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“So you keep saying-”
“I don’t want to get stuck with you, numbnuts, I’m not your protection-”
“I don't need protection,” Ash cut in calmly.
Nix scoffed. “Oh yeah, you’ve got this mysterious non-existent MC at your back-”
“Yeah.”
Nix retorted, “You featherweight-”
“You’d be surprised,” Ash said.
Nix pursed his lips. “Anyway, I don’t want trouble-”
“You were the one who stopped me, who grabbed my arm, checking up on me-”
“I wasn’t checking up on you.”
“You were worried I wouldn’t eat.”
“I know what it’s like to go hungry, okay? And it fucking sucks…” Nix’s grip was completely slack now. He was standing in front of Ash, so close, unaware he’d completely dropped his threatening demeanor.
Ash felt triumph at having played the big bad wolf, tricking him into a moment of intimacy.
“When did you go hungry, Nix?” Ash asked silkily.
Nix sniffed. “At home, when I was a kid… if I did something bad, I wasn’t allowed dinner,” Nix said quietly. His eyes drifting off to the past.
Ash let him drift for a bit, he wanted to see a snippet of Nix as a teenager. He wanted to imagine this giant man in a smaller, quieter, less formed guise.
“My father… and… the pastor…”
Ah, Ash thought. “The Evangelical Christians you ran away from?” he asked, gently probing.
Nix’s eyes unfocused slightly. “Our community… it was kind of a fucking… religious cult… Evangelical but… and the pastor would punish me if I… and everyone would watch…”
Ash watched Nix closely. “All those eyes on you.”
“Yes,” Nix said hoarsely.
Ash licked his lips and his gaze snagged on Nix’s plump lips, inches from him. “Yes, all those eyes, burning as they watched you, alone under the spotlight…”
“Yes, everyone watching… I had to recite passages as punishment in front of everyone.”
“To atone?”
“To atone,” Nix replied slowly, almost as if he was slipping under a spell.
“And did you feel it?” Ash said, purposefully ambiguous, wondering where Nix would take the interpretation of this.
Nix was behind a wall of haze now. A haze that Ash knew well. A haze of desire. Oh yes, Nix may come across big and tough and scary, but in reality he was easy prey for Ash. How to calm him, how to soothe him. This hot-headed angry, abused man, Ash guessed. He wanted to test his theory.
“I felt…” Nix’s lips parted. Ash felt the heat radiating off Nix’s skin. Ash saw Nix’s pupils widen and heard him swallow loudly. Nix was getting turned on.
“I didn’t… learn my lesson well…” Nix continued.
“Oh no?” Ash prompted.
