Page 24 of A Life Chosen

“Though I’d be happier if you’d stop treating me like a fucking leper,” he muttered.

Mathias’s eyes snapped back to him, and Rayan held his gaze.

“What are you saying?” Mathias challenged him.

“Nothing.” He looked away. “I’ll grab you a pack downstairs.”

Rayan reached for his wallet. Mathias’s hand on his arm stopped him.

“I’m still hungry,” his capo said, eyes darkening.

Rayan seized the front of the man’s shirt, covering his mouth with his own. There was no hesitation. He felt Mathias’s hand on his neck, pushing back, as he parted Rayan’s lips with his tongue.

“Fuck it,” Mathias murmured when they came up for air. He stood and pulled Rayan toward the bed.

“Hnh… fuck—” It came out a muffled murmur as Rayan pressed his face into Mathias’s neck.

His skin prickled as Rayan shuddered. He felt the wetness slide through his fingers. It had surprised Mathias how much pleasure he could find in someone else’s. He’d never been one of those men turned on by eating out a woman or who jacked it while sucking someone off. He didn’t get the point. Sex had always been about his own release… until he found himself fixated on the ways his touch affected this man. The sudden arch of his back, a reluctant groan, the flush of heat along his chest. How Rayan tried to turn away, hide his face, making Mathias all the more determined to see it. It got him off. That and the way he clenched around him, spasming exquisitely with him inside.

Mathias’s grip slipped as he let himself give in to what he’d worked so hard to hold back. He came with a sharp grunt, feeling Rayan’s fist in his hair and slick thighs beneath his palms, everything else fading, contracting, as the sensation seared through him.

When their breathing slowed, Rayan extracted himself and rolled to one side. Mathias had discovered that Rayan was incredibly sensitive afterward, his bodyrecoiling from the slightest touch. It took him a few minutes to lose his edge, and then he was seductively pliant. It made Mathias want to fuck him again.

They lay side by side, chests rising and falling as Rayan’s eyes began to close. Mathias reached out and yanked the pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his discarded jacket.That’s right—just the one left.It felt like hours had passed since their conversation in the kitchen. He lit up and took a long drag, savoring the taste before exhaling slowly.

Then, from his postcoital nicotine-fueled buzz, Mathias spoke the words he never would have uttered in the light of day. “I’m not the first man you’ve fucked.”

As soon as he said it, a shot of sobriety hit Mathias in the gut. He would be a liar if he said he hadn’t thought about it. This thing between them—and he still wasn’t sure what to call it—had happened with such intensity that he had yet to give it real-world context.

Rayan opened his eyes, shifting slightly so he was facing him. “Am I?”

Mathias bristled at the confrontation. He had a feeling Rayan already knew the answer to his question. He sat up, crushing his cigarette into the empty pack and reaching for his pants, but Rayan lunged forward, looped an arm around his chest, and pushed him back down onto the bed. He stared at Mathias with a veiled expression. This close, Mathias could see the swelling along Rayan’s bottom lip, where he had bitten down.

“The fuck do I care?” his second murmured, their mouths meeting once again.

This time, Mathias stayed. He stared at the ceiling as they lay, spent, on Rayan’s bed, the lights from the street ebbing and fading against the exposed concrete. Next to him, Rayan’s breathing was quiet and regular as if he were on the verge of sleep.

He’d wanted Rayan to tell him how much he hated the work, his life with the family. It would have made things easy. But as it turned out, lines were beginning to blur. Already, it was becoming difficult to separate the man he sent ahead of him from the man who lay beside him, their sweat mingling.

As if on cue, Rayan rolled over and rose from the bed, rubbing a hand across his face. He disappeared into the bathroom and reappeared several moments later in a T-shirt and gray sweats. “I have cognac, no scotch.”

Mathias pulled himself up, giving Rayan a skeptical look. “Here I was thinking this was a dry house.”

“Tony’s holiday bonus,” Rayan shot back, walking to the kitchen.

Mathias snorted. “Knowing him, it’s probably cheap.” He stood and slipped on his pants then shrugged into his shirt.

On the nightstand was a faded copy of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’sTerre des hommes. He’d read it in high school and found it trite, despite the author enjoying a popular resurgence. He picked up the book and flipped through. It fell open on a well-worn page, a place where the spine was heavily cracked, the corner dog-eared. Someone had underlined a passage, pressing hard enough to leave an indent in the paper:

Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

Mathias snapped the book shut and placed it back where he’d found it.

Rayan appeared in the doorway and held out a tumbler of amber liquid. In his own hand was a glass of water. His eyes fell on Saint-Exupéry’s memoir, and he picked it up and absently dropped it on top of a pile of books by the door. Mathias glanced around the room, surprised he hadn’t noticed before the stacks of books in various corners and along the windowsill. He recalled their conversation about Alighieri.So this is what he spends his money on?Certainly not booze and hookers, like the rest of the family’s soldiers.

“Favorite of yours?” Mathias asked, tilting his chin in the direction of the pile.

Rayan seemed to weigh his answer carefully. “A gift from my mother.”

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