Running Blind

by SE Jakes

  But just the smell made him feel sick. He’d told Misha that he wouldn’t drink for a while, until he got on his feet and made sure he was over self-medicating. And he felt guilty for fucking with her trust.

  So instead, he put the bottle down and stood, looked over the rails toward the roads that led to the middle of the property. He could jump down and follow it along but he couldn’t get far. If he couldn’t have one type of escape . . .

  “You really want to go?” Sweet asked from behind.

  Ah fuck. “Why don’t you just tell me what I can and can’t do, Daddy.”

  Sweet was on him in a second. “You lookin’ for a daddy? Because I wouldn’t mind spending time teaching you a few things.”

  Then Sweet walked away. And that made Bram’s angry motherfucker come right back out to play. Again.

  He ran, light and quiet, and slammed Sweet from behind. Sweet clearly hadn’t expected him to have the balls—or the stupidity—to do that. Bram knocked him flat, held him down, whispered in his ear, “Just because it’s your place doesn’t mean you get to call my shots.”

  “You don’t get the whole authority thing, do you?”

  “Get it. Hate it. Don’t plan on following it,” Bram growled.

  Sweet tensed up, readying himself for a fight. They were evenly matched, and even hurt and detoxing, Bram was a strong fucker.

  But just as suddenly as Bram knocked him down, he got up. Sweet followed, getting onto his feet and facing Bram, standing inches from him. And that’s when Bram surprised Sweet in a way he never thought he could be surprised again.

  Bram faced him. And then he dropped, purposefully, to his knees directly in front of Sweet. Put his head forward to rest on Sweet’s thigh.

  But Sweet didn’t mistake this for Bram giving up or giving in.

  “Christ, Bram, just when I think . . .” He trailed off as he brushed his knuckles along Bram’s cheekbone. “So fucking full of surprises. You’re killing me.”

  Bram looked down pointedly at Sweet’s obviously hard cock. “I can help fix that. I can try to help fix everything, Sweet, but you have to let me. You can’t—” His voice broke.

  “You’ve got to let me lead, Bram. And you’ve got to trust me.”

  “Wouldn’t be down here if I didn’t.”

  “We’ll figure it out, baby. If that’s what you want.”

  “I want you. I want Linc safe. Beyond that . . .”

  “That’s a pretty damned good start.” Somehow, he’d been dancing around Bram like he was Jimmy’s ghost. This? Solidified that Bram was nothing of the goddamned sort.

  Bram was needy for this, but the guy was also an island. He could live alone for a long time and make it, but he’d thrive in a place like Havoc.

  Bram needed healing, but he would heal. The hurt-comfort cycle wasn’t what he needed. He needed the rough stretch of sex . . . but he could also provide enough comfort for himself and a partner.

  “You don’t know what I had to sit back and watch,” Bram bit out.

  “Did the good you did outweigh the bad you needed to let happen?”

  “I can’t do that, Sweet. Can’t play judge and jury, balancing the scales.”

  Sweet stroked his hair. “You have to, Bram. Otherwise, you won’t make it.”

  “Then maybe I won’t make it,” Bram admitted, maybe out loud for the first time.

  “You’re a good man.”

  “No, that’s not true. I was. A good man doesn’t stand by and watch people getting killed.”

  “Pretty sure Heathens kill a lot of scum too, including each other. Also pretty sure what you did helped to save a lot of people from them in the future, right?”

  “Stop trying to make me feel better.”

  “You’re still in fucking shock. PTSD,” Sweet told him. “You’ve got to trust me more than you trust yourself.”

  Bram stared at him. “I can promise you that for tonight. That’s all I have right now.”

  “It’s enough.”

  Sweet tugged Bram to his feet, held him close. “I want to know every goddamned thing that turns you on. Every forbidden desire. Every desire that scares the fuck out of you, and I want to show you ones you didn’t even know you had.”

  Bram put his forehead down on Sweet’s shoulder as he surrendered. Again. There were a myriad of other choices he could make but none of them felt this right.

  He let himself be led into Sweet’s room, let himself be stripped and told to, “Get on the bed—on your back,” in Sweet’s darkest, hottest drawl.

