Page 23

The compliment does little for him, even coming from someone as knowledgeable as her. He’s much more interested in Mal’s thoughts on this particular subject.

“Thanks,” he says anyway. “Got a good model.”

“Mmm,” she hums, eyeing Mal up and down, an appreciative smile on her face.

It’s weird is all Rowan can think. And he can’t help but see her in a different light now that he knows she and Mal have scened together. That she helped him figure out what he wanted when he was new to the kink scene. Like Mal’s doing for Rowan now. The tiny pang of envy that grips at his skin makes him feel like a teenager who didn’t get to ask out his crush first before the popular kid got to him.

He mentally slaps himself for it.

“Everything feel okay?” he asks Mal, needlessly straightening already near-perfect lines.

“Yeah. You did good.”

“Wish they had a mirror in here.”

Mal bites his lip. Shifts his gaze to the side for a beat. Flicks back to Rowan.

“You got your phone?”

In the short time it takes the words to register in Rowan’s mind, his heart rate skyrockets.

“Yeah, why?”

“Can take a pic if you want.”

“Wh—really?”

“Just don’t be postin’ my mug to Instabook.”

“That’s not a… yeah, yeah, course. I wouldn’t.”

Scrambling to get his phone out of his pocket, he hears Mal huff a laugh.

“Ain’t goin’ anywhere, man. Kinda tied up at the moment.”

Rowan feels his face flush as he unlocks his phone and opens the camera app. “Your legs’re still free.”

“ Pft . Won’t catch me running unless someone’s chasin’ me.”

“I like running,” Rowan replies, as if his hobbies need defending.

“Why does that not surprise me,” Mal deadpans.

“How do you wanna…?”

With a jerk of his head, Mal gestures to a blank wall off to the side of the room. Rowan leads the way, waiting for Mal to take his place against the wall as he switches his camera to portrait mode.

As he’s about to direct Mal how to pose, the other man half leans against the wall, one leg bent at the knee and foot pressed behind. It creates a tantalizing stretch between his legs, accentuating both the muscular limbs and the thick cock Rowan knows lies beneath the fabric.

Rowan almost forgets to tap the screen to focus on Mal rather than the wall behind him when he sees the sultry, half-lidded look Mal throws his way. He must tap the shutter button a dozen times in rapid succession, unable to take his eyes off the image on his screen to even see if the photos came out any good.

“Want the back too?” Mal asks, a knowing smirk on his face.

Busted.

“Yeah, if you’re cool with it.”

More like if Rowan can be cool with it. Christ.

Mal turns in place, this time standing with his legs shoulder width apart. Even with a tank top in the way, the muscles of his back are prominent beneath the ropes and doing a lot for Rowan, making his dick jump for the dozenth time today.

It must be some sort of spidey sense that makes Mal look back at Rowan as he’s about to take the next photo, but fuck if it doesn’t make for an incredible freeze frame. It’s slightly blurry with his movement, the strands of rope around his arms the only part completely in focus, but it looks almost artistic in its lack of deliberateness. It would look incredible in black and white.

And Rowan’s no photographer, but they look good . The kind of photos that would definitely get him banned from any social media site even if it weren’t firmly established that these aren’t going anywhere but Rowan’s own phone.

“You good, Liebowitz?”

Rowan wonders when Mal’s going to run out of nicknames for him. “Yeah, ’m good.”

“Send me those later.”

“I will,” he promises, walking back to their table.

“When you’re ready, you can start untying your partners,” Camilla calls to the room. “Be sure to go slowly and keep checking in throughout to make sure nothing goes numb or is painful. And of course, if you need the shears for any reason, use them.”

“You ready?” Rowan asks. “Or do you wanna stay in a bit longer?”

“Can take it off,” Mal replies. “Must be gettin’ close to eight.”

A quick check of his watch tells Rowan that they only have about fifteen minutes until then. He’s sure that if they needed it, Camilla would let them stay longer, but Rowan gets to work undoing the rig anyway.

