Park cut the ignition and they sat quietly in the driveway of their home, listening to the clicks of the cooling engine. Cooper had filled him in on the little bit more Neil had revealed about the Cranes funneling money into a larger, violent organization.
“From what Neil described, it feels very likely that Arthur was also being blackmailed by James,” Park said, unbuckling his seat belt. “The intimidation techniques, the insistence that he and Genevieve flee.”
“Blackmailing him over what, I wonder,” Cooper said. “The embezzlement? Or is James the reason for the embezzlement in the first place?”
“I think the only way to figure that out is to find what that key you found in his hotel room unlocks. We could go back to the zoo tomorrow. Get a better look around.”
Cooper hummed an acknowledgment. “Sounds good.” With the car off, the air was getting rapidly cooler, and he ran his fingers through the condensation on the inside of the window, making four straight lines down. “Do you think the Cranes are wolves?”
“I don’t know,” Park said. “I don’t recognize the names.”
“Hmmm.” It was well past sunset by now, but the moon was nearly full and Cooper could easily see the tacky Halloween skeleton hanging from the porch eave, swaying in the wind; the silhouette of their house with its erratic add-ons; the unfinished porch; the shadow of a package that probably contained another absurd item Park had ordered to class up the joint. In short, their life together. The mashing together of two different people from two different worlds who had sort of just fallen into each other, wholly unexpectedly, unwillingly, uncontrollably.
In some ways, their entire relationship had felt like tripping down a cliff side. Shoved over the edge into the unknown, stumbling over all sorts of obstacles and pitfalls that hadn’t done a whole hell of a lot to slow them down, caught, as they were, in the slipstream of gravity. Pulled by a momentum so powerful, so inevitable, that it was never even an option to stop falling. The only concern—whether they would hit the bottom on their feet or their faces.
Just two good years? No. No.
“Is everything okay?” Park asked. “You seem...distracted tonight.”
Cooper turned to see Park watching him with concern, one hand on the car door handle, eyes collecting stray moonlight until they appeared reflective.
“Neil and I used to have sex,” Cooper blurted out. Well, he could have eased into that with slightly more grace, but at least it was out there and he couldn’t take it back.
Park blinked, eclipsing twin moons. “Ah.”
“Sorry. I just wasn’t sure if—I didn’t want you to feel like I was keeping things from you. Is that—” Okay, Cooper almost said like an idiot. “Does that upset you?”
“I don’t think it’s my right to be upset,” Park said evenly.
“That’s not an answer.”
Park acknowledged that with a tilt of his head. “It’s never going to bother me that you had a sex life before me,” he said, which still somehow felt like avoiding the question, though Cooper wasn’t sure why. “How long were you together?”
“Four years, more or less,” Cooper said. “Plus a handful of times after I left undercover, but that was, you know, nothing.”
Well, not nothing. What it had been was a series of mistakes once or twice a year when they ran into each other in the office. Relapses, more than anything else. Then Cooper had been attacked and moved to the BSI. Without any reason to run into Neil again—and a whole hell of a lot else on his mind—Cooper had just...stopped thinking of him. That was the unexpected and strange thing about traumas that changed the course of your life. They eclipsed the good and the bad parts alike.
After a quiet moment, Cooper realized Park was staring at him, clearly surprised. “What’s wrong?”
“Four years while you were working undercover?” Park repeated. “You must have gotten together very quickly.”
Cooper laughed. “Yeah, you could say that. He blew me on my first day. Quite a welcome,” he added in a mutter, remembering how shocked he’d been by the whole thing. Hours into the official start of his career, still agonizing over whether he wanted to be out at work or not, and practically the next thing he knew Neil’s hand was in his pants.
Cooper shook off the memory and realized Park looked upset. He kicked himself. “Sorry. Too much information, obviously.”
“That’s not why I’m—” Park bit his lip, cutting himself off, and worried thoughtfully at the scar there. “You must have been young,” he said, sounding cautious for some reason.