  Bram’s skin prickled, from cold and a little fear and anticipation. Sweet took out a piece of rope. “Arms up—over your head.”

  Bram did as he asked, wrapping his fingers around the lowest rung of the headboard as Sweet tied his wrists together with the rope that was softer than he’d expected. Sweet tied him well, not too tight, and Bram was reasonably sure he could get out of it . . . eventually. But with Sweet’s heavy body on his?

  No.

  Sweet remained clothed as he knelt between Bram’s legs, spreading them wide, one hand stroking his cock and the other drifting along his chest and sides, over the scars, new and old, touching them with rough fingertips before finally pressing a finger between his legs, fingering him, demanding Bram to simply take it.

  The restraints made him raw. Helpless. Exposed. He shuddered when Sweet’s finger breeched his hole, dry.

  “That’s right. You’re going to let me do what I need to. Just shut up and for fucking once, we’re going to shut off that goddamned mind of yours.”

  A groan escaped from Bram’s mouth as Sweet’s finger pushed in and took him—not painful, just different with no lube.

  But when he touched Bram’s gland over and over, Bram gripped the headboard bar tightly to not crumble. Sweet smiled and took his hand off Bram’s cock and reached for something on the bed next to him.

  He held them up for a second, and Bram recognized them immediately, opening his mouth to say no when Sweet said, “Your safeword?”

  Bram closed his eyes, feeling Sweet’s finger still inside of him. “Fed.”

  The word was part challenge, a last-minute way to make Sweet realize what he was doing and who Bram really was.

  Sweet stroked his shoulder, and then Bram felt the bite of the clamps on his nipples, one after the other, pulling a wicked burn of pleasure from him. Bram’s chest surged up to meet the bites of pain. “Fuck. Fuck!”

  “Yeah, that’ll happen,” Sweet assured him. His finger left Bram for a minute, and then two lubed fingers disappeared inside of him.

  “Stop thinking. Just fucking feel,” Sweet growled as he added another finger, and yes, Bram did, his balls tightening, his cock stretched tight and ready to come.

  “Such a pretty cock. Thinking of piercing it,” Sweet said seriously. Bram gasped, a half sob as Sweet twisted his fingers—four of them now—inside him. “And I could do that. Call the piercers in here right now. And what could you do?”

  “Nothing,” Bram gasped.

  “He’d come in here, see you splayed out, needy as fuck, my hand in your ass and he’d stand here and play with your cock, looking for just the right place.” As Bram nodded, Sweet reached up to his clamped nipples. “Or maybe I should do these instead.”

  He took a clamp off suddenly, with no warning.

  “Fuck,” Bram shouted, the blood rushing as the metal came off and his ass clamped hard around Sweet’s fingers, trapping them there as he shot come up his chest.

  “Didn’t have permission to do that,” Sweet said as Bram came back down to earth, still spread on Sweet’s fingers. He was drunk on Sweet, a desire that was hot and needy unfurling so damned slowly as he realized that Sweet had started sliding his hand inside farther. That Sweet’s thumb had joined his fingers, and they were working him, slowly. Purposefully.

  Sweet nodded, watching him carefully, stroking and kneading his cock with his free hand. “Yes, baby. All five in there. Stay still.”

  “No
. Nononono,” Bram moaned, but in reality, he’d fucking die if Sweet stopped now. Because it seemed like Sweet had been playing with him for a minute, for an hour . . . he’d lost track of time, aware only of his skin, slick with sweat, his moans of satisfaction, the way his ass took Sweet in . . .

  The way he was holding himself still so Sweet could take him exactly the way he wanted to. The way both of them wanted. It was predatory. Dirty.

  Perfect.

  “Look down,” Sweet commanded.

  Bram didn’t want to, but he didn’t want to disobey Sweet. He saw Sweet’s wrist at the same time he felt Sweet’s hand attempt to open inside his ass. A dark thread of satisfaction unraveled, deep in his belly. His climax exploded and everything went white and floaty, and he went to that special place Sweet seemed to bring him to easily. A place where nothing mattered except Sweet. And pleasure.

  Then he was shuddering. Moaning, cursing.

