Chapter 24
Xavier
Ibarely have time to suck in a breath before his lips crash into mine. It’s not soft, it’s not seeking permission, it’s demanding, overbearing, taking.
This isn’t tender, first-time energy. It’s obsessive, impulsive, hungry. Is the infamous Artemis de la Pena finally losing the control he holds so dear? For a heartbeat, something raw flickers behind his eyes—want. Sharp and reckless—before he swallows it down like poison.
He takes. He devours. He uses my openness, the way I melt against him, as he feasts on me like oxygen. But I give it right back. Because I’m a switchy menace.
Every thrash of his tongue is met by one of mine. Every grope of his firm hand on my body is met by an equally firm squeeze of mine. Our teeth clash as our kiss grows sloppy, hungrier, so messy that if I didn’t know it was him, I’d have laughed at the idea that Artemis could be so… wild.
Heat licks at my spine, making my balls heavy, and all we’ve done is kiss. He cups my neck, tipping my head so he can kiss me deeper. His breath ghosts over my lips, warm and desperate, like he’s been starving for this longer than he’ll ever admit.
He pulls back from me like the switch of a light has clicked, grumbling something under his breath as he drags me into the living room.
Not taking me upstairs. Noted.
His grip tightens just a fraction too much, like he’s fighting himself harder than he’s fighting me.
Disappointment flares in my gut. I had visions of this being an all-night-long, exploring every inch of each other’s bodies kind of deal, but the more I’m in his presence, the more his irritation tells me he wants to purge me from his system.
This is a booty call. A one-and-done sitch.
My lips twitch. This bitch thinks he can fuck me and flee without consequence. It’s okay, I did too before he kissed me against the door and stole every molecule of oxygen from my lungs.
Whatever this is between us is burning hotter, brighter. It’s not dimming, and I know before his dick comes anywhere near my ass that that connection is only going to pour fuel on the fire, not extinguish it.
It’s fine. Let him learn the hard way that he can’t bang his feelings into my ass and leave them behind as he walks away.
Everything about him says he’s going to top me. The way he holds his shoulders, the glint in his eye, the firm set of his jaw, but I pause next to the couch, shunting my pants and boxers to the floor. His breath stutters—barely—but I catch it, the tiniest crack in his command.
“You going to bend over for me, princess?” I keep my face schooled, my tone just a little playful but firm enough for him to know I’m serious.
He snorts, grabs me by the nape of my neck, and thrusts me over the arm of the sofa.
Well, fuck me. If this isn’t the single hottest experience of my life.
His chest brushes my back for a split second, heat searing through my spine before he shoves me down harder, like he’s punishing himself for even wanting to be close.
Who knew his repressed, Dom energy was what my sex life had been missing this whole time?
I can feel how angry he is, probably at himself for wanting this, for needing this. I feel it too, the undercurrent of desperation surging in my blood, of being drawn to him like there are magnetic particles flowing in my hemoglobin.
My cock is painfully pressed against the fabric, but I don’t give a shit. I’m all in for this fucking ride. Whatever he wants to give me, I’ll take.
He doesn’t even strip, the sound of a zipper pierces the air, the tearing of a condom wrapper, except it’s a little packet of lube because he kicks my legs apart and squirts it directly on my ass without ceremony.
This guy is mad. It radiates off him in waves, hot enough that my skin tightens like it knows it’s about to be claimed. Part of me wants to fuel his frustration, to make him so fucking angry he splits me in two with his cock. Jesus Christ, yes please.
Another wrapper is torn, time is strung out between us, sizzling, crackling, and hissing with anticipation.
I try to peer over back at him. I haven’t even seen his dick yet.
His thighs cage mine, heat and muscle and tension, and his breath hits the back of my neck sending waves of goosebumps over my body.
When I rise, my back meets the hard planes of his chest for a split second before he shoves me back down. Hard. He holds me in place while he works the lube between my cheeks and over himself.
“Consent.” He barks the word, the sound breaking the silence like a plastic ruler being snapped in half.
