Page 13

Chapter 12

Louis

I come home sweaty and exhausted from an extensive session at the gym. Working out my aggressions and horny frustrations by lifting metal used to work in the past, but now it proves as hopeless as most everything else these days.

In the past week, Sparrow’s been trying his hand at cooking, and I’ve had to taste his various forms of inedible concoctions. Last night, he made an experimental meat stew with things he found in my freezer, and I had a hard time even swallowing it while he stood by the side of the table and eagerly anticipated my verdict. “Good,” I choked out, giving him a strained smile. “It’s good.”

I expect I’ll have to force down another one of those as I step into the kitchen.

“Welcome home,” Sparrow says. He’s standing by the stove, wearing an apron. Only an apron.

“Thank—” I stop in the middle of the sentence when he turns around and shows his back.

His bare back. His bare ass , and as my eyes inevitably zoom in on it, I notice something glinting between his cheeks.

No fucking way.

A low rumble starts in my throat, and my hands flex, longing to grab, to squeeze, to pleasure, to hurt.

The gemstone glittering between his cheeks manages to look both cute and sexy, just like the bearer of it. On silent feet, I close in, inching further and further toward the very thing I should run away from, closer and closer to his destruction and mine.

I’d like to say I practice restraint—this is what I’ve resisted for weeks; surely a bare ass and a butt plug nudged between tantalizing cheeks won’t make me lose my cool? But all it takes is roughly ten seconds for all my doubts to be eradicated by the sight of him, and in the face of such temptation, who can blame me? I’m only human, after all. I’m a man—a man with needs, and what I need is currently right in front of me.

Sparrow doesn’t even turn around to acknowledge the war currently going on in my mind. Even as I prowl toward him, I’m silent enough that I’m right at his back before he gasps and looks up at me past his shoulder.

“I’ve made dinner,” he says with a sly smile, but his initial confidence quickly dissolves into a gasp when I press up against him, nudging my crotch to his ass.

“I can see that,” I say gruffly. “What are you doing?”

“I just thought you’d be hungry after the gym.”

“Not dinner. This.” I skirt my hand up his side and cup his bare ass cheek. It’s just a touch. There’s still enough time to stop this.

His sly smile is back. “Oh, that .”

I stoke a lock of hair from his face and hiss into his ear, “So desperate for it, are you? So desperate that you’d buy a plug to fill your hungry little hole?”

“Yeah.” He melts onto the counter, hands dropping whatever he was doing. Eyes hooded, he gazes up at me and pushes his ass back until I feel the hard end of the plug press against my fly. “But I want you…Want you to fill it.”

Jesus fucking Christ.

With a growl, I grip both his ass cheeks, squeeze them in my hand, and lift them to hold them apart. Sparrow whimpers, standing on his tippy-toes to allow me better access. I kneel to the floor, dig my thumbs into the crease of his ass, and part his cheeks wide, dinner wholly forgotten. When I trace his stretched rim with a finger, he shudders and lets out a moan. So responsive. So attentive. He moans louder when I place my finger on the end of the plug. The textured plastic of the gemstone is warm to my touch as I push it further inside, testing the give of it. The plush muscles of his cheeks clench around my touch. Then I pull , and he gasps as the wider part starts pushing against his rim.

“Hold yourself open for me, okay?” I mumble.

His hands fly immediately to his flanks, and he grabs his ass cheeks to expose himself, upper body resting on the kitchen counter as he balances on his tippy-toes.

So eager. I smirk as I fuck the plug in and out of him for a while, watching his rim expand and pulse around the flared base.

“Fuck,” I curse under my breath.

There’s some resistance as I pull the plug out fully, and Sparrow whines as his hole clenches around nothing.

“You need something here, don’t you?” I press a finger to his hole, hot and slick from the lube he must’ve used.

“Yeah,” he gasps. “Please.”

I lean in and flick my tongue over his hole, and he nearly falls over.

“Hold on tight,” I say with a smirk before I dive back in, probing his stretched hole with my tongue, groaning as I bury my face between his warm cheeks. I lick him from balls to taint and back over his hole. All the while, he’s gasping and hitching for breath as if I’m hurting him. As if he’s dying.

I spit into his crack and push a finger inside. Sparrow moans, the faintest whisper of “please” slipping over his lips as I twist my finger inside him and find the spot that has him crying out.

“Yeah, there you go.” Won’t take long now; I can feel his muscles tensing up, his hips thrusting into thin air in his desperation for some friction on his cock. He lacks the sense to ask me for it; instead, he’s so obedient in holding his ass open for me.

I rip the ties of the apron open and tap his thigh. “Turn around for me, boy.”

Delirious, he drops his hands from his ass and does as I say, and as the apron falls to the floor, I take his hard cock into my mouth, swallowing it to the root in one go.

“Ah! Louis!” he cries out, and barely two seconds later, he explodes into my mouth, hips jerking uncontrollably as he spurts deep into my throat.

I swallow it all and stand up. Not wasting any time, I flip him back over, rip my jeans down, and get out my own rock-hard dick.

I don’t know much, but I do know this: I’m not going to fuck him today. It would be too much for him, and too much for me too.

Instead, I jerk my length with harsh, desperate strokes, and it doesn’t take long for my release to rush up my spine. Groaning and squeezing my eyes shut, I paint Sparrow’s ass with my seed until he drips with it.

A long moment passes where I do nothing but catch my breath and let the aftershocks sear through my body. Then I tuck myself back into my pants, lick my lips, and open my eyes.

