"Zero—I'm—"
He doesn't pull off. He sucks harder. Takes me deeper. His free hand reaches up and his palm presses flat against the bond mark on the side of my neck—his—and the second his skin closes over it the bond between uscracksopen like a struck bell, and I am gone.
I come down his throat with a cry I do not bother to muffle.
He works me through it. Swallows around me. Stays there with his lips at the head as the aftershocks roll, his thumb stroking the inside of my thigh while my whole body twitches against his hold. He doesn't pull off until I am whimpering and oversensitive and my hand has loosened in his hair, and even then he stays one beat longer—flat tongue under the crown, eyes up at me—just to watch me jerk against the tile from it.
Thebastard.
He sits back on his heels. Wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist. Looks up at me with the evidence of me still on his tongue.
"You taste like a man who hasn't eaten."
"I—what?"
"Salty. Thin. Not enough of you to swallow." He licks his bottom lip, slow, deliberate, watching me watch him do it. "Iwant more. Of all of you. And right now there isn't enough of you to have more of."
I make a sound somewhere between a choke and a laugh and my face is on fire.
"Zero, oh my god—"
He stands. Pulls me closer to him by the elbows. Hooks a wet palm around my ribs and drags two fingers down them, slow, one at a time. Counting. His eyes don't leave mine.
"One. Two. Three. Four."
"...stop—"
"That's four ribs I can count without trying, Carter. That's four too many. I want you happy. I want you mine. I want you full—and not just of my cock. Get that through your head."
"Zero—"
"Finish washing. I'm making you something. You're going to eat all of it. If you don't, I am going to feed it to you myself, and you are not going to enjoy how I do it."
"...okay."
"Smart."
And just like that, we are showering.Showering. Like it's normal. Like he didn't say what he said. Like I am not still standing here trying to put my brain back together. He soaps his own arms. He works shampoo through his hair like this is completely normal. He rinses. He elbows me when I just stand there staring at him.
"Soap, Carter. You're not getting cleaner standing there."
I wash. He helps. Or pretends to help—he is mostly running his hands over me under the spray, working the bruises on my hips with his thumbs the way you work a knot out of a shoulder, sliding wet palms slow up my back. My body is loose and warm and used and I am not going to survive the next four hours of being in proximity to him and his brothers without supervision.
He turns the water off. The silence rushes in.
He grabs a towel from the rack and tosses one to me. I miss it. He laughs. I bend to pick it up off the bathmat and—
Crack.
Zero’s towel snaps against my ass with a sound that echoes off the tile. I yelp—loud, startled, furious—and clap my hand over the spot.
"Zero!"
"Sorry. Hand slipped."
"Your hand did not—"
"Hard to tell with these tile floors. Slippery."
