Chapter 3 #2
Then Matej’s hand was inside the loosened denim and Luca’s head went back, mouth open on a breath that wouldn’t form a word, and he was making sounds he couldn’t catalogue, small involuntary ones, his hands at the small of his back where he’d kept them, the shirt still gathered behind his wrists, the whole front of him open to the room.
The contrast between being held and being this exposed did something to him he had no name and no map for.
He had never been held like this. Had never been held, full stop. The last of the management came off him like a skin he hadn’t known he had on, and under it there was just Luca. A man who wanted.
Matej’s mouth was at his throat. Not kissing. Breathing. Warm, the stubble dragging, sending it down through his chest and his stomach and lower, and Luca pushed his hips forward and felt Matej against him, the shape of him through the fabric, the heat of it.
Then Matej made a sound. Low. Warm. Unguarded, the sound of a man who hadn’t meant to make it, who showed nothing as a rule and was not managing to show nothing now. Brief and real, and Luca felt it land in him differently than the hand had. Not the touch. The sound.
He was loud. He could hear himself and didn’t care. The house was empty, the night was long, and something had come off him, and being loud felt like the first full breath he’d taken in years.
Matej moved him.
He turned him, a hand at the shirt where it bound his arms, drawing the cotton forward and around with the motion, and Luca went, went easily, without negotiating it, without deciding, just answered the pressure as if it were obvious, and found himself facing the old sideboard, dark wood, the smell of beeswax and something deeper.
His palms went flat on the surface. The shirt hung in front of him now, bunched at his wrists, where it had bound them behind.
He understood, as Matej’s hands settled on his hips, that none of this was accidental. That he had been moved here on purpose, turned and bound on purpose. That the constraint was the point.
The understanding arrived in his body before his mind caught up, and his body’s answer was not ambiguous.
Matej’s mouth came to the back of his neck. Not a kiss. The scrape of teeth, careful, deliberate, and Luca’s head dropped forward and the sound he made was not language.
His jeans were low on his hips. He hadn’t felt them slide but they had, and the cool air across the small of his back was a shock, clarifying, and then Matej was pressed against him, the hard heat of him fitting into the cleft of his ass, and Luca’s fingers curled against the wood.
He pushed back into it. Deliberate. Felt the weight and the heat of him answer, the involuntary tilt of Matej’s hips, the breath that broke loose at his ear.
His wrists. He was still aware of them, the phantom of where Matej’s hand had been, and he understood with a clarity that felt almost chemical that he wanted them held again. That the absence was worse than the grip. That he had been given a choice and was choosing not to have one.
He spread his fingers wider on the wood. Pressed his weight back, tilted, opened, and felt the loosened denim give and slide down off the curve of him, the cool air on bared skin. An offering, and not a subtle one.
Matej’s hand left his hip. “Stay,” he said, low. Then nothing, just the warmth of him close behind, the sound of his breathing, the smell of him, woodsmoke and salt and something under it that was only animal, and Luca held his palms flat and kept them there and waited.
The sound came before the sensation. Sharp, the crack of a flat palm, and then warmth bloomed outward across him and Luca jolted forward into the sideboard, fingers splaying on the wood.
He went still. Processing.
Oh, he thought. Oh. That.
He had never asked for that. Not once, not from anyone. He had shelved it years ago under not for me, under too much, somewhere on the long list of wants he’d ruled incompatible with the man who had his life together.
He heard himself, very quiet:
“Again.”
Behind him, Matej went completely still.
“Again.” Steadier than it had any right to be. “Please.”
A second hung there. Then Matej’s hand came around the front of his throat, not pressing, just there, the broad warm span of it drawing his head up off the wood, not back against him, not yet, just up, enough that Luca felt his own pulse hammering into the palm, felt held in place by it, felt unable to go anywhere and entirely unwilling to.
“I’ve got you,” Matej said, low, at his ear.
And the other hand came down on him again.
Harder. And the noise it pulled out of him, throat under Matej’s hand, was nothing he recognised.
