Chapter 28 RAFE
RAFE
The room smells like metal, dust, and melted plastic from overused wiring—an old compound screening room outfitted with newer tech no one ever bothered to calibrate properly.
It hums faintly when it’s silent, a low mechanical breath that vibrates against the teeth if you sit still too long.
Kai doesn’t seem to notice. He’s perched in the corner chair, arms crossed, his usual cold detachment polished sharp tonight.
I’m on the bench in front of the main screen, elbows on my knees, eyes fixed forward, watching the boy we both helped break become the man neither of us can stop watching now.
Julian Reaver. Then and now. Two separate tapes. Two separate beasts.
A god on skates.
On the right screen is last week’s footage: compound game, red team, no number. Julian now.
He skates like he’s on fire. Every movement is chaos wrapped in fury.
He doesn't glide—he lunges. Doesn't dance—he hunts.
He plays like the puck wronged him personally, like the boards are made of bone and need to break under him.
His teeth are always clenched. His mouth always open.
When he scores, it looks like violence. When he misses, it looks like war.
This version of him doesn’t care if the crowd loves him.
This one wants to make them look away.
Kai leans forward slightly, eyes narrowed, voice quiet but weighted. “You see it, don’t you?”
I nod once, jaw tight. “Yeah.”
“Same boy,” he says. “But this one doesn’t want redemption.”
I don’t answer. Because he’s right. Julian doesn’t want to be saved. He doesn’t play to get back what he lost. He plays like everything should burn for what was taken from him. He doesn’t chase glory anymore. He drags it, kicking and screaming, behind him.
And both of us watched it happen.
I remember the first time I saw him twitch on the floor, shaking from withdrawal, eyes glassy while his mouth ran off at the speed of fear. Kai dosed him that night; I held him. He didn’t cry—he bled, over and over, into the compound, onto the ice, into my hands.
Kai watched him crawl. I made him kneel. Now we’re both staring at something that no longer crawls or kneels. It devours.
“He’s ready,” I murmur, more to myself than to Kai. “For the game. For the title. For the captaincy.”
Kai exhales slowly through his nose. “He’s still an addict.”
I glance over. “And?”
“He’s addicted to you now.”
I don’t respond, because that, too, is true.
I don’t hear the door open, but I feel it before anything else—that subtle shift in the air, the static prickle of awareness that only ever sparks when he’s near, the slow burn that ignites under my skin and spreads outward like a fuse catching fire.
Then he’s there: Julian, wearing nothing but my hoodie.
No socks, no pants, no shame. His legs are bare, thighs still bruised and pink from last night’s grip marks, knees flushed red from where he dropped to the floor in front of me hours earlier.
His hair is a wreck, wild and damp; his eyes molten, gleaming with something dark and unbroken; his mouth flushed and curled into a smug little curve that has no right to be there on a boy who was sobbing in my arms less than twenty-four hours ago.
He walks like the hallway belongs to him—each step measured, unhurried, as if he knows exactly what he looks like in my hoodie, how the hem rides high on his bruised thighs, how the fabric clings to the damp heat of his skin after last night. He’s doing it on purpose. He always is.
He doesn’t speak.
He simply crosses the room with slow, deliberate strides and drops himself straight into my lap like gravity dragged him home, thighs bracketing my hips, chest brushing mine, the weight of him settling with perfect, possessive certainty.
“Time for my dose,” he purrs, voice syrup-slick and low, the sound vibrating down my spine like a threat wrapped in silk—soft, dangerous, and already pulling me under.
Kai doesn’t blink, but his mouth twitches—smirking, because of course he is. This feral little creature has both of us by the throats and doesn’t even know it, doesn’t see the way we orbit him now, the way we’ve learned to breathe around his gravity.
I rest one hand on Julian’s bare thigh, fingers squeezing just once—warning or promise, he can decide which—and murmur, “Say please.”
Julian blinks at me, smiles wider, leans in until his breath brushes my lips. And then he whispers, right against my mouth, “Please, Daddy.”
Fucking hell.
Kai moves. He doesn’t sigh, doesn’t speak, doesn’t hesitate.
He simply stands, walks over to the cabinet behind us, and returns with the vial and syringe like it’s routine now—like this is normal, like we didn’t build a ritual out of depravity and obsession and call it medicine. He hands them to me without a word.