Mal’s eyes are closed lightly as Rowan unties him. He’s never been tied himself, but Rowan can’t help wondering if it’s as satisfying having the binds taken off as it is to have them put on. While his fingers work, he watches Mal closely, not often able to drink in the sight of him outside of their scenes. It makes Rowan’s head spin a bit, knowing that this gorgeous person chose him to share his body with. Even if Rowan’s wildest dreams don’t come true and Mal’s never anything more to him than a sex partner—and maybe even a friend, now—he still feels like Lady Luck is shining on him.

As each section of rope falls away, he rubs the pink skin left in its wake, stimulating the blood flow. He knows he didn’t tie anything tightly enough to constrict any major vessels, but he also knows that the delicate web of capillaries sitting below the skin is highly susceptible to pressure.

It’s almost clinical, Rowan thinks. He’s removed so many constricting objects from his patients’ skins at work that his body moves almost on autopilot. Hands gently tugging apart the knots one by one until the red rope gives way to flushed pink skin and soft black fabric.

Sure, there are no sirens or flashing lights or chaotic jostling from dodging traffic while riding in the back of an ambulance, but there’s the gentle scratching of the rope against Mal’s body, the glint in his eyes from the overhead lights, and the unpredictable rhythm of Rowan’s heart kicking his adrenaline into overdrive, and really it shouldn’t be all that different.

But it is. It feels like more because of where they are and who they are to one another, and the pressure of being perfect almost makes a lump swell in Rowan’s throat. He swallows it, reminding himself that even if he fucks it up somehow, Mal’s stuck by him so far and hasn’t dumped him outside the club by his scruff like a wet dog. It sends a flicker of warmth through him, and he finishes untying the rest of the rig with ease.

Finally free, Mal flexes his fingers and stretches his arms across the front of his chest.

“You good?” Rowan asks.

“Yeah. Here, wind this one up,” Mal says, handing him one of the fifteen-foot strands of rope as he grabs the thirty.

He watches how Mal coils it, following suit until they have three neat bundles of rope. Mal takes all three and heads toward the front.

Each couple dutifully places their coils of rope—some neatly tied back up, others in hellish crumpled balls—in a separate bin to be cleaned. Half have marks on their skin and indents in their clothing that mirror the ones on Mal, and Rowan can’t help but wonder what the other pairs are going to get up to now that class is over.

As Mal comes back from the front after a brief exchange with Camilla, Rowan feels a swirl of accomplishment and can’t wait to tie Mal for real.

But for now, he’ll be content with getting him naked again.

With getting inside him again.

“You still up for a scene?” he checks, though they’d already planned on it.

“Yeah,” Mal nods and leads the way to the staircase.

ROWAN’S BUZZING as they make their way to the Gold Room. He hasn’t felt this eager since his first scene alone with Mal.

As usual, Mal sets out the cuffs on the bed, the clinking of the D-rings and clasps making Rowan’s cock twitch in some kind of perverse Pavlovian response.

They hadn’t planned on using anything else tonight, but Mal’s thumbnail rakes rhythmically across the zipper of his bag, and he stares down into it. His gaze is far away, like he’s not looking at something, but rather seeing straight through the bag to some unknown point in space. Rowan opens his mouth to ask if something’s wrong, but then Mal is stuffing one hand inside and tossing a box of condoms on the bed. It makes only the tiniest hollow thump against the thick leather pad, but it might as well have been a gunshot with the way it sends a searing pain through Rowan’s chest.

“Oh….”

He’s not even sure if Mal hears it with how small and pathetic it sounds to Rowan’s own ears. Hell, he’s not even sure any sound came out at all with the hollow ringing all around him.

He stares at the black-and-gold box for far too long before he feels Mal’s gaze on him. When their eyes meet, it’s… fuck. Rowan wishes he could see the dark sheen of regret coloring those gold eyes, but there’s nothing. No sign of guilt or empathy or anger or anything there beyond a silent dare to raise the question that’s currently burrowing into Rowan’s head and taking over all his thoughts.

It doesn’t mean anything. Of course Mal has every right to go out and fuck whoever he wants, whenever he wants. Rowan had thought about doing the same only a couple of hours ago. As long as they use condoms until enough time has passed and they get tested next. That was the deal they made. The deal Rowan agreed to .

But it fucking hurts .

