Chapter 13 #2
He’s breathing harder, chest rising and falling against the small space between us. The worst part—the most fucked up part of all of this—is that what I’m saying doesn’t make him recoil. His gaze drops to my mouth for the hundredth time, as if he’s fighting the urge to lean in.
“You say that like I’m not already ruined,” he whispers. “You said I messed up your coping mechanisms, so why are you pretending we’re gonna go back to the way things were before?”
This. Fucking. Martyr.
I close my eyes for half a second, because this boy is either going to save me or kill me, and I’m not sure which would be kinder. The image he just offered—me taking it out on him instead—won’t get out of my head. It’s a razor on a loop.
He chuckles, making my eyes snap open. “Now you’re suddenly Mr. Noble because you’ve decided to take the safe road? Since when does the Beast play safe?”
The nickname hits me in the chest harder than it should. There’s no mockery in it. No fear. He’s naming the part of me everyone else either romanticizes or avoids, and somehow, he says it as if it belongs to him already.
“Seriously?” I say. “You really want to be the guy who volunteers to soak up a serial killer’s bad day, and then bitch when he says no? That’s the worst logic I’ve ever heard.”
He rolls his eyes, and the sheer audacity of that gesture nearly pulls a laugh out of me even as my temper spikes.
“Yeah, well. I’m not exactly operating from a place of healthy decision-making right now—you messed that up weeks ago.
You don’t get to be the Beast and the hero at the same time, Dominic.
But you’re wrong about one thing,” he says, voice slightly dropping.
“I’m not a martyr. I’m selfish, actually. ”
Before I can ask what the fuck he means, his arms slide up around my shoulders, looping behind my neck. He has to rise onto his toes to do it properly, the top of his head barely reaching my chin, and the contact lights up every nerve in me.
He leans in, breath warm against my ear, and the whisper that follows is soft enough that if I wasn’t attuned to him, I’d miss it.
“Use me,” he whispers, and the words go straight down my spine. “Take it out on me. You keep saying I’m yours, so use what’s yours, Beast.”
Every muscle in my body goes tight. He shifts his weight, swaying close, and his whole body is one long line of temptation pressed up against mine.
“Stop,” I say, but it comes out hoarse.
My hands find his hips without me meaning to, fingers curling into soft cotton and the hard line of bone underneath.
I squeeze too hard, and feel his breath hitch against my throat.
A part of me makes a violent, desperate decision all on its own: if I start, I won’t stop.
Not tonight. If I let myself use him right now, I’ll go until there’s nothing left in him or me, and I don’t know which of us will be worse for it.
“You keep saying no, but your body keeps saying yes,” he says, throwing my own fucking words back at me. “Which one am I supposed to listen to?”
“Christ,” I mutter, because hearing that out loud from him doesn’t help. I try one last time to shove him toward safety, even if I don’t actually move him.
He smiles then, small and so fucking dangerous. It’s the smile of a man who’s already halfway gone and doesn’t realize how obvious it is. I think he’s finally stepping back. Instead, his knees hit the floor in front of me with a soft thud.
I gasp as he leans forward, nuzzling his face against the front of my sweats, right where I’m already hard from this whole fucked-up conversation.
It’s not accidental contact. He rubs his face against me like some fucked-up cat, inhaling, exhaling, mouth parting on a shaky exhale that I feel right through every layer between us.
“Please, Daddy,” he murmurs against me, the words muffled by fabric but still clear enough to detonate inside me. “Let me take it. Let me be good for my Beast.”
For the first time since I was old enough to hate myself, I feel shock ripple through the monster.
I’ve taken blindside sacks on the field that made my vision go white around the edges.
I’ve had my bell rung, my ribs bruised, my breath knocked out—none of those compares to the impact of that word from his mouth.
Daddy.
I don’t recognize my own voice when it finally drags up from somewhere deep and torn. “Fuck, Brendon.”
He holds my gaze, daring and begging, the tiniest tremor dancing along his lip—but no hint of retreat. “Use me,” he whispers.
Electric heat snarls through me. I yank his face up fully, away from my crotch, away from the distraction of that obscene little nuzzle, because I need his eyes. I need to see exactly where his head is at.
“You’re not a fucking pressure valve for my blood lust,” I say again.
His eyes go a little hazier at the pull, like the pain’s knocking something loose in his head rather than scaring him.
“I know. I’m not asking you to… to use me like that. I want… I want my head to shut up, Dominic. You do that. When you’re like this, when you’re rough, and mean, and telling me what to do, everything else goes quiet. I can breathe. I want that. I want you.”
The words slam into me harder than any plea for mercy ever has. It’s not martyr bullshit. It’s not “let me save you.” It’s “this ruins me in all the right ways, so please don’t stop.”
