39. Onyx
Onyx
Onyx had crashed, and crashed hard — hard enough to where he was sluggish and slow when he finally started to wake up again. Usually, he woke at the slightest thing, but he was pretty sure he could’ve slept through a hurricane during whatever dead sleep he’d been in following the… the…
His thoughts stuttered and threatened to fracture.
Following that.
He squeezed his eyes closed as he went still, trying to figure out just how things had gone the way they had. Why had he agreed to the aphrodisiac potion? Oh, Dominic fucking him had been inevitable, but that didn’t mean he’d needed to be into it. And with the potion in his system…
Dread and shame filled him in equal measures as some of the foggy events filtered through his mind. He’d been so addled by the potion that he couldn’t remember all of the details — thank fuck — but he remembered enough to loathe himself for being so weak.
He’d given Dominic almost everything he’d asked for, and he hadn’t fought against it at all. He’d just moaned like a wanton whore and taken it. He didn’t even know how many times he’d come, for fuck’s sake.
He didn’t feel sore or raw at all, probably because of the vampire blood fresh in his system, but he swore he could still feel Dominic’s cum in his ass. He probably could. The other witch had come multiple times, after all, using him for everything he had.
Over the past several months, he’d been marked inside and out: the mark on his wrist, the collar around his throat, the blood he’d spilled, the cum he’d taken over and over again.
The thoughts all compounded to put him in a dark mood, and he pulled away from Dominic as he worked through his thoughts. For once, the other witch released him without arguing, which was a good thing because Onyx didn’t think he’d have been able to handle it if he hadn’t.
Without waiting for permission, he muttered, “I’m showering.” He got out of bed and stalked to the bathroom, and the thought of using one of Dominic’s enemas just to get the feeling of him out briefly flickered through his mind.
It was almost as horrifying as the knowledge of what had happened only hours earlier.
Onyx didn’t know what to do.
Dominic had said that things would return to how they were tomorrow; did that mean he expected Onyx to submit to him more tonight?
Because he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He wasn’t going to lose himself to another potion like that, and he wasn’t going to spread his legs and whimper out another orgasm at Dominic’s hands.
He wasn’t.
Standing beneath the hot water, Onyx scrubbed at his skin, trying to get the imprints of Dominic’s hands and body off of him.
It didn’t work.
He shut the water off after cleaning himself thoroughly, then returned to the bedroom with all of the reluctance of someone about to face his execution.
He grabbed clothes and got dressed, but before he could snarl anything in Dominic’s direction, Dominic was already speaking into the intercom. “Have Shane meet us in the gym.”
Shane.
The gym.
Relief — and a grudging amount of gratitude — filled him, and he nodded to Dominic. He waited for the witch to open the door into the hall, then started toward the gym, agitation coursing through him.
When he arrived, he got onto the mat and started to stretch, needing to have this respite.
The wolf pushed through the door with a look of concern on his face, a look that Onyx despised, but without comment, Shane quickly kicked off his shoes and got into the training ring to stretch.
Onyx finished limbering up and got to his feet. “Hand to hand,” he said flatly. Right then, he wanted something familiar, something he was good at, something he’d just used to murder a witch and his two associates alongside his magic.
Magic he didn’t have access to any longer.
But the physical strategies that had allowed him to break through Ambrose’s shields would be good practice for when he did have Dominic in a similar situation. Now that he knew that he’d be freed if Dominic died…
That changed everything.
Didn’t it?
Onyx needed to practice the moves that would get him through Dominic’s shields, which meant he’d have to go hard at one specific point on Shane’s body; wherever he imagined the shields’ major point of impact might be, he’d focus there.
In this case, he went for the chest. The other wolf had not had Shane’s training or skill, and Onyx was well aware of just how serious Dominic had been in finding someone who could really keep up with and improve Onyx’s training.
Onyx guessed that earlier would’ve been the first time Shane had seen him like he’d been as a rebel, as a soldier — detached and no-nonsense, dealing with threats as efficiently as possible. What had Shane thought of that?
Worse, though, was the question of what Shane had to have thought about Onyx letting himself be recollared like he had. Shane had to think he was fucking pathetic, and that thought made his aggression go through the roof.
