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Suburban life has never suited him but that doesn’t mean it’s not peaceful in shorts tretches. Chris has a semblance of a routine and he sticks to it: he runs in the mornings because the body is important. He eats a wholesome breakfast made from yesterday’s shopping, then spends the rest of the day catching up on news. Sometimes he works on the garden, a project he’s undertaken on a whim at the advice of his realtor.
It keeps him busy.
Chris enjoys the freewheeling selfhood the suburbs affords; he’s never late for work because he doesn’t have to work; he’s in complete control of his time. But there are days when it takes him a moment to reacquaint himself with his new life, when old habits rise to the fore. He makes every meal he eats by hand and scrapes out jam from the jar by the knife-ful, and catches himself from time to time staring at his reflection in the gleaming silver.
The room he wakes in every morning is clean and immaculate: plush carpeting, the furniture arranged symmetrically. There’s a cordless telephone sitting on the nightstand. Sometimes he wakes up from dreams that leave him feeling tired and on-edge, reaching for the gun he no longer keeps under his pillow. The last two years flood his mind like images on a zoetrope, memories that still make him reel from the phantom ache of a gunshot wound in his ribs. He sits up slowly, cradling his face in his hands, and rubs tiredly at the corners of his eyelids.
The clock on the nightstand declares it 8:27 AM.
*
One night Chris comes home from the pub and stops abruptly in the foyer, house keys clutched tightly in a white-knuckled grip.
Even inebriated, he can tell when something is noticeably off. He knows his place well enough to walk through it in the dark but he swipes at the light switch and studies the living room down to the tiniest detail: the placement of magazines on the shelf and the tiny part between the curtains, the mug of coffee he left behind already milky and congealing. Everything is just as it should be except for the presence of an unmarked envelope on the coffee table. He picks it up with two fingers, gingerly peeling back the wax seal stamped with the family crest he knows all too well.
Do you ever think as a hearse goes by, that you may be the next to die?
Chris doesn’t finish reading, tossing the envelope back onto the coffee table with a frown. It’s a taunt, and a poor one at that. He refuses to be moved. But he spends the rest of the night checking all his locks, sitting in the dark of his living room, perfectly alert and sober. He rests his Glock on his knee, every muscle in his body taut with tension.
Chris watches the door impassively, his fingers steepled under his chin. He doesn’t sleep.
In the morning, his alarm clock goes off upstairs and he shoots a hole in the ceiling, sending plaster and dust crumbling everywhere on the carpet.
Chris drives to the hardware shop after breakfast for new paint and a tub of spackling paste, and as an afterthought buys wire for his fence and an electric drill.
*
A week passes by without incident. That’s the great thing about living in the suburbs: nothing ever happens. The neighbours’ lives revolve around a tried and tested routine: pick up the kids from school, make dinner, see them off to school the next morning. Everyday, with little deviation from the pattern. Chris can count on them for predictability.
But they come for him, eventually, on a Tuesday night when Chris is in bed with his gun tucked securely under his pillow. His eyes open at the first scratching noise, but he doesn’t reach for his gun until they’re hauling him out of bed and securing a length of rope around his neck. The gun is knocked out of his hands with a vicious kick as the noose tightens to the point of asphyxiation. He scrabbles at his neck but then he’s kneed in the gut for struggling.
Chris crumples on the floor in a fit of pain and lets out a sound halfway between a groan and a shout when something blunt and solid slams against his back.
When he blinks through the hair in his eyes, he sees a familiar face smirking down at him: scarred and endlessly infuriating.
Volkov tilts his head to the side, a baseball bat slung over his shoulder. He has three men with him, fanned around Chris in a loose half-circle. Chris recognizes each one. The last time Chris had seen Volkov had been on a job in Istanbul and he’d shot the man clean through the ribs. He should have left him to die in Gülhane Park; he’d always hated his smug self-satisfied face.
Volkov crouches on the floor so they’re eye level with each other and tips Chris’ chin up with a gloved finger. “We’ve missed you, Chris.” He licks at the ridge of a scar curling on his upper lip, the same one Chris gave him two years ago with an ice pick. “Mr Hiddleston sends his regards.”
Then he kicks Chris in the face.
*
Chris wakes. The light outside has softened to milky hues and his shirt is covered in blood.
