Chapter 7 Quinn
Quinn
Soft lips kiss down Quinn’s spine, sending tingles of pleasure to the tips of his fingers. A hot, wet tongue licks at the dimples above his ass, and he can’t help but rub his softening dick against the bed.
He could easily go another round, but Soren never stays with him long.
Both of them are afraid that this will stick—that this time, one of them will give in to the urge to bite, bonding them together forever.
“You smell so fucking good here,” Soren murmurs, nose pressed into the top of Quinn’s tailbone.
“I smell like you.” Sweet heliotropes and musk. Quinn clenches his internal muscles so he can feel Soren’s come leak from his sore hole, just to hear Soren groan.
“Like ambrosia. Up a bit…let me—” Quinn pops his ass up so Soren can get at his hole, sucking at his rim and using the soft flat of his tongue to clean up his load. “Turn over, want to taste you, too. It was too long this time.”
Quinn knows Soren doesn’t mean for it to come out so soft and sweet. Soren wouldn’t reveal his soft underbelly if he’d been thinking with more than his dick, but it still makes Quinn smile to himself.
It had been three weeks since he’d last let Soren fuck him. Not because Quinn enjoys being an asshole—he does—but because Quinn likes this too damn much. Loves the aching pleasure, the fiery release—what gets him most is the aftercare. The way Soren turns gentle. Sweet.
And that is the problem.
Quinn doesn’t do gentle and sweet. Doesn’t want to miss Soren when he goes, or be missed when Quinn finally clears out of Nashville. He’d meant it when he said Soren never stays long, and if he’s honest, Quinn doesn’t either.
In that way, they are alike at least.
There’s a familiar ache at the thought, but he pushes it down because Quinn is going.
Any day now.
The chaos of New York has been calling, and Quinn knows his wanderlust won’t be far behind.
It’s his favorite place to disappear—into motion, into strangers, into the thrum of a city that’s spent more of its life changing than ever staying the same.
He’s never found a place that felt less like home. That’s exactly why he loves it.
Quinn does as he’s bidden, rolling onto his back in the late afternoon sun. The ache in his lower back will make dancing tonight more difficult, but it will be a welcome relief from thinking about this afternoon and what comes next.
Easier to focus on what’s right in front of him.
The man between his legs is a work of art, there’s no other way to say it, and Quinn has always been a man to call it as he sees it.
Soren is six-foot-three and made entirely of lean muscle—like his body was carved to move, not just to fight. He recently shaved his head, but silver-blond stubble has already returned, dusting his perfectly shaped skull like the first frost on winter stone.
It’s a stark, almost deliberate contrast to his eyes: light green, unnervingly bright, burning with something that doesn’t feel natural.
They always seem to see more of Quinn than he’s ready to share.
And somehow, without speaking, they keep telling Quinn things he’s certain Soren would never willingly admit.
Mischief flickers in his gaze as he locks eyes with Quinn, tongue sliding a stripe up his hardening cock. “You have a pretty dick, Blaze.”
You’re a pretty dick, Quinn thinks, but doesn’t say it. “You suckin’ it or writin’ it a sonnet?” he says instead, but it comes out as more of a plea than he’d like.
“Made you come twice already. Don’t be greedy.” Soren runs his nose down the side and sets his teeth into Quinn’s knot for a second. “Besides, you don’t do seconds.”
He’s right. Quinn doesn’t do second times. Or repeats. With one—obvious—exception, and the bastard knows it.
Quinn’s fucked plenty—and been fucked by even more. He’d liked some of them, enjoyed most. But not enough to want them to stay. Or enough to make him want to.
Until Soren found him in that alley behind The Glory Hole post-shift, sweaty and sore. Quinn had come out the staff door to find Soren leaning against a piss-stained wall.
It’s a fucking cliché, but time had stopped.
It had only started again when Soren pulled out that battered metal lighter, flipped it open with a snap.
Quinn can still hear it. Still smell the Black Devil Cherry smoke curling through the alley, wrapping around the sticky-sweet scent of heliotrope and heat and something neither of them had been willing to name.
Soren had stepped in close, breathed deeply, then he’d whispered, “Wanna fuck?”
It had been the best Quinn had ever felt, cheek pressed up against that wall, even with the tears on his cheeks and Soren’s teeth piercing the shoulder of Quinn’s hoodie.
They’d known they were mates—how could they not? Fated, probably, with how hard Quinn has to work not to bite him, or beg him to do the same. Or with how Quinn hasn’t been able to walk away.
He’s not sure why it hurts to think about it.
If it’s because Weres aren’t made to love and leave a mate, or because Soren doesn’t seem to care either way.
