Page 60 of Prohibited

And here she was, saving Lindsay’s life. She had chosen this over her freedom. Had Lindsay had that much of an effect on her? Or was this some sort of atonement? The memory of them together in the back of the truck twisted his stomach with jealousy, but he pushed it back.

Another complication thrown into the machine of what should have been a very straightforward hostage situation.

Finally, Evelyn sat back and swiped at her forehead with her wrist, hands sticky with blood. She let out a big breath.

“I think he’s going to be alright. If infection doesn’t set in. We must watch very carefully and keep his wound very clean.”

An almost imperceptible softening came over Alex’s body. The release of tension. He caressed Lindsay’s hair back from his forehead.

As if sensing Ryan’s gaze, he raised his eyes to meet Ryan’s. An unreadable expression lurked there. Gloating? Regret? Satisfaction? Impossible to say. Shame was beginning to slip through his veins, as deadly as a poison. He was furious. Disgusted. With Alex. But most of all with himself.

There was nowhere to hide now and no one else to blame. He had kissed Alex, not the other way around. Alex had only opened the door. Ryan was the blind fool who had stumbled through it, out onto the road of dark destruction. What had he been thinking? After all theseyears, he would never forgive himself for giving Alex that kind of satisfaction.

Well, the truth was he hadn’t been thinking at all. Not with anything except his cock. And even now, try as he might, he couldn’t keep it from stirring at the way the lightning had crackled between them. The look on Alex’s face. The moans unraveling between them. The feeling of his hands on Ryan’s cock. And the agonizing torture of being on the very brink of falling forward into a void that had called for him for too long–

Only for it to be yanked away from him by stark reality.

And somehow, he couldn’t help but feel like Lindsay’s brush with death was his fault. He’d been too busy stuffing his tongue down Alex’s throat and grabbing the hot thickness of Alex’s cock to make note of the threat that was engulfing them until it was well on its way.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He was going to get everyone he loved killed if he didn’t get his head on straight.

“I’ll need to wash up,” Evelyn said to no one in particular. She walked past Ryan, out onto the landing. The urge to follow her surged through him, the part of him that had taken her hostage. The need to control where she was and for how long. But he let go with a breath. Something had shifted. He didn’t know how, he didn’t know the magnitude of what had occurred, and he didn’t know the way forward.

All he knew is that, somehow, her decision to return to them had really fucked things up for him.

He met her eyes, dark and veiled. A haunted look. An exhausted look. A pleading look. But there was a spark there, something that leapt up between them that caused things to flutter inside his stomach.

The way the white collar opened at her throat put an ache into his chest that he simply couldn’t account for. Shame chased the ache through him, a jumbled confusion of feelings rooted in his desire for her and the beginning of regret for what he had forced her to endure for the sake of his vengeance.

He shoved it all down and looked away, wishing not for the first time in his life to simply disappear.

Then, she was gone, trailing the metallic scent of blood, the warm scent of her body, and the ghost of the smell of violets. Something pricked at the back of Ryan’s neck, causing him to raise his eyes from the polished wood floor.

Alex was watching him from where he sat at Lindsay’s side, looking as disheveled as he had ever seen him. His normally pristine hair was askew. He wore only his shirt sleeves, suspenders still dangling around his waist, one of the sleeves burned, the skin blistered and red beneath.

The air was thick between them. Not quite awkward, but heavy with many unsaid things. Some of them that needed to be discussed, and some of them that never needed to be revisited again.

The moment he had turned and saw Alex with his shirt on fire and a rare glimpse of raw fear and vulnerability on his face settled heavily over him. The realization that Alexcould have died. Lindsay could have died. Evelyn could have died.

It could have been any of them. The thought coiled around him like a great snake, constricting tighter and tighter until he couldn’t breathe.

“A cigarette?” Alex said. He got to his feet and slowly crossed the floor, closing the gap between them one step at a time. More slowly than necessary, it seemed to Ryan. There was something infuriatingly charming about Alex looking out of order. “I left the mine at the candy shop.”

Wordlessly, Ryan took the pack from his pocket and handed them over, matches too. He looked away from Alex, feeling a door close inside of himself. These pricks of curiosity, these prurient interests needling through him needed to be smothered. Put to death for all time. The terror that the possibility of Alex's death caused in him was swallowed up.

His whole body tensed for what he knew would come. Alex wasted no time in lighting his cigarette and then stepping far too close to Ryan for the comfort of propriety. One of his hands floated up toward Ryan’s face.

Ryan caught his wrist so hard it made Alex gasp. His pale cheeks colored. Ryan tried not to look at him, but he couldn’t help himself. There was too much in that sound, shock and pleasure. A loss of control this small was not something he was accustomed to seeing on Alex. It stroked the predator inside of him that wanted to consume Alex like a small, delicate white rabbit. A vicious rabbit.

“You could have died,” Ryan said in a hoarse voice.

“You could have, too,” Alex said back, voice quiet. Expression unreadable. He lifted his other hand toward Ryan’s face, but Ryan turned away.

“Don’t,” Ryan said in a soft, sober voice. “It shouldn’t have happened. It won’t happen again.”

Alex studied him through lidded eyes, casually bringing the cigarette up to his mouth while Ryan’s whole body hummed with tension, temporarily paralyzing him.

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