“God, it feels that way now,” Cooper said with a laugh. “But I was halfway through my twenties already. Definitely an adult, by any definition.”
“And he was your senior partner. On your first assignment,” Park said, still in that strange, careful tone.
Cooper caught on. “It wasn’t like that,” he protested quickly. “I wasn’t pressured into anything.”
Park’s expression didn’t change.
“Seriously, I wasn’t that new. And he wasn’t my boss or anything.” Distantly, Cooper recognized that if someone else were the one saying this to him, he would definitely still look as concerned as Park did. But it wasn’t someone else saying it. It was his life and he knew it wasn’t like that. How could it have been when Cooper was, well, the way he was?
“It’s not like I was much different then, you know. Probably even more of an asshole, if you can believe it,” Cooper tried to explain. “If anyone walked away fucked up from that relationship, it was him, as I’m sure he’ll try telling you himself if we see him again. We had a lot of issues, but it wasn’t, you know, whatever you’re thinking it was.”
Park looked sad and started to say something.
“Don’t,” Cooper said, without intending to, suddenly excessively irritated for reasons he didn’t even understand himself.
Park closed his mouth. The tender but wary look in his eye plus his easy acquiescence to drop it made Cooper feel impossibly fragile.
He busied himself with getting out of the car, taking a moment to count his breaths the way Dr. Ripodi had taught him. The sharp October night air cooled his lungs and he felt instantly calmer, less trapped. The anger was gone as quick as it had come, replaced by shame. Behind him, he heard Park get out, too. Even his silence was gentle.
Cooper sighed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“You didn’t,” Park said. “It’s fine.” He gestured at the house. “You want to head in?”
“You go ahead. I just...need a minute.”
There was a pause. But then Park nodded and headed into the house. The wind ruffled his hair and his hands were shoved into his jacket pockets, fiddling with something. Probably the house key. That was one thing Cooper had been worried about with moving in together. That he wouldn’t be able to ask for space without it being a thing to be taken personally. But it hadn’t been a problem because Park understood. He got it.
Broken was an ugly word for people that Cooper wouldn’t use, but it wasn’t exactly breaking news that he and Park had met at a strange time in both of their lives. Cooper, still reeling from an attack that had deeply changed him both physically and mentally. Park, having just given up his whole life as a professor to root around in his own childhood trauma, only working for the Trust as a favor to Cola in return for telling him the truth about his father’s death and locating the mother who had abandoned him.
No, neither Cooper nor Park had been two people at their emotional prime, though it had definitely presented differently. That didn’t make it a wrong relationship. For both of them, the last year and a half had been as much about feeling safe enough to heal as it had been about falling in love. An opportunity neither had taken for granted. It had been Cooper’s joy and privilege to see Park open to him slowly, softly. To catch more and more frequent glimpses of the sweet, vulnerable man behind the blank mask and call him his.
In turn, Cooper was trying too. God, was he trying. With the therapy and the communicating and the thinking before he spoke and the apologizing after he did... But that didn’t change the fact that one of them was shedding walls to reveal literal fluffy goodness and the other was shedding walls to reveal...well. The person Cooper had always been, he supposed. Three percent less of a dick? Five on a good day? And not one single degree warmer, even at his best. Even before the attack. He’d known Neil long before then, after all.
What’s that expression? You have a heart only a mother could love, Neil would always say to him and laugh.
Cooper had laughed right along with him. Why not? He could see the truth in it, under the sting. It wasn’t like Neil meant to hurt him, anyway. That was just how things were between them, with Cooper saying all sorts of harsh shit to him in return. Both giving as good as they got. It had probably looked pretty toxic from the outside, but honestly, their relationship had been mostly uneventful. And yet, for some reason he didn’t fully understand, Cooper’s whole being cringed at the thought of having to explain that to Park. It felt impossible to say without exposing the particular way being with Neil had made him feel bad. Not badly, but bad.