Onyx had no intention of going light on Shane. He was a werewolf; he could take it. Maybe if he’d had his magic, and he’d been able to augment his strength on top of the vampire blood, he’d have needed to hold back. But not like this.
“Aim for lower,” Shane told him as he continued to focus on that one spot. “Shields are thick over the heart. You want to hit just below the solar plexus.”
He put his full strength behind the attacks, using every ounce of speed that he could muster as he aimed where Shane had instructed him to.
He was not weak.
He was not going to let Shane think he was weak.
Even if he had been completely and utterly stupid for not killing Dominic Bancroft.
Shane grunted as one of Onyx’s strikes got through his guard, and then his head cracked back as Onyx pivoted immediately, following the strike with another.
Onyx’s adrenaline was raging as he threw everything he had into the spar with Shane.
He didn’t think that Shane was holding back, but neither was Onyx, and the fight suddenly seemed more like it was in deadly earnest — like in the early days, except Onyx had been too weak to actually break through anything back then.
Could he best Shane now? If he really tried, could he knock him on his ass and go straight for Dominic?
It wouldn’t matter. Until the vampire blood had worked its way out of Dominic’s system, Onyx wouldn’t go after him, not when there was even a chance he might wake up.
He might be able to kill Dominic in mortal form, but he doubted anyone would let him stake Dominic fucking Bancroft or cut his head off.
He wouldn’t be able to burn his body without his magic, either.
But would Dominic keep his word and release the collar at the point of death if he recognized it? If Onyx truly got that close, if Dominic admitted defeat in the way he’d chased for so long?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know, and that drove him inexorably on.
Onyx was breathing hard, but he was honed in in a way he’d rarely shown Shane. Maybe it was from fighting for his life earlier or that day, or maybe it was his anger at the situation; he didn’t really know, but he found himself throwing everything he had into the combat.
When he knocked Shane down, surprising a stunned grunt of pain and disbelief into the wolf’s expression, Onyx went to follow it with another blow.
He pulled it at the last second because while he was angry, he wasn’t angry at Shane.
He wasn’t going to try to kill Dominic today.
There was no sense in making this a fight in deadly earnest.
Instead, he took a step back, regarding the werewolf with that same cold, aloof expression. “You underestimated me,” he noted. Either that, or Onyx had gotten lucky.
Shane slowly climbed to his feet, keeping his eyes on Onyx like he expected Onyx to attack again. “No, I didn’t,” he replied, breathing heavily. “I laid everything out and you dropped me. Well done.”
Onyx watched Shane carefully, and he found himself surprised at the sincerity in those words. Had he dropped Shane fair and square? He’d certainly been putting all he had into it, and it was a nice feeling to know that he could actually get one up on Shane.
“I’ve had good teachers,” he said carefully, keeping his distance from Shane even as he dipped his head in acknowledgment. He was dripping with sweat, but it was worth it for that moment.
It almost helped his mood, knowing he’d earned that.
He walked over to the side of the ring to a cooler and pulled out two bottles of water, offering one out to Shane before cracking the other one open to drink it down.
Shane accepted the bottle of water and drank it while Onyx finished his own bottle of water and tossed it into the recycling bin.
He was feeling marginally better, but he wasn’t ready to go anywhere with Dominic yet. “Staves?” he suggested. He smirked. “Or are you too tired?”
Shane studied Onyx for a moment, his gaze flicking in the direction of the doors of the room, then back to Onyx.
Onyx didn’t follow his gaze, knowing that Dominic was there but wanting to ignore his presence entirely.
Shane met Onyx’s smirk with one of his own. “Staves,” he agreed. He climbed out of the ring to fetch the two practice staves.
Onyx took one of them with a nod. He adjusted his grip and his stance, ready to go through one of the katas that Shane had taught him.
Anything to avoid being alone with Dominic.
That wasn’t to say he didn’t want to do the lesson, but… he was tired, and ordinarily, he’d have called it there. But he did not want to be alone with Dominic.
So staff practice it was.
Shane had Onyx run through the kata, correcting his hand positions, his footing, and how the blows were angled.
After several of those, he switched and showed Onyx a series of formulated blow trades.
They worked the same way that a traditional spar did, with a set known of trading strikes and blocks until one of the opponents broke form and the spar started in earnest.
