"It would be in your best interests if you left it alone."
Ren rolled his eyes. "Look, I don't blame you for keeping Kyouya
around. But you obviously can't stand each other outside of—"
"You're mistaken."
"So you like the fighting?" Ren gave him a sidelong glance. "I
suppose that could be considered a turn-on."
"No, I meant—" Shin made an aggravated sound that Ren found
inexplicably adorable.
Sirien took comfort in the warmth and weight of Aldir against his side as they sat in the dim light of Sirien's corner lamp. Moonlight lit his curtains and cast blocks of silver across the carpet. He lowered his gaze and traced with his eyes the slight bump of Aldir's wrist bone, the slope of his hand, the line of his fingers. Aldir's fingers were slightly thicker than his, his pinky crooked from when Sirien had broken it once.Don't forget to enter to win an ebook of my upcoming release Incognito ♥
Much later, Aldir surprised Sirien by shifting against him, arms lifting in a languid stretch. He'd thought Aldir had fallen asleep. Aldir stood, his knuckles dragging down the side of Sirien's thigh, and moved to pull his shoes on. Sirien offered him his sofa, but Aldir quietly refused, something like disappointment in the cast of his eyes.
Destruction is the one constant Stephen has known. There is little Stephen has touched that he has not destroyed.
Eventually, Stephen thinks, as he thrusts into Bry's body. Eventually. He runs his hands down narrow hips, fingers tracing over the sharp angles of Bry's passion. Eventually this, too, will be dust.
Except then Bry smiles, locks his ankles behind Stephen's back and squeezes. He rests his hands against Stephen's chest, palms lightly cupped as if holding something far more fragile. In this tangled embrace of limbs, Bry offers Stephen something else, something new-—something that, perhaps, will endure.
When Bry is eighteen, he attends a meeting and returns bruised and bleeding. Months later, he settles a dispute with another family and spends two days in the infirmary. The next year, he saves a subordinate from an ambush and the recovery time is considerably longer. Each incident is an ideal moment for Stephen to fulfill his objective and eliminate Bry.
At some point, he comes to realize there are only so many times he can tell himself 'next time' before he accepts that that elusive 'next time' might not, in fact, exist.
Beneath him, Bry parts his legs and cups himself, arching his back in a wanton display despite that his face is red with his boldness. Stephen's mouth tightens and, finally, he understands exactly which of them has been conquered.
"Do you believe in fate?" Bry asks him. Stephen smiles because the question is unexpected, and amusement is never in short supply with the boss.
Bry is a practical man who works endlessly toward a single purpose-—to protect the family. Not by choice but by circumstance. Not by providence but by blood. Bry, Stephen has no doubt, does not believe in fate.
Stephen drags his tongue along the curve of Bry's shoulders; his fingers press into Bry's body. "I believe in myself," Stephen whispers, and kisses him to smother a smile drawn in the tender lines and melancholic shades of Bry's mouth.
The last thing Stephen wants from the boss is sanctuary.
He has barely cleared the front gate of Headquarters before Bry's silhouette appears illuminated in an upper window. His hand waves in a greeting Stephen doesn't return.
Bry senses his proximity, always. And there is a reluctant comfort in that-—in the way Bry's door opens before Stephen has even reached for the knob; the way Bry welcomes him without Stephen ever having to ask or demand.
He tugs Bry close, wipes the shy smile from his lips with a kiss (because there are endless other ways to catch Bry off guard), and wonders if this is what it feels like to come home.
For the leader of the most powerful mafia family in the world, Bry does not exude authority. Coolly focused in battle, he carries himself with a confidence he lacked in his youth, but aggression is not a trait his enemies fear in him.
Stephen knows this to be false. He revels in this secret as the windowpane shudders under the force of Bry's thrusts. He smiles against the reinforced glass, scalp stinging as Bry's fist in his hair rips a couple strands loose, and breath hitched as Bry tilts his hips just so.
Mirrors are such fickle things. Their headquarters in Italy is abundant with them, some spanning entire rooms, floor to ceiling, so that a single chandelier will set a room on fire in a ring of flame.
Stephen prefers to avoid his own reflection. He's never sure what he'll see, and what's there is never quite what he expects.
But there is one mirror, positioned horizontally above a king-sized, four-poster bed in the guest quarters of the west wing, that he enjoys very much for what he sees reflected—-Bry, sitting astride with head thrown back, thighs flexing as he bears down on Stephen. And himself, arching beneath the young boss, eyes aglow.
"Stephen." Bry's breath is hot against his jaw. Fingers curl like talons around his shoulders.
"Not yet," Stephen whispers. Bry makes a desperate, throaty sound and thrusts into the circle of Stephen's hands.
"Stephen." He presses open-mouthed kisses to Stephen's neck, drags his tongue down the slope of muscle. He scrapes his teeth across Stephen's clavicle and bites. Nails claw at sweat-slick skin as Bry squirms in Stephen's lap, pulls him deeper inside, clenches his buttocks and causes Stephen to forget his name, age, and entire history for the span of five seconds.