It aches in a place Quinn only feels when Soren’s shirtless, drinking his lemon tea, cigarette dangling from his fingers, and bare feet perched on the roof’s edge.
It aches when he hums along with the bakery’s endless stream of Top 100 Pop music—out of tune, all the lyrics wrong.
And when he shows up broken and bleeding, fresh from a fight. Always from protecting the only thing he seems to care about.
Quinn’s hips buck up, and Soren is on him—mouth hot and hungry, tongue dragging a line up the underside of his dick like he’s starving for it.
“Fuck. Ren—” he gasps, hand sliding to cup the back of Soren’s head.
Soren doesn’t answer. His hands are already anchoring Quinn’s thighs, fingers biting into the curve of muscle, holding him down like Quinn might run. As if he knows Quinn was just thinking about it.
The pleasure is so sharp it burns, lighting Quinn up as streamers of sensation arc outward.
But it’s the admiration—and something else—in Soren’s gaze that pulls him along. That makes him want to run.
He shouldn’t let this happen. Not when every cell in his body sparks mine at the feel of Soren’s mouth sealing around him.
Soren moans low around the head of his cock, and Quinn’s spine bows, the sound branding him deep.
He fists the sheets, teeth gritted, every muscle pulled tight. “This doesn’t mean I’m stayin’,” he gets out, voice wrecked and shaking.
Soren hums. Pulls back just enough to let his breath hit slick skin. “Didn’t ask you to.”
It should feel like a relief, but it doesn’t. Not with Soren looking at him like he would ask…in another life. If things were different. If they were different.
Still, if he ever writes a memoir, Chapter One’s going to be “How Not to Get Dicked into Domesticity.”
And then Soren sinks down again, deeper this time. Just a hard swallow around Quinn’s cock that punches the breath from his lungs.
He chokes on a curse, heels digging into the bed. Heat coils sharp and fast in his gut, too much too soon, but Soren’s not letting up. He’s sucking like a man possessed, like he needs this taste in the back of his throat to survive.
Quinn looks down—and fuck, fuck, the sight of him. Soren’s eyes locked on his, glassy and glowing. Lips stretched obscenely around his cock, spit slicking his chin, the flush on his cheeks spreading like fever.
He’s shaking. As if it’s taking everything he’s got to hold back from the pull of something neither of them is willing to name.
Quinn’s voice breaks. “I’m gonna—”
But Soren just growls and doubles down. Sucks harder. One hand slips lower, thumb dragging behind Quinn’s balls, pressing lightly before slipping in past his rim, the way slicked by his own cooling come.
That’s all it takes.
Quinn comes with a groan that’s almost a sob, hips stuttering, thighs trembling under Soren’s unrelenting grip. Soren swallows, sucking him through it like he wants every last drop. Like he can’t get enough. Will never get enough.
It’s too much.
Quinn sags back, chest heaving, trying to ride the high. His body is humming, loose, and still twitching when Soren licks over the head again, gentle now.
“Wanted to taste you before you dance for them,” Soren murmurs, voice thick and ragged. “Want you to remember you’re—”
He doesn’t finish.
Then—
Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz. The alarm trills from the nightstand.
Soren’s body jerks like it’s been shocked. He wrenches back, already reaching for his phone.
Quinn blinks, disoriented.
Soren checks the screen. Freezes. “I gotta go.”
Quinn was wrong—this thing doesn’t only hurt on soft mornings or those broken nights. It aches when Soren chooses the man who left him over the man who’s right here.
Quinn goes cold. “Connall.”
Soren’s already moving. He drags his jeans up over his hard dick, leaving them unbuttoned as he yanks his shirt over his head. His scarred leather jacket is in one hand, the keys to that old bike jangling too loudly in the silence of Quinn’s place.
“You were just inside me,” Quinn says. He hates that it sounds like a whine. He hates himself for the weakness, for letting it slip past the walls he was sure were ten feet tall and a lifetime thick.
Soren’s face falls, but it doesn’t last. His jaw tightens right after. “I’ll see you later…”
It’s a platitude. One he means to keep…sometime, but only after Connall O’Daire is done with him again.
“Don’t bother,” Quinn says, pulling the quilt over his still-hard dick, hurt fueling the heat in his voice. “Why do you run when he calls? He left you. He doesn’t even want you.”
Doesn’t want us.
It’s cruel. He knows it. Means it to hurt Soren as much as it hurts him.
Soren freezes with his hand on the doorknob. His shoulders drop—but he still doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t take his clothes off. Doesn’t come back to Quinn’s bed and kiss him for the first time.
He doesn’t look back.
And then he’s gone.