Chapter 35. Ethan
Word travels through the academy like fire through dry grass. By dinner, everyone knows. I purposefully avoid Liam the whole day, even if it hurts like hell. I need to give him time to cool down a little. I don’t even go back to the dorm during Quiet Time. I skip MMA altogether.
Liam finds me in the hallway after dinner, even so.
He's not crying this time. He's something worse, cold. His blue eyes are burning.
“You told him." Not a question.
"Yes."
"I asked you not to. I begged you." His voice is low, controlled, but I can see his hands shaking at his sides, cuticles raw from where he's been picking at them. "Just like you told Griff about the eating thing. You just... you don't listen. You decide you know better and you just go ahead and..."
"He's gone, Liam. He can't touch you anymore. I don't regret it one bit, baby. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. And he should thank me for not killing him."
There it is. The lack of control I feel when I'm close to Liam. I'm trembling again, remembering the fear in Garrett's eyes. It felt good. It still feels good. Too good. I'm smirking, and I know how unhinged I look.
"That's not the point!" His voice cracks. A few students down the hall turn to look. Liam doesn't care, or maybe he does, but can't stop himself. "The point is, I trusted you! I told you something, and you used it! Again!"
He's not wrong. I made that choice for him. I did it with the eating disorder, and I did it again now. And I'd do it again. Every time. But he's not wrong.
"Liam." My voice comes out flat, even. The leader voice. "We're not doing this in the hallway."
"We're doing this wherever I…!"
"No." I step forward. Close the distance until I'm looking down at him, using every inch of height, my shoulders blocking the light and casting his face in shadow. "We're not."
I take his arm. Not rough, I'd never be rough with him outside of sex, but firm enough that he knows this isn't a suggestion. He tries to pull away. I tighten my grip, just enough.
"Let go of me!"
"Walk."
Something in my tone makes him go still. His eyes search my face, and I watch the anger flicker, shift, become something more complicated. He walks.
My office. Turn the lock. Liam rounds on me immediately, mouth open to resume the argument, and I kiss him.
Not gently. There's nothing gentle about it.
I press him back against the door with my full weight, one hand cupping the back of his head, fingers tangling in the longer hair on top, my other arm locking around his waist and pulling him against me.
He makes a sound against my mouth, surprise, protest, something, and I swallow it.
I kiss him like I've been wanting to since the moment I walked back into this facility and found out he was in the hole.
I kiss him like an argument I'm winning.
He resists for exactly three seconds. I count them. One, two, three, palms flat against my chest, pushing. Then his fingers curl into the fabric of my shirt, and the pushing becomes pulling, and the sound he makes shifts from protest to something desperate and wanting and broken.
"I'm still mad at you," he gasps when I pull back enough to let him breathe.
"I know." I kiss his jaw. His neck. The edge of that geometric tattoo. I feel his pulse hammering against my lips. "Be mad at me all you want, baby."
"You can't just... you can't keep doing things without... oh, fuck..."
My hand slides beneath his shirt, fingers tracking over his ribs, too prominent, every one of them countable, and I'll deal with that too.
I'll deal with everything, because that's what I do, that's what I am for him, even when he hates me for it.
He's everything to me. I lift the shirt over his head, and he lets me, arms going up, and the bruises on his torso make my blood boil with leftover rage.
I press my mouth to the worst one, just below his left pectoral. He hisses.
"This," I say against his skin, "is why I told him."
"Ethan..."
"This." I kiss another bruise, lower, along his ribcage. His breath catches. "And this."
"You're... that's not fair..."
"You're right. It's not fair what he did to you.
And he'll pay for it. My only regret is not being able to beat him until he cries and begs for forgiveness.
" I straighten up. Look him in the eyes.
His pupils are blown wide, lips swollen and parted.
I can see his resistance crumbling in real time. "Take off the rest."
He stares at me. Swallows. "You're an asshole."
"Yes. Take off the rest."
He does. His hands shake, anger, want, probably both, and he's standing in nothing but the academy white briefs.
"Sit," I tell him.
He sits on the edge of the desk. I step between his legs, and the sound he makes when I press against him is worth every second that he was mad at me. I take my time with my own shirt, watching his eyes track across my chest, my shoulders. He watches like he can't help it.
"I hate you," he says, but his legs wrap around my waist.
"And I love you."
I kiss him again. Slower this time, one hand braced on the desk beside his hip, the other sliding into his hair, tilting his head back so I can control the angle, the depth, everything.
He moans into my mouth. His hips rock forward against mine, and the friction sends a jolt through me that short-circuits whatever restraint I have left.
"I'm going to keep you safe," I murmur against his ear. I feel the shudder, the goosebumps erupting across his skin. "Whether you want me to or not. That's not negotiable."
"You controlling bastard."
"Yes." I pull the briefs down. He lifts his hips to help, which undermines his argument significantly. "And you love it."
His mouth opens to deny it. I wrap my hand around his cock, hard, leaking, and whatever he was going to say dissolves into a sound that's half gasp, half whimper. His head falls back, exposing the line of his throat. I press my mouth there, tasting salt, while I work him slowly.
"Fuck... please..."
"Please what? What do you call me?"
