CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mordechai's house was not what Rodney expected.
He wasn't sure what he'd expected, a sleek penthouse, maybe, all glass and chrome, the kind of place that looked like a magazine spread and felt like a museum. Something cold and impressive and perfectly controlled, like the man who lived in it.
Instead, the house was warm. Low-ceilinged, wood-floored, with bookshelves on every wall and soft lighting and the faint smell of cedar that Rodney now associated with safety so completely that walking through the front door made his legs give out.
Mordechai caught him. Of course he did. He'd been catching him all night, in the warehouse, in the car, on the walk from the driveway to the front door.
His hands were steady and his grip was firm and his body was a wall between Rodney and everything else in the world, and Rodney leaned into him and let himself be held up because he didn't have the strength to do it himself anymore.
"Bathroom," Mordechai said. Not a question. A direction. "Can you walk?"
"I think so."
He couldn't, really. His legs were trembling and his back was a single sheet of fire and every step sent jolts of pain through muscles he hadn't known he had.
But Mordechai's arm was around his waist, carefully, avoiding the worst of the damage, and together they made it down a hallway lined with framed photographs and through a door into a bathroom that was bigger than Rodney's entire apartment.
The tub was enormous. Deep and wide, the kind of tub that belonged in a spa rather than a private home, with brass fixtures and a tile surround and a small shelf of bottles that suggested Mordechai took his baths seriously.
Mordechai turned the water on, testing the temperature with his wrist, adjusting it, testing again, and added something from one of the bottles.
The room filled with the scent of eucalyptus and something herbal that Rodney couldn't identify but that smelled like healing.
"The pants," Mordechai said, and his voice was controlled but his hands weren't quite steady as he undid Rodney's belt and helped him step out of his jeans.
Then Rodney was naked, standing in the warm bathroom light, and Mordechai's gaze moved over his body with the same focused attention he'd used the first night at the club, except now he wasn't looking for pleasure. He was looking for damage.
"Get in. Slowly."
The water was perfect. Hot enough to ease the ache in his muscles without burning the open cuts on his back.
Rodney sank into it with a hiss that turned into a groan that turned into something close to a sob as the heat enveloped him and the eucalyptus rose around him and his body, which had been clenched like a fist for hours, finally began to release.
Mordechai knelt beside the tub. He'd put on a pair of sweatpants at some point, Rodney hadn't noticed when, but his chest was still bare, and the scratches from Inuit's claws were visible on his sides.
Shallow but long, already starting to heal.
He didn't seem to notice them. His entire attention was on Rodney.
He dipped his hand in the water. Brought it up.
Let it run over Rodney's shoulder, carefully, avoiding the worst of the marks.
Then again. And again. A slow, rhythmic motion that was less about cleaning and more about contact, about saying I'm here with his hands because his voice couldn't carry the weight of everything he needed to say.
"Do you know the names of the men who touched you tonight?" Mordechai asked. His voice was calm. Controlled. The calm of a man who was holding himself together with considerable effort.
Rodney had been drifting, the heat and the exhaustion pulling him toward sleep, but the question brought him back. He opened his eyes and looked at Mordechai's face. The amber light of the bathroom cast shadows under his cheekbones and turned his dark eyes darker.
"If I tell you," Rodney said quietly, "will you kill them too?"
The answer came without hesitation. "Yes."
Rodney sank a little deeper into the water. "I don't want anyone else to die."
"I don't want anyone thinking they can touch you and walk away with their hands."
Despite everything, the pain, the exhaustion, the lingering terror that hadn't fully released its grip, Rodney smiled. Small and tired and real. "That's very dramatic."
"I'm a very dramatic person. I just killed a polar bear with my teeth. Dramatic is what I do." Mordechai's hand continued its slow circuit over Rodney's shoulder. "I'm sorry I wasn't there to protect you."
"You couldn't have known."
"I should have. The sharks don't play fair. I know that. I should’ve been watching.
" The control in his voice cracked, just slightly.
Just enough for Rodney to hear what was underneath, not just anger, but guilt.
The specific, corrosive guilt of a man who believed that if something went wrong on his watch, it was his failure.
Rodney reached up and took Mordechai's hand. The one that had killed a man earlier. The one that had held him in the warehouse, that had stroked his hair, that had fed him raspberries from its fingers. He brought it to his lips and kissed the knuckles.
