8. Eight
Aleksi had come home at four and gone straight into the kitchen without looking at me. Ten minutes of cupboard doors slamming and cutlery noise later, the flat smelled like mustard and cheap ham. He hadn't offered me anything. I'd have taken it. I've been telling myself I wouldn't for two hours.
I'd been bent over the jacket since dawn, long past the satisfying stage of the work and into the stage where restoration became patience and chemistry.
It was a gamble whether your spine gave out before the adhesive did.
The hide was pinned open under the lamp, and I'd cut compatible backing pieces wafer-thin.
The resin was curing in slow, tacky layers that wanted exactly what they wanted and punished you for improvising.
Unfamiliar tweezers sat beside my hand.
I missed my granddad's set. My da had given the leatherworking tools to me when I turned eighteen. But they were gone now — in that bastard's hands, an ocean from where they belonged.
My lip had split again sometime after lunch. I'd tasted blood twice in the last hour and ignored it both times. The hard-on I'd had since two had finally settled into the background of my body like bad posture. Present. Annoying. Not technically an emergency.
My hands were steady. That was the important thing.
The rest of me could get fucked.
By half nine the adhesive had started to turn properly clear around the edges of the backing patches. Six hours of work. I wasn't going to blow it by getting impatient. I capped the resin, cleaned the brush with acetone, and rolled my neck slow enough to hear something click.
"Fin," Aleksi bellowed from the bedroom.
I shot a glare in that direction and didn't answer. Fuck off, I thought, and decided then and there that I wasn't going to come running like a fucking dog just because he'd called for me. I was on my feet and down the hall before I'd finished the thought.
The bedroom door was open.
That was the first bit of theatre. He could have made me knock. He could have made me wait in the hall. Instead, he'd left the way clear. Walking in was my choice. So was stepping into a snare, if you were the rabbit.
I went in anyway.
His bedroom was lit by a single lamp on the nightstand, leaving the corners of the room dark. An untouched drink sat on the nightstand beside him.
Aleksi sat in the armchair, his tie pulled loose at his throat. His sleeves were rolled to the forearm, and the gloves were gone, and my pulse did something I hadn't given it permission to do. Bare hands looked wrong on him now. Too intimate.
He pointed two fingers at the floor in front of his boots. "Kneel."
Like fuck I would. I crossed the room and stood a half meter from where he'd pointed.
Aleksi narrowed his eyes at me. Then he gripped me by the shirt and hauled me in front of him. "I said kneel."
The absolute fucking bastard.
I knelt. It wasn't worth another split lip.
Aleksi's fingers dropped to the arm of the chair.
"Good," he said.
"Careful," I said. "Praise me like that again and I'll start thinking ye like me obedient."
His eyes slid over my face, then down my body. Slow.
"I don't like you, Fin," he said.
"Aye," I said. "That explains the bedroom summons. Very normal way to hate a man."
Aleksi's hand flexed once on the chair arm.
Then he reached for the untouched glass on the nightstand and drained it in three hard swallows.
The sharp smell of whiskey cut through the faint acetone still clinging to my fingers.
I'd seen men do it before a hit, before a betrayal, before they crossed a line they couldn't uncross.
The fact that he needed it for me sent a vicious little thrill through my gut.
He stood without warning, brushing past me close enough that his thigh grazed my shoulder.
I stayed on my knees because standing now would feel like losing.
He crossed to the dresser, yanked open the top drawer, and pulled out a revolver, matte black, well-oiled, the kind of gun that had seen real work. My mouth went dry.
Aleksi cracked the cylinder open with a practiced flick.
Five brass rounds glittered under the lamplight before he tipped them into his palm.
One bullet went back in. He spun the cylinder hard, snapped it shut, and gave it another casual whirl against his thigh.
The metallic rattle was obscenely loud in the quiet room.
"Strip," he said, voice low and rough from the whiskey.
I looked up at him. The gun hung loosely in his right hand. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide. The pulse beat in his throat.
I rose to my feet. "Make me."
Aleksi's smile was thin and ugly and perfect. He stepped in, pressed the muzzle of the revolver under my chin, and tilted my head back. The metal was cool and heavy. "Strip, Fin. Or I'll do it for you, and I won't be gentle with the clothes."
I smirked and pulled my shirt over my head. Boots kicked aside, trousers and briefs shoved down together. When I straightened, I was completely naked, cock hard and flushed, curving up toward my stomach. I didn't cover myself. I let him look.