Only people who don’t know the real you think you’re hot-tempered. But we both know you’re cold inside. So cold it burns. Born empty.
Okay, so maybe Neil had fucked him up a little after all.
But it wasn’t Park’s job to fix him. Nor was it his duty to wait around, possibly hindering his own growth, while Cooper floundered about taking two steps forward, one step back. Lashing out when uncomfortable. Progressing, sure. But not fast enough. Cooper didn’t believe anyone should have to stick out a relationship while their partner got their shit together.
Not that they were going to break up. This was no longer a question of if they were going make it or not. Nothing short of Park saying I don’t want to be with you anymore could make Cooper leave him. Nor was he over-concerned that Park would have some massive change of heart either. Cooper knew they were in it for the long haul like he knew the world was round or Mother’s closing monologue of Psycho. But as someone who cared about Park, as his friend, he wanted better for him than that cold man with the hair-trigger temper that had turned Neil bitter and put the shadows in his eyes.
Cooper didn’t just want to make it. He wanted them to thrive. He wanted Park to feel the sort of nurtured, safe, joyful, happy that he’d given up on as an abandoned child.
Cooper would get it back for him if it was the last thing he did. That was his own personal vow that had nothing to do with human matrimony rituals and everything to do with the man Cooper wanted to be for himself, for Park, for their lives together.
He took one last deep breath of night air, feeling energized, purposeful and focused in a way he hadn’t in a while. Up in the sky, only the brightest stars outshone the moonlight, but were no less beautiful for their loneliness.
He hurried inside, giving the floor vase still in its box a fond little pat, and found Park standing at the kitchen counter, just opening the mail.
“Oh, I just—” Park started, quickly shoving what appeared to be an old sea captain’s brass telescope back in the box.
Cooper threw his arms around him, hugging him from behind. Park jerked, clearly surprised, and tried to turn around, but Cooper squeezed his arms tighter to stop him and Park stilled, accepting it. He obviously couldn’t reciprocate like this so he just continued to stand there, staring straight ahead while Cooper buried his face in the divot between Park’s lower shoulder blades and breathed in and out. Memorizing the smell of him. The exact level of heat his body radiated.
Eventually Cooper let go, and Park looked over his shoulder. “That’s the third hug of the day, you know,” he said, curiosity burning in his expression. “My diary entry tonight is going to be rife with exclamation marks and hearts.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a hug,” Cooper said seriously. “Maybe I was just patting you down for any more smuggled antiquities.” He eyed the box that the telescope had disappeared into pointedly, and Park went slightly pink.
“That’s my December purchase,” he said hastily. “But the auction was last week and—well, nautical spyglasses don’t pop up that often. Not in such good condition, anyway. Especially not Victorian, so—”
Cooper felt such a bolt of fondness it knocked his breath out of his chest. “Settle down, Long John Silver, I’m not here to seize your booty. Tonight,” he added after a small pause, and Park’s eyes widened fractionally. “I was just thinking about something and realized I could think about it even better while holding you.”
“Ah,” Park said after a moment, then crossed his arms and adopted a casual stance against the counter, as if he could reclaim some of his dignity after that embarrassing break in character. “Thinking about what?”
“Oh, nothing new. Just how I’m going to love the ever-living fuck out of you for as long as you let me,” Cooper said.
Park blinked, a tiny, pleased smile sneaking into the corners of his lips. “Really?” He leaned forward and kissed the tip of Cooper’s nose. “I had no idea I was with such a poet.”
“Mmm, what can I say? You inspire me.” Cooper pretended to give him a critical once-over. “Have you considered full-time muse work? You’d look very fetching lounging in nothing but a sheet.”
“You’re ridiculous. Remind me again why I missed you so much while I was away,” Park murmured, and pulled Cooper close, touching his lips to his.
It was a sweet touch more than any kind of passionate claiming, and still it made Cooper’s knees buckle. Park held him up as he continued to press soft, tender kisses to the edges of his lips. His hands running up Cooper’s sides, to the back of his neck, and tracing down the back of his arms—
Cooper flinched and hissed when Park’s hand passed over his elbow.
