Page 82 of The Cartographer

He pants and screams, bangs his clenched hand on the floor, and yes, cries. I fling the wand, attachment and all, to the floor. It’s not going to hurt anything there, but what I’m going to do…

I take the opportunity to unbuckle and unzip my pants, and it’s a quick few strokes before I’m coming over the broad plane of his heaving back. I let him know with an inarticulate groan how much he’s turned me on. That’s when he chokes out, “Thank you, thank you. Fuck, sir. Thank you.”

Dropping to my knees behind Hart, I lay my chest against his back, feeling the thick strands of my release being pressed into my shirt, making us a sticky, sweaty mess. I reach around to his cock, and with a similar scant number of strokes, he blows his load, his release spurting out of him until the force lessens and the lusciously viscous fluid is dripping over my hand and onto the floor.

“That’s better,” I murmur into his back while I hold him tight to me, my fingertips raking his abs because too soft a touch would be alarming.I’ll give it to you as hard as you need, Hart. I swear.

*

Allie’s head isresting on my stomach, one of his large hands draped over my thigh. His breathing is deep and even as I stroke his head. Such a foreign sensation still, the prickles under my fingertips. That’s one thing I like about women: their hair. I could pet a person for days. I should check in with India, see how she’s doing, when I can see her again.

As I start to compose my mental to-do list, Allie shifts ever so slightly. “Sir?”

“Yes?”

“You said something. Right before…”

Right before he ran away.

“Right before I forced you to leave?”

A sigh, his breath a quick burst of warmth toward my cock. “Yes.”

“I said a lot of things.”

“Yeah, but there was one in particular that stood out.”

I marshal my breath and try to steady my heartbeat. I was hoping he hadn’t noticed.

“And?”

“You said they literally couldn’t hurt you. I thought it was a weird thing to say.”

“What makes you think I wasn’t just being my typical egotistical self?”

He shrugs, muttering, “Youarean arrogant son of a bitch.”

I take his earlobe between my fingers and twist until he gasps. Not nearly as hard as I’d wrenched the man’s earlier, because this is an affectionate admonishment. “I’ve told you how I feel about people disparaging my mother.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

His apologies are things of beauty. The man does genuine contrition very well. I let go, and he sits up, curling his legs to the side. When he’s settled himself, his childish posture at odds with his unbearably adult body, his brows draw together and his eyes narrow.

“You’re precise with your language. I’ve watched you pause for almost a minute while you find the right word because you don’t want to say the wrong one out loud. Your brain’s like a live-action thesaurus. You definitely don’t say literally when you mean figuratively.”

One fucking word. Why would my mouth have chosen to say that one fucking word?Literally.Because he’s right. Allie pays almost as much attention as I do, and he would know. It’s possible I’ve lectured more than one person about the precision of language, and should they use literally to mean figuratively in my presence, the price would be quite high.

I can practically see the thoughts bouncing around inside his head while he tries to figure this out. There are people I’m willing to fib shamelessly to, things I readily lie about, but I won’t lie to him, not about this. I don’t want to widen the circle, but I don’t particularly feel as though I have a choice. I could ask him to leave and never see him again, but something inside me wilts at the idea. There are a lot of people I care for, fewer of whom I care for deeply, and an even shorter list of people I would concede the status “loved” to.

Allie has somehow worked his way quite quickly from being an acquaintance to someone I not only care quite deeply for, but who I genuinely enjoy. The idea of telling him to walk away and never seeing him again doesn’t sit well with me, not at all. So I smile, a wry reluctant thing that curls the corner of my lips.

“Can you keep a secret, Hart? Because I’m very good with secrets.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

‡

He nods, andI briefly consider giving him some bullshit answer. I could tell him I was lying—they would have hurt me very badly, I would have felt each and every blow, it would have been agony. I could tell him I had lied to get him to go because I would have. But I didn’t have to.

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