Stephen gasps, grinds his hips upward slowly, deliberately, and grits out, "Not. Yet."
There are few who know about his ongoing affair with the boss. Bry's adviser knows because there's very little he doesn't know. Bry's first and second in command know as well because they'd overheard Bry's cries one night and burst into his room in a blaze of smoking guns and flashing steel.
And of course, Stephen's subordinates know, who put up a show of declaring Bry an unfit lover, but smile all the same in secretive, gentle ways when Bry reaches for Stephen's hand and laces their fingers together.
Warmth is fleeting. Years spent suspended in a cold prison, counting the passage of time by the atrophy of his limbs, has taught Stephen that there is nothing that cannot be endured because nothing is everlasting.
Not even this... thing... with Bry. This unacceptable quickening of Stephen's breath, this wander lust swelling in his hands like a broken sieve, this urgency in his gut that insists on taking precedence over objectives that have taken a lifetime to plan.
Bry is a means to an end. Stephen recalls the cold silence of his cell and holds this truth in his heart.
For all intents and purposes, Bry is his boss, and Stephen is obedient when it suits him. When asked to, he takes reconnaissance with his fellow subordinates; he smiles in tolerance of Bry's first and second in command; and he kneels between his boss's knees and takes him into his mouth until it is Bry who's asking, begging, moaning.
Bry, despite being a mafia boss, has never been very good at asking for what he wants. But Stephen could read between Bry's stuttered greetings, the involuntary pull of puzzled eyes, the flustered heat in his face.
Fortunately, Stephen is good at taking what he wants.
Bry is resplendent in his uncertainty: in the jerk of his hips, the awkward jumble of inexperienced limbs, his surprised gasps like every touch is a discovery, a delight wrapped in slippery fingers and smoky whispers; peeled away like Stephen's numerous layers. Bry shudders around him and Stephen, unveiled, falls apart.
When Tsuna spends too long at his desk with Gokudera, their heads bowed over documents and Gokudera's hair brushing his cheek, Mukuro steals Tsuna away and takes him, fully dressed, against the door to their bedroom so that everyone who passes by can hear every thud of their boss getting nailed by his Mist guardian. When Tsuna takes his tea with Hibari and lingers overlong to discuss business details, Mukuro binds him to their bed afterward and teases him until he's begging for release.
And if Mukuro has noticed Tsuna baiting him more often than not lately, he hasn't said anything about it.
Alec stood with his back to him, draped in nothing but the fall of his hair, inky strands cutting across pale skin like the ragged arms of his tattoo. Grey's breath caught in his throat and Alec's head turned, just enough to hitch an impatient eyebrow.
"If you're just going to stand there and gawk, I can do this without you."
Grey finally collected himself and shrugged off his shirt. "Don't ruin the mood, Alec."
"What mood? There's no mood if you just stand there like an idiot and--" His words ended on a short gasp as Grey stepped close and dragged his fingertips down the swell of Alec's backside.
"This better?" he whispered, breath fanning the shell of Alec's ear. Strands of dark hair clung to the curve of his lips. "Or do you need...?" He dragged one finger down the crevice of Alec's buttocks.
Alec stoutly refused to reply even as his breath grew quick with budding excitement. Grey sank to his knees, lips trailing down the broad slope of Alec's back and the thick sweep of his hair. He adjusted his knees against the rug before grasping Alec's hips and licking a wet stripe up one tight butt cheek.
Saizo scooted back onto the bed and rested on his elbows. He drew his knees up and parted his legs, toes curling into the bed sheets.
"You coming or do I have to get started without you?" He lowered one hand between his legs, long fingers cupping himself.
Hiko almost swallowed his tongue but dying NOW from asphyxiation would probably be the worst thing to happen to him since his sister's How to Be a Hairdresser Phase so he diligently breathed and crawled onto the bed between Saizo's legs. His nails scored down Saizo's chest, leaving bloodless trails that flushed red against the pale skin. Then he lowered his head and pressed his lips to the curve of Saizo's hipbone, the taut skin of his abdomen, the short black hairs just beneath.
"Saizo," he whispered, voice ragged. He laced his fingers with Saizo's, raised their hands and dropped light kisses along the fine bones of his knuckles. Then he parted his mouth and dragged his tongue along Saizo's wrist.
"If you slow me down," Alec had said to Grey the day they met as comrades and partners, "don't think I won't leave you behind."
Grey slumps against his side, his stumbling feet hindering more than helping. Alec growls something that sounds like a curse and a prayer and hauls Grey upright again.
"Just a few more miles," he says. Grey's fingers claw into Alec's back and shoulder with the strength absent in his legs, his nails biting even through Alec's clothes.
Alec hates how deeply entwined they've become, but drags Grey along all the same, gripping him like a lifeline instead of the other way around, a compass, a guiding star. (A trail of breadcrumbs, a string of yarn—all paths lead to—)
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