And he’s still paying for it. Still spiraling through the wreckage, clinging to whatever’s left like it might save him. Like I might save him.
I look down at him.
Julian is spread out under me, throat working, mouth parted in a quiet moan, tear tracks running down his flushed cheeks. His eyes are glassy and full of things I want to rip out of him with my bare hands—shame, guilt, longing, need. His thigh twitches under the blanket, the one I wrapped earlier, the one still bandaged, still healing. His hips buck into my hand like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.
Or maybe he does.
Maybe he’s giving me this. All of it.
My fingers tighten, stroke slowly. I want him to feel everything. I want him to burn with it. The way I burn watching him ruin himself. The way I burned seeing that video. The way I’m burning now, knowing that fucking captain took the best of him and left him like this.
“Rafe…” he gasps, voice catching on my name like a plea, like he still doesn’t know if I’m going to kill him or fuck him or both.
I stare down at him. At every fucking inch of him. And I swear—That man is dead.
“Why do you still watch that video?” I ask, my voice rough but quiet, too fucking quiet.
Julian doesn’t answer. His jaw tenses. His lips press into a line, and I see it—the resistance, the shame, the part of him that wants to lie or run or pretend he’s not still bleeding. But I’m done letting him bleed alone. I’m done watching him rot in silence.
So I squeeze harder. His cock twitches in my fist and his breath stutters like he hates that it still feels good. Like he’s punishing himself with the pleasure.
“Why?” I growl again, leaning closer. My teeth grit. “Why do you torture yourself like this?”
He sniffles and shudders, then finally says it. “I… I miss it.”
The quiet little confession cracks something inside me, spoken so softly it’s like he doesn’t even hear himself say it.
And suddenly, I see red.
“Miss it?” My voice isn’t quiet anymore. “Misswhat?The lies? The secrecy? The married man who used you like a dirty little secret and smiled while he did it? What the fuck do you miss, Julian?!”
“Being wanted…” he mumbles.
The words come out small and soft, wrecked in a way that makes something inside my chest go still. And I don’t breathe—not for a second.
My hand tightens around him again, not to punish and not even to control, just to hold him there. To anchor him to now, to me, to anything that isn’t the past rotting in his chest.
Because he says it like no one ever wanted him before that. Like no one wants him now.
And that?
That’s the biggest fucking lie of all.
I growl—deep, animal, involuntary—and shove his thighs farther apart. He gasps, a sharp hiss tearing from his throat when the movement pulls at the injured one, but I don’t let him close them. I don’t let him hide. I don’t let him disappear back into the shame he keeps drowning himself in. I fit myself between his legs, caging him in, claiming the space he’s been using to bleed alone.
His breath stutters. Mine burns.
I lean down, slow and heavy, until my mouth is brushing his—wet cheeks, trembling lips, the faint taste of salt and fucking heartbreak. His chest rises fast, desperation and want colliding in his breath, and I swallow it like it belongs to me.
My hand moves lower between his thighs—right where he’s already warm and shaking for me. “Tell me what you miss, Jules…” I murmur against his mouth, voice roughened with fury and something far darker. My lips graze his, barely a breath apart, close enough that when he exhales, I taste it.
My fingers press deeper between his legs, slow, claiming, making him open for me even more. “Tell me,” I growl, jaw flexing as I drag my mouth along the corner of his, breath hot. “Tell me what he made you feel.”
He whimpers and it goes straight down my spine like a knife dipped in gasoline.
I want the truth. I want the rot pulled out of him by force. I want every inch of the past burned to ash so I can fill the spaces myself. So I press harder between his thighs, lips grazing his like a threat, and demand again. “Tell me, Julian.”
Julian shudders beneath me, his entire body wired like it’s trying to run and sink into me all at once. His breath hitches when my fingers move again, slow and deliberate between his legs, pressing into heat that has nothing to do with comfort.
