Chapter 16 #3
His eyes fell to half-mast. “You know you do. You had him the minute I stepped in your car.”
I kissed him while soaking my fingers with lube from a pump bottle on the side of the tub. Then I dipped my hand back underwater, going lower than his balls this time to circle the entrance to his body. He jerked in my grip, moaning into my mouth.
“Well, I’m a greedy bastard because I want it all,” I said against his lips.
“Husk isn’t mine to give.”
“I don’t need you to give him to me. I’ll take him away from the man who has him now.”
Tav snapped his head back. “You don’t understand—”
“Devlin Walsh and I…” I had to think how to word this, “…are old acquaintances.”
Tav stared at me like he’d never seen me before, his gaze darting all around my face, his brow furrowed.
“Wait, you…you said something last night…” His voice trailed off as his eyes went unfocused for a moment as he tried to sift through his hazy memories.
He shook his head. “I can’t remember, but it doesn’t matter. This isn’t a game, Con—”
His voice cut off on a strangled gasp as I breached him with a finger. “Shit,” he muttered, letting his head fall back. His triceps bulged as he strained. “Fuck.”
I leaned in, lapping up the rivulets of water running down his neck. “I can spend all day in this tub. And that’s what’s going to happen. We’ll stay here, with me inside of you, and you won’t come until I get the whole story. Do you understand?”
He was breathing hard, his chest red from the hot water and his arousal. “Not…playing fair,” he gasped.
“Never said I’d play fair. That guy in your movie dipped his fists in nails to fight. I’m using my fingers in your ass. You tell me which is most effective?”
He chuckled and then abruptly grunted as I placed a second finger into his ass along with the first. I pumped in and out slowly, staying away from his prostate. “Tell me why you’re fighting for Devlin.”
Tav lifted his head, his eyes swirling with colors. “No one knows the truth but me and Devlin. I kept it that way to keep people alive.”
I was going to kill Devlin with my bare hands. “What you said doesn’t leave this room, Tav.”
“No.” His voice cracked. “I won’t. I can’t.”
“You will—”
“Tie me,” he gasped, and the words seemed to surprise him as much as me. “Tie me or I can’t do this. I need… I need—”
“You need me to make you,” I whispered.
He exhaled, the tension in his shoulders easing as he realized he was understood. “Yeah, I need you to make me.”
I was out of the tub in a flash, dripping water all over the floor as I padded into my bedroom and closet.
I grabbed the first tie I saw, a solid red one.
When I returned to the bathroom, his hands were still gripped on the bar, his gaze locked on the tie.
I made quick work of tying his wrists together and then around the bar.
Then I slipped the end into his palm. “You can tug and fight all you want, and the tie won’t come loose.
But if you pull that end, the tie will unravel.
I won’t tie you up in a way you can’t get out.
Not right now. Don’t ask me to do that.”
His breath rasped out of him, and I swore I heard a whispered thanks as I slipped back into the tub, adding some more lube to my fingers, and went back to work. I didn’t take it easy on him as I immediately slid three fingers inside. He moaned and his eyes fell closed.
I repeated the last question. “Tell me why you fight for Devlin, Tav.”
He licked his lips, then opened his eyes again. He tugged on the rope, and I could see the panic in the tense lines of his face, not from the bonds, but from being forced to spill his secrets. His gaze locked with mine. “My sister was fucking his brother Dennis.”
Dennis. Just the name of Devlin’s older half-brother had my whole body going cold, because I already feared where this story was heading.
“She met him at the same gym I trained at. I hated the fucker, but my sister was independent. Said she could take care of herself. And then she got pregnant.” Tav’s eyes went hard.
The muscles in his neck corded, and I was glad I tied him up, because he might have put a fist through a wall or the tile of the tub ledge.
“I overheard him talking to his brother—fucking Devlin—and turns out Dennis was married. I didn’t know and neither did my sister.
So Dennis planned to…” Tav yanked on the tie, hard, and growled low in his chest, “get rid of her. Fucker was going to kill her. I didn’t tell her, because how the fuck was I supposed to tell her that her boyfriend was going to kill her?
I trailed him one night, got him alone in an alley.
He ran his mouth and I… I lost it. Fucking lost it. Beat him up and then strangled him.”
I forced myself not to shake. “Strangled him?”
Tav’s gaze was tortured. Pained. In agony. “He fought back, and I knew it was either going to be him or me. I didn’t mean to, but… I killed him. I made sure the one who walked out of that alley was me.”
Killed him.
I wanted to drop my head to be able to hide a reaction from Tav, but I refused to break the eye contact with him in this moment where he was vulnerable. I’d forced this out of him, so I’d be with him in the moment.
I had known Dennis was killed. The rumor was that it happened in a mugging gone wrong. And I hadn’t been sad about it. Dennis had always been a fuckhead, and I had always suspected he’d have a short lifespan.
“In case you’re wondering, I don’t regret it,” Tav said, his eyes defiant. “Not one fucking bit. If he crawled out of his grave, I’d do it all over again if it meant keeping my sister alive.”
I didn’t even think before I said, “And I’d be beside you ready to help.” And then I’d add murderer alongside pimp under my list of accomplishments.
Tav blinked. Three fingers were inside of him, but I didn’t dare withdraw them. He was taking strength from me, sucking it right out of me with those eyes locked on mine. He needed me. Needed this. So I gave it all to him.
