Suddenly, though, there was nothing beneath my mouth as he jerked away. “No hickeys,” he said shortly.
Okay, what the hell? I stopped dancing and planted my hands on his shoulders, turning him forcibly around. He resisted at first, then yielded. I gave him a moment to take in his first real look at me.
“Next you’re going to tell me I can’t pinch you.” I brushed my thumbs over both his nipples at once, and his breath stuttered to a halt, his eyes sliding shut. When he opened them again, I could see something behind them, something he wasn’t letting himself say. Half-frustrated, half-fearful.
I decided rather than give it time to reach the verbal stage, I’d press my advantage. I kept his attention locked on me with eye contact and the touch of my fingers: gently tweaking his nipples, steering him until we were near the door and his back was against the wall. I dipped my head to let my lips and teeth graze along his neck without sucking or biting. I gripped his ass possessively when he tried to grind against me.
“Invite me back to your room,” I murmured. “Let me give you what you want. I swear, baby, I’ll fuck you so hard you won’t be able to walk in the morning. I’ll leave marks on every inch of you. You won’t be able to look at yourself for a week without remembering how good it was.”
Geoff groaned, a pleading, desperate sound, but I could feel something in him still struggling. He wanted to give in, his body was trying to give in, but his brain was holding him back. I felt it in the shuddering of his body, the way relaxation and tension pulled at him in turns.
“Okay,” he panted when my fingers tried to wedge their way down the back of his jeans. “But . . .”
“Yeah?” I tongued the shell of his ear. “Tell me.”
“We have to—” I tightened my hand on his ass and his words stumbled. Then his resolve rallied, and he opened his eyes. “Can we step outside, where it’s quieter?”
“Sure.” I nudged him those final steps toward the door. The cool air hit our fevered, sweat-damp skin like a blast out of a meat locker. I saw him shudder, his useless shirt still hanging from his back pocket, and I caught his body against mine, rubbing my hands over his arms. I pressed my erection against his hip. “Talk. You’ve got sixty seconds before I drag you back to your room.”
His mouth opened and closed, his forehead creasing with that inner battle I sensed but couldn’t quite understand. Seconds ticked by. Then he gave one decisive shake of his head and turned to mash his lips against mine.
Well. Okay then. So much for talking. I gripped his upper arms and yanked him closer, my tongue stroking deep inside his mouth.
He tasted as sweet and smoky as he smelled, and I thought I could devour him. Then the copper tang of pennies hit my tongue. I drew back in alarm, wondering if I’d forgotten myself and bitten him after he’d told me not to.
Realization dawned in his eyes at the same instant mine made sense of the dark streak beginning to flow from his nostril. It was . . . weird. He didn’t look surprised by it. Just resigned, and weary, and disgusted. He actually rolled his eyes.
“Fuck,” he hissed, letting his head fall back.
Geoff
“Stay right there.” My would-be one-night stand dashed back into the bar. Furious at myself and my fucking body, I turned and followed the paths around the pool area that led back to the cottage with long, angry strides. Robin caught up with me before I’d gone fifty yards.
“I said to stay put,” he scolded. He thrust a bar towel at me, which I accepted, pinching the bridge of my nose through it. I imagined him watching the nearly black stains spread through the terry cloth, stripped of their color by the darkness. Between the dancing and the arousal, my blood pressure had probably been surging and dropping all evening. Along with the change in humidity and barometric pressure that came with traveling, and the fact that I wasn’t doing my prophy as often as I should, of course I was ripe for a nosebleed. I growled softly, too pissed off even to be self-conscious.
“Let me help you to your room.” He slipped an arm around my waist.
“I’m not an invalid.”
His eyes widened and an insulted expression settled on his face. I immediately regretted snapping, even if my voice was probably far too nasal with my nose pinched off for my rebuke to be taken very seriously. My issues weren’t his fault. He wasn’t aware of how irritated I got when someone hovered. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just— I’ve got this. It’s only a nosebleed.”
