Seth could handle it. Sethneededit.
Zain slammed him against the bedroom wall. Seth's shoulder blades hit plaster and the impact knocked the air out of him and the shock of it, the beautiful violence of it, cut through the numbness like a blade through fog.
"Like that," Seth breathed. "Exactly like that."
"Shut up." Zain's mouth was on his neck. Teeth. Not gentle. The scrape of stubble and then the sharp bright pain of a bite that would bruise, and Seth's cock went from half-hard to aching in the space of a heartbeat.
"Make me."
Zain pulled back. Looked at him. Rain on his face, blood on his knuckles, and that expression, the one that saidI am going to take you apart and you are going to thank me for it.
"Hands on the wall," Zain said.
"No."
"Seth."
"I said no." Seth grinned. It was feral, sharp, the grin of a man who was using defiance the way other people used breathing exercises. "You want my hands on the wall, you put them there."
Zain put them there.
One hand, both wrists, pinned above Seth's head hard enough that his shoulders strained. Seth tested the grip. Solid. Immovable. The relief of it flooded through him like a drug, the relief of someone else holding the reins while the thing inside him, the horror, the silence where feeling should be, worked its way through.
Zain's free hand yanked Seth's shirt up. Over his head, bunched around his pinned wrists like a makeshift bind. Seth's bare chest hit the cold wall and he hissed.
"You wanted rough," Zain said against his ear. His voice had dropped into the register that made Seth's knees unreliable. Low. Controlled. Dangerous. "You're getting rough."
"Promises, promises."
Zain bit the junction of his neck and shoulder. Hard. Hard enough that Seth's vision whited at the edges and the sound that came out of him was not a word but something more honest than language.
"Still mouthy?" Zain's hand slid down Seth's chest. Nails dragging. Not enough to break skin. Enough to leave lines that would be visible tomorrow.
"Always," Seth managed. His voice was already wrecked and Zain had barely touched him. "You knew that when you -fuck-"
Zain's hand had found his cock through his pants. Palmed him. Squeezed. Not stroking. Just holding, the possessive weight of a hand that saidthis is mine and I decide when it gets what it wants.
"When I what?" Zain asked. Conversational. Like he wasn't grinding the heel of his palm against Seth's cock while Seth tried to remember how lungs worked.
"When you pulled me out of that cage. You knew -Christ, Zain - you knew I was going to be a problem."
"The worst problem I've ever had." Zain released his wrists. Spun him around. Seth barely had time to register the shiftbefore Zain dropped to his knees on the hardwood floor and yanked Seth's pants down with both hands.
Seth looked down at him. Zain on his knees was a sight that short-circuited something fundamental in Seth's brain every single time. This man, this controlled, compressed, lethal man, on the floor, looking up at Seth with dark eyes that held zero apology and absolute intent.
"You don't have to -"
"I know I don't have to." Zain's hands gripped Seth's hips. Thumbs pressing into the hollows beside his hip bones hard enough to bruise. "I want to. I want you in my mouth. I want to hear what you sound like when you can't think."
"I can always th-"
Zain swallowed him to the root.
Seth's head cracked back against the wall. His hands flew to Zain's hair, gripping, pulling, holding on because his legs had stopped being structural and the only thing keeping him vertical was the wall behind him and the man in front of him.
Zain worked him like a mission. Methodical, devastating, relentless. He knew Seth's body now, knew the spots, the rhythms, the difference between the sounds Seth made when he was close and the sounds he made when he was desperate. He played every one of them.
"Zain … Zain, I'm going to -"