He limps to the bathroom, slumping across the sink where he lets water run down the back of his head. He tugs his shirt by the tail before dropping it on the floor and bracing himself against the wall. The lighting in the bathroom is weak but he can see the discoloration of his bruises, the split lip Volkov gave him and the cut above his left eyebrow that would probably need stitches. His left side aches when he breathes and his head looks slightly uneven which could mean there’d been some swelling. He spits blood into the sink and washes his face, digging his fingers into the ache behind his eyes as he dries his face on a hand towel. His teeth hurt. And his body feels like one massive bruise.
When he resurfaces to check his reflection in the mirror, his teeth are shiny with a transparent coat of blood.
*
Chris likes to keep himself occupied. The body is important but so is the mind so he makes sure neither goes to waste. He keeps abreast of local politics by reading three different spreadsheets. He watches the news while making dinner for himself, which he eats in front of the television with a glass of white or red wine. Sometimes, he heads down to the pub to ingratiate himself with the locals. He goes there every Saturday when it’s poker night, loses forty quid gambling and buys everyone a pint regardless. He’s extremely well-liked by the patrons; he’s built quite the generous reputation for himself.
Character is, after all, the only investment worth anything, and Chris is planning on rooting himself among them for a long time to come. They’re good people, working class. They understand the value of money, of hard work, of using your hands as tools.
Another thing Chris likes to do is drive. He’s had his fair share of cars over the years – gifts from some of his clients, but the real beauty, his prized possession, is a motorcycle he’s purchased for himself last year: a 2014 Honda Valkyrie in chrome blue. It’s sleek and ergonomic and responsive to the touch. Best of all, it’s his.
Chris takes it out when the weather is good and drives back when he’s low on fuel, or when the sun is beginning to cast long shadows on the road.
It’s nothing short of grounding: all this space from the before and now, all this freedom, the road in front of him unfurling like a rattlesnake, and the air biting at his neck where his helmet exposes skin, the solid thrum of his Valkyrie between his thighs. All this: bliss.
*
Chris comes home one night to his living room in flames. The neighbours have called the fire department but when the firemen arrive there’s hardly anything worth salvaging. Everything he’s handpicked himself: gone. The settee, the matching coffee table and rugs, the Norman Rockwell paintings. The kitchen is kept intact for the most part though Chris is dissuaded from staying at home for health and security risks. The police take a statement. The neighbourhood women offer him a place to stay for the night but he opts to camp out at the pool house until he’s figured out what to do. He locks the floor-to-ceiling windows and listens to the telltale creak of the wind rattling the door.
Chris stares at the ceiling, an arm tucked behind his head. He goes into the garden with a shovel and a pick. The smell of burnt wood is still strong in the air, the lower half of the house charred and gaping like an open maw. It’s going to rain, Chris can tell. The trees bend under the insistence of the wind.
He kneels on the ground and starts digging.
*
Chris showers, does a decent job of patching himself up, and dresses for the evening. It’s all about presentation. Presentation is key. His suits are arranged in gradients of light to dark, his shoes perfectly polished and lining the topmost shelf in his closet. Tonight, he opts for black because the colour hides stains fairly well. Chris combs his hair, adjusts his cufflinks, slips on his tie with an easy swish of fabric. The letters on his knuckles have faded, the ink blurred by sweat and time: baba on the fingers of his right hand, yega on the left. Boogeyman in Russian. They nicknamed him Koschei, after the tsar of life, impossible to be killed by conventional means.
He was twenty three when he first got that tattoo, still wet around the ears and trying to prove himself with his first kill. Ten years later, he’s marked all over: tattoos stripe his whole back and upper arms, covering silvers of scar tissue and remnants of scuffles he’d been too young to know better than to accommodate. There was a time in Ibiza; the memory still makes him smile.
Chris keeps his guns in a compartment in his closet. His favourite ones are hidden in a safe in the pool house, next to a suitcase of money he’s made over the years. In his world, money is everything, and every kill is worth a little more than the last. He’s done his math: Chris has earned himself a fortune enough to tide him over for the next twenty years until the itch to come crawling back to the fold rises up again like an old ghost. He can’t remember a time before this life; he can reassemble his guns blindfolded. Maybe living in suburbia had been a mistake; maybe he’s not meant to be an upstanding citizen: paying his taxes on time, working an honest job. He’s stopped counting the number of bodies he’s buried.