That was the tip of it. Not the heat across his skin. The hand at his throat that meant he wasn’t going anywhere, that someone else was deciding where he stayed. It moved him out of every room he’d ever had sex in and into one with no map at all.
Matej’s hand came down a third time and the seal Luca had kept on himself for years went, just went, and the sound he made was not shaped or permitted or anything he’d have let out in another life.
The hand at his throat eased. Stayed. Warm.
“Do you want to play?” Low. Almost careful.
Luca breathed out. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s play.”
Both of them surprised. Neither moving yet.
Then: “Again.”
Asking had stopped embarrassing him after the first time.
Matej’s arm came around him from behind, across his chest, drawing him up off the sideboard and back against him, flush, and Luca felt the whole length of him, the heat, the want, exactly how much Matej wanted this, and it lit something in him that answered.
His other hand came back to Luca’s jaw. Not a grip.
A placement, thumb at the hinge, and turned his head to the side, and Luca let himself be turned, let himself be set where Matej wanted him, and the arm across his chest tightened just enough that he felt the whole circuit of it, the containment, and his breath came uneven.
His wrists were still caught in the open shirt, in front of him. He could have shrugged free. He didn’t.
“Luca.” His name. Low. Right at his ear.
He had never heard his name said like that. Not once, not by anyone.
“Good?” Matej said. One word, waiting.
“Yes,” Luca said. Not managed. Just true.
Matej’s hand slid down his body and closed around him.
Held him a beat, the weight and the length of him more than the broad palm could fully close around.
Then he wet the hand at his own mouth, unhurried, and brought it back, and began to move.
Not the careful, curated way he’d been touched before, not the kind that performed tenderness like a skill.
A man who knew what his hand could do and did it, no apology, no asking, and the certainty of it undid something Luca hadn’t known was wound tight.
He made a sound from below language, below the part of him that edited and managed and kept the night on rails.
Matej’s arm across his chest held him up.
Without it he’d have gone down, he could feel it, the give in his knees, his weight pouring back into the other man’s body.
And behind him Matej was moving too, the hard heat of him dragging slow, the length of it riding the cleft of his ass and up against the small of his back, heavy, thicker than he’d braced for, the drag gone slick between them, a rhythm he wasn’t fully choosing, his breath gone ragged at Luca’s ear, and Luca could feel the restraint in him, the deliberate hold on it, and the small places where the hold was beginning to fail.
The slick between them was sweat, and it meant something: the last of the holding-back had burned off them both.
The shirt was still caught at his wrists, in front of him. He was aware of it like a rope he’d chosen, not a limit but a condition, the reason the rest of it was possible.
Matej’s hand changed, a shift, a turn of the wrist, and Luca’s head went back against his shoulder and the sound out of him was nothing he knew as his own.
He was here. All the way here. Not in Milan, not in the magazine, not on the name Ferrante or the key or any of the scaffolding he’d built around himself. Just here, in this body, this room, this man’s hand on him and this man’s breath at his ear and this man coming undone against his back.
“Matej.” Barely. He said it again and couldn’t stop.
He came in waves. Not sharp, not sudden, a long unspooling through his knees and his stomach and his chest and his throat, and his knees went and Matej’s arm was the reason he stayed up, and he heard himself far off, uninhibited, all the way inside it.
Matej followed a breath behind, grinding hard into the cleft of his ass one last time, his grip clamping down, his forehead dropping to the back of Luca’s neck, the sound torn out of him low and swallowed and completely real.
The fire. The dark. Both of them breathing.
Matej’s arm did not move.
He kept coming back to that, in the long minute after.
Matej hadn’t stepped back, hadn’t put the small careful distance between them that usually came next, hadn’t started the work of restoring things to how they’d been.
He was just still there. Arm across Luca’s chest. The two of them standing at the old sideboard in the low firelight, getting their breath.
I have you, the arm said. I have you, you’re fine, I’m here.
Luca looked down at Matej’s forearm across his chest, the one he’d been watching all evening, the muscle and the tendon of it, the one that had started all of this, and what moved in him then had nothing to do with what had just happened to his body.
He had not expected to be held afterward.