“No.” He moves toward me, and I can see flames in his eyes, a fire I thought I had a right to. “He thinks he can take what he feels belongs to him. He doesn’t own me. He never did.”
I can see the truth in him then, like a flare going off in the dark. He’s furious not with me but with the idea of being possessed. My chest tightens because he is adamant in a way that both pleases and unsettles me. He refuses to be reduced. He refuses to be claimed by anyone’s explanation.
“I’m not Xavier’s,” he says.
The words land like a vow. It should ease something in me. It does, partially. But a photograph is a photograph and a bullet is a bullet and a menace with a face in my files will not be mollified by sweet talk in the middle of a bedroom.
“You should have told me about him. About you seeing him.” I say, finally, the accusation is soft, but the meaning is clear.
“I didn’t tell you,” he answers, jaw tight, “Because I knew you’d make it worse. Because you would have wanted to do something drastic. Because you think everything is an ownership problem and I?—”
“And you think I’m wrong.” I cut him off, and then a flash of something else cuts through me. “Did… Did you think I would hurt you? If you told me?”
“I think you’d protect me in every way you know how,” he says quietly.
Heat gathers between us—not sexual, not yet. It’s the dense, animal thing that happens when two predators whisper promises. The private stakes climb.
He bites his lip. “I didn’t tell him where I’d be. I didn’t sleep with him. I didn’t—” The words fall apart. “I am not his to claim, Lucian.”
“You’re mine,” I say, because the truth settles somewhere in me like an anchor. I grip his face between my hands. The words spill before I have composed them. Might as well be honest, for once. “I will not have someone come after you.”
He lets out a sound that is half laugh, half snarl. “I am not yours.”
His flippancy is a challenge and a dare. It lights a coal in me. Maybe it always did—the thing about him is that he baited me into feeling like a man who could be undone. Maybe that was the plan. Maybe he always wanted to see whether I would be the one to adjust.
I move first. The kiss stops every other calculus. It is hot and jealous, teeth and tongue and possessive hands that claim the space he keeps. That is the reaction I expect of myself and the one I have rehearsed. But he fights, not escaping, not giving,but matching me with something that is at once petulant and hungry.
There is a moment in the middle of it where he tries to pull back. I see it—the small recoil against being owned. I let him. I do not let go entirely. Instead, I laugh softly and reach for the ribbon on the dresser—the red silk that started as a joke and became a thing that sometimes feels like a strap between us.
“You’re testing me,” I say gruffly as I tie it in a loop around his wrists. He tenses then relaxes the fraction that assures me I have not overstepped.
“Don’t,” he says breathlessly, and the word becomes something like begging and command at once. He is shaking with too many things: adrenaline, fear, lust, exhaustion.
“Don’t what?” I ask.
“Make me prove something.” His eyes are wild. He is not calm. He wants me to prove I’m wrong, or he wants me to prove I’m right. I can’t tell.
I pull him close, the red ribbon a bright slash against his skin. He tastes like cigarette smoke and a trace of peppermint, like he tried to cover it. He kisses me back with more force than I expect, deeper and more honest. The fight becomes a fever; the lust collapses the rest like dominoes.
We move from accusation to contact with a speed that feels like both surrender and conquest. I want to punish him. I want to feel him squeeze around me and scream that he’s mine. I want to mark him, claim him. His clothes are torn off before he has a second to comprehend what’s happening.
I throw Elias face-first into the mattress, taking his bound wrists and pinning them behind his head.
“Maybe we shouldn’t?—”
But I’m already spitting into my hand and massaging the slickness on my shaft.
“Lucian, listen to me—oh!” Elias cries out as I shove into him ruthlessly.
I don’t wait for him to adjust. I can’t wait any longer. The ribbon is knotted around his wrists. I tangle my fingers in the red silk like it’s my anchor to reality as I thrust into him.
We fuck in the jagged way of two people who do not always know where tenderness ends and control begins. It is messy and real and far from the polished notion of intimacy I’ve been taught to display. It is hunger and apology, threat and truce. It is what it is and we don’t stop because everything else feels lesser in the face of the urgency that has us now.
I bite Elias’s shoulder, tasting the metallic hint of blood. He moans under me, whimpering my name. He moves his hips on the bed, trying to get some relief from his needy cock.
I force his hips up with my free hand. “You’re not allowed to come.”
“Lucian—”
