What just happened? The question circled through Sawyer’s mind in a nonstop loop he couldn’t answer. He could brush it off as a simple fuck, but that’d be a lie, and he was so damn tired of hiding.
Asher shifted on the mattress, close but not touching. They’d managed to stumble to the bed, both of them falling onto it in boneless masses of fatigue. Sawyer’s thighs and calves burned and his dick throbbed, chafed when it was already raw from the sports cream.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this good—if ever.
He floated in the aftermath, limbs buzzing and numb at once. Every ache was a testament to how alive he was. His pulse slowed with each passing minute, time ticking away with the lightening rhythm of the rain and Asher’s slowing breaths.
Now what?
Asher grunted, yanked on the duvet until Sawyer assisted his efforts to cover them. The air-conditioning that’d felt good earlier was quickly whisking in to chill him. He shivered.
“I can turn the fire on,” Asher said, reaching for the remote on the nightstand.
“No,” he stated too quickly. Asher shot him a quizzical look over his shoulder and Sawyer rushed to cover his hasty response. “The blankets are enough.” His heart raced, explanations scrambling to validate his actions as he looked away.
Asher frowned, but rolled to face him, gaze burrowing into the side of Sawyer’s head. The brunt of the storm had passed, a fading light left behind as evening approached. A hundred options rambled through Sawyer’s thoughts, from escape to denial to anger, each one discarded before it took hold. There was no running from the moment.
From Asher.
If anything, he kept running to him. Or was it away from Utah and the haunting silence that’d driven him here?
With a sigh of defeat, he turned to his side, face a few feet from Asher’s. They eyed each other through the gray light, words and questions flying without a sound. Asher’s eyes were a stormy shade of passion and hesitancy. What did his own show?
“This is new to me,” he admitted to break the ice.
“Sex?” Asher’s lips lifted in a sarcastic half smile.
“In some ways, yes.” He let the truth flow out, his walls down in the quiet lull of the aftermath. “And this.” He motioned to the bed.
Asher studied him. “Me too.”
The quiet confession should’ve eased some of the panic threatening to break free, but it didn’t. It’d leveled the field only to raise the stakes.
“I didn’t see you coming,” Asher said. “And I don’t know what to do with you.”
He chuckled, his cheeky defenses bursting out. “Whipping and fucking me would be just fine.”
Asher puffed out a derisive snort. “If it was that simple we wouldn’t be here now.”
No. They wouldn’t. Which is why he’d never been in this position before.
“How old are you?” he asked as a distraction.
“Thirty-five.”
Sawyer arched a brow. “Trust fund kid?” he joked, only half kidding. This house was pretty damn luxurious for a guy still reaching for forty. And his own unwanted wealth was a result of his parents’ deaths, proving there was more than one way to acquire money.
“Hardly.” Asher scratched his temple, dragged his hand through his hair. “App development mostly. I got in on the ground level when smartphones were starting to boom and game apps were in their infancy. I cranked out a bunch of those, then transitioned into developing generic source code others could buy and build on, shortening their development time.”
“Wait.” He braced his head on his hand, fascinated. “You got rich developing stupid game apps for smartphones and tablets?”
“Not all of them were stupid.” Asher shrugged, smiling. “But yeah. Essentially.”
“Who knew?”
“The smart kids, obviously.”
He shoved his shoulder, chuckling. “Ass.”
“So I’ve been told.” There was something about his grin that didn’t reach his eyes.
“By who?”
Asher looked down, inhaled. He spread his fingers over the sheet, his skin a warm gold against the stark white. “My ex-wife for one.” Sawyer’s brows winged up, but he stayed silent. “My little brother. Cousins. More than a few subs who wanted a Dom more than a sadist. The Kick guys.” He shrugged. “I’m not the most social person.”
“And I am? Shit.” Sawyer cracked another smile, only slightly disarmed at how much he did that around Asher. “We make quite the pair, you and I.” He nudged Asher with his foot, running his sole over the springy hairs on Asher’s calf.
Asher’s eyes grew wider, and only then did Sawyer realize how his comment had sounded. He opened his mouth to cover his blunder, but Asher beat him.
