Chapter 22 No More Quiet #2
He wouldn't find them. Because as terrified as I was, as angry and hurt and lost as I felt, the one clear certainty I had was that I needed him here and I needed him close. I needed whatever this was between us even if it killed me.
“Okay,” Troy said quietly. “Then I'm staying.”
Relief crashed through me hard enough to make my knees weak. I leaned my forehead against his and breathed him in and let myself have this moment of contact while the rest of the world felt like it was falling apart.
“I'm sorry,” I said.
“I know.”
“And I'm sorry for falling apart on you like this. For not being stronger or more together or—”
“Declan.” Troy pulled back enough to look at me. “Shut up.”
Then he kissed me.
It wasn't gentle or soft or careful or any of the things a kiss probably should be when both people are crying and one of them has just unloaded years of pain.
It was desperate and hungry, the kiss that tasted like grief and relief and the terrible certainty that we were choosing each other even when logic said we shouldn't.
I kissed him back just as hard and poured everything I couldn't say into the press of my mouth against his. Every apology. Every fear. Every fierce and stubborn feeling that refused to be logical about what was smart or safe.
Troy's hands went to my waist and gripped hard enough to hurt in the best way. He pulled me closer until there was no space between us.
I broke the kiss long enough to say, “Here. I need you here.”
“We're in the gym.”
“I don't care.” I grabbed the back of his neck. “I need you right now, Troy. Need to feel you. Need to know this is real and I'm not losing my mind.”
He studied my face for a long moment, reading the desperation there and the need that went beyond just physical want into territory that felt dangerous and necessary at the same time.
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. Okay.”
He took my right hand first. Turned it over in his palms and looked at the damage with the same flat assessment he brought to everything. Then he led me toward the bathroom attached to the gym without letting go of it.
The fluorescent lights were harsh and made everything look worse than it probably was. Troy ran warm water over my knuckles, working carefully, washing away blood and loose skin until he could see the actual damage underneath. I hissed when the water hit the worst of it. He kept going anyway.
“Deep,” he said.
“I know.”
“You fight in two days.”
“I know that too.”
He dried my hands with a clean towel, his thumbs pressing gently along the bones of my right hand, feeling for anything that moved wrong.
His jaw tightened slightly when he found what he was looking for but he didn't say anything, just held an ice pack from the kit under the sink against my knuckles and watched my face.
I caught his chin with my other hand and tilted his face up. “Troy. We deal with the hands tomorrow. Right now I need you.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Something shifted in his expression. Then he set the ice pack on the edge of the sink and nodded. “Okay.”
He kissed me softly and led me back out to the mats.
We knelt facing each other, both of us wrecked and marked up in different ways by the same weeks of chaos, the bruising from the alley fight mottled across his ribs and the cut above his eyebrow that had finally stopped seeping, and I let myself look at all of it directly for the first time.
The fluorescent light was honest to the point of cruelty and I was glad for it.
There was nothing flattering about the angle and no forgiving shadow to hide in.
We were exactly what we were and we were choosing it anyway.
I reached out and cupped his face with my hands, careful of the split knuckles, feeling the roughness of his jaw against my palms.
He exhaled long and slow with the specific release of someone who has been holding their breath for longer than they should have been.
I kissed him, not urgent or driving toward anything, just his mouth against mine in the quiet gym with the hum of fluorescent tubes overhead and blood still tacky on the leather bag behind us.
His lips were salt-rough and familiar in a way that still surprised me every time, the particular shape of him and the way he kissed back with a deliberateness that said he was present for every second of it.
The heat built in increments. His hands moved to my chest, mine to his waist, and both of us shook slightly with something that wasn't cold.
“I need to feel you,” I said against his mouth. “Need to know you're real and here and mine.”
“Then take what you need.” His voice was rough and raw from crying and confession and the weight of everything we'd said. “I'm not breakable, Declan. Stop treating me like I am.”
The challenge in his tone made something shift in my chest and made the careful control I'd been maintaining crack just enough to let something darker through.
