Chapter Two Tristan #2
Considered whether I should re-download Grindr. Find a nameless to pretend he was Razor.
Then I threw that thought away as quickly as it arrived.
Instead, I sent a few messages. A text to Henry, asking how the picket line was faring.
One to Zara, checking if Westminster had swallowed her whole.
One to my sister, asking how her recent equestrian meet went.
Then, I opened my emails and sank into the small glow of normality, of tasks and work and everything that wasn’t this bizarre dinner.
When I finally looked up again, what felt like twenty minutes later, Wolfe still hadn’t returned.
The wine in my glass had gone lukewarm, untouched long enough to feel accusatory.
The servers skirted my table with a delicate avoidance usually reserved for wild animals and awkward breakups, as if approaching me would obligate them to explain where the hell my dinner companion had disappeared to.
I waved one down anyway. “Has Lord Wolfe come back through?”
She blinked. “Lord Wolfe? No, sir. I haven’t seen him.” A quick glance at another server. Another shake of the head.
Brilliant.
A slow, uneasy trickle settled low in my stomach. Something between embarrassment and… something else I couldn’t name without sounding paranoid.
I caught another server. “Is Elliot around?”
“Sorry, sir, he’s not on the floor anymore.” And off she went to her next obligation.
My mind started doing that thing it shouldn’t. Spiralling.
First: I’d assumed Wolfe’s party favours came through this Elliot.
And they were doing the exchange out the back and I’d been half-waiting for his return, wondering, stupidly, whether I would’ve taken something if he’d offered.
But with neither of them returning, another thought wormed in: what if Wolfe had taken something?
What if he was having a bad turn somewhere in the back?
It wasn’t exactly unheard of in these circles.
Maybe Elliot was handling it discreetly.
Second: the far uglier thought: had Wolfe actually walked out on me?
Had whatever business he needed to attend to been far more important to him than this dinner with me and, even worse, not even worthy of an explanation for this departure?
And if so, did I tell Father? Would that start some Hale-Fitzroy civil war about public image and political connections?
And why, exactly, was nothing in my life ever simple?
Why did every night out have to feel as if it was the start of an internal conflict report?
I sighed and checked my watch; anxiety settling like damp under my collar.
Eventually, I pushed back my chair and stood. I left my blazer hanging there like a pathetic little breadcrumb for Wolfe in case he returned. Then I headed in the direction he’d gone where the restaurant narrowed into a dim corridor lit by soft sconces. I pushed open the door to the men’s.
Empty.
I stepped inside anyway, washed my hands, and tried to regain some sense of composure. Then I caught my reflection. Hair mussed, collar slightly skewed, irritation written plain as day across my face.
Jesus Christ.
I should go.
I should grab my blazer, text my father something neutral, disappear into the night and chalk this up to another Hale-Fitzroy social disaster.
So I bent over the sink and splashed water onto my face, eyes closed as droplets slid down my cheeks.
I reached for the paper towel as the door opened behind me.
Before I got the towel to my face, a soft and silky fabric snapped down over my head from behind, covering my eyes and rendering me in darkness.
I couldn’t even protest, as the blindfold tightened and a hand clamped firmly over my mouth, followed by a solid, scorching body crashing into my back and driving me forward for the sink to bite into my stomach.
The air left my lungs. Panic hit me hard.
Then a deep, rumbling voice skimmed my ear, “Don’t scream.”
Holy.
Fucking.
God.
Eight months of silence, yet my body recognised that voice instantly. Traitorously. The way a starving man recognises bread. Everything inside me went loose. Weak. Willing. And I fell back into the man behind me, my whole body turning molten and pliant before my brain could catch up.
The grip on the blindfold tightened, forcing my head back onto a broad shoulder.
One hand stayed locked over my mouth while an arm crossed my chest and trapped me.
I couldn’t move. I wouldn’t have even if I could.
Pinned between cold porcelain and the blistering heat of this man, all I could hear was his breathing.