Robin dropped his hand from my waist, but he didn’t step back. Instead, he folded his arms and regarded me with a lifted eyebrow. “I’m aware of that. But there are dark walkways between here and the cottages. I thought it might be harder to navigate if you’re trying to keep your head tipped back.”
Shit. He was right. Perhaps even more importantly, his voice didn’t have that hint of concerned condescension I hated so much. He was simply being . . . logical. With a sigh, I conceded. “Right. Yeah, thanks. That would be good.”
His hand came around my waist again. I let him keep an eye out for ground-level hazards since I couldn’t really see much beyond my hand and the bulk of the bar towel. I directed him to our cottage. I could hear voices rising from the hot tub the two two-bedroom cottages shared. Sounded like Jace had found companions after all.
Not surprising. His vanilla inclination aside, there was never a time when he wasn’t determined to wring every ounce of fun out of life and share it with anyone within speaking distance. Being aware of his history as I was, I thought Jace’s way of handling his issues was about a thousand times better than some of the alternatives.
I smiled underneath my towel, too amused to be envious.
“Sounds like someone’s having a good time,” Robin said, sotto voce.
“That would be my friend, Jace.” I dug blindly for my room key, still trying to hold the towel to my nose. Robin pulled my hand out of my pocket and replaced it with his own. His fingers fished around right next to my dick for the card. Jesus. If not for the total unsexiness of the nosebleed, I would have been instantly hard.
“The one who wasn’t thrilled with all the leathermen around this weekend?”
“How did you know that?”
“I overheard the two of you at the bar.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. But then, it wasn’t as though we’d been trying to keep it private. He hadn’t necessarily been eavesdropping.
Once inside the cottage, Robin sat me on the sofa and grabbed a clean towel from the kitchenette. I was going to have to keep pressure on my nose for at least another ten minutes while he sat there, waiting awkwardly as the seconds ticked by.
Hot. Real hot.
“Thanks, um, thanks for the help,” I muttered, trying to rein in my annoyance at my body’s betrayal so I didn’t sound as resentful as I felt.
“It’s not a problem.” Robin perched on the arm of the sofa, watching me with a patience that belied his earlier aggression.
“I know, but you didn’t have to. Especially after the way I nearly took your head off out there.”
He huffed a soft laugh. “Eh, that’s nothing. I’ve got a lot of practice dealing with people who get prickly because they would rather go on offense than play defense. I get it.”
I frowned at him. “What do you think I’m defending myself against?”
“Being seen as weak, obviously.” He shrugged. “First you got your back up when I used the word ‘delicate,’ and then you protested the idea that you might be an invalid. Pretty simple math to conclude that it’s a hot-button subject with you.”
“Right. You know, it’s just . . . baggage. Didn’t mean to take it out on you.” I drew the towel away from my face. The bleeding had slowed but hadn’t completely stopped.
Robin shook his head, brushing the apology off. Unsure what I could possibly say next, I looked away.
“You get nosebleeds a lot?” he asked after a moment.
I nodded, seizing on part of the
truth to avoid explaining the whole of it. “Um, yeah. Sometimes.”
He studied me, his eyes searching. “It’s not uncommon. Why does it bother you so much?”
I wet my lips, tasting blood, as I tried to figure out how to make him understand. I tipped my head back farther and pinched the top of my nose harder. “When I was a young kid—God, I don’t remember when, maybe in the late eighties or early nineties?—I saw this movie. One of those athletic, coming-of-age things about a high school wrestler.”
“I think I saw that one. Had Matthew Modine in it, right?”
“Uh-huh, that’s the one. Anyway, you know, at one point he got a nosebleed. And after that, whenever his archrival was trying to rattle Modine’s character, he’d call the guy a bleeder. Like, having a nosebleed meant he was weak or something. So whenever something like this—” I waved my hand at the bloodstained cloth still pressed to my face “—happens, that’s the thing that comes to mind. That if you bleed, you’re weak.”
