Cam gritted his teeth, the tortured sounds coming from Gabe’s lips inflaming his senses as he came apart in his arms. Cam yanked away the towels covering their bodies, lifted Gabe, and twisted him around before pushing him down on the bed. A shudder ran through him when he covered the body of the beautiful man still climaxing from his touch with his own. He took Gabe’s mouth roughly and swallowed his grunts while the latter’s hips jerked beneath him in the final throes of his orgasm.

Cam reached out blindly, grabbed the bottle of lube from the nightstand, and wrenched his lips from Gabe’s. He sat back on his heels and poured a generous amount of the liquid in his right hand before dropping the bottle on the bed. He hooked his left hand behind Gabe’s right knee, bent his leg, and pushed his thigh to the side, opening him up for his touch. Gabe blinked dazedly as Cam reached down, lubed fingers skimming past his trembling balls and the stretch of taut skin behind it.

* * *

Gabe froze when he felt Cam’s wet finger slide against the tight pucker of his ass. A half-choked whimper escaped his throat despite his best effort to stifle it. The sweet post-orgasmic afterglow bathing his body evaporated in a chill of pure terror.

All of a sudden, Gabe was there again. In that filthy, run-down hotel room the night when his life changed forever. That terrible, awful night when five men had held him down on a dirty bed sticky with their own cum. Five men who had watched him with crazy eyes while they tore the clothes off his body, their faces filled with lust. Five men who had raked his skin and flesh with their hands, teeth, and tongues and jerked off over him while he fought them desperately, his body weak and his mind fuzzy from the drug they’d slipped him.

No, that that bastard had slipped him.

The man Gabe had mistakenly fallen in love with. The first person he’d ever wanted to give himself to. The one who had sat in a chair opposite the bed, watching him with an excited gleam in his eyes, one hand frantically working his erection while he held a camera in the other. He’d continued filming while Gabe shouted as his legs were violently pulled apart, his entire body stiffening in horror when a stranger pressed his bare cock against his hole, the first of the five men who had paid to rape him on tape.

Cam stilled above him, bringing him back to the present. His face sobered and his hands paused on Gabe’s body.

“Hey,” he said softly, concern flashing in his eyes, “are you okay?”

Gabe bit his lip and shook his head. He sat up and scooted away until his back met the headboard, one hand rising to clutch at his hair, remorse and self-hatred filling him.

“I’m—I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do this,” he whispered.

Cam frowned. Gabe’s stomach twisted as he watched his puzzled expression turn to disbelief.

“Is this your first time?” Cam said, shocked.

Gabe tried to push down the pain that rose inside him when Cam physically pulled back from him. Even though he had wanted Cam to stop, he could not help the acute sense of loss that tore through him at his shocked expression and strained posture.

“Technically, yes,” Gabe said with a low, derisive chuckle.

Cam knelt on the bed, his gloriously swollen dick visibly shrinking as he watched Gabe.

“What do you mean, technically?”

Gabe inhaled shakily, his hands fisting while he fought the sudden wave of nausea roiling through his belly. This was it. The moment he had been dreading all along. Ever since he accepted Cam’s invitation at the bar. No, ever since he decided to move to Tokyo and start over again.

Gabe knew that if he wanted to overcome the emotional and physical wounds of his past, to have a chance at any kind of meaningful relationship in the future, to finally heal the scars embedded in his soul, then he had to brave this man’s reaction to learning why he couldn’t handle having sex, right here and now. He took a shuddering breath.

“If you discount the five guys who tried to rape me while my supposed boyfriend watched on with a camera in hand, then, yes, this is technically my first time.”

Gabe heard Cam’s sharp intake of breath and dared himself to look at the face of the first man he had wanted to sleep with in nearly a decade.

The expression in Cam’s eyes nearly undid him. Instead of disgust, all Gabe read in the stormy gaze was anger and compassion.

“Tell me,” Cam said between gritted teeth. He turned to sit on the edge of the bed. 

Gabe wrapped his arms around his raised knees. “Not much to tell really. It was eight years ago. I was in my final year of design school and my first ever relationship with a man.” He swallowed. “I always suspected I was gay. Although I’d dated girls in high school and college, I wasn’t sure until the day I met him.”

“What was that asshole’s name?” Cam growled. 

“Andrew,” Gabe breathed. The old hurt twisted through his heart once more at the sound of his former lover’s name. It had been years since he last said it out loud. More than four years. In fact, the last time was during his final session with his therapist in Chicago. “His name is Andrew.” 

“What did he do?”

Gabe blinked at the rage in Cam’s voice. The fact that this sexy, gorgeous man, this king, had not rejected him and appeared instead to be utterly livid at what had happened to him was enough to give Gabe the courage he’d desperately been seeking. The words came tumbling out of his mouth, confessions he had only ever revealed to the therapist he had been referred to by the detectives in charge of his case. He shared how he had fallen wildly and madly in love with the first man who had ever properly given him any attention and made him feel wanted. It was a relationship he had fully trusted in.

It was only afterward that Gabe realized Andrew had always backed out whenever he wanted to have penetrative sex. They had kissed and fooled around plenty of times and given each other hundreds of hand jobs. They had even sucked each other’s dicks, although Gabe had gone down on Andrew ten times more than he ever did him. Andrew’s excuse had always been the same: the timing wasn’t right. That he wasn’t ready yet, even though Gabe had made it clear that he would be the receiving partner in their relationship.

In his filthiest dreams, Gabe had only ever had one wish. To be taken. To be made love to by a man. To be fucked and driven wild with pleasure while someone rammed his dick into his body, branding his insides, possessing him, controlling him.

It wasn’t until the night of their first anniversary together, the night he’d thought Andrew would finally fulfill his dirtiest wishes, the night he had waited so long for — to finally welcome another man inside the place no one had touched before — that the truth had finally come out.