Chapter 30 Elias
THIRTY
Elias
I know that Andre is angry. I can feel it in his body as he carries me into the warehouse apartment. I can feel it in his silence. But I don’t panic until he takes me down the stairs and into the dark cell.
He releases me when I struggle, but he’s blocking the door and there’s nowhere to go. It’s pitch black. All I can hear is my own harsh breathing as I grope around and find a wall.
“Are you going to leave me in here?” I gasp, finding words for the first time. Until now, everything between us has been silent understanding. A sort of dark, unspoken clarity. A connection. But this …
This is separation.
This, I don’t want.
I almost hope he won’t answer, that he’ll just growl at me, prowl toward me, attack me, but the silence is already broken and we’re well outside the dark, wild space of the woods.
“Shouldn’t I?” he demands.
His boots move with a quiet, dangerous tread across the floor. I can’t tell exactly where he is until I hear a soft clink of metal about where I remember the chair being.
“Isn’t this where I can best control you?” he asks. “Since I can’t trust you.”
“That’s not—”
“Don’t tell me that’s not fair. Don’t tell me that’s not true. I trusted you, and at the first fucking opportunity, you broke that trust.”
My chest starts heaving. “That’s not what happened!”
“You don’t get to say whether or not you broke my trust.”
I feel dizzy and disoriented in the darkness. I lose my sense of where I am and where he is.
“I don’t want to be down here,” I say.
“And where do you want to be?”
“With you!”
“You are with me,” he says, cold and harsh.
“Not here!”
“You had another option—and you fucking threw it away!”
“That’s not fair!” I shout.
“I don’t fucking care!”
I let out a wordless shout of frustration and bolt toward the vague grayness that I can see now that my eyes have adjusted. It’s a lighter darkness. It’s the doorway.
Andre lets me get there. He lets me run along the hallway to the stairs. I can see more light, faint light, and I stumble up the stairs toward it. Heart pounding, I race out into the main room. Street light drifts in through the high windows, but it’s mostly dark.
There’s nowhere to go, and I don’t want to go anywhere, but I still run to the other side of the couch as Andre’s unhurried footsteps come up the stairs. He emerges into the room like a darker shadow in the already dark space.
I fall back into the fantasy. It’s easy. It simplifies things. It’s where I want to be. And, yes, it’s a test.
For a second, I’m terrified that Andre won’t enter it with me, that he’ll just let me run straight out of the fantasy and away, but when I bolt in the direction of the outside door, he charges to cut me off.
His snarl is vicious and it lifts the hair all over my body as I reverse course and race across the room, elated. Relieved.
I go for the stairs, but it’s a mistake. I’m repeating what I did last time, and he anticipates me. He catches me all too easily. I flail, but he clamps onto me and carries me up the stairs. He wrestles me onto the bed and rips my jacket off me.
I’m hard and ready for him, and I can feel the stiffness of his cock, but just uses his weight to trap me while he forces a cuff onto my wrist. He pulls my arm up and locks the restraint to the railing at the head of the bed.
I pull against it, but I would need my other hand to free myself, and Andre has control of it.
He gets the other cuff on and locks it to the railing as well.
He yanks off my shoes, then my pants. I hear the click of a knife and gasp, but he uses it to cut the shirt from my body, tearing away the shreds of it. Then he gets out of the bed—and fucking leaves.
“Stop!” I shout as he tromps down the metal steps.
“Should I fucking stop when you didn’t?”
“Andre!”
I listen to his boots, terrified that he’ll walk to the door, that he’ll leave, but when he gets downstairs, he starts pacing.
“Andre!”
“You fucking left, Elias!”
“I was going to come back—”
“No, you fucking weren’t! You wouldn’t have come back because you would’ve been fucking dead!”
My chest starts heaving. I know he’s right, but it doesn’t feel fair. “I didn’t want you to get hurt. I was trying to deal with it myself because he’s my—”
“He’s fucking nothing to you!”
