by Mary Calmes
“We are.”
“Good.”
“I just… I had no idea he was in love. He’s always been one to bring home strays, and so I thought—”
“I’m not a stray.” I bristled, because her son was it. He was my world, my sanctuary, the center of everything. “I have a family.”
“I know—he’s it, he told me.” She reached for me, and I allowed her to take hold of my hand. “I just had no clue that you’re the man Dylan plans to spend the rest of his life with.”
“Because he’s young, you think he doesn’t know his own mind.”
“Yes.”
“I made that mistake for awhile myself.”
She took a breath, patting my hand with hers. “When you left tonight, Dylan was very upset and very angry with all of us, but mostly with himself. He didn’t go out tonight. He’s been in his room, and I think he’s still up because I heard him in the shower a little bit ago, but… if you could go up and see him, I would be very thankful.”
“I have to take a shower, too, I reek of cigar smoke, but I’ll see him in a minute.”
“I’d like to talk to you in the morning, if that would be all right?”
“Sure.”
She nodded and let go of me.
Upstairs, I was surprised when I opened the door to Dylan’s old room, the room I was sharing with him, and found the man himself sitting up in bed.
“Hey.” I smiled, crossing toward the opposite side of the room to dump my leather jacket on the chair and my cell phone on the nightstand.
“What’s going on?”
I turned to look at him because the voice was not his. It was low and nasally like he’d been crying. Studying him, I saw that his eyes were raw—red-rimmed and brimming with tears—his hair was tousled, and he was shaking ever so slightly.
“I’d come hug you, but I smell like a—”
“It’s okay.” His breath hitched as he lifted his arms to me.
I walked around the bed, sat down, and reached for him.
He moved fast, scrambling out from under the covers, sweats hanging low on his lean hips, and climbed into my lap. I loved the fact that because the man was only five nine to my six four, he always fit so perfectly in my arms.
I framed his face with my hands. “What’s with the tears?”
He didn’t answer; instead, he leaned in and kissed me, hard and deep and urgent, his tongue sliding between my lips to mate with mine. His arms wrapped around my neck as he whimpered in the back of his throat, grinding his growing erection against my abdomen. Normally he kissed me passionately and hungrily but never roughly, never demanding submission. It was a huge turn-on. When I grabbed his ass, pulling him forward, he moaned sweetly.
The kiss went on. I didn’t want it to end and neither did he, both of us heaving for breath when he finally pulled back, his nose against mine.
“Not that I’m complaining,” I told him, my smile, I was sure, just decadent. “But, baby, what the fuck?”
He took a shuddering breath. “Malic, I love you.”
“Yeah, I know.” I laughed gently.
“I don’t want a guy my own age. I just want you. It’ll always be you. I swear to God I’m not missing out on anything. You know I have my own friends at home that I see at school and do shit with all the time. And when I wanna go out dancing or whatever, I go, but who’s to say what’s normal and what isn’t? Why do I have to live my life by rules that don’t apply to me? I’m the hearth of a warder—I’m so much more than your boyfriend—I don’t want that to change.”
I put my hands on him, into the loose curls that framed his face, pushing them back so I could see the big, beautiful eyes now locked on mine. He was so fragile and delicate in comparison to me, it was like holding a bird, and I loved it more than I could articulate.
“Please, Malic,” he said, and I heard in his voice that he was on the verge of fresh tears. “Don’t doubt me just because I was a dumb-ass and took you for granted. I was just happy to see the guys, is all. It means nothing, I swear.”
I nodded.
“Forgive me for being clueless. Please.”
“There’s nothing to forgive. You didn’t do—”
“Then tell me everything’s fine and don’t make me prove anything to you.”
“Dylan, honey.”
“No,” he snapped. “I don’t want to talk when we get home, fuck that. We’re good, we’re fine; now say we are. Nothing’s changed.”
“Love—”
“No,” he growled a second time. “No argument, no big talk, nothing. All I wanna hear from you is that everything’s perfect.”
