Page 20

Mal doesn’t hesitate for a second. “Want you.”

There’s a little jolt that runs through Rowan’s chest at the phrasing. Like Mal actually wants him and not one specific part of him.

But he shoves those thoughts aside, not wanting to dwell on maybes when there are a whole lot of definitely s happening right now. As in, he’s definitely got to get his cock inside Mal again. And Mal definitely wants him to.

Unclipping Mal’s wrists from his thighs and hauling him to his feet, Rowan settles against the bench and guides Mal between his spread thighs.

“You’re gonna ride me,” he tells him.

Mal bites his lip but nods, letting Rowan pull him up so he’s straddling him, Mal’s cock pressed firmly against Rowan’s lower belly and his ass inches above Rowan’s own cock. Once he’s settled, Rowan clips Mal’s wrists together behind his back. He can tell he’s wobbly and supports him with a firm hand to his lower back while he slips his erection between Mal’s cheeks, slicking his length between his cheeks and positioning himself under Mal’s hole.

“Sit.”

Slowly, so fucking slowly, Mal sinks down and down and down a half inch at a time, breathing hard through his nose until Rowan’s fully sheathed and nearly aching from the heat of Mal’s body.

“Fuck…,” Rowan breathes, barely audible but so loud to his own ears with the rushing of blood echoing in his head.

He wants to chastise himself for showing his hand, but Mal merely exhales a long, shaky moan in response, and he couldn’t care less about the slip.

But he sits there in Rowan’s lap. And sits and sits. And sits , because that’s what Rowan told him to do, didn’t he? God, he’s so fucking good.

“You can move now. At your own pace. And,” he says, tugging at the clip binding his wrists together. “You’ll get these back if you’re good.”

Then Mal’s rising up, thighs flexing at the height of his ascent and quivering on the way down. As he gains speed, it feels so damn good that Rowan nearly forgets himself. Nearly fucks up into him in an effort to quell the slowly simmering heat that’s been building all night. But he reins himself in, focusing on the slick drag of Mal’s walls around him and the rolling of his abs as he rides him.

“That’s it. Keep fucking yourself until I say you’re done.”

“I can’t…,” he says, thighs quivering and pace slowing to little more than a stutter.

“Yes, you can. Make me proud, Mal.”

The request works. Mal seems to get a second wind at the prospect of pleasing Rowan—of making him proud—and it’s the hottest fucking thing. With every rise and every drop, he brings both himself and Rowan closer to the sweet promise of release. Rowan grabs the masturbator he’d brought with him, slips it over Mal’s red cock and makes him whimper.

“Can you do one more for me?”

Mal whines, “N-no. Can’t…,” but he doesn’t stop moving.

Doesn’t stop fucking up into Rowan’s fist and down onto his cock, so Rowan presses.

“I think you can, Mal. Give me a color.”

It takes two thrusts for him to respond.

“Green.”

“Good. One more. Then you can come.”

After a long night of being on edge, it takes less than a minute to bring him to the brink again. Rowan doesn’t even have to move his hand, Mal effectively stroking his own cock from his riding.

“Rowan… I’m…!”

Rowan tugs off the toy and grabs Mal’s hips as he rises up, pulling him off his cock and nearly hissing at the cool air surrounding his cock.

“Fuhhck….”

Rowan laments the fact that he can’t see Mal’s eyes as he shakes through another denied orgasm. He knows well enough from the past few weeks what a sight it is to look him in the eyes when he comes, see the glazed-over expression before his bright eyes roll back and his eyelids squeeze tight. He settles for watching the quiver of Mal’s abs as he hovers above him.

“Good. I’m so proud of you,” Rowan tells him, stroking his thigh with one hand and petting his cheek with the other. “Sit.”

Mal sinks back down as Rowan guides his cock back inside. He starts up his rhythm again, but it’s clear he’s at his limit.

Taking pity on him, Rowan asks, “Want your hands?”

Mal nods frantically.

