Chapter 25 #2
I laughed, the sound echoing in the empty kitchen. “I thought you left me again.”
There was a pause, then a subtle shift as he adjusted in my hold, his arms coming up around me in return.
One hand settled at the back of my head, fingers brushing through my hair before he gave a light, absent pat.
The move should have felt condescending, something you did to soothe a child instead of a man who could break bones with his bare hands.
But it didn’t.
It did something worse.
It unraveled me because he did it without hesitation, as if it were instinct and comforting me came naturally to him.
He likely had no idea what such a small, thoughtless touch did to someone like me who hadn’t been touched by anything but violence since before I understood that people were evil—some just less so than others.
Others needed a little coercion, and their monster would show.
“There, there…be good and allow me to breathe,” he said after a second. “I just went out to get us something to eat.”
I pulled back slightly to look at him, my gaze searching his face with more intensity than I bothered to hide.
“Are you sure that’s it?” I asked quietly. “You don’t regret last night? You’re not going to run again for two weeks the second I turn my back?”
A flicker of emotion crossed his features, but I couldn’t figure out what he was feeling in the moment.
“I could lie to you and tell you no.” His thumb brushed along my jaw, slow, grounding, and I felt the shift in him before he even continued. “But the truth is that when I woke up beside you this morning, I panicked. Because it felt so good. Just…being there. Next to you like that.”
A faint, almost self-conscious huff of breath left him.
“Then I remembered last night, and I panicked all over again. Because the sex was…” He gave a small shake of his head as though struggling to find the words. “It was really that amazing.”
My grip on him shifted, tightening slightly as I waited for him to continue, sensing he had more to say.
“I did think about leaving. That was my first instinct, but I didn’t. I changed my mind because I think we have something here. Something worth exploring.”
Both hands were on my face now, framing my cheeks.
“Sergei, the truth is, I can’t promise you I don’t feel guilty about moving on so quickly. It’s still there. I still feel it. But I also know if I walk away from this without trying—without figuring out what this is between us—that would be the bigger mistake.”
The air shifted, quiet and charged and impossibly fragile all at once. Then he leaned in and pressed his lips to mine.
This kiss wasn’t like last night. There was no urgency in it, no heat meant to catapult us into bed. He was careful and intentional. His lips moved against mine like he was learning the shape of me in a different way now, without the shield of lust to hide behind.
And I fell in love with him just a little bit more.
“Now that’s out of the way…” He released my face and turned back to the bags on the counter. “We can have breakfast, and you tell me what happened last night.”
I groaned. Despite the sweet nature of the kiss, I was rock hard. I walked up behind him and pressed my front to his back so he had no option but to feel the imprint of my erection against the curve of his ass.
“I’m horny,” I said into his ear.
He continued unpacking the contents onto the counter without missing a beat. “You’re a grown man. I’m sure you can control yourself.”
The smell of fresh pancakes and strawberry syrup wafted through the air, but it still didn’t deter me, even when my stomach growled.
“Usually I can, but not when it comes to you.” I slipped my hand around him, down between his legs, and groaned deep in the back of my throat when I felt the weight of him in my palm.
He was just as hard as me, yet acting as if the kiss hadn’t affected him.
“Sergei, let go of my dick.”
I slipped my hand into the waistband of the sweats he was wearing, which were baggy on his frame but so sexy. He was going commando beneath, and the realization only made me want him more. I stroked him from the tip down to his base, and his hips bucked.
I grinned in satisfaction. “See? You want this too.”
Leo gave a sigh, abandoned what he was doing, then turned around to face me. He shoved the sweats down his thighs, revealing my hand grasping him, and my mouth watered—not because of the food on the island but because there was a sticky bead of precum forming at his slit.
“You have one of two choices,” Leo said, his words even, although his breathing deepened. “You either release me, and we have breakfast, or you suck me off, swallow my load, then we eat breakfast.”
My breath got trapped inside my lungs. “What about—” I glanced down at my erection pressing against the front of my shorts.
“What about it?” Leo asked, not even blinking an eye.