Chris drags a chair from the kitchen, and sits in the dark of his living room. And he waits, impossibly clear-headed and ready, letting the ash of his cigarette dust the patent sheen of his leather shoes.
*
It’s four in the morning when Chris calls Charles for cleanup. Tom has sent an entire team to kill him and it’s all very flattering but there are twelve bodies he needs to bury in his backyard. That in itself isn’t the problem but the blood on his hardwood floors and the holes in his ceiling. A spatter of blood has sliced across his cheek. None of his furniture has survived. The wound in his elbow has reopened and it’s starting to smell, and it’ll probably need fresh stitches. Chris uses his tie to staunch up the blood and lights himself a cigarette, pulling up Charles’ number from the address book he keeps in his safe along with his passport. He punches in the number and Charles picks up after the second ring. He doesn’t need to see Charles’ face to know when he’s smiling crookedly.
“It’s me,” Chris says without introduction. “Write down this address.”
Charles arrives with his team in just under half an hour. That’s the great thing about him; even in his old age, he’s always reliable. He’s good at what he does: clean, efficient; he knows when to keep his mouth shut. He tips his hat at Chris in greeting and enters the living through where the door once stood, pausing to give Chris a meaningful look.
“It’s nice to see you back, Christopher,” he says, deep-voiced.
“Charles,” Chris says, nodding.
*
Chris drives out of town. His first stop is St. Regis where he sets up shop to regroup. The hotel has had a facelift, the classic furnishings replaced with a sleek and modern touch. The concierge recognizes him; practically everyone in the building he’s worked with at some point. It’s funny how they all try to blend into their surroundings. He nods at Perkins on his way to the lift as she valiantly avoids his gaze.
Tom’s whereabouts are unknown, but Chris knows the right people to ask. The Viper Room is just three blocks away from the hotel and it’s not long before the barkeep slides a paper napkin across the counter with the address he’s looking for. He offers Chris the house’s best whiskey. “Complements of the beautiful lady across the room,” he’s assured as the barkeep nods in her direction.
Chris smiles in response and takes a long pull, tucking the napkin into his front pocket before sliding out of his seat. He gives Perkins a farewell salute with his fingers before slipping through the throng of lurching bodies on the dance floor. He can’t stand club music, but what he can’t stand even more is being tailed.
*
Chris finds him at The Peninsula. Tom’s always had a taste for all things rich and refined and the Peninsula is the most garishly ostentatious hotel in the city, desperately bright like a smear of neon lipstick. He’s in the middle of a date, smiling and nodding at all the appropriate pauses when Chris taps his date’s shoulder and tightens his grip. The man stiffens, dropping the cutlery abruptly with a clink. “I think you two are done now,” Chris says smoothly. Tom’s smile twitches in the corners but he nods stiffly at his bodyguards to settle down.
“I’ll call you, Louis,” he tells his date who eyes Chris warily before scurrying off Chris watches him beat a hasty exist before flagging down a waiter for a bottle of red wine.
“Louis,” he repeats, lifting an eyebrow as he smooths a napkin across his lap. Chris takes a hunk of bread from the basket and breaks it apart in two hands, not missing the way Tom’s gaze darts to catch the movement of his fingers. Once upon a time, Tom is probably thinking, I’ve had those same fingers wrapped around my throat. “What does he do for a living? Oh no, let me guess—”
“He’s a lawyer,” Tom cuts in. He dabs the corner of his lip daintily, and Chris smiles before catching himself. It’s wolfish, reflected perfectly in the silverware. Tom cuts to the heart of the chase, dropping all pretenses and leaning forward on his elbows. It’s bad manners, but Chris does love it when he loses control like this. To the general public, he’s sweet, soft-spoken Tom. Tom the oddball, Tom the saint. But Chris knows that under the veneer of calm and charm is something twisted and ugly; he’s a mess of anger inside, just barely on the side of deranged.
“What are you doing here?” Tom hisses. Chris slides his seat closer and covers Tom’s hand with his. Tom pulls his hand away but Chris closes his fingers around his wrist, refusing to let him go.
“I love these little games you play with me,” Chris starts, running his thumb across Tom’s soft inner wrist, delighting in the resulting little shiver. “You burn my house, you send your people to kill me – I can’t remember when it was precisely that I gave you permission to pry into my private life.”
