20. Tate #2
Roman had told me, earlier today, that the Confessional can contain truly anonymous secrets, if the secret writer wants it that way. You can get as detailed as you like, or stay vague.
Oliver reaches in for the first secret, reading it out loud.
The only other sound in the room is the steady crackle from the fireplace.
“I was in love with a woman who didn’t want me,” Oliver reads aloud someone else’s confession. “I let her pull me away from everything I should have cared about, and failed two classes. I don’t forgive myself. All I want is to change.”
The box gets passed to the next person, a freshman I haven’t spoken to before. He pulls out the next paper.
“I dreamed about my sister’s boyfriend, and I am so ashamed.”
I wish I knew who wrote that one, just so I could give him a hug and tell him everything was going to be okay.
A few more secrets are read, which involve confessing to petty crimes like shoplifting, a guy who thinks he is ugly, and another who knows he isn't a good enough boyfriend. Some are simpler: people saying that they don’t know how to deal with their fear of death, or fear of losing people they love.
But when the box gets passed to Hunter, I know exactly whose secret he is reading.
Roman didn’t even try to anonymize his confession.
Hunter reads it, baring Roman’s soul for all of us.
“I thought that I would have to stay trapped inside a machine forever, solely for one reason: to avenge my mother’s death.
I’ve realized now that nothing can do that.
She is gone, but she is also here, with me, forever.
No amount of bloodshed will ever get her back.
But starting over feels like a beginning, not an ending. And I want my heart to be open.”
Ollie, Weston, and Rayne are all tearing up, hearing it.
And when I look to my side and see Roman, he just looks at peace.
I reach down to clutch his hand in mine and squeeze it tight, looking at the deep, blank ink of the tattoo that says honestas, just above his knuckles.
I love the way his inked fingers look entwined with mine.
I love the way it feels to hold him, knowing that he’s the kind of person who would write something like that beautiful secret.
I want my heart to be open, he wrote.
He doesn’t realize that it already has been.
Since the day I met him, and he took care of my self-inflicted wounds like I was someone who mattered.
Hours later, Roman’s had more than one glass of vodka on the rocks.
After the Confessional, all of the guys drank together downstairs, and I went outside to wait by the fire pit.
I knew I would have been welcome, if I wanted to stay.
But it had never been clearer that the Onyx Society is a true brotherhood, and right now, Roman needs to know that he still has a brotherhood, for life.
When he said he wanted to get out of the Petrov Bratva, I thought for sure that it had to be just an effect of the painkillers he was on at the hospital, or a reaction to the surgery, or a bold statement he didn’t actually mean.
I didn’t push him on it since that night.
For once, I let it simmer.
When he wanted to talk about it I knew he would.
When I heard that secret tonight my heart felt like it was overflowing, with… I don’t know what.
Pride. Care.
So much love that I don’t even know how to contain it.
I push the long iron rod into the wood at the center of the fire pit, and just as I’m getting it roaring again, I see the back doors of the house open up.
Roman comes out slowly, heading over, and I can see from the look in his eyes that he’s very tipsy.
He sits right next to me, gathering me against him.
“Give me your hand,” he says in a low voice near my ear. He smells like vodka, but I don’t think it smells too strong at all.
I put my hand out, and a moment later, he’s pulling it, taking something from his pocket.
Rope.
He gives me a half-lidded, authoritative stare.
He pushes my wrist to the armrest of the chair I’m sitting in, then easily ties me to it.
“Right here?” I ask, lifting my eyebrows.
But my cock is already responding, growing hard for him again.
“Yes, here. You afraid of the other guys coming outside?”
I pull in a short breath. “No. Not even a little bit.”
He has my other hand bound to the other side of the chair a minute later.
He runs his fingers down the front of my body, trailing from the underside of my jaw all the way down to my chest. He lets his hand roam up under the hem of my shirt, pinching my nipple at first and then gently sweeping his thumb over it.
