5. Roman
Roman
The fool.
“You will come to Onyx House tonight,” I tell Tate, running my hands through my hair as I look up at the leaves gently blowing in the breeze.
“Give me a break.”
“You will do what I say, Tate. I need to keep you close until I find who left you the present.”
A heavy weight settles in my chest.
I’m the real fool.
I’ve been sitting here thinking that nothing threatening has happened to Tate, when in reality, I just hadn’t been doing my job well enough.
His gaze pierces mine. “How close, Roman? You going to tie me to your bed?”
“Don’t fucking say that to me,” I roar at him.
My voice is too loud.
A few girls walking down a nearby path look over at us, but I ignore it, staring straight into Tate’s wide eyes.
I want to reach over and clutch his throat.
I could cut off his air for a moment, show him my control, and stop him from saying these intensely distracting things to me that confuse my cock when there are serious things to deal with.
You don’t know what I can do with good bondage, boy.
He still has no clue about my family.
The things I’ve endured.
I give him a cold stare, imagining every knot I could fasten around his strong arms to restrain him; to show him exactly how good I am at getting people to do what they’re told.
I could have him begging me.
Pleading and desperate, within minutes.
Fuck him so hard he screams, make a mess of him with my cum, and leave him tied up and begging for release I wouldn’t give, and fuck, I really am losing it, because I want to see him like that. Tied up, just for me.
In the back of my mind, I’m aware that I’m having these thoughts about a man… but he’d look so good in rope. His skin. His muscle.
I breathe deeply and evenly, watching his eyes dance over my face.
“Yo,” I hear from behind me.
Weston and Sev appear at the side of the picnic blanket, both of them carrying to-go sandwiches in their hands. I exhale, smothering my rage like I’m dousing a fire.
Back to myself.
Composed.
Numb.
In control.
“Hi,” Tate says with a radiant, warm smile that he seems capable of instantly summoning onto his face.
“Mind if we join?” Wes asks, as he and Sev are already sitting down on the blanket. “We were going to go sit somewhere on the quad, too. It’s perfect out today.”
The truth is that I want to get the fuck out of here.
Tate just dropped information on me that we need to investigate, and I am itching to look up whatever symbol he saw on that rock.
Who the fuck else is tailing him, other than me?
How could I not have noticed?
“Please join us. More the merrier,” Tate says, sliding over on the booth.
We will stay for a while.
Then I’m leaving, and Tate will stay by my side.
“Weston and Sev, this is Tate,” I say. “He transferred in.”
“Whoa,” Wes says, doing a double take and looking at Tate more closely, like he just saw a mirage. “You’re Tate Landrey. What the fuck? When did you get here?”
“A few weeks ago,” Tate says, reaching out to shake his hand. “I went to an Onyx party, but I left after a grand total of ten minutes. Pleasure to meet you both.”
“This is awesome,” Weston says. “You’ve always been my favorite Landrey brother. I mean, shit, Luke’s an awesome QB, but no one has style like you.”
Tate smiles. “Too kind. I try my best. Roman, you want these?”
He hands me his container of strawberries, and I nod, taking one.
“You also piss off all the right people, and I like that,” Weston tells him.
“Only takes one well-timed blow job to make a whole section of society clutch their pearls,” Tate says casually.
Weston and Sev both laugh.
I stay tight-lipped.
How can Tate appear so breezy and happy and talkative, lying back on his elbows in the afternoon sun?
Wes and Sev have no clue about the danger he’s in.
Right now, it doesn’t feel like Tate does either.
“Wait. You didn’t know those photos were being taken of you on the beach, right?” Sev asks.
“No. It was a genuine accident.”
When I researched Tate before he arrived, I saw the photos.
I didn’t look closely, but I saw enough.
A leaked set of photos of Tate Landrey sucking an anonymous guy’s dick got plastered all over the internet months ago, leading to him being removed from his college football team.
“I can’t imagine how violating that must have been,” Weston says. “A private moment, and suddenly the whole world is gawking at it…”
Tate shrugs. “The consequences really sucked, but I don’t mind that people saw me sucking cock. Whether they’re pissed off or jerking off to me, they’re thinking about me, right?”