“I haven’t seen you in two years,” Tom says, tilting his head to the side. The restaurant is loaded with cameras but not one of them catches the ghost of a smirk on his lips. “I was hoping you’d bring me flowers.”
“You have Perkins tailing me.”
“That’s because no one else will.” Tom snorts. “Everyone you’ve ever worked with is afraid of you.”
“Maybe they ought to be,” Chris says, leaning back in his seat as a waiter pours him a glass of wine.
“My father died,” Tom says, the second Chris lets go of his wrist. He rubs absently at the skin before pulling down his sleeve and takes a sip of water. “And you were always his favourite, you know that.”
Chris doesn’t say anything for a moment, drumming his fingers across the table. Tom is dressed in a blue suit tonight and it highlights the watery colour of his eyes. Despite the docile image he wants to project, they’re sharp and watchful, but only to those who can recognize the darkness. Tom slides his right hand under the table – no doubt reaching for his gun – but Chris beats him to it and clamps a hand around his wrist once more.
He clicks his tongue. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Tom.”
Tom looks unimpressed. “I was going to check my phone.”
Chris grunts noncommittally. “Your father and I had an agreement. I do one last job for him and he’ll let me go.”
“The agreement was not set in stone,” Tom says placidly. “And anyway, he’s dead now, the agreement has pretty much been voided. I’d like you to start working for me. I’ll double whatever he paid you.”
“Pretty little boy sitting in his pretty little throne,” Chris says in Russian. He chuckles, running his tongue over where he’d chipped his tooth two nights ago. His elbow still hurts; he has a nasty habit of pulling at his stitches. He can still taste blood from his bottom lip. “I don’t want your money.”
“Maybe so,” Tom says, his smile reaching his eyes. “But I have something even better I can offer you if you promise to stay awhile and listen.”
*
“I’m going to let you fuck me,” Tom says. “However you want, whenever you want, however many times you want. I’ll let you tie me up and hurt me. I’ll be completely at your mercy. I’ll let myself be yours, any time you want.” He pours himself a shot of brandy and takes a casual sip. He’s taken Chris to his penthouse, and had dismissed all his bodyguards with a flippant wave of the hand – a stupid decision, ballsy even; he should know better than to be left alone in a room with Chris. But he’s just like his father in a lot of ways: ruthless and ambitious. He’s beautiful, and unkind, and Chris can’t remember a time when he didn’t want him with a panging ache.
“I know you, Christopher. Come work for me; we’ll be so good together,” Tom says, his voice gone soft and low. He sets his glass down on the counter and walks across the room, stopping just a foot short of Chris, just close enough to touch.
“I don’t want to be your dog,” Chris tells him, slipping into Russian.
They’ve had too much history, growing up alongside each other.
Tom has always been the apple of his father’s eye, untouchable to Chris. Except for that one night on his eighteenth birthday when they’d tumbled into his bed after school, drunk as anything, giggling and tugging at each other’s clothes. Tom had let Chris fuck him into hoarseness, his schoolboy tie askew and his sock-covered feet bobbing in the air, hefted above Chris’ shoulders. He’d wanted a piece of Tom any way he could get it, so he tied Tom’s wrists up to the bedposts and made him squeal like a gutted pig. He fucked him the way he heard men liked to fuck, slowing down only when Tom started to cry. But he still remembers the coy splay of Tom’s legs, the dusky furl of his arsehole opening up slowly for Chris’ cock. And his kiss: sloppy and trembling, his lips parting to let Chris swallow his next breath.
Tom, with his sweet boyish smile, with his riot of wheat-coloured curls, his skinned knobby knees. Tom who’d cried when Chris came home bloody with a knife wound and had refused to speak to him when he’d made the decision to start working for Tom’s father. Who left for Cambridge without so much as a phonecall or a goodbye; whose hands shook the first time Chris taught him how to load a gun.
That had been too long ago: nothing more than a fairytale dressed in the embellishments of childhood nostalgia. Chris has always been in love with him, since the very first day Tom’s father had introduced them to each other the summer Tom returned from boarding school. Even after all this time, the sight of him makes his knees stumble. It’s funny, what the body chooses to remember. Tom has hit him plenty of times as children, has called him names and bullied him, but Chris always looks back at their shared history with fondness, with a touch of love.
“You’re pretty sure of yourself,” Chris says.