“You would?” he said softly.
“Yes,” I answered.
He shifted his hips and watched me for a minute then continued talking.
“Devlin found out it was me. I don’t know how.
Got six of his guys to beat me up. I’m a trained mixed martial arts fighter.
Almost went pro before all this shit went down, but even I couldn’t take on six guys.
They almost killed me. Devlin kept me in a basement for a while.
” Another yank on the ropes. “Tied up. I thought I was going to lose my mind. I thought they killed my sister, and she’s all I ever cared about. She was all I had.”
Tied up. That was why he’d reacted so poorly when I’d tried to tie him and leave him. Fucking Devlin caused that and had left deep-seated trauma.
His muscles relaxed some then, like he was losing steam.
I shifted closer to him and slipped in a fourth finger.
His eyes fired, his hips worked a little, and then he found his voice again.
“He told me I had to fight. If I didn’t, he’d kill my sister and the baby in her belly.
I had no money, no choice. So I gave everything up that I had and I went off the grid.
Underground. And to rub it in, to further fuck up my life, he told my sister I got into drugs and killed her boyfriend for no reason.
He forbids me to have contact with her. So I’ve been fighting for Devlin for five years for my sister who thinks I’m a drug-addicted murderer. I’ve never met my nephew.”
I hated Devlin with every single cell in my body.
He’d ruined Tav’s life, his sister’s life.
What choice had Tav had, really? Let his sister be killed?
Devlin would have found them if they ran.
It was then I made the mistake of dropping my head and cutting off eye contact. But I needed a fucking minute and—
Suddenly Tav’s body jerked, and water splashed toward the edges of the tub.
I nearly lost my grip on him as he surged forward as much as the tie would allow.
“Are you happy now? Are you fucking happy now?!” His voice boomed on the tile of the bathroom walls and spit flew from his mouth.
“You know everything now, okay? You have it all. Is that what you wanted? To see me wrecked? It wasn’t enough to fuck me, you had to screw with my head? Well fuck you, Conrad! Fuck you!”
If he wasn’t tied to the towel bar, he might have killed me.
He twisted his hips and thrashed his legs, throwing me off him as water sloshed out on the floor.
I fell to the other side of the tub, and my back slammed onto tile.
I gripped the edges to keep myself from falling under as Tav went wild.
The towel bar creaked. Tile dust dropped to the ground.
He was going to pull the damn thing out of the wall.
He was losing his mind and his control as he roared, just like he’d done when he’d been tied to my bed.
I threw myself on top of him, gripping his head as I crashed my lips onto his. He fought the kissing, gnashing his teeth, trying to bite me, but I held on, gripping his hips with my knees, using my weight to settle his body.
It wasn’t easy. Tav was stronger than me, and I wondered what kind of destruction he could do if he’d had use of his arms. Eventually he calmed, stilled, his body vibrating under mine. I kissed harder now, daring to slip my tongue between those teeth that had been so eager to snap at me earlier.
Tav let me, kissing me back like he wanted to drink from me.
He was hard between my legs, grinding into me. It was awkward, but I managed to lift his legs, gain purchase on the bottom of the tub, and enter him with my own hardness. His hole was slick with the lube from my fingers, and he let out a strangled cry as I took him bare to the hilt.
And fuck, he felt amazing. Hot and tight, nearly molten compared to the cooling water surrounding us.
His walls rippled around me as he threw his head back, his knees bobbing on the surface of the depleted water.
I gripped his thighs, spreading him wide, and stared through the water as my cock plunged into his stretched hole.
The water splashed around us, and Tav grunted with each thrust. I angled his one leg higher on my hip, and when he cried out, I knew I’d hit his prostate.
“That’s it, Tav.” I dug my fingers into his skin. “Trust me to know what you need. Always.”
“Fuck, Con,” he turned his head into his biceps, mouth open against his skin, eyes squeezed shut as his body jolted with each of my savage thrusts. “Fuck, please come. Wanna feel you.”
I reached between us, and it only took a couple of tugs on his shaft before his cock kicked between us, spilling milky white cum into the water between us.
I pulled out just before my cock pulsed, my own cum mixing with his in the water between us.
I dropped my face into his neck, whispering his name, his real one, against his skin.
I let his knees drop. He hadn’t pulled on the end of the tie, so I peeled back his fingers and tugged until the fabric fell from his wrists.
I dropped it over the side of the tub, and it made a wet smack on the drenched floor.
I rubbed Tav’s wrists, his arms, his shoulders.
He watched me in silence, his body passive and at rest. His eyes were barely open.
When he spoke, his voice was rough. “Did I hurt you?”
The tense altercations with him, from the time he lost it over the ropes to today in the bathtub, might have given me a bruise or two, but not in the way it mattered to me.
Those felt like occupational hazards, like a part of the job when dealing with a fresh and new stallion who was just learning how to be a part of a herd.
I didn’t look at him, my eyes on his wrists. “No.”
He paused for a moment. “Were you worried I’d hurt you?”
I met his gaze and spoke honestly. “No. I wasn’t worried. You said you’d never hurt me. And I know that’s still true.”
He rested his forehead on my shoulder and wrapped his arms around my waist. The last of the tension in his body left on a giant exhale that fluttered the surface of the water. “Yeah, Con. It’s still true. It’ll always be true.”