"You came," Rodney said. "That's what matters. You came."
Mordechai closed his eyes. For a long moment, he was still, just breathing, his hand in Rodney's, his body kneeling beside the tub like a man in prayer. When he opened his eyes, they were bright.
"I want you to stay here tonight," he said.
"I was hoping you'd say that."
"And tomorrow night. And the night after.
" Mordechai's voice was steady again, but stripped of its usual authority, not a command, not a request. A need, stated plainly, without armor.
Just a man asking another man to stay. "I want you here, Rodney.
Not because of the sharks, not because I'm worried about your safety, though I am.
I want you here because my house has been empty for a very long time, and it doesn't feel empty with you in it. "
Rodney's eyes burned. The eucalyptus was not to blame. "Mordechai..."
"You don't have to answer now. You've been through—"
"Yes." The word came out clear and certain, without hesitation, without the wobble of exhaustion or the haze of pain. "Yes, I want to stay. Not just tonight. For as long as you'll have me."
Mordechai's hand tightened around his. "Then you're staying."
***
He got Rodney out of the tub when the water started to cool.
Wrapped him in a towel that was softer than anything Rodney had ever owned, thick, warm, the kind of luxury that Rodney would have felt guilty about a week ago and now just felt grateful for.
Mordechai patted him dry with careful attention, avoiding the welts on his back, and then led him to the bedroom.
The bed was massive. King-sized, piled with pillows, the sheets a deep navy that looked almost black in the low light. Mordechai pulled back the covers and helped Rodney in, on his stomach, because his back couldn't take the pressure of lying against anything.
"I want to check your back," Mordechai said, sitting on the edge of the bed beside him. "Some of these are deep."
"Shifter healing," Rodney murmured into the pillow. "They'll be gone in a few days."
"The physical ones will." Mordechai's fingers traced a line down Rodney's back, not touching the wounds, just following the path between them, mapping the damage. "The other ones take longer."
Rodney turned his head on the pillow to look at him.
Mordechai was sitting very still, his hand resting lightly on the small of Rodney's back, one of the few undamaged spots, and his expression was one Rodney had never seen on him before.
Not the controlled Dom. Not the sharp lawyer.
Not even the man who'd held him in the dark and called him extraordinary.
This was someone younger. Undefended. A man looking at something he was terrified of losing.
"I thought about you the whole time," Rodney said.
"When they, when it was happening. I went somewhere inside my head, and you were there.
Your voice. Your hands. The way you say good boy and everything goes quiet.
" His voice cracked. "You kept me alive, Mordechai.
You weren't there, but you kept me alive. "
Mordechai lay down beside him. Carefully, on his side, facing Rodney, close enough to touch but not pressing against him. His hand found Rodney's on the pillow between them.
"I'm here now," he said.
"I know."
"And I'm not going anywhere."
"I know that too."
Silence settled over them. The house was quiet, no humming fridge, no street noise, just the gentle creak of a structure settling into itself and the soft sound of two people breathing in the same dark room.
Rodney's eyes were heavy. His body was shutting down, the adrenaline finally spent, the pain retreating to a dull background roar as exhaustion took the wheel.
"Mordechai?"
"Mm."
"Are you going to be in trouble? For killing Inuit?"
A pause. "Lady Leo is handling it. The Playground operates outside normal channels, there's no police involvement in shifter business conducted there. And Inuit had enemies. Plenty of people wanted him dead. I just happened to be the one who did it." Another pause. "I'd do it again."
"I know."
"Without hesitation."
"I know that too." Rodney squeezed his hand. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay."
Mordechai was quiet for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was rough. "You're lying in my bed with a back full of whip marks, and you're asking if I'm okay."
"That's who I am."
"Yes," Mordechai said softly. "It is. And it's why I—" He stopped. The sentence hung in the air, unfinished, full of something too large for the room.
Rodney waited. But Mordechai didn't finish it. Instead, he lifted Rodney's hand and pressed his lips to the palm, a kiss that was more prayer than gesture, and then placed the hand back on the pillow between them.
"Sleep," Mordechai said. "I'll be here when you wake up."
Rodney slept. And Mordechai lay beside him in the dark, holding his hand, and did not sleep at all.