9. TATE
TATE
Ilove watching those dark lashes flutter like butterfly wings. I wasn’t missing out on seeing his face when he comes. I wanted to watch him the whole time, but the little fucking shit taunted me, and then the animal took over, and I tore his ass apart.
“Look down. Watch your greedy little asshole swallow my cock.”
Ryan claws the sheets, his eyes glance to where we’re joined, and he bites his lip. I love the way he turns from big, angry, hockey man to docile—if a little lippy—shy, pretty boy when I have him in hand. He’s perfect, and he’s all mine. He’s going to leave this room knowing how owned his ass is.
I slide in and out some more to prove a point. Or maybe several. We look good like this—we belong like this. He’s never going to find anyone like me, I’ll make sure of it. Picking up the pace, I open him wider, sinking deeper with every thrust.
“I want you to come, dollface, and then I’m going to keep fucking you until you’re sore, screaming, and full of my cum.”
“Oh, God.”
Ryan’s body tightens, his balls draw up, and then he shoots cum in jagged spurts over his abs, all the way to his nipples.
I don’t stop fucking him, working him over with hard thrusts, rocking my pelvis with enough force to leave bruises.
His head lolls back, pure bliss in his eyes.
And then I see them, clinging to his lashes like fragments of a broken star.
Tears. He blinks, and they trail down his face. I lean forward, licking them up.
Mine.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful.”
Tears continue to stream, he moans, aching cries bleating out of him, all the while his cock still leaking. I could watch him like this forever, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep myself from coming.
“Your hole is so good. Tight, irre-fucking-sistible.” I come hard, all the pent-up days of wanting him released in one orgasm, filling him full. He pants, writhing, an extra jolt of cum shooting from his cock. “That’s it, you’re gonna always be stuffed full of my cum, dollface.”
I pant, too, still in him and over him, letting my heartbeat regain natural rhythm. Marveling at how much I’ve wrecked him. He’s tear-stained, hair destroyed, drenched in his own cum. His eyes flutter as if he thinks he’s going to go to sleep.
“Don’t you dare, dollface.” I gently slap his cheek. “I’m not done with you yet.”
His eyes jolt open, and a palm presses against my still-covered chest. I never took my hoodie off. Didn’t know if I was ready for him to see my scar. He’d ask questions, and I’m not ready for those questions.
“What is there left to do?”
“I can’t mark you where others will see, but you’d be surprised how many hidden places I can find. Especially on skin this tattooed. I know exactly where I’m going to start.”
Without warning, I flip him and spread his cheeks wide. I sink my teeth into the place between his asshole and ass cheek.
Blood hits my taste buds, falling across my lip.
Ryan screams, and I almost come again.
Ryan’s head rests on my chest, lying on his side, one thick hockey thigh across mine, and I’m not internally screaming.
This is … okay. But I don’t know what it means.
Luke’s been the only person my body doesn’t reject, and that’s a good thing.
He won’t admit it, but he’s a hugger. It would have been tough trying to get out of that one, but thankfully, I don’t have to.
But Luke’s always been an exception to everything, and it made sense for so many reasons.
He was comfort for little me when our parents died.
He protected me. He always lent an ear and gave thoughtful advice.
I always thought his being able to hug me, lay a hand on my shoulder, pat me on the back was an extension of that.
Even with him, sometimes there’s a small, internal flinch.
So, what is it about Ryan?
Even thinking about the way I got like this, my wiring fried, it still doesn’t add up.
I cup my larger hand over his and bring the knuckles to my lips. “Did you know your heart beats four times between breaths? When you’re relaxed, that is. Seven when I’m fucking you.”
Placing his hand on my chest—I’m still in my Scorpions hoodie—frees up mine to run fingers through his sweaty hair. He cried, and I licked away his tears. Mission accomplished.
“You … counted my heartbeats?”
“And your breaths.”
“How very sporty-psycho chic of you.”
“I want to know everything about you.” His chest rises and falls some more. I count more heartbeats to myself. As soon as something changes within him, I want to know about it. His heart can tell me everything. “There’s something we have to settle.”
His heart rate speeds up. Interesting.
