Dylan POV
This is wrong. So fucking wrong.
I try to move, to put some distance between us, but Blaze still has me pinned beneath him, his much larger body caging me in. His cock is still buried deep inside me, warm and heavy.
“Go on,” he whispers against my ear, voice low and dangerous. “Say it.”
I have to. It’s the only thing I have left right now. But saying it after everything we just did feels like kicking him while he’s down. I pull away and this time he actually lets me.
“This can’t happen again,” I say quietly, sitting up. “I’m—”
“Yeah, I got it,” Blaze cuts me off, his voice suddenly loud and sharp. “You’re not fucking gay!”
I flinch at the volume. “I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say… I’m meant to be marrying a woman.”
Blaze stares at me for a long second, something dark and frustrated flashing across his face. “Why? How about you give me some actual fucking truth for once, Dylan. Who the hell are you?”
“I’m me,” I whisper.
“Bullshit.” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Even Siren and Lila have no real clue who you are. You disappear every weekend for ‘family stuff.’ You vanish randomly during the week. They don’t know shit about you. Not really.”
My stomach twists. “They said that?”
“No. But it became pretty fucking clear when they couldn’t tell me anything about you. So why, Dylan? Why the hell are you meant to marry a woman?”
I can’t tell him. I can’t tell anyone.
“I just am, Blaze.”
He sighs heavily and stands up, running a hand through his hair. “Then I guess you’re right. This can’t happen again.” He looks down at me, eyes hard. “Go on then. Go get Sasha. Go marry her.”
He leans over me, face inches from mine, voice dropping into something cold and cutting. “Go have that perfect little family. But when you’re lying on your deathbed one day, regretting every single choice you made… that’s on you. Not on me. Not on anyone else.”
I open my mouth, but he keeps going, voice rising.
“You only get one fucking life, Dylan. And you’re wasting it marrying a woman for some stupid fucking reason you won’t even tell me. Religious bullshit, right?”
“It’s not like that,” I whisper.
“No? Then get dressed and get the fuck out.” He turns and storms toward the door. “But don’t think I’m going to sit around waiting for you to figure your shit out.”
The door slams behind him.
I sit there for a minute, chest tight, before forcing myself up. I shower quickly, get dressed, and walk out of the room feeling completely numb.
When I step into the main bar area, I look around, but I don’t see Sasha or Titan anywhere.
“She’s still with Titan,” Blaze mutters from the bar, not even looking at me. “Fourth door on the left. Good luck.”
I should just leave. I know I should. But the anger and humiliation keep my feet moving. She’s been pressuring me for ages about getting married, about meeting my father again, about our future… and now she’s fucking someone else?
I walk down the hall and don’t bother knocking. I just shove the door open.
The moment I do, Titan groans. “Well… this is fun.”
Sasha turns her head. She’s completely naked, straddling Titan’s lap, his cock still buried inside her.
“You’re not even worth it,” I say, voice flat.
Her eyes widen. “Dylan, you have to understand, expecting me to wait until your father approves is crazy.”
“And this is why,” I laugh bitterly. “You couldn’t even wait one fucking month, Sasha. One month. Imagine if we had actually gotten married. You’d probably be screwing bikers left, right, and centre.”
“I wouldn’t say bikers,” Titan mutters with a lazy wink. “I’d say guards.”
My blood runs cold. “You fucking told him?”
Titan just grins. “Hey, I’m not telling anyone, little mafia prince. Not even Blaze, and he begged me to.”
I can’t do this. I can’t fucking do this.
“Forget it,” I say, voice hollow. “Have fun. Keep fucking him.”
I turn and storm out, slamming the door behind me.
Now I have to tell my father that Sasha fucked one of the bikers and I’m back to square one. I need a wife if I want to take over. Maybe me delaying everything is what’s fucking it all up.
I feel sick.
Everything is falling apart.
By the time I finally reach the estate, it’s late. I decided to walk the whole way, taking every possible detour just to delay getting here. My head was a mess the entire time. Nothing is going to plan. Not a single fucking thing.
The second I step inside, my father is waiting in the sitting room, a glass of whiskey in his hand and that sharp, expectant look on his face.
“Any updates?”
Yeah. I have a fucking update.
“Sasha is out,” I say flatly.
He tenses immediately, his eyes narrowing. “What do you mean she’s out? She’s from a good family, Dylan. Fix it.”
“She screwed another guy.” The words taste bitter coming out. “We were at the club last night. I walked in on her fucking him. How the hell would that work if I married her? I’d be gone half the time and she’d be screwing guards, drivers, whoever the fuck else, and whose kids would they even be?”
My father’s jaw tightens. “Who is the guy?”
My body locks up. “Doesn’t matter. He didn’t even know she was in a relationship. She never told him.”
I’m lying through my teeth. Titan knew exactly what he was doing, but the last thing I need is my father starting a war with the club.
“If you’re sure…” He studies me for a long moment, then leans forward. “No need to waste time fixing her anyway. I was actually thinking about this earlier. I was talking to Elliot. I think his daughter could work.”
My stomach drops.
“She’s…” I stop myself, trying not to sound panicked.
“Yeah. Elliot Windsley’s daughter. The senator. What a connection that would be. He’s already agreed to an arranged marriage.”
“No.” The word flies out before I can stop it.