Harsh.
Uneven.
Hot against my ear.
My pulse hammered so loudly I could feel it in my teeth.
I tried to twist to see him, to confirm this wasn’t some desire-induced hallucination, but the cloth over my eyes made it impossible. So I arched my back helplessly against him, as if I wanted nothing more than to sink inside him.
“Move again,” he growled low into my ear, accent brutal and unmistakable, one I hadn’t heard in months, “and I swear I’ll put you on your knees right here.”
A violent shiver ripped through me.
I stopped moving.
And satisfied, or maybe the satisfaction was its own problem, I was dragged backwards, step by forceful step, the grip on me never loosening.
Then I was shoved through a door where the sound changed instantly.
It was quieter. A faint hum of compressors.
The dull thuds of bass leaking through walls.
Cold air rushed over my face as I was dragged deeper into the passage, doors slamming left, right and centre.
I couldn’t see a thing. I also didn’t want to.
Because what if this wasn’t him? What if I were delusional, and this were an easy kidnap, a ransom note to my father by midnight, maybe something Wolfe had even planned?
Then it was silent. Deathly quiet. And I was shoved forward.
There was rustling, clattering and clanging as if things were being moved then a kick of a door shut.
Before I had time to process anything, the body pinned me, full weight, chest pressed to my spine, one thigh wedged between my legs to keep me open and off balance.
The hand finally peeled away from my mouth, but the silk stayed over my eyes, holding me in perfect, trembling darkness.
“Fucking Tricky.”
Razor.
His voice vibrated along my spine. I didn’t move. Barely even breathed.
Then he ghosted his lips along the side of my neck while dragging my shirt collar aside so he could inhale me as if he’d been starving for this, starving for me, for months.
I let him know I felt the same with a soft moan, tilting my neck to give him more access and drifting my hands behind me to grip his thighs, digging my fingers into rough denim stretched over muscles that could break me open or hold me exactly where he wanted. Muscles capable of bleeding me dry.
“Fuck,” he growled.
Then he pulled my hands away from his thighs and slammed them flat on the wall above my head.
He didn’t need to tell me to keep them there.
I would. I’d surrendered. To him. Without even knowing where I was, who could see us.
Then he untucked my shirt from behind, shoving it up, and scraped his rough palms over my back, around to my stomach, chest. He pinched my nipples as he dragged his mouth along my neck, nipping my earlobe.
I groaned. Loud. The sound cracked off the walls.
“Shhh.” His voice slid down my spine like a blade dipped in heat. A threat. A promise. “Not a sound. You understand? I don’t care what I do to you, you keep quiet.”
I bit hard on the inside of my lip, held my breath, forced every whimper back down my throat. If silence was the price of keeping his hands on me, I’d bleed for it.
“That’s it.” Dark satisfaction curled through the words. “Pretty little thing.”
Then he gripped the front of my shirt with both hands and ripped. Buttons exploded, clattering on tile. He didn’t stop. He tore at the seams until the shoulders surrendered, until the whole thing fell apart under his hands. Shredded, useless, expensive fabric meant absolutely nothing to him.
Cold air hit my skin for a heartbeat.
Then his tongue did.
He licked one devastating stroke up the centre of my spine, hot and hungry; it almost put me on my knees.
He then rose and twisted me around. My arms dropped uselessly to my sides.
I couldn’t see him through the blindfold, but his mouth found mine a second later, kissing me bruising and deeply.
He grabbed my arse and lifted me, and I wrapped around him without thinking, flinging my arms around his neck, legs around his waist, letting him hold me there as he invaded my mouth with his tongue.
He sucked my bottom lip. “You taste good, Tricky.”
I fisted both hands in his hair, dragging him closer, lips close to his ear to whisper, “So do you, Richie.”
Something snapped in him then. He growled, low and animallike, and kissed me harder, slamming me into the wall. Then he set me down, tore at my trousers, shoved them and my underwear to my ankles before spinning me back to face the wall where he planted my hands again.
