Chapter 8
High
Oliver was drunk, his head spinning, but not from anything as banal as alcohol.
He couldn’t get enough of Rune’s sweet purrs, whimpers, and panting breaths. The sound of them was of a prideful young man’s walls shattering, exposing things no one had ever witnessed before. Oliver was in new territory. Everything he discovered was his to own and keep. No one else could have it.
Not holding back, he let the animal in him loose, fucking like he was angry, like he was desperate to get so far inside Rune, his legs wouldn’t work for days and he’d never get Oliver out again.
He could tell Rune hadn’t been fucked in years, and it was glorious. It was like being with a virgin, only better, because Rune knew what it meant to surrender to a man like Oliver.
Not only was he tight as sin, he stayed clenched up with fear and discomfort, making it impossible for Oliver to last as long as he wanted. Oliver felt every flutter of Rune’s inner muscles, every inch of his passage, because they’d both gotten tested the week before. They’d agreed to only lose condoms with each other for the foreseeable future, but this was the first time Oliver got to enjoy the glorious sensation of going bareback with a partner.
Oliver kept his hand clamped around Rune’s lower jaw, lip and tongue, forbidding him from closing up and hiding anything. Oliver wanted everything. Every cry.
Bracing a hand on the bed, Oliver leaned down over Rune. Oliver looked him dead in the eye and slammed into him one last time as he came, shuddering and unloading into Rune.
The orgasm had Oliver tingling from head to toe, the aftershocks drawing out as he kept fucking Rune more gently, his thrusts wetter now. He maintained eye contact, thinking of Rune’s history. He knew Rune had been failed by all of his previous Doms in one way or other. Even Elet. They didn’t get him. Couldn’t see what he needed. Mistreated him out of their own selfish pride, arrogance, and blindness. They let him think he was the problem, just for knowing what he wanted, what worked, what didn’t and not settling for anything less.
Maybe before, Rune’s own arrogance had been an issue, but it wasn’t anymore. No, instead, now he was too broken, too fragile underneath the standoffish exterior. He thought there wasn’t a place for him, and he’d been right. But now things had changed. Now he had Oliver, and Oliver saw him. Clearly.
Rune’s eyes were filled with fear—of not being enough, of being a disappointment, of being lost again, of hoping things might get better now that Oliver had signed a contract.
Oliver was so used to the way new subs held back, or tried to put on an act to show off, or the way Jackson sometimes got lost in his own head; he was struck by Rune’s bare terror and secret frailty.
Recovering, Oliver drew Rune into a hug, wrapping his body around him in the embrace without pulling out. Rune grasped Oliver’s back, holding on gently, breathing heavily. He tucked his chin over Oliver’s shoulder and wrapped his legs behind Oliver’s back. His hands flattened against Oliver’s skin, grasping him. A subtle tremor shook Rune, from deep inside. He kept making soft sounds as he tried to catch his breath.
It was more intimate than any moment Oliver had experienced in ages.
When he did pull back, Rune glanced away, turned his head, jaw clenched. Oliver caressed down Rune’s toned chest and abs and grazed the tip of his swollen, red, wet erection. It jumped at the contact, begging for attention. Caressing back up, Oliver trailed fingertips over Rune’s arm and the twisted scars along the outside of his left arm. There had been more along his back and Oliver felt suffocated to imagine what Rune had looked like freshly after the accident, bloodied and left on the road to die. It had been a miracle the head injuries hadn’t killed him.
Glancing at Rune’s face, Oliver saw him cringing. He brought a hand up to cover his eyes.
Oliver set a hand on Rune’s chest, feeling his heart hammering away, his breaths broken and hitching.
Oliver drew the hand away from Rune’s face with effort, and guided his head with a hand to face forward. Angrily, Rune opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and wet. He held his breath, stopped looking at Oliver, or focusing on anything. Oliver kept caressing him—his jaw, brushing back his wet black hair, stroking his neck, his chest. Rune tensed up, clenched on the cock stuffing him full. He squirmed restlessly at each touch, with his thighs tensed as if he wished Oliver wasn’t between them, breathing in fits and starts. It felt like he expected Oliver to punch him at any moment.
Oliver reached for Rune’s hand, brought it down and wrapped the fingers around his shaft. Rune still wouldn’t make eye contact and his hand threatened to fall away. Oliver reached for the lube and drizzled some over Rune’s dick. Covering Rune’s hand with his own, Oliver squeezed up to the head and down again, then let go. Rune didn’t continue, but he didn’t let go.
Oliver rubbed up to Rune’s neck, grasped his jaw, traced his lips, pushed between them and wrenched open his mouth again. Right away, Oliver heard a broken whine and saw him squeeze his eyes shut.