“What?” Park asked, concerned, already easing Cooper’s sleeve up to look. A brutal bruise had ripened around the bone from when Neil had slammed him onto his back. Park traced the edges of the dark bloom without touching, face suddenly impassive.
“It’s fine,” Cooper said quickly, reluctant to start talking about Neil again and see worry in Park’s eyes. Or worse, pity. “I’m not that delicate.”
Park must have heard the plea for what it was because all he said was, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you fight hand to hand before.”
“Yeah, well, murder investigations call for a lot less fisticuffs than Sam Spade led me to believe.”
“You’re better than I thought.”
Cooper snorted. “Thank you to the peanut gallery for that not-at-all-condescending compliment. I do have almost a decade more field experience than you, professor.”
“Why is it that you always seem to forget I was an infamous pack enforcer, feared around the continent?” Park asked thoughtfully.
“Oh, please. You’re not so tough.” He poked Park in the belly lightly, and Park seized his wrist, twisted him around, switching their positions, and had him bent over the kitchen counter before Cooper could even register what was happening.
“You lock your knees when you’re tense. That’s why it’s so easy to overbalance you,” Park murmured behind his ear.
“Hey!” Cooper said a little breathlessly, Park’s weight at least partially on his back, pinning him down while his arms acted as a cushion between Cooper and the granite. “Is this foreplay or the start of a training montage?” He arched his spine suggestively. “‘Cause if you want, I’ll let you teach me how to bend my knees properly, either way.”
Park huffed a laugh. The puff of breath on the back of Cooper’s neck made him arch again, instinctively this time, the tickle of arousal unfurling lazily in his belly. Park dragged his hands possessively over Cooper’s chest, rubbing his nipples, up to his sensitive throat and then back down his torso, tracing down the grooves of his hips.
Cooper widened his stance welcomingly and felt something hard—something unexpectedly hard—in Park’s pocket, like he’d bundled up thick cloth. Curious, Cooper reached back for it and Park abruptly jerked away to standing.
“What’s wrong? What is that, a matching captain’s compass?” Cooper asked.
“No. It’s nothing,” Park said, blank-faced.
Cooper took a step forward and, surprisingly, Park took a step back. Cooper raised his eyebrow, took another step forward, and again Park stepped away. “Are you trying to tango with me?”
“I’m more of a foxtrot sort of guy.” Park’s hand rested defensively over his pocket. “Tell you what, if you’re so curious, why don’t you put these legendary ten years of experience in the field to use and come take it from me?”
A surprised laugh escaped Cooper. “Is that a challenge?
“For me? Not at all. Not even if I was blindfolded. With one hand behind my back.”
Cooper snorted, but couldn’t deny the flicker of excitement and interest as well. Park’s cockiness awoke...something in him. Competitiveness, perhaps. Or something even more primal. He felt energized at the prospect of tussling with Park. All the pent-up frustration, adrenaline, anger, buzzing under his skin and begging to be used. Released. This was precisely what he needed right now, and Park clearly knew it.
Cooper shouldn’t have been surprised. Park knew him. People were rarely that complicated. But even less often were they generous.
Park could have decided to be jealous. Or that he wanted to keep talking about Cooper’s relationship with Neil. He could have requested details. Could have felt angry for him. Sorry for him. He could have wanted to be tender and soft and gentle with Cooper, which would have only made him feel more fragile, fractured, hurt.
Instead Park was offering controlled, consensual roughness, and Cooper was grateful more than he knew how to put into words. That was okay. There were other ways to show appreciation.
“You talk big,” Cooper said.
“I am big.” Park winked. “It’s the pictures that got small.”
“Prove it.”
Park moved quickly. Too quickly for Cooper to do much of anything, even if he’d wanted to. He found himself bent backward on the countertop, Park standing between his legs. Hands gripped the backs of his knees and tugged him forward so he bumped firmly against Park, once, twice.
