Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CALEB
It’s fine. Everything is totally fine.
As soon as he returns from the arena, Caleb’s duffel bag lands with a muted thud by the entryway, next to two hardshell suitcases piled atop each other on a luggage rack.
With a life spent bouncing from city to city, unpacking becomes redundant.
There is no point in setting down roots.
Not until Asher. Not until a nightmare with a troublemaker smile looked right at him and had the nerve, the goddamn audacity, to ask him to stay.
He stands by the window and looks out over the city, highways of moving lights on the ground and the cloudy, polluted sky above. He grips a can of beer with his left hand, trying not to crush it while the fingers of his right twist up in his hair.
The room is dimly lit—the soft glow of the bedside lamp just enough to cast a reflection of the room in the glass. It illuminates the ironed bed sheets and plush beige settee nestled in the corner of the room, the one where he had placed his championship belt earlier today.
Caleb’s entire career has been a string of main events, title defenses, and pay-per-views with his image plastered at the very center.
An honor, certainly, but a heavy burden thrust upon his shoulders too.
Years of being the perfectly ruthless creature Prichard makes him out to be.
A bull’s-eye for hatred. Caleb has spent a lot of time imagining this moment, wondering what it would feel like to get dethroned.
Learning that he would finally drop the title to Asher by means of a text from Creative an hour before the show began was completely unsurprising.
Fans had not taken well to the revelation of the screwjob, clamoring for a rematch just as fervently as Asher had.
Not that Prichard batted an eye—all publicity is good publicity after all.
He’s already getting chauffeured around in a tricked-out new—barf—Tesla.
Caleb had, on his part, already done his job.
Now he’s dispensable. It was only a matter of time.
Point is, he never imagined he would feel this way—an exhale. A weight off his back. He’d expected resentment. Disappointment even. A sense of loss or failure.
Instead, all he hears is Asher’s voice running through his head. I could hold some of it for you.
Sipping his beer, he tries not to look at the door.
He’s failing miserably, of course.
But it’s fine.
Now that Asher’s fully recovered and clinched the gold, he can chase after something new, a dream that doesn’t bind him to Caleb. And why wouldn’t he? Who could know Caleb, truly see him at his ugliest, bear the brunt of his mistakes and, after everything is said and done, stay?
And yet, despite it all, Asher has defied every awful, punitive voice in Caleb’s head. He’s brave like that, Caleb supposes.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Caleb rests his temple against the cool glass.
Snapshots of Asher flash through his mind.
Asher’s hands on him, breath tickling his cheek, his neck.
Asher in the ring, eyes like a solar flare.
Asher thumbing corks out of champagne bottles.
Asher pressed up against the bathroom wall, head thrown back.
Asher grinning beneath a glittering crescent moon.
He is the sun. He is the thunder.
He’s everywhere. A brand-new religion.
The slide of a key card cuts through the night.
Caleb spins around, almost dropping his beer.
There he is: Asher in his room.
Asher looks back at him, brows raised as if he’s equally surprised that the key card works. The corner of his mouth rises when Caleb crosses the room in a heartbeat and takes Asher’s elbow in his hand.
“You came,” Caleb says, unable to shake the tinge of disbelief in his voice.
“Only if you do a good enough job,” Asher quips. Heat flashes through his eyes right before it melts into the affectionate look Caleb seeks out like the sun.
“You’re very annoying,” Caleb tells him.
Asher grins fully now, stepping into Caleb’s space. His breath ghosts over Caleb’s lips, and when their noses brush, Caleb is smiling into it. The collar, which Asher flushes as he retrieves from his bag, is tossed onto the bed. The clink of its metal clasp echoes around the room.
“I know,” Asher murmurs. He brushes a stray curl out of Caleb’s eye. “You like it.”
Caleb chuckles. He will never win. He thinks he is perfectly fine with that.
“This isn’t a one-time thing to me,” he says, widening his stance so his knees bracket Asher’s.
“It could be if that’s what you want. I would respect that, but I think you deserve the world, and I want to be that for you and—”
Mid-ramble, Asher moves abruptly, placing a palm on each side of Caleb’s face. “I’ve always wanted you,” Asher tells him, “so shut up and kiss me.”
Who is Caleb to fight that tether in his chest?
All that time he’s spent thinking about purpose, searching for it.
Maybe this is his. Maybe he was created from the earth to give Asher everything he wants, anything at all to make him smile.
