Chapter 58 Dante
I hold him in my arms for a long time, the worst of him out in the open between us. I don’t dare move. I’m not moving first. Not after what he told me.
His phone is on the coffee table where he set it when we came in. It’s been buzzing continuously for the past few minutes. I reach for it and put it in his hand.
“Text Freddie. Tell him you’re alive, you’re somewhere private, you’ll handle the rest tomorrow.” He’s the only one who’d be lighting that phone up by now. Worried about his asset, not Levi. “Then shut it off.”
He looks at the phone. “Off?”
“All the way off. No one gets you tonight. Not the label, not the manager, not the crowd with their cameras out. They had you all day. They’re done.” I tighten my arms around him. “Tonight you’re mine. Not theirs. Mine.”
His throat works at that. He’s been owned forever. Now he’s hearing mine mean wanted instead of used. He thumbs out one short text to Freddie. I don’t read it. He turns the phone off, and sets it face-down beside the burner. For one night he belongs only to me.
“Okay,” he says. Wrecked, but steadier than I’ve heard him in days. “Okay.”
I help him up and take him to my bedroom. When I pull my shirt up over his head, the one I put him in when we came home dripping, I take my time. I look at his body with appreciation while I do.
He leans into me. Whatever else the world managed to do to him, it never once put a flinch between us. Tonight his words have him raw and wide open, making him hungry instead of shy. He turns into my palms, and after the day he’s had, being wanted is the only language that reaches all the way in.
“You keep staring at me,” he says.
“I enjoy looking at you. You’re beautiful, Levi.”
I push him down on the bed and take the rest of the night as slow as I can stand. The rest of his clothes come off. Unhurried, with me touching. My hands go over the lean length of him, the strip of hair under his navel. I know his body now. I cover it again anyway, because tonight he needs touch.
His breath jumps when my palm drags low across his stomach. Every place my mouth goes, he rises to meet it. The hollow of his throat. The flat of his stomach. The crease of his hip, where I set my teeth and feel him jerk.
“Mark me again,” he murmurs, fisting my hair.
I bite and suck the skin until a red spot begins to form. “Like this?” I murmur.
“Yes, I want more.”
His body was punished for years, in a hot dark box, to make him believe its own softness was the crime — and yet every inch of it opens for me willingly like the sentence never took.
When I take him in my mouth, the sound he makes is half relief, half surrender.
I take him deep, one hand wrapped around the base of him.
The other lies flat on his stomach, feeling the muscle pull tight.
I stay there until he’s shaking, until he’s right at the edge.
Then I back off. Tonight is not about fast.
“Dante—” My name, half a question.
“No hurry.” I come back up his body and say it against his mouth, both of us hard between us, slick already where we move against each other. “All night. There’s no part of this you have to earn.”
I take him apart the way he’s shown me how. I know what tightens him. What opens him. When to slow. When he needs my voice more than my hands. I use every bit of it.
When I reach for the bottle in the nightstand he freezes. I stop, my hand flat on his hip and wait.
“You set the pace,” I tell him. “Every inch of it. You say stop, we stop, and I will not be anything but glad about it. Tell me what you want.”
“All of it. I want you inside me. I want you to be the first—” He stops. He finishes it looking right at me. “I need it to be you. Only you.”
I’ve never wanted to give a man anything the way I want to give him exactly what he’s asking for. And that is how I know tonight isn’t the right time.
“Levi.” I hold his face so he can’t misunderstand me. “Not tonight, baby.”
His eyes flicker. Bracing for me to reject him. That fast he’s willing to believe I don’t want him.
“Hear me out before you decide what it means,” I tell him. “When that happens, and it’s going to happen, I promise you, it’s not sharing a night with anything else. Not with the box. Not with Freddie’s circus. Not with the bad day you’ve had.
“The first time I slide my cock inside you, the only thing that day gets to be about is us. You’ve waited for someone who’d care what happened to you after. And I’m so damn glad you did. We need to wait for it to be right for you.”
He looks at me a long moment. “Are you sure there’s not another reason that you’re not telling me? Am I too much to deal with? I know I’m fucked up in the head.”
I reach for his hand and put it on my cock. “Do you think I don’t want you? That I don’t want you more than anything right now? Touch me and tell me that.”
He strokes my throbbing cock and that gets the ghost of a laugh out of him, which is what I was after.
“Tonight we can go further than we’ve gone. If you’re up to it. That’s all.”
“I am.”
I slick my fingers carefully, coating them until the lube shines in the low light, more than necessary because I refuse to let a single second of this feel like anything but care.
“Do you remember what to do?”
“Push out. Breathe.”
I settle between his thighs, one palm steady on the inside of his knee, holding him open without pressure, just presence.
My other hand drifts lower, the pad of my first finger tracing the soft, warm place between his cheeks, circling once, twice, letting him feel the slickness before anything more.
“I’m going to slide the first one in now,” I tell him. “Nice and slow. You tell me if it feels like too much.”
“It’s not too much,” he answers immediately. “I want your hands on me like this. You don’t need to be so careful with me.”
I smile up at him. “Let me decide that.”
I press in slow. Just the tip at first, watching every flicker across his face.
The tight ring of muscle gives under the pressure, and I ease the first knuckle inside, then the second, until my finger is seated fully inside him.
