Alexei #2
“Son of a bitch,” he spits, but the insult is a compliment. “You love this, don’t you? It makes you hard as fuck to know that I’m your little bitch, right?”
I like it so much that his words repeat in my head like a prayer.
I press a bruise with my thumb, and Griffin’s body arches, the pain and pleasure indistinguishable in the sound he makes. I feel that, if I ordered him, he would crawl on the floor, laughing, proud.
I correct the angle, look for a new spot, and his whole body shudders, the extreme tension collapsing into spasms of pleasure.
“That’s it,” he moans, “there.” He repeats the word like a litany, a mantra, a password.
The last vestige of control vanishes, and need takes over. I clench my jaw, force possession, cup my hand at the base of his nape again.
The rhythm is brutal, paced only by the need to mark territory, to make it clear that, from there, there is no more room for doubt about who won.
“That’s it,” he moans, his voice melted, “show me who’s boss...”
I squeeze every bruise, rekindle the memory of all the blows of this night, and he groans louder, reverberating throughout the entire apartment, maybe the entire floor, and I don’t care if anyone hears. I want them to hear.
The thrusts become faster, stronger. I hold Griffin by the hair, pull his head back until his neck is exposed—I sink my teeth into his hot skin, and he roars.
The rest of the world disappears. There is only the blind certainty that, at that moment, I am everything he has and everything he wants.
We are both lost in this now—he is a fire that I started and that now threatens to consume me completely.
“Look at me,” I order. He turns his head, and his eyes meet mine in the reflection of the window. The pain is gone from his face, replaced by an expression of ecstasy.
I want him to break, and I know he’s close—I feel his body start to lose the battle, I feel his legs trembling, the spasms increasing. He groans my name, not once, but several times, each time louder, each time more urgent.
I squeeze harder. I want him to remember me for weeks.
He trembles, the muscles in his thighs contract.
“Alexei, I’m going to—“
“No,” I cut in. The power of the imperative is all I have left now, and I discover that I can squeeze Griffin to the exact limit, holding him on the edge of the abyss, where desire becomes agony and agony, perfect obedience. “Not yet. You’ll cum when I tell you to.”
I slow down drastically, almost stopping, and the sound of protest he makes is the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard. I torture him, moving slowly, dragging out the pleasure.
The words of supplication that form in Griffin’s mouth are wet and disarmed, devoid of the ironic veneer that protects his pride. “Please,” he begs. “Alexei... please, I need to...”
“Need what?” I demand against his ear. “Say it. Say what you need.”
He hesitates, his breath held. And then, he gives in. “I need to cum... I need you to let me cum, please.”
“Ask properly,” I whisper, and when I feel the tremor in his body, I know I’ve touched the exact point of collapse.
“Sir,” he moans, in a whisper so low it could be mistaken for an obscene prayer. “Fuck... please, sir, make me cum...”
The blood rushes, a foolish wave of euphoria washes away any rationality.
I increase it. The rhythm, the friction, the violence of what I force myself to do.
I pull Griffin against my body, hold his wrists tightly, imprint on his ribs and hips the kind of marking that doesn’t disappear in a day or two.
I want him to be an unfinished work for weeks, with fresh scars to remind him with every movement who he serves now.
“Good boy,” I allow, and I feel his body shudder, the last resistance crumbling in an instant.
I pour myself inside him at the exact moment he groans, torn, staining the wall.
We stay like this, frozen. My hands are still clasped around Griffin’s waist, but I feel his heat as a reminder that, no matter how much I try to transcend it, I am a slave to the same flesh.
The fury is dissolved in spasms of pleasure and pain. There is only a sudden, childish fear of not knowing what to do next.
I pull away from him.
Griffin loses his footing and falls, sliding down the wall. He hits the floor on his knees first, then his arms hang heavy—only his chest rises and falls, panting, the effort of breathing now new and painful.
The sight of him, so raw and exposed, causes me deep discomfort. It is an intimacy that I didn’t seek, a consequence of my loss of control.
My first instinct is to restore minimal order.
I compose myself. I adjust my clothes back in place. I avoid looking at him. Every second of silence exposes the disaster of what I have just done.
He says nothing.
I walk to the counter, strangely unstable, and pour myself another shot of vodka. I down it in one gulp. The alcohol burns, but it doesn’t purify.
