Page 30 of Crown of Ash

He had never once built against Andreactually standing there with so much love and worry on his face.

Because Marcus knew that feeling, the one he saw reflected back at him. Marcus had his own. Four seconds, in a stairwell at 15:02 with his thumb hovering over a contact and blood drying tacky on his forearm, when what he wanted was not backup…and not Elijah… and not a plan, just the low hum of Andre’ s voice through the phone, solid as stone.

His knees gave first, not a choice, but a structural failure. The floor rushed up to meet him, all of it at once, the gray industrial carpet swallowing his weight in front of the steel-legged desk. A sound tore out of him, thin and fractured, something he hadn’t made since he was twelve, standing barefoot on cold linoleum watching them cuff his dad’s thick wrists.

"Marcus. Marcus-"

Andre was on him then. Hands cupping his face, one scraped raw and stinging where it pressed against Marcus’s cheek. Andre dropped hard onto his bad knee without a flinch, close enough that Marcus could feel the heat coming off his skin, smell gun oil and winter air on his jacket.

"Hey. Look at me. I’m right here."

"I was going to call you." The words came out in shards. He’d cross-examined contract killers without breaking a sweat, but now six words wouldn’t hold together. "Tonight. Elijah was in the car bleeding. Jack was a mess. I had my thumb on your name."

"Marcus."

"I have had my thumb on your name since the day you left." His fingers closed around Andre's wrists, not to move them but to feel the proof of him. The pulse hammered against his thumb, a frantic one- forty, adrenaline still ebbing from the chase. "Every time something goes wrong in this goddamn city, you're the first call I want to make. I pick up the phone. I put it down. Tonight, with him bleeding out in the next room, I almost did it again. I’m so fucking tired of hanging up on you."

Andre’s composure shattered. A tremor went through his jaw.

"So call me," he said, voice frayed.

"Andre."

"Call me." Andre’s thumbs swept over Marcus’s cheekbones, smearing tears Marcus hadn't realized were falling. "Next time. Three in the morning, I don’t give a shit. Call me."

Marcus bent forward, his forehead pressing into the solid plane of Andre’s sternum. Andre’s arms came up, cradling the back of Marcus’s head, fingers tangling in his hair. For a long moment, there was only the ragged syncopation of their breathing and the distant, acrid scent of scorched rice from somewhere else in the building.

Of course it would break here. Not under the sodium lights of the parking lot, not down the hall where Elijah was stitched back together two doors over. Here, in this gray-walled office with its framed insurance license and the industrial carpet Marcus had chosen specifically because it hid stains.

Marcus turned his face sideways.

He pressed his mouth to the front of Andre’s shirt, just over his breastbone. The cotton was warm from his skin. Andre went completely still.

Marcus did it again, lower this time, lips brushing over the third button down. He realized his hands had settled on Andre’s hips, fingers digging into the dark wool of his trousers. He didn’t remember moving them.

"Marcus." Andre’s voice was low, stripped raw. There was no hesitation in it. No refusal. They both heard what wasn’t there.

Marcus looked up.

On his knees on that wear-hiding carpet, his hands resting on the worn leather of Andre Jefferson’s belt, Marcus said, "Tell me to stop."

Andre’s mouth opened.

"Tell me to stop," Marcus said again, "and I'll stand up and get you the water. We'll talk about Sovereign. I will not say one word about this, ever again. And I'll mean it."

Six years of not asking for anything for himself. He had made an art form out of not asking. He had built an entire organization out of it.

Andre got one hand into the back of Marcus's hair and closed it, fingers tightening like roots finding purchase. "Don't you dare," he said, the words gritted out between teeth.

Marcus worked the belt open, hands that had fumbled uselessly at a refrigerator latch now moving with a thief's certainty. Leather sliding through brass, the click of the prong, the whisper of the button giving way, the zipper's low hiss. Andre's stomach contracted sharply beneath his touch, a flinch that became a tremor. Marcus pressed his mouth to the tense warmth just below his navel, tasting salt and cotton. A sound broke from Andre's throat, raw, vowel-shaped air.

He had been starving. Had refused himself the word for it. Standing earlier in that kitchen doorway, arms folded over his chest, playing calm for people who needed calm, all that time he'd been running on empty for years and telling himself it was discipline. Really, it had been his desperation not to admit that the only man he had ever truly belonged to was and always would be Andre.

He tugged the waistband down. Andre was already hard, flushed and straining, and when the elastic cleared him he jerked forward into open air, into nothing, a full inch of desperate, involuntary thrust before Marcus had even touched him. Marcus made a sound low in his chest and pressed his open mouth to the underside, not taking him, just breathing there, feeling the pulse jump against his lips. Andre's thighs went rigid.

"Marcus-"

He didn't answer. He dragged his mouth up the length of him slowly, lips barely parted, just enough pressure to feel every ridge, every vein, learning the map back from memory. Andre's hips stuttered. His grip in Marcus's hair tightened until the roots burned deliciously.