Chapter Nine Jace
Two days pass.
I compile the intelligence from Whitmore into a dossier that reads like a roadmap of Moore's corruption.
Bank accounts in Cyprus, shell companies in the Caymans, a network of handlers and facilitators that spans three continents.
Names, dates, amounts. Everything Abernathy needs to justify keeping Elliot alive.
Everything I need to keep Webb at bay.
But something has changed in the apartment. A tension that wasn't there before. Elliot moves differently around me now. Watches me from corners. Flinches when I reach for anything, even a coffee cup.
He's afraid of me.
Good, I told him. You should be.
I meant it. I still mean it. But there's a new variable in my calculations, something that registers as discomfort when I see him pressed against the wall as I pass, eyes tracking my hands like they're weapons.
They are weapons. He's right to watch them.
But I find myself wishing he wouldn't.
On the third night, I wake to the sound of crying.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just quiet, choked sobs leaking through the wall between his room and the hallway where I've been sleeping in the chair.
Pushing my door open, I stand, cross to his room, listen. The crying continues, punctuated by ragged breaths that sound like they're being torn out of him.
I should leave him. Sleep is a healing process. Interruption can compound trauma rather than alleviate it.
I open the door anyway.
He's curled on the bed, knees to chest, face buried in the pillow. The sheets are tangled around his legs like restraints. His whole-body shakes with each sob.
"Elliot."
He freezes. The crying stops, replaced by the controlled stillness of someone who's learned that noise brings punishment.
"I'm sorry," he whispers into the pillow. "I'll be quiet. I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize." I cross to the bed, sit on the edge. The mattress dips under my weight. "What happened?"
He doesn't answer. Doesn't move. Just lies there, trembling, waiting for whatever comes next.
I reach out. Hesitate. My hand hovers over his shoulder, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his skin.
"Elliot. Look at me."
He turns his head. His face is wet, eyes red and swollen, lips bitten raw. He looks broken. More broken than the day I took him from the auction.
"I can't stop imagining it," he says. His voice is barely a whisper. "The warehouse. The screaming. Your hands covered in blood." He squeezes his eyes shut. "And then it shifts, and it's Moore's hands, and I'm back in the basement, and I can't—I can't—"
His breathing hitches. He's spiraling, caught between past and present, unable to distinguish one trauma from another.
I do something I've never done before.
I lie down beside him.
The bed is too small for the both of us. My body presses against his back, arm draped over his waist, chest against his spine. I can feel his heart hammering through his ribs, rapid and arrhythmic.
"Breathe," I say against his hair. "In. Hold. Out."
He tries. The first breath comes out shaky, more sob than air. The second is better. The third is almost controlled.
"You're safe," I say. "You're in my apartment. No one is going to hurt you."
"You hurt people." His voice is small. "You hurt that man."
"Yes."
"You could hurt me."
"I won't."
"How do I know that?"
I don't have an answer. Nothing I say will erase what he saw, what he heard, what he now understands about the thing that's been protecting him.
So I don't use words.
I press my lips to the back of his neck. Soft. Brief. A point of contact that has nothing to do with violence.
He goes rigid against me. Every muscle locks.
"What are you doing?" he whispers.
"I don't know." The honesty surprises me. "Tell me to stop and I will."
He's quiet for a long moment. I feel his pulse gradually slow, his body gradually soften against mine.
"Don't stop," he says.
I kiss his neck again. Longer this time. My lips drag across his skin, trace the line of his spine, settle in the hollow behind his ear.
He shivers. Not from fear.
"Jace." My name comes out broken, desperate. "I need—I can't stop thinking about—"
"What do you need?"
"Make it go away." He turns in my arms, faces me. His eyes are wild, wet, pleading. "The memories. The hands. Every time I close my eyes, I'm back there. I need you to—" He swallows. "Replace it. Give me something else to feel."
I understand what he's asking. The psychology is simple: overwrite trauma with new sensation. Use the body to reset the mind.
It's a valid therapeutic technique. I've seen it used in Foundry reconditioning, though the applications there were considerably less consensual.
"Do you know what you’re asking?" I ask.
"No." He laughs, hollow and desperate. "Yes. I don’t know.
But I know I can't keep living in that basement.
I can't keep feeling his hands every time I try to sleep.
" He reaches up, touches my face. His fingers are trembling.
"Your hands are different. You're different.