“Still gotta use your words, Mal.”

“Yes, please ….”

Rowan quickly unclasps both of Mal’s wrists from behind his back.

Immediately, Mal’s arms fly around Rowan’s neck like a life preserver, pulling himself closer and leaning in so he can fuck himself deeper.

It’s a thousand times better. The leverage Mal’s able to get with his elbows clamped around the back of Rowan’s neck and his short fingernails clawing into Rowan’s back is just right for him to rise up fully and drop himself down, a filthy slap, slap, slap echoing in the room. It’s all Rowan can do to keep the masturbator tight around Mal’s cock as his own is fucked raw, an electric charge building in his core with every clench of Mal’s hole.

“Fuck, just like that, Mal. You close? Tell me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah… wanna…,” Mal whines, hips starting to stutter once more. “ Rowan , please… need—”

“Do it, Mal. Let go. Come for me. Been so fucking good.”

When Mal comes, it’s with a sob and a shudder that wracks his entire body. He falls into Rowan, blindly pressing his forehead against Rowan’s, and before he knows what’s happening, Mal’s soft lips are pressed firmly against his own.

The impact of his lips vibrates through him like a tuning fork, and Rowan’s pretty fucking sure there’s a ringing in his ears to match as his chest explodes in surprise. And then he’s coming, filling Mal up with their lips smashed together. He inhales sharply, frozen in place and breathing in the musky smell of Mal’s sweat.

Fuck . He wants this. He’s wanted this, but Mal is….

Mal is….

Mal isn’t in the right state of mind.

Even without being able to see his eyes, he knows that he’s far from with it right now. It’s only been a few seconds, but despite the racing in his mind, his body feels like it’s moving in slow motion, fighting against gravity and so fucking heavy where there’s usually lightness. And when he regains control of his limbs, it’s much harder than he thought it would be to cup Mal’s cheeks in his hands and gently tug himself away from his warm, plush lips.

The half whine Mal lets out when they finally part nearly breaks Rowan’s entire damn heart, but he can’t let it get to him.

“Mal…,” he whispers, mind reeling and body still tingling from his unexpected orgasm. “Fuck, I can’t…. I’ve wanted to do that since I saw you. But not—not now. You can’t—you’re not in the right state of mind. Do it again when you’re back to yourself and I’ll kiss you back. I swear I’ll kiss you back. Promise .”

He’s rambling, tripping over his words, but he needs Mal to know—to understand —that he’s not rejecting him because he doesn’t want him. He’s rejecting him because he wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye again knowing he’d taken advantage of him in a vulnerable state. As it is, he’s glad he can’t see Mal’s eyes right now, because he doesn’t want to know what he might find staring back at him.

Mal makes a tiny, strangled whimper of protest.

“Need you to tell me you understand, Mal.”

Thankfully, he nods, a sloppy jerking motion of his head but recognizable as an affirmative nonetheless. He lets his body slump forward into Rowan’s chest, arms falling loosely around Rowan’s hips.

Rowan scrunches his eyes shut, cupping the back of Mal’s neck and squeezing gently, fingers stroking over his short, sweaty hair. He takes it as a good sign that Mal isn’t immediately shooting away from him and denying it ever happened, but he knows they’re not out of the woods yet.

He feels Mal start to shake against him, a tiny quivering of his shoulders, but it makes Rowan let out a long, uneven breath. He’s got whiplash from the kiss, the ringing plaguing his ears earlier now louder than a damn clock-tower bell, but right now, his priorities are squarely on Mal. So he rubs his back as gently as his hands will let him and allows the two of them to sit in the quiet until Mal’s breathing evens out and his muscles still.

It’s only then that Rowan shifts his hips down enough to slide out of Mal. And fuck, he’s still mostly hard. Definitely not as soft as he should be with the shock and intensity of his orgasm. The feeling of his come dripping down back onto his cock is hardly helping the matter either.

“Can you stand?” Rowan asks softly.