“Magnificent,” Oliver sighed. “God, if you only knew…”
Some of the old fight kicked in then. Rune bucked, but Oliver was in too deep. A hand pushed at Oliver’s chest, but it didn’t shift Oliver an inch, so instead he grabbed at the arm keeping his mouth opened. With effort, grunting, struggling, Rune pulled. He didn’t bite Oliver, or even try to. Arm flexed, Oliver remained, smiling.
Then Oliver let go, freed his hand from Rune’s mouth and reached for Rune’s neglected hard-on, petting it gently, stroking through the slick. A shiver worked its way through Rune, and Oliver felt it move through him. The gentle fondling made Rune wild. His teeth gritted, he swallowed his protests, refusing to open his eyes.
For a while, Oliver played just with Rune’s cockhead, focusing his attention there. He traced it, squeezed it, scratched over it. Despite the humming and convulsing, arms fallen to the bed at his sides, Rune allowed it.
Oliver thrust into him to remind him of his place, then sank down into a kiss to his mouth, opening him with ease, licking as deep as he could reach to force Rune’s jaws open wide, then pulled back into a gentler tease of just his lips. Rune bucked against Oliver’s fingers, trying to ride them. Scratching up the underside of Rune’s erection, which was hard and ready to shoot, Oliver watched his prey’s eyes slip open, just a little. With the sweetest whimper yet, Rune came in a flood, shuddering hard through it as Oliver moved to kiss him again, stroking gently and drinking down Rune’s soft sob.
Oliver pulled back only slightly, watching. Rune’s control slipped entirely for just a moment, and he let some of the sorrow out, teeth clenched, lips drawn back, eyes closed against tears that escaped anyway.
Hushing to him, Oliver brushed a kiss to his cheek, licked away a tear.
Rune grabbed him by the back of the head and chased a passionate kiss that drew out for minutes.
When they broke, Rune wasn’t letting go. His fingers played at the hair on the back of Oliver’s head, his gaze stubbornly lowered.
Smiling, Oliver pecked a hard kiss to Rune’s cheek and pulled out with a groan.
Rune tried to keep him there, grasping at him, but Oliver slipped free and quickly cleaned off. Oliver had put a few new rules in place to keep them both safe while they went without condoms, like establishing that with everyone else they had sex with, they would always use protection, no matter what, and that they’d keep getting regularly tested together.
Oliver saw the relief as he came back to bed and manhandled Rune, who looked utterly exhausted, over onto his stomach. Spreading him wide by pushing his legs far apart, Oliver climbed up, steadied himself and plunged back into Rune’s ass with a heavy groan.
Rune cried out with both pain and gratitude, tipping his hips up to help Oliver sink all the way in. Once there, Oliver wound his arms around Rune to keep their bodies flush. Feeling every breath and heartbeat against his palm, Oliver moaned. Restless, Rune tried to move counter to each of Oliver’s rolling thrusts, but Oliver’s closeness prohibited much. He bit at Rune’s earlobe, chased his mouth from over his shoulder, and saw ecstasy painted over his stunning features.
Wanting more of a deeper kiss, Oliver pulled out, rolled Rune to his back and re-entered him so they were face-to-face.
“You’re fucking dangerous,” Oliver panted, trying to clearly enunciate his words. He forced himself to focus at least that much, as much as he was getting lost in it all. Clenched and begging wordlessly, Rune’s hands were splayed on the bedcovers, his ass pushed down firmly into the next thrust. His gaze never left Oliver’s lips. “Don’t have a clue how much you could fuck me over, do you?”
He pulled all the way back, then let Rune’s ass swallow him hungrily, all on its own, inch by inch. Rune reached up to grab a fistful of Oliver’s hair, rubbing himself against him like a cat wherever he could.
“Thought no one could reach you, huh?” Oliver rode him, feeling delirious, wanting it to last for hours. “Thought you were safe. Alone. Tough as fucking nails. Untouchable. And now what? How’re you gonna keep me out now?”
His palm skimmed over scar tissue, thinking of that damned gun. Of a roaring bike flying down the road, being chased by a truck full of monsters. Oliver let Rune pull him in to another rough kiss.
And knew he was doomed.
He was a fucking goner.
Rune wouldn’t look at him. Oliver tried everything short of prying his eyelids open. Rune was curled up in Oliver’s arms, facing him, and kissed him eagerly, often, finding his target by touch alone. He breathed hot against Oliver’s chest and played gently with the dark hair on his forearm. But he wouldn’t look, even when Oliver tried to sign to him. He’d just frown and come at him for a teasing kiss that Oliver would feel all the way down to his toes.
