CHAPTER SIX
Mordechai held him for a long time.
He hadn't planned to. He wasn't, by nature or habit, a cuddler.
The men he'd been with at Kinky Kritters, and there had been many, over the years, had received competent aftercare: a check-in, a glass of water, a blanket if they were cold.
He was thorough about it because he was thorough about everything, and because aftercare was a responsibility, not an indulgence.
You took a man apart, you made sure the pieces went back together before you sent him home. That was the deal.
But Rodney was curled against his chest like he'd been designed to fit there, and Mordechai's arms were around him, and the small, trusting weight of him was making it very difficult to remember why holding on this long was supposed to be a bad idea.
So he held on. Longer than he should have.
Longer than was professional or appropriate or wise.
Eventually, the practical part of his brain reasserted itself. The part that ran a law firm, managed a staff, kept fifteen-minute increments. That part said: check his wrists. Check his breathing. Feed him. Water him. Make sure he's not in subdrop.
Mordechai eased Rodney back, keeping one hand on his shoulder to steady him. "How do you feel?"
Rodney's head tilted toward him behind the blindfold.
His lips were swollen, bitten, kissed, used, and his neck was a map of red marks that would bruise beautifully before they healed.
His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat.
He looked wrecked. He looked, Mordechai thought with a possessiveness that startled him, perfect.
"I feel..." Rodney started. Stopped. Tried again. "I don't know what I feel. Is that okay?"
"That's normal. Your body just went through something intense.
Your brain needs a minute to catch up." Mordechai guided him to the couch, not bent over it this time, but sitting on it.
The leather was cool against Rodney's damp skin, and he shivered.
Mordechai pulled a throw from the arm of the couch and draped it over his shoulders.
"Thank you, Sir." The gratitude in Rodney's voice, for something as simple as a blanket, made Mordechai's jaw tighten.
This man had been thanked by no one and cared for by less.
It was written in every startled flinch of pleasure, every bewildered gratitude, like kindness was a foreign language he was hearing for the first time.
Mordechai crouched in front of him and took his hands. The leather binding had left pink lines around his wrists, nothing that wouldn't fade in an hour, given shifter healing, but Mordechai examined them carefully anyway, turning each wrist, pressing gently against the marks.
"Any numbness? Tingling?"
"No, Sir. They're fine."
He checked Rodney's throat next, running his fingers over the bites he'd left. Some were deeper than others. The one at the juncture of neck and shoulder had broken the surface, not badly, but enough to bead. Mordechai pressed his thumb against it, and Rodney hissed softly.
"Sorry."
"Don't be." Rodney's voice was quiet. "I liked how I got them."
Mordechai allowed himself a small smile. He sat on the couch beside Rodney, close enough that their shoulders touched, and pulled out his phone.
"Are you allergic to any foods?"
"No. Why?"
"Because I'm ordering us something to eat. You need sugar and protein after what your body just went through." He texted Amani: Fruit and cheese plate. Two bottles of milk. Chocolate if you have it. Room seven. Then he put the phone away and settled back against the couch.
Silence stretched between them. Not uncomfortable, the opposite.
The kind of silence that only happened between two people who'd just shared something raw and were letting the reverberations settle.
Mordechai returned his hand to Rodney's hair, and Rodney leaned into the touch with the unconscious trust of someone who'd forgotten to be afraid.
"Sir?"
"Mm."
"What are you?"
"A panther."
Rodney's shoulders went tight. The lean-in stopped. His whole body stiffened beside Mordechai on the couch, and the scent of fear, sharp, green, unmistakable, cut through the warm fog of the room.
Mordechai didn't take his hand away. He kept stroking Rodney's hair, steady and slow, the same rhythm he'd been using.
In the shifter world, most people had been with most species by the time they'd had a few partners. The lines between predator and prey blurred in human form, and curiosity usually won out over instinct. But Rodney had stayed in his lane. Two partners, both non-threatening, both safe.
And then his first predator was a panther who'd just bitten him hard enough to draw blood.
"I'm glad I was your first true predator," Mordechai said.
The stiffness in Rodney's shoulders eased. A small smile crossed his face, tentative, almost shy. "Me too."
"Good boy."