Mal nods against his shoulder, and Rowan lightly shrugs Mal’s arms away from his hips. With Rowan supporting Mal’s back, they stand, and Rowan walks them the short distance to the bed.

He helps Mal lie down on his back and sets to work unclasping the cuffs from his wrists and thighs. But when he gets to the blindfold, he hesitates.

“Gonna take the blindfold off,” he says, more to himself than Mal.

But Mal nods again, and Rowan slips the mask off slowly, Mal’s eyes still squeezed tightly shut.

Fuck. He wasn’t prepared for this at all .

He feels stuck amid a swirling mess of Do you wanna s and Can you s and Should I s and Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit s in his head, and he doesn’t know what the hell to do .

But then Mal blinks his eyes open, and Rowan’s sucker punched back to the moment.

He looks… God, vulnerable ? Shocked? Ambivalent? It’s hard to tell. Like thousands of years of human evolution has completely left Rowan’s brain, and he suddenly doesn’t know how to read another person at all.

Rowan mentally runs through his aftercare checklist.

Unbind… get him comfortable… talk him down… soft touches… hydrate… shower… walk… diner….

He cups Mal’s cheek, the skin heated under his palm, and swipes away a bead of sweat trickling down from his temple.

And he knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help dipping down and brushing his lips against Mal’s damp hairline, lower lip catching a stray droplet of sweat poised to fall.

“Did so good, Mal,” he tells him, voice low and tone—hopefully—soothing. Rowan feels like a broken record with the number of times he’s said that tonight. “Listened and did everything I asked.” He brushes the longer locks of Mal’s hair away from his face. “Asked for what you wanted.” He rubs each of Mal’s wrists in turn, though there are no visible marks from the cuffs. Presses another light kiss to the inside of his palms.

It doesn’t linger, barely more than a whisper of a press, but Mal slowly tugs his hands back to drape heavily across his chest.

Right. Despite what’s happened, they’re not there yet. Rowan has risked some small kisses to Mal’s skin in past sessions, mostly when he’s been teasing him, and almost always followed by a hard smack or thrust or bite or pinch or something to dampen it. And tonight there’s been next to nothing to dampen the action. No spanks or slaps or biting words to take away the fact that Mal broke one of his own boundaries and kissed him.

Rowan lies beside him, ignoring the stickiness on his skin and the cramp in his side, and talks him down. Watching the rise and fall of his chest and his eyes moving gently behind his eyelids. It feels exactly like it did after the gangbang. Like he’s talking with little thought behind the words, despite the fact that he’s done it multiple times now and knows more or less what to say.

Feels like he’s back at square one.

But he keeps going, making sure Mal knows that he did so well for him. That he looked gorgeous. Felt even better. He doesn’t mention the kiss. Stays far, far away from that particular subject for now.

It normally takes only a few minutes for Mal’s breathing to fully even out, but this time it feels like it takes ages. Of course Rowan would give him as long as he needed. Even if their four-hour booking ended, he’d find a way to make sure Mal was okay before they left the club. But he can’t deny that he’s worried, a sharp thorn of concern wriggling into his side and worming its way up into his chest.

Eventually Mal sits up, elbows resting on his knees and staring straight ahead.

“Okay?” Rowan asks gently, sitting up beside him and trying to catch his eye.

All he gets in response is a quiet, “Mmm,” and no eye contact.

Rowan knows well enough not to push him, even though he wants nothing more than to have a giant Undo button that he can slam to go back to the beginning of the night. But that’s not gonna happen—he has to deal with the present.

A quick trip to the supply table and Rowan returns to Mal’s side to see him now kneeling on the bed, but not doing any of his usual stretches.

Mal accepts the water bottle, taking a single tiny sip. But when Rowan holds out the damp washcloth, he shakes his head. The thorn inches deeper. He wants to clean off the come he can see coating Mal’s cock and the lube between his legs and the sweat on his forehead, but…. He knows Mal’s stance on Rowan helping clean up afterward.

