Chapter Ten #2
Bateman and Surge had already gone, loading the rescued women and children into vans, determined to escort them personally and make sure the authorities were actually doing their job.
Dev stuck around with the team, called it babysitting with a smirk, but there was a softness in his eyes when he said it.
He, like the rest of them, needed to know those victims were safe.
There was banter, retellings of close calls and ridiculous shots.
Ricky swore his aim had saved Bateman’s ass.
Bateman didn’t argue, which was almost praise.
Luca clutched his side, scowling through pain, and Marsh teased him over comms about his dramatic groaning.
Even Ty and Oren, normally the quiet ones, cracked tired grins, listening to Torch relive blowing the mansion sky-high.
For a moment, everyone wore the same look—satisfaction.
They had hit the Bratya where it hurt, and it showed.
Then Hogan’s voice cut through the noise. “Enough. Time to go.”
It wasn’t a request. Heads turned, but nobody cracked a joke, nobody gave them grief. They all knew better. Dev’s mouth twitched like he wanted to say something, but instead he saluted lazily and turned back to his drink.
“Yeah,” Kai said, standing and stretching the ache out of his ribs. “Let’s go.”
They left together, slipping out the side door into the quiet night. Their van waited for them like a faithful hound. Hogan brushed Kai’s arm again as he opened the door, and the touch still managed to burn through him, even after everything.
Once inside, Hogan leaned against the counter, arms folded. “We should think about getting one of these.”
Kai ran his hand along the edge of the table, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. “I don’t want just any old van. I want this one.”
Hogan raised a brow. “This exact van?”
“Yeah.” Kai smirked. “And I’ll make Surge give it to us. Man owes me.”
That pulled a short laugh out of Hogan, the kind that rumbled low in his chest. “God, you’re impossible.”
“Yeah,” Kai said softly. “But you love me anyway.”
Hogan’s eyes flickered, something raw and unguarded flashing across them. He stepped forward, close enough that Kai could feel the heat of him. “I do. I love you.”
The words landed heavy. They weren’t flung out like a battlefield confession—they were grounded, deliberate, a stake in the ground. Kai’s throat tightened.
“I love you, too,” he admitted, and the truth of it almost staggered him. After everything, after the years and scars and silence—it still came easy.
Hogan lifted a hand, tracing the edge of the bandage at Kai’s jaw.
“I’m getting pieces back. Memories. Not all of them, but .
.. some. They come at me in flashes. You laughing.
You calling me Ace and me telling you to shut the hell up.
Us running through a city in the rain. The taste of your skin. It’s there.”
Kai swallowed, fighting the burn in his eyes. “You remember?”
“Not everything. Not yet. But enough to know that losing it once was hell. I’m not doing it again.”
Kai pulled him closer, forehead to forehead. “You don’t have to. You’ve got me. I’m right here.”
For a long moment, they just stood there, holding onto each other as the world outside quieted. The hum of the van’s systems, the faint smell of smoke still clinging to them, the weight of Hogan’s arms—everything felt like coming home.
Then Hogan kissed him. Not rushed, not desperate, but deep and steady, like he was stitching the memories back together with every press of his mouth. Kai’s hands slid up his back, gripping hard, and when Hogan finally pulled him toward the shower, he went willingly.
It was a tight fit to be fair, but they made it work.
Quickly washing the night’s activities from them, stealing kisses and caresses, some of them innocent, others that made them cry out, driving their arousal toward fever pitch so that by the time they turned off the water, and quickly toweled off, Kai was ready to be fucked. Hard. Now.
Hogan was apparently on board with that if the way he slammed his mouth onto Kai’s and walked him back toward the bed was anything to go by.
He had taken the time to lower it when they arrived, before their shower, and when his thighs hit the bed, he broke the kiss to jump up and sit on the mattress.
When he went to slither back into the bed, Hogan stopped him.
“I realized something when I was making this bed as you slept those first few days back at the RV park,” Hogan’s voice got deeper when he was riding the edge of arousal. It drove Kai’s own arousal up a notch of seventeen when it did.
“Yeah,” Kai asked, sliding his hands down Hogan’s chest, loving the warmth of skin over steel.
“That it is just about the perfect fucking height.” And to prove his point, Hogan grabbed one of the bolster cushions from the dinette chair, and dropped it to the ground, then knelt on it. That did put him at the perfect height to—
“Fuck!” Kai lost the ability to continue that thought as Hogan sucked his cock into the back of his throat.
