His jeans are tangled around his feet. His bare legs are slim but toned. They’re open. His spent cock lies across his hip. His cum isin the dirt, but on his shirt too, a little on his throat. Mine is inside him.
I love how filthy he is.
He murmurs as I get his pants pulled up. I carefully tuck his cock away. My hand lingers on it inside his pants. It’s beautiful to touch even when he’s not aroused. There’s a fragility to it, a tenderness. His softness tells me that he got what he needed. I rumble in satisfaction.
I scoop him up and carry him along the trail. I don’t yet know where I’m going to take him. This part hasn’t been written. I’m off script.
I’ll just walk and see what happens, see where we end up.
But I don’t get that chance—because I’m not the only one who realizes that I can’t be trusted right now.
Wes emerges from the shadows when I reach the edge of the woods with Elias in my arms. I halt. I snarl.
“I’ll take him,” Wes says.
Wes is a big guy, almost as tall as my 6’2”, almost as heavy. He’s wearing black tactical pants and boots, a tactical jacket. I know from the scar through his left eyebrow, from the way he walks, from the way he watches rooms, that he’s been in plenty of fights.
I don’t fucking care. He’s not taking Elias from me.
I don’t even bother to say it. Wes needs to open his fucking eyes and see it.
He sighs irritably. “Bring him to the van then,” he says and starts walking.
I don’t, in fact, have a great alternative. My car is probably two miles away, and it’s better to not let my vehicle be seen outside Elias’s building. But … I’m not sure that’s where I was going to take him.
That’s why Wes is here—and it means he understands me better than I thought.
I don’t like that.
I do, however, follow him. His presence is pulling me out of my role, reminding me of everything that exists outside it, reminding me that none of this was real. It was just an act, even when I lost myself in it. Even that, letting that happen, was the point. That was Elias’s fantasy.
But it’s over now.
The van is parked at the garden’s entrance. Wes goes to the back and opens the double doors. He doesn’t object when I get in with Elias, sitting on one of the side benches. He just closes the doors behind us.
It’s a short ride to Elias’s building, and that’s where I get stuck. Wes gets out and gets the back doors open. I can’t see much of his face in the darkness, but I’m sure his expressionis careful, watchful. It usually is. I should have known he was stalking me as I was stalking Elias.
I manage to get out of the van and carry Elias to the building door. I follow Wes up the stairs to the ninth floor. He pulls a lockpick set from his pocket and expertly opens Elias’s door.
Fresh anger flares inside me. Has Wes been here before? Did he put a camera in Elias’s apartment? Has he been watching all along?
Did he watch me fuck Elias in the woods?
If I were more fully in one role or another, I would ask. But I’m in a weird, in-between state. I’m still wearing my skull mask, but Wes knows who I am, one version of me at least, so I don’t know how to interact with him right now.
And really, I don’t want to interact with him at all, or anyone. I just want … fuck, I don’t know.
I refocus when I see the awful little apartment. I knew it would be awful because of the awful building and the glimpse I got in the background of Elias’s submitted picture, but it’s hard to look at the full reality of the cramped, dingy space revealed by the weak light spilling in from the hallway. I don’t want to leave Elias in this shitty place. He doesn’t belong here. He belongs where I was going to take him.
I’ve been telling myself “maybe” and “I don’t know,” but seeing this, I do know. I would never have brought Elias here.
But some part of me must know that Wes is right and that I do actually need him right now because as much as I hate that he’s here, I’m doing what he says.
I lay Elias in the bed. He murmurs but doesn’t wake. I take off his shoes. I want to do more than that, but I don’t know what.
He didn’t ask for anything else.
Besides, he might wake up, and I can’t be here when he does.