He shoves open my legs, then goes for the button and zipper at the top of my fly. He yanks my pants and briefs down, taking off my shoes with everything, until I’m completely naked from the waist down.
“It feels like you have been mine for a long time, Tate Landrey,” he murmurs.
I swallow. “It does.”
“So tell me. Are you really ready for what it’s like to belong to me?”
My cock jumps, and his eyes flick down toward it.
“I’ve been ready for that for a long time, too.”
“It means I have you when I want you,” he says, running his middle finger over the precum at my tip.
“Good thing I want you all of the fucking time.”
“It means I keep no secrets. Everyone will know you’re mine.”
“Fuck,” I hiss as he drops to his knees between my legs and lays a long, wet stripe with his tongue all the way from the top of my balls, up my shaft, and to my tip.
He shoves his hand underneath me, in the space between my ass and the chair, and the finger he slicked with my precum finds my hole, pressing up against it.
If I could move, I would be jerking my body around, running my hand through my hair, or gripping him hard, but I’m fully restrained, and he knows it. His other hand swirls around the front of my body, going up to tweak my nipple again, harder this time.
I arch my back.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Roman says, gazing at me like he sees every thought in my head.
“Thinking I might accidentally come if you breathe on me, because I’m so turned on the moment you’re near me.”
“Tell me what you’re actually thinking, beauty,” he murmurs, leaning over and kissing up my shaft, lapping his tongue out in an agonizing tease.
Don’t say it.
Don’t fucking say shit.
You run your mouth, and you’ll scare him, it’s too fucking soon.
“Fuck,” I repeat.
“Tell me.”
“I’m in love with you,” I blurt out, and he wraps his lips over the head of my cock, giving it a firm suck.
He looks back up at me and I swear my entire heart could burst.
He pulls off of my cock and then moves up, kissing my jaw, then my mouth.
“Thank the fucking Lord, I am not the only one crazy enough to feel it,” he murmurs. “You are my love.”
He still has his fingers pushed up under me, teasing at my hole, as he slides his tongue into my mouth. He pushes just one finger inside, not far, not nearly enough because he doesn’t have a ton of lube.
I love it when he pushes, however far that I can take.
Pushes every fucking boundary with me, and my body lights up for him like I was made for only his touch.
“I love you,” I whisper. “If it’s crazy I don’t fucking care.”
He sighs against me, kissing my neck, then dropping low again to kiss all along my inner thigh. “I knew it when you stayed by me at the hospital. When you came to protect me, that night… I knew it when you demanded every fucking thing from me, Tate. I am in love with you, too.”
He plunges his mouth over my cock again and swallows me whole.
Inside, and out.
My arms tug at the restraints as my body shudders in place under his tongue.
I tilt my head backward, looking up at the clear night sky as a cold breeze blows past, kissing my skin.
His finger pushes inside my hole a little deeper.
Then a little more.
Even though it’s a fraction of his cock, it feels incredibly intense.
His body is silhouetted by the orange glow of the fire pit behind him, and I feel like I’m now being overtaken by the fallen god I saw in him earlier.
He takes me deep into his throat and I groan loudly. The windows to the house are open wide, and I don’t give a fuck who hears me.
“Fuck, I’m going to come,” I breathe. “I love you so fucking much—God—”
I lose control as he wraps his hand around my base, stroking and tugging as he sucks the cum from me. I pulse, over and over, as he takes me through the waves of my orgasm, and afterward, I collapse backward onto the chair.
“So perfect,” I hear him saying softly as he strokes a hand over my hair. “Bound for me, like this. Coming for me so fucking hard.”
“You could leave me tied up like this all year, and I’d come anytime you told me to,” I whisper.
My voice sounds broken and hoarse.
A sound comes from the back of the house, and the door swings open.
“Poker? We’ve got to do poker,” I hear Weston’s voice float over in the air.
I lock eyes with Roman, and a wide smile spreads over his face. “Should I leave you like this?”
“God, I hate you.”
He shakes his head. “No. You love me. I know all of your secrets, now.”