Chapter 12 What He Saw #3
My cock was throbbing now. I could feel my pulse in it, each beat sending a wave of pressure through my entire body. I was leaking into my boxers, the fabric already damp, and I hadn't even touched myself properly yet.
“You're so fucking pretty,” Rafael said, quiet but clear.
“Don't,” Troy said. But he said it into the pillow, so it came out soft, and he didn't mean it.
“I'll say whatever I want.” Rafael's hands slipped under the lace, peeling it down just enough to expose Troy fully. “You want this or not?”
“Yes.” Troy's voice had gone ragged already. “Yeah, I want it, come on, stop making me wait.”
Rafael took his time anyway. He worked Troy open slowly and thoroughly with slick fingers, and I watched Troy push back against his hand, watched his knuckles go white where they gripped the sheets, heard the sounds he made graduate from low and controlled to less controlled, needier.
A broken little sound that he muffled against the mattress.
A sharper sound when Rafael found the right angle, a sound that Troy tried to swallow and couldn't quite manage.
I wanted to be the one pulling those sounds out of him. The thought arrived fully formed and I couldn't push it away. Wanted my fingers inside him instead of Rafael's. Wanted to be the one learning what made him arch his back and grip the sheets and make those desperate little noises.
“There it is,” Rafael said, satisfied.
“Don't gloat,” Troy managed through gritted teeth. “Just fucking—”
“Just fucking what?”
A pause where I watched Troy fight himself, watched resistance and need war in the line of his shoulders.
“Please,” he said finally. The word came out rough and a little wrecked, like it cost him to say it. “Please, Raf. I need it.”
Rafael said words too low to hear. Then he positioned himself, and I watched the moment he pushed in, watched Troy's spine curve downward and his head drop and his mouth fall open, and the sound Troy made then was not muffled, was not controlled, was a low open “fuck” that he didn't bother trying to hide.
My hand was on my cock before I had time to decide anything about it.
I pressed the heel of my palm against myself through my jeans, jaw clenched, trying to tell myself this was just pressure, this was just taking the edge off, this wasn't what it was.
My cock didn't care what I was telling myself.
It was hard and had been hard since the first sound I'd heard climbing the stairs, and the pressure I was putting on it through the denim was barely anything at all.
Rafael started moving and the bed frame hit the wall once, twice, finding a rhythm, and Troy made a sound with each thrust that was low and rhythmic and devastatingly good.
He'd pushed himself up onto his hands now, head hanging between his shoulders, hair falling forward, the lace still sitting askew at his hips where Rafael had pulled it aside.
The lamp caught the curve of his back, the flex of his arms, the way his whole body moved with the force of it.
This was my stepson. The boy I'd raised. The man I'd spent years trying not to want. And he was on his hands and knees in the room down the hall getting fucked by someone else and I was standing here hard as stone watching it happen.
“That's it,” Rafael said. His voice had gotten rougher, some of the easy charm burned off by friction. “Yeah, just like that.”
“Harder,” Troy said. Not asking. Telling, his voice already starting to fray at the edges.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, come on, don't hold back, I can take it.”
Rafael gave him what he asked for, hips snapping forward with real intent now, and Troy bit out a curse and pushed back to meet it and the sound they made together was filthy and rhythmic and went straight through the wall and straight through me.
I was stroking myself through my jeans properly now, not pretending otherwise, one hand braced on the wall beside the door and the other working myself in slow strokes while shame burned in my chest and did absolutely nothing to make me stop.
“Harder,” Troy said again, and his voice had come completely apart now, all the careful control stripped away. “Raf, I swear to god—”
“Tell me what you want.”
“I want you to fuck me like you mean it, come on, please—”
Rafael drove forward hard enough that Troy's arms buckled, catching himself with his elbows, face dropping toward the pillow, and the sound Troy made then was a long broken moan that he didn't bother muffling at all, loud and genuine and laced with desperation.
I stroked myself faster and tried to swallow the sound that wanted to come out of me in response.