Griffin is still on the floor, but now he is looking at me. His eyes don’t lose focus; they don’t look away. It’s as if he’s studying me, looking for something that neither he nor I can define.
“Get up,” I order. My voice comes out sharp, much more so than necessary. I break his gaze before he does.
For a moment, I think he’s going to challenge me, but he moves.
With each movement, Griffin seems to be relearning how to use his own body: his arms rest on the wall, his legs tremble, his face contorts into a grimace that is more contempt than pain.
He pulls up his pants as if it makes no difference, leaves the button open, deliberately exposes the failure of his composure.
I see the blood drying at the corner of his mouth, the red-marked skin where my nails dug in, and yet, what stands out most is the clarity of his eyes. He looks at me like he won, somehow, just by still existing whole.
“Give me a shot,” he says, hoarse.
I hesitate longer than I’d like to admit.
My hands, which minutes ago were crushing Griffin’s dignity until he turned to dust, now tremble almost imperceptibly.
The domestic ritual of alcohol becomes a kind of truce: I pour another glass, place it on the marble island between us.
Griffin maneuvers his devastated body to the counter.
He takes the glass with his left hand—always the left, I realize—and empties it at once.
The air is saturated with something else now. It’s no longer the feverish sexual tension; it is something quieter, more dangerous. It’s the knowledge of what happened, and the uncertainty of what it means.
I lost control. He made me lose control. And we both know it.
I could easily let him go and sort himself out, but the image of him arching under my hands still pulses in my synapses. I feel a foolish urge to apologize, which disgusts me. I never learned to deal with guilt. Only to contain it until it explodes.
“Turn around,” I order.
Griffin raises an eyebrow. A glimmer of his usual defiance returns. “Haven’t we had that part of the night already?”
“Turn,” I repeat, walking around the island. Griffin hesitates, but spins the revolving stool, showing me his back.
He is all torn, wounded by glass, blows, and painted with dried blood and recent bruises. Still, there is a raw beauty in the alignment of his spine, in his broad shoulders, in the way he doesn’t allow himself to shrink.
I go to where I abandoned the first aid kit before I lost control.
I place it on the island. I soak gauze in antiseptic and touch the first scratch on his back.
Griffin shudders all over, but makes no sound. He is so proud that he turns every gesture of care into a new battlefield. I clean the dried blood, press the gauze around the wounds. He doesn’t back down. I feel his breath quicken, but he holds on tight to the counter.
“You’re impulsive to the point of stupidity,” I murmur.
He laughs humorlessly. “And you’re a control freak dictator. We’ll call it a draw on that one.”
I apply gauze and ointment to his ribs, where a purplish bruise is growing under the skin.
“You knew what you were getting into when you took me out of that arena,” he says, lower.
“I was acquiring a weapon. Not a natural disaster.”
“Too bad for you. You ended up with both.”
I feel the area with less hard fingers, feeling the heat rising between us. Griffin grinds his teeth and doesn’t complain.
“You gave me what I needed,” I admit. “The information about Seraphim... it was crucial.”
His silence is an answer in itself.
I could ask if he’s okay, but Griffin would hate that. Instead, I give his shoulder an affectionate pat when I’m done.
He turns on the stool and looks at me from below, challenging authority with every cell in his body.
“Happy now?” he says.
“No,” I reply. “But less angry, maybe.”
He smiles, tired. He already expected that answer.
I don’t know what to do with this. I guess I never did.
The silence Griffin leaves in the air is like a line stretched to the breaking point—and I, who have always prided myself on being the man who never trembles, feel my fingers waver when I close the zipper of the first aid kit.
He watches me with a quiet disdain, but his eyes—clear, never passive—betray an expectation that verges on the absurd. There is no longer any neutral ground between us, and that terrifies me in a way I would never admit out loud.
I still hear, like an echo, the sound of his voice pleading between moans, the way “sir” escaped him as a necessity. That should give me pleasure, or at least the dry comfort of restored dominance. Yet, the feeling is a deep, nauseating discomfort.
I look at him, at his destroyed body, at the thin, cheap chain that swings on his chest and the St. Michael medallion—ridiculous, meaningless.
It doesn’t fit Griffin, who is made of exposed nerves and primary aggression, but there it is: a reminder of a life that doesn’t belong to me, a weakness impossible to accept.
The object irritates me, perhaps because it’s the only thing on his body that I didn’t put there.
“That’s his,” I say.