The initial pain of the shock fades quickly, but the ache it leaves behind when he regains his senses is like a week-old bruise. Only really hurting if he pokes it. If he thinks about it too much.

He should stop the scene. He knows he should. That’s what a good Dom would do. A good partner in general. But the thought of getting a half-mewling Mal underneath him again makes it hard to say no. Impossible, even.

Time passes in slow motion, but Rowan manages an astonishingly unaffected sounding, “’Kay.”

And with frustratingly shaky fingers, he opens the brand-new box of Magnum Trojans and rips one off the strip, immediately hating how the foil feels in his hands. Knows how much worse the rubber is going to feel around his cock and how dull every sensation will be when he’s used to feeling all of Mal.

That’s exactly what it is, Rowan thinks. A dulling. They’d gotten too close for the parameters of the relationship they’d established, and Mal thought it necessary to pull on the reins. And his way of doing that was fucking someone else. The sour bite of betrayal fills Rowan’s chest even though he knows he hasn’t earned the right to feel that way. Definitely not yet, if ever.

Rowan’s always been quick to anger, one of the many things he hates about his brain chemistry. He’s got a pretty low frustration tolerance and tends to lash out as soon as that threshold is met. But he doesn’t want that with Mal. Doesn’t wanna punish him any more than he would normally for being a brat. Instead he wants to show him how good it can be between them—how good he can be.

He thinks back to the diner all those weeks ago, how he’d told Mal I don’t like to share and made him backpedal and state bluntly that they weren’t exclusive. The thing is, sure, he’s possessive, he knows he is, but like at the gangbang, something about watching others wreck Mal and knowing that he can do it better—longer, harder, faster—gets him endlessly hot.

And they’d planned on a longer spanking session this time—more than a few errant swats like Rowan has done when Mal has been particularly mouthy. So it’s going to be hard to make it feel like it isn’t a punishment.

But Mal had specifically requested it. Only two days ago. And Rowan can’t help but wonder if he’d slept with whoever else he did before or after that fact. Hell, he could have fucked someone immediately after he’d driven away from the diner last Saturday night and Rowan would be none the wiser. He also can’t help but wonder if Mal only chose the spanking to do a complete one-eighty from their last session—the slowness and gentleness of it, relatively speaking—this time wanting something at the other end of his kink spectrum.

More dulling. More pushing away, even though it’d felt like they made progress earlier tonight.

He has to remind himself once again that they’re not here for progress. Not the emotional kind, anyway, no matter how badly he wants it.

“Strip.”

It’s shockingly easy for Rowan to slip back into the role of Rowan Campbell, Dom, as if last week he didn’t nearly fall apart at the feeling of Mal’s lips on his own.

“Make me.”

Mal dips back into his own role as if last week he didn’t get so overwhelmed by Rowan’s words and whatever was going on in his personal life that he’d let himself cross one of his major boundaries.

Business as usual.

Rowan’s body moves before his brain does, and in a flash, Mal is faceplanted onto the bed with one of Rowan’s hands squarely between his shoulders. The ropes that had held him earlier now replaced with muscle and bone.

“Too easy to rile you up, Firecrotch,” Mal grits, half mumbling as he turns his head to stare up at Rowan.

“You think I don’t know your bullshit plays by now, Mal? Couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Uh- huh .”

He kicks Mal’s legs apart, delighting in the wobble in Mal’s knees.

“Take off your fucking shirt.”

“How exactly d’you expect me to do that like this?”

Underneath him, Mal wriggles, the friction of his body against Rowan’s hand scorching.

“Figure it out.”

A huff and a grunt have Mal squirming to free his hands from underneath him. With no small amount of effort, he manages to grab the sides of his tank top and tug upward until the fabric bunches up underneath Rowan’s palm.

“Move your hand,” Mal snaps.

Smack! Rowan’s free hand cracks down against Mal’s clothed ass, the dull hit still making him jolt forward and let slip an audible gasp.

“My hand’s exactly where I want it. Take off your shirt.”

There’s a grumbling from Mal that isn’t gonna fly. Rowan smacks his other cheek, harder than the first.

“Fuck!”

“Quit being a whiny little bitch and take off your fucking shirt before I rip it off.”