My interest should have disappeared instantly since he wasn’t about to make me come, but it was the opposite. His words caused a tingling sensation to spread from my dick, pooling into my stomach and making my nipples and the roots of my hair turn sensitive.
I dropped to my knees in front of him, leaned forward, and wrapped my mouth around Leo’s girth. The soft head gave way to a firmer, veiny texture as I swallowed around him. He’d showered this morning, and his fresh, clean scent tickled my nostrils.
Mine.
Leo was mine.
What did it matter that he denied me my orgasm? As long as I could make him pant and moan the way he was, I was satisfied. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t get the most out of it.
I slipped my palms up, under his shirt, toyed with his piercing, then traced the hard lines of his chest. His body felt incredible—warm, solid—but it was the way he reacted that got to me.
His breath caught, and the muscle under my hands tightened.
My fingers twisted around his nipples, and I sucked harder—up and down, then repeat—encouraged by the way his head fell back and the moans coming from him.
His hips moved in a hypnotic rhythm, circling into each lazy thrust past my tonsils.
“Sergei—”
He dug his fingers into my hair, his breathing becoming more labored, his hips snapping forward like he couldn’t hold back anymore. Every sound, every movement of pleasure from him only made me want to give him more.
“Fuck, dollface, your mouth’s incredible—”
The words broke off into a strained groan, his body going taut.
His chest heaved under my hands, muscles locking, and his grip in my hair tightened as everything in him seemed to crest at once.
A shudder tore through him, sharp and uncontrollable, as he let go with a rough, broken sound, his cum spurting in rapid bursts down my throat.
He stilled after that, but only for a second before another tremor followed, softer this time. His breathing came out uneven, chest rising hard against my palms, his hold on me loosening slowly, reluctantly, like he didn’t want the moment to end.
“Jesus…” he muttered under his breath, voice wrecked, still trying to steady himself. “I’m going to have to make use of that slutty mouth more often.”
He took hold of my cheeks in his hand and urged me to my feet. “Come here, baby.”
Baby.
For a second, I just stared at him, my chest tightening. Leo didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he did and chose not to make it a thing. He just stepped in, close enough that I felt the heat of him again, and then his arms came around me.
I went still in his hold.
Didn’t know what to do.
Didn’t know where to put my hands, how to breathe, how to exist inside something that felt this gentle. How could one word unravel the tough shell I’d built around myself over the years?
“You did well,” he murmured, voice low, right by my ear. “Such a good boy, aren’t you? So obedient and eager to please. I’ve got you.”
My throat burned, and before I could stop it, I leaned in, my forehead pressing into the side of his neck. I curled my fingers into the back of his shirt to anchor myself against him.
I hadn’t… This wasn’t…
No one had ever held me like this.
No one had ever looked at me the way he did.
No one had ever thought to call a man like me, whose existence was forged out of blood and bullets, “baby” and “dollface.” No one had ever said that I was good before, when we both knew the truth.
Leo didn’t move to pull away. Didn’t comment on the way my breathing hitched or the way I held on tighter than I probably should have. His hand slid up my back, slow and steady, reminding me he was still there.
“You’re safe to be yourself with me,” he said, even softer this time.
And the fractured pieces of me, still holding together, shattered.
When I was six years old, I watched my mother die a horrible death, stabbed by my father’s jealous.
From then on, I lived a miserable existence, tortured by a father who blamed me for his life falling apart.
There wasn’t a day I wasn’t reminded that I shouldn’t have been born.
That I hadn’t been kicked in the ribs, burned with an iron, stripped, and beaten with the buckle end of a belt, even starved.
It had been years since I’d remembered that boy.
My eyes burned.
I squeezed them shut, burying my face deeper into Leo’s neck, hoping he wouldn’t notice. Or that he would and wouldn’t say a word about it.
Either way, he didn’t. He just kept holding me. And for the first time in a long time—maybe ever—I let myself be the version of that little boy who’d desperately needed to be held when he lost his mother but ended up with a beating from his father instead.