His man was a generous lover, and had given him many blowjobs in the months they had been together, but it always felt new.
Felt so good, and drove him so high so fast, that it was difficult for him not to come fast. Add to that the excitement of the evening and the touches and caresses in the shower adding to the anticipation and he had to concentrate to hold back.
But from the way Hogan was working him, he had no intentions of allowing him the ability to hold back.
His hands worked the base of his shaft as his tongue—God, what that man could do with his tongue should be outlawed.
And his other hand did not remain idle either, working his balls, rolling them in his palm, and giving them the squeeze that he loved.
Kai was soon lying mostly prone, propped on his elbows so he didn’t miss the show Hogan was performing for him.
The way their eyes locked had his toes curling.
Or maybe it had more to do with the fact that—
“Damn it! I’m coming! Shit!” Kai dropped back onto the mattress, as pleasure broke through him, and he arched his back as he released over and over into Hogan’s willing mouth.
His lover applied just the right amount of suction that had his orgasm lengthening, and leaving him, when it finally did, a sated pile of breathless, gasping male collapsed against the mattress.
“Hogan,” he gasped as Hogan continued to slide his tongue against his cock, not allowing it to soften completely, but without the strength of just moments before, knowing that he would be sensitive in the moment just after release.
As his heart rate slowed and blood returned to his brain, Hogan placed one last kiss against his cock, then stood up.
Kai looked at the smug satisfied shit-eating grin Hogan gave him, and couldn’t even be mad about it. But he had a plan to wipe a little of that well-deserved smugness from his handsome face.
“Lie back on the bed, Ace,” Kai said, moving over with a wiggle of his hips that made Hogan growl and slide a hand over his ass, but did as he was directed.
As Hogan settled himself against the pillows, lying slightly spreadeagled on the mattress, Kai reached for the lube.
Holding Hogan’s gaze, he opened the tube and squeezed some into his hand.
Then he rubbed them together to warm the product, before using it to lubricate Hogan’s impressively hard cock.
Hogan arched up into his caress with a sigh.
“Feel good, Ace?” Kai asked. Hogan nodded his answer, but Kai already knew what it would be. The hooded gaze and sweep of color across his cheekbones told him so. “Then you are going to love this.”
Swinging his leg across Hogan’s waist, he used the rest of the lubricant on his hand around the entrance to his own ass, and then gripped Hogan’s cock, placing the head at his entrance.
“Wait!” Hogan said, gripping Kai’s hips. “You need to be ready. I will not hurt you.”
Kai gave him a smile, biting his bottom lip in a way he knew Hogan would appreciate.
“Baby, I know you’ve lost a lot of your memory about me, but let me fill you in on a little thing about me.
” He leaned forward, placing his mouth against Hogan’s pectoral, tonguing his nipple to full erectness, loving that Hogan’s hands shot to his head, to hold him against him.
He looked into his eyes. “I like a bite of pain with my pleasure.” And then he bit none too gently against Hogan’s nipple.
“Shit!” Hogan cried out, and jolted, but from the way his dick twitched in Kai’s hand, he knew he liked it. He always did—they truly were perfect for each other.
Then he placed Hogan’s cock against his back entrance and began to lower himself over him. Rolling his hips, to take him in, letting his body get used to him again. Hogan held himself still, his entire body tensing against what Kai guessed was a frighteningly strong urge to move.
When Kai had him mostly inside, he dropped down hard, reveling in the burn that came with that move, and the way Hogan’s hands flew up and gripped his hips. Neither of them said anything, the sounds of their breathing the only thing in the van.
Then Kai began to move, slowly at first, up and down, riding his lover’s cock, adding a roll of his hips at the top and bottom to increase the pleasure.
Moves that made them both equally gasp with pleasure and curse with shock.
They both needed this connection a little too much for this to last too long.
Soon, Kai was riding Hogan hard, placing his hands on Hogan’s chest for leverage, and snapping his hips up and down in a broken rhythm.
Hogan’s hand suddenly reached for Kai’s cock, which was harder than it should have been, and began to shuttle his hand up and down from root to tip.
Kai threw his head back, taking the pleasure his man gave him as he gave it in return.
He could feel the pressure of another orgasm building within him even as Hogan began to thrust up into him.
Their release approached at the speed of light.
And when they finally flew off the edge of the world, and into the abyss of pleasure that lay before them, it was together.
Always together. It wasn’t about proving anything.
It was about forgiveness, about finding the pieces of themselves they thought they’d lost and choosing each other all over again.