21. Dakota
DAKOTA
Brady crosses the space in two strides.
His hand fists in Cruz’s hair and yanks his head back, hard. Then Brady’s mouth crashes against his, all teeth and tongue and years of repression finally tearing loose.
I forget to breathe.
Eli’s arm tightens around my ribs. I feel his whole body freeze beside me.
Cruz makes a sound into Brady’s mouth—surprised, delighted, hungry. His hands come up to Brady’s shoulders, not pushing, pulling. Urging him closer. Brady’s other hand finds Cruz’s throat and just holds it there, fingers spanning the column of muscle, claiming the territory without crushing it.
When they break, Cruz’s lower lip is split. A bead of red wells up where Brady’s teeth caught him.
Cruz licks it off, grinning.
“Shit,” Brady’s voice cracks. His hands jerk back from Cruz’s skin like he’s been scalded. The horror is already rising. “I shouldn’t, I don’t know how to… ”
“Williams.” Eli’s authoritative voice. The one that brooks no argument, no negotiation, no escape.
Brady freezes.
“Let go.” Eli hasn’t moved from beside me. “Whatever you’re holding back, stop holding it. We can take it. That’s an order.”
Brady’s eyes find Eli’s over the bed.
His face changes.
The hesitation drops away like a coat hitting the floor. And what’s left is the man I met in my apartment with a bottle of wine he couldn’t afford, who put his hand around my throat and bit my shoulder until I came screaming. Except now that look isn’t aimed at me.
He shoves Cruz backward onto the mattress and quickly sheds his clothes.
Hard. Not gentle. His body bounces onto the bed, and Cruz laughs, breathless and thrilled, as Brady climbs over him.
“Yeah, baby,” Cruz murmurs, hands already on Brady’s ass, pulling him closer. “There you are.”
Brady grinds down against him. Both of them are hard, skin on skin, and Brady’s hips snap forward in a rhythm that’s pure need. His hand wraps around both their cocks at once, stroking rough and graceless. His other hand twists back into Cruz’s hair.
He drops his head to Cruz’s throat.
I think he’s going to kiss it.
He bites.
Cruz’s whole body jolts. The sound that comes out of him isn’t pain. It’s the opposite. His hips buck up into Brady’s grip, nails digging crescents into Brady’s ass.
Brady pulls back, sees the mark already darkening on Cruz’s skin, and something feral floods his face.
He bites again. Lower. Cruz’s shoulder, then his collarbone.
Beside me, Eli has stopped breathing.
I tilt my head back against his shoulder and watch his face. His pupils nearly consume every bit of green. His jaw has gone slack. There’s a flush climbing his throat that has nothing to do with what we just finished doing.
Dante has shifted onto his side beside us. His hand has wrapped around his own cock, slow and lazy, eyes locked on Brady. He hasn’t softened all the way down. Now he’s hardening again.
“Fuck,” Dante breathes.
Brady manhandles Cruz onto his stomach. No question, no checking in, just hands on hips and a body moved exactly where Brady demands without a single word spoken. Cruz goes willingly, eagerly, getting up on his knees and presenting himself like a gift.
Brady reaches for the lube without looking.
His fingers are rough but thorough. One, then two, then three work Cruz open as if he had been doing it for years. He’s not careful, but he’s not careless either. I can see the difference even now, even gone as he is.
Cruz pushes back onto his hand and starts babbling. “Yes, fuck, Brady, I’m ready, come on, put it in me, I can take it.”
Brady lines up and pushes in.
One thrust. All the way.
Cruz cries out, fingers fisting in the sheets, and Brady goes completely still inside him.
I watch his face. I watch the realization hit. The moment he understands this is real, that he’s inside another man, that the line he spent his whole life refusing to cross is already behind him.
Cruz clenches around him deliberately.
Brady’s hesitation breaks.
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it.” His voice has dropped into something I’ve heard before. Rough, low, dripping. “Such a fucking slut for it. Begging for my cock like you were made for it.”
Eli makes a sound beside me. I glance up. His mouth has actually fallen open.
“Look at you,” Brady grits out, pulling almost all the way out and slamming back in. “My pretty little whore. So desperate for cock you couldn’t hide it to save your life. Everybody saw.”
“Yes,” Cruz pants. “Yeah, Brady, Fuck I love that filthy mouth!”
“Yes, what?”
Cruz moans. “Yes, please.”
“Better.”
I feel Eli’s cock stir against my hip.
He’s still half-hard from the train, and now he’s coming back fully online from hearing Brady’s filthy mouth split silence that had taken over the room moments ago.
Dante is openly stroking himself now. His other hand has found my thigh.
Brady fucks Cruz with a brutality I feel in my bones. The same intensity he came at me with the night I seduced him, except now there’s no leash on the words. They pour out of him in a constant stream.