“You want a decision,” he guesses.
“Yes. We don’t have all the time in the world.”
“All you’ve made are promises. I want proof, VanCourt.”
My body tenses. His reluctance makes sense, and I’d question his sanity if he agreed to my terms without due diligence, but there’s a timeline, and the time for pulling the trigger on phase one—get Henry Savage on board—is ticking to expiration.
“Naturally,” I force myself to say. “But you need to—”
“And I want to know what you expect of me,” he says, some of that aristocratic pedigree bleeding through. I don’t see it in Ryan as much as I expected, maybe because he’s been fighting it his whole life? But it’s there. He probably finds it insulting that a grunt of the world like me would own him.
Even Uncle Jasper, who held a title within some circles, wasn’t accepted by everyone in his social class.
I was never given anything close to a title of any kind.
If it were anyone, it would have been Luke named as his heir.
Or he would have been given it if he’d fallen in line better.
Luke’s the one who wanted to live like an animal in the woods, so Uncle Jasper let him be.
Yeah, let him be. He’d never fucking let me off like that. The only way you leave is in a body bag, he’d said on many occasions. I got a year in California with Luke, and that was the most freedom I’d ever had.
Until he was dead.
I’m right where I want to be, though. I like being King of the Underworld. And I’ll have my beautiful consort by my side. If he’d fucking make up his mind.
“You said I’d be giving up my freedom—tell me about that. It’s been left to my imagination too long, and I’m picturing collars and chains.”
My cock pulses, blood rushing. I’d love to have him in a collar and chains, but a man like Ryan would become a restless doll.
A sad doll. I want him shackled to me, but I have no wish to kill his spirit.
His angry spirit makes my dick hard. “Don’t give me ideas, dollface.
But to answer your question, I decide what we do and when we do it.
You ask me for permission for big things, and I want to know where you are at all times.
It’s a safety measure, but it’s also because—”
“You’re a controlling bastard?”
A proud smile spreads onto my face. “Yes.” I’m not ashamed of it.
“That means playing in the NHL is out,” he says, but I catch the bite in his voice.
I trail fingers over his cheek to soothe him. “Is that something you want?”
“Isn’t that every hockey player’s dream?”
But he already did that … until he didn’t. His reason for leaving Phoenix was buried well, but there are too many reasons a contract can end to say for sure.
Uncle Jasper’s laughing in his grave at my conundrum.
A hockey husband is the perfect husband for me.
He’d be away most of the year, and I could conduct business without having to concern him with my affairs.
He could be ignorant of all of it. But the thought of Ryan being away from me for most of the year makes me murderous.
Does that mean I keep him with me or distance myself from him? My hand finds his hair, clenching, as if I’m trying to leash him to me by it.
He hisses. “Okay, already. I’ll take that as a no.”
I don’t know if it is, so I leave it at that for now. I’m going to have to talk it over with Ethan. I’ve made a college hockey schedule work; would an NHL one be that different? Being commissioner would be off the table … fuck.
“You know, if someone would let me play murder hockey—”
My hand cinches tighter into his hair of its own accord, I swear. “Murder hockey? Is that what you call it?”
“Yeah,” he says through gritted teeth. I ease off him.
“Your safety is non-negotiable. Add that to the list of rules. No putting yourself at risk beyond a standard hockey game,” I add, because I know that’s coming.
He exhales. “Yeah. Anything else?”
“Just the usual marital promises. Sleep with anyone else, and I kill them and punish you.”
Ryan laughs. Finally. I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever hear him laugh. But it’s not the laugh I want to hear. I want it bigger. Louder. “That’s nowhere near the usual marital promise, but it’s on brand for you, I guess.”
I return to counting his heartbeats and breaths for exactly one hundred and sixty-seven beats, but then he interrupts me again.
“I need to go, Tate.”
“You go when I dismiss you. Rule.”
He sits up anyway, climbs off the bed, and I’m paralyzed, caught in the web of his beauty that’s enhanced by the moon. It gives him an ethereal glow, and my mind struggles to make sense of what my eyes are telling it.
“Maybe when we’re married, big guy. I have a curfew to meet.”
