CHAPTER SIX #2
"No," Mordechai said. He sat down and picked out a raspberry, the biggest one on the plate, dark and ripe.
"Amani and I have played together. More than once.
But we aren't together, and I have no claim over him.
He's free to give his submission to anyone he thinks is worthy of it.
" He held the raspberry to Rodney's lips. "Open."
Rodney opened his mouth, and Mordechai placed the raspberry on his tongue.
Rodney's lips closed around his fingertips, soft, warm, instinctive, and then Rodney made a small sound of pleasure at the sweetness of the fruit, and Mordechai had to take a slow breath because the combination of that sound and those lips and the trusting way Rodney's mouth found his fingers was doing things to him that had nothing to do with the scene they'd just finished and everything to do with something much more dangerous.
"This is good," Rodney said, chewing.
"You need the sugar. Your body's been through a lot.
" Mordechai fed him a piece of goat cheese on a cracker, then brought one of the milk bottles to his lips and tilted it gently.
Rodney drank, long, grateful swallows, and when a drop of milk escaped the corner of his mouth and ran down his chin, Mordechai caught it with his thumb and brought it to his own lips.
They ate like that for a while. Mordechai feeding Rodney piece by piece, choosing each bite with the same deliberation he'd used in the scene itself.
A strawberry. A cube of sharp cheddar. A square of dark chocolate that made Rodney moan in a way that was, frankly, obscene for something that was just chocolate.
"You sound like that for food?" Mordechai said, amused.
"I'm sorry, Sir. It's really good chocolate."
"Don't apologize. I'm taking notes."
Between bites, they talked. Not about anything heavy, not at first. Mordechai asked about Arkansas, and Rodney told him about the grocery store, about the produce section he'd managed with pride, about the care he'd taken with it.
It was the most mundane story Mordechai had ever been told by a naked, blindfolded man, and he found it unexpectedly charming.
There was a sweetness to Rodney's enthusiasm for his old life that suggested a man who hadn't wanted adventure, who'd wanted stability and routine and the simple satisfaction of a job done well, and had been pulled from that life by his own worst impulses.
"How did you end up in Vegas?" Mordechai asked, feeding him another strawberry.
"Same way everyone ends up in Vegas. I thought it would be different here. I thought I'd be different here." Rodney chewed and swallowed. "Turns out I was exactly the same, just with worse luck."
"The gambling."
"Yeah." Rodney's voice was small. Ashamed.
"It wasn't even exciting, really. Not after the first few times.
It was just… the casinos made me feel like someone.
The cocktails, the lights, the way the dealers call you sir even when you're losing.
In a city full of predators and beautiful people, the casino was the one place that treated me like I mattered. Until it didn't."
Mordechai heard the loneliness underneath the words.
He recognized it because he knew what his own version of it sounded like.
Different in form, Mordechai had never wanted for attention or success or material comfort, but identical in substance.
The sense that something was missing. The gap between having everything and having enough.
"You matter here," Mordechai said. He hadn't planned to say it. It came out on its own, unedited and unstrategic, and for a man who planned everything, the loss of control should have been alarming. It wasn't.
Rodney's lips parted. His breath caught. Behind the blindfold, his expression changed, a softening, a crack in the careful wall he'd been building since childhood. "Sir..."
"Tonight is about having fun and trying new things." Mordechai forced himself back to safer ground. "You're experimenting with submission. I'm discovering that I like being around a panda. You make the best whimpering noises when you're about to cum."
Rodney blushed so deeply that the color spread all the way down to his chest. "I like when you growl, Sir. It's..." He bit his lip. "It makes me feel like you're not in control of yourself. Like I'm doing something to you, even though you're the one doing everything to me."
The observation landed with the precision of an arrow.
Because that was exactly what had happened.
Mordechai had lost control. Not of the scene, the scene had been exactly what he'd intended, paced and deliberate and designed to take Rodney apart.
But of himself. Of the careful professional distance he maintained between his desire and his emotion.
Somewhere between the first touch and the last, the distance had collapsed, and he'd been fucking Rodney not like a Dom enjoying a new sub but like a man who wanted to be close to someone and had forgotten how to ask.
He didn't say any of that. Instead, he fed Rodney the last piece of chocolate and said, "If you came back tomorrow, would you be here to play?"
Rodney's head tilted. "You're asking me? I thought... I was going to ask you the same thing."
"I asked first."
"Yes, Sir. I'd be here. I'd..." He licked chocolate from his lips. "I'd come back every night if you'd have me."
Mordechai leaned forward and nipped at his chin. Light. Playful. A different kind of bite than the ones he'd left on his neck. "Every night might be ambitious. But tomorrow? I can do tomorrow."
"And if you're not here when I arrive?"
"Have Amani text me. I don't live far."
The smile Rodney gave him was dazzling. Wide and open and completely unguarded, the kind of smile that belonged on someone who hadn't just been through what Rodney had been through. It was the smile of a man who'd been given something he hadn't dared to hope for.
Mordechai laughed. He couldn't help it. The smile was ridiculous and disarming and it made him feel something he hadn't felt in longer than he could remember.
He leaned in and brushed his lips across Rodney's mouth, barely a kiss, more a promise of one.
Rodney's breath hitched. He swayed toward Mordechai, chasing the contact, and Mordechai pulled back just enough to deny him.
"Not yet," he said. "If you come back, you can have a real one."
"That's cruel, Sir."
"I know." He was smiling. He could hear it in his own voice. He hadn't smiled so much in years.
***
An hour later, the food was gone and Rodney was getting heavy-lidded. He kept listing to the side, catching himself, straightening, and listing again. Mordechai watched the cycle three times before deciding the night was over.
"Come on." He stood and offered his hand. Rodney took it and let Mordechai pull him to his feet. "I'm taking you to the locker room. You're going to get dressed and go home."