I watch his pupils pulse, the way his eyes keep trying to close, and then fight it because I told him to look at me. His lips are parted, breaths coming in shallow pants, and there’s this unfocused edge creeping into his expression that I recognize, even if I’ve never seen it on him before.
This boy is sliding into subspace. What the fuck?
“Hands on your thighs,” I say, testing him, my voice dropping into that tone I know goes straight to his spine.
He obeys instantly, his fingers leaving the fabric of my sweats and returning to his own legs, his palms flattening on his thighs.
“Back straight,” I add.
He straightens—shoulders pulling back, chest opening, head still tipped up by my grip. The movement makes him look even more offered up.
“Good,” I murmur. “Now answer me properly. What are you doing on my floor, Little Sin?”
His lashes flutter once, and when he speaks, his voice is softer.
“Kneeling for you, because you’re… you’re wound too tight and I want to help, and…
I want you to touch me. And I don’t know which is more fucked up.
” He swallows, and his words start to tumble out faster, less censored.
“I can’t stop thinking about your hands, and your voice, and the way everything inside me goes quiet when you tell me what to do.
I want that. I want to be good for you.”
There’s a particular cadence people pick up when they start drifting; sentences get longer and looser, thoughts sliding into each other, like the filter between brain and mouth is dissolving.
He’s teetering right on that edge. The only reason he hasn’t toppled fully is because somewhere in there, he’s still waiting to know if I’ll catch him or let him hit the ground.
“Fuck me,” I mutter, mostly to myself. I loosen my grip in his hair just a fraction, enough that my fingers can shift from punishing to cradling. “You feel floaty, Little Sin?”
His eyes flick up. “A little,” he admits, voice dreamy. “Everything feels… big and small at the same time; loud and far away. Everything’s fuzzy on the sides, but you’re… clear. If you stop talking, I feel like I’m going to drift. So don’t… stop.”
I let that settle and allow myself to really feel the weight of it.
He trusts me enough to fall apart in front of me on purpose—that never happens.
People don’t trust me at all, or they trust the golden boy mask and never see what’s underneath.
No one looks at the monster and says, ‘Yes, you. I pick you to hold me while I unravel.’
“Tell me what you want,” I say. “Use your words. Don’t give me metaphors. Give me the simple shit.”
He takes a breath that sounds more like a sigh.
“I want you to tell me what to do. I want you to stop thinking about hurting other people because you’re too busy…
messing me up.” His mouth curves, a loopy little half-smile he probably doesn’t realize he’s giving me.
“I want your cock in my mouth, Daddy. I want to taste you. I want you to look at me like that, and not anyone else.”
“Like what?” I ask, even though I know.
A startled, blissed-out little giggle escapes him, and it’s so rare and ridiculous and sweet that I almost have to look away. “Like you don’t know whether to kill me or keep me.”
My chest tightens. I do know. I’m going to keep him as long as I can, and that knowledge is its own kind of horror.
“Eyes on me,” I demand.
He locks on immediately, pupils huge. “Yes, Daddy,” he says, without a beat of hesitation this time—and that’s when I know he’s gone.
The word shivers through me, cutting straight past muscle and bone to someplace older than sense, but I force myself to keep my tone steady, almost clinical, because he’s glassy-eyed and floating and I need every syllable to land like an anchor.
“Why are you calling me that, Brendon? Why ‘Daddy’?”
He blinks slowly, as if the question has to travel through syrup before it reaches whatever part of his brain is still translating thought into speech. His lips move, nothing comes out, then he wets them and tries again.
“Because it… feels right,” he whispers, each word drawn out on its own thread of breath. “Feels like you’re the one in charge of everything loud in my head… and the only thing I have to do is listen… and be good, and you’ll handle the rest.”
I slide my hand from his hair to hook under his chin, tilting him another fraction so I can see every flicker in his eyes. The honesty in them is obscene.
“When you say it, what are you asking for?” I press, lowering my voice until it’s a rasp meant for him alone.
His eyes flutter closed, lashes trembling, but he forces them open again, pupils swallowing nearly all the green. “Safety,” he breathes. “Protection. Control.”
The fucking irony that I could ever be someone’s idea of safety is so fucking absurd. He isn’t wrong; I am in charge right now, and whether the world calls that safe or suicidal is irrelevant.
What matters is that he’s here on the floor in front of me, choosing my hands over any sanctuary the church ever offered. I need to treat that with something bordering on reverence.
“And you trust Daddy, Little Sin?” I ask, needing to hear him say it, even if it makes me sick.
“Yes,” he says immediately. “You scare me, but I trust you.”
This is the part where a sane man would haul him to his feet, shove him back into his car, and walk away.
I am not a sane man.