“We do.” He winked, shifting the serious to lighthearted. “Even if you are a dick.”
“Ass.” Sawyer pointed at Asher, then to himself. “Dick.” He shot a cheeky grin. “Perfect.” And when had that word ever come out of his mouth when it wasn’t associated with pain?
Asher groaned, wiped his hand over his face before he shoved Sawyer’s arm. “Where in the hell do you get those corny lines?”
“Must be all the hours I spend by myself.” Sawyer stilled, the air seeming to flee the room. His gaze skipped over Asher’s face, avoiding his eyes in search of anything safer. He was exposing too much too easily and had no idea why. All of this was too comfortable—normal—and that was dangerous.
Doubts scrambled to coalesce until he shoved them back and faced Asher’s questioning patience. “I’m a bit of a loner,” he said, another piece of him exposed. “If you haven’t picked up on that before now.”
“I hadn’t. Not really.”
He plucked at the duvet before shifting to bunch the pillow under his head. “You come from a big family then?” Any topic was better than the one they were on. “Two brothers and a sister?” Yeah, he’d been listening at dinner.
The silence lengthened, water tapping on the roof, a wind gust rushing over the house. Asher pressed his lips together, reached out to trail a finger down Sawyer’s jaw. “And a shitload of cousins.”
Sawyer swallowed, chest knotting around the longing clamoring to get out. “Are you close?”
“Too much, sometimes.” Asher let his finger fall away, a burn mark scored into Sawyer’s skin. “My parents are second-generation Italian Americans. Our family restaurant has been a part of Southeast Portland since my maternal grandparents opened the doors forty years ago.”
Longing crept into his throat to scrape over the tender lining before he choked it back down. “That’s…nice.” Amazing. Special. Something to be cherished.
“It is.” His smile was weak, though. “And not. I grew up with the expectation I’d become a priest.”
The disbelief burst from Sawyer in a rush of laughter before he could contain it. “What the fuck? You’re serious?”
“Very.” Asher leaned in, his kiss dirty and blatantly erotic as he held Sawyer’s nape and took what he wanted. The bite to his bottom lip throbbed when Asher pulled away, brow arched. “You can see how bad that would’ve been.”
Sawyer rubbed his mouth, fingers dabbing at his lip. “You. A priest?” He snorted. “I would’ve loved receiving penance from you, but I doubt many others would’ve.”
“My parents are devout Catholics.” He raised a brow, shrugging. “I have two uncles who are priests. They didn’t know any different.”
“And didn’t know you, apparently.” Sawyer had no idea if his own parents had known he was gay before they’d died, but he did know they never would’ve forced him into a life he didn’t want. “So where does the ex-wife fit in?”
Asher rolled to his back, hands clasping over his chest, his sigh long and deep. “She saved me from the seminary.” He cringed, wet his lips. “We were friends since the sandbox, raised in the same neighborhood. High school sweethearts, which our parents both encouraged and warned us against.” Another deep sigh gusted into the quiet. “The marriage was real. We did love each other. But abstaining from sex before marriage meant we didn’t discover how incompatible we were in bed until after the ‘I do’s’ were done.”
“People still do that? Abstain from sex until marriage?” No way.
“It’s a dying tradition, but yeah. We did.” He frowned. “It was over fifteen years ago.”
“How old were you when you got married?”
“Eighteen.”
“Damn.” He’d known by fifteen that he preferred guys, had confirmed that by sixteen, and had explored every aspect of gay sex before he was eighteen. “That’s kind of impressive.”
Asher turned his head, brow raised. “I did say she was saving me from the seminary.”
“And her from the nunnery?” He frowned. “Is that even a word?”
Asher smiled, a little crack that managed to weave into Sawyer and spread its warmth.
“ ‘Convent’ is the word you’re looking for, and no, but she wanted to go to college, and marrying me gave us both the freedom and financial aid we needed to do what we really wanted—and break free of our families’ expectations.”
“I guess it didn’t work, huh?”
His shrug was small. “It sounded great when we did it, but the novelty wore off quickly. We made it last until we’d both finished school and then we dealt with the ‘I told you so’s’ and filed for divorce.”
“And the gay sadist part? When’d you figure that out?”
