Page 46 of The Cartographer

I’m used to caring for my clients, having affection and concern for my lovers, but this is…different somehow. I’m not sure if I like it, but while I figure it out, I have to care for Allie because he’s like a bronze statue melted down, all boneless and god, yes, hot.

I’ve been trying to ignore it because I’m supposed to be tending to him—the amount of time I spend lecturing my clients about aftercare is truly astounding, and I won’t be a hypocrite about that—but it’s getting harder and harder to pretend I don’t see his thick, hard cock jutting out. It’s so flushed it’s almost purple, and I have to wonder if it hurts or if it just feels like need.

He’s so gorgeous, sprawled over the pillows. All carved musculature and sparse hair, and those goddamn delicious hipcuts that make me want to bite him until I draw blood. I need a distraction before I fuck him raw, and the best distraction there is is looking after him.

The glass of water I’ve given him is empty now, and he’s staring at me over it. He doesn’t break eye contact as he shifts his shoulder against the pillows.

“Does it hurt?”

“Would it be weird for me to say I don’t know?”

I shake my head. “No. Nothing you feel is weird. I’ve seen it all. You can feel it, though, right?”

“That you whaled on me for like three hours? Yeah.”

It was more like one, but I won’t correct him. Time is one of the things that melts away when someone’s in subspace, and I don’t want to shock him out of it, disrupt his altered reality. He can keep soaking in it, that blissed-out high.

“More water?”

“Yeah.”

After he’s swallowed down the glass I poured for him, he looks slightly more awake, more alive and more…avid. As though he wants something badly and that something is me. The feeling is mutual, and I let the desire I’ve been holding back flood me, taking the empty glass and dropping it to the carpeted floor where it lands with a dull thunk. That’s what accompanies our lunging toward one another, our mouths meeting so we can taste each other.

The sharpness of adrenaline overwhelms how human and vaguely sweet he usually tastes, but the smell of him is merely amplified, intensified. It surrounds me as I let my hands roam wherever they’d like. All over him—all of his pleasure, all of his sounds, all his frustration and wants—because he’s all mine.

He makes an unsatisfied noise I swallow, and then he’s pawing at my clothes, uncouth and forceful, as if he’ll rip them if he doesn’t get his way soon. I help him, our hands running into each other in the scramble to drop this barrier of cotton and summer-weight wool.

He barks a laugh as he unzips my pants and slips his hand inside. “Do you never wear underwear?”

I lean back slightly and shrug, throwing him my best arrogant grin. “Why should I? It’s more expedient this way.”

He laughs again and grips my dick in his hot hand, squeezing slightly. “I wasn’t complaining. It just seems really…conceited.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh, and because he’s startled me and I didn’t have time to prepare, it comes out as more of a donkey bray and I’m glad I didn’t have anything in my mouth. “If you’ve got a problem with conceit, you’re in bed with the wrong guy.”

“Not a problem,” he says, shaking his head, “seems like you might’ve earned it.”

I hope so. I’m sick of talking, though, so I reach over and turn the knob on the lamps until it’s nearly dark and then I let him strip the rest of my clothes away. When I’m naked, I sit astride him and let our cocks slide against each other. While I’d like to jerk off fast and hard, see my come splattered all over his torso, and if I was lucky, a drop at the corner of his mouth, sliding down his chin, I won’t. He’s earned a good, slow, painstaking fuck.

The drawer doesn’t protest as I slide it open and grab the bottle of lube. Nor does Hart as he watches me pour a good measure into my hand. It’s not cold, so I reach between us, gathering our hard lengths into one hand while I lean up against the headboard with the other. Rocking up against him is pure bliss, our cocks sliding against each other in this incredibly filthy way that makes me want more wetness, more tangling of body parts. I kiss him again, and he kisses me back, wrapping a hand opposite mine to keep us tight and slippery.

I have to bite his lower lip, hold it while we thrust into our joined hands, and when he starts to go too fast, I break away and tut at him.

“Ah. I decide when we come. Not you. Do you understand me?”

He gets this rebellious look in his eyes, but it’s quickly cowed by a raise of my eyebrow.

“If you’re good and follow my lead, I swear you’re going to come so hard you’ll see stars. If you’re disobedient, though, you get nothing. Not only tonight, but not on the way home and who knows how long after that.”

“What the fuck makes you think I’m going to let you control when I get off?”

I stare at him, our gazes locked.I can play this game all night long, Hart. Don’t even try, because you’ll lose.

We face off for a good few minutes, the air thick with pent-up passion, carnal frustration, and the animal scent of sex and bodies.

“Won’t you?”

That’s when he blinks, his swollen lips parting and a gulp of air inflating his lungs. I can see the war taking place inside his head:What kind of man am I? What kind of person will this make me? What will handing myself over to this brash-as-fuck asshole mean?

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