CHAPTER EIGHT
Bethany didn't give him a wristband this time.
She just nodded toward the elevator and said, "He's downstairs," and went back to whatever she'd been doing, which appeared to involve a crossword puzzle and a level of concentration that suggested she was very close to finishing it and did not want to be interrupted.
Rodney took the elevator down.
The club was busier than it had been the previous night, or maybe it just felt that way because he'd been blindfolded for most of it.
The music was low and pulsing, and the bar was crowded, and everywhere he looked there were beautiful people in various states of undress doing things with their bodies and each other that would have made Rodney blush a week ago and still made him blush now, though maybe slightly less.
He stood at the edge of the room and scanned the crowd. Which was pointless, because he had no idea what Mordechai looked like.
"You're back."
Amani materialized beside him like he'd been conjured from the ambient darkness. He was dressed the same as last time, tiny black shorts, bare everything else, but his smile tonight was slightly tighter. More controlled. There was something careful behind it that hadn't been there before.
"Already," Amani added. Not quite a question.
"He told me to come back," Rodney said, and immediately wondered if that sounded defensive.
Amani studied him for a moment. Then the careful expression softened, and he tipped his head toward the bar. "Come on. You and I need to talk before you find him. Sub to sub."
Rodney didn't know what that meant, exactly, but he followed Amani to the bar.
The sleek black surface gleamed under amber lighting, and Amani slipped behind it with the ease of someone who'd done it ten thousand times.
His hands moved fast, orange juice, cream, ice, a shaker, and within thirty seconds he'd produced two drinks that were the same bright color as a sunset and topped with a swirl of thick cream.
He slid both across the bar and came back around to sit on the stool next to Rodney.
"Creamsicle," Amani said, sipping his. "Orange and cream. It's my favorite. Try it."
Rodney tried it. It was aggressively sweet, the kind of drink that tasted like summer and candy and would probably give him a headache, but it was also kind of wonderful. He took another sip.
"Mordechai doesn't really drink, in case you're wondering," Amani offered. "He likes milk. Or chocolate milk, depending on his mood. He's very serious about his chocolate milk. He has opinions about brands."
Rodney almost smiled at the image of the commanding, authoritative man who'd taken him apart last night having strong opinions about chocolate milk. "That's... not what I expected."
"Nobody's what you expect once you get to know them.
" Amani set his drink down and turned on his stool to face Rodney fully.
The playfulness was still there, but underneath it was something steadier.
More deliberate. "Okay. Here's what I want to say, and I want you to actually hear it, not just nod and then forget it the second you see him. "
Rodney nodded, then caught himself. "I'm listening."
"I like Mordechai." Amani said it plainly, without coyness or flirtation.
A statement of fact. "A lot. I enjoyed being with him.
He's intense and focused and he made me feel.
.." He paused, choosing his words. "Seen.
Like I wasn't just another guy on his knees.
He's good at that. It's what makes him a great Dom. "
Rodney didn't know what to say, so he stayed quiet.
"But here's the thing." Amani leaned forward.
"I've been told I can't play with him anymore.
My mom, yes, Lady Leo is my mother, I know, it's a whole thing, she banned me from anyone who leaves marks like he does.
And my sister upstairs would side with Mom over me, and she's older and stronger than me.
So that door is closed, and I'm not opening it again.
This isn't about me being jealous. Well…
" He gave a rueful half-smile. "It's a little about me being jealous. But mostly it's about this."
He fixed Rodney with a look that was suddenly, startlingly direct. The warmth was still there, but there was a lion behind it now. An intelligence and a protectiveness that Rodney hadn't expected.
"Don't fall in love with the first Dom you submit to.
" Amani said each word carefully, like he was placing bricks.
"I see it happen all the time. A guy comes in here, terrified, and some experienced Dom takes him apart and shows him what his body can do, and the guy thinks he's found god.
He confuses the high of submission with the feeling of love, and he builds a whole fantasy around a man who never promised him anything except one night.
And then when the Dom moves on, because Doms move on, Rodney, that's what they do, the sub is destroyed.
I find them sobbing in the bathroom. I hold their hands and I make them creamsicles and I tell them it gets better.