My father’s expression darkens. “What do you mean, no? This was never going to be a marriage of love or feelings, Dylan. You knew that from the beginning. You agreed to it. So what does it matter who the woman is?”
I did agree. But I thought it would be someone unimportant. Someone whose family had money and power, but not enough to destroy us if everything went wrong.
“I just think it’s a risk,” I say carefully. “If anything goes bad, this isn’t some small deal. He’s not a nobody. He could destroy us.”
“No one can destroy us,” my father says dismissively. “He doesn’t have that kind of power.”
“Okay, maybe not destroy us, but he could make our lives hell. Cut off ports, have police doing random checks everywhere —”
“And why would it go bad?” he interrupts. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“When I take over from you, I’m going to be busy. Really busy. She doesn’t seem like the type to sit at home and wait quietly. If she’s anything like her mother, she’ll start causing problems the second I’m not home for dinner.”
My father waves a hand. “She’ll learn. He’ll make sure she understands her role.”
I feel sick. “Can I have more time? To possibly find someone else?”
“It’s too late for that,” he says, shaking his head. “Every woman you’ve tried has gotten cold feet once they found out who you really are. Elliot has already agreed. His daughter has agreed. It’s done.”
Fuck. This can’t be happening.
“How long?” I ask, my voice tight.
“I’m thinking a month. Maybe two.”
Shit.
I won’t be ready. There’s no way in hell I’ll be ready in one or two months.
I swallow hard, trying to keep my face neutral while my entire future feels like it’s collapsing around me.
“Sure.”
I can’t fight it anymore. I’ve been fighting this for years. Since I turned nineteen, I’ve been finding every possible way to delay this, to push it back, and now it’s finally caught up with me.
“You’re going to meet her tomorrow,” my father says. “There’s a table booked at Nescho’s. Get to know her, talk. There is one condition though.”
My body tenses immediately. “What condition? You mean from her or her father? Her father, obviously.” It was a fucking stupid thing to say.
“Actually, her mother.”
What? “Her mum?”
“She’s got maybe two or three years left to live. This marriage ensures she gets to see her daughter get married.”
“So that’s why the rush. I get it, but if she’s only got two or three fucking years, why the hell are we rushing into it in one or two months?”
“No, Dylan, that’s not the condition,” he says, leaning forward. “She wants to see her grandchild before she dies.”
My body tenses hard. “You fucking what?”
“That’s the condition of this. After you meet her tomorrow, you two begin trying for a child.”
I choke on a sharp, bitter laugh. “No.”
“Excuse me?” His glare sharpens, cold and dangerous.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
“I get it,” I say quickly, trying to keep my voice steady. “I get the importance of it, but us fucking instantly just to create a damn child is fucked up. I’m not saying never, but at least give us a few months to actually get to know each other before throwing pregnancy and a child into the mix.”
“Well, I already agreed,” he replies coldly. “If you don’t like that, that’s something you can speak to her about tomorrow because she agreed.”
I can’t get hard for women. I just fucking can’t.
It’s why I keep lying and saying they aren’t ready to get married. It’s why I use getting married as the reason I can’t fuck them. Now I’m faced with the reality that I have to. I have to figure this out and somehow make my body do what it needs to do.
“I’m going to get back to the apartment.
Let me know the time.” I stand up and leave before he can say anything else.
By the time I get back to the apartment, it’s already late.
I walk straight into the bedroom, strip off my clothes, take a long shower, and then just collapse onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling in the dark.
How the fuck am I supposed to do this?
I’ve been trying since I was a teenager. Ever since that one time during sports when a guy had me pinned underneath him and my body reacted in a way it was never supposed to. That was the moment I realised something was seriously wrong with me.
I’ve tried everything.
I never touched myself because I was convinced by some article that my own hand was the problem, that it would be training my brain to think about men if I did.
I took so many cold showers trying to kill the urge that I lost count.
I tried finding God, spent weeks on my knees praying, begging to be normal, to be fixed.
It was more painful than not pleasuring myself at all.
I even tried pain. Every time I caught myself reacting to a man, I’d snap a rubber band hard against my wrist. When that didn’t work, I moved on to cutting. I thought if I punished myself enough, my body would finally learn that men should disgust me, not turn me on.
None of it worked.
No porn. People always say cutting out porn helps, but I’m twenty-six and it did nothing for me. So maybe the problem is that I’ve been avoiding it too much? Maybe I just need to force myself.
I grab the remote with shaking hands and turn on the TV.
I load up a porn website, my stomach twisting with anxiety.
I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I click on a video with two women, staring hard at the screen, desperately trying to will my mind to find it arousing, to make my cock react the way it should.
It stays completely soft.
Okay. Woman on woman was a bust.
I switch to a standard video, a guy fucking a woman.
I force myself to focus on her body, her face, the way she’s moaning, trying to block out everything else.
For a little while it does nothing. Then slowly, very slowly, I start to get hard.
For a second I feel this rush of hope, maybe I’m finally fixed.
But then I realise I’m staring at the guy’s cock, at the way his hips are thrusting, and the shame hits me like a truck.
This isn’t working.
I switch back to the women again, watching video after video, over and over, begging my body to respond properly, to just do what it’s supposed to do. It has so little effect that eventually I fall asleep with the videos still playing in the background.
Fuck you, you fucked up brain.
Why can’t you just do what you’re told?