Page 28 of Hero Worship

"I know, baby." The endearment slipped out before I could catch it. "It'll pass."

His eyes fluttered open at that, glazed but seeking. Even half-conscious, he responded to my voice with an eagerness that made my cock throb. Such a pretty thing, so desperate to please. To belong.

Christ. I needed to get my head straight.

The urge to possess, to control… It wasn't just about desire anymore. It was about protection. About keeping him safe from his own self-destructive impulses. But was that just what my father had told himself? That he was protecting my mother by controlling every aspect of her life? By "collecting" her like some precious thing to be preserved behind glass?

I could still remember the way she'd looked in those final days before she died. She’d been beautiful and fragile as a butterfly pinned to velvet. The way she'd smiled at my father like he was her whole world, even as he slowly drained the life from her. He'd called it love. Called it protection. But all he'd really wanted was to own something perfect, to control something beautiful until it stopped breathing entirely.

My hands shook as I watched Xander burrow deeper into my blanket. The parallel was too close, too dangerous. Here I was, taking in another beautiful, broken creature. Wanting to possess him, to control him, to keep him safe. But was I any different from my father? Or was thisthingin my blood finally showing itself, wrapped in prettier packaging, but just as toxic underneath?

The thought hit like ice water in my veins. Is that what this was? History repeating itself? Was I no different from my father?

I shifted, reaching for the bottle of water on the coffee table. We needed to keep him hydrated through this. But the moment I moved, Xander's hand shot out, grabbing my wrist with surprising strength.

"Please," he mumbled, eyes still closed but face tight with panic. "Don't leave."

I caught his trembling hand in mine, squeezing perhaps harder than necessary. "I'm not going anywhere. But we're going to have a serious conversation about boundaries when you're coherent. And right now, you need to drink some water."

A bitter laugh escaped him. "Gonna punish me for being bad, Daddy?"

Heat flooded my body at the title, even as shame churned in my gut. Because yes, part of me wanted exactly that. Wanted to bend him over my knee and mark that pale skin until he understood exactly what disobedience earned. Wanted to show him that actions had consequences in ways that would leave him aching for days.

The intensity of my own desires terrified me. This need to possess and control… It wasn't how a good man would think, and I wanted so desperately to be a good man.

"No," I growled, as much to myself as to him. "That's not what this is about."

But Xander was already moving, trying to straddle my lap despite his obvious dizziness. "Could be," he purred, though the effect was somewhat ruined by how badly he was shaking. "Could let me make it up to you. Show you how sorry I am..."

I caught his hips in a bruising grip, holding him still. "Stop." The word came out sharp as a knife. "You don't need to earn my care with your body."

Something vulnerable flashed across his face. "Don't you want me anymore?" The question wavered between genuine hurt and calculated manipulation.

"You know I do." I tightened my grip, making him gasp. "But not like this. Not when you're using sex to avoid dealing with why you took that ketamine in the first place."

His expression crumpled, the facade finally cracking. "I just wanted to stop feeling like I'm not enough. Like I'll never be enough."

The words hit too close to home. I'd spent my whole career hunting men who preyed on that kind of vulnerability, who took desperate people and twisted them into weapons. Men like my father, who'd built an empire on breaking people.

"Look at me." I cupped his jaw, forcing those desperate eyes to meet mine. "You are enough. But this? The drugs, the reckless behavior? It stops now. You belong to me, which means your safety belongs to me. Your wellbeing belongs to me. Your pain belongs to me. Do you understand?"

He shuddered, pupils blown wide. "Yes, Sir."

"Good," I purred, watching him melt at the praise. "So perfect for me." Such a pretty thing, so desperate for validation. For structure. For someone strong enough to keep him in line.

The intensity of my own possessiveness twisted something sick in my gut. The familiar patterns screamed at me, a trained profiler recognizing the signs of obsession forming. The way I tracked his breathing, anticipated his needs before he voiced them. It was the kind of hyper-focus I'd seen in countless case files. The kind that started with protection and ended with possession.

But something was different, too. Something that didn't fit the profile I'd spent years studying. When my father had protected my mother, it had been about control. About making her dependent on him, isolating her from everyone else until hisvoice was the only one she heard. But with Xander... I wanted him stronger, not weaker. Wanted to build him up, not break him down. Wanted him to choose me, not need me.

Maybe that was the real difference between protection and possession: the desire to see the other person grow versus the need to keep them small. My father had wanted my mother perfectly preserved, unchanged, like one of his precious butterflies. I wanted Xander to flourish, to become more fully himself, even if that meant he might one day choose to leave.

His eyes were starting to glaze again, exhaustion and ketamine residue pulling him under. I caught glimpses of the child he must have been—desperate to prove he was worth keeping, worth choosing, worth loving. His file had detailed how Annie had taken the triplets directly from their unstable biological mother, a B-movie starlet who'd later succumbed to her paranoid delusions. Even having loving adoptive parents couldn't completely erase that primal wound. It must’ve been hard never knowing where he came from, who the people were that made him.

The profiler in me recognized the patterns. How that early abandonment had shaped his adult relationships, made him push people away before they could reject him. Made him seek out temporary connections, using his body as currency for fleeting moments of approval. The incident with Xion at fourteen had only reinforced those fears. To Xander, it was proof that even family could turn on you, that love wasn't guaranteed to last.

I recognized the signs of attachment forming. The way he tracked my movements even when half-conscious, the subtle tells that showed he was already attuning himself to my moods. In anyone else, it might have seemed manipulative. But with Xander, it was pure survival instinct. Even with all the love the Laskins had given him, that deep fear of abandonment hadnever fully healed. Learning to read people, to be whatever they needed, had become his shield against rejection.

No. I couldn't let him pass out here, couldn't risk him falling back into that chemical haze. He needed real sleep, somewhere I could watch over him properly.

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