I pushed him back onto the mats harder than I'd intended and followed him down with my weight. I pinned his wrists above his head and felt him arch up into the contact instead of pulling away.
“You want it rough?” I asked, needing to hear him say it and needing permission to stop being gentle when gentle wasn't what either of us needed right now.
“Yeah.” His eyes were dark with pupils blown wide. “I want everything you've been holding back. All the fear and the rage and the helplessness you've been swallowing. Give it to me.”
I kissed him hard enough to bruise and bit his lower lip until he gasped.
I used my weight to keep him pinned while my mouth moved down his jaw and his throat, finding the places that made him shake.
He fought the hold just enough to make me tighten my grip and just enough to feel the power exchange happening between us.
“Fuck,” he breathed when my teeth found the junction of his neck and shoulder. “Declan.”
I bit down harder, not enough to break skin but enough to leave a mark and enough that he'd feel it tomorrow and remember this, remember me losing control in the best possible way.
His hips bucked up against mine. The friction made us both groan. I ground down against him and let him feel how hard I was, let him understand exactly what he was asking for.
“Get your pants off,” I said and pulled back enough to let him move. “Now.”
He stripped them off with shaking hands while I did the same. Both of us were naked on the gym mats with sweat and tears still drying on our skin, both of us breathing hard and watching each other like predators deciding who would strike first.
Troy reached for me. I caught his hand.
“On your stomach,” I said.
His eyes widened slightly. “Declan—”
“On your stomach, Troy.” My voice came out rougher than I meant it to. “Unless you want to stop.”
“I don't want to stop.” He turned over and spread himself out on the mats face down with his arms stretched above his head, completely exposed and completely trusting me not to break him.
The sight of him like that made my hands shake as I ran them down his spine and over the curve of his ass, feeling the muscle tense and release under my palms.
“You're so fucking beautiful,” I said, and meant it. “You have no idea what you do to me.”
“Show me.” His voice was muffled against his arms. “Stop telling me and show me.”
I found the lube in the gym bag and slicked my fingers. I knelt between his spread thighs and ran one palm flat down the length of his spine while the other moved lower.
The first touch made him jolt. I pressed my palm to the small of his back, holding him still.
“Breathe,” I said. “Just breathe, Troy.”
He took a shaking breath and let it out slow. I circled him without pushing in yet, just letting him feel the pressure and the promise of what was coming.
“Please.” The word came out broken and desperate. “Declan, please.”
I pushed one finger inside him slow and deliberate, felt him clench around the intrusion before forcing himself to relax. The heat of him was extraordinary.
“That's it,” I said and worked the finger deeper. “You're doing so good.”
“More.” He pushed back against my hand. “I can take more.”
I added a second finger. The stretch made him gasp and made his whole body go taut before softening again. I worked him open with a patience I didn't feel, finding the spot inside him that made him cry out.
“Fuck, right there.” His hands fisted in the mat. “Don't stop.”
I didn't stop. I just kept hitting that spot over and over until he was shaking, until he was begging incoherently, until the control he usually kept so tight was completely shattered.
Then I pulled my fingers out.
He made a sound of protest that turned into a moan when I replaced them with my tongue.
I spread him open and licked him from base to tailbone. I felt him jerk and curse and push back into it.
“Fucking hell.” His voice was wrecked. “Declan, what are you—”
“Taking what I need,” I said against his skin. “Like you told me to.”
I worked him with my tongue until he was a shaking mess, until he was cursing and begging and completely undone, until the taste of him was burned into my memory in ways I'd never forget.
Then I pulled back and slicked my cock. I positioned myself at his entrance.
“This is going to be hard,” I warned. “Tell me if it's too much.”
“It won't be too much.” He looked back at me over his shoulder with eyes dark and determined. “Give me everything.”
I pushed inside him in one long thrust.
The sound he made was somewhere between pain and pleasure. His whole body went rigid. I held still and gave him time to adjust, feeling him clench and release around me while he breathed through the initial burn.
“Okay?” I managed, barely holding onto the last shred of control.
