“So, you thought it was okay to video chat with your drug dealer naked?” He steps forward, cocking his head to the side as he stares at me. I swallow. My Adam’s apple bobs against his palm, making him smirk and tighten his grip.

“I forgot.”

“You forgot you were naked?”

I nod, unable to speak anymore, though I’m unsure if I even want to. Water drips onto my face as Rhett presses closer and tilts his head down. His eyes lock on mine, and I find myself locked in a trance.

This hold he has over me is sickening. All I can think about are his wet lips on mine and his numbingly cold fingers digging into my flesh, marring my skin with even more bruises until I look completely and wholly his.

“I’m sick for this.” The words come out raspy and weak, but Rhett heard me. He moves his thumb from the side of my neck to my chin and angles my face up until our noses brush, our lips a hairsbreadth apart.

His beard scratches across my lips as his part. The scent of beer and cigarettes infiltrates my senses as he breathes into me, filling me with him.

“You think you are, beauty boy.” The fingers on his free hand tangle into my curls, knotting with the strands. He yanks my head back even further until my skin stretches impossibly taut over my Adam’s apple, restricting my airways further.

“All of this is because of me. You being here, like this, needing me.” His words are cut off with a swallow, his eyes hardening by the second. “Because I can’t let go. I can’t move on, and you have to pay for it.” His once lifeless eyes become blue orbs of steel as quick as a flash of lightning.

“Don’t you understand?!” he shouts in my face, pulling until pain lances through my scalp and an unwarranted yelp escapes from my forcefully parted lips.

“There is no choice. I don’t even know if I want one—if that would be better, or worse. And then, of course, you had to fuck all of it up.” My mind is spinning as I try to process his words, but nothing about them makes any sense.

“Rhett—”

“Don’t fucking talk, Dominik. Just don’t fucking… talk… because when you talk, all I can do is stare at those fucking lips and remember the, apparently, inevitable beginning of this mess when I couldn’t resist them.” His eyes drop to my open mouth. With his grip on my hair and my throat, I’m immobile, but I brush my tongue along my upper lip before sucking my bottom one into my mouth, needing something.

“I fucking hate you and everything you stand for,” he snarls before pulling me into him and capturing my lips with his teeth. They sink into the bottom, sharp and stinging. The flash of pain is like an aphrodisiac. My balls thrum, sending vibrations through my rapidly hardening dick.

“You life-ruining, piece of shit.” Grunts and growls fill the air along with the scrape of the barstools as Rhett man handles me, pulling and twisting me every which way.

My body is just as wet as his as we stumble into the living room, lips locked as we devour one another. I’m somewhat aware of the jabs to my body as I crash into furniture, knocking it off balance and sending it flying, but I don’t feel the pain—of course, I don’t. How could I with venom rushing through my bloodstream and Rhett’s lips, hands, and teeth on me?

“Fuck!” Rhett shouts at the same time his palms press against my naked chest. The backs of my knees catch on the coffee table, and I tumble over it, landing with a hard thunk on the floor. My chest is heaving in exhilaration as I look up, finding Rhett standing above me, arms hanging by his sides, his own chest moving rapidly.

His eyes are what garner my attention most. They don’t match the rest of his body. His expression is pinched and grave, his eyes drawn downward, whereas I can see the vivid outline of his cock straining through the material of his jeans and his lips parted with his heavy breathing.

“Quit fucking staring at me,” he barks out, and I flinch. He steps forward and lifts his leg to my chest, kicking me until my back meets the floor. I’m wholly at his mercy, naked, afraid, and so fucking turned on, precum is smearing across my abdomen.

Speaking of… His gaze drops down to my rock-hard dick before flicking back up to my face, his blank expression never deviating. My heart kicks in my chest, sending a wave of crippling doubt to my brain, but I don’t dare move.

His foot moves from directly between my pecks to my neck, the tip of his muddy combat boot tracing the planes of my sternum as he does. When he reaches my Adam’s apple, he increases the pressure, pushing down until I swear, I could swallow my larynx.

My throat bobs on instinct, and I let out a harsh cry at the pressurized pain localizing in my esophagus. Breathing becomes impossible, and my body begins to panic. Waves of trepidation warp my sense of reality, and my arms fly up on instinct, wrapping around Everett’s leg, yanking, and pulling it in every direction to relieve the pressure. But my body is weak, exhausted, and compromised from the Dilaudids, so my fighting is fruitless.

All the while, Everett simply stares down at me, watching the fight in me slowly diminish to nothing. My arms fall from his pant leg, thudding onto the carpet, and my eyes flutter closed, my body finally accepting its fate.

That’s when clarity creeps back in, slowly. I’m lethargic as I pull oxygen into my lungs, literally breathing life back into me. But… it’s not just oxygen. It’s hot and forceful against my face, against my lips.

My eyelids flutter open, finding intense, blue orbs peering into me. We’re frozen in time, his hair hanging around my face, acting like a shield, protecting me from the outside world, from everyone but him.

But I don’t want protection from him. I want everything he has to offer me. Whether it be pain, sex, degradation—I want it all.

Hesitantly, I lift my aching head off the floor and brush my lips against his. His beard tickles my chin, and I gasp, reveling in the sensation I didn’t expect to feel when I’m so numb.

He makes me feel everything I shouldn’t. Even when I can’t.

Rhett jerks his head away from mine, eyes narrowing, lips forming a thin line of distaste. Inadequacy sinks into my gut, twisting me up on the inside.

He doesn’t want me. I’m such a fucking idiot. It was only ever about the drugs…