And it does get better. But the crash is brutal. "
Rodney looked at his drink. The orange and cream were swirling together, blending from separate things into one thing. "You think that's what's happening to me."
"I think you've had one night with him and you came back within twenty-four hours wearing your nicest clean shirt.
" Amani glanced at his gray t-shirt. "Okay, maybe not your nicest, but you clearly thought about it.
I think you liked what he did to you. I think you liked it more than anything you've experienced before.
And I think you're already halfway to building a castle in the sky with a man you've never even seen. "
It was uncomfortably accurate. Rodney took a long drink of his creamsicle and said nothing.
"I'm not telling you to leave," Amani said, softer now.
"I'm not telling you to stay away from him.
He's a good man. He's not going to hurt you, not in ways you don't want, anyway.
" That got a flicker of a grin. "I'm just saying: go slow.
Enjoy it. But keep your feet on the ground.
Don't give him your heart before he's asked for it. Okay?"
Rodney met his eyes. Amani's were dark and warm and more knowing than a twenty-year-old's eyes had any right to be.
He'd grown up in this world. He'd watched people fall and break and rebuild themselves.
He wasn't guessing. He was speaking from a depth of experience that made Rodney feel simultaneously comforted and deeply out of his league.
"Okay," Rodney said. "I'll be careful."
Amani didn't look entirely convinced, but he nodded. Then his expression shifted, a sudden brightness, a flicker of something mischievous, and he leaned close to Rodney's ear.
"By the way," he murmured, "he's been watching you since you stepped off the elevator. He's about three feet behind you and closing."
Rodney's heart slammed against his ribs.
"He hasn't stopped staring," Amani continued, now clearly enjoying himself. "Even though you are, I have to say, tragically underdressed for the occasion." He plucked at the collar of Rodney's t-shirt with theatrical dismay.
"I came straight from work," Rodney said, his face on fire.
Amani laughed, full and bright and genuine, the careful sub-to-sub version of himself giving way to the warm, ridiculous, irrepressible person underneath.
"Good luck, panda boy. Remember what I said.
And don't let him skip aftercare, he gets lazy sometimes.
" He slid off his stool and disappeared into the crowd with a wave over his shoulder.
Rodney sat on his barstool. His hands were shaking. He was facing the bar, which meant Mordechai was behind him, and the knowledge that the man he'd been thinking about for the entire day was right there was making every nerve in his body fire at once.
He turned around.
Mordechai was tall. That was the first thing.
Taller than Rodney by at least four inches, with a frame that was built for the kind of lean, muscular power that panthers carried in both forms. His skin was deep brown, his features sharp and elegant, high cheekbones, a jaw cut clean as a blade, dark eyes that caught the amber bar light and held it.
He wore a charcoal suit without a tie, the top button of his white shirt undone, and his hands were in his pockets, and he was looking at Rodney with an expression of quiet, focused intensity that made Rodney forget every word in every language he'd ever known.
He was beautiful. Not in the generic, symmetrical way of models or actors.
Beautiful in a specific, dangerous way, the way a storm was beautiful, or a hunting cat.
The kind of beautiful that made you understand, on an instinctive level, that the thing you were looking at could destroy you if it wanted to.
Rodney couldn't look him in the eye. His gaze made it as far as Mordechai's right shoulder and stopped there, stuck, like a car that had run out of gas on the highway.
"Hi," Rodney’s voice cracked on the single syllable.
"You came back." Mordechai's voice, the voice, his voice, the one from the dark room, was exactly as Rodney remembered it.
Low and warm and carrying an authority that didn't need volume.
Hearing it while seeing the man who produced it was almost too much.
The voice he'd clung to in the dark and the face it belonged to merged, and the recognition hit Rodney like a key turning in a lock he'd forgotten he had.
"I couldn't not," Rodney said quietly.
Mordechai moved closer. Into Rodney's space, between his knees where he sat on the stool, close enough that Rodney could smell him, cedar and leather and the dark feline musk that was uniquely, unmistakably Mordechai. His hand came up and rested on Rodney's thigh. Warm. Heavy. Possessive.
"You're not blindfolded," Mordechai said.