Even when you're terrifying, you're—" He stops.
Tries again. "You don't lie about what you are.
Moore smiled while he hurt me. You don't smile at all. "
I process this. File it. Calculate the risks and benefits.
The calculation takes 0.3 seconds.
"Tell me to stop," I say, "and I stop. Immediately. No questions. No consequences. Do you understand?"
He nods.
"Say it."
"If I say stop, you stop."
"Good." I roll him onto his back, settle my weight over him. Pin his wrists above his head with one hand. "Now tell me what you need."
His breath catches. His pupils dilate. Under me, I feel his body respond, hardening against my thigh.
"I need you to make me forget," he whispers. "I don't care how."
I don't start gentle.
Gentle is what Moore did. Gentle is the soft voice and the careful hands that preceded hours of calculated agony. Gentle is a lie, and Elliot has had enough lies.
Smashing my lips to his, I force his mouth open, taking what I want without asking. He moans against my lips, body arching up to meet mine. I tighten my grip on his wrists, feel the bones grind together, and he gasps but doesn't pull away.
"More," he breathes when I break for air. "Please. More."
I release his wrists, grab the hem of his shirt, yank it over his head. His chest is pale, ribs visible under the skin, scattered with old scars. I run my hands down his sides, feeling him shudder, then rake my nails back up hard enough to leave red lines.
He cries out. The sound is nothing like the screams from the warehouse. This is sharp, surprised, edged with something that sounds like relief.
"Again," he says. "Do it again."
I do. Harder this time. He writhes under me, hands clutching at my shoulders, hips grinding up against mine. I can feel how hard he is through the thin fabric of his pants, can feel the wet spot spreading where he's leaking.
Grabbing his chin, I force his head to the side, and bite down on his neck. Not gentle. Not careful. Hard enough to bruise, hard enough to mark, hard enough that he'll feel it for days.
He screams. His body jerks, then goes slack, then pushes up against me, demanding more.
"Jace." My name is a prayer and a plea. "Jace, please, I need—"
"I know what you need, let me do what I do best."
Pants, underwear, everything gone in seconds. He's fully hard, flushed and leaking, trembling on the sheets. I stare at him for a moment: the jut of his hipbones, the hollow of his stomach, the way his cock twitches under my gaze.
Then I flip him over.
He gasps as I push him face-down into the mattress, hand on the back of his neck, pressing him into the pillow. I yank his hips up with my other hand, positioning him on his knees, ass in the air, completely exposed.
"Stay," I say.
He stays. He doesn't move, doesn't speak, barely breathes. Just waits, trembling, for whatever I decide to give him.
I reach for the nightstand. There's water-based lube in the drawer—I put it there three days ago, anticipating this possibility with the same clinical detachment I bring to everything.
I slick my fingers, press one against his hole without warning, and push inside.
He cries out into the pillow. His body clenches around me, tight and hot and resisting.
"Breathe," I say. "Push out."
He tries. I feel him relax by degrees, feel his body start to accept the intrusion. I add a second finger, scissoring them apart, stretching him open without worrying about being gentle. He will take me because I demand it.
"Jace—fuck—Jace—"
"You can take more." I add a third finger, twisting them, searching for the spot that will make him fall apart.
I find it. He screams.
His whole body convulses, cock jerking, leaking a stream of clear fluid onto the sheets. I press against the spot again, hard, and he sobs, fingers clawing at the mattress.
"Please," he begs. "Please, fuck, fuck. Take me. Just fuck me until I can’t breathe.”
I withdraw my fingers. He whimpers at the loss, empty and open and desperate.
I strip off my clothes in seconds and position myself behind him, line up, press the head of my cock against his hole.
"Last chance," I say. "Tell me to stop."
"Don't you fucking dare stop."
I push inside.
He's tight, but I don’t stop. He asked for pain, pain he shall get.
Impossibly tight, even with the prep, his body gripping me like a fist. He tenses, choked sounds forcing their way out his mouth as I bottom out, every inch of me buried in his heat.
I don't give him time to adjust.
I pull back and slam in again, setting a brutal pace that rocks the bed frame against the wall. He cries out with every thrust, sounds that might be pain or pleasure or both, his hands fisting in the sheets, his face turned to the side so I can see his expression.
His eyes are closed. His mouth is open. Tears stream down his cheeks, mixing with sweat and drool.
He looks destroyed.
He looks beautiful.