No response this time as Mal reaches back to gingerly shimmy the fabric from under Rowan’s palm. He can feel Mal’s shoulder blades and back muscles flexing against him. Once the shirt is finally past Rowan’s hand, Mal grunts quietly as he stretches to pull it over his head and toss it to the corner of the bed.

“Good,” Rowan purrs. He slots himself against Mal’s ass, letting him feel his growing erection. “Pants next.”

“Are you fuckin’—”

Rowan shoves his hand harder into Mal’s back, a silent command to get the fuck on with it.

It’s immensely satisfying to see his tattooed fingers curl around the waistband of his joggers and his arms tense as he struggles to strip in his compromised position. He gets the waistband a few inches over the swell of his ass when Rowan stops him.

“Take ’em both off.”

Mal huffs, letting the pants snap back into place.

“Only said to take my pants off,” he scoffs.

Rowan’s response is to grind against his ass and draw out a surprised-sounding gasp, as if Mal had forgotten what the outcome of his compliance would be.

“Gonna be here all day if you take each piece off that slowly. Move .”

This time, Mal has the good sense not to make a retort before clutching both his pants and black briefs and starting to shove them over the curve of his ass. Despite his insistence on Mal hurrying up, Rowan does exactly nothing to help him out, one hand still pressed firmly on his upper back and hips flush with his ass. When Mal finally manages to make progress on stripping, it isn’t only the hard line of Rowan’s cock that it snags on.

Immediately, Rowan grabs the waistbands of Mal’s pants and briefs and rips them down to mid-thigh, where his spread legs stop them from falling to the floor.

“Fuckin’ slut…,” Rowan breathes, seeing the thick base of a plug slotted neatly between Mal’s asscheeks.

He presses against it with his thumb, grinding it in a tight circle that has Mal’s thighs tensing and a loud “ Unnn …” escaping his lips.

“You been wearing this all night, huh? Who told’ja to do that?”

“No one tells me to do shit .”

Rowan huffs an amused laugh. “We both know that’s a fuckin’ lie. Been telling you to do shit every week for two months, and you keep coming back for more.”

He trains his eyes on Mal’s ass, and with one hand, spreads his cheeks and sees a distinct sheen of slickness coating either side of the plug. He’ll never get sick of seeing the pretty pink hole that clenches around the toy inside. But a churning in his stomach reminds him that someone else got to see this too, at some point in the last week. The rancid taste of bile wells up in his throat, and Rowan knows he has no right to be sickened by it. Has no right to Mal because they’re just fuckin’ .

Swallowing, he pushes the bile and his thoughts back where they belong.

“Couldn’t even wait for me to prep you,” Rowan says. “That how bad you wanted my cock tonight?”

“What can I say? Thought you’d screw around and waste my time.”

“Have I ever wasted your time, Mal?”

“Seems like you’re doin’ it right now.”

“ Pft ,” Rowan scoffs. He grips the base of the plug and tugs until he feels the pressure of the widest part catch on Mal’s rim.

“ Nng ….”

“You want me to fuck you right now? Pull out this plug, use you, then bounce?”

Mal lets out a soft, barely-there moan, like he might actually want that after all.

“Huh?” Rowan insists, twisting the plug back in and pushing hard when it’s fully seated. “Fuck you till I’m satisfied and to hell with everything else? Answer me.”

A pause, then “No.”

It’s begrudging and too brusque, but sincere. Not good enough.

“No, what?”

Mal shoves his ass back against Rowan’s hand where it’s roughly tugging and twisting and pushing his plug.

“Don’t want ya to stop.”

“Uh-huh. ’S what I thought.”

Rowan releases Mal long enough to dip lower and shove his pants and briefs the rest of the way down, then slap the outside of his thigh to get him to toe his shoes off.

Fully naked and with his upper half pressed into the bed, Mal’s a fucking sight to behold. Rowan can still see the faint pink lines of the ropes serpentining over his arms and shoulders, and he wants to get him all tied up again.

Reaching forward to grab the cuffs from beside Mal, he can’t help but grind his clothed cock again into Mal’s bare ass, pressing the plug deeper inside and making Mal gasp.

“Front or back?” Rowan asks lowly.

