Chapter 14
RIGGS
Smith spent the night.
He was a boneless pile of pleasure after the bath and there was no way I would have felt right about sending him home.
He could barely focus his eyes on me, let alone the road.
After a long soak, I gave him a pair of sweatpants that were far too long on him, then I tucked him into my bed.
I debated if I wanted to crawl in with him, but I knew myself well enough to know that was a horrible idea.
I curled up on the couch with a blanket instead, and when I woke up Sunday morning, Smith was there.
Shoved onto the narrow couch, his back pressed against my chest and my arm slung over his waist. I groaned into the back of his neck and pulled him close, trying to ignore the way he thrust his ass back against my non-existent morning wood.
If he noticed I wasn’t hard, he didn’t say anything.
He only made a weak noise of protest when I gave up trying to get back to sleep and climbed over him to get up.
I padded into the kitchen, quiet and barefoot, to make some coffee and check my phone.
On the screen, I found a slew of missed messages from Damon, most of which were him being hyped about his knee tattoo.
The rest were a series of names and times with phone numbers attached.
My piece of shit best friend had booked me interviews.
Sighing at his insistence, I rested against the counter and took a sip of my coffee.
He’d booked me four for later in the morning, which was annoying but not horrible.
It was just before nine and Smith didn’t strike me as the type to sleep in late.
Hell, I wasn’t the type to sleep in late.
I was up before seven most days, even though I didn’t open the shop until almost lunch.
I liked having time to myself to wake up slowly, to read on the couch, to water my plants.
After another drink of coffee, I shifted my position so I could watch Smith sleep on my couch.
With his eyes closed and his mouth relaxed, he looked like he was far too young to be half-naked in my apartment, but I knew he was more than grown enough to ask for what we’d done the night before.
Smith was a conundrum of a man, so sure of himself while being so uncertain at the same time.
I imagined that was a result of the way he’d been raised.
God, he was something else. Just knowing I’d left his backside striped and bruised was enough to propel me through the rest of the week.
It had been so fucking long since I’d let myself play with someone like that.
Smith was new to power exchange, that was obvious, and I wasn’t sure if he understood what it had cost me to do the things we’d done.
I gave him the pain he was after because it was what he wanted, but I could have just as easily spread him out on my bed and feasted on him until the end result reached the same place.
My focus as a dominant was—and would always be—pleasure.
Not mine.
Ev used to tell me it was a caretaking gene, something that had been skipped for every generation before mine or maybe borne from it, but my driving need to take care of everyone in my orbit was a very real thing.
It made perfect sense to me it would expand into the bedroom, that it would take the shape of a boneless man on my couch with bruises shaped like my hands on the backs of his thighs.
Fuck, it had felt so good to have his hand in mine, his cock in his, both of us working together to push him to places he’d never even dreamed about going before he’d walked into that bathroom stall with me.
I had to be exceedingly careful with Smith Covington, not just for his own benefit but also mine. It would be easier than breathing to fall into the trap of wanting him to feel that good every second of every day, and that was treacherously close to a relationship, which…
A knock on the door downstairs startled me out of that thought process, and I frowned at my apartment door. Smith didn’t even move at the sound, so I slipped my hoodie on and took my coffee down to see who couldn’t read the hand painted hours of operation sign on the door.
“Fuck.”
Of course it was Damon, his stupid head bobbling side to side as I came down the stairs.
He had a crumpled brown bag in his hand and a cardboard tray with two white cups in the other.
When he saw me, he knocked his elbow into the glass again, producing another louder than necessary rattle.
Setting my own coffee down on the counter, I unlocked the door and let him in.
“Why are you here?” I asked, foregoing any sort of hello.
“Happy interview day!” he answered, spreading his shit out over the counter. Thankfully, he slid my portfolio out of the way before digging two over-schmeared bagels out of the bag and setting them down.
“Is it?”
“Didn’t you get my texts?”
“I woke up to them, yes.” I sighed, sniffing and hating how good the bagels smelled. My best friend absolutely knew how to butter me up.
“I knew if I didn’t do it, you wouldn’t.”
“I told you last time you were here I’d booked one,” I reminded him.
“You did that to get me off your back, not because you really wanted to hire anyone,” he countered, popping the black plastic top off of his tea and breathing in the steam.
“What makes you think I’ll want to hire any of the people you have coming in later today?”
I was a weak man, giving up and dragging my finger through some of the cream cheese overflow on an everything bagel and sucking it off my finger. My stomach immediately growled, reminding me how much I’d exerted myself the night before and how little I’d eaten before and after.
“They’re good artists, for one,” he said, wiggling a tattooed finger at me. “I vetted their work to make sure you wouldn’t hate it before I even talked to them.”
“A start,” I grumbled.
“They’re all good people.”
“Are they now?” I pulled a corner of the bagel off and shoved it into my mouth, hoping it would be enough to quiet my stomach but immediately knowing it was nowhere near enough.
“Yeah. Different backgrounds, some a little rougher around the edges, but I know a diamond when I see one.”
Damon grinned at me, and I gave up, finally lifting the bagel off the crinkled white paper wrapper and taking a bite.
“And I know you only have room for one or two right now, but I think we could consolidate your sprawling mess and get three in easy.”
I glanced at my station.
It took up most of the shop because it was my shop, and I liked it that way.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I warned. “You’re lucky I’m not going to cancel the interviews.”
“You’re lucky,” he shot back. “Ev would never have wanted you to do this alone.”
