Benji feels it. Instead of tensing, he grabs my hair and yanks my face down to his.
"Give it to me." Raw. Direct.
I push my knot past his rim, and we lock.
We’re stuck. Standing in a dirty alley, his back against the brick, my knot buried deep inside him. The stretch forces us still. I can only grind in small pulses, every movement sending a shockwave through us both.
My thumb works the slick head of his cock, and Benji comes over my fist, his body seizing around my knot. The look on his face—honest, completely undone—wrecks me.
I come seconds later, the climax tearing through me. My mouth drops to the claiming bite on his neck. I don't bite again. I just press my open mouth to the scar, breathing against the raised skin, tasting him.
Benji's hand tangles in my hair. He holds me there, keeping my mouth pressed to his mark. I let him. My cock pulses inside him, knotted to my mate behind a dive bar, and I'm completely fucking ruined.
The adrenaline slowly bleeds out. The alley air bites at my sweat-damp skin, freezing where my shirt is bunched up. The bass thumps against the brick. Benji’s hands are on my neck, his fingers tracing the short hair at my nape.
I rest my forehead against his. His eyes are half-closed, the bite mark red and wet from my mouth. I could make a joke. Something about dumpsters and alley sex. I swallow it down.
"You wanted to know if I'd show up," I say, my voice cracking. "I'll show up. That's the part I can't figure out how to stop."
The words hang in the freezing air. Every instinct I have screams at me to laugh it off, to spin it, to put the swagger back on. I don't. I just watch his face.
His fingers stop moving. The sharp, defensive edges of his expression soften.
"Don't make me regret believing that," he says quietly.
The knot finally releases. I pull out, both of us hissing at the separation. Benji’s boots hit the asphalt. We stand there in thedark, righting our clothes. Benji wipes his stomach with what’s left of his underwear, muttering something about dry cleaning.
His hands are shaking as his kilt drops into place. I watch his fingers tremble against the denim, remembering my own hands shaking the night I bit him. I don't point it out.
We’re dressed. The silence is heavy, filled with everything we aren't saying.
Benji turns toward the street. He takes a step, then pauses, looking over his shoulder at me. He doesn't ask if I'm coming. He just waits.
I follow him out of the alley.
Benji
Knox sent me a photo of a walk-in's tattoo forty minutes ago—a butterfly on an ankle, allegedly—with the caption:She cried the whole time. I think she might press charges against the butterfly.
I laughed. I actually laughed, alone in my room at my phone, like a person who finds Knox Rivera charming. It’s a problem. But right now, scrolling back through our thread, the problem is getting worse.
The messages have shifted since the alley. I don't know exactly when, but the sharp edges wore down somewhere between Knox bitching about Mars chewing him out over inventory, and me sending him a photo of the worst band logo I've ever been asked to design. He told me the drummer's taste was an affront to art. I told him he tattoos butterflies on crying women for a living and can shut the fuck up. He sent back a voice note that was just him laughing. I saved it to my phone. If anyone ever finds out, I will relocate to another continent.
The thing is, he's funny. Genuinely funny when he drops the cocky routine. We have this rhythm now where we go back andforth for hours, and I look up and it's 1:00 a.m., and my face hurts from smiling. The bite mark on my neck is warm. My room smells like him because he's been here enough times that his scent is practically baked into my sheets. I should wash them. I’m not going to, and I hate myself for it.
But I keep coming back to the alley. The thing he said after. Not the sex—the sex was territorial and insane, and I'm still finding brick dust in the seams of my shirt—but what he said when the swagger dropped and his voice cracked.I'll show up. I can't figure out how to stop.
It was real. I felt it in the way his body went still against mine. But it was also vague as hell, and I've been chewing on it for days. Show up for what? For sex? For me? For the bond? What does "always" look like to a guy who already left once without a word?
He gave me something real, and it wasn't enough. The fact that it wasn't enough means I want more. Which means I care. Which means I'm a massive fucking idiot.
So I'm going to get the answer without admitting any of that. I'm going to turn it into a game.
My phone buzzes.
Knox: You've been quiet for eleven minutes. That's either murder or you fell asleep on me.
Me: Maybe I got bored.