“I can see that.” Robin’s eyes were sympathetic but not pitying. Like he really got it. He slid off the arm of the sofa to sit beside me. “You know it’s bullshit, right?”
“Sure, I guess.” I looked away, because giving a more concrete answer would require details I didn’t want to share. I was more easily injured than most people, and it did make me feel weak, or at least prone to being perceived that way. “But there’s knowing and then there’s knowing, you know?”
He chuckled and nodded. “I know. Why hang so much weight on such a meaningless word, though?”
Fuck it. After oh-so-suavely bleeding all over him, I wasn’t getting any tonight anyway.
“Because for me it’s not meaningless. ‘Bleeder’ is a word the hemophiliac community uses to refer to themselves.”
I saw a wrinkle of confusion form between his brows before the pieces clicked together. “So, you’re a hemophiliac.”
I nodded, my eyes sliding away from his gaze to stare at the wall past his shoulder.
“Okay. Umm, aside from the whole business with Ryan White when I was a kid, and some movie that said a woman would die from a paper cut, I don’t know much about that.”
“We don’t die from paper cuts,” I growled between clenched teeth. “Hollywood idiots.”
“All right. Then how does it work?”
I had to hand it to him: he was being cooler than I thought he would about it. Some people immediately freaked or went all super-sympathetic, as if I’d told them I was dying. Or they got all uncomfortable and didn’t want to be around me any longer than it took to make an excuse to get out. Or they got morbidly curious and—
Never mind. “It means that when I bleed, internally or externally, it takes longer for me to heal. I don’t bleed any more than anyone else. Small surface injuries can heal up with basic first aid, especially if I keep up on my prophy—sorry, prophylaxis, which supplements my clotting factor to reduce the number of spontaneous bleeds I get—but major wounds can be a problem. The real worry is internal injuries. The stuff that can’t be bandaged up.”
He nodded slowly. “Like?”
I sighed. “Well, my joints are a problem. Bumping an elbow, banging a knee—hell, just overworking a joint can cause a bleed. Or it can happen spontaneously. Bleeds injure the joint a little more each time, so eventually you’re dealing with arthritis. Even worse are the deep-muscle bleeds. They can pinch off nerves and cause paralysis. Don’t get me started on head injuries.”
“No, please, let’s do get started on head injuries. I’d like to know.”
“Why?”
“So I know what your limits are. I’m assuming this is why you were declaring biting and sucking verboten. What else might I accidentally trip over?”
I blinked at him. Repeatedly. Was he saying he still wanted to get with me? I pulled the bloodstained towel away from my face, relieved to see the bleeding had stopped. Though my face probably looked like something out of a slasher film. I stared at the towel, not sure what to make of that possibility. Robin hopped up and disappeared into the bathroom, then returned with a wet washcloth.
“Your face—”
“Right.” I accepted the cloth, trying to wipe away any traces of blood around my nose and mouth without a mirror. Robin took it back from me, gripped my chin gently with his other hand, and began cleaning me himself.
It should have felt patronizing and like all the oversolicitous crap I hated, but it didn’t. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out the difference.
“Tell me about head injuries.”
“Fine. Okay. True story.” If he still thought he wanted to fuck me, I was going to let him know exactly how inconvenient it could get. “A couple years ago, I picked up a guy at a bar and went home with him. He was hot, I was horny, we were having fun. Then he pushed me against the wall to kiss me. Sexy, right?”
Robin’s eyes had darkened. “I’m a big fan of up against the wall.”
“Yeah, me too. For a couple seconds, I was really into it. Then I stopped thinking with my dick long enough to realize I’d bumped my head when he did it. Not badly. You wouldn’t have had to think twice about it. But I had to leave him blue-balled so I could rush home for a dose of factor, and I spent the night afraid I would wake up in the produce aisle of the neurological care unit.”
I watched the reactions slide across his face: arousal transitioning to humor and then to disbelief.
Bitterness was starting to creep in again, bringing up my not-so-inner asshole. I decided to lay another slice of my reality on him. “I just came out of the closet a couple of years ago. Want to know why?”