Something nudges my entrance, fingers or cock I have no idea. The smell of his cologne mixed with something inherently Arte imprints on me like a fucking brand. I breathe him in without meaning to, and it hits low and hard, a punch of closeness he’d never allow if he noticed.
“Xavier.” My name is released on a slow, hissing breath through gritted teeth. “Consent.”
If my balls weren’t so fucking tight and my dick wasn’t already leaking precum, I’d let him hover on the edge of ‘yes,’ for a while longer, make him drag it out of me.
But my traitorous fucking hips rock back toward him making him chuckle.
“I need the actual word, Martinez.” Somehow his voice is even lower.
“Yes.” I consent. “Do it.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice but he doesn’t ram inside me in one go. Part of me is expecting it, that solid thrust, but he doesn’t. He teases my hole as he slips the tip of the head of his cock into my ass.
Fucking hell, he’s big. My vision whites out for a second, my knees threatening to give as my body scrambles to take him.
I’ve heard rumors. I mean, hockey players are nothing if not gossipy little shits, but when he finally eases his whole girthy head into me, I see stars. The rumors didn’t do him justice.
He opens another packet, squeezes more lube over both of us, and hisses again as he inches his length into me. A guttural moan fills the room, animalistic, raw, ripped from some dark depth inside… me. I’m making that noise.
Something’s different about his cock. Isn’t that what they all say? There’s a cold kiss of metal, a textured drag that lights up nerves I didn’t know I had. It’s definitely cold, bumpy, something… sweet baby J is this thick-dicked-dark-destroyer pierced?
My thighs tremble. My stomach clenches hard, a warning tremor that I’m seconds from embarrassing myself all over his damn couch.
He moves once, pulling his hips away from me, letting the length of his dick slide out of me, dragging the piercing against my insides. Another feral noise falls from my lips before he rams into me at speed.
He pistons his hips. It’s brutal, fast, hard. My breath shatters, spilling out of me in a broken, needy noise I’d deny ever making. All I can do is hold onto the arm of the couch, bracing myself against it so the force of his thrusts doesn’t shoot me over the fucking thing.
Our breathing synchronizes at some point, and I want to breathe in time with him forever. Fuck. He’s a powerful force invading my senses. His breath against me shouldn’t feel intimate, but it does. And I hate that I want more of it, more of him… more of us.
His hips fit against me perfectly, forcing the couch to cradle me in a fucked-up kind of way. His fingers bite into my hips, they’re going to leave marks. Good. This is going to be over faster than I want it to, and I want bruises as a reminder that this really happened.
He grips harder when I moan, like he needs something firm under his hands to keep himself from unraveling.
Every few beats of his cock plunging inside me grazes that special spot, sending white-hot pulses of pleasure rippling through my body.
If I just… move… a little he’d hit it square on…
shit. Shit. Shit. Right there. Don’t move. Don’t fucking move.
I don’t say it out loud. I don’t want him to stop, but also, I can’t fucking speak.
He’s stolen my words, my breath, my control, my fucking soul.
I’m a quivering bag of bones as he rams into me, grunting, slapping, breathing.
I’m hanging by a thread, every nerve ending strung tight and singing his name.
The second he presses on my prostate; my body tells on me. The deeper electric pulse shimmers, detonating like a massive explosion, like someone pushed a button behind my balls.
I’m one of the rare number—ten to twenty percent of men—who can come from prostate stimulation alone, and I never take that fact for granted.
It’s a guaranteed hands-free, slightly embarrassing, life-ruining orgasm when someone finds my happy button, and Artemis fucking found it with his mondo dick and his sexy piercing.
I roar through my release, bucking my hips despite being pinned over the arm of the couch.
There’s no decorum in my orgasm, it’s wild, it’s reflexive, it’s messy.
Cum spurts over the couch, up my stomach, and Artemis’s jerky, haphazard movements smear my release all over the fabric as he rides me into his own blissful release.
My body goes limp as I melt into the sofa. My vision blurs, my ears buzz, and the world tilts. “Holy shit,” I whisper.
