CHAPTER NINE #2
Mordechai's rhythm was different. The previous night had been slow and controlled, every stroke calculated.
Tonight, he started slow but didn't stay there.
He built, gradually, each thrust a little harder, a little deeper, a little faster, and Rodney could feel the tension in him, the leashed power, the animal under the man straining against its cage.
The composure that had been absolute before was fracturing, and Rodney realized with a dark thrill that he was what was breaking it.
His body, his sounds, his submission… they were pulling Mordechai apart the same way Mordechai had pulled him apart, and the mutuality of it was more intimate than anything they'd done with their hands.
"Touch me," Mordechai said. The command was ragged. Barely controlled. "Reach back and touch me."
Rodney reached behind him. His hand found Mordechai's hip, the bare skin where his shirt had ridden up, the dense muscle underneath, the sharp jut of hipbone, and he gripped.
Held on. His fingers dug into Mordechai's flesh as Mordechai drove into him, and Mordechai made a sound that was close to a snarl, a pure cat sound, the vibration of it traveling through his body into Rodney's.
"Again," Mordechai breathed. "Don't let go."
Rodney didn't let go. He held on as Mordechai's rhythm broke, as the careful pace collapsed into something urgent and raw, as Mordechai's hand came around to grip Rodney's cock and stroke him in time with his thrusts.
The dual sensation, being filled and stroked, taken and touched, was overwhelming.
His mind went blank, nothing left but the feel of Mordechai inside him and around him and everywhere.
"Cum for me," Mordechai said, and Rodney obeyed, instantly, completely, his body answering the command before his mind caught up.
He spilled over Mordechai's fist with a cry that might have been Mordechai's name, or might have been nothing, just sound, and behind him Mordechai drove deep one final time and followed him over the edge with a roar that rattled the locked door.
They stayed like that for a long time. Connected. Mordechai draped over Rodney's back, his forehead between Rodney's shoulder blades, breathing hard. Rodney's hand still on his hip. The room was quiet except for the sound of them catching their breath.
When Mordechai pulled out and cleaned them both up, carefully, methodically, the Dom returning after the animal had retreated, he sat on the couch and pulled Rodney into his lap, and Rodney went.
He curled against Mordechai's chest and pressed his face into the curve of his neck and breathed him in, and it was the same as their first encounter except for the staggering, fundamental difference that this time his eyes were open and he could see Mordechai's hand in his hair and the rise and fall of his chest and the soft, unguarded expression on his face that Rodney suspected he didn't show to many people.
"You were incredible," Mordechai said. "Twice now you've given me things I didn't expect."
"What things?" Rodney murmured against his skin.
"Honesty. Trust." A pause. "You touched me when I asked. That sounds small, but it isn't. Most subs, when they're told they can touch, get tentative. Careful. You grabbed me like you needed to hold on. That's—" He exhaled. "That's the most genuine thing a sub has ever done with me."
Rodney closed his eyes. "I did need to hold on. You were taking me somewhere I'd never been. I needed an anchor."
Mordechai's arm tightened around him.
***
Later, when they'd eaten… Amani had delivered the food without lingering, a pointed, professional knock, a tray left outside the door, footsteps retreating… and Rodney was drowsy and sated and wearing the blanket like a cape, Mordechai said:
"I want to see your panda."
Rodney opened one eye. "My what?"
"Your panda. Your animal form. I want to see what you look like."
A bolt of self-consciousness shot through the warm haze. "Sir, I'm not—pandas aren't exactly impressive."
"I didn't ask for impressive. I asked to see you." Mordechai's voice carried the gentle authority of someone who was making a request that was also, subtly, an order. "Show me yours and I'll show you mine."
There was nothing to do but comply. Rodney stood, let the blanket fall, closed his eyes, envisioned his panda, and shifted.
The transformation was quick, a few seconds of that strange pulling sensation, bones rearranging, skin reshaping, and then he wobbled a bit before dropping to all fours, round and black and white, blinking up at Mordechai with the slightly bewildered expression that pandas wore as a default.
Mordechai crouched in front of him. His face was, Rodney hadn't expected this, soft. Open. He reached out and ran his hand along Rodney's flank, fingers sinking into the thick fur, and a sound escaped him that was suspiciously close to a sigh of pleasure.
"You're beautiful," he said. "Your fur is the softest thing I've ever touched."
Rodney, who had spent his entire life being told that pandas were cute but useless, the teddy bears of the shifter world, felt the words land in a place he hadn't known was waiting for them. Nobody had ever called his panda form beautiful. Cute, yes. Funny, often. But beautiful—
Mordechai stood. Stepped back. And shifted.
The panther was enormous. Not in the way that bears or wolves were enormous, not bulk but presence.
Sleek black fur over dense, powerful muscle.
A long, thick tail. Eyes that glowed amber in the dim light of the room.