Breath shaking.
Heart gone.
I waited. Braced for whatever he was going to do.
Which was to crouch behind me, sliding his tongue between my cheeks, licking me open, tasting me, fucking me with his mouth.
Oh, fucking God. I heard rustling, squeezing, a belt opening.
Then his wet fingers spread moisture around my opening, causing me to moan.
After that indulgence, he stood, nudging the hot, blunt weight of his cockhead to my entrance.
“Let me in,” he growled in my ear. “Wanna feel you… all the way through.”
I arched back into him without a word, giving him everything he asked for before he even took it. And when he eased inside me, claiming the space between us, and breached me with a force stealing my breath, any thought I might have still had left me completely.
“Fuck, Tricky…” He bottomed out, dropping his forehead between my shoulder blades and let out a rough exhale shuddering down my spine.
I reached back, sliding my palms over his hard lines, dipping down into his jeans to grab his muscled arse and pulled him closer, dragging him into every inch I could give.
“What do you want, pretty boy?” he panted, shoving his jeans down to allow me to roam my hands all over him.
“Fuck me, Richie.” My voice broke on it. Need, plea, promise. “Fuck me ’til it hurts.”
I’d wanted this for too long. I needed the sting, the edge, the proof that it was real and that it was him.
He lifted his head. Maybe he looked at me.
Maybe he needed to see the fucked-up devotion it took to offer myself like this.
Blind, breathless, already gone. But he must already know.
I was his. And there was nothing soft waiting for us.
Not here, not tonight, maybe never. No slow sweetness tucked behind a back-room door.
That wasn’t who we were. We’d spun full circle, charged and cracked and twisted enough to bruise.
Maybe he had wanted slow. Maybe he’d imagined something gentler.
But honestly?
That would’ve hurt more.
So he moved.
He pulled out. Then drove back in, harder.
Slamming into me with urgency. Flesh on flesh, the wall rattling with every thrust. And I slapped my palms onto the cold brick to stay upright as he gripped my hips, fucking me filthy.
He then spat onto my back, the warm wetness sliding slowly down my spine, his hand following it, dragging through the slick trail before he pushed his thumb inside me beside his cock, easing me more open around him.
“You’re too tight,” he growled.”
“Christ…” The word tore out of me as he pushed deeper, claiming ground inch by inch, stretching me past the point of comfort and straight into something addictive.
Course I was too tight.
I’d closed myself off without him.
I gripped my cock and worked myself in time with his thrusts, every stroke a fight to stay upright as he fucked me apart.
But it didn’t last long. How could it? We were both too pent up for it to be sensual.
And when he drove in deep, holding himself there, breath catching as a guttural sound ripped from his chest, he came, fingers bruising my hips.
I followed seconds later, shuddering, spilling hard against the wall.
Silence hit like a gavel.
Still.
Heavy.
Charged.
Then he eased out of me, leaving a hollow ache making my legs tremble, and the faint snap of a condom being removed put the full stop on what this was.
I straightened, unsure of what came next.
What we did next. But Razor didn’t leave me hanging.
He turned me around, crouched, and his tongue was on me again.
Licking along the inside of my thighs, my balls, a slow swipe over the sensitive tip of my spent cock, cleaning me up.
Then he tugged my underwear and trousers up with surprising gentleness before standing and kissing my mouth.
Hot, claiming, soft in the way nothing else between us ever was or could be.
The blindfold came off next, light stabbing in. I blinked hard, vision swimming until Razor switched on a light, a lone bulb hanging from the ceiling to illuminate a storage cupboard. How fucking ironic.
“How are ya, Tricky?” He threw the cloth among a bunch of other random things on the floor I couldn’t yet make out as I was far too stunned at the sight of him, cocky grin in place before he winked.
I grabbed a fistful of his shirt, yanked him closer, and kissed him.
Deep. Messy. Hungry.
Because stopping wasn’t an option, not after this.