I swallowed hard, a particularly thick piece of bagel lodging in my throat.
I chased it down with some room-temperature coffee, some of the fight going out of me at the reminder Ev would have hated to know how long I’d been alone.
Pleasure for us had gone both ways, in different ways, and he wouldn’t have…
That didn’t matter.
“Thank you for taking the time to do this,” I conceded, and Damon grinned at me like he’d won the lottery.
“You’re welcome. So, did you do anything fun last night?” he asked, finishing off his own bagel with a happy and satisfied little moan of approval. “I ran into Athena at The Cathouse. She showed me her new piece.”
I nodded, doing everything possible to not even think about the fact Smith was upstairs and asleep on my couch because my face might give away the answer to Damon’s question before my mouth ever could.
“It was fun,” I said.
“Her tattoo or last night?”
Before I could answer, the back stairs creaked under someone’s weight, and Damon’s head jerked toward me, his eyes wide and his mouth ready to tease.
“Don’t,” I warned, desperate to keep the conversation off of me. “Did you go home with her?”
“She has her hands full with Wes and Grant.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“Of course I went home with her.” He rolled his eyes like the answer should have been obvious. “Then I went home and set an alarm to make sure I was here in time to rouse you with tea and snacks before your big day.”
“Of course you did,” I grumbled.
My complaint was not loud enough to smother the sound of Smith tentatively calling out my name from the top of the staircase.
I sighed, looking down at the counter. I could feel Damon’s stare on me, the question and the accusation ready.
There was no way I was getting out of this meeting, no matter what I said.
“Down here,” I called. “With company.”
“I don’t…”
He didn’t have a shirt. His clothes were folded on a chair in my bedroom, but I’d put him to bed in my clothes without a shirt, and part of me loved that he hadn’t bothered to look for his things.
“Hold on.”
I gave Damon the finger and met Smith on the stairs, tugging off my hoodie and offering it to him.
He looked amazing, rumpled from sleep and the ease from the night before still sketched across every muscle of his body.
He shrugged into my hoodie, and I fidgeted with the hem of the threadbare shirt I’d slept in.
“Did you have an appointment?” he asked.
“No. My best friend showed up.”
“Oh.” Smith’s cheeks darkened and he took a step back toward the apartment. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s fine.” I cradled his face in my hand, stroking my thumb across his cheek until the worry line between his brows disappeared. “He knows you’re here.”
Smith followed me into the shop, and I shot Damon a warning look before we reached the counter.
“Damon, this is Smith. Smith, my meddling best friend, Damon.”
Damon let his lips pop out from his teeth and he gave Smith a much nicer smile than I’d expected. “Nice to meet you.”
“Same.” Smith fidgeted like he was about to try and shake Damon’s hand but decided against it, instead shoving both of his hands into the pocket of my hoodie.
“If I would have known Riggsy had company, I would have brought extras.”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Smith said quickly, but if I had been starving, he must have been famished.
“Here.” I slid him the other half of my bagel and the tea Damon had gotten for me. I hadn’t touched either.
“I’m o—”
“Eat,” I interrupted the protest, and Smith tucked his chin toward his chest and nodded his understanding.
The corner of Damon’s mouth twitched, and I sent him another threatening glare. He chased whatever remark he’d wanted to make went down with a swallow of his own tea.
“Did you two have fun last night?” he asked.
“Stop it,” I warned.
“Yes,” Smith answered.
I bit the inside of my cheek.
“Thank you for breakfast,” I said to my best friend. “And thank you for setting up the interviews. Don’t you have somewhere to be now?”
“I was going to loiter for your interviews to make sure you don’t pass on any good artists just because you were in a surly mood, but judging by the state of his hair—” Damon jerked his chin toward Smith. “—I think your mood will be just fine.”
“You can go,” I told him. “If you want to come back, I clearly can’t stop you, but you can leave for now.”
Damon chuckled, shaking his head at me before putting the lid back onto his tea.
“I’ll reconnect with you later today,” he said. “Dinner.”
“Alright.”
“Nice to meet you, Smith.” He gave a two-finger salute. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Damon let himself out, and Smith finally pulled his hands out of the hoodie, flicking some of the poppyseeds off the top of the bagel.
“You should eat,” I told him.
“Is that an order?” he asked.
My chest ached. “It’s a suggestion. I’m not in a place to give you orders.”
“Just last night, then?”
I tightened my hand around my mug and took a steadying breath. “This isn’t anything more than it was.”
“And what was it?”
“Two men having a good night together.” Even as I said it, the words tasted like a lie, a wash over a truth that was very different and far less casual.
“Is that all it’s going to be?” he asked.
Yes.
No.
“Until we’ve talked about it being anything different, yes,” I said.
“Let’s talk about it then.”
Jesus, he was unlike anyone else I’d ever met.
So sure and nervous simultaneously, so unafraid of taking the things he wanted, even if he didn’t understand them entirely.
And I knew, without a doubt, he didn’t understand this…
at all. There was also no way for us to have that conversation without having a very serious conversation about me—a conversation I hadn’t needed to bring up in a very long time because things had never gotten to the point where it was necessary.
“Eat the bagel, Smith,” I said gently, not wanting to hurt him while also desperately clinging to the threads binding my own sense of self-preservation together.
“Drink the tea, then let’s get you dressed.
I have interviews today and dinner with Damon tonight, and if you still want to have that conversation with me when the afterglow of last night has worn off, you know where to find me. ”