Then again, he also thought he knew his stance on kissing, so he’s at a bit of a loss.

“Do you wanna shower?” he asks, hoping to keep some semblance of normalcy to the end of their scene.

“Yeah.”

“By yourself?”

There’s a dazed-sounding huff of a laugh, which Rowan takes as another good sign. “Yeah, ’m good.”

Mal slides off the bed and makes for the door, turning back and grabbing his clothing almost as an afterthought. Rowan follows him into the hallway, both completely naked, and makes sure he sees the door to one of the few private bathrooms he’d only recently learned about close behind Mal.

Rowan returns to the Gold Room, mind completely on autopilot. He does the fastest cleaning job he’s ever done and picks up the rest of Mal’s things, packing them neatly away in his black messenger bag. When he sees Mal’s phone poking out of one of the side pouches, he pauses.

And pauses. And waits for his brain to decide what to do. Snoop or don’t snoop. Like he’s in a video game and his choice will have consequences.

Because he’s fucking worried , and he can’t stop thinking about the young woman, Amy, who looked so much like Mal, and the timing of everything that happened a couple of days ago and then everything that happened tonight.

He snoops.

Presses the wake button on the side only to find a lock screen with one new notification of a text from “Bitchface” a few hours ago that says Ok . Rowan almost misses the background at first glance—a nearly all black photo with a silver circle in the middle highlighting the barrel of a gun pointing straight ahead, a thin wisp of smoke rising straight up. Eerily similar to Mal’s chest tattoos.

Rowan quickly puts the phone back in the case and zips it shut. Message fucking received.

He skips his own shower, instead splashing some water on his face and putting on a fresh coat of deodorant in the locker room. As soon as he’s done, he stations himself outside the private bathroom stall and waits for Mal to come out.

THEIR CUSTOMARY walk to Sheila’s diner is awkward in a way it’s never been before. Mal’s completely silent save for a few snuffles that don’t sound enough like the tearful kind to warrant Rowan asking him anything right now.

He’s lost enough in his own thoughts as it is.

Why?

Does Mal think Rowan gets off on taking advantage of people?

Why?

Will this be the last time they meet up?

Why?

Is he unknowingly walking toward his final hour with Mal?

Why, why, why?

Or, on the other hand, will this change things for the better ? Will Mal be more open to kissing for real now that the proverbial bandage has been ripped off?

Will they ignore it altogether?

No. Rowan can’t let that happen. If for no other reason than because communication is so fucking important. And , a little voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like a younger, more optimistic version of himself supplies, I don’t want this to end .

It seems like a lifetime until the familiar neon sign comes into view and they’re finally entering Sheila’s.

“You go sit,” Rowan tells Mal. “I’ll get some food. You want your usual?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Rowan goes to the counter and waits for Sheila to come to him from the kitchen, her customary easy smile etched on her face.

“Hi, honey. What can I get for you?”

“Hey, Sheila. Can I have Mal’s usual and a grilled chicken sandwich on wheat? And some waters, please.”

“Of course.”

She scribbles their orders on a slip—by now thankfully having given up on attempting to give them free meals—and glances over Rowan’s shoulder to where Mal’s sitting.

“Everything okay over there?” she asks, as if her perception is so strong that she can tell something is off by the slope of Mal’s shoulders.

Rowan glances back to see that Mal’s head is in his hands, shoulders visibly tense even from the short distance away. “Yeah, it will be.”

At least he hopes to God it will be.

Sheila accepts the admittedly cryptic answer, hands him two red cups of ice water, and retreats back into the kitchen. Mal still hasn’t told Sheila anything about their relationship, so he’s not willing to divulge anything more to her without Mal’s knowledge.

He returns to the table, slides into the booth across from Mal and nudges the cup of water toward him.

“Thanks,” Mal mumbles, immediately burying his face in the cup.