“Am I?” Tom laughs, quietly, to himself. “I can see right through you. That’s all there is to it. And wasn’t it you who always said I should start believing in myself?” He grins, full of teeth, and Chris grabs him by the wrists, lifting them just slightly above Tom’s head. The line of his throat is flawless, pale like the neck of a swan. Chris wants to bite it, mark him with his teeth until the soft skin ruptures and he can claim Tom as his.
“There’s a fine line between stupidity and risk,” Chris breathes against his face. “You send a team of men to kill me and you dangle sex as an incentive for me to start working for you? You’re crazy, sweetheart. But I guess you and your mother had that in common.”
It’s a low blow but it has its desired effect: Tom flinches, his expression twisting into one of quiet fury. His mother had killed herself when he was ten, shooting herself in the temple after years and years of being on and off anti-depressants. Tom’s jaw tightens but that doesn’t mean Chris lets him go easily.
“I told them to rough you up,” Tom spits, evading his gaze. “You were the one who did all the killing.”
“You wanted my attention?” Chris says, tightening his grip. “Well, you have it now, sweetheart. You have all of my attention.”
Tom’s shoulders slump tiredly as he eases his wrists out of Chris’ grip, wincing. “I’m offering you a job, Chris. You’ve been putting up protest but you haven’t exactly said no, either. So which is it? Do you want it or not?”
Chris hears the real question behind the words: do you want me?
*
The answer should be simple. Chris wants a boring life; he wants a nine to five job he can complain about and wants a middle-range car to drive to the nine to five job he can complain about.
But he also wants this: Tom, knelt in front of him, the complete picture of obedience, his head bowed meekly and his sweet mouth pulled down to a moue.
Tom: waiting for him in his bed in a slip of silk, shaved and pretty and opening his legs to welcome him home.
Or Tom: with his legs wrapped around Chris’ ears and his thighs trembling around Chris’ neck as Chris swallows all of him until he chokes. Tom shaking from the ferocity of his orgasm, coming apart by just a few touches, his nipples stiff and flushed with blood.
Chris imagines the indolent spread of Tom’s legs and wonders how his ankles would feel in his hands as he guides Tom’s legs open. He downs another shot of tequila to put the image out of his mind.
“Rough night?” says the barkeep, indicating the bruise blooming across Chris’ left cheek, courtesy of Tom.
Chris chuckles and orders another drink, ignoring the flare of pain the movement brings. “I’ve had worse,” he says, sliding a bill across the table. It’s not a lie.
*
“I knew you’d come around,” Tom says when he opens the door. He looks like he’s been expecting him, dressed down to a silk dressing gown and drinking from a flute of champagne. Chris wants to punch him in the face as much as he wants to kiss him. Instead, he shoulders past Tom, pinning him to the door before he has any chance to react. He drops his champagne on the floor and the glass shatters to a dozen pieces but neither of them gives it any mind.
“I’m not here to play games,” Chris grunts, pushing Tom up against the door.
“Yeah?” Tom pants against his lips. “You’re here to fuck me then? Good. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist—” he laughs, light and airy, but the sound is muffled against the insistent press of Chris’ lips.
Tom moans when Chris grabs him by the waist, sliding his hands south to squeeze the globes of his arse. He palms them greedily before hefting Tom up into his arms, carrying him to the bed as Tom winds his arms around Chris’ neck and lets Chris’ mouth press against his collarbone. He leaves tiny marks with his teeth and Tom gasps and writhes, saying his name like a prayer. “Yes—yes – fuck—” needy, like he’s eighteen still and a virgin.
Chris climbs over Tom in bed, kneeling over him, and takes his wrists in each hand to pin them above his head. He’s wearing nothing underneath his dressing gown and Chris smirks as he discovers that Tom’s cock has hardened to a luscious curve. The part of his dressing gown reveals enough to make his blood run hot: a dusky nipple and a long strip of pale of thigh. Chris parts it further and bends down to lick a stripe up Tom’s inner hip, biting down once Tom lurches up into his touch.
“I’m going to fuck you until you break,” he says evenly, using one hand to undo his tie and slip it off his neck with ease born of practice. Then he starts undoing his cufflinks, leaning over to place them gently on the nightstand before turning his attention back to Tom. “I’m going to fuck you and you’re going to thank me, and I’m going to do it over and over again until you start coming through your arsehole like it’s a cunt.”