"Yes, Sir." Rodney sounded drowsy and content, a combination Mordechai found unreasonably appealing.
He led him down the hallway, one hand on his arm, and Rodney followed without resistance or worry.
The trust in his steps, in the way he let Mordechai guide him without hesitation, was a quiet, devastating thing.
In the locker room, Mordechai turned Rodney to face him and reached for the leather binding on his wrists.
The quick-release opened with a click, and Rodney brought his hands forward with a sigh of relief, flexing his fingers.
Mordechai examined the marks again, fading already, shifter healing doing its work, and ran his thumbs along the pink lines.
"You'll heal by morning."
"I know." Rodney rubbed his wrists absently. Then, with a hope that was almost painful to witness: "Sir? Can I take the blindfold off now?"
Mordechai considered it. He wanted to say yes.
He wanted to see Rodney's eyes, wanted to know their color, their shape, whether they were as expressive as the rest of him.
But something in him liked this. Liked that Rodney didn't know what he looked like.
Liked that tomorrow, when Rodney came back, if he came back, the reveal would mean something. It would be earned.
"No," he said. "If you come back, you can. But tonight, the blindfold stays on until I leave."
He expected an argument. Rodney just lowered his head, not in defeat but in acceptance.
In the quiet acquiescence of someone who had, over the course of one extraordinary evening, begun to understand what it meant to let someone else make the decisions.
To trust that those decisions, even the frustrating ones, had a purpose.
Mordechai kissed the top of his head. "Good boy."
That same softening. That same full-body response to two words that shouldn't carry the weight they did but clearly, for Rodney, carried the weight of the world. Mordechai filed it away. More than filed it. Committed it to memory.
He checked Rodney's throat one last time. The bites were already fading from angry red to dull pink. By morning, they'd be gone. Shifter biology was merciless in its efficiency, it healed everything, given time. Even the things you might want to keep.
"Go home," Mordechai said. "Avoid the sharks. Get lots of rest. And Rodney?"
"Yes, Sir?"
"Eat something before bed. Something with protein. Your body needs it after tonight."
"Yes, Sir."
He started toward the door. Then stopped.
Turned back. He couldn't see Rodney's face with the blindfold on, but he could see the rest of him, standing in the locker room, naked and pink-marked and soft and brave, and the image settled into his mind with the permanence of something he was going to keep whether he wanted to or not.
He crossed back to Rodney in two strides. Took his chin between his thumb and finger. Tilted his head back. And kissed him.
Not the barely-there brush from earlier.
A real kiss. Slow and deliberate and thorough, the kind that said I know your mouth now and I will know it better.
Rodney made a small, surprised sound against his lips, and then his hands came up, free, unbound, and found Mordechai's chest. His palms spread flat against the fabric of Mordechai's shirt, feeling the heartbeat underneath, and Mordechai let him.
He let Rodney touch him for the first time, and the reverence in those tentative, trembling hands undid him in a way he hadn't been prepared for.
He pulled back. Rodney's lips were parted. His breathing was unsteady. His hands stayed on Mordechai's chest, not ready to let go.
"Stay away from the sharks," Mordechai said, his voice rougher than he intended. "They're dangerous for your health."
Then he gently removed Rodney's hands, squeezed them once, and left the room.
***
Rodney stood in the locker room for a long time after the door closed.
His hands were still warm from Mordechai's chest. His lips were still tingling from the kiss. His whole body was a landscape of sensation, the ache of used muscles, the sting of healing bite marks, the strange tender emptiness where Mordechai had been inside him.
He pulled off the blindfold.
The fluorescent light was blinding after hours in the dark. He squinted, blinked, and gradually the locker room came into focus, ordinary, institutional, unchanged. The same bench. The same lockers. The same mirror on the wall.
He looked at himself.
His neck was a constellation of pink marks, already fading. His wrists bore faint lines from the leather. His hair was a disaster. His lips were swollen and his eyes were bloodshot and his skin was flushed from cheeks to navel.
He looked like someone who'd been thoroughly, expertly, lovingly wrecked.
He looked like someone who'd been seen.
Rodney got dressed slowly. The green shirt.
The jeans. The scuffed shoes. Each piece of clothing felt like a costume, a disguise covering the person he'd discovered underneath.
The person who liked pain and praise and submission and the sound of a panther's growl against his throat.
The person who'd said I want all of it and meant it.
He didn't know what Mordechai looked like. Didn't know if he was tall or short, dark or fair. All he knew was a voice, and hands, and teeth, and the cedar-leather-salt smell of him, and the way he'd said you matter here like it cost him something to admit.
Rodney closed his locker. Walked to the elevator. Rode up to the lobby. Bethany was still at her desk, and she looked up as he passed.
"How was it?" she asked. The question sounded casual, but her eyes were sharp.
"I—" Rodney's voice cracked. He tried again. "I'm coming back tomorrow."
Bethany's expression didn't change, exactly, but something behind it did, an acknowledgment, a nod of recognition, like he'd passed a test he didn't know he was taking.
"See you then," she said.
Outside, the Las Vegas night was warm and loud and blazing with light. Rodney stood on the sidewalk and breathed it in. The same city he'd been walking through for years. The same neon, the same noise, the same crowds of people rushing past without seeing him.
But he wasn't the same. He felt it in his body, a realignment, small and fundamental, like a bone that had been out of joint his whole life and had finally, painfully, clicked into place.
He didn't know Mordechai's face. But he knew his voice. He knew his hands. He knew the way it felt to be held by someone who was choosing, deliberately and without obligation, to hold him.
Rodney walked to the bus stop. Sat down. Pressed his fingertips to his lips, where the kiss still lingered.
Tomorrow. He'd come back tomorrow.