  He was so empty, but almost instantly Sweet’s cock filled him, and his ass clamped down, adjusted, and Sweet gave him the ride of his life.

  Bram could barely hang on—and he did hang on as Sweet pounded him. They were loud. Anyone walking by—hell, anyone in the general vicinity—knew what they were doing.

  “Yell, baby. Yell my name. Let them all know you’re claimed.”

  He did. It was all Sweet and yes and please and yours. Anything Sweet told him. Nothing to do with getting out of trouble and more about wanting Sweet to keep him. In his bed.

  In his life.

  Bram was knocked out, sleeping peacefully for probably the first time in God knew how long. And while he slept, Sweet planned. Because the danger—to Bram, to Havoc, was far from over. No, the doors had opened up to let in a world of problems.

  Bram woke from the nightmare with a yell and Sweet’s voice trying to calm him down. Bram sat up, panting, sweating, trying to get his mind around where the fuck he was.

  “Bram, you’re with me. At Havoc. Safe,” Sweet told him, and Bram snorted.

  “Right. Safe.” He tried to push away but Sweet held him there.

  “What the fuck happened to you, Bram? I know your sup screwed you good but . . . this was something else.”

  “It’s nothing,” he mumbled.

  “It’s not nothing—and it keeps coming up to bite you in the ass.”

  “Linc’s father tried to fucking kill us,” he blurted out without warning, and Sweet did let him up then. Bram paced a little while he talked. “My own dad sucked but my stepdad? If he wasn’t ordering us around drunk he was hitting me. The day he tried to kill me and Linc was the day I realized I could never fucking fully trust anyone, especially not someone in a position of authority. Are you satisfied now?”

  Sweet sighed. “I’m sorry your stepfather was fucked up.”

  “I don’t need your sympathy,” Bram spat, his skin hot and tingly.

  “Sweet, we both know this can’t go anywhere.”

  “Who says?”

  It was Bram’s turn to sigh. “Even if I wasn’t who I am, you think the club’s going to accept you with an outsider?”

  “They did before,” Sweet said.

  “This is crazy,” Bram muttered. “Fucking nuts.”

  “Maybe you need to shut up and go with it,” Sweet suggested.

  “Maybe I’ve done that too many times in my life.”

  “Bram,” Sweet said quietly. “What we did tonight . . . it was intense. This reaction? It’s normal.”

  “Thanks for the analysis. Know I can always count on you for it.” As his head cleared, he decided that maybe it was time to turn the tables on Sweet a little, put his feet to the fire, as it were, and get some answers he probably didn’t deserve. “You and Jimmy played.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “He needed it,” was all Sweet said, his voice as tight as his expression. He was done with this conversation. Bram?

  Wasn’t. “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Need it?”

  Sweet swallowed. “I needed him.”

  Jesus, Sweet’s loss was palpable. “Do you still play?”

  “Why aren’t you letting this go?”

  “Because you’ve played with me,” Bram told him, and Sweet’s head snapped up. Then he walked toward Bram with a dangerous stride. “Are you denying it?”

  “Why are you pressing?”

  Because I won’t let you dismiss what you’ve done with me. “Because most people who enjoy this kind of play don’t just do it because one person enjoys it. That never works, and you and Jimmy? Sounds like you worked.”

  “You don’t get to analyze my sex life, or any part of my personal life. Hell, any part of my life.”

  And right there, Bram had his answer, the one he’d been pushing for. The one he’d already known despite the fact that a small part of him still hoped it would be different. “Got it. Subject dropped.”

  It wasn’t, though, if Bram’s expression was any indication. He’d shuttered off again, and although he’d pissed Sweet off, Sweet couldn’t deny Bram had been right. Like Bram, Sweet liked the fight—and he liked to win. Not letting Bram analyze him was hypocritical as hell, but Sweet hadn’t been pushed by anyone on this since Jimmy-Boy. It wasn’t a place Sweet willingly liked to go back to.

