“More.” I drag my thumb slow down the side of his throat, tracing the faint, fading imprint where the tape used to sit, a ghost of bruising that’s almost gone. “What else are you?”
He shudders again—harder—and his lips part around a broken breath.
“I’m your halo.”
“More.”
He swallows, chest heaving, fingers curling behind my neck to pull himself impossibly closer like the words physically hurt to hold in any longer.
“I’m your addict,” he whispers, voice cracking open. “I need you to breathe.”
“More.”
He moans—deep, guttural, wrecked. “I’m your fuckin’ problem.”
I smile against his cheek—slow, feral, satisfied.
“More.”
His head falls onto my shoulder; he clutches me like the dose is dragging him under and my voice is the only rope he has left.
“I’m your player,” he gasps. “Your blade. Your demon on the ice.” He sobs, hips jerking instinctively even though I’m still holding him motionless, cock pressed hard and leaking between us, the need twisting through him so violently he chokes on it. “Rafe—I’m—please—I’m—”
I grab his hips and thrust up into him and he screams, head snapping back, spine bowing so sharply it looks like it might snap under the force. He clamps down around me so tight I grunt, the sudden vise of him ripping the air from my lungs, and then he’s coming—shaking violently, gasping in broken little bursts, spilling hot and frantic between us in helpless, stuttering jerks that paint both our stomachs and the hoodie still bunched around his waist.
He’s still trembling, still riding the aftershocks in tiny, involuntary spasms, when I pull him down against me and kiss him slow—filthy, claiming, tongue sweeping in to taste thesalt and the wrecked sweetness of his mouth. My hands slide up his back, one tangling in his sweat-damp hair, the other pressing flat between his shoulder blades to keep him locked against my chest. “Good boy.”
The words hit him like a second dose. His entire body melts in my lap—bones turning liquid, weight collapsing forward until his forehead rests against my shoulder, arms looping loose around my neck as if he’s forgotten how to hold himself up. Every muscle goes soft, surrendered, pliant in a way that makes my chest ache and my cock throb harder inside him.
And I finish—deep, hard, so fucking hard I see stars burst behind my eyelids. My hips snap up one last time, burying myself to the root as I come with a low, guttural sound I can’t swallow back. Heat floods him, pulse after pulse, marking him from the inside until there’s nothing left but the slow, heavy drip of us together, the faint tremor still running through his thighs, and the ragged rhythm of his breathing against my throat.
Julian slumps in my lap like sin incarnate—boneless, smug, dripping sweat and praise and something darker I’m too wrecked to name. He doesn’t move at first, just stays there, cock still twitching against my stomach, hole leaking around where I’m still buried inside him, body warm and wrecked and clinging.
Then—he lifts his head. Golden eyes, shot through with something too dangerous to be called sweet, blink up at me. His lips curl. A smirk so obscene it belongs on a goddamn cathedral mural, defaced by a cult. “Gonna kill me one day if you keep fuckin’ me like that,” he rasps, voice ruined and proud. “Pretty sexy way to go, though. Might let you leave the gun in my mouth next time. Just to test your aim.”
I grab the back of his neck—slow, deliberate—and tilt his head until his lips are brushing mine, breath to breath. “Don’t joke about that,” I murmur.
He smiles wider. “Then stop making it feel so good.”
The boy is chaos—still leaking across my skin like an offering, warm and sticky and unapologetic, marking me the way I marked him. But his grin is sharp enough to wound, all teeth and mischief, and his thighs squeeze around my waist with a strength that says they never intend to let go, locking me in place like he’s claiming the territory he just conquered.
He licks his lips, slow and deliberate, eyes half-lidded and glittering. “Captain,” he purrs, the word rolling off his tongue like velvet wrapped around a blade, “think I’ve earned agold star yet?”
I lean in, drag my teeth down the side of his throat where the bruise from the tape is still blooming vivid purple—a fading map of yesterday’s violence that looks obscene under the low light. “You’ve earned something,” I growl against his skin, letting the vibration sink in, letting him feel the promise of reward and ruin in the same breath.
He fucking giggles—high and bright and completely unhinged, the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep and reckless inside him. And then he buries his face in my neck, pressing open-mouthed against my pulse, moaning like a high demon just got exactly what he wanted for Christmas.
29
JULIAN
The moment I walk into the locker room, silence doesn’t fall—it snarls. Old NHL bones in this rink. You can feel it in the floors, in the cracked tiles, in the way the walls seem to hold breath. This place used to shine. Cameras, crowds, gods in jerseys. Now? There’s blood in the grout and knives behind every set of eyes. Mafia syndicates sit in the luxury boxes. Armed guards lean on the boards. Belladonna’s best are sharpening skates with the same hands they used to slit throats. Every man in this room knows what tonight is.
Not a game. A fucking war. And I walk in wearing the black jersey—no number, no name, just the C stitched into my chest like a brand I never asked for but will kill to keep.
It shouldn’t fit. I didn’t earn it the way men like Rafe did, bleeding across seasons and leagues, carving their place with years of ice and bruises and clean victories. I earned it in bedrooms and back rooms, on my knees, on the rink, in Rafe’s lap. I earned it with a tape in my mouth and a scream in my throat. I earned it in the way Ezio’s jaw still clicks wrong when he tries to speak, the sound of cartilage grinding like a reminder every time he opens his mouth. And now it’s mine.
I head straight to the bench at the far side of the locker room—the old kind, splintered wood worn smooth in places, metal bolts half-rusted, corners stained dark with sweat and spit and everything else that’s ever dripped from a man in armor. I sit. I breathe once, deep and deliberate, letting the cold air burn down my lungs. Then I reach down and pull the roll of tape from my bag.
