Rick spat into his palm, slicked himself quick, though Ash hardly needed it. When he spread him wide, thumbs digging into the firm curves, Ash’s hole was already wet and glistening, tight as if untouched, like it hadn’t been ravaged by a monster less than twenty-four hours ago. Rick pressed in, thick crown breaching the clutch of muscle, tearing a gasp from Ash’s throat. The vise-tight clasp made Rick’s vision spark white. He gripped Ash’s hips hard, driving deeper until every inch of him was locked inside that magnificent heat.
“Fuck—” The word tore hoarse from him as he withdrew, slow, leaving only the swollen head lodged in. Then he went utterly still.
Ash twisted, tried to push onto him, but Rick’s iron grip held him pinned. His nails screeched faint lines into the wood as he writhed, cheek mashed to the cold surface, frustrated whimpers spilling out. “Don’t stop.” His voice cracked, desperate. He tried to grind back, to suck him in, but Rick only clamped harder on his hips, immovable.
“Beg for it, pretty boy,” Rick growled into his ear, breath hot and merciless.
Ash’s head rolled against the partition, his lips parted, raw need spilling out. “Please, Rick. Fuck me. I’ll die if you don’t.”
Only then did Rick slam forward to the root, burying himself in one brutal stroke, forcing a ragged cry from Ash’s throat. “Like this?” he rasped.
“That’s it,” Ash moaned. “Faster.”
Rick obeyed with a curse, pounding deep and hard, hips slapping flesh, each thrust punching through resistance until Ash’s cry broke high, half agony, half exaltation. He set a savage rhythm: piston after piston, each drag searing along nerves so raw they felt incandescent. The stall rattled with every impact, hinges shrieking as if they’d rip loose.
A roar tore out of him, half man, half beast. Stress, suspicion, rage—all of it burned away in the furnace of Ash’s body. His rhythm turned feral, the kind of hunger that couldn’t be disguised. Ash braced and pushed against him, that reckless ease now a counterpoint, a wicked song meant to undo men stronger than Rick. Each thrust sent vibrations rattling stall and tile; each gasping moan branded another wordless claim:mine, mine, mine.
The world shrank to pressure and motion: the slick vise milking him, the tremors rippling through Ash’s thighs, the raw sounds spilling from his throat. Rick’s hips hammered mercilessly, every stroke wrenching another ragged cry. “Say that you’re mine,” he ground out.
“Yes—fuck—I’m yours,” Ash gasped, trembling.
Rick didn’t know if he meant it, but the words still hooked deep, made something shiver at the core of him. His hand snaked around to seize Ash’s cock, rigid and leaking. He fisted it roughly, his strokes matching the ruthless slam of hips. Ash’s moan cracked too loud, the dual assault tearing him apart. Hiswhole body coiled, muscles locked, and with one more frenzied push, he broke, spine arched, teeth bared, ecstasy ripping through him.
Cum splattered the door in hot streaks, Rick’s fist drenched as Ash convulsed in his grip. The sight of him undone dragged Rick over the edge, too. He rammed deep, stayed buried to the hilt, and let himself go—release tearing out of him in a low snarl, cock pulsing as he flooded Ash’s gut with his seed, branding him from the inside out.
They sagged together in the aftermath, chests heaving, legs trembling. Only the harsh glare of the overhead bulbs, the slow drip of a faucet, and their ragged breathing filled the air. Rick pressed his forehead to Ash’s shoulder blade, sweat cooling too fast, heart still hammering its claim. “You drive me out of my skin,” he whispered.
“Then stay inside mine,” Ash said softly, his hole clenching around Rick’s cock.
Rick’s arms wrapped firm around Ash’s waist, drawing him close as if he meant to crush the distance out of existence, to bind them into one shadow, one breath. The city could wait. The case could rot. All that mattered was the boy shivering beneath him, marked, filled, his own possession made flesh.
{ VIII }
Saturday, October 28
Chapter Forty-One
(3:30 a.m.)
The Inferno pressed at Ash’s spine, its deep percussion following him along the pavement and across the street. He cut across the slick blacktop, boots splashing through puddles left after the rain, and slid into the shadows where Rick’s car crouched at the corner, half-buried in the night.
The door creaked as he swung it open and folded himself inside, the seat taking his weight with a supple groan of leather. Rick didn’t look up at first, eyes fixed on the club’s entrance where revelers spilled in and out, the streetlight carving the hard planes of his face into stark chiaroscuro. Ash liked the ritual of it, the way the car seemed suspended outside of time, two men hiding from the world in their own little box of shadow.
“Hank says Griffin’s still inside,” he said, unable to keep the glint of triumph from his voice. “He’s on shift another half an hour or so.”
Rick’s gaze slid to him at last, wolfish in the dark. “You seemed awfully chummy with that bouncer.”
Ash smiled, a crooked flash of lips. “Hank? He and I are… old pals.”
Rick obviously understood what that meant. With an exasperated sigh, he pinched the root of his nose, then rubbed his temple as though warding off a headache. “You’ll be the death of me, kid.”
Ash settled in his seat, the smirk deepening, savoring every frown of Rick’s brow, every tick of his jaw. “You don’t look like you mind,” he purred.
The line landed the way he knew it would. Rick turned toward him, glaring with those stormy eyes that glistened in the gloom. Then Rick’s hand was on him, dragging him close across the bench seat, and their mouths collided in a kiss teetering on the knife-edge between fury and devotion.
Ash yielded into him, the seats groaning beneath the shift of their bodies. Rick’s arm locked around his shoulders, drawing him deeper into that bruising heat, the faint rasp of stubble scraping his chin. For all the shadows pressing in around the car, Ash felt lit from within, a flare of excitement he couldn’t quite smother; he was a child sneaking into the grown-up world of stakeouts and danger, except this time it came with the taste of Rick’s lips and the promise of something even more powerful coiling between them.
Rick’s mouth left him breathless, and for a moment, Ash only leaned there, folded against the heat of him, listening to the steady hammer of a heart that wasn’t his own. The world outside—the cracked neon, the hiss of passing tires, the sour stench of the street—it all seemed to fade, thinned out by the simple fact of those arms holding him.