Artemis’s roar swallows my words, but it’s restrained, choked somewhere in his vocal cords so it sounds strangled. And as soon as he comes, he’s pulling out from my ass, but his breath shudders, cracking like it impacted him as well.
My legs twitch with aftershocks I can’t control, pleasure still buzzing faintly under my skin like static electricity. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. My body’s shaking, forever changed from having just been decimated by Artemis’s de la Pena and his magical cock.
I suck in ragged breath after ragged breath, frantically trying to find level ground. But sweat trickles down my neck, my body’s stuck to the couch, and despite the flickering hope in my chest crackling like a wooden-wicked candle, I know that when I turn around, he’s going to run.
I can feel it, hovering in the air between us.
His jaw is locked so hard I can almost hear the crunch.
The snap of a condom being tied off pulls me back from the edge of a nap right here where I lie, pants around my still-spread ankles, ass sticky with lube, and the cold trickle of what feels awfully like shame rolling down my spine.
I refuse to be embarrassed about this or let regret find its way into my chest. I wanted this, I knew what I was getting, and I knew going in that he’d bolt like a horse out of a stable.
The silence between us spreads, growing colder.
He leaves, presumably to find a trashcan, and when he comes back, he stands a little further from me.
When I turn and meet his eyes, all I see is dissociation.
His pupils shrink, going flat and cold, the warmth from minutes ago vanishing like it never existed.
There’s nothing mean in his eyes, nothing cruel, he’s just… gone. The shutters are back. If I didn’t know what his hands felt like on me, I’d swear he’d never touched me at all.
He zips up his pants like he’s covering his dick with armor. He avoids eye contact, and when he speaks, his voice is devastatingly neutral. “I shouldn’t have come.”
Neither of us says anything else. We give those words the space they need because it’s a massive statement.
He flinches, barely, like my presence physically hurts.
It’s hard not to feel a sting of rejection, but despite any blooming insecurity he might be feeding, rationally speaking I know this is about him, not me.
And still, I want to fight, to scream, to shake him but I know that won’t help things.
Because behind the stillness, the neutrality, the calmness in his voice?
Lies something else. Something unkempt and untameable.
Something broke open inside my Dark Destroyer, and that look in his eyes that he doesn’t want me to see? Is fear.
Artemis de la Pena is fucking terrified.
He fucked me to scratch an itch, but what happened between us opened the door to something more. By fucking me relentlessly, something more than my prostate exploded, and from the mechanical way he’s not-staring at me right now, I know he felt it too.
He lets out a low, probably involuntary sound that is not a growl—it’s something needier that he instantly covers with a step toward the door. “I should go.” His fingers shake for a split second before they flex, and he pulls any sign of emotion under control.
“This is your place.”
He doesn’t answer.
I bend to pick up my clothes, filling the uncomfortable silence between us with the sound of my pants skimming my sticky legs, my zipper closing, then clear my throat. “It’s all good. I’ll leave you to it.”
I didn’t expect aftercare, but a fucking shower might have been nice. Ugh.
He reaches out to touch my forearm as I start toward the door but stops himself. “I can take you home.”
A bitter laugh falls from my lips before I can stop it. “Let’s not try to pretend tonight was a real date, Artemis. I’ll make my own way home.”
His throat works, but he doesn’t say anything. His jaw twitches, a tiny betrayal of how deeply my words land. Any hope that was flickering in my chest gets snuffed out on the coldness sweeping through the room. His coldness.
I leave him standing in a pool of silence and regret and probably my cum.
My hips ache from the familiar pulse of where his fingers pressed into my skin.
I can still feel the ghost of his grip, like my body hasn’t realized he’s gone yet.
My unsteady steps turn my gut-punched insides from wrecked and confused to smoldering determination.
Determination for what? To chase harder or to stop chasing entirely?
I’m not yet sure. But one thing’s for sure, that’s not the last time I’ll hear from Mr. de la Pena.
Even if perhaps, it should be. Artemis is about to implode like a dying star wearing skates and backed all-the-way-up with emotional constipation.
Part of me wants to reach out to him, to warn him, protect him, or at least ride the waves with him, but he’s made his decision. And I need to respect it.