“This isn’t—I can’t think right now! Come back!” I yank at the restraints. “Andre!”
“I can’t, Elias, I’ll fucking hurt you.”
“Come back! Come back now!”
“No!”
“Red!”
“That’s not how it fucking works!”
“Red!” I shout again. “Red!”
He lets out a wordless shout and comes flying up the stairs. His boots clang aggressively and he storms across the platform to the head of the bed. He grabs my jaw.
“I’m angry with you!” he snarls in my face.
“Then fuck me!”
Andre lets go roughly and starts pacing the platform, back and forth in the small space. When he rips off his shirt, my eyes close in relief.
As each piece of clothing comes off, as the weapons drop heavily to the floor, I writhe on the bed. I deserve his anger. I want him to give it to me.
When he’s naked, the lines of his body softly limned by the distant light, his hard cock jutting out, he comes to the side of the bed. He yanks open a drawer of the nightstand. He gets onto the bed with a bottle of lube. He slicks his cock. He’s rough and impatient.
He grabs me and flips me, making my arms cross in the restrains. He yanks my hips up and forces my legs apart. His fingers prod at my hole, forcing lube into me. I whine and pant as his rough handling centers me. It calms me. It’s what I want. It’s what I need. Because …
Because I’m still scared. Of what I did tonight. Of what I almost lost. Myself. Him. He’s right. And I need him to help me. I need him to take me out of myself for a second so I can calm down, so I can let go of the fear.
I focus on my breathing as his cock pushes against my hole. I cry out as he forces his way inside, opening me an inch at a time. It burns. It hurts. It’s supposed to.
But when he’s all the way in, he stops. I’m panting and shaking.
“Is this what you want?” he growls, but I have no words.
He pulls out and slaps my ass. I cry out at the sudden, awful emptiness.
“Answer me!”
“Yes!” I shout.
He forces his way back in, still too slow, still too careful.
“Fuck me!”
He smashes my head down and gives me what I want. I moan and push back against him. He pulls my hips up harder, forces me to arch. He hits my prostate with ruthless precision, pounding until I fly out of myself. I scream and thrash under him as I come.
He’s not even close. He just keeps fucking me through it until I’m moaning and hard again.
But he stops, still buried inside me. His breathing is harsh. He’s trembling.
“This … isn’t what I want,” he rasps. “This isn’t what I fucking want.”
I cry out when he pulls out of me. Fear surges up, but he doesn’t leave. He flips me over onto my back. He crawls up my body and releases my wrists—then he wraps his arms around me and buries his face against my neck.
My emotions trip and tumble. Then they crash so hard that I throw my arms around him and start crying.
It’s a different kind of release, scarier but more necessary. More vulnerable.
When I’m able, when I’m calm, I tell him, “I’m sorry.”
“You scared me,” he whispers against my neck. “You fucking scared me.”
Fresh tears leak from my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to fuck you like this when I’m angry.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I love you, Elias.”
I start sobbing as I cling to him. “I love you too.”
I stop trying to justify myself. He stops trying to punish me. He just lets it go, and so do I. We stay like that for a long, long time. Until everything settles. Until we both feel safe.
Andre lifts his head. He starts petting my hair. He reaches over to the nightstand and turns on a low nightlight, just enough to soften the darkness. His beautiful face emerges from the shadows.
Propping himself up on one elbow, he says, “I know why you did it.”
My throat tightens. “I was afraid you’d do something and get hurt. Or killed.”
“Then you know how I felt when I woke up.”
I swallow hard, feeling guilty. “I …”
“Elias, let me be clear with you.” He lays a hand heavily on my chest. “If something had happened to you, I would be dead right now, one way or another. You were not protecting me because you can’t. It’s not possible. You cannot take that role from me.”
“But—”
“And I feel like you did this because I let you see, for a second, that—” Andre cuts himself off, struggling, but I don’t interrupt.
I don’t rush him. I just wait. He says, “I let you see that something … hurt me. And that makes me feel like I can’t ever let you see anything like that again.
