I start breathing harder. The guards weren’t lying. I had killed others in my cell. I don’t like to think how scared Lucas must have been when they threw him in there with me. I didn’t think like that then. Butnow … everything’s different. Everything’s harder.
“It was different then,” I tell him.
“Why?”
Frustration wells inside me. “Because things made sense there. Nothing was confusing. I belonged there. I don’t belong here—I shouldn’tbehere.”
I hear Lucas get to his feet. “What the hell does that mean?” When I just keep staring out the glass door, he shouts, “Roman!”
I turn to face him, but before I can figure out how to reply, he demands, “Answer meright now. What do you mean you shouldn’t be here?”
My frustration is coiling tighter, turning into something worse. “In this room, Lucas, in this house, in this fucking world—I shouldn’t fucking be here.”
Lucas comes at me with an anger I have never seen in him. His eyes are wide and furious. He aims a finger at me.
“Don’t you fucking talk like that! Youhaveto be here—”
“Youbelong here, Lucas.Youshould be here. Everyone will take care of you—”
“What, you mean without you?”
“Whether I’m here or not!”
“For fuck’s sake, Roman, I don’t belonghere—I belong withyou!”
I start to turn away, but Lucas grabs at me. If anyone but Lucas grabbed me like that, I would lose it, but I let him do it. A convulsion goes through my body because I can’t not react to being grabbed, but I make myself allow it.
His hands fist the fabric of my shirt as he gets in my face, eyes blazing with fury. “I will go with you, wherever you fucking go. And if you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, I’ll go there with you too. Do you fucking understand me?”
“Stop it,” I snap as I grab his wrists, pulling his hands from my shirt. Now I’m angry too.
He tries to yank free of my grip. “Let go!”
I don’t let go. I walk him backwards toward the bed. I force him down onto it. I lean over him, right in his face.
“You arenotto talk like that,” I tell him. “If I’m not here, I have to know—”
“If you’re not here, you don’tgetto know. That’s how it fucking works, Roman. You have to fuckingbehere.”
“Lucas—”
His legs hook suddenly around my torso. He squeezes tight. I snarl at him as my cock reacts. He shouldn’t be playing like this, not when I’m angry.
I still have hold of his wrists. He yanks again, but I haul his arms up over his head and pin his wrists to the bed. His legs remain locked around me.
“Letgo,” I order him.
“Never.”
I snarl again and lower my head to bite his neck, but before I can, he bitesme. I shout, shocked and furious. I let go of his wrists, intending to pull away from him, but he wraps his arms around me, and his legs squeeze tighter. I won’t shove him off me, so I pin him with my body instead. I bury my face in the covers above his shoulder, and I yell in frustration and anger and something else that I can’t identify.
Lucas still clings to me, but he starts kissing me and nibbling at me and murmuring against me. I don’t know what else to do with my body, so I start rockingagainst him. His cock is hard and so is mine. I grind on him, ruthlessly, until he comes in his sweats.
He didn’t expect to. He’s disoriented by it. He’s loose and sloppy as I manhandle him, tearing the clothes from him. I tear off my own and use it to tie his wrists together, then to the headboard.
I grab the lube, slick my cock, and force his legs open. I won’t shove my cock straight into him, but I can’t be nice either. I’m so, so angry with him.
I put my hand over his face, splaying my fingers so he can breathe through his nose but making sure he understands how fully he is in my possession. I push my fingers into him, scissoring inside him until I feel him open for me. He’s hard again, his cock twitching against his contracting abdomen in the traces of his first release.
