Chapter Twenty-One
WAS IT pain or was it pleasure? It was funny how the two commingled. Like no matter how diligently everyone tried to keep them separated, they always ended up conspiring together. Or maybe the distinction was perception.
Pain needed a host who cared. Pleasure just needed a host.
Daniel’s lips hurt where Aaron was overpowering them, the same as his skin where Aaron clawed at it, but he was also so hard he couldn’t stand it. He was a host who didn’t care.
The kiss was enough to get him drunk. Which was maybe why he kept stumbling. Or perhaps that was because Aaron was leading him backward toward the bedroom in the world’s most volatile tango, ramming them against an armchair, then a dining room table, painting the walls with their sweat and fingertips. Neither one of them knew this dance.
“I can’t believe you called some guy in front of me.” Aaron’s hands were in Daniel’s hair, and his voice was a smoky growl. “How could you do that? You don’t do that!”
“How could you not come get me?” Daniel sank his teeth into perfect honeyed skin, denting it in little half-moons as he tore Aaron’s shirt down his arms. “You chose him over me. You chose Marco over me.”
“I didn’t choose Marco.” Aaron yanked so firmly on the buttons of Daniel’s pants that he nearly crashed to his knees. Then he willingly crashed to his knees because, well, he wanted to! “And I would never use another guy to hurt you.”
Daniel unstrapped Aaron’s belt in a maniacal whirlwind of tugs. “Well, if that ain’t the teapot callin’ the kettle whore-ish.”
“Shut up, Daniel.” Aaron’s eyes were wide, and he looked like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. “God, shut your mouth. Please .”
“Shut me up, Aaron.” He yanked Aaron’s pants down. “I’m so over talking to you that I’m considering selective mutism—”
Aaron jerked Daniel’s head back by his hair and shoved the length of himself inside Daniel’s mouth. The muscles of his stomach glistened like cuts of wet lattice in the city light spilling through the windows .
“Deeper than that,” Aaron said after a moment, which was going to be a challenge, but Daniel was prepared to literally die than admit that, so he made it happen.
“I didn’t realize this was amateur hour.” Aaron was smiling now, which was both stunning and infuriating. “Make the noises I like. And eyes up here, sweetheart.”
He met Aaron’s eyes, he made the noises he liked, and he resisted the enormous temptation to bite down, but it paid off. Three minutes later, Aaron was struggling to keep his knees from buckling.
“Okay,” Aaron muttered. “Shit. Okay, hold on—”
“And that’s my cue,” Daniel said, having freed Aaron to swipe his hands together and smack his lips. “I was hoping you might last long enough to have any kind of fun whatsoever, but you’re right. This is amateur hour.”
Aaron muttered curse words under his breath as he yanked Daniel up to a stand and tossed him onto the bed like he was one of those photorealistic sex dolls. He wished he was a sex doll as he propped himself on his elbows, gnawed a thumbnail, and twitched with his whole body. It would make this far less confusing.
Was this hate sex? He didn’t hate Aaron, even though he sort of wanted to fight him. Or did he want to bang him? Did he want to fight-bang him? Whatever he wanted to do, Aaron needed to hurry up instead of taking one million years to weed through his drawer for a condom, then another two million to get it torn open. Then he did finally tear it open only to fucking drop it.
“Is this your first time putting on a condom?” Daniel yelled, wide-eyed, making Aaron jump. “Get on top of me. Like, yesterday.”
Aaron blinked. After a few moments, his brows knitted together as his face morphed into a cocky smile. “Wow. Look at how badly you want me. Why do you think that is?”
Daniel rolled his eyes so hard he could swear he accessed another dimension. “I don’t know, Aaron. Because I have unaddressed mental health issues?”
“You wanna know what I think?”
“No.”
“I think—”
“Cool. So you’ll be telling me anyway. ”
“I think I turn you on in a way no one else can even touch.” Aaron crawled on top of him, and Daniel instinctively spread his legs because they just fit so perfectly that way. “I think it’s everything. The way I look. The way I fuck—”
“The way you annoy me?”
“The way I own you, Daniel Greene.”