Asher’s chuckle was filled with sardonic mirth. He rolled to his side, the approaching darkness warded off by the glow of the forgotten bathroom light. “The gay thing was something I refused to acknowledge. Denial worked until I got into bed with my wife and realized I couldn’t keep it up unless I thought about naked guys.”
Sawyer couldn’t stop his grimace. “That’d blow.”
“You have no idea.” Asher scrubbed his face, his groan muffled. “The guilt almost sent me to the seminary anyway.”
He couldn’t see him confined behind the cloth of a priest. Not Asher. “It would’ve broke you.”
“You think?”
“Self-flagellation isn’t your thing.” There was too much passion buried beneath the contained outer shell he presented. Damn. Why in the hell did he think that? Know that? The closeness prickled down his back, churned in his stomach.
“You’d be surprised.”
Did everyone beat up on themselves? “We’re our own worst enemy. Isn’t that how it goes?”
“So they say.” Asher searched him, traced his fingers where they lay on the mattress, the absent caress soothing when it should have been annoying, even threatening. “What about you?”
“Meaning?”
“What eats at you?”
Fuck. Too close. Too personal. He yanked his hand away, ready to vault from the bed, covers already pushed back, instinct and habit taking hold.
Asher grabbed his wrist, stopping his sprint to safety. “Hey. Sorry.” He traced small circles over Sawyer’s pulse, every stroke a shot of empathy Sawyer didn’t want. “Forget I asked.”
Could he? Should he? His heart raced, every swipe of Asher’s thumb telling his tale of panic. Over a question. One he usually dodged with ease.
“I, uh…” He sniffed, offered a tight smile to Asher. “I should get going.”
“You’re running, Sawyer. Not going.”
The truth hung between them, and Sawyer had no way to fight it. Denial was useless. Agreement revealing. And who the fuck cared? Since when did he give a shit what anyone thought of his actions?
He twisted his wrist out of Asher’s hold, his glare pointed. “So let me.” He didn’t wait for a response. Didn’t need an answer. A corner of his brain logged how dicky his actions were, but he didn’t have it in him to change. Not that much that fast.
His pain was his. His secrets too deeply engraved to simply divulge them over pillow talk with a fucking sadist. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” he mumbled to himself as he hitched his shorts up. “Digging into my shit to watch me squirm.”
“Not really,” Asher stated, voice flat. He still lounged on the bed, apparently unconcerned by Sawyer’s quick departure. “We were having a conversation. You’re the one going ape-shit over a question.”
Ape-shit. Fuck. He hung his head, hands dropping to his sides. Asher was right. Again. Ass. “Fuck.” The curse rebounded in his mind but didn’t help. If anything, it pounded home his own insaneness.
He dragged his hands through his hair until his fingers clamped over the base of his skull. How long could he keep running before his past brought him down? Before he gave up completely?
His parents wouldn’t have wanted this for him.
That knowledge had driven him to Oregon. Had kept him from falling into the endless pit of self-destruction. If only they were still alive…
He squeezed his eyes closed, blocked the rush of pain.
Wishing on the past was futile.
“I’ll drive you back,” Asher offered, sheets ruffling.
Sawyer snapped out of his private hell, scrambled to pull himself back together. “It’s fine,” he said, already moving toward the exit. “I’ll get a ride.”
“From who?”
He stopped at the door, grin wide as he dug his phone out of his pocket and waved it at Asher. “There’s an app for that.”
Asher hesitated, brows furrowed. Bathed in the soft yellow glow from the bathroom light, white covers pooling over his groin in a pop of brightness against his golden skin tone, he was all man. Hard muscles, lean frame, stark beauty exposed for Sawyer to examine.
He lowered his phone, heart wrenched tight. “Let me go, Asher.” He cleared his throat, the rumble gouging his pride, yet he pushed on. “I need the space.” The wide-open space to hide in.
Asher’s shoulders lowered with his sigh. He gave a slow nod, lips compressed in a thin line of acceptance.
Thank you. Sawyer swallowed and managed a weak smile in place of the words. “I’ll be in touch.” And then he was gone, escaping down the stairs and away from everything that threatened to break him.