Julian doesn’t even glance at him. His eyes stay locked on mine—waiting, hungry—every line of his body tuned to the next beat I give him, every tremor waiting for my hand to steady it or break it open again.
Kai hands me the vial like a priest passing the relic of a dead god. No ceremony. No hesitation. Just quiet competence and that irritatingly smug tilt to his mouth that tells me he knows exactly what I’m about to do with it.
Julian shifts in my lap—slow, sinuous, rubbing himself along my thighs like he’s trying to fuse our bones together. His breath ghosts warm over my jaw; his fingers curl tight into the fabric of my shirt as if he’ll die if I move him even an inch away.
I load the syringe with steady hands while he watches every motion—wide-eyed, lips parted, breathing already turning shallow and sweet just from the sight of the needle glinting under the low light.
“Needy,” I murmur.
Julian blushes down to his throat, a slow flush that spreads like spilled wine, and pushes his hips forward in my lap like he’s presenting himself for inspection, offering every trembling inch without a word.
I grip the back of his neck with my free hand, guiding his head to the side until the soft, vulnerable hollow just under his jaw is exposed. The pulse there flutters frantic—rapid little kicks against my fingers. He shivers the instant the cold metal kisses his skin.
“Breathe,” I say quietly.
He does—barely, very barely—each inhale shallow and trembling, held together by nothing but the promise of what’s coming, as if the air itself is too fragile to trust.
I slide the needle in.
He moans—loud, not obscene, not filthy, not desperate.
Worshipful.
My cock twitches hard beneath him, answering the sound before my brain can catch up, a raw, involuntary pulse that betrays how deeply that single note has hooked me.
His breath stutters; his eyes flutter half-closed as the dose hits, flooding through him in a slow, unstoppable wave.
His whole body loosens in my lap, melting against me like I’ve sedated him with something far darker and more permanent than the tiny vial of chemical relief.
His fingers claw at my shoulders, nails digging in just enough to sting; his thighs tense around my hips, squeezing once before going slack again; his mouth falls open on a sharp, shuddering exhale that ghosts warm across my throat.
“Good boy,” I whisper, withdrawing the needle.
Julian whimpers, soft and broken, the sound catching in his throat as the last of the dose settles deep.
I set the syringe aside and slide my hand between his thighs.
He gasps—sharp, high, trembling—his hips jerking forward on instinct.
His eyes roll back a little, fluttering half-shut; his head drops back against my shoulder, exposing the long line of his throat as the high hits him in slow, rolling waves—hot, dizzying, climbing up his spine and pooling in my palm where I’m stroking him slow and heavy.
Every sound he makes is soft, wet, reverent, like he’s praying into my mouth without words, each breathy exhale a quiet offering laid at my feet.
I bite his throat—hard enough to mark, not hard enough to break.
He moans louder, thighs locking tight around me, hips pushing shamelessly into my hand like he’s chasing the dose deeper, trying to fuse the chemical rush with the heat of my grip until they become the same thing.
Kai clears his throat.
Julian doesn’t even hear it—lost somewhere between the needle’s burn and the slow drag of my fist, body liquid and trembling in my lap.
I don’t stop touching him.
“I need to go see Luca,” Kai says dryly, voice flat as he pretends he isn’t eyeing the way Julian is panting open-mouthed into my neck, or the deliberate rhythm of my hand working him slow, precise, devastating. “Before he stabs someone out of boredom.”
I snort—hard—sharp amusement punching out of me even as my thumb circles the slick head of Julian’s cock, coaxing another shuddering whimper from him. “Tell him to use a smaller knife this time,” I mutter, dragging my thumb over Julian’s slit, earning a choked whine that vibrates against my chest.
Kai rolls his eyes. “Says the man jerking off the team’s star player during film review.”
Julian makes a noise somewhere between a moan, a laugh, and a broken plea—high, wrecked, muffled against my neck as his hips jerk into my fist.
Kai’s smirk widens, slow and knowing, like he’s watching a private show he’s already seen a dozen times. “Enjoy yourselves,” he says, turning toward the door with lazy indifference. “Don’t kill him before the game.”
He leaves. The door shuts with a soft, final click.
And Julian gasps, voice cracking open raw and desperate. “Rafe—please—don’t stop—fuck—”
I tighten my grip around his throat with one hand—firm, steady, just enough to feel his pulse hammer against my palm—and stroke him harder with the other, slow drags turning deliberate, punishing, perfect.
“I wasn’t planning to.”