Pain lashed through Daniel’s limbs and his eyes shot open when Aaron pushed a finger inside him. He tried to breathe, but he should’ve known he’d be far too tense.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Aaron’s forehead creased, but a smirk tilted his lips. “I thought you could handle at least that much. Can you not?”
Daniel glared. “I can handle anything,” he said through gritted teeth, because he must really have mental health issues. “Anything.”
“Are you sure?” Aaron asked in that deliberately silky version of his voice as he nuzzled Daniel’s neck and pressed another ginormous finger inside him. “There’s no shame in taking a minute. You need a minute?”
Daniel’s voice fractured into some high-pitched version of itself.
“We can take our time,” Aaron whispered, his breath rhythmic in Daniel’s ear as his body started to roll on top of him. “Let’s take our time.”
“I don’t need time. I need you to get on with it.”
“Just like I don’t need to fucking break you,” Aaron said through a clenched smile. “I just kind of want to.”
He growled. Partially because Aaron stretched his fingers inside him and partially because that was the kind of thing that warranted a growl. “You won’t. You can’t.”
“Are we certain about that?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” Aaron’s expression was amused as he gently kissed his lips. “You be sure to remember that, sweetheart.”
Daniel’s self-assured smirk dwindled a touch. “I’m sorry?”
“Remember how you said that.” Aaron smiled, his voice pure, graveled sin. “When you can’t fucking walk tomorrow.”
Daniel’s eyes leaped open. He gasped, suddenly flipped to all fours, suddenly fisting the sheets like they might help ground him in a moment that had lost its place in reality. Was this his hate-sex? It didn’t necessarily feel like hate as Aaron pushed inside him, somehow unhurried, yet deep as could be and absolutely consuming .
“Such a fucking brat,” Aaron said, holding his hips as Daniel stretched his body long to take it. He was going to take it. He was going to go down in history for taking it. “A perfect, precious brat.”
Daniel collapsed his face onto the mattress when Aaron clenched his waist tighter, bucking into him a little more intensely.
“You want to call other guys in front of me?” Aaron lowered his mouth to Daniel’s ear. “So I can hear them drool over you?”
“It worked, didn’t it—?”
Aaron’s fingers—one, two, three—filled Daniel’s mouth as Aaron slammed into him hard enough for the bed to thud against the wall. He hadn’t tasted that sting of salt since their first night together, but now that he was here swallowing it, he could feel himself starting to leak all over the sheets. He moaned as he took him, as Aaron filled him to capacity. The holes of his body. Over and over. On repeat.
“Is that all you got?” he managed to grumble between Aaron’s fingers. Should he get those mental health issues addressed?
Aaron hooked an arm around his chest and lifted him to kneel on the bed. His voice was a deep hook as he said, “What did you say to me?”
“You fucking heard me.” It didn’t matter. The evening was a mess. Their relationship might have been a mess too, and if they were both going to burn hot in a husk of fury, they might as well go ham. Not to mention, Aaron already thought he was a brat. Why not act like one? He reached back and patted Aaron’s cheek. “Back to work, sunshine. I’ll stop by the ATM later.”
He grunted when Aaron twisted his cheekbone into his lips and purred against his cheek, “Yeah? You need it harder?”
“Well, unless you’re tired already, sweetie?”
Aaron chuckled and licked his hand, starting to stroke him. “You might be insane. Tell me not to stop.”
He leaned back against Aaron’s body while their chests rose and fell in matching cadence. As much as he couldn’t believe it, he could absolutely believe it, because he heard himself say it. “Don’t stop.”
Aaron grinned against his ear. “Say my name.”
“Aaron.”
“Again.” Aaron kissed his neck, stroking him harder. “Like it’s the only name that matters.”
“Don’t stop, Aaron ,” he said in some throaty version of his voice .
“You perfect precious brat.” Aaron thrashed him back over the bed. “Now loud enough that the neighbors call the cops.”
That was easy, because Aaron bottomed out inside his body. He was so good at what he did. He was good with the way he pinned Daniel’s wrists behind his back and the way he read his body. He was good with the words he spoke and his hungry, unhinged grasp on dominance like some kind of a mob boss in a movie.