Mal was only in the shibari rig for an hour or so, but Rowan wants to give him the option of resting his arms if he needs it.

“Back.”

The subtle rocking of Mal’s hips has Rowan’s hand cracking down hard against his left asscheek.

“Fuck!”

He wrenches one arm back, holding it in place against Mal’s lower back. But Mal holds his other arm above his head. “Give me your other hand.”

Slowly, Mal shifts his arm backward, elbow barely passing his rib cage, but when Rowan reaches for it, Mal yanks it away with a grin that Rowan can see even in profile.

Smack!

Rowan’s palm stings from the force of the slap across Mal’s ass, directly over the plug. The groan ripped from Mal’s throat is cut off as Rowan yanks him to standing, back flush to Rowan’s chest and one hand still pressed between them. His fingers dig into Mal’s bicep, then trail along his chest, up his neck, and grasp the sides of his jaw to bring his ear directly to Rowan’s lips.

“You know…,” Rowan starts, voice low as if someone might hear them in the soundproof room. “I know you think you’re doin’ something here with all this pushing back, but I’ve got more patience in my little finger than you’ve got brattiness in your whole body.”

With no more fanfare and only the faintest whisper of a huff from Mal, Rowan cuffs Mal’s wrists and fastens them together.

“On the bed.”

Predictably, Mal gets on his knees, upper body planted into the bed. Rowan lets him sit there. Sweat it out a little as he strips himself of everything but his briefs, because he doesn’t know what Mal did with whoever he fucked, but he’s not going to take any chances or put Mal in a situation where it takes him out of the scene.

He perches on the edge of the bed, feet planted firmly on the floor, with his back to Mal.

“Come here.”

“Told me to get on the bed, didn’t ya?”

“Don’t be a smartass,” Rowan replies, tugging Mal up by the cuffs until he’s on his knees. “Or are you waitin’ for me to move you myself?”

Over his shoulder, Mal shoots him a wry smile that does exactly nothing to impress Rowan.

“Cute,” he deadpans. “Not gonna get you what you want, though.”

“Has so far.”

“Mmm…,” Rowan hums thoughtfully. “I think you’re a little too used to getting what you want.”

“ Tch .”

Rowan turns to gaze at him over his shoulder. “Told me you wanted it earlier. So you’re gonna have to come get it.”

So he leans back on his hands and waits.

It’s a standoff.

Sure, Rowan could order Mal to move. Manhandle him easy as pie. But the thought of waiting for Mal to cave, well…. It’ll be ten times sweeter.

The tension radiating off Mal behind him is visceral. Even without the benefit of his sight, Rowan can feel the tightness in his shoulders and hear his knuckles turning white from where the grinding of metal tells him he’s tugging at his cuffs.

A minute. Maybe two. Definitely not three. That’s all it takes for Rowan to hear the frustrated huff and the slick slide of skin against leather.

The satisfaction of watching Mal shuffle over to him on his knees—face flushed, jaw tight, cock bobbing between his legs—is unlike anything Rowan’s felt before. No drug that’s ever passed his lips has given him a high quite like this.

“Good,” Rowan tells him, unable to stop his smug smile from reaching his eyes. “Wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Mal stops a foot away from Rowan’s thigh. “Fuckin’— ah !”

His exclamation comes out a surprised yelp when Rowan pulls him down over his lap and lands a swift smack to each asscheek.

“Enough. Playtime’s over.”

“Thought it just got star—”

Smack! Smack!

He tugs at Mal’s hair to force him to look up at him. “The only words outta your mouth right now should be more or a safeword. Got it?”

“Ain’t gonna make me count for you, sir ?”

Smack!

“If you can keep count, I’m not doing my job right.”

The first few strikes are easy. Warm-ups to gauge how much Mal can really handle. He knows he can take a lot, but he wants to push him to his limit.

Under Rowan’s hand, Mal’s skin is warm and heating up by the minute.

“Mmm!” Mal cries out at the first truly hard spank even as his cock twitches against Rowan’s thigh.

It’s hot as fuck, and Rowan rewards him with more hits, one after another. Nowhere on Mal’s backside is safe from his hands—blows raining down on his asscheeks and the crease of his thighs and directly over the plug keeping him open for Rowan’s cock later.

