Page 81 of A Life Chosen

Mathias swiveled to fix him with a deadened stare. “I can’t give you what you want,” he said in a low voice.

“And what’s that?” Rayan countered. “There’s nothing I want you haven’t given me already.”

“Orders?” Mathias sneered, eyes narrowing. “What happens now, with no one to tell you what to do?”

“That’s what you think—I’m incapable of making my own decisions? I’m here, aren’t I? And you may have given the orders, but I was the one who followed them.”

Mathias stalked toward him, his mouth a hard line. “Don’t act like you wanted to do the things I made you do. Once you were in deep enough, you didn’t have a choice.”

“There was always a choice!” Rayan cried.

“Bullshit.”

“I chose you.”

Mathias blinked, his shoulders slackening.

“And I’d make the same choice every fucking time.” Rayan swallowed hard, his heart hammering in his throat. He stepped forward, ignoring the signs of reproach Mathias had been sending him since his arrival, moving as close to the man as he dared. “I’d choose you every time.”

Their eyes locked, and he was finally granted passage past Mathias’s defenses.

“When I saw you that day by the river—” Mathias’s voice tightened. “I couldn’t watch you die.” He pulled Rayan to him, their mouths meeting, everything else falling away.

There was a ferocity to it, as though their bodies weren’t privy to the shaky peace that had been hashed out along the waterfront. They confronted each other in bed like enemies, fighting for territory, for dominance. Rayan embraced the turmoil, a physical manifestation of the chaos that had plagued him for so long.

He knelt on his hands and knees, eyes veiled by a curtain of damp hair, legs trembling as Mathias thrust into him. The man wrapped a hand around his throat, tightening his grip, setting his skin on fire. The intensity of Rayan’s arousal scared him, the months apart having done nothing to quell the depth of his need.

He felt a sudden spasm and dropped the weight on his right arm, pain crackling like lightning from his shoulder to the tips of his fingers. Exhaling through his teeth, he pulled away and flopped onto his back on the bed. Mathias towered over him, naked and erect, both of them breathing hard, neither of them speaking.

Mathias brushed his fingers over the scar tissue, the dimple where the bullet had entered Rayan’s shoulder. His eyes were shuttered, preventing him from seeing inside.

Shame prickled across Rayan’s bare skin. “I don’t need your pity,” he said flatly.

Mathias snorted and, in one fluid motion, scooped Rayan’s legs over his shoulders. He leaned forward, capturing Rayan’s tongue in his mouth as he pushed his cock inside him. Rayan let out a groan, arching into the mounting pressure. His body, so used to mitigating bouts of searing pain, had forgotten how good it could feel.

Mathias wrapped his arms around him, his lips grazing Rayan’s ear. “I don’t do pity.”

Yet he was gentler than he would have been, his movements achingly slow, his face inches from Rayan’s. Their bodies, too, began to work things out, addressing old wounds and revealing a hidden tenderness that had been quashed again and again.

Rayan tried to recall the last time they were together—whether it had been quick and frenzied, as it so often was, or languid, one of those nights where booze stripped Mathias of his cloak of stone. He couldn’t remember. He also couldn’t bear the man’s eyes on him, missing nothing, leaving the very core of him exposed. Rayan turned his head away.

A hand cupped his chin, bringing him back. “Where are you going?”

But he no longer felt able to form words, the pleasure muddling his thoughts. Mathias here with him, inside him, scrambled everything.

“You can’t hide from me,” Mathias murmured.

Rayan met his gaze and saw in it the force that bound them. He twined his fingers through Mathias’s hair, pulling him close, kissing him. Mathias rose to his knees, his hand finding Rayan’s cock. They moved faster now, each thrust shuddering through him, making his toes curl. He felt himself slipping.

“Mathias—” he choked out.

Release slammed into him like a freight train. The edges of his vision went black. Rayan was barely aware of Mathias above him, the man’s body stiffening as he came with a low growl.

They collapsed onto the bed, chests heaving, limbs intertwined. It felt like days had passed since their reunion on the street that morning. They lay side by side atop the sheets without exchanging a word. There weren’t any left to say.

Chapter Thirty

They acted as though the world didn’t exist outside the four walls of his apartment. When they weren’t in bed—which wasn’t often—they cooked, made coffee, or leafed through books on the small balcony. Work didn’t register. Rayan simply hadn’t shown up. Nothing was more important than this, a lifetime of pleasure condensed into these few tenuous days.

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