Heat closes around me. I let him adjust, my free hand stroking the tense muscle of his thigh in long, soothing passes.
“That’s one,” I murmur against the skin just above his hip. “Relax. You’re doing so well. Just breathe with me.”
“I am,” he says, and the words come out on a shaky exhale. “It feels… good. Fuller already.”
“That’s because I’m taking my time with you.” I begin to move, the shallowest of slides, in and out, coating him from the inside. “Feel that? How your body opens when I go slow?”
“Yes.” His hips shift in a tiny roll. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
I curl my finger slightly, searching, and find the smooth, slightly firmer place that makes his whole body lift.
“There,” I murmur. “That’s the place that belongs to you and me. Tell me what it feels like.”
“Like you’re touching a place inside me no one else ever has,” he answers. “Like it was waiting for you. God, Dante — do that again.”
I stay on that spot with tenderness, rubbing in small, firm circles while my finger continues its slow, deep glide.
The second finger waits, slick and ready against his hole, but I don’t rush it.
I let him get used to the single finger first, let the pleasure build until his hips start to rock in tiny, unconscious rolls.
“I’m going to give you the second one now,” I tell him. “Same as before. You push out when I press in. Ready?”
“Ready,” he says, no hesitation. “I want both. I want to see how much of you I can take tonight.”
I give him the second finger slow, alongside the first. The stretch is real. I feel him tighten for a heartbeat and suck in his breath.
“Push out for me,” I remind him. “Just like before. Nothing happens you don’t want.”
“I know.” He does as I ask, the long, controlled breath. “I’m pushing. I’m — oh—”
The slow, sweet give as his body accepts the second finger. I slide deeper, until both fingers are fully inside him, pressed together.
“That’s both of them,” I say. “All the way in. How does it feel?”
“Full. God. So full. Like you’re already inside me. Don’t you dare pull out.”
“I won’t.” I hold still, giving him every second he needs. “I’m right here. You’re taking me so perfectly. Are you okay?”
“It burns a little,” he says. “But it doesn’t hurt. It feels good.”
I begin to move again, both fingers moving in a slow, rolling rhythm, scissoring gently. “Every time I push in, I’m opening you a little more.”
“God, I feel it.” His hands fist in the sheets. “Dante — please. More of that. Right there.”
I add more lube without pulling out, the cool slickness easing the way even further, and resume the deep, patient thrusts. In and out. Curl and press.
“You’re perfect like this,” I tell him, with everything I feel. “Taking me so willingly. Letting me take care of you. There’s no rush. We stay right here as long as you want.”
After a long stretch of that careful rhythm, he asks, rough, “How many more fingers until I can take your cock? Is two enough?”
I slow my movements but don’t stop, looking up at him so he can see the honesty in my face. “Three,” I tell him. “Not less. Three will stretch you enough that when the time comes, it won’t hurt the way it would tonight. That’s the number that keeps you from hurting.”
His eyes darken with want. “Then give me one more. Please. I want the third. I want to feel how full I can get for you. I want to be ready when you decide it’s time.”
“Levi—”
“I’m asking. One more finger. Please. Fuck, Dante. I can take it.”
I study him, reading the open need and the trust that has nowhere left to hide. Then I nod once. “Alright. One more. You set the pace.”
I coat my third finger thoroughly and press it carefully against the place where the other two are already seated. “It’s going to be a lot. Push out again for me. Breathe. Tell me the second it feels like too much.”
“It won’t,” he promises, shaking with anticipation. “I’m ready.”
The third finger goes in slower than the first two put together. I feel him fight the stretch for a heartbeat, feel his body remember what to do — push out, breathe — and then the long, trembling give as he opens and takes all three. The sound he makes then is shocked and entirely new.
“That’s it,” I say against his hip, holding still so he can live in the fullness. “That’s all three. You’re doing so good. Taking everything I’m giving you. Talk to me.”
“Full,” he gasps. “God. So fucking full. Please don’t stop.”
I don’t stop. I move all three fingers in him, slow and deep, curling into that sensitive place on every careful pass.
Then I put my mouth back on him, the wet heat of my tongue matching the thrust of my fingers.
He doesn’t last long after that. He comes down my throat with my three fingers seated deep inside him.
I take him through every pulse and ease out while he shakes.
“You’re going to feel so good when I’m inside you,” I tell him.
“Don’t go yet,” he says, already reaching for me. “Both directions. Or it doesn’t go at all. Your rule.”
My own rule, walked back at me at the one moment I have no argument left in me. I stretch out beside him and let him take me in his fist, his forehead close to mine, watching my face the way I watched his.
“Look at me,” he says in that deep voice I’ll never tire of. “I want to see you when you come. I want to know I can make you come with my hand.”
It doesn’t take long. His grip is steady and sure, and the pleasure builds fast under the weight of his eyes.
I come hard across his fingers and wrist, spilling onto his hand while my body shudders against him.
He holds me through it, never looking away, and I let him see every unguarded second of it.
“God, I love seeing you come,” he says.
Tonight he needs to know he isn’t the only one who can be undone.
I stay in the bed and gather all of him in. The sweat, the shaking, the after-quiet. After cleaning us up, I hold on to him. I pull the sheet over us both and keep him against my chest, my hand moving slow on his back.
“This is what the after feels like,” I say again into his hair. “The after always belongs to me.”