It’s time to grow up, little angel. Stop your crying, stop feeling sorry for yourself. You show me you can be a man, show me your loyalty, I’ll make youFamiglia. But only when you prove yourself to me.
I’d proven myself, alright.
I felt a strange overlap ofthenandnow. I’d loved and feared Tino Morelli the way the Church suggested we should feel instead about God. Tino had created me in his own image, after all. There was only one point where we differed, and I’d made my peace with never letting my sexuality become open knowledge. Relationships seemed trivial, anyway. Only the work mattered. I came to value sex only in as much as it could be useful to me: as a method of control, or a method of release. Nothing more, nothing less. It was useful in its way, but I’d never let my sexual attraction to someone get in the way of the bigger picture. When I could see that seduction might work before violence, I’d seduce.
Or I’d seduce andthenuse violence.
If I needed the kind of relief Bax seemed so desperate for, I’d dealt with it. If I craved another body, I had anonymous sexual encounters, or paid for the convenience of ensuring that my lover would stay only for a strict allotment of time, leave without expectations.
“I’m not a kid,” Baxter said again now, obstinate, and he pushed against my arm. Not hard. But enough to rouse me, enough to chase all thoughts of the past out of my head, no morethen,only thehere and now.
And here and now, I was overcome with desire, my belly throbbing with it. I wanted to show Flynn how wrong he was, howeasyit could be for me to wreck him, to control him, to make him dance to my tune.
“Oh, yes youarea kid,” I spat. “You’re a stupid little boy wandering off the safe path through the woods. You think you can understandme? You couldn’t, even if I laid out my whole life story. Even if I opened up my skull and let you poke around in there.”
“That’s not—that’s not what I want,” he stammered breathlessly. “Not right now, anyway.”
“No?” My left arm was still across him, keeping him where I wanted him, but my right was free. I ran my fingers down his side, light and suggestive. “Then what is it that you want?” I let my hand rest on his hip.
It would be unkind of me to take advantage of his sexual desire for me. It would becruel. But it would also be an effective method of control. I knew that from personal experience. Besides, I only meant to tease, to make the kid understand that in all things, he needed to keep to heel.
The problem was, his wasn’t the only heart beating faster.
The problem was, his face was tipped up to mine like he wanted to kiss me, and I…I wanted to kiss him back. Kiss him much more thoroughly and deeply than I’d kissed him after O’Sullivan had chased us off.
Kiss him until Iownedhim, until I’d marked him out as mine, body and soul.
“Well?” I asked recklessly, tightening my grip around his hip. I was struggling with my own desires, but I couldn’t stop goading him. “Tell me, what do you want from me?”
And then came my final problem: Baxter Flynn’s incurable honesty.
“I want to come,” he said. “And I want you to make me.” Then he added two words that took back all his power and control in a soft rush: “Please, Angelo.”
Chapter Seventeen
Baxter
The first touch of Angelo Messina’s hand on my cock made me give an embarrassingly loud moan. I went boneless, except for the only place where it really counted, andthere, I just got harder.
“Is this what you want?” he asked, sounding so harsh that if I’d been anywhere else with any other man and in any position to just get up and walk out, I would have. But then and there, it only made me want it more.
Wanthimmore.
“Yes.”
His fingers trailed up the side of my dick and it gave a little jump, like it knew where it should be—in his palm, in the very same hand that had killed scores of men, hundreds of men. It should have sickened me to think of that hand working me.
It didn’t.
This was new territory. I’d undergone extensive psychological evaluations as part of my career. I’d undertaken fierce, searching self-examinations of my psyche. Not once had I or anyone else ever identified a hint of this kind of masochism, this kind of weakness. For the first time, I felt myself pushing back at a self-observation.No, this wasn’t me.
This wasn’t me atall—
And then Angelo curled those long, cruel fingers around my shaft and my brain shut down. Whatever was going on between us, it felt like a fever-dream. His fingers were loose, teasing, petting at me gently before they closed tight and started to pump steadily. I arched up, tried to kiss him, but he pushed me back with an arm across my torso. I learned fast that whenever I moved, wriggled, writhed, he stopped his hand and waited.
Waited for me to subside and accept what he was giving me without demanding more.
He toyed with my cockhead, playfully caressing my slit, drawing out my pre-cum and spreading it down my shaft to help lubricate as he jacked me off. He pushed my thighs open, gentle fingers fondling my nuts before smoothing under them, stroking down the delicate skin until he pressed against my asshole and made me groan. I spread my legs wider, inviting him in, and he gave quick, teasing taps to the rim, massaged the folds of skin until I groaned again, but then he went back to my cock, his hand warm and strong.