  Because Jimmy-Boy hadn’t so much needed him as he’d needed someone to constantly be there to save him. He wanted a full-time Dom . . . and Sweet had tried to be one. Tried his best to constantly give Jimmy what he needed. But it became apparent that Jimmy didn’t even know what he truly wanted or needed—and he refused to try to figure it out. And he definitely didn’t want to let Sweet know any of his needs, contented himself by telling Sweet that he wasn’t helping. Forcing Sweet to try to push his limits. But what Jimmy needed was beyond simply wanting to be a sub.

  He went back into the military after they broke up and told Sweet that he’d be sorry. Sweet had hated that they’d left it like that . . . and even though he knew he had nothing to do with the fact that Jimmy was killed in combat, the guilt still hung heavily. After Jimmy-Boy, he’d stuck to threesomes. Easier, with no entanglements. That was why he’d been happy when Grayson jumped into his first night with Bram.

  But when Sweet hadn’t considered bringing in a third after that, he knew he was in trouble. Then, and now. He admitted the partial truth, knowing it would piss Bram off. “Jimmy-Boy wanted to be saved. He was as addicted to it as I was to saving him.”

  Bram just looked at him, more upset than angry, but obviously comparing their situation to the one Sweet just described. “I guess you think you’ve got a type then.”

  “Bram . . .”

  “You think I’ve enjoyed being saved by you? You think I like being fucking helpless? Because I hate it. I’ve worked to get us to an even ground. I’m not looking to be dominated, Sweet. I like playing with you, and that’s obvious, but I’m not looking to be saved.”

  “I know that.”

  “No. I don’t think you do.” Bram pointed at him. “It’s one thing to know I’ll be compared by everyone in this club and you to the ghost of a guy who fucked you up badly. But now you’re telling me he was fucked up the entire time you were together, and that’s supposed to make me feel better how?” Bram shook his head. “I’ve survived for a hell of a long time on my own. I’ve kept a lot of people safe, including myself. I might love the danger of my job, of rough sex, but I’m not unstable enough to go looking for danger just because. Anything I’ve done? Has been to save Linc. And you. Tell me, Sweet, did Jimmy-Boy ever do anything to save you . . . or is that all you need from a guy? If it is, then ain’t ever gonna work.”

  Sweet knew Bram was freaked out—and lashing out. Hell, he was too. He couldn’t deny that. They’d both been through hell, and neither one of them seemed ready to climb on out completely. And before he could stop himself, Sweet was reminding him, “You’re the one who said this can’t go anywhere. Stop trying to blame it on me.”

  “You’re keeping me on the
outside. Do you not see that? I can’t ask a question about the last serious relationship you’ve had, but you want total honesty from me?”

  Sweet tried to keep his patience, but Bram was purposely pushing buttons and sometimes you got what you asked for. “You’ve said repeatedly that you don’t want to be here. You’ve said you’re only here for Linc, that you just wanted to pay and get the fuck out of here. You lied to all of us. And then you’re pissed that you’re treated like an outsider. Bram, you are.”

  “I know.” He said it angrily. “You want me to wear it painted on my forehead? I guess I don’t have to—everyone fucking knows I don’t belong.”

  Being a loner had never bothered Bram until he realized that having no one to count on at the end of the day, no one to go home to and find comfort with really fucking sucked.

  “Bram, look—”

  “Don’t, Sweet, okay? Don’t try to make it better.”

  “Who the fuck you think you’re talking to?” Sweet demanded.

  “The only reason I’m still alive, right? That’s your big threat. You know what? I’m not hanging around because of a threat, Sweet. Newsflash—I’m hanging out because I want to hang out with you. You think I couldn’t leave if I wanted to? You think I couldn’t escape? Trust me, I’ve gotten out of worse scrapes in my life.”

  Sweet looked at him oddly and Bram’s inner alarms were going off, clanging loudly and telling him to shut the fuck up.

  Bram, of course, ignored that, because why use common sense in a situation like this? Where the fuck had common sense gotten him until now? Almost killed. “So how about I just go, all right?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  No, it wasn’t. But he’d be damned if he admitted what he wanted now.

  “God, you’re fucked up, Bram.” Sweet’s words were gentle. “You’ve been to hell and back. I realize that. That’s why I brought you here.”

  “To make me feel worse?”

  “I realize it seems like that, but no, my intent was to help.”

  “I’m not a charity case.”