Cooper groaned and Park leaned over him, trapping his body to the marble. “Easy,” he murmured, and kissed the vulnerable spot under his jaw.
With effort, Cooper put a hand to Park’s chest. “Stop.”
Park did and started to back away, but Cooper gripped his shirt and held him there. “That wasn’t fair. I believe you said something about being blindfolded with one hand behind your back.”
Park’s eyes darkened.
“Unless you’ve changed your mind, of course.”
Park stood, pulling out of Cooper’s hold, breathing a bit heavily, as if stopping himself from touching was the first time he’d needed to expend any effort. “Living room. Five minutes. Bring your choice of blindfold.”
“And my dueling pistol?” Cooper asked, amused, standing.
“I was thinking a good ol’ fashioned crossing of swords.” Park squeezing himself through his pants, deliberately crude.
Cooper felt his own breath catch and he had to swallow a sudden excess of spit. “All right. Five minutes,” he said roughly, and stalked out of the kitchen, hurrying upstairs.
They’d bought a blindfold from a sex shop a few months ago, but after a couple unsuccessful attempts, Cooper had decided it wasn’t his thing. It wasn’t that he was upset or turned off by it, per se, just that he kept compulsively pulling it down to see what was going on.
“I’m sorry! I can’t help it,” Cooper had said when Park got exasperated with him just wearing it over his eyebrows like a bandanna and said he drew the line at Rambo role-play. “I like looking at you.”
An understatement if ever there was one. Still, they hadn’t bothered trying the blindfold again, and Cooper found it shoved in the back of a drawer upstairs behind other, more successful items. He grabbed it now and, because luck favored the prepared, tucked lube into his pocket as well.
Back downstairs in the living room, Park had pushed the coffee table to the side and was perched casually on the couch arm. His expression was slightly more unsure than before, as if wavering on the edge of some decision, and the moment Cooper walked into the room he examined him very intensely.
“Are you sure this is going to be okay for you?” Park asked, which was about as close to him bringing up Cooper’s PTSD without an explicit invitation as he got.
“Yes,” Cooper said quickly. “Are you?” He stepped between Park’s legs, twirling the blindfold from his finger teasingly.
“You do the honors.” Park gestured, and Cooper carefully fitted the blindfold over his head and eyes and then gently readjusted where it was pulling, taking the opportunity to run his hands through Park’s thick hair.
“Okay?” Cooper checked, and in response Park leaned forward, pecking him unerringly on the lips.
“Hey!” Cooper protested. “Can you see?”
“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind,” Park said, smirking. “And the ears. And the nose.”
“What does love smell like then?” Cooper said, taking a step back with one last reassuring squeeze to Park’s thigh.
“At the moment, a bit like catnip, unfortunately,” Park said, but smiled fondly, looking much more relaxed now.
He followed Cooper’s movement without the least bit of hesitation, and belatedly Cooper remembered a conversation he and Park had once had about how wolves didn’t primarily rely on their sight the way most humans did. The blindfold wasn’t going to slow Park down any more than sticking a clothespin on his nose would slow down Cooper, and from the amused quirk to his lips, Park had always known it.
That being said, Cooper took a long, uninhibited look and couldn’t regret the turn things had taken. Blindfolded and barefoot, with his shirt untucked and the first couple of buttons undone and his hair in disarray from Cooper’s fingers, Park should have looked utterly vulnerable, but he didn’t. There was a predatory sort of stillness to him as he easily tracked Cooper. The juxtaposition of it was, well, erotic, for some reason. Like the blindfold had done nothing but highlight certain qualities Park usually kept hidden.
Cooper had the sudden sensation of being on the edge of another exhilarating fall. You’ll have this forever, he thought suddenly. This moment. This memory. No matter what happened in the future, no one could take away the fact that imperfect Cooper Dayton had found his own perfect love. He’d never felt more stupidly lucky in his whole life.