“Such a good little cocksleeve. Look at you taking it. This what you’ve been so fucking hungry for? Hmm? You’ve been watching me all this time, all those months in the gym, wondering what it’d feel like to get fucked by me?” Brady’s hand cracks down on Cruz’s ass and Cruz keens. “Answer me.”
“Yes, fuck, yes, so bad I could all but taste it.”
“That’s what I thought.” Brady leans down, covers Cruz’s back with his chest, bites the back of his shoulder.
Sucks until I see the bruise bloom. “Going to fill you up. Going to breed you so full it leaks out of you for days. Going to make sure every single person in that gym knows you’re mine now. ”
I feel Eli shudder behind me.
I turn in his arms. He’s gone, somewhere deep inside his own head, watching Brady work and processing things he didn’t know he was hungry for. His cock is fully hard again against my hip.
“Eli.” I keep my voice soft.
His eyes drag down to me. Slow. Like it costs him something dear to look away from them.
“You’re hard again.”
A muscle works in his jaw.
I shift up onto my knees. Eli’s hands come to my waist automatically. I turn so my back is to his chest, both of us facing Brady and Cruz, and I freeze just as I’m about to impale myself on him.
“Eli.”
“Off.” His hands lift me before I even say it. He’s already moving. “Off. Hold on.”
He slides out from under me, kisses the back of my neck once, and heads for the bathroom. I hear the tap. The quick scrub of soap. Him muttering something to himself.
Cruz, even mid-fuck, manages to crack one eye open. “Coach has got manners,” he wheezes.
Brady’s hand cracks down on his ass again. “Did I say you could talk?”
Cruz groans and shuts up.
Eli comes back with a damp towel in his hand, still hard, towel-drying himself as he walks. He climbs back onto the bed behind me, settles, drops the towel off the side.
“Sorry, sweetheart.” His hand finds my hip. His mouth finds my shoulder. “Come here.”
I sink back down onto him, and this time he’s clean and warm and groans into my neck like he can’t wait one more minute to have me.
His hands span my ribs. Pull me back against his chest. We both turn our heads at the same time, and his mouth grazes the corner of mine before we both look back at Brady.
He’s pounding into Cruz now. The slap of skin is loud in the room. Cruz is babbling, half-sentences almost entirely incoherent, please and yes and Brady and please again.
“You feel good.” Brady’s voice has gone almost soft, a contrast against the brutality of his hips. “So tight for me. Such a good little whore. Going to fuck the cum out of you, gonna make you come, that what you want?”
“Yes, yes, please.”
“Then come.”
Brady’s hand wraps around Cruz’s cock, stroking him exactly twice.
Cruz comes apart. His back bows. He cries out into the sheets. His whole body clenches, and Brady snarls and bites down on Cruz’s shoulder hard enough that I see his teeth break skin as he buries himself one final time.
“Mine,” Brady grits out against Cruz’s neck, hips stuttering. “Fucking mine. Taking it. Take it.”
I feel Eli’s whole body go rigid behind me.
That word mine pushes him over.
He pulls me down hard, grinds up into me, and comes with a groan that he muffles in my hair. The pulse of him inside me, the sound he makes, the way his fingers dig bruises into my hips. It’s enough. I come with him, clenching around his cock, eyes locked on Brady still buried inside Cruz.
Beside us, Dante’s hand jerks once, twice, and he hisses through his teeth as he comes across his stomach.
For a long moment nobody moves.
The room is just panting breaths, five sets of lungs working overtime. The sheets are a disaster. Cruz has gone boneless on his stomach with Brady draped over his back.
Then Brady lifts his head.
I watch him return to himself, one breath at a time and it’s beautiful for a minute.
His eyes track down Cruz’s body, catching on each bite mark. His pupils contract. His breathing changes.
“Oh god.” His voice has gone thin. “Oh god, Cruz.”
He pulls out fast. Scrambles back. His hand goes to his mouth.
“Cruz, I’m sorry, I—”
Cruz rolls over, completely unhurried, and catches Brady’s wrist before he can completely retreat.
“Hey.” Cruz’s voice is unsteady but firm. “Hey. Look at me.”
Brady can’t. His eyes keep snagging on Cruz’s shoulders, his collarbone, the marks already going purple.
I sit up slowly, Eli’s hand sliding off my hip. I move closer, careful, the way I’d approach a fighter coming down from a bad knockout.
“Brady,” I murmur.
“I hurt him.” His voice is shaking. “Look at him, I bit him, I said the things I said—”
“Brady, look at me.” Cruz’s grip tightens on his wrist. Brady’s eyes finally drag up. Cruz holds them. “I loved every second of that. Every bite. Every filthy word. You hear me?”
Brady’s mouth opens. Nothing comes out. Closes again in confusion.