He nips at Asher’s bottom lip, playful, teasing, and tucks away the hitch of breath as Asher opens up eagerly for him.
It’s nothing more than a sweet touch, but Asher’s knees still threaten to melt out from beneath him as Caleb continues to press soft, tender kisses to his lips, Asher chasing after each one with tiny whimpers.
His hands run up Asher’s back, careful to avoid the angry welts lashing his shoulder blades, traces the veins down his arms, and winds their fingers together.
He traps Asher against the desk beside the television and breathes him in, stealing kiss after kiss.
Spinning them around, Caleb’s smile turns slightly feral as he nudges Asher backward, scooping up the collar that Asher had tossed onto the bed. Caleb dangles the chain between them, a silent question in his eyes: Well? Do you want it?
Pupils dilating, Asher’s hand flies to his neck. Then he cups Caleb’s jaw, kissing him again as if to say, Please.
The rise of Asher’s chest stutters under Caleb’s hands, but his body is like a willow.
It always yields, so obediently and willingly that it takes Caleb’s breath away.
He draws Asher in, all of Asher and his miles and miles of warmth, but even that doesn’t feel enough.
He scrapes his teeth down the side of Asher’s neck and leaves another bruise there, this one less violent than all the rest. Asher’s pulse runs riot.
Tiny tremors ransack his body, leaving nothing in their wake.
A snap echoes around the room as Caleb loops the leather collar around Asher’s neck, tightening the strap until it fits snugly around his throat.
He hears a sharp inhale, Asher gasping in a breath.
His head is tilted back, neck bared in submission, lips already parted and swollen, and two words slip out.
“Good boy.”
For a split second, Asher freezes. His entire body stills before his eyes glaze over. He moans, low, like a blade scrapes through him. Caleb wants to bottle it up and wear it on a chain in place of a cross around his neck.
“Is this okay?” he asks, smiling when Asher nods and presses his cheek into the palm of Caleb’s hand. “You’ll tell me if you want to stop or slow down?”
This time, Asher whines, the noise high in his throat.
Caleb tugs on the collar a little, testing its give and the weight of it on his fingers.
“Two taps to stop if you can’t speak, one tap to continue.
Stop means stop, okay?” While being in control of Asher gives him a rush, it is not about being cruel or unkind.
Caleb doesn’t want to hurt Asher beyond what he is willing to take.
Just knowing he has Asher’s pleasure cupped between both hands is enough to send him into oblivion.
Asher lets out a breath, then nods.
For a beat, Caleb hovers over him, just looking his fill. Taking his time. Content to drag it out. Then Caleb drags Asher in by the chain and finally presses their mouths together once more. Both of them sigh into it with relief.
“Caleb,” Asher gasps out as Caleb tightens the grip around his neck.
Caleb hums, too busy paying attention to the hollow at the base of Asher’s throat, right where, judging by the noise he makes when Caleb bites down on the skin there, he is most sensitive.
“Caleb.” Asher breathes his name again, soft and vulnerable, and time comes to a standstill.
The moment unravels between them, vast as the ocean. If they do this, there is no turning back. Escape is not an option.
Caleb exhales and slips two fingers beneath the collar again, increasing the pressure around Asher’s neck. “Be good,” he orders.
Asher swallows so thickly Caleb hears it catch in his throat.
With gentler motions, Caleb begins to peel off Asher’s already disheveled clothes, revealing inch after inch of tan skin. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen in the ring, but it is special, Caleb thinks, that the world doesn’t get to witness this.
“Brace on or off?” he asks, glancing down at Asher’s knee.
Asher’s response is automatic. “Leave it on.”
Caleb nods. “You’re gorgeous,” he says quietly.
He wonders if the loud thump of his heart can be heard around the room.
Slowly, like reaching through hallowed halls, Caleb cups Asher’s jaw and brushes an index finger against the splash of freckles beneath his eyes, pupils hazed over with a scorching want, swallowing the lovely brown that Caleb constantly sinks into.
Drawing his lower lip between his teeth, Asher glances up through thick lashes, eyes wide like both saint and sinner.
His inhale is ragged as Caleb traces his thumb along Asher’s delicate cheekbones, down to his neck where the cool leather collar claims him.
Only a couple minutes have slid by, but Caleb already misses kissing Asher. He dives back in, surging forward and capturing Asher’s lips again, swallowing every desperate noise Asher makes against his mouth.