Page 129 of Hate Mates

“Good,” I say just to feel the pressure of his lips again. “As long you care enough to hate me, I won’t give up on us, not ever.”

Roux hangs there for a second longer, holding us together as we breath in tandem, harsh and angry and lost. Then he draws back, opening his eyes and repositioning his knife against my throat, holding it there in blatant warning.

“Stay the fuck away from me and my family, Freddie,” he says, low and brutal, “or Iswearon my life that I will kill you.” There’s enough grit behind the promise, in the electric blue of his eyes, to let me know he means it. If it came down to it, Roux would choose the boy.

That shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, not when I’ve always known that Roux’s loyalty lies with his family, first his brother and now his brother’s son.

It shouldn’t hurt, but it does, more than Roux will ever understand because the only family I’ve ever cared enough about to kill for is the one that I built with him.

Roux moves his knife away from my throat, and I take the loss like a punch to the gut. It ravages the air from mychest, scraping my lungs raw, like I’m breathing in particles of sandpaper and broken glass. He doesn’t get off me, staying put in my lap, staring me down like he’s still trying to decide how to end this, with my blood or his regrets.

In the end, it’s me who closes the distance first, crossing over enemy lines without a thought for the potential land mines I could be trampling on in the process.

I move in fast, raising my free hand to grip the back of his neck and yanking him in close to steal a kiss, pressing my mouth to his so hard it hurts, prying his lips open and spearing my tongue into his mouth. I’m pushing my luck, taking what I want and hoping for the best because that’s all I have to bargain with, the masochistic belief that he’ll give in if it’s already too late.

Roux goes rigid against me, hot skin solidifying into burning stone. We hang there, suspended in the moment. Roux doesn’t kiss back, but he doesn’t try to bite and claw his way free either. I can’t take that as a good sign, because nothing about this is pure enough to be considered good. We’re spilled blood on white wood, dark-red liquid seeping into the timber, the surface forever stained by one terrible choice made during terrible times.

When I pull back, Roux makes a noise of agony, high and keening, like a wounded animal crying out for relief from its torment. He throws the knife aside as if an electric current ran through it and shocked his palm.

I tug on the handcuffs again, rattling them against the radiator, like a metal cup clanging along the bars of a prison cell. Roux drops his head to my shoulder and inhales deeply, ignoring my silent plea for release. But he doesn’t stop me when I start searching through his pockets for the key, or when I find it and unlock the handcuff from my wrist, or when I grasp hold of him with both hands, one on his hip and other on his arse, and lift him up so I can press his back into the floor. I grasp feverishly athis clothes, practically ripping them off his body in my haste to see him laid bare beneath me.

Roux doesn’t protest, allows all of it. When I’m done stripping him, I take a moment to rake my gaze over every naked inch of him. There’s a new scar, about the length of a biro and faded to a pale diagonal line, that cuts across his slim torso. I hate that I have no fucking idea where it came from. There was a time, before, when I could map each of his scars with my fingers and tongue. I could do it in the pitch black of our bedroom at night, under the covers, my hands and mouth roving over him, committing the damage to memory, like I was going to be interrogated about it later. Roux’s body has become a mystery to me, my memories of it warped and distorted more and more the longer we’ve been apart. It makes me want to tear a hole in his torso, to rip the white pen line away and let that flesh heal into something that I’ve put there instead.

Splayed out on the floor, it’s easy to see that he’s noticeably smaller than me, but that doesn’t make him weak. There are defined muscles in his limbs and stomach, finely honed and fit for purpose. Roux has never been big on exercise as a general rule, which just shows how doggedly determined he is to have built a body like this anyway.

Roux opens his legs for me, and I settle myself between them, looming over him with my arms blocking him in on either side of his head. Roux gazes up at me with those same sky-blue eyes I fell in love with when we were kids, except they’re filled with so much more pain, hard-edged too, flint and rage that translate into a freezing-cold grief. Grief that I caused and couldn’t—wouldn’t—take back.

Roux’s mouth seems too high-risk when everything else between us is in flux already, so I start at his collarbone instead, pressing a kiss between his shoulder and chest, letting my tongue drag over the warm skin there. Roux holds himself stillat first, but at the swipe of my tongue, he releases a full-body shudder that only serves to stoke the fire spitting and raging away inside my gut.