Sparrow lies naked and half-slumped against the kitchen counter, his sharp shoulder blades protruding from his back and his hair in disarray. He turns around, and at the sight of his glittering blue eyes and lips bitten pink and plump, reality crashes back into me and churns my insides into mush.

Done. It’s done. I did what I swore I would never do. At least I didn’t fuck him, but this is bad enough.

“Louis…” His arms lift toward me shakily as he leans into my body. He stands on his tippy-toes again as he reaches up, up, his mouth open and wanting, longing for the heat of mine. But he doesn’t know it’s cold, and he knows nothing of the darkness lurking inside my blackened heart.

I jerk away from him so forcefully he nearly trips, but he catches himself just in time.

“I’m going out,” I grunt.

His mouth falls open. “But…Don’t you want dinner?”

I avert my gaze to avoid the hurt and confusion in his eyes. “No. I’m going.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

What can I say to that? How can I possibly explain that what we just did can never happen again? He looked so happy when he leaned in to kiss me, and I’d like to give him what he wants, but I can’t. I can’t.

The further I back away from him, the more disturbed his expression gets, and when I go to the hallway, he follows.

“Louis, wait—”

I cut him off by fleeing through the door. I just wish the door to my heart would close as well, but that damn kid has cracked it open further than I ever thought possible. He’s going to be the death of me, and I of him, and no one can stop it from happening but me.

As I rev the bike far beyond the speed limits and zigzag through the evening traffic, I still can’t believe myself, but most of all, I can’t believe him .

How could I have underestimated him to this extent? I was so sure he wouldn’t do anything even remotely close to this that I never prepared myself for it. He seems so innocent in other aspects of life—at a loss for how to do the most basic things. But when it comes to sex, he was comfortable with putting on that show for me—strutting around half-naked in the kitchen with a butt plug up his ass. Well, maybe not comfortable, but certainly willing.

Has he done something like this before? With that ex-boyfriend of his, perhaps? Somehow I doubt it, and besides, part of me doesn’t want him to have done this for anyone else. Irrational as the thought is, I want it to have been for me only.

The outcome is the same in any case, and my freak-out after the fact is still running through my veins, setting my mind on fire with the uncomfortable fact that I no longer have control over our relationship. Whatever that relationship is exactly. And when I lack control, everything is tilted on its axis and the wrong notes are playing in my head, and until I can figure out what to do, all I can think about is numbing myself with booze.

Instead of Ravi, it’s Maurice behind the bar this time, and to my relief, there are fewer customers than usual.

“Coming alone this time?” Maurice asks, eyebrows raised.

I give a noncommittal grunt in reply and order a whiskey.

“Let me guess,” he continues, “it’s that little twink that has your panties in a twist.”

My gaze flicks up to him, and before I can school my expression, I show him the truth in my eyes.

“Ha! Knew it,” he cackles. “Finally fuck him, did you?”

“Shut the fuck up.” Bending over the bar top, I grab the bottle of Jack Daniels to pour another glass for myself.

“Now, now,” Maurice says. “No need to be all secretive about it. Unless you’ve caught feelings for him, that is.”

I’ve barely allowed myself to think as far as that. Even if I had, and even if it was true, there’s no way I’d let Maurice know about it. I’m not sure why I distrust him so much; he’s never betrayed me, and he and Ravi are pretty much the only Black Claws I can stand to be around. Aside from a few snide remarks, he wouldn’t do anything to sabotage me, so why do I find myself unable to share what lies heavy in my heart?

I suppose it’s business as usual. I learned long ago to clutch my weaknesses to my chest and let no one know what plagues me.

“You know…” Maurice offers me one of his more understanding smiles. To me, it looks like a pitying one, because I know what he’s about to say. “You can’t live the rest of your life alone just because of—”

“Don’t.” The word wrenches out of me, and the death glare I spear him with would make anyone take a step back and go pale, but Maurice just rolls his eyes.

“Fine.”

We lapse into silence for a while as I sip the whiskey. I can’t talk to Maurice; he knows too much about me, and the one person I hoped to talk to isn’t here.

“Where’s Ravi?”

“Helping Tara,” Maurice says. “There’s a leak at the Outpost again.”

I groan. “Christ, that place is hopeless.”

Ever since we bought the Outpost Motel for another money laundering scheme, it’s been one problem after the other. First, it was the mold infestation, then the hopelessly outdated plumbing, and as if that wasn’t enough, the roof started leaking after one of the rainstorms this past summer.

I pour the rest of the whiskey down my throat. The liquor burns my gut, piling onto my list of recent regrets and impulsive decisions. “Any spare rooms?”

Maurice raises an eyebrow. “What’s this now? You need one?”

I nod, not meeting his gaze.

“For you? The landlord throw you out or what?”

“No. For him.”

“Oh.” Maurice snorts. “Why though? The kid seemed happy enough about you living together. You both did.” He gestures to the back room with a grin.

“Happy has nothing to do with it.”

Well, technically it does. In order to preserve Sparrow’s happiness, I have to let him go. I need to leave him to someone or somewhere that can take care of him better than I can. Besides that, we’re incompatible; Sparrow’s heart is wide open, while mine is long shut. We can’t be together. Two broken people are a bad combination, and I need to gain control of this—I need to end it before something bad happens. Before I hurt him. Before I do to him what I did to Justin. I wouldn’t be able to stand myself if I did.

The truth is a paradox, but it’s a truth nonetheless: I care about Sparrow, and that’s why I have to let him go. I can’t trust myself with him—not with his body and even less with his heart. I can’t be the one to heal him, and I can’t be the one to break him further either.

I set the whiskey down, get hold of my phone, and call Ravi’s number with a heavy heart.