Daniel bowed his chest to the mattress and surrendered again and again. Over and over. He’d turned into a whimpering mess, drooling, clutching the sheets hard enough to sprain a finger, screaming Aaron’s name into tangled bedding like it was the only name that mattered. He probably did it loud enough for the neighbors to call the cops.
Then the urgency, the temper, the sweet hate-not-hate peaked, and Daniel found himself skirting an edge without warning. He clawed at Aaron’s hand, his voice trembling. “I’m about to—”
“I know,” Aaron said, like the confident professional he was. He flipped Daniel onto his back, tugged his legs off the bedside, and fell to his knees before him.
Daniel propped himself up on his elbows, his eyes rolling closed and his head falling back. He couldn’t even moan as Aaron took him into his mouth. Not really. It was more of a gasp mixed with a prayer, and it caught somewhere in between his throat and the word “You.”
He gripped Aaron’s hair to ground himself in a moment that was far too intense, and so good he might die, and so saturated with the weight of the whole night that his IQ dropped to his shoe size. He fell over that cliff with all the cells in his body stiffened as violent quakes of pleasure ripped through him, one right after the other.
You. I hate you.
The room twirled around itself in a dizzying dance of angles and corners as he collapsed back onto the bed. Everything hurt. And stung. And throbbed with the kind of pleasure that’d be visceral enough to make him laugh, if only he could move.
You. I love you.
His eyelashes were a sweaty jungle as he fixed his gaze on Aaron. Aaron, who hadn’t met him on this side of the husk of fury yet. Things were so calm over here. On this side, he wasn’t combative or angry. He was limp and boneless. Over here, he was himself again .
But Aaron would be meeting him soon because of how wildly he stroked himself, wincing through his teeth, staggering to keep himself lifted.
“Right here,” Daniel whispered, softly arching his spine, merging into a canvas with the sheets so that Aaron could paint them both in ribbons of white. “My face. My body. Wherever you want.”
He stayed motionless and let Aaron choose. It splattered his belly, chest, and neck as Aaron emptied himself in this stunning display of veins, muscles, and wild blue ice.
Then he was different too. They were both different, reuniting on the other side of the hate.
Aaron’s touch was so strange after the past hour, so delicate as he cleaned Daniel with a soft towel and sprawled long in the bed beside him to thumb his cheekbone and silently hold his gaze. He wasn’t shaking nearly as much as Daniel, whose fingertips quivered as he tried to smooth the crease in Aaron’s brow.
They blinked at each other through a mist of uncertainty. A mist of new meaning. Things might have been calm on this side of hate, but they were also less defined.
“Aaron,” he whispered, his voice barely there. “I’m so sorry for what I said to you—”
“No, I am.” Aaron licked his lips. “I’m the one who should be sorry. Will you, um. Will you say—?”
“I love you.”
Aaron swallowed, barely nodding. In the dim room, scarcely lit from the city, it almost looked like his eyes were beginning to glisten. Which was impossible. Daniel had never seen Aaron cry. Not even close.
“You deserve to hear it,” Aaron whispered, his voice wobbly. “You deserve so much more—”
“No, no, no, no, it’s okay. Shh, it’s okay.” He tugged Aaron into him, where he cradled him against his chest, rocking them gently back and forth. “You’re fine. Everything’s fine.”
From the beginning, he’d leaned into Aaron’s guidance. What they would do. How they’d amend whatever was wrong. But for once, Aaron seemed as lost as him, so he continued to hold him. Like Aaron had held him dozens of times.
“Let’s get some sleep, okay?” he said, brushing his fingers through chocolate brown hair. “We’ll deal with tonight some other day. ”
Aaron nodded against his chest.
“It’s okay, I can fix it.” He kissed Aaron’s forehead. “I’ll fix it. I’ll be better. I can be better.”
He didn’t know how. He didn’t know how he was going to fix it or how he was going to alter his entire nervous system so that he might suddenly become someone who was unaffected and nonburdensome. But he also couldn’t handle losing Aaron. That’d be like losing a piece of his soul. Losing his mister. His tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. That’d be like losing his everything.
“I’ll learn how to deal with it. I promise. You get some sleep.”