The jealousy was a physical thing. Sitting in my throat, hot and corrosive, completely unreasonable given every fact of the situation. This was Troy's life. His body. His choices. I had no claim on any of it, no right to feel anything except maybe embarrassment at myself for standing here at all.
But I felt it anyway. The grinding specific misery of watching someone give to someone else what you wanted them to give to you. Watching Troy be open and desperate and asking for things in ways he'd never ask for anything from me. Watching him let someone in.
My cock was painful in my hand now. I'd gotten it out without registering doing it, jeans pushed down just enough, and I was stroking myself in my own hallway outside my stepson's barely-closed door, and some distant part of me acknowledged this was a new low, and the rest of me didn't care.
Rafael reached forward and fisted a hand in Troy's hair, pulling his head back, and Troy's mouth fell open and the noise he made was broken and raw.
“Yeah, yeah, like that—”
“Fuck,” Rafael said, and it wasn't performance, just the genuine admission of a man who couldn't stop staring.
His free hand ran down the length of Troy's spine and hooked under the waistband of the lace, not pulling it off, just stretching it back and letting it snap against his skin.
Troy made a sharp sound at the sting of it.
“Been thinking about these since you took your jeans off. Can't get my head straight.”
“Then stop thinking,” Troy said into the pillow, but his hips pushed back anyway, seeking more.
“Nah.” Rafael slowed his pace down to a long deliberate grind, his thumb stroking along the lace waistband like he was memorizing the texture of it. “You had these on all day. Out there with me, walking around the city, and you were wearing these the whole damn time and I didn't know.”
A pause. Troy's fingers tightened in the sheets.
“Yeah,” he said, quieter than the rest.
He'd been wearing them all day. Walking around Chicago with Rafael while wearing black lace under his jeans and Rafael hadn't known until now. The image of that was going to live in my head forever, was going to surface at the worst possible times, was going to haunt me.
“Fuck.” Rafael pulled out slowly and then pushed back in, deep and unhurried, and the sound Troy made was a long wavering thing that dissolved at the edges. “What else?”
“What?”
“What else do you like. Tell me.”
My hand was slick with pre-come. I hadn't touched myself in the last minute, had just stood there with my cock in my fist and let it leak while the scene through the door rearranged everything I thought I understood about Troy.
I could feel the wet heat of it against my palm and I couldn't make myself care about that, couldn't make myself care about anything except what I was watching.
Troy turned his face sideways on the pillow so I could see his profile, his jaw tight, working up to admitting to what he wanted.
“I've got more,” he said finally. “Back in my bag.”
Rafael went still. “More what.”
“More of these. Different ones. And other stuff.”
The silence lasted two full seconds, and then Rafael made a sound that was low and involuntary and extremely honest. “You've been walking around this house for a week with a bag full of that shit and you didn't say anything.”
“Wasn't sure it would go anywhere.”
“Troy.” Rafael pulled out, and I watched him climb off the bed and cross to where a bag sat slumped against the wall. He crouched in front of it. “Can I?”
“Yeah. Side pocket.”
I watched Rafael unzip it, watched him go still for a moment when he looked inside. Then he reached in and came out with fabric I couldn't make out clearly in the low light, just the impression of dark material and thin straps and then a small coil of rope.
My breath stopped entirely.
“All of this?” Rafael said. His voice had changed register entirely, gone rough and wanting.
“You said tell you what I like.” Troy pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked back over his shoulder, and for a half second his eyes were almost pointed at the door. I stopped breathing. He looked back at Rafael. “So that's what I like.”
Rafael laid everything out on the edge of the nightstand and I could see it better now.
Another pair of lace underwear, darker than the ones Troy was wearing.
A thin strip of fabric that might have been a blindfold.
And a short length of soft-looking rope that Rafael picked up and turned over in his hands with an expression of genuine reverence.
Troy wanted to be tied up. The knowledge settled into my bones and made a home there. My stepson wanted his hands bound while someone fucked him and he'd brought the rope with him because he'd been hoping for this.
“You want this?” Rafael asked.
“Only if you know what you're doing with it.”