And maybe that should be fine. Maybe that’s better, but … it doesn’t feel better.”
Tears spill from my eyes, and I find that I can’t respond. He’s right. That is what happened. I hated seeing him suffering. I still hate it. I hate what happened to him.
But instead of holding a safe space for him, I stepped away. That my intention was to help doesn’t change that fact. I understand what he’s saying. I understand the trust that I broke.
“I want to see you, all of you,” I tell him when I can speak. “I want you to tell me things. Please—please give me another chance. Please, Andre. Forgive me.”
I see how his eyes soften, how he comes back to me, all the way back. I see him forgive me even before he says, “I do.”
I swallow around a lump in my throat. “Thank you for coming to get me.”
“I will always come get you. I will always protect you, even from myself.”
“I don’t want to be protected from you. I don’t want you to hold back from me.”
“I need you to let me, when I need to.”
A worry niggles inside me. “But I still want …” My fingers go to my bare throat.
“To play?”
“I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Elias. You’re just more honest than most people, and you’ve made me honest too. About what I want. And … need. And I will still play with you, because that’s always going to be a part of me. But …”
“What?” I prompt when he seems stuck.
“But I wonder if we could do other things too.”
“Like what?”
“I want … to make love to you.” He looks more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him as he adds, “But I don’t know how.”
“I bet we can figure it out.”
He looks worried. “I don’t know if I can … finish.”
“We don’t have to finish everything we start.”
He takes a deep breath, relieved. Then he draws himself up and settles on his heels between my legs.
He massages my thighs and hips. He’s hesitant, exploring.
I relax and let him take his time. I let myself enjoy his touch.
My cock hardens again, but I don’t rush him.
He’s slower to respond. It’s too new for him, too unfamiliar.
But he gets more comfortable. He finds his way.
It makes me smile. It makes me so fucking happy. He’s a little hesitant meeting my eyes, but then he smiles too. It’s just a tug of his lips, but it’s everything.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
“So are you.”
A shadow passes through his eyes, and I think I can guess why. I’m sure he’s always been beautiful, and it’s been used to hurt him.
But the shadow fades. He lets himself hear it from me instead of from his memory. He slicks his cock with lube. He lifts me, opens me. He enters me, taking his place inside me. I breathe in relief, but I wait for him.
He’s frowning slightly, but I don’t say anything. I let him decide what he thinks, how he feels. I try to hold the space that he’s trusting me with.
I know he might pull out of me, that this might be as far as he gets, but then his eyes come to my face. He sees me. He relaxes. He starts to fuck me. No—he starts to make love to me.
God, he’s beautiful as he does it. The nightlight softly limns the contours of his body. It lets me watch his rhythm, doubling the pleasure of feeling it. I’ve never gotten to watch him before. I love it. I love every second.
I bite my lip because it feels too good. My cock is stiff and leaking. My balls are drawn up.
He says, “I want to see you touch yourself.”
“I’ll come.” It surprises me that it’s true. Usually, I need it rough. Usually, I need to leave myself. But I like being here with him.
“I want you to come,” he says.
I curl my hand around my cock. I moan as I start to stroke. I watch him watch me. His eyes are on my cock at first, but then they lift to my face. He gives me more, pushes my arousal to its limit. He’s breathing harder now, just letting his body work as he watches me. It’s too much.
I cry out as my cock kicks in my hand. I clench on him, crying out harder as he buries himself deeper. He curls toward me as he comes inside me, straining through his orgasm as I strain through mine.
“Fuck,” he gasps. “Fuck.”
I see the edge of panic in his eyes. I see him start to draw back from me. I don’t know what he needs, but I offer my hand—and he takes it. He leans down, letting his cock pull free of me. He pulls me into his arms, and I wrap mine around him. I hold tight as he rolls us onto our sides.
We don’t say anything. We just let the shudders fade and let ourselves relax, not worrying about the mess, not worrying about all the things we still need to talk about.
That’s for later.
Now is for this.