“Yeah.” He pushed back slightly and took me deeper. “Move. Please move.”
I pulled almost all the way out and drove back in.
The pace I set was brutal with no gentleness in it, just raw need and desperation and all the fear I'd been carrying turned into something physical. My hips snapped forward hard enough to make him slide forward on the mats and the sound of skin on skin echoed in the empty gym.
Troy took all of it and met every thrust with a push back, turning the violence into something shared instead of something I was doing to him.
“Harder,” he demanded. “Stop holding back.”
I gripped his hips and used the leverage to drive deeper. I felt him clench around me with every thrust and felt the way his whole body responded to the rhythm I was setting.
The angle hit that spot inside him on every stroke. It made him shake and curse and beg for more even as he was taking everything I could give.
“Touch yourself,” I said with my voice rough. “Want to feel you come around my cock.”
His hand moved under his body and found his cock. The change in his breathing told me when he started stroking himself in time with my thrusts.
“That's it.” I leaned forward and pressed my chest to his back, felt the sweat between us and every shudder running through him. “You're so perfect like this. Taking me so well.”
“Declan.” My name came out broken and desperate. “I'm close.”
“Then come.” I bit his shoulder hard enough to mark. “Come for me, Troy.”
He came with a shout that echoed off the gym walls. His whole body clenched tight around me and I felt him pulse and shake and completely fall apart.
The feeling of him coming undone pushed me over the edge. I buried myself as deep as I could go and let go, came inside him with both hands gripping his hips and his name falling from my lips like a prayer.
The orgasm was total and complete and left me shaking and breathless and wrecked.
I collapsed on top of him with both of us gasping and both of us trembling with aftershocks.
When I could move again, I pulled out carefully and turned him over. I needed to see his face, needed to make sure he was okay.
Troy looked destroyed in the best possible way, tear tracks on his cheeks, lips swollen from kissing, eyes unfocused and hazy with satisfaction.
“You good?” I asked and ran my hand over his face, gentle now when I hadn't been gentle before.
“Better than good.” He pulled me down into a kiss that was soft and sweet and nothing like the brutal fucking we'd just finished. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” I settled beside him and pulled him close. “Even when I'm falling apart.”
“Especially when you're falling apart.” He pressed his face into my neck. “Because that's when you need me most.”
We lay there on the mats in the quiet gym, both of us marked up and messy and completely satisfied in ways that went beyond just physical release.
This was what I'd needed. Not just the sex or just the physical connection, but the complete breaking open, the shattering of the walls I'd built, and the permission to be messy and angry and scared and still be loved anyway.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
“For what?”
“For not leaving. For seeing me at my worst and staying anyway. For letting me have this.”
Troy lifted his head and looked at me with eyes that were clear despite the tears. “I told you. I'm not going anywhere. You're stuck with me.”
“Good.” I kissed his forehead. “Because I don't know how to do this without you anymore.”
“You don't have to.” He settled back against my chest. “We're doing it together. All of it. The messy, complicated, probably-going-to-fuck-us-up-eventually version of this.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We are.”
We lay there until the floor got uncomfortable, until our bodies started protesting the position. Then we got up slowly and cleaned ourselves off as best we could, got dressed in silence that felt companionable instead of heavy.
Troy looked at my right hand without touching it. His jaw was tight. “Ice it tonight. Properly.”
“I will.”
“And tomorrow you tell Mara.”
“Troy—”
“You tell Mara, Declan.” His eyes met mine and they were serious in the way that meant the conversation was already over. “She needs to know what she's working with going into the fight. You can't keep that from her.”
He was right. I hated that he was right.
“Okay,” I said.
He held my gaze for another beat, making sure it had landed. Then something in his face softened fractionally. He reached out and touched my jaw with the backs of his fingers, light and brief.
“Come on,” he said. “Let's go home.”
I followed him toward the door and let him flip the lights off behind us, and felt the particular weight of the gym going dark, the smell of leather and sweat and blood lingering in the air.
Outside, the snow had stopped. The street was quiet and cold and ours.
We walked home close enough that our shoulders touched.