He tastes vaguely of salt, a possible mix of sweat and the ocean spray from walking on Colbie beach. This close up, I can smell the softer scents of his hair and skin, citrus and lime, more likely shampoo or body wash. I didn’t see any cologne in his room or bathroom back when I searched his house, and Roux hasn’t ever been the type for it. I’m glad because the other scents are faint enough that when I drag my nose up and inhale at the crook of his neck, I can smell the distinct bite of him, the thing that is pure Roux, an innate sweetness but slightly sharp too, like burnt sugar.

I resist the impulse to sink my teeth into his throat, aching with the need to sink in deep, down through muscle and sinew, to scrape against his jugular. It should concern me how badly I want it, to tear into Roux, to consume him piece by piece until I’m sated. But I know, somewhere burrowed inside the dark depths of my heart, that nothing I could ever steal from Roux would be enough, so there’s no point. You can’t own stolen things, and that’s what I want. I want him to be mine, completely, if only for a moment.

Roux has to give it, himself, his desire to me, or nothing else matters.

He gasps when I breathe him in, his body instinctively bowing backwards, his neck and spine arching. His chest pushes up against mine, and the heat in my gut flares to a bone-scorching degree, a jolt of want sparking lower.

Emboldened by Roux’s response, I grasp his hip and shove him down to lie flat on his back again, holding him there like I can somehow keep him pinned in place under me, where he belongs, forever. Roux hooks his hands around my biceps and grips the meat and solid muscle there with unambiguous intent,digging his nails into my skin hard enough to leave behind indentations and bruises that won’t last as long as I wish they would.

Taking the hint, I grab his thighs and hike them up, encouraging him to wrap his legs around my waist, which he does, allowing me to bring my crotch into alignment with his, our thin underwear the only barrier between us. I splay a hand over his chest, more forcefully pinning his shoulders and upper back to the floor. Then I rove the fingers of my other hand across the expanse of naked skin bared from his navel and along his rib cage to just below his tits. I palm one of them, knowing he likes to be grabbed and squeezed like that, and carefully rub my thumb over his nipple. It hardens under my touch, and Roux gasps again, back attempting to arch like before, but with my other hand holding him down, he can’t do anything but take what I give him.

I bend over at the waist, still rubbing his nipple just to feel how he trembles beneath me at even that small amount of pressure. Bringing my face close to his again, I ask the question that needs to be asked before we go any further.

“Is this okay?” I murmur against his mouth, our lips brushing lightly with every word. “Do you want this?” “Me,” I don’t ask. Do you wantme. I’m afraid that would be too much, too immense a question for the moment. I’m genuinely terrified of what any form of rejection from him right now would do to me.

In answer, Roux moves his hands to my torso and clamps down hard, holding me in place against him at the same time he rolls his hips up. The first roll elicits a sharp whipcord of pleasure that does little more than bait the beast that growls ferociously inside my abdomen. On the second roll, I grind down to meet him, rubbing my hard cock against his through our underwear.

Roux releases a short cry when I pinch his nipple cruelly as we grind together, our hips moving faster and shallower now as the desperation and heat grows between us. Roux’s hands tighten even more on my torso, to the point where it’s genuinely painful, but I don’t want him to stop, the pain and pleasure mixing to create a more visceral sensation, something that is both different and better.

It’s not nearly enough, and yet it already might be too much. The feel and sound of him as he moves frantically against me—want transforming into need—pulses through my cock, and the urge to reach down so I can hurry along our joint release is more intense than I expected.

Naked emotion, raw and exposed, plays out across Roux’s face. He doesn’t try to hide any of it from me, and the brutal honestly of his desire makes me so hot for him that I feel like I could combust, split apart into atoms, like an exploding star in the deep recesses of space.

Roux’s underwear is soaked through with pre-cum, and so is mine; the smell of us mixing together reaches my nose, and it’s such a primal thing that a guttural moan explodes from my throat in a violent rush. I don’t know quite how to ask for what I need from him without it sounding like a deranged set of demands, so I just tell him instead, all civility abandoned.

“I want to bury my face between your thighs and suck your cock, take it down my fucking throat,” I growl, shoving down on his chest a little harder and pinching his nipple again for emphasis. “I want to push myself inside you and feel all that fucking wondrous heat around my cock as I stretch your tight little hole like you deserve.”

Roux tips his head back as far as he’s able to and groans something unintelligible, voice as saturated in lust as his underwear.

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