Strike-block, strike-block. A slow cadence to start with, Shane had explained, while the pattern was still being learned, but it gave the fundamentals of what would eventually turn into sparring with the staves.
Onyx half-expected Dominic to step in and stop them, but the Bancroft witch left them alone — and Onyx was beyond relieved by that as they continued their training.
By the time Shane signaled to call it off, he was drenched with sweat all over again.
“You did very well, Onyx.” Shane held his hand out for the staff. “I’m proud of you.”
Onyx stared openly at Shane. He wasn’t used to that kind of sincere recognition. Paul and Marcos had never given it to him. Shane gave him praise here and there, sure, but this felt like more. To know that at least one of his teachers thought he was worth something…
He handed the staff back to Shane. “I… Thanks."
Not knowing what else to say, he fled for the showers to clean up. He took his time, soaping up and washing his hair with the shampoo Dominic had left even there. When he finally finished and dressed, he returned to Dominic, though he was wary and even skittish about being near him.
Dominic was standing alone in the gym, and Onyx felt the heat of his gaze as Dominic studied him. Then he held out his hand in silent invitation.
Or demand.
Onyx looked at the outstretched hand, his eyes narrowing. No one else was around, but he was always leery of refusing Dominic outside of the bedroom. They had appearances to maintain, and just like Dominic didn’t push Onyx down and fuck him where anyone could see, Onyx didn’t push back either.
He took the hand, for all that he didn’t want to. “Thank you,” he said grudgingly.
Dominic smiled. “What would you like for dinner?” he asked in a voice that was weirdly soft.
Onyx hadn’t been hungry before the workout, but now he was starving.
“Stir fry?” he ventured, letting Dominic lead him out of the gym.
“Something with beef, no chicken.” He paused, then added, “but no broccoli.” He was allowed to be picky these days, and he didn’t have any qualms about expressing what he did or didn’t want.
He was lucky.
Dominic chuckled as he guided Onyx out of the gym and back toward his rooms. He caught a servant on the way there and relayed the instructions for stir fry for dinner — beef, sans broccoli.
The sheets had been changed while they were gone, and the bed was neatly made when they got back to Dominic’s room, something Onyx immediately noticed. It wasn’t a comfortable thought, because it meant someone had been in there. They knew.
Never mind that it wasn’t like this was the first time something sexual had happened between them; this had just been momentous in a way that terrified Onyx.
Dominic paused at his desk long enough to get the game controller and tablet out of the drawer and steered Onyx toward the sitting side of his rooms and to the love seat there. Onyx was surprised — and a little suspicious — when Dominic pushed him toward the loveseat with his gaming supplies.
First the workout, then this? Getting to choose the meal wasn’t strange at all, but these things were. Dominic was buttering him up, and he didn’t know if it was because he had gotten what he wanted or because he was hoping for more of the same.
Well, fuck that. Tomorrow included this evening, as far as Onyx was concerned, and a glance at the tablet screen told him it was getting late anyway.
He settled down with his game, casting a few more wary glances in Dominic’s direction before he started to play and ignored him.
Other than resting his hand lightly on Onyx’s back, Dominic didn’t make any movements and he only read until a servant arrived with their food.
Onyx wasn’t ready to come back down to earth yet, but he was hungry, so he let Dominic take the controller and tablet.
He was also half-asleep, and even food only perked him up a little.
It seemed like things were going to be fine, and that Dominic wasn’t going to try anything else dodgy, but he still didn’t trust it.
Onyx ate without comment, tucking away the food with the same appetite he almost always had, then when he was finished, he glanced at Dominic. “I’m ready for bed." He eyed him warily. “For sleep, I mean.”
“Just sleep,” Dominic agreed. He finished up the meal, wiping his mouth with his napkin and leaving the dishes behind to stand and make his way to the bed, where he undressed.
Onyx relaxed slightly, getting ready for bed before climbing into it, burying his face against the pillows and taking a deep breath. He was going to escape anything further tonight, at least, it seemed.
In the morning… Well, there were no promises for then, but all he could do was hope that Dominic would keep his word.
Dominic got into bed, and Onyx let himself be pulled close, but he couldn’t immediately sleep. Not until he was sure Dominic wouldn’t start something. As soon as he heard Dominic drift into sleep himself, though, he could no longer hold off his own exhaustion.
He slept, and he slept deep.