Cooper darted forward without a word, hoping for the element of surprise, but Park caught his arm as easily as if it were choreographed and pulled Cooper over, causing him to stumble into Park’s chest with a grunt.
He felt Park’s mouth drag along the side of his neck before nipping him lightly. “Got you,” he murmured, more vibration against the skin than actual speech.
Cooper sucked in a breath and tugged away, Park letting go of him immediately. “That was just a test,” Cooper warned him.
Park nodded solemnly. “Did I pass?”
Cooper lunged for him again, this time twisting and ducking in anticipation, and made it close enough to touch Park’s leg before he was grabbed around the waist and felt the ground fall away. He just had enough time to register being in the air before he landed, bouncing harmlessly on the couch face up.
Park stood over him, still blindfolded, and cocked his head. He stroked two fingers up Cooper’s neck, over his chin, and tapped it against his lips, which parted obediently, and then he dipped briefly in and out of his mouth. “Got you.”
Cooper scrambled up to standing, torn between arousal and something with a darker edge. This time he genuinely tried—circling Park, dodging his reach, darting forward and back. Sight wasn’t the advantage he’d hoped for, but there were other things he did have on his side. One, he was very twisty. Two, Park would never hurt him or let him hurt himself. Three, he had a pretty good idea based on the last two attempts what Park was going to try to do.
He lasted twice as long before Park caught him around the waist and tugged him close. But having anticipated this, Cooper was already shooting his hand up between them to grab the back of Park’s neck.
“Got you,” Cooper said.
Park went strangely motionless, not even breathing, the wolf of him docile and submissive to the dominating touch at his nape. Cooper knew instinctively he could claim his prize—the mystery item that had started all this—and Park still wouldn’t move or protest.
Instead, Cooper leaned in and nudged Park’s nose with his own. “Kiss?” he asked softly.
Park’s arms immediately came up around him and pulled their mouths together, one hand fisting into Cooper’s hair, the other cupping his ass and pulling him firmly closer and closer until Cooper had to break away with a gasp.
Without pause, the hand in his hair tilted his head back and Park just continued kissing across his jaw, behind his ear for a toe-curling moment, and then down his throat. Cooper shoved his hands between their bodies and fumbled Park’s belt off and his pants open just enough to yank everything down his thighs, freeing his cock.
When Cooper grasped it, hot and hard in his hand, Park bit down on the flesh between his neck and shoulder, groaning. Cooper only stroked him once, twice, before shoving Park away firmly. Pants caught halfway down his legs, Park toppled backward and landed with an oomph on the couch, blindfold still in place.
“You should bend your knees,” Cooper teased.
“After you,” Park countered, and Cooper complied, lowering himself to the floor at Park’s feet and immediately burying his face between his legs.
He nuzzled the base of Park’s cock, inhaling the comfortingly familiar scent, then gently began to mouth his balls. Park shuddered, and both of his hands came down on Cooper’s head, petting his hair, reverently at first, then gripping tight when Cooper made his way up and started to suck Park’s dick instead.
Cooper let it happen for a bit, working him farther and farther down his throat with Park’s encouragement. But when his hips started to twitch, Cooper pulled off. A reluctant little sigh-turned-whimper escaped Park’s mouth, and Cooper smiled. It was funny how such a simple sound could make him feel almost decadently desirable.
He stood, quickly shucking his clothes and rescuing the lube from his pants pocket. He tossed it underhand at the couch and felt a flicker of adrenaline when Park caught it in the air without sight.
“Blindfolded with one hand behind your back,” Cooper said, voice rough. “So how come I felt two tugging my hair and choking me on your cock?”
Maybe super-hearing was contagious, because he was positive he could detect Park’s eyebrow quirk beneath the silky black cloth. “If this is how you fight, I think we need to have a talk.”
“This is how I win,” Cooper said, straddling Park’s lap comfortably. He grabbed Park’s right wrist and pinned it to the back of the couch, by his shoulder. “Now, you’re going to stay right here while I open myself up. And when I’m ready, I’m going to ride you.” He brushed his thumb over Park’s lips lovingly. “I’m going to use your fat, pretty cock like my own personal toy, okay?”
