asked me to take care of it for him, monitoring, watching for fallout. Jesus, I think that fucked me up more than anything else.

He seems like he’s doing okay. He seems, in fact, calmer than I’ve ever seen him. Not calm maybe—I doubt he’ll ever be that, and that’s fine, I like him like he is—but some of the edge is off. I’ll kill anyone, anytime, if it helps him find a moment of peace.

I don’t feel peace though. Not in this house.

After we finish eating and clean up the kitchen, we go to my father’s office. I’ve been going through cash pretty fast getting rid of bodies and motivating people to look the other way.

Rafael hangs back while I open the wall safe. At first, I think he’s giving me privacy to put in the combination, but then something crashes to the ground. I nearly jump out of my skin.

Furious at being startled, I whip around to see Rafael standing by the leather couch. A crystal lamp is shattered on the ground at his feet.

“Oops,” he says dryly.

“What the fuck, Rafael. And get your bare feet away from that glass.”

My heart is hammering. I’m still pissed off that he startled me, here of all places. This room is one of the worst in the house. Despite the bullet holes from the showdown in here a few months again, everything in this room still shouts with my father’s voice.

Faggot.

Pussy.

Disgrace.

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

Rafael wanders away from the broken lamp. He knocks a painting off the wall. I stare at him, stunned.

Next, he snags the iron poker from the fireplace. He whips it across the mantel, sweeping everything to the floor.

He turns to face me from across the room. His gray eyes are steely. His jaw is hard. He looks angry. He looks psychotic.

I huff a small laugh. I don’t really know how to react. Rafael smiles like a fucking lunatic—and cracks the iron poker against the wall behind him.

For a while, I just stand there and watch him demolish my father’s office. He’s a force of fucking chaos—and so goddamn beautiful that I stop really thinking about my father and start thinking about him. How he moves. How his cock is starting to lift against the front of his sweatpants.

Eyes laser focused on my face, he comes sauntering my way. He sets the poker on the desk, grabs my face, and kisses the hell out of me. It’s an aggressive kiss, a dirty kiss, all tongue and teeth. It unlocks me. I grab his hips and haul him against me, lit up by the feeling of his hard cock. I moan as my dick swells. I deepen the kiss, devouring him as he’s devouring me.

Grabbing his hair, I pull his head back, breaking the kiss and exposing his throat. I bite and suck and rub my face all over him. I’m frantic with it, unable to believe that I’m doing this here.

His fingers scrape at me, my chest and abdomen, my back and ass. He grunts and pants and arches toward me.

Then he reaches for something on the desk and pushes it against my hand. It’s my father’s crystal ashtray. As I take it, Rafael draws aside, clearing my path but still touching me. His hand goes under the hem of my t-shirt to feel my abs then trace my waistband.

I start breathing hard, aroused and getting angry. It bubbles up slowly, moving sluggishly through the ice that’s been in my blood the whole time we’ve been in this house. Then I hurl the ashtray across the room. It cracks into the wall, cratering the drywall.

Rafael makes a sound of appreciation and draws away to start going through the desk drawers. He finds a black marker and walks to one of the walls. He writes in huge letters across the wallpaper, Fuckstick. Then, Shitpants.

I laugh. “What are you, twelve?”

He grins over his shoulder and draws a picture of a cock.

I rifle through the desk for my father’s fancy knife.

I still feel a little weird as I stand over his leather office chair. I force myself to stab the seat. I force myself to stab the back. Then I fucking lose it.

I slash and hack until I’m grunting and panting and making all kinds of fucked-up sounds. Heat roars through my body. I pick up the chair and hurl it across the room. It hits the couch and bounces over it, tumbling into the fireplace.

I storm across the room and pick up another chair. I throw it too. I tear down the last painting and rip it to shreds. I yank the curtains down, tearing the rod from the wall. I whip the rod free of the curtains and throw it like a spear out the door.

Chest heaving, fists clenched, cock hard as fuck, I turn to look for Rafael. He’s standing by my father’s massive desk. Obscene drawings decorate the walls all around him. His lips are tugging in a wicked smile, his eyes are dark with arousal, and his cock is tenting his pants.

I stalk toward him.

“Wanna help me flip this desk?” he asks.

“No,” I say, snatching the marker from his hand and tossing it away. I sweep everything off the desk. “I have a use for it.”

I grab at his shirt, practically ripping it from his body. He starts scrabbling at mine. I slap his hands away and tear it off myself.

I grab him by the throat. “Vandalism is very naughty.”

His eyelids flutter. “Then punish me.”

“Oh, I will.”

I release his throat to spin him around. I slam him down on the desk. I fish in the pocket of his sweats and find what I expect. With the sachet of lube in hand, I yank down his pants. I shove my own to my thighs and tear open the lube. I slick my stiff, angry cock then pour the rest into my hand and slap it against Rafael’s ass.

“Hurt me,” he breathes.

I press my cockhead to his hole and push into him He shouts and squirms and cries out as I forcefully penetrate him, pushing past his body’s resistance.

I know it hurts, but I slap his ass anyway. “Stop crying like a bitch. You can take it.”

I need him to—and he does. He accepts the pain, makes himself relax into it as I thrust. Then his cries become needy, desperate moans.

“That’s it, pretty whore. Now you’re remembering what this body’s for. Who do you belong to?”

He only moans, so I yank him upright. It shifts my cock in his ass, and, fuck, it feels good. My arms hook around him, holding him tight against me. My left hand curls threateningly around his throat.

Holding still inside him, I growl, “Who do you belong to?”

“You.”

I give him a nice slow thrust to reward him. He moans. His body is so damn responsive.

“And what do you want, my filthy whore?”

“ You .”

I glide out and in again. I watch over his shoulder as his hard cock twitches, dripping precum.

“What a pretty cock,” I tell him. “Now put your foot on the desk so I can fuck you like you need, because I always take care of my whore.”

When he gets his foot up, opening himself for me, I hold on tight and fuck the hell out of him. He’s loose, pliable, moaning, taking it perfectly.

He’s close, so I unleash myself, rutting so hard into him that his foot is lifting off the ground. His body tightens. His moans grow louder. He wraps his hand around his cock, stroking like he can’t help himself.

It’s too much. I can’t hold back. I bite the crook of his neck and roar as I come hard in his ass. He instantly clenches on me. White ropes of cum leap from his cock, landing on my father’s desk as I strain inside him, filling him with my seed, breeding him hard as his body spasms through his own orgasm.

As the aftershocks rock through us, I hold myself inside him, hold him against me. He’s spasming lightly in the wake of his orgasm. I rest my forehead against his shoulder and let the waves pass through me.

We’re both loose and shaky as I pull out and turn him to face me. I pull him in. His arms wrap around me.

“I love you,” he murmurs against my neck.

“God, I love you too,” I rumble as I hold onto him in the center of the chaos we’ve made. Somehow, though, it looks like peace to me.