Eventually, Rune fell asleep like that, with his arm and leg wound around Oliver. Oliver had things to do—work, studies, email, calls—but he refused to move even though he wasn’t sleepy at all.
How often he’d wished for a submissive who wasn’t always thinking of the next thing, or how to politely leave right after the sex was through. With Jackson of course, there were feelings involved. Commitment. But he always needed to get home to the kids. To Jo.
They came first.
Adam had no trouble finding such a thing. Oliver had been jealous of Adam’s ex, Italo, for too long, because Italo never left Adam alone. There was no motive. He just liked being around Adam more than he liked being alone. For Italo, Adam came first. Though there were no great feelings there, they were a comfort to each other. From the outside looking in, it was sweet.
Sweet like Rune, who had nowhere to be. No one expected him. Besides Max, who out there worried about him? Anyone?
Oliver didn’t know why Rune had gotten upset. Maybe the dam simply broke. The monumental effort of going it alone. Or maybe, instead, it just hurt that much to be truly weak, sharing with Oliver each one of his broken places and giving Oliver every chance to hurt him more by knowing.
So Oliver ignored the need to take a leak. The fact that he was expecting company. The fear of showing Rune he could be weak, too.
An hour later, the apartment’s front door opened, keys jingling.
“Olly?” a familiar voice bellowed. It was late, but Oliver didn’t sleep normal hours, or much at all.
Instinct told him to shush, to cringe at the yelling.
Then, he remembered.
Stupid.
With Rune nestled in slumber against his chest, Oliver called out, “In here!” Even though it still horrified him to do it. Instincts and habit were funny.
“Am I interrupting? You’re in the guest room, so…”
Jackson rounded the doorway. Stopped short. Clapped a hand over his mouth and winced.
“It’s okay,” Oliver told him in a normal, loud voice. “He can’t hear you.”
“Why not?”
Oliver smiled, but it was a bittersweet sort of sentiment. He’d told Jackson the basics of what was going on, but not details.
“He’s completely deaf.”
“Yeah, right,” Jackson laughed, eyeing the sleeping figure on the bed, seeing everything the thin bedsheet didn’t hide. Already, Oliver saw heat there, and plenty of interest, as he suspected he might. Rune was a fantasy fuckboy, after all. It was like he’d crawled right out of someone’s filthy wet dream.
Oliver snapped his fingers beside Rune’s ear as Rune dozed away, totally relaxed.
“Oh shit,” Jackson breathed, his smile wilting, replaced with a look like he’d been punched in the gut by his best friend, which was pretty close to the truth. “Oliver…”
“It’s recent. The injury. Fucked over his whole life.”
“When you said he was desperate, I had no idea…” Jackson floundered, a hand rubbing over the warm brown skin of his bald head. Then a switch flipped and Oliver smiled to see it. “Has he seen specialists? Maybe it’s something correctable with surgery. Or—”
“He’s not there,” Oliver cut in. “Not even close. He’s used the financial factor as an excuse, but I think that’s all it is. An excuse.”
Jackson wandered closer, covering his mouth with a hand, his gaze slipping all over Rune. Oliver felt how Jackson was being pulled in magnetically by Rune’s relaxed, bare demeanor, his guard totally down. It was why Jackson and Oliver got along so well. They were drawn to conquer in the same ways.
“I’m intruding,” Jackson realized. “The way he’s holding you… He wouldn’t want me to see this. I should go. Or make some dinner while I wait, maybe. It’s been hours since I ate anything.”
“Sure. Just don’t go. Stay as long as you can,” Oliver asked, brushing his fingers through Rune’s hair. “It’s time you two met.”
Jackson grunted in agreement, still unable to look away from Rune.
“How was he?” Jackson asked, lowering his voice, his passion and lust evident in the question.
Oliver chuckled darkly, feeling the silky texture of Rune’s dark hair between the pads of his fingers. He got lost in the memory of how Rune had grown shy as soon as Oliver was inside him, and stayed submissive, his fight gone while he was being taken like he needed to be had more than he needed to defend his pride, the fight returning only when Oliver wanted him to masturbate. Giving pleasure had seemed much easier for him than accepting it.
“Tight as a virgin,” Oliver told him. “His first time taking cock in quite a few years, from what I’m told. But he was… eager for it. Embarrassed.”
Jackson ran his thumb over his bottom lip, glancing between Rune’s body and Oliver’s eyes, a spark of hope charging him up.
“You want him,” Oliver observed. When Jackson stayed quiet, added, “Hmm?”
“Of course I fucking want him. Look at him.”
“He’s a fighter,” Oliver warned. “If it was two on one, he wouldn’t make it easy for us. You might leave with a black eye.”
Jackson smiled at that, laughing a little. “Bring it.”