Aftercare for Monsters
NICO
The shower in my bathroom at Blackthorne cost more than my rent.
It had multiple heads, storm-gray tile, and water that turned hot the second I touched the handle, as if the house had already decided I needed it. I stood under the spray until the heat worked into my shoulders and the steam made the room small enough to breathe in.
I pressed my forehead to the tile and told myself I was fine.
The bloodstone sat on the bathroom counter where I had left it. I had taken it off before stepping into the shower, though I could not remember deciding to. Even across the room, I could feel it waiting there, quiet and patient and impossible to ignore.
I turned off the water.
I dragged the towel over my hair and thought several uncharitable things about ancient vampires with god complexes and perfect bone structure.
Drake was asleep on the windowsill, one paw hanging over the edge, his tail twitching through whatever dream cats had in supernatural mansions. I envied him with my whole chest.
I wrapped the towel around my hips, picked up the bloodstone without looking at it, and set it on the nightstand beside the bed.
Mateo was in the armchair in the corner. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his face carefully blank, which was how I knew he had been sitting there making himself guilty.
When I stepped out, his eyes moved to my shoulders, then to my wrists, then to the bruising along the inside of my forearms.
His jaw tightened.
“Don’t,” I said.
He looked up. “I haven’t said anything.”
“Your face is writing a whole tragic novella.”
I crossed to the bed, sat on the edge of it, and stared at the rug. I tried to locate which version of myself I was going to be for this conversation.
“I'm sorry,” Mateo said.
“I know.”
“That's not...” He stopped, and tried again. “What happened in there. I followed an order, and I'm not going to pretend it was nothing, or that you were fine the whole time, or that Draco having that kind of...” He exhaled hard through his nose. “I should've checked in more.”
I looked at him a moment, then looked at the rug. “You're not the only one who owes an apology here. I'm sorry for running. For putting you in front of Draco's temper.”
He leaned against the doorframe like it might need the help holding itself up. “You think that's the part that scared me?”
“It should've. He looked like he wanted to peel you.”
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged, and the size of him made even that look like work. “He's wanted to peel me since the day he put me on payroll. I'm used to Draco. What I'm not used to is turning around to find a door still swinging and a whole lot of nothing where you'd been standing.”
That one landed under the ribs. “I didn't think. I just went.”
“I know. That's the part of the job nobody warns you about.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Babysitting's easy. It's when you start actually giving a shit that it gets hard.”
I looked at him standing there, big and rumpled and too honest for the room. “You barely know me.”
“Don't have to know somebody long to know they're worth not losing.”
I didn't have anything for that, and Drake saved me, stretching along the windowsill and yawning wide enough to show off every tooth he owned.
“See, him I'd lose on purpose,” Mateo said.
I laughed before I could stop it, and the worst of the night finally let go of my chest. Outside, the sky had gone bruised purple and old gold where the city threw its light up at the clouds.
“The fitting room,” I said, before I could talk myself out of it, and Mateo went still. “Not talking about it is making it weird, and it happened, so I'm going to talk about it. Though I'm not sorry it happened.”
“Neither am I. Figured you'd want to pretend it didn't, so I wasn't going to be the one to bring it up.”
“I need you to be straight with me.” I turned the ring on my finger while I worked out how to ask. “Was it a job? Did Draco put you up to it?”
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and looked at me.
“Draco told me to give you whatever you wanted the same day he handed me the job.
Said it plain, like he was reading off a grocery list. So yeah, the order's real, and I'm not going to sit here and pretend it isn't. But being allowed to want isn't the same as being told to do it, and what happened in that room wasn't me following orders.
If it had been, I'd have stood there like a piece of furniture and let it happen to you, and that's not what I did, and you know it's not.”
I let that settle. Drake watched the both of us from the windowsill like he was charging admission for it.
“Yeah,” I said finally. “I think I know the difference.”
“Good.” He held the look. “You want me to leave?”
“No,” I said.
He came off the chair slowly, crossed the rug, and stopped in front of me with his hands loose at his sides, giving me the room to change my answer. I looked up at his face, the amber still faint in his eyes. I closed the space and kissed him.
He made a low sound against my mouth and kissed back hard.