“Okay.” I gave in because I wanted to and because I believed him. “Everything’s perfect.”
Hadn’t he proved that he loved me when he tore down all my walls when we first got together? He had seen me attacked by demons, and still he loved me. We had fights about me being an unforgiving bastard because he wanted me to make up with an old friend and I said no. He was not afraid of me, never had been, and that was rare, because of my size and strength. Dylan didn’t see a brute, he saw a man. I was so thankful.
“Malic,” he whimpered, shifting on my lap until he slid his crease over my now painfully hard cock.
“Baby,” I said softly. “Lemme take a shower. I smell gross.”
“You smell great,” he promised before he kissed me again.
I was a goner.
His hands were all over me, pulling, yanking as he kissed me voraciously, sucking, biting, licking, making his claim, showing me that even though I was bigger and stronger, I belonged to him. It was a bruising kiss, and the pressure he was exerting was not gentle. He wanted me badly.
“I do not want you near fuckin’ Brad Darby,” he warned before he bit down on the spot where my shoulder met my neck. “He’s not getting you.”
“Dylan….”
“No.” He was adamant, and I saw a fire in the brown depths of his eyes I had never seen before.
I smiled slowly, amazed. “You’re jealous.”
He growled as he shoved me down on the bed, arching over me, hands on either side of my head as he stared into my eyes. “I’m telling you what you can and cannot do. So just fuckin’ deal with it.”
He wasn’t just jealous; he was pissed off, and the knowledge tore a blazing trail through me. I could not imagine anything hotter. He was possessive of me. He wanted me. I could barely breathe.
I moved fast, grabbing him, flipping him over on his stomach, and driving him facedown into the bed. Hands on his hips, I lifted him to his knees, ass in the air as I bent and took a quick bite of one smooth, firm ass cheek.
“Malic!” he yelled.
I couldn’t resist, and spreading his cheeks, plunged my mouth down over his pink puckered hole. As he was fresh from the shower, his skin was still dewy and warm from being under the covers. He smelled clean and musky and tasted even better. He went limp in my arms as I licked and stroked, pushing in, nibbling, swirling my tongue in and out, deeper each time, making a meal of him.
“Oh God, harder,” he whimpered, panting, writhing under my hands. “Please, Malic—put your fingers in me.”
I eased him down on the bed, rolling him to his back, and curled over him, attacking his mouth, ravaging it as I thrust two fingers inside his saliva-slicked ass.
He arched up off the bed, and I reached with my free left hand for the nightstand. I had to end the kiss, and he was heaving for breath as I did, whining at the same time, wanting me back even as he lifted to make sure my flesh stayed impaled in him.
I drizzled the lube over his grasping entrance, then withdrew enough to coat my fingers before adding a third, stretching, pressing, scissoring, sliding over the spot I knew, making him jolt from the pressure, drawing a deep and sexy growl of need from the back of his throat.
“I’m gonna come all over you if you don’t put your cock in my ass,” he moaned, shoving his hips upward, begging.
I grabbed his legs, lifting t
hem, dragging him forward, and then tucked a pillow under his bottom to adjust the angle. When he wrapped a hand around my swollen erection, squeezing, fisting, tugging, I nearly came.
“This is so fuckin’ huge,” he said, and his voice was full of awe and a sultry tone that only ever infused it when we were in bed. “It amazes me that I can take this inside me.”
Watching it slide into his hot, tight little ass was a continual source of delight for me.
“Oh God, Malic,” he whined, smearing the precome over the tip, lifting his hand away to taste it, lick it off his fingertips. “Either fuck me or let me suck you, but you’re killin’ me.” His eyes were heavy-lidded, cloudy with passion, and his parted lips were red and swollen from my savage attention.
It was too much.
I grabbed hold of his beautiful, round, firm ass, parted the twin globes, and thrust inside the man who belonged to me.
The idea that I could ever, would ever, voluntarily walk away from him was ridiculous. He was too precious, too dear for me to even consider leaving.