The words slipped out before Mordechai fully considered them.
It was a thing he said, a standard bit of Dom vocabulary, as reflexive as please and thank you.
But Rodney's reaction was anything but standard.
His whole body softened. His chin dipped.
His breathing slowed. The two words landed on him like a benediction, and Mordechai watched him absorb them with the naked relief of someone who'd been waiting his whole life to hear them and hadn't known it.
Interesting, Mordechai thought. Very, very interesting.
A knock at the door. Soft and rhythmic, Amani's signature knock, recognizable from across the club.
"Wait here." Mordechai rose from the couch. Amani’s scent wafted on the other side of the door, sun and grass and the faintest edge of something sour. Jealousy. It had a scent, and Mordechai knew Amani's brand of it well.
He opened the door just wide enough to block the view of the room.
Amani stood in the hallway holding a tray, two glass bottles of cold milk, a generous plate of fruit and cheese, and a small dish of dark chocolate squares that hadn't been part of the order.
The boy's eyes went past Mordechai's shoulder, trying to see inside. Mordechai shifted to block him.
"Thank you, Amani."
Amani handed over the tray. His jaw was set, and the muscles in his neck were taut. He was holding himself together, but barely. Up close, his eyes were bright with something that wasn't quite tears and wasn't quite anger but existed in the miserable space between the two.
"My mother wouldn't have to know," he said quietly. The words came out in a rush, like he'd been rehearsing them. "I wouldn't tell her. And you could be rough with me. I can handle whatever you want to do to me. You know that. You know me."
Mordechai did know him. He knew the sounds Amani made.
He knew the way Amani's body responded to pain and to pleasure and to the controlled violence that Mordechai specialized in.
He knew that Amani was strong enough to take everything Mordechai could give, and brave enough to come back asking for more.
These were not trivial things to know about a person.
But he also knew, had known since the night Lady Leo had found her son with bite marks deep enough to show the muscle underneath and had looked at Mordechai with an expression that was not anger but something colder and more final, that knowing wasn't the same as having.
"Listen carefully," Mordechai said. His voice was low. Private. The hallway was empty, but the club was not, and some conversations deserved walls. "I'm going to say this once, Amani, and I need you to hear it."
Amani stared up at him. His eyes were huge and dark and wet, and he looked so young that Mordechai had to steady himself against the pull of it.
The young man was twenty. He'd been playing at this since he was eighteen, growing up in a club where submission and dominance were the air he breathed.
He was good at it. He was built for it. But he was also still learning the difference between wanting someone and needing them, and Mordechai was not going to be the man who let him confuse the two.
"You are a gift, Amani. Not a consolation prize, not a convenient option...a gift. And you don't give gifts by begging someone to take them." He held Amani's gaze. "We're done. That part is over. But it doesn't mean I don't care about you."
A tear slid down Amani's cheek. He didn't wipe it away.
Instead, he leaned forward and pressed his cheek against Mordechai's forearm, a lion's gesture, a scent-marking, a claim that was also a farewell.
Mordechai let him. He bent and kissed the top of Amani's head, breathing in the sun-warm smell of him one last time.
Amani pulled back. His eyes were wet but his chin was set, and when he spoke, his voice was steadier than it had any right to be. "Take care of the panda. He's…" He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, a gesture so young it made Mordechai ache. "He's a good one. Don't waste him."
"I won't."
Amani turned and walked away down the hallway. His shoulders were straight. His stride was sure. He didn't look back. Mordechai watched him go and thought: that boy is going to break someone's heart wide open someday. I hope whoever it is deserves it.
He closed the door and brought the tray to the couch.
"Sir?" Rodney's voice was cautious. Careful. "We're alone again?"
"We are. That was Amani, bringing food." He set the tray on the cushion between them and sat down.
A pause. Then, quietly: "I heard. Some of it. Sir, are you... did you cheat on him? With me? Is that what this is?"
Mordechai stopped moving. The question hit him sideways, not because of what it asked but because of what it revealed.
Rodney, who was blindfolded and bound and had just been fucked senseless by a stranger, was worried about the feelings of the young man on the other side of the door.
A person he'd met once, briefly, hours ago. A young man who'd been jealous of him.
This man. This improbable man.