He tosses my sweats at me, jostling me back to life.
I sit up, watching him dress. He’s got several marks of my ownership stamped on him, purple hickeys up his torso, mixed in with the ones from the game I know were from McKinnon.
His hoodie falls over them, the concealment doing nothing to cool my ire.
Ryan laughs again. This time softer. “Thinking about when McKinnon hit me during the game?”
I may have barked at McKinnon more than usual for that. Ryan’s fully dressed now, so I slip into my sweats boxer-less, and stand, crowding him against the doorway.
“Marry me,” I demand.
Ryan’s lip trembles with defiance. Is it because he’ll hate being owned in the way I want to own him? Or because he’ll love it?
“I …” he stammers. “I … maybe.”
Infuriating. The urge to break something burns through my veins. I curl my fingers and extend them, finally laying them across his chest, looking for something to calm me down. But his hoodie’s too thick, and I can’t find what I’m looking for.
“Are you looking for my heartbeat again?”
“Yes,” I snap. Can’t he see I’m not in the frame of mind for stupid questions?
Slowly, he places his tattoo-covered hand over my wrist, and I take a breath; my interest in what he’s doing overrides the skin-on-skin contact.
He slides my hand up to his throat, till my fingers reach his pulse point.
I place my thumb on the cotton hood, so its pulse point doesn’t interfere with detecting his, and I look for that rise and fall of his chest.
Some of the murder in my veins subsides. Enough that I can think about letting him leave the room.
What just happened? What the fuck is going on? This is a level of obsession that’s new to me. Is this what Uncle Jasper saw? What he worked so hard to prevent?
“That’s so fucking, weird, dude,” he says, and he’s …
Well, shit.
Is that a smile? It is. A real one. It hits like a puck to the face, disorienting, knocking me senseless. That little hook and pull sensation I felt when I saw him in the woods, it happens again, but this time the pull’s staggering.
Oh, dollface, you’re so done for.
If he’s smiling like that, he can’t hate my weirdness too much. It bolsters me. “You need proof, and I want to give it to you, but that means I’m going to have to find out about you, dollface.”
He lets his head fall forward to my chest. “Yeah, I know.”
Fuck. I don’t know what to do with him. This is where my emotional incompetence rears its ugly head.
Is he upset? Tired? Do I pat him on the back?
Or kiss him? I think I’ll go with kiss. Our kisses could heal even the deadliest of ailments.
But then he shakes, his breath hitching.
Is he … crying? Fuck. He was smiling less than a second ago.
How do people do that? Smile their way into annihilating tears?
I’ve cried tears of terror and tears of pain, but never anything else.
Course correct. No kiss—yet. Embrace him. That’s what I’ll do. When people cry, they like to be embraced. Slowly, I slide my arms around his thick torso.
“N-Not too tight,” he says.
Ooookay.
I loosen my grip. “Ryan,” I murmur. “Tell me. Please.” I’m terrible at best with the crying thing. A crying Ryan could set off a murder spree. He needs to tell me what’s upset him so I can find it, destroy it, make sure he never cries again. “I have to fix it.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get my father to let me go to Shadowridge. Things are complicated and … and … fuck … I have to go.”
He tries to move. “Not a chance, Ryan.” Ryan’s jaw sets tight, glaring as the tears keep coming. He’s not going to tell me, and I can’t use my usual methods of extracting information on him. “He’ll say yes.”
“It’s a whole generational thing,” he says.
“You’ll convince him. Parents always want to make their kids happy.” Not that I know firsthand, but I’ve seen plenty of parents in action. Like, McKinnon and his dad. They’re besties. It’s disgusting.
“And if I can’t?”
I don’t know the word can’t. I either find another way or kill what’s in my way. I guess if he can’t, that’s what I’ll have to do, but it will torpedo this plan. I’d need to reengineer.
“Then everything takes longer.”
“I don’t have longer,” he says.
“Then we need to move, dollface. Let’s start with you talking to your dad. Okay?” I wipe the tears from under his eyes—what the hell am I doing?—and study his face.
He nods slowly. “Yeah, okay.”