And he was screaming my name.
I clamped a hand down over his mouth—because I really didn’t want his parents banging on the door—and pounded into him, over and over, again and again, my hips pistoning fast and hard as Dylan’s back bowed off the bed.
Moving my hand, I got a fierce whisper of promised silence before his drugged eyes met mine, the melting brown gorgeous to see as he begged me for deeper, harder, faster.
“Baby,” I groaned, because he was so tight, so hot. I wanted to devour him, mark him, show him who he belonged to.
“Yours, Malic,” he gasped, knowing, like he always did, like only he ever did, what to say and when to say it. “Forgive me… was stupid… yours… only ever yours.”
“Fuck!”
His grin was like a gift, as was the love that went with it. “So eloquent.”
The muscles in his ass had tightened like a fist, clasping, clenching, the squeeze so powerful that my orgasm came without warning, exploding through me as I filled his rippling channel. I coated his insides, thrusting into him as deep as possible, to the hilt, my balls slapping against his ass.
He yelled my name again as I fisted his dripping cock and tilted my hips, making sure I pegged his gland, slid over it, and jerked him off at the same time. Seconds later my abdomen was splattered with thick cum.
It took long shuddering minutes for us to descend from the adrenaline high. I stroked his skin, whispering how much I loved him even as tears filled the beloved eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
“Baby,” I soothed him, slowly pulling out as gently as I could, flopping down onto the bed and lifting him into my lap.
He shoved his wet, sticky cock against the gooey mess on my stomach, pressed his sweat-covered body to mine, and kissed the side of my neck, licking, nibbling, frantic to get closer.
I held tight and still he wriggled closer, the smells of sex washing over me, the moist heat of the room making me light-headed even as his lips touched mine.
He kissed me so hard our teeth clicked together, and he bit down hard, drawing blood that he sucked, along with my bottom lip, inside his mouth.
I threaded my fingers through his hair, yanked his head back, and grabbed a handful of his gorgeous ass at the same time. I let a finger slide over the still fluttering semen-and-lube-slick hole and felt him shudder in my arms.
“You want it again?” I asked, studying him, his beautiful face.
“I just want you to fuckin’ want me so bad you go crazy with it.”
He needed to fall asleep, was what he needed, but he was still scared, and it was my place to show him how stupid that was. He never had to worry.
I grabbed the covers that had been pushed to the bottom of the bed, not caring that we’d be lying in a mess. The only thing that mattered was wrapping him back up in my arms. I crushed him to me, notching his head under my chin as I lay down, making sure that all of him was plastered against me.
He trembled hard, and I felt the tears on my collarbone.
“I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not letting you leave me, so we’re good, all right?”
He took a shaky breath.
“Forgive me. I forgot for a second that you’re my whole fuckin’ world,” I told him.
“Swear?” His voice sounded so hopeful.
“Oh God, baby, yes, I’m so sorry. I should have just told you how I felt.”
“Yes, you should have, and then I would have realized that I was being an ass.”
“I just missed you,” I assured him. “That’s all there was to it.”
“But you still love me, only me, you only want me.”
“Oh yes,” I said before I bent and kissed him so hard and so long that when I was done, he was limp and flushed with heat under me. I rose over him like a hungry beast.
“Use me,” he panted, his body spent and sated, shivering in anticipation of what I was going to do to him.
I crushed him under me instead, pinning him to the bed, and he cried silently as I held him tight, rolling over on my back so he was draped over me.
“I love you,” he whispered, his face buried in the hollow of my neck.
“I know, baby,” I sighed. “I swear to God I know.”
“Then never doubt it,” he rasped, and I knew he was struggling to lift his head, wanting to look in my eyes, but he was wrung out from fear and sadness and sex. He had attacked me, but I ended up devouring him.
“Baby,” I soothed, stroking the sweat-dampened curls, feeling his body get heavy, loving the way he clutched at me, the way he inhaled my scent and nuzzled under my jaw.