His eyebrows lifted, his expression sobering. I think he was starting to get it. “Why?”
“When I was seventeen, I told my mom I was gay, and she had a complete breakdown. Like, she had to be hospitalized and sedated. Not because she had a problem with me being gay, as such, but because she was terrified I might get bashed. She spent the better part of a year having panic attacks about it, until I finally promised her I wouldn’t let anyone know.”
I could tell by his thoughtful frown that he was taking it in, pondering. “You were going to tell me about this outside the club, and then you stopped yourself.”
Licking my lips, I looked away. Fuck. That had only been, what? Twenty, thirty minutes ago? I’d been so damn hot for him, so ready to toss it all aside and take my chances.
If only I could go back to that moment and replay it without the nosebleed putting the brakes on everything.
“I gotta say, that pisses me off,” he said so mildly that the anger indicated by his words was almost lost—or maybe being held in check. I lifted my head to stare. “When we got back to your room, I was planning to get rough because that seemed to be what you were into.”
“I am. That’s what I wanted.”
“But you weren’t going to tell me.”
“Because I didn’t want you to think I was—”
“Fragile?”
“Exactly. I didn’t want you to hold back.”
“Wow.” He rubbed his forehead, like a headache was blooming. The line of his mouth was tightening, his lips bloodless. “How many guys have you played with, Geoff? I mean, not just hooked up with, but done BDSM scenes with? Or at least had sex rough enough to require a safeword?”
“Umm—” Damn it, now I was blushing. “I’ve never—” I cleared my throat. “None.”
“Oh, good. At least you’ve never put anyone else in the position of being responsible for your well-being without knowing your physical limits.”
“What?” I bristled, my all-too-easily-wounded pride snarling. “Excuse me, but I’m responsible for my own fucking well-being, thank you very much.”
“Then act like it! And while you’re at it, don’t bullshit a stranger into accidentally killing you without even the courtesy of a heads-up.”
I scoffed and glared at him. “Yeah, great, thanks. Ever think that this is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you?”
&n
bsp; “So your answer to that is to put me in a risky situation without my consent?”
“It’s my risk to take!”
Robin threw his hands up in the air. His fury seemed excessive and somewhat misplaced. “Sure, until they fucking arrest me for reckless endangerment or assault or whatever grounds they want to use to charge me for your homicide. You think maybe, just maybe, I ought to have the right to decide if or how to deal with that issue?”
He deflated suddenly. “It’s about consent, Geoff. Yours and mine. RACK: risk-aware consensual kink. That acronym does actually mean something. If I don’t know all the facts, I can’t give meaningful consent.”
Okay, so there was some validity to that, but Jesus. “Wow. Dramatic much? I didn’t want you handling me any differently than you would handle someone else. Is that really so much to expect?”
His eyes narrowed. “You don’t get it, do you?” In an instant, he’d closed the distance between us, gripping my hair hard enough to command my gaze, keep me focused on his face right up in front of mine. His voice was a low, angry growl that spoke as strongly to my dick as his words did my ears. “You want to sub, baby, but you’ve got no idea what it means. When you give someone the power to do what they want to you, you also give them the responsibility of keeping you safe. Otherwise, you can’t ever really give in and let go.”
Oh God. His face swam before me, and my heart thundered, my pulse pounding with surge after surge of wanting. Yes, every nerve in my body screamed. Do that. Hurt me. Control me. Take what you want from me.
He let me go before I could become a whimpering, pleading mass of longing.
“Until you can give that up, Geoff, you’re never going to get what you want.”
It took me a moment to pull myself back together, and then I started to get angry again. “So, what, you’re telling me if I’d been up-front with you about it, you wouldn’t have held back?”
“I’m telling you the decision of whether or not I hold back, or how much—within any negotiated limits, of course—belongs to me, not you. And if you can’t trust me to make that decision and still give you what you need while keeping you safe, then we’ve got no business playing together.”
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