With each, Mal groans. Low, high, whining, gasping, growling—the reaction is different every time Rowan’s palm connects with Mal’s skin. And Rowan commits them all to memory, knowing he’s going to jerk off to them for weeks on end.

That and the power he feels having this gorgeous man in his lap, rutting against him.

“Tell me why you wanted this, Mal,” Rowan says between two sharp spanks.

“I… fuck … I deserve it,” Mal breathes back.

“Why?”

“’Cause I…. Oh ! Fuck, more ….”

“ Why , Mal? Tell me.”

He wants to hear Mal call himself a brat or spoiled or hell, even a needy bottom bitch, but he’s not expecting a sincere confession.

“I sl-slipped. Did something we didn’t… I shouldn’t—”

It’s nearly incoherent. A stuttered mess of half sentences, but… I kissed you and I shouldn’t have is what Rowan hears. And then I slept with someone else is what he doesn’t.

This is dangerous—letting Mal ramble like this. He’d said last week he didn’t want to talk about the real world during their scenes. Didn’t want to use them to work through his personal problems. Which, fine, whatever. Rowan can respect that. Even if it takes everything in him to stop his babbling, he knows that getting Mal actually incoherent is dangerous for both of them, for more reasons than Rowan’s pride and curiosity.

“Hey, come back to me,” Rowan says gently, cupping Mal’s cheek and guiding his eyes to meet his own. “You don’t deserve it for that. Never for that. Give me a color.”

“Green….”

“Good. You need a minute?” he asks anyway.

Mal shakes his head, and with the gesture apparently shakes off whatever vulnerability he’d been about to blurt out.

But Rowan smooths his hands over his red ass anyway, so gently that he barely feels the fine, light-colored downy hairs tickling his palms.

Only when Mal pushes his ass up into his touch and grinds his hard cock into his thigh does Rowan raise his hand again. He gradually ramps back up from one to eleven, each spank harder than the last, dialing it down only when Mal’s gasps signal more pain than pleasure.

Every hit is punctuated with a sharp “Hunh!” or “Ohh!” or “Fuck!” that rewires Rowan’s brain and makes him salivate. The sounds are nearly as hot as watching Mal’s plump ass jiggle beneath the force of his hand. He can’t help but knead the thick muscle every few hits, watching the redness turn to white with the perfect indents of his fingers.

By the fiftieth spank, Mal’s squirming in his lap. Pushing up and shrinking down, like he can’t decide whether the actual spank or the anticipation of the next blow feels better.

Rowan rains down smacks on Mal’s ass until each cheek and thigh burn to the touch and his skin is cherry red. Until there are tears streaming down Mal’s cheeks and precome dribbling down his cock. The latter drips onto Rowan’s bare thigh, and he’s struck with the urge to lap it up, to suck the tip of Mal’s cock into his mouth and taste him.

But he can’t, because Mal fucked someone else.

The petty, nosy part of Rowan wants to know who it was. A friend? An old scene partner? A Grindr hookup? Or maybe he picked up a stranger at a bar. He can’t exactly imagine Mal doing that when he’s got a top-tier membership here, but he has no clue. Fuck, was it even a man? He’d never have thought it might not be until tonight’s revelation with Camilla. And it doesn’t bother him, not in principle anyway. What bothers him is the not knowing . But he shoves his wandering thoughts aside, focusing back on the man in his lap.

With one final slap, he tugs Mal off of him, pushing back until he’s sitting on his heels, a ghost of a wince on his face from the undoubtedly sore area.

“Clean it up.”

“Clean… wh—”

“ Me . Don’t be stupid.”

He shoves Mal’s face down to his own lap like a dog, his hot breath warming the precome on Rowan’s thigh. But it’s with little kitten licks that Mal laps up his own mess from Rowan’s leg, his tongue smooth and wet and making more of a mess than was even there to begin with.

“All of it, or I promise you, the next time my hand touches your ass, you won’t enjoy it.”

There’s a soft mewl followed by two more licks to the inside of his thigh that feel like liquid fire, and Rowan’s thigh is clean of every trace of precome.