He moved toward Rodney with a fluid, silent grace that made every prey instinct in Rodney's panda brain scream at him to curl into a ball and play dead.
He didn't. He trembled, he couldn't help that, but he stood his ground as the panther circled him.
The fear scent rolling off him was, he suspected, obvious to both of them, but Mordechai didn't retreat.
Instead, he pressed his huge head against Rodney's side and pushed, a deliberate, firm pressure that was the feline equivalent of an embrace.
Then he rubbed his jaw along Rodney's flank.
Slow. Intentional. The scent glands along a cat's jaw produced territorial markers, and Mordechai was, Rodney realized with a jolt, marking him.
Claiming him. Leaving an invisible signature on Rodney's fur that would tell every cat in the building: this one is mine.
The panther circled him twice more, rubbing, marking, pressing against him, and then stepped back and shifted. Mordechai stood naked in the room, chest heaving slightly, with an expression on his face that Rodney, once back in human form too, shaking and wide-eyed, could only describe as stunned.
"Sir?" Rodney ventured. "Are you okay?"
Mordechai blinked. The stunned expression cleared, replaced by something more controlled but no less intense. "I've never done that before."
"Shifted with someone?"
"Marked someone." He said it like the words tasted strange in his mouth. "In all my years of playing, with every sub I've been with, I've never scent-marked anyone. That's—" He paused. "That's not a casual thing, for a cat."
Rodney didn't know what to say. So, he stepped forward, put his arms around Mordechai, and held him.
Just held him. The way Mordechai had held him after the scene, except reversed, Rodney's arms around Mordechai's waist, his face pressed against the broad, warm plane of Mordechai's chest, his hands flat against his back.
For a second, Mordechai was stiff. Surprised. Then his arms came up and closed around Rodney, and he exhaled, a long, slow breath that felt like it had been held for years.
***
They got dressed. Mordechai walked him out of the club, past the bar as Amani was pouring drinks and very deliberately not watching them, up the elevator, through the lobby where Bethany was packing up for the night.
Outside, the air was warm. Vegas warm. The financial district was quiet, the buildings dark.
"I'm parked down this way, Sir," Rodney said, gesturing right. He drove a Volkswagen Beetle that was held together primarily by optimism, and he wasn't sure he wanted Mordechai to see it.
Mordechai tucked Rodney's arm into the crook of his elbow and started walking. "You can drop the Sir out here."
Rodney stumbled slightly. "Because we're outside the club?"
"More than that. When I help you stand at the end of a scene, that's my signal that we're stepping out of roles. Equals. Out here, you don't kneel and I don't command. We're just two men walking down a street."
"Two men. One of whom just scent-marked the other."
A surprised laugh escaped Mordechai. It was becoming one of Rodney's favorite sounds, the way Mordechai's carefully maintained composure cracked when Rodney said something he didn't expect. "I'm going to have to think about what that means."
"Take your time. I'm going to be thinking about it too."
They walked. The silence was easy, companionable.
Rodney's body ached in the pleasant, thorough way that was becoming familiar, the specific soreness of a man who'd been well used by someone who knew what they were doing.
He leaned into Mordechai's arm and felt Mordechai adjust to accommodate his weight, and it was such a small thing, and it meant everything.
"Rodney," Mordechai said as they neared the end of the block.
"Mm?"
"What are you doing tomorrow night?"
Rodney's heart kicked. "Do you want me at the club again?"
"No." Mordechai's pace slowed. "I want to take you to dinner. Somewhere nice. Just the two of us, out in the world, without the club around us." He glanced at Rodney. "I want to see who you are when you're not on your knees."
"I think I'm mostly the same person. Just taller."
That laugh again. Full, sudden, and genuine.
Mordechai stopped walking and turned to face him.
His hand came up to cup Rodney's jaw, and he kissed him, slow and warm and unhurried, the kind of kiss that happened on quiet streets at midnight between people who were discovering that they might be the beginning of something.
When he pulled back, Rodney was glowing.
He could feel it, not in his chest or his bones or anywhere poetic, but in the plain stupid grin on his face that he couldn't have stopped if he'd tried.
This man wanted to take him to dinner. Wanted to see him outside the context of leather and safe words and locked doors. Wanted him.
"I'd like that," Rodney said. "Very much."
"Good." Mordechai pulled out his phone. "Give me your number. I'll pick you up at seven."
They exchanged numbers. Mordechai kissed him one more time, brief, firm, proprietary, and then stepped back.
"Get some sleep," he said. "You'll need it."
"Is that a threat or a promise?"
"Both." Mordechai smiled, the warm one, the one his eyes participated in, and turned back toward the club. Rodney watched him go. At the corner, Mordechai glanced back and caught him staring.
He didn't look embarrassed about it. He waved.
Mordechai shook his head, laughed, and disappeared around the corner. The faint sound of whistling trailed after him.