Spook went still, and he swallowed hard.“I can’t let you risk what you have for me.”
Xane lifted his hand to Spook’s face again.“I’d burn the fucking world down for you.Stop thinking about everybody else.Be selfish for once.What do you need?”He’d stood back for a long time, watched his friend sink deeper and deeper into darkness.“What’s going to make things right?”
“If it was simple—” Spook began, only for his words to peter out, and his head do another side to side sway.
“It’s only as complicated as you allow it to be.”Xane raised his hands at the muttered protest, and sat back on his haunches.“From where I am, it’s all about fear.You’re scared of what Siv might do to you, but she’s done it all already.You’re frightened of whatBang!might publish.What are they gonna say?There’s no actual story.And you’re tied up in knots over the fact you want to have sex with someone you’re in love with, and who is dotty about you.Just fuck her already.”
“It’s easy for you to say—”
“It’s easy, full stop.”
“—you’ve not been where I’ve been.”Fear bled into his already fraught expression.His shoulders were hitched up high, and he wound his arms around his bent legs.
Xane nodded.“You’re right, I haven’t.None of us know precisely what anyone else has experienced, but I’ve seen you hurting.I’ve seen you zipped up tight and breaking on the inside.I can see you now.It makes me mad, Spook.So fucking mad.”With a wild ferocity, Xane shook his head, making his dark hair lash about his chest.“That woman and the rest of her screwed up family don’t deserve space in your head.They don’t.”He inched his body closer, putting their faces on a level, mere inches apart.Xane slid his fingers down Spook’s cheek, and tightened them upon his jaw, forcing the other man to meet his gaze.“It’s time to let it go.”
“Don’t you think I’ve fucking tried?”
“No—actually, I think you’ve held onto it.You’ve let it define every aspect of your fucking life.You’ve let her accusations infect you so much you actually believe them.You’re no monster, Spook.At no point have you ever been that.It’s not like you go around hurting people for the hell of it.You don’t walk around thinking, ‘I’d really like to smash that guy’s nose,’ or ‘Hell, it’d be really good fun to dislocate someone’s wrist, and then wank over them.’Or maybe you do, but it’s in your head and you don’t act on it because you’re not a sociopath.You have boat loads of fucking empathy.You just have a few sadistic quirks.”
“That involve hurting people.”
Xane nodded.“In a way that turns them on.You know I’m still hard from what you did earlier.”
“Yeah, that’s because you have a problem.”
Xane scoffed.“The fact that I sometimes use sex as a salve has nothing to do with why I’m currently turned on.Not a damn bloody thing.I’m turned on because certain forms of pain excite me.In the same way that dishing them does you.And because you’re a crazy hot bastard that I’ve wanted to nail since the day we met.”
“Xane.”
With a swift movement, he swiped Spook’s legs to one side, and moving in close, slammed his mouth down on Spook’s.
Spook cried out.He fought the aggressive kiss.Brought his hands up between them and shoved Xane square in the chest with enough force to land him flat on his back.That might have been the end of it.On other occasions, it had been.This time, Spook launched himself on top of Xane.He straddled his thighs, and wrapped a fist up in his hair.
“Don’t fucking kiss me without permission.”He jerked Xane’s head back, exposing his bite-marked throat.
“Do it,” Xane goaded in a low voice.“Bite me.”
There was that blowtorch gleam in his eyes again.“Bite you,” Spook repeated.“I’m gonna fucking maul you.Then maybe you’ll have a clearer picture of what the fuck I am.”
“Yeah, right,” Xane laughed in his face.“You haven’t the guts, Jan Mortensen.”
“Don’t fucking call me that.”
Spook bit down hard on the junction between Xane’s collarbone and throat.The pain was wicked, but it was the sort of pain his body easily rewrote as pleasure, especially when it was coupled with the rough scrape of Spook’s body against his already thickening cock.“Fuck yes.Yes,” he encouraged, grabbing hold of one of Spook’s wrists and guiding his hand down his chest to the ring piercings through his nipples.“Show me what a fucking monster you really are.Give me all that indignation.That rage.”
The twist upon his nipples made him gasp something fierce.Xane’s hips bucked up off the floor, his back arching.Rough was good.Rough was really fucking good.
His jeans got ripped down.They tangled around his ankles, hobbling his movements, as Spook flipped him over, showing a remarkable degree of strength.With a minimal amount of fight, he repositioned Xane on his knees, torso flat against the sofa base, and his wrists pinned in the small of his back.
“Do it,” Xane goaded.“Come on, fucking do me.Show me how big and bad you are.How vile.How cruel.Just how much you get off on inflicting pain.”
Spook locked one arm tight around him, looping it under Xane’s armpit, and then across the front of his pecs, so that the hand gripped Xane’s opposite bicep.It was both an intimate and aggressively restrictive hold.Comforting and intriguingly possessive.It put their bodies in such close proximity that Xane could feel Spook’s racing pulse through his skin, the drum of the other man’s heart against his back, and smell the perfume of arousal and alarm rolling off him.
Spook’s fingernails scored down his arm, making him hiss in outrage.Still.“More,” he demanded.
Spook was never going to loosen up until he let go of the things holding him back.Fact—he was no more a monster than anyone else.Fact—he was scared of Alle changing her mind after the fact, which was nonsensical and demonstrated a clear lack of trust.Xane guessed fear was rarely rational.
“Come on, Spook.You have me in this hold, now what are you going to do with me?One feeble scratch is hardly proving anything.”