His hands didn't go for the towel. They went to my hips and gripped through the terrycloth. My calves hit the edge of the mattress, and I didn't sit. I pulled him closer instead, my hands going up to his shoulders, the heavy muscle there shifting under my palms.
He tasted like mint and that warm musk that came off him in the cold of the house.
He kissed me deep and my knees stopped being a reliable concept.
I groaned and tipped my head back to give him room, and his hand left my hip, fisted in my wet hair, and pulled, baring my throat, and his mouth came down on the side of my neck.
He bit. Not a nip. A hard blunt scrape of teeth right over the pulse, where my heart was going like it wanted out of me.
“Fuck,” I got out.
He pushed a thigh between mine, and rolled his hips forward, and even through the towel and the denim the hard line of him dragged against me and the spark of it went straight up my spine.
His hands went down my bare back, thumbs pressing into the dip of my spine just above the towel. I fumbled at his shirt buttons with hands that had stopped taking instructions, got two of them undone, gave up, grabbed the front of it, and hauled him flush against me.
“Nico,” he said into my collarbone, and his hand came around front and cupped me through the fold of the towel, his thumb dragging rough over the head of my cock through the cloth, and I arched into it with my breath gone to pieces.
He kissed me again and I got lost in it.
Then, the door opened.
We froze. Mateo’s hand stopped its rhythmic pressure, his mouth lingering a fraction of an inch from mine.
Rowan was in the doorway. His eyes were locked dead on us.
The air in the room instantly grew thick, heavy with the sudden, overwhelming scent of two predators in an enclosed space. Mateo didn't step back. He kept his body flush against mine, his hand still resting heavily over my groin, but he turned his head slowly to look at the doorway.
“Up to you,” Mateo said. His voice was a low, gravelly rasp that did absolutely nothing to help my heart rate.
“Lock the door,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady.
Rowan reached behind him and locked the door. He didn't rush forward. Instead, he took two slow steps into the room, his gaze dropping from my face to where Mateo’s hand was still heavily cupping my groin through the towel.
With agonizing slowness, Rowan reached down to his own waistband.
He popped the button of his dark trousers.
He reached inside and pulled himself free.
He was already rock-hard, a thick, heavy length of veined flesh that jutted out aggressively, the blunt head glistening with a bead of pre-come.
He wrapped his massive, calloused hand around his own shaft and began to stroke, slow and rhythmic, his glowing eyes fixed entirely on us.
The sight of it sent a violent jolt of electricity straight to my core. My knees buckled slightly.
Mateo felt it. He let out a low, feral sound, a growl that vibrated right through my chest. He didn't look back at Rowan.
“You like that?” Mateo murmured, his voice a rough, gravelly scrape against my ear. He ground his hips forward, pinning me harder against the edge of the mattress. “You like him watching?”
“Fuck, Mateo,” I gasped, my hips instinctively jerking against his hand.
“I need you still,” Mateo said. He reached down to his side, his fingers catching the edge of a dark, heavy silk tie he had pulled from his collar earlier and left draped over the chair. He snapped it up in one smooth motion, the fabric wrapping around his knuckles.
“Give me your hands,” Mateo ordered.
I swallowed hard. I lifted my hands and offered them to him.
He caught both my wrists in one large hand, pulling them together.
He wrapped the silk tie around them, pulling it taut.
The fabric was soft, but the knot he tied was absolute, binding my wrists tightly together.
He didn't secure me to the bedpost. He just bound me, rendering my hands useless, leaving me entirely at his mercy.
“Good boy,” Mateo praised, the words sending a hot, humiliating thrill straight to my groin.
He shoved me backward. I hit the mattress hard, bouncing once, my bound hands falling awkwardly against my chest. Mateo followed me down immediately, caging me in with his knees.
He grabbed the edges of my towel, yanking it roughly to the sides, exposing me completely to the cool air and the burning heat of their gazes.
I was a mess. My cock was dark red and weeping, jumping against my stomach with every erratic beat of my heart. Mateo looked down at me, his chest heaving, his hands planted flat on the mattress on either side of my head.
From the foot of the bed, the wet, rhythmic sound of Rowan stroking his own cock filled the room.