Park nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes,” he said, passing Cooper the lube.
Cooper reached back and began to prepare himself with one hand, the other keeping Park’s wrist trapped. Park pressed his face against Cooper’s chest, just breathing deeply at first, but soon his free hand crept to Cooper’s waist, then from his waist to his ass, massaging the flesh there and inching toward where Cooper was stretching himself. There he traced the rim, and Cooper felt Park shudder beneath him. He began to nip and suck sloppily at Cooper’s chest, murmuring something into the skin.
When Cooper was ready, he kissed the top of Park’s head. “Scooch,” he said, repositioning them so that he could guide Park’s dick between his cheeks, just teasing them both like that for a moment before fitting the head to his hole and working himself down gradually, whimpering a bit at the stretch he hadn’t felt since they’d fucked goodbye last week in the airport parking lot.
When Cooper was finally fully seated, Park let out a desperate, primitive groan but didn’t move his hands. They both sat still for a moment, adjusting to the sweep of raw emotion that came from cohabiting, briefly, partially, a single body.
Cooper pressed his lips to Park’s. It didn’t have the finesse of a kiss so much as it was breathing together, panting into each other’s mouths. When he finally began to move, rolling his hips, his own dick brushed maddeningly against Park’s shirt, wilted with the humidity of their sex-hot bodies. Cooper fumbled at the buttons and yanked it down to his elbows, trapping Park’s arms at his sides.
The sight of him restricted by his clothes sloppily pushed to the side, blindfolded and sitting low on the couch, and the way he felt distractingly large inside Cooper with every circle of his hips made soft pleasure sharpen into a different need. Cooper began to ride him properly, with intent.
“God, you feel so good,” he gasped, bouncing in Park’s lap. “So deep.”
Park dug his head back against the couch cushions and whined, clearly struggling to keep still. “Cooper, my Cooper...” he groaned, mouth slack with pleasure.
Needing to see him, Cooper pulled the blindfold down without warning so that it hung around Park’s neck, and was momentarily taken aback by Park’s eyes, glowing gold and inhuman. Obviously startled too, Park stared at him for a millisecond before blinking hard, and suddenly his eyes were the same amaretto brown they usually were.
“Sorry,” he murmured quickly, but Cooper shook his head.
“It’s fine. Don’t be.” They’d stopped moving and just sort of sat there, in danger of losing the moment, despite the fact that Cooper was still stuffed full of Park. How strange to be tied together in the most physically intimate and vulnerable way and still be hiding parts of your body, your self.
“Can you...you can change them back. If you want,” Cooper said. “If that’s more comfortable for you.”
Park studied him cautiously, and Cooper was almost sure he wouldn’t do it. He had just enough time to feel disappointed and then wonder why he was disappointed when Park’s eyes changed again. This time without blinking, so Cooper could watch them brighten and expand, obliterating the whites, like clouds over the moon.
Cooper’s heart rate felt loud in his ears. He reached up slowly to cup Park’s face, thumb brushing the softest skin just below his dark bottom lashes. This close, his eyes looked a bit like gold flakes exploding out of a darker cloud of bronze that lined the pupil.
“How are you so beautiful,” he whispered, and tentatively rolled his hips.
Park’s eyes fluttered and he abruptly growled, ripping out of his tangled shirt with a flash of claws. Free, he grasped Cooper’s ass firmly, holding him in place on his dick as he stood. Cooper gasped and clung to Park’s back as he was picked up and turned around before being eased down on the couch. Flat on his back, legs bent and spread with Park positioned between them, pressing his thighs back, Cooper grabbed the blindfold hanging loose around Park’s neck.
“God, Oliver,” Cooper groaned, pulling gently but insistently on the black silk around Park’s neck. “Please.”
“Say it,” Park growled. “Tell me what you want me to do to you.”