Rowan studies him. Tries to analyze every move he makes in the hope that it will shed some light into what Mal’s thinking. What he’s feeling. There has to be something , right? Some reason for Mal falling into him like he had and for whimpering when Rowan had pulled away and put a stop to it. But he doesn’t know if that something is going to be something he wants to hear.

When their food comes, Rowan lets his sit until Mal starts eating. He’ll let him get some food into his system before he brings anything up.

They eat in silence save for the mellow song playing on the jukebox and the scraping of Mal’s fork against his plate. Rowan watches as he tears off chunks of banana pancake with the side of his fork, spearing each little wedge and swirling it around the extra syrup on the plate before actually eating it. There’s none of his usual eagerness in his movements, everything slow and cautious. Like he’s been fucking sedated or something.

Rowan’s own food is surely delicious, but he barely tastes it, only eating half his sandwich and a handful of the fries it came with.

It isn’t until Mal’s completely finished with his banana pancakes, little else on his plate touched, that Rowan speaks.

“Can we talk about it, Mal?”

Mal sighs before leaning back and fixing Rowan with an emotionless look. He works his mouth like he’s testing out how to form the words before he actually says anything.

For a moment, Rowan’s worried Mal’s going to pull a Talk about what? but what he actually says is worse.

“It was a mistake, Red. Just deep in it, y’know?”

Rowan feels himself nodding despite the hollow that’s growing in his chest, making him want to collapse in on himself like a black hole. “Yeah. No biggie.”

It is a biggie. A very big biggie that Rowan’s gonna daydream about for the rest of however long he gets to be with Mal—in whatever capacity—like a goddamn loser.

But really, what had Rowan been hoping for? Some grand confession or declaration from the guy he’s only been fucking for a few weeks?

“I’m sorry,” Mal says abruptly, so softly that it makes Rowan pause his distracted sip of water mid-gulp.

“For…?”

“For… doing that.” He looks down, shaking his head a little before continuing. “Consent’s obviously a big fuckin’ deal in general, but especially for shit like this. I shouldn’t’a let myself do that, no matter how out of it I was. We didn’t talk about it beforehand.”

Rowan feels his stomach twist, his dinner threatening to come right back up at Mal’s words. He opens and closes his mouth, willing his reply to come to make everything okay. Because fuck, he thought he’d taken advantage of Mal . By being too shocked to push him away immediately. By coming the second he’d felt his lips for the first, and probably only, time.

Rowan doesn’t know how long he’s silent, but it’s apparently too long for Mal, who continues, “If you wanna stop meeting up, I get it.”

“No!” Rowan blurts, far too loud for Mal’s near-whispered statement. The one lone patron on the other side of the diner looks up from his coffee at the commotion before shaking his head and flicking the page of his newspaper.

“No, it’s fine, Mal,” Rowan tells him at a more reasonable volume, shoulders hunched up to his ears. “I’m not against kissing or anything. Actually kinda love it, but not if you’re not into it too.” He stops to fiddle with his napkin, scrunching it up in his hand. “I just….”

“What?”

“Feel fuckin’ guilty for, y’know, blowing during it.” His cheeks burn, and he can’t force himself to meet Mal’s eyes. “You were so out of it, and I feel like shit for basically getting off on it. I don’t normally….”

He trails off when he sees Mal nodding in his periphery, clearly understanding what he was going to say. I don’t normally get off on hurting people.

Somehow, despite the roiling in his stomach, the confession feels good, like a weight has been lifted off his chest. No matter how Mal reacts to it, he’s glad to have this conversation rather than let it tear him up inside. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to tell him how badly he’d wanted to cup his face and lick into his mouth and kiss him senseless. He’s gonna take that shit to his grave.

“Not your fault, man. Shit’s obviously emotional for the both of us, even if no feelings are involved.”

The statement hits like a punch to the gut, plunging that thorn of worry straight into his heart.

“Right,” Rowan manages.

He’d been worried about this—his chaotic and confusing feelings not being reciprocated. Pretty definitively assumed that was the case too. But to actually have it spelled out, black and white? Far worse than he’d imagined, even in his worst-case scenarios.