“Smell amazing.” He yawned softly. “Malic.”
I was quiet, just running my fingers through his glossy curls, slowly, tenderly, and when his breathing evened out, I knew he was asleep.
Slowly, I eased him off me and spooned around him, pulling the down comforter up over us, snuggling tight. His sigh of happiness could not be missed, and I found that I could not stop smiling even as I reached back and flipped off the light.
III
I WOKE up late, close to noon, and of course Dylan was gone. I noticed that my phone was missing, and since I was almost completely positive I had left it on the nightstand, it was safe to assume that it had been swiped. Since I was on vacation, without an alarm, my body had just stayed in hibernation. Rolling out of bed, I went to take a much-needed shower.
Half an hour later, clean, shaved, and changed into jeans, a black T-shirt, and motorcycle boots, I made my way down the stairs. I would have gone into the living room, but I stopped before I turned the corner when I heard the raised voices.
“Of course we’re going to be nice, Dylan,” I heard his father, Jeff, say. “You told us how important the man is to you.”
“But you knew that before and you were still mean.”
“Yes, but after your display last night before we left for dinner—”
“Dad—”
“He just seems so cold to me,” Lily Shaw chimed in. “He’s nothing like Ethan.”
“No, Mom, he’s not, thank God.”
“Dyl—”
“I will not talk about Ethan Burke,” he said quickly, and his voice was as I had never heard it: hard and icy. “And besides, that was a hundred years ago.”
“It was three years ago, before you moved to San Francisco,” his father corrected him. “That ain’t a hundred years, kiddo.”
“Honey, you never told us what hap—”
“Let it go, Mom,” he told her. “That’s ancient history.”
There was a long silence.
“I’m sorry, love. I know Ethan hurt you when he took up with his friend Gordon.”
“I don’t want to—”
“I’m sorry,” she began. “But, sweetheart—”
“Why don’t we just not talk about any of it?” Mr. Shaw coughed, obviously uncomfortable from the sound of his voice, having cut off his wife before she could finish her
thought.
“Jeff, we should be able to talk about your son’s love—”
“I don’t want to hear about either of my children’s love lives,” he told his wife. “I just don’t want to know!”
“Dylan,” Tina began, “we just want to know if this guy loves you.”
“He does.” Dylan cleared his throat, and I wondered what had happened that made his voice not his own.
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“Does he tell you?” his mother asked.
“He has.”
“But not a lot,” she prodded. “Right?”
“Mom.”
“He’s the strong, silent type,” she offered as an out.
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it? A man should tell you he loves you,” she assured him. “Mike tells Tina. I hear her say it back to him all the time on the phone.”
“Yeah, but Mike’s a piece of crap.”
“Dylan!”
“Oh, c’mon, T, you know he is. Along with the other—”
“Don’t start,” Tina ordered.
“Fine, then, we’ll go with the obvious… your man’s a dog.”
“And Malic isn’t?”
“Not at all.”
“Honey.” His mother was trying to soothe him. “You should have the same interests with the person you love. You should be at the same place in your lives so that you can grow together and make plans and have goals. You—”
“We do.”
“How? He’s so much older than you.”
He was quiet, and my stomach twisted into a knot. There was nothing he could say to convince them, and I knew it hurt him that he wouldn’t be able to make them understand our—
“He picks me up,” Dylan said suddenly, breaking the silence.
“I’m sorry?” his father asked.
“When I work graveyard.” Dylan cleared his throat. “Sometimes I get off at seven in the morning, or sometimes I get off at six. It depends when someone decides to show up to relieve me. But whatever time it is, Malic picks me up, takes me to breakfast, and then drives me home and puts me to bed before he starts his day.”
He forgot the sex part in the middle. Between the “got home” and the “put to bed” there was usually what started with a kiss and ended with us both breathless and panting and covered in sweat and semen. After the full-body hug when I picked him up, it was my favorite part of the morning.