Cooper gathered the blindfold in his fist until it sat snug on Park’s throat. Like this, it couldn’t possibly choke him, but it did give Cooper a sort of makeshift collar to tug on. Which he did. “Fuck me. I want you to fuck me.”
“How do you want me to fuck you?
“Hard,” Cooper begged. “So hard I can’t move tomorrow without remembering who—who I belong to.”
Park snarled, pulled back, then slammed into Cooper. At this position it felt impossibly deep, and a prickle of tears appeared as Cooper’s heart launched up into his throat. Not pain, exactly, but surprise and that bone-deep ache of being completely and utterly taken.
He was just able to focus on catching his breath when Park thrust into him again and again, setting a demanding pace that Cooper urged on, guiding him, pulling him deeper, closer with one hand and grasping his own dick with the other, stroking himself frantically.
“Whose ass is this?” Park demanded. “Tell me who owns your slutty little hole?”
“Yours, yours,” Cooper said. He started to moan, approaching the edge now, punctuated by gasps and the slap of flesh on flesh. Cooper registered distantly that Park was staring down at his face intently, pupils so blown that all that remained was gold rings.
Gold rings.
Cooper was sure that any other time he’d think connecting Park’s friggin’ eyes to wedding rings embarrassingly trite, nonsensical sentiment he’d rather die than repeat. But right now—on the edge of orgasm, system going haywire—it seemed like the most poignant, poetic miracle in the universe.
Cooper laughed as he came, overflowing with feeling. Pleasure and joy.
He felt Park stiffen and jerk his own orgasm deeply within, making a broken sound, before collapsing heavily on top of him, forcing Cooper’s legs farther apart in a way that would have been uncomfortable if he had been capable of noticing anything but banked satisfaction. They drifted for one or many moments before Park pulled out and rearranged them on the couch, rolling Cooper over to rest facedown on Park’s chest, lulled by his heartbeat. Soon Cooper’s body would protest with all the dismay and outrage of middle age. But for now, all the happy sex hormones, and quite possibly shock at the audacity of it all, kept his bones relatively silent.
Park’s hand stroked lazily up and down his spine. He was just resigning himself to sleeping on the couch when Park spoke, his chest rumbling beneath Cooper.
“I know we like to laugh during sex, but cackling as you come is a new one,” he said mildly.
“Mmm. I was struck by something poetic. Blame my muse.”
“Does your muse get to hear the poetry?”
Cooper smiled, but wasn’t quite willing to expose his rambling, sex-brain thoughts, which, as predicted, seemed entirely absurd now. Park couldn’t even wear rings because of the shifting.
So Cooper just pressed a lazy kiss to his chest and dodged the question with some improv. “Oh, Oliver.” Another kiss to his collarbone. “You turn up my thermometer. Mmmm, it’s true I’m no philosopher, but I think therefore I am, in love with you, my Oliver.”
Park sighed. “To think I inspired such fine art. What a legacy I’ll leave.”
Cooper’s mouth moved, but he was so tired even he wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to say and he was half asleep when Park spoke again. “Do you want your prize?”
“Hmmm?” Cooper asked, forcing his eyes back open with significant effort.
“The thing in my pocket. Do you want to see it?”
Park halfheartedly reached in the direction of his pants, abandoned on the floor somewhere, but Cooper caught his arm and pulled it toward his face instead. He kissed the inside of Park’s wrist gently, then dragged his teeth up his forearm and placed another soft, ticklish kiss to the crook of his elbow.
“I got what I came for.” He snorted with his eyes closed. “Came for, heh.” His face landed heavily back on Park’s chest. “Your surrender is all the reward I need.”
“It’s true. I did surrender,” Park murmured, sounding soft and even a little surprised. “I surrender everything to you, heart and soul.”
Cooper hoped he said something nice back before he drifted off completely, but couldn’t be sure. With Park, sometimes it was hard to tell what was real life and what was just a really lovely dream.