He clears his throat, quickly shifting to a topic that feels a little less like swallowing hot coals. “Do you wanna start planning our scenes more?”

Mal takes a deep breath and shifts his gaze to the side, like he’s considering. “Not sure that would’a helped. Let’s just stick with what we’ve been doin’.”

Business as usual, then.

They’ve talked about it, cleared the air a bit, but for all intents and purposes, they’re gonna sweep this shit under the rug.

Pretend it never happened.

“HEY,” ROWAN says as they’re approaching the club, nudging Mal with his elbow. “Text me if you need anything, okay? Or call, whichever.”

“Yeah,” Mal replies, though there’s a flatness to his voice. He kicks a pebble on the ground, hands stuffed in the pockets of his joggers as they’ve been during the whole walk back.

“I’m serious. Doesn’t matter when.”

“I know.”

Rowan tries to catch his eye, but Mal’s gaze remains firmly downcast. And when they reach the front doors, Mal immediately turns to head to his car.

“Mal,” Rowan says quickly, catching his shoulder before he bolts.

Thankfully he doesn’t, and lets himself be turned around to face Rowan. When he finally meets Rowan’s eyes, there’s nothing there, and it makes something inside Rowan shrivel.

He doesn’t know what more to say. How to express that Mal can still talk to him, especially if he drops because of this, and that he really does still want to keep seeing him. But his body knows what to do, pulling Mal in and wrapping his arms gently around his shoulders. Mal stiffens instantly, only relaxing after a long exhale. Even in the sticky summer heat, the warmth of his body is a comfort Rowan didn’t know he needed after a tense night.

Mal doesn’t hug him back, but Rowan feels one hand slide from his waist to his hip, settling for a beat before dropping back down. A little pleased thrum manages to squeeze itself in among the tangled knots in Rowan’s chest, but he takes that as his cue to pull away.

“Text me,” he says again.

Mal nods. Clears his throat. Mutters a “Later” and heads straight for his car.

Rowan stands alone on the sidewalk, lit only by the glow of the Menagerie’s marquee lights, watching until Mal drives away.

THE NEXT morning, Rowan finds that he’s far more rattled by the kiss than he thought he’d be. Well. Truthfully, he thought if they ever got to kiss, it would be something as simple as Mal saying, Hey, I’m cool with kissing and shit now. You wanna? and that would be that.

No biggie.

Really, the way it actually happened tells Rowan a lot about the kind of person Mal is and about what’s going on in his mind. Because when he’s at his most vulnerable, when he’s seeking comfort and reassurance and familiarity, he seeks out a kiss, whether or not he had done so knowingly.

And God, Rowan wanted it so fucking badly . Already, after only a few weeks. After only five sessions together, not counting the gangbang. But he’d never forgive himself if he let it continue, and Mal might not have either when he regained his senses.

I’ll knock you out if you try to kiss me. That’s what Mal said at the gangbang a month and a half ago. Rowan could practically feel the hostility in his tone at the time.

He can’t help but wonder if he was like this with his last Dom too, or if it’s only with Rowan. He thinks back to a few weeks ago—how Mal implied that Rowan had been the first Dom he’d let call him Mal rather than Malcolm.

And the way he’d reacted after the kiss… completely shutting down, even though he’d talked about it with Rowan.

Well. It makes Rowan’s heart ache, is all.

The vulnerability that Mal had shown earlier that night during their scene had been all but completely replaced with stoicism by the time they’d discussed the kiss. They’d been doing so well too. Their forward progress may have been limited to baby steps with the occasional baby leap, but it was still progress. Now it feels like they’ve gone backward. And for the first time in a long time, Rowan doesn’t see a clear path forward.

It’s nearing noontime, and Rowan hasn’t heard anything from Mal, so he caves and texts him.

[RC] Hey, you feeling okay?

By the time Rowan’s getting ready for bed later that night, Mal still hasn’t texted him back.