"Please, Daddy," he breathes, and the word does what it always does, snaps something loose in my chest that I keep locked for everyone else.
I take him on the desk. His back against the scattered papers, legs hooked over my hips.
I'm careful with his ribs, but I'm not gentle.
He doesn't want gentle. He wants to be overwhelmed, taken out of his own head, out of the fear and the anger and the bone-deep exhaustion of being Liam Marsal in a world that keeps finding new ways to hurt him. I can give him that.
I get the lube and start with one finger, circling first, pressing against him, feeling the tight ring of muscle clench and then slowly give way. He sucks air through his teeth.
"Relax," I tell him, my free hand flat against his stomach, feeling the muscles quiver. "Breathe for me, baby."
"I am breathing, asshole."
"Breathe better."
He huffs something that's almost a laugh, and that tiny release is enough. My finger slides in to the second knuckle. His whole body arches off the desk.
I work him open. One finger becomes two, scissoring, curling, searching, and I know the exact moment I find his prostate because his hand shoots up and grabs my forearm, and his mouth falls open in a silent scream.
"There?" I ask. Because I'm a bastard.
"You know... fuck... you know exactly where..."
I press again. His back bows. A thin, desperate noise escapes his throat. His cock twitches against his stomach, leaving a wet streak across the faded bruise below his navel.
"One more," I say, and add a third finger before he can protest. Stretching him, feeling him clamp down and then relax in waves, his body learning to accept what I'm giving it.
His eyes are glassy now, that sharp blue gone hazy.
His lips move but no sound comes out. He's somewhere else. Somewhere I put him. Somewhere safe.
I withdraw my fingers. He whines at the loss, this high, needy sound he'd be mortified about if he were fully present. I shove my pants down enough, slick myself, line up.
"Look at me," I say.
His eyes find mine. Tears on his lashes, but different ones. Not pain or fear. Just being so overwhelmed with feeling and pleasure that his body doesn't know what else to do.
"I love you," I tell him. Because he needs to hear it, because I need to say it while I push inside him, slow and steady and relentless, watching his face contort through every stage. The resistance. The stretch. The burn. The moment it shifts into something else entirely.
"Oh God," he breathes. "Oh fuck, Ethan..."
"I got you, baby." I bottom out and hold there. Every nerve ending screams at me to move. But I wait. For him to adjust, for his breathing to even out, for his muscles to stop clenching around me. His legs tighten around my waist, heels digging into my back, pulling me deeper.
"Fuck me," he whispers. "Please, Daddy."
I pull back and thrust forward. Not gentle. The desk scrapes against the floor, obscenely loud in the locked office. Liam gasps, hands scrabbling against the wood, and I set a rhythm, deep, angling my hips to hit that spot on every stroke, because I know his body like I know my own. Maybe better.
He's loud. Always loud. Normally I'd cover his mouth, remind him where we are.
Tonight I don't care. Let the whole dormitory hear.
Let Griff hear. Let every person in this institution know that Liam Marsal belongs to me and I will burn this entire place to the ground before I let anyone touch him again.
"Harder," he begs. I comply, bracing one hand on the desk, the other gripping his hip, careful to avoid the worst bruises but firm enough to leave marks of my own.
Marks that mean something different. Marks that mean mine.
The desk slams against the wall in a rhythm that leaves nothing to the imagination, and his moans dissolve into broken cries that sync with every thrust.
"You're so good," I tell him. I watch the words hit, watch his face crumble with need. "So good for me. You know that?"
"Daddy... I'm... I can't..."
"Yes, you can. Hold on for me." I slow down, just enough to make him desperate, rolling my hips in deep grinding circles that make him writhe and claw at my shoulders. "Not yet."
"Please!"
"Who takes care of you?"
His eyes snap to mine. Wet and wild. "You do."
"Who keeps you safe?"
"You... fuck... you do, Daddy, please..."
"Then trust me." I lean down, press my forehead against his, our breath mingling. I whisper against his lips. "Trust me when I make decisions for you. Trust me when I say I'd rather have you alive and hating me than loving me and dead."
Something breaks open behind his eyes. He pulls me into a kiss.
I start moving again. Harder, faster, because I can feel how close he is, in the way his body tightens, in the way his breath hitches on every thrust, in the trembling of his thighs. I reach between us, wrap my hand around his cock, stroking in time with my thrusts. His whole body locks up.
"Come for me," I say. Not a request. "Now, baby."
He shatters. His back arches off the desk so hard I have to press him down with my weight. The sound he makes is raw, guttural. He spills over my fist and across his stomach, clenching around me in waves.
I last maybe three more strokes before I bury myself deep and let go. My orgasm crashes through me with a violence that whites out my vision. I groan against his neck, teeth grazing his collarbone. For a few blinding seconds, there's nothing. Just him.
We stay like that for a long time. I press my face into the curve of his neck and breathe him in. His breathing evens out, slow and deep. When I finally lift my head, his eyes are half-closed, that post-orgasm haze softening every sharp edge of his face. Peaceful.
"I don't hate you," he whispers. "I fucking love you."
"I love you too, baby."
"And I'm glad he got what he deserved."
"I know you are, sweetheart. I told you. Daddy's here. I'll always take care of you. You're mine. My responsibility."