Asher then flipped him. Levi was on his back before he registered the movement — the ceiling and Asher above him with glassy eyes. Asher hooked one of Levi’s legs over his shoulder as he drove back in and the angle was devastating. Levi didn’t know if he was sobbing or moaning or begging anymore. All there was was Asher, inside him, over him, caging him in and subsuming him.
Asher pushed Levi’s other leg up, folding him nearly in half, his palm behind Levi’s knee, pressing it toward his chest. The angle deepened and Levi’s vision whited out at the edges, and the sound he made was wrecked and continuous and hecouldn’t stop it. He couldn’t stop any of it — his hands on Asher’s forearms, his nails leaving marks, all of it so intense it had crossed over into something that didn’t have a name. Past pleasure, past pain, justsensation, enormous and relentless, and his brain had gone offline so completely that the sounds coming out of his mouth were not being approved by any conscious part of him.
“God, look at you —” Asher panted above him, his control fracturing with his words. “Your eyes are —fuck, baby, you’re shaking, you’re so fucking pretty —”
Asher’s hand left his knee, wrapping around the column of Levi’s throat and squeezing, the heel of his palm grinding into Levi’s collarbone. The pressure on his trachea was enough that his next breath came thin and tight. Asher pushed down harder, his weight, each thrust, his grip, even the give of the bed all working together to press Levi into the mattress like Asher was trying to fuck him through the goddamn box spring.
Levi’s pulse hammered against Asher’s fingers. The old fear was there again — somewhere distant — but it was buried so far underneath everything else that his body didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was more… more intensity, more proof that he was alive inside his own skin. His cock throbbed between them, his vision was narrowing and every nerve was so overloaded that the squeeze on his throat was just another frequency in the wall of sensation, and he couldn’t tell where the fear ended and the want began and it didn’t matter, because they had always been the same thing with Asher.
“Tell me this is real,” Asher gasped against his mouth, his hand loosening just a fraction. “You’re mine, Levi…mine—FUCK—every part….every part of you is mine….”
“It’s real —it’s real, Asher, it’s—oh God, I’m so close. I’m so fucking close,“ Levi rasped. He clawed at Asher’s shoulders, every muscle in his body seized taut in an agonizing clench fromhis toes to his jaw, the fire in his gut twisting like a knife that he couldn’t escape. “Please, Asher, please don’t stop, I’m yours, I’m —fuck, I can’t, please,please—!”
His body clenched around Asher in rhythmic pulses as he spilled hot across his own stomach. Asher’s hand stayed on his throat, the pressure making everything sharper, brighter, the orgasm extending past the point where he thought it would end, his body convulsing in waves that kept coming and his mouth kept saying things he couldn’t stop —“Don’t let go, don’t stop, don’t let go, I’m yours, I’m yours —”
“You’re so tight when you cum — I-I can feel your heart — fuck, Levi,” Asher gasped, sweat dripping down his temple as his voice broke apart, word by word, his breath coming in sobs. “I love you —fuck— I love you, I love you, Levi, I love you —”
The words poured out of him like they’d been ripped free, a raw declaration spilling out of his mouth as he grabbed Levi’s hips and he buried himself deep, his whole body shuddering. Levi’s name and those three words tangled together until they were the same thing — “I love you, Levi, I love —Levi—” His forehead dropped to Levi’s chest as he pulsed inside him and Levi could feel every spurt of it, hot and deep, with Asher’s mouth against his sternum, still saying it, quieter each time, “I love you, I love you,” until the words were just breath.
Levi’s hands were in Asher’s hair. His eyes were burning. Every muscle in his body twitched in different intervals. His throat was raw — from the screaming, from the grip, from the words that were sitting right behind his teeth, pressing against the inside of his mouth, wanting out.
Asher’s lips kept moving on his chest, and the thing that made Levi’s eyes sting worse than the words themselves was that he recognized the shape of Asher’s lips on his skin like this. Back on the ship, when they had been floating and Asher wouldn’t let go, this was what he had mouthed on Levi’s skin. Levi’s fingersmoved through his hair in the slow stroking rhythm that Asher had used on him.
His throat tightened, not from the rapidly forming bruise there, but from the thing living behind his teeth.
It’s real.
I’m going to get us out of here so it can be real out there too.
16
Foggy Settings aren’t Known for Relaxation
WhenLeviwokeup,Asher was wrapped around him like the world’s deadliest lifejacket. The room was dark, the fog at the window had swallowed whatever was left of the evening light, and the only glow was the clock on the nightstand. 7:47.
We’re okay.
He lay there for a while, not wanting to move. His body ached in places he was going to have to think about later but didn’t want to think about now, and he could feel Asher’s heartbeat against his spine. More than anything, he wanted to close his eyes and go back to sleep. Nothing insane had happened yet. The walls weren’t moving, monsters weren’t falling out of vents, there were no alarms blaring. He was just here, in a nice hotel room, sleeping naked with Asher. It was so painfully normal he could almost forget everything that had led up to this point.
Almost.
It wouldn’t last. It never did. Something would change again, and then he and Asher would be running or hiding or fightingtheir way to the end of the game and he would get Asher to leave with him this time. He didn’t know where that certainty came from, but it was there.
This is the last game. We’re getting out.
Eventually he slid out from under Asher’s arm, wincing with every shift of his body against the sheets, gathered his discarded clothes from the floor as quietly as he could, and moved on unsteady legs to the bathroom. The tile was freezing on his bare feet, but as he shut the door and flicked on the light, the full scope of what he had asked Asher to do caught up with him as he stared at a reflection in the bathroom mirror that was much worse than he imagined.
His eyes were swollen and red-rimmed, his lower lip was puffy and darker than it should be. From his neck down was a mess of bite marks and hickeys, bruises in the shape of fingertips, dried blood around his collar bone and one nipple. When he turned to the side, one entire asscheek was bright red, purple in some places…
I look like a puppy’s favorite chewtoy.
He stared at the marks, his face hot as his mind unhelpfully replayed all the sounds, the words, the way his body had responded togood boyand the threat about the headboard and the part where his thighs gave out and Asher’s hands took over and his mind went somewhere it had never been.
Stop. Stop thinking about it.
He splashed water on his face and used a washcloth to clean himself as best he could, combed his tangled hair out with a plastic wrapped comb on the sink, and dressed himself slowly, the drag of his boxers and jeans over his ass introducing him to a different level of hell than he was used to. The sweater did not cover the marks left on his neck, and if anything, looked like it was designed to explicitly accentuate his neck.
When he came out, Asher was sitting on the edge of the bed in just his jeans, holding up the dress shirt he couldn’t put back on because the buttons were scattered across the ground, his hair still wrecked from Levi’s hands. His eyes landed on the sweater’s collar, and he grinned, tilting his head slightly.