Aleksi's gaze dragged over every inch, slow, hungry, furious. His jaw flexed when it reached my cock. His throat worked around a swallow.
"Like what ye see?" I asked, voice rough. I wrapped a hand around myself, gave one lazy stroke, and let my thumb smear the slickness over the head. "This is all for ye, Aleksi. Hate me harder. I can take it."
He made a low sound, half growl, half curse, and closed the distance. The revolver came up. Cold steel brushed my lower lip.
"Open."
I held his eyes for a long moment. Then I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue.
He slid the barrel between my lips. The taste hit instantly: gun oil, metal, the faint ghost of powder.
My pulse hammered so hard I felt it in my teeth.
I closed my mouth around the steel and took it deeper, tongue along the underside of the barrel.
I hollowed my cheeks, bobbed slowly, let my lips drag wetly along the metal.
The cylinder pressed against my teeth. One live round.
One chance in six. The risk was whiskey and adrenaline and pure fucking want.
My cock throbbed, leaking onto the floor.
I moaned around the gun, low and filthy and deliberate, tongue over the muzzle. The taste of iron and oil coated my tongue. My hips jerked forward, chasing friction that wasn't there. I was so hard it hurt. Light-headed with it.
Aleksi's breathing had gone ragged. His free hand fisted at his side. The knuckles holding the revolver were white. His eyes were locked on my mouth, on the way my lips stretched around the black steel, on the shine of spit already slicking down the barrel.
I pulled back just enough to speak, lips brushing the muzzle with every word.
"Come on then," I rasped, voice wrecked. "Pull the trigger if ye're man enough. Or fuck my mouth with it. Either way, I'm no the one shaking."
Aleksi inhaled, and his control snapped.
He pulled the revolver from my mouth with a wet pop, the barrel gleaming with my spit. For half a second, I thought he might pull the trigger. Instead, he tossed the gun onto the bed with a heavy thunk, undid his belt and opened his fly.
"Open your fucking mouth."
I barely had time before he was shoving his cock past my lips.
He was thick, heavy, and already leaking. The taste of him, salt and skin, flooded my tongue as he pushed deep in one ruthless thrust. His hips jerked again, driving him to the back of my throat.
"Fuck—Fin—"
I took him. All of him. Relaxed my throat and swallowed around the head, nose pressed to the open V of his trousers, and his whole body shuddered above me.
and a sound came out of him I don't think he'd planned.
He was still mostly dressed. Tie hanging loose, shirt open at the throat, the heat of him coming off his skin in waves.
I had my hands on his thighs and I could feel him shaking.
His hand came down on the back of my head and stayed there.
"Jesus Christ—" His head fell back. "It's—fuck, it's—I didn't—Christ, don't stop—"
He started moving, and it wasn't controlled. His hips jerked forward. Deep strokes that made my eyes water, that made my throat work around him. I let him have it. I knew what I was doing. I'd always known what I was doing.
Except his hands were in my hair and his voice was in pieces and I was on my knees on the floor of his flat and my chest had gone very quiet.
"Christ—why does it—" He broke off and tried again. "Why does it feel like—fuck—"
He couldn't finish it. I sucked harder, tongue working the underside, hollowing my cheeks on every pull, and whatever he'd been trying to say dissolved into a sound that came from somewhere below his ribs.
Spit ran down my chin. I reached up, cupped his balls, rolled them, tugged.
His knees buckled, and he caught himself on my shoulder, fingers digging in.
"Don't stop—don't you fucking stop—you little whore—don't—"
I wanted him ruined. I wanted this straight, dangerous bastard to never forget what my mouth could do to him.
I took him deeper until my throat fluttered and my lungs burned and tears were running down my face and I didn't care. His rhythm turned erratic. His grip in my hair was bruising.
"Gonna come—Fin—fuck, I'm—"
He slammed in deep and held me there, thighs shaking against my face, and spilled down my throat in thick, rolling waves. I swallowed every drop, milked him with my tongue until he was trembling and oversensitive and had gone quiet above me.
I stayed on my knees, lips swollen, chin shiny with spit and the last traces of him. My cock was aching, flushed dark, a steady drip of pre-cum falling from the tip onto the floorboards.
Aleksi stared down at me. His chest heaved. Then his jaw tightened, and the control came back.
He reached into the dresser drawer again and pulled out a dildo, flesh-toned, veined, bigger than average, with a heavy suction base. Brand new. Still in the packaging. For me.