“Good.” He drags Mal off by his hair, not satisfied with having him stop there. He rolls his tongue and spits loudly on his own thigh, the pearly white fluid a poor stand-in for what Rowan would rather see him lick. “Keep going.”

Mal’s eyes flick to Rowan’s, pupils blown, mouth slack. There’s a hesitation there that Rowan doesn’t like.

“Give me a color, Mal.”

His response is instant despite his raspy voice. “Green….”

“The fuck are you waiting for, then?”

A sharp smack against Mal’s cheek has the other man yelping and instantly dipping his head, pink tongue darting out to catch the trail of spit trickling down the outside of Rowan’s thigh. It tickles, but Rowan tightens his quads to keep from quivering. The sight of Mal cleaning Rowan’s own spit off his thigh is enough to have his already hard cock straining in his briefs.

Pinching Mal’s jaw between his fingers, he forces him to look up. “Let me see.”

Mal’s mouth dips open, tongue pink and glistening with his own precome and Rowan’s spit.

“Fuckin’ filthy. You love this shit, huh?”

As best he can with his face in a vise between Rowan’s fingers, Mal nods.

Smack!

Rowan cracks his hand across Mal’s cheek, not nearly as hard as he’d been on his ass, but enough to have the other man gasping aloud.

“ Words , Mal. Not gonna tell you again.”

“Yes….” It comes out a garbled whisper of a thing.

“Yes, what ? Should know by now that one-word answers aren’t good enough.”

“Love it. ’M so fuckin’ hard,” he groans, hitching his hips forward and rutting his cock against Rowan’s thigh, another dribble of precome leaving a pearly streak.

Rowan tsk s, collecting the tiny drop of fluid with two fingers and shoving them into Mal’s mouth. Mal’s surprised “ Mmf !” is almost as satisfying as the hot tongue that curls around his fingers and sucks the droplet off.

“Filthy…,” Rowan comments, but it comes out as praise.

Relying solely on the strength of his arms in this position, he grabs Mal’s hips and shifts him away from Rowan’s lap, ass up and face down.

Rowan wastes no time in reaching for Mal’s plug and tugging gently. But Mal clenches around it, keeping it suctioned inside him.

Smack!

“You want me to fuck you or not?” Rowan scolds him, punctuating his question with another stinging spank. “’Cause I’m good just jerking off.”

“Bet you are,” Mal mumbles, evidently coming back to his snarkiness after the intensity of the last hour.

Rowan flicks the plug before giving it another tug. It doesn’t budge around Mal’s walls.

“Maybe go see if Jeremiah’s got a break coming up….”

It’s a petty, cheap shot, and he knows it. He knows, too, that Jeremiah very much isn’t DTF, for reasons Rowan doesn’t really understand as he found out earlier. But it’s enough to get Mal’s hole relaxing, and the plug slides out easily.

“Good,” he says, a small curl of pleasure at Mal’s obvious jealousy swirling in his gut.

Rowan takes a fistful of each asscheek, completely encompassing each and spreading them wide, revealing his slick and waiting hole.

He retrieves the condom from the edge of the bed and tears open the package, the crinkle loud in his ears. He takes off his briefs, rolls the condom on, and rubs the tip of his cock against Mal’s thigh—a quick acknowledgment that it’s on—before he slicks himself with a squirt of lube. As he slides in, the tight heat that engulfs him even through the condom dulls his earlier heartache and for a split second makes him forget about it entirely.

And when Mal’s back bends upward and his deep moan echoes off the walls accompanied by the metallic clinking of his cuffs, well. Rowan’s right fucking there with him.

He’s been inside Mal over half a dozen times by now, and each time is better than the last. It’s easy to get lost in the rhythm of Mal’s hips thrusting back against his own, slow at first as he adjusts to Rowan’s cock, intensifying in speed and power as he opens up for him.

Rowan pauses his thrusts, basking in the feel of the heat around him for a long moment before pulling all but the tip of his cock out. Mal squirms, attempting to keep up the pace on his own.

“ Nnng , shit ….” Mal complains. “Come on .”

“Do it yourself,” Rowan tells him, widening his knees to plant himself firmly in place.