Chapter 10
ELIAS
He pulled away first.
It wasn't sudden. It was a slow, agonizing retreat over the next twelve hours. The warmth that had bloomed between us at the kitchen table, the fragile truce declared by our linked hands and his hands in my hair, froze and shattered. By morning, it was as if it never happened.
Samuel woke before the alarm, a ghost slipping out of his bed while the sky was still a bruised purple.
I heard him in the bathroom, the frantic scrub of his toothbrush, the splash of cold water on his face, repeated over and over.
When he emerged, his face was raw, his eyes shadowed. He refused to look at me.
Our companion study was a masterclass in penance.
He didn’t just read the scriptures; he attacked them.
His voice was sharp, clipped, each verse a nail he hammered into the coffin of the previous night’s softness.
He spoke of accountability, of avoiding the very appearance of evil, of the narrowness of the path.
He spoke to the air in front of him, to the wall, to his God, but not to me.
I was a leper in the room, the source of his contamination.
The space between our chairs at the table felt a hundred kilometres wide.
The hurt was a cold stone in my gut. Part of me wanted to lash out, to grab him by his crisp white collar and shake him, to scream, What are you so afraid of? But watching him, I saw it wasn't about me. Not really.
I saw the rigid set of his shoulders, the way his jaw worked under his skin, the frantic, desperate energy thrumming just beneath his surface.
He wasn’t punishing me. He was punishing himself.
He scrubbed the kitchen counters until the cheap laminate gleamed under the fluorescent lights.
He reorganized his section of the bookshelf, aligning the spines of his scripture commentaries with a ruler's precision.
It was an act of frantic, desperate exorcism.
He was trying to scour away the memory of our touch, to scrub his own skin clean of the comfort he had offered, even if just for a moment, and I had accepted.
He was terrified. Not of me, but of himself.
Of the part of him that had reached for me, that had intertwined his fingers with mine, that had surrendered to his inner desires, even if just for a moment.
He saw that part as a monstrous thing, a weakness, a sin to be starved and beaten back into submission.
And watching him hate himself with such devout, programmed intensity made my own anger curdle into something else. Something fierce and protective.
Kempton and Dalton had done this. The Church had done this. They had handed him this doctrine of self-hatred, this poison, and told him it was medicine. They told him he was broken, and he believed them so completely, he was willing to tear himself apart to prove his faith.
I sat on the edge of my bed that night, listening to the city breathe outside our window.
I sketched in my notebook, not people this time, just jagged, angry lines, the charcoal smudging under my thumb.
Across the small room, Samuel knelt by his bed.
His shoulders shook with the force of his silent prayers.
He prayed for so long his white shirt rumpled at the hips, his posture eventually slumping with exhaustion.
I watched the rigid line of his back, the devotion, the misery.
And I decided.
Words were useless. Doctrine was a weapon.
Prayer was his poison. There was only one thing left.
I couldn't tell him he wasn't evil. I had to show him.
I had to take this thing he feared, this terrible desire, and prove it could be something other than an instrument of shame.
That it could be a comfort. That it could be a gift.
It was long past midnight when his prayers finally ended.
He climbed into his bed with a sigh that was more a shudder, the sound of a man surrendering to a battle he could never win.
I waited. I listened to his breathing, ragged and uneven at first, then slowly deepening into the fitful cadence of sleep.
The room was dark, but the perpetual twilight of the city seeped through the thin curtains, painting everything in shades of grey and silver.
My own heart hammered against my ribs, a wild bird trapped in a cage.
This was a line. Once I crossed it, there was no going back.
Not for me. Not for him. The mission, my promise to my mother, his entire world—it could all burn down from this single spark.
I thought of my forehead against his shoulder.
I thought of the self-loathing in his eyes that morning.
The floorboards were cold under my bare feet. I rose from my bed. I reached his bed.
He was on his back, a sheet pulled up to his waist. His face, in the dim light, was younger, the lines of worry smoothed out by sleep.
I knelt beside him, my shadow falling over him.
I reached out, not for his arm or his shoulder, but for the part of him that met the earth.
My hand closed, gently, around his ankle.
His skin was warm. He stirred, a low murmur in his sleep.
I stilled, my heart hammering against my ribs like a wild bird trapped in a cage.
Then, so slowly, I began my work. I wasn't guessing.
I had seen the way his focus would sometimes drift downward, the way he seemed to brace himself through his feet when a conversation grew too intense.
It was a long shot, an intuition born of a thousand stolen glances.
My thumb found the delicate, bird-like bone on the side of his ankle. I let my fingers trail upward, tracing the long cord of his Achilles tendon, and then slid my palm down to the high, sensitive arch of his foot. I pressed my thumb into the soft hollow there, a slow, circular motion.
The effect was instantaneous and electric.
A violent shudder wracked his body, a jolt of pure, unadulterated sensation.
His eyes flew open, wide and dark in the gloom.
He stared at me, terror warring with a dawning, unmistakable heat.
His breath hitched, and a soft, wounded sound escaped his lips.
His toes curled, flexing into my palm with a strength that was pure, instinctual need. His entire leg trembled.
“Eli,” he breathed, the word a feather of sound, half-plea, half-warning.
I didn’t stop. I held his gaze, my thumb continuing its steady, knowing pressure. He was right there, the real him, behind the fortified walls of his faith. He was terrified, yes, but he was also awake and wanting. His body was singing a song his mind had forbidden.