Wes raises his hand to fist bump Tate.
The image of Tate’s tongue in those photos flashes through my mind, over and over again, unbidden.
He was lavishing that man’s cock. His tongue jutted out over his base, like he was hungry for it.
“You going to finish that, Roman?” Tate asks, suddenly staring at me again.
“Chto?” I say without thinking, forgetting to speak English. “Sorry. What?”
A little smile appears on the corner of his mouth. “The strawberries.”
“Take them.”
I watch his lips wrap around the fruit and I can’t look away.
The fucker knows he’s getting to me.
Weston and Sev hang around for another half an hour, and I see Tate’s social ease playing out right in front of me.
He is a natural at conversation.
He asks Weston and Sev when they started dating, then manages to compliment them both, Weston on his hat and Sevan on his leather belt.
After they speak for twenty minutes they’re already talking about childhood dreams, and how much things have changed since they were small children.
I feel like I’m witnessing a magician.
People are comfortable around Tate within moments.
I still think some Onyx Society guys are uncomfortable and intimidated around me, even ones I’ve known for years.
I pull out my phone as Weston and Sev are wrapping up their stuff to go.
Maks Petrov
Met with Yegor this afternoon, got a ride from Nata. Pick me up in a while?
Roman
I’ll be there.
Yegor says guests are coming over soon. No clue who.
Be on your guard. I don’t trust any guest he entertains.
You read my mind.
See you in a bit. Stay safe.
My own family life has felt like a distant world since Tate arrived on campus.
I have been avoiding my father’s Sunday dinners.
Avoiding a few of my cousins’ phone calls, too.
There will be consequences for that… but watching Tate has been all-consuming.
After Weston and Sev head out to hit the gym, I help Tate fold up his picnic blanket.
“Walk with me,” I tell him.
“Sir, yes, sir.”
We head through the main part of campus, walking side by side down one of the shorter gravel paths that cuts across the quad. The clouds are puffy and white in the sky, and students are sitting under trees, tossing frisbees back and forth, and laughing all around us.
“We go get this fucking… rock,” I say to him, waving my hand through the air. “Then I have to take care of a couple of things. Then we go back to Onyx House.”
“What do you need to take care of?” he asks.
My eyes scan the grassy quad. “Things.”
“And how do you know I don’t have plans?”
“You don’t have more classes. I know your schedule.”
“What if today was different?”
I give him a heated glance. “Okay. Do you have plans, Tate?”
“No,” he admits, and we fall into silence again.
My boots crunch on the path as we walk. It feels like I’m reverting now. It had been getting easier to talk to Tate lately… even easy to text him sometimes, too.
Now I’m myself again.
Silence hanging between us like a third person on the path.
I accompany Tate upstairs to his dorm room, where he grabs the rock, the bow it came with, and the wrapping it was in. He tosses them in his backpack and slings it over his shoulder, heading back downstairs.
“How do you do it?” I finally ask him as we get to the first floor landing. “Talk to the other guys so easily, acting like nothing is wrong?”
“I told you, I just enjoy people’s company. Even yours.”
“That’s a mistake,” I tell him.
“I have a question. And you have to be honest.”
I stop walking for a moment, and he freezes, too. I show him my free hand, tapping on the tattoo I have that says honestas.
“This means ‘honesty’ in Latin. I’m always honest.”
He bites his lower lip. “When you sent me that picture… the outline of your dick, did you think I was going to jerk off to it? Or were you just showing off?”
“Jesus fuck, Tate, we are not going to talk about my cock right now.”
He smiles a little. “I want to, though.”
“None of my business what you do with the picture, Blondin.”
He looks up at me, and his eyes make my blood flare with heat.
“Did you know I would come to it, Roman?” he insists.
I let his question hang in the air for a while, but then I relent, nodding.
“Yes.”
“Well, I did. It made me come really fucking hard, and I needed that. So thank you.”
A rush floods my body, ending at my cock.
God, what are you doing to me?
I hold his gaze for a moment before I walk off ahead of him, beckoning him to follow.
“Come on. Let’s go. I’m going to be late.”