There was something almost vulnerable in the observation, not insecurity, exactly, but an awareness that the dynamic had shifted.
Last night, Rodney couldn't see him. Now he could.
The power of anonymity was gone, and in its place was the rawer, more dangerous power of being known.
"No, Sir." Rodney swallowed. "I can't stop staring at your shoulder."
Mordechai's eyebrows lifted. A smile, small, surprised, genuine, crossed his face. "My shoulder."
"I can't make my eyes go higher. I'm trying. You're very..." Rodney gestured vaguely, helplessly, at all of Mordechai. "You're a lot."
The smile widened. Mordechai put a finger under Rodney's chin and tilted his face up, forcing their gazes to meet.
Rodney's breath caught. Up close, Mordechai's eyes were dark brown, nearly black, and they held a warmth that the rest of his sharp, angular face didn't advertise.
The eyes were where the gentleness lived. Everything else was predator.
"There," Mordechai said softly. "That's better. I want you to look at me, Rodney. Not my shoulder."
"Yes, Sir."
Mordechai held his gaze for a long moment. Then his hand slid from Rodney's chin to the back of his neck, cupping it, and he pulled Rodney forward and kissed him.
Not the light, teasing brush from the previous night.
Not the deeper kiss in the locker room. This was a claiming.
Slow and thorough and deliberate, Mordechai's mouth moving over his with the same focused authority he brought to everything else.
Rodney made a sound against his lips, a whimper, soft and startled, and felt Mordechai smile into the kiss.
When he pulled back, Rodney was breathless and the room was spinning and several people at the bar were watching them with expressions ranging from amused to envious.
"Come," Mordechai said. He took Rodney's hand, not his arm, his hand, and pulled him off the stool. "I have a spot."
He led Rodney through the club to a plush couch in a quiet corner. The music was softer here, the lighting lower. Mordechai sat, and instead of pointing to the couch beside him, he placed a pillow on the floor at his feet.
Rodney looked at the pillow. Looked at Mordechai. And went to his knees without being told.
It wasn't obedience. It wasn't even a decision. It was gravity. The pillow was there. Mordechai was there. And Rodney's body knew where it wanted to be with a certainty that bypassed his brain entirely.
Mordechai's hand found his hair. The same slow, rhythmic stroking from last night. Rodney closed his eyes and let himself sink.
"This is where you belong," Mordechai said quietly. The club noise wrapped around them like a cocoon, making the space between them feel private despite the crowd. "Do you feel that?"
"Do you mean at your feet?" Rodney asked. "Or in this club?" He remembered the sir a beat late. "Sir."
"With me," Mordechai said simply.
Amani's words flashed through Rodney's mind: Don't fall in love with the first Dom you submit to. And Mordechai must have felt him stiffen, because his hand stilled in Rodney's hair.
"That scared you," Mordechai observed.
"A little." Rodney pressed his cheek against Mordechai's thigh. The fabric of his trousers was soft and expensive. "Amani said I should be careful."
"Amani is smarter than most people give him credit for.
" Mordechai resumed stroking. "And he's not wrong.
What I said, with me, I mean while you're here.
Tonight. This moment. I'm not proposing anything beyond that.
If something more develops between us, that conversation happens when you're not on your knees. When we're equals. Not here."
The relief was so intense it was almost physical.
Not because Rodney didn't want more, he was terrified of how much he wanted more, but because Mordechai understood that wanting more and being ready for more were different things.
He was giving Rodney room. Space to feel what he was feeling without the pressure of having to name it.
"Thank you, Sir."
"You're welcome." Mordechai's fingers traced the line of his jaw. "Now. I didn't buy you tonight. You're here because you chose to be. That changes things. It means you have a say in what happens. So tell me, Rodney, what did you come here hoping for?"
Rodney thought about it. Not the nervous, panicked thinking of the auction’s aftermath, but something calmer. More grounded. He knew what he wanted. He'd known since the shower this morning.
"You," he said. "Whatever you want to do. I trust you."
Mordechai's hand tightened in his hair. A brief, possessive squeeze that sent heat cascading down Rodney's spine. "That," he said, his voice low and rough, "was exactly the right answer."