Chapter Seventeen #2
Tired, Mathias was impatient and efficient. Rayan matched the man’s pace, yet even with his focus split, he was there too soon. He tried to catch his breath, tried to bring the swell of pleasure under control, but Mathias’s fist around his cock laid waste to all remaining restraint.
His own hand stilled as he teetered on the brink, and Mathias slowed to draw it from him, gray eyes fixed on his as he pushed Rayan over the edge. The growl of release that erupted from Rayan’s throat was enough to finish Mathias, and they both fell back onto the bed, panting.
Rayan leaned in to kiss him, their open-mouthed hunger fading to a soft brush of lips. Mathias rolled onto his back, and Rayan rested his head on the man’s chest. He closed his eyes, sleep pulling at his heavy limbs.
“I saw you with the girls,” Mathias said into the silence. His voice sounded far away. “I didn’t know that was something you wanted.”
Rayan opened his eyes, struck by Mathias’s candor. It was a subject that had never come up, rendered fraught by their respective histories.
“No,” he said quietly. “I’ve never wanted that.” His childhood had left him with little faith in the institution of parenting. “What about you?”
“If I accomplish one thing in this lifetime, it will be to avoid that nightmare altogether.”
Rayan stroked his fingers across the unfamiliar stubble that lined Mathias’s jaw. “Your mother will be sad to hear it.”
“Oh, she knows.”
Rayan lay watching Mathias after he’d fallen asleep.
At the camp, Mathias had exhibited an obvious discomfort at Amina’s interest in him.
Yet he’d pulled the children from the water like it was nothing.
He possessed a kind of practical protectiveness that ran counter to his indifference.
Rayan saw it in the way he handled his mother.
As charged as their relationship was, Mathias continued to provide for her—reluctantly but consistently.
Gently, he pushed Mathias’s hair back from his forehead. The fact that they were here together like this defied any logic. It was a clear departure from what his life had taught him to expect.
Rayan couldn’t remember when he’d first started going to the clubs in the Village.
But he knew what had brought him there—years of repressed desire and a loneliness that threatened to choke him.
It would have been around the time his brother was working for Bastien.
Tahir would disappear for days on end, releasing Rayan from his duties as his brother’s keeper.
Initially, Rayan didn’t go home with anyone.
He preferred to retreat to the back rooms and fumble about in the dark.
He fucked several men before he let someone fuck him, no longer able to ignore the pull he felt while watching them moan and writhe beneath him.
The first time was with a man named Clément.
He was in his late twenties, handsome, and friendly and had invited Rayan back to his apartment downtown.
While Clément proved generous and accommodating in his instruction, Rayan found the experience tepid.
He didn’t want to be asked what he liked or how it felt or whether it was too much.
He wanted someone to make those decisions for him.
He wanted someone to own him. Only when he got close to that feeling did everything else begin to fade.
Afterward, when Rayan moved to leave, Clément asked him to stay.
The following morning, he made him breakfast and gave Rayan his number.
They saw each other regularly for several weeks, always at Clément’s apartment.
Sometimes the man cooked for him, or they would lounge around in bed while Rayan deflected questions about his life, sliding the truth out of view.
Rayan had thought plenty about sex but not about the rest—the sharing of food and company, of feelings and expectations.
He’d determined early on that he wasn’t destined to enjoy the simplicities of life that came so easy to others.
But those nights with Clément challenged his conviction.
Then one evening, he was downtown with his brother, who was high off his face, when Rayan saw Clément cross the street and head toward him.
“You’re a fucking addict,” Clément hissed, wrenching at Rayan’s arm as if to confirm his suspicions. “Oh God—I let you into my house!”
He looked at Rayan like he was shit stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Rayan yanked his arm back, horror and humiliation churning in his gut.
“I know how this works,” Clément went on. “You prey on unsuspecting men and get them to fund your habit.”
Rayan had never asked the man for money. Never asked him for anything. All the assumptions about who he was hurt. It didn’t matter if he refuted them—they were there now, lodged between them.
Rayan refused to allow the pain to register on his face. Instead, he let out a scornful laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself. You were just an easy lay.”
After Clément, there were others, but he knew not to stay.
It was safer to keep the sex separate from the rest of his life.
Still, the need ate at him. He wanted someone to throw himself against, confident they wouldn’t sag under the weight.
Rayan felt as though he was chasing a feeling, his fingers brushing the edge of it only to have it slip from his grip.
It wasn’t so much that he liked to be hurt but that he liked to be conquered, rendered obsolete.
He’d grazed against it with some men, but never like with Mathias.
Mathias wielded power like it was his birthright, and Rayan had been drawn to his control, his purpose.
With Mathias there was no hesitancy. Nothing about Rayan made Mathias so much as bat an eye.
Mathias had owned him from the moment Rayan first reported as his second—long before the man ever laid a hand on him.
For years, he’d been content to simply remain by Mathias’s side.
Rayan had never believed their relationship could be more than that.
As it turned out, that was only the beginning.
Somewhere along the line, things began to change between them.
The urge to be obliterated gave way to other desires, and they navigated these with a cautious back-and-forth.
He discovered that Mathias’s own needs were liable to bend and transform as he let Rayan in.
It wasn’t until they’d come to Calais that Rayan had started to believe that maybe life’s simple pleasures weren’t entirely out of reach.
Beside him, Mathias shifted, and Rayan felt his eyelids droop. He pressed himself against the man’s warm body and let sleep come.