I moved my other hand to his knee, just a steadying weight on the sheet. My own fear was a metallic taste in my mouth, but the desire to ruin him—to save him—was stronger. I hooked my fingers on the edge of the sheet, my eyes asking the question my mouth couldn't form.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, a single tear escaping to trace a silver track into his hairline. Then he opened them again, and they were dark with resolve, with a surrender that was also a choice. He gave a sharp, definitive nod.
I pulled back the sheet. He was wearing thin, church-approved cotton sleep pants, but the fabric could do nothing to hide the state of him.
A dark stain had already bloomed on the cotton at his groin.
When I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of his pants, he arched his back, lifting his hips to meet me, to help me. It was an unmistakable invitation.
I dragged the fabric down past his hips and his thighs, baring him to the cool night air.
His erection sprang free, pressing tight against his stomach, violent and beautiful.
In the gloom, his skin was pale marble, but his cock was flushed a deep, furious red, thick and veined.
It looked angry, twitching with his pulse, the head swollen and glistening with a clear bead of fluid.
He was so perfectly groomed, so modest in every aspect of his life, but here, in the dark, he was obscenely, perfectly hard.
I leaned forward, letting my breath ghost over the sensitive skin of his inner thigh. He smelled of soap and sleep and the heavy, musky scent of arousal. I tracked the line of hair up his thigh with my nose until I reached the base of him.
I didn't hesitate. I opened my mouth and licked the very tip of him.
He cried out, a strangled, guttural sound, his back bowing off the mattress. I tasted salt and musk, the bitter tang of his pre-cum hitting my tongue. I swirled my tongue around the slit at the head, gathering the fluid, before opening wider and sliding down.
His hands came up, not to push me away, but to grasp my head, his fingers tangling in my hair, holding me there.
He was anchoring himself to the source of his undoing.
I took him deep, fighting the gag reflex as he hit the back of my throat.
He was thick, filling me completely, stretching my jaw until it ached.
The war was not in his body. His body had already surrendered.
It was a willing casualty. The fight was in his eyes, in the frantic way his head turned on the pillow, as if looking for an escape he knew he no longer wanted.
His free hand flew to his own mouth, his knuckles pressed hard against his lips, trying to stifle the moans that were already escaping.
I began to move, bobbing my head, using the suction of my cheeks to drag the pleasure out of him.
I could taste the smooth texture of his skin, the pulsing vein on the underside of his shaft.
With one hand, I gripped the base of his cock, pumping in time with my mouth, while my other hand slid down to cup the weight of his balls, feeling them tighten and draw up.
A low growl rumbled in his chest, a sound of pure, agonizing pleasure. He began to fuck my mouth, his hips snapping up in a rhythm that quickly grew desperate. It was a question and an answer all at once. He was an active participant in his own beautiful ruin.
"Oh God, Eli," he choked out against his fist. "Please."
I quickened my pace, taking him deeper, letting him hear the wet, sloppy sounds of my worship.
I wanted him to know this was real. I wanted him to feel the wet heat of it.
I moved my free hand down to his foot again, my fingers interlacing with his toes, grounding him in the sensation that had unlocked him.
A broken sob tore from behind his hand at the contact.
He was so close. The muscles in his thighs were rock hard, trembling against my shoulders. The grip in my hair tightened, no longer frantic, but possessive, a silent, desperate command. Don't stop.
I worked him harder, swirling my tongue against the sensitive ridge of the head, sucking hard as his hips began to stutter.
The explosion was total. He ripped his hand away from his mouth and cried out, a raw, broken sound that was half my name, half a prayer. His back bowed off the mattress, a perfect, strained arc of submission. A profound shudder seized him, a seismic event that shook the cheap bed frame.
I felt the head of his cock swell to bursting in my mouth, and then the hot, thick ropes of his release hit the back of my throat.
He came with a desperate, guttural sob, pumping his hips as jet after jet of cum flooded my mouth.
It was hot and viscous, coating my tongue, tasting of salt and heavy musk and him—pure, concentrated Price.
I didn’t pull away. I swallowed it all, drinking him down, taking his shame and his pleasure inside of me where it belonged.
I milked him dry, draining every last drop until he collapsed back onto the mattress, boneless.
The hand in my hair slid away, falling limply beside his head. He lay there trembling in the aftershocks, his chest heaving with choked, quiet sobs.
I pulled back, my mouth slick with him. A stray, thick dribble of white leaked from the corner of my lips, sliding toward my chin.
I didn't wipe it away with my hand. I caught it with the flat of my tongue, lapping it up, tasting the last evidence of what we’d done.
I refused to waste a single drop of him.
I stayed kneeling beside the bed for a moment, the silence of the room roaring in my ears. The only sound was the ragged tear of Samuel’s breathing. He had his forearm thrown over his eyes, hiding his face from me, from the room, from himself.
I reached for the crumpled sleep pants still tangled around his ankles and pulled them off, tossing them onto the floor.
I took the corner of the top sheet and gently, methodically, wiped the remaining spill from the tip of his softening length.
He flinched at the touch but let me. I pulled the sheet back up, covering him to his chest. An act of kindness. An act of concealment.
I stood, my knees aching, and sat on the edge of his mattress. It dipped with my weight, and he went still. He curled onto his side, facing away from me, his knees drawn up to his chest. He was trembling.
The silence grew, thick and suffocating. It felt like hours passed. Finally, his voice came, muffled by the pillow, so quiet I almost didn't hear it. It was three words, heavy with a horror directed entirely at himself.
"I liked it."
The admission was a shard of glass in the quiet room. It wasn't an accusation. It was a confession. The source of his terror wasn't what I had done, but that he had wanted it. That he had loved it. I looked at the rigid, shaking line of his back.
"I know," I whispered, the taste of him still lingering on my breath. "Me too."