Tom shivers, not taking his eyes off Chris’ face. They’re cut from the same cloth: the same quiet rage just simmering under the surface. The same darkness. Whatever Chris throws at him, he can bandy back; he’s not as blameless as he likes others to paint him.
“And then?” Tom prompts, leaning up on his elbows earnestly. His eyes are pulled down to half-mast, and his breathing is heavier, excited.
Chris starts unbuttoning his shirt, still one-handed. “And then we’ll see,” he says, pausing to flick a button open. “If you make it worth my while, maybe, just maybe, I’ll consider your offer.”
*
“Stop squirming,” Chris says, splaying his fingers across Tom’s stomach. Tom makes an unholy sound like he’s been wounded, scrunching his eyes shut as Chris takes his ankles in each hand and spreads his legs. He’s tied him up, as promised, using a collection of his own silk ties. He’d have stuffed Tom’s mouth too to shut him up except he has plans for his mouth later, wet and lush as it is. Perfect, Chris knows, not just for whispering lies but also made for sucking cock.
And now he’s spread out underneath him, open for the taking, his hole clenching in anticipation. He’s the picture of everything Chris has ever dreamed.
Chris traces the tight furl of muscle with his tongue and bites Tom’s thigh when he keens.
“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this,” Chris says, not recognizing his own voice. It’s low and husky, full of want, and he curls his fingers around Tom’s ankles so he can slot his mouth perfectly beneath the plump hang of his balls, down to where he always wants to be kissing him and tasting him, especially after that first time.
“Oh, I have a vague idea—” Tom says as he shivers, canting up his hips, spreading himself for Chris’ tongue. He’s eager, and open, and his hole gives sweetly under the tentative press of Chris’ tongue, as easily as if it had been a cunt. And he tastes just as dirty as Chris remembers him: musky, like the boy who let Chris fuck him without a condom on, who let Chris bear him down on the soft carpet and push his cock inside him until he cried about how good it hurt.
“You always looked at me – ah, a little differently… I was never comfortable being in the same room as you.”
“That’s because I wanted to fuck you all the time,” Chris grunts, keeping Tom’s legs open, skimming his fingers down his thighs so he could rub his thumb tentatively across Tom’s hole. He gives it another tender lick, prying his arsecheeks apart to lodge a wad of spit directly inside.
Tom startles but his movements loosen interminably, sensuous and liquid as Chris begins teasing his hole with his thumb. And it’s the truth: he would do this all day if he could, have Tom sit on his cock, making himself come, or fuck him in front of his guards, in his dead father’s study. He would hold him against the sink, brace his legs apart with his knee and push their bodies impossibly close until they both shook and came apart in tremors that sent the floor quaking.
“Beg me,” Chris says, slicking his fingers with spit and easing his middle finger inside. It must burn going in because Tom whimpers, clenching his teeth, his toes flexing and uncurling in the air. “Tell me what you want me to do with you. Tell me.” He grips Tom by the back of the neck, but doesn’t kiss him – not yet.
“I want everything,” Tom pants, hiding his face into the meat of his arm. He closes his eyes, tucking his nose into his armpit where there’s a soft tuft of dark hair. He’s shaved clean, otherwise; the light film of hair covering his legs rasp Chris’ fingers when he runs his hands up and down his calves.
“I want to ride your fat cock,” Tom says reverently, tipping up his chin. “I want you to destroy me, utterly. Make me walk bowlegged for weeks. When were younger, back in university, I would slip my fingers inside myself and pretend I was sitting on your face. ”
“Jesus,” Chris says. He almost wants to laugh. “But you’ve always been greedy, haven’t you? Even when we were boys.”
Tom makes an affirmative noise that’s just on the side of slutty as he lowers himself onto Chris’ tongue. He seems to like getting his hole licked, so Chris lets him have at it, licking and kissing him right there in turns, teasing lightly with the pad of his thumb. He trembles and sighs and makes all the right noises, his face crumpling the closer he is to the brink.
He howls when Chris pushes two fingers without warning. “How does that feel? Good?” Chris asks.
Tom nods, huffing out a breath, moving his hips in time with the thrust of Chris’ fingers. He’s sinful like this, palms curling and beating the air senseless as he rides Chris’ hand. His arms will hurt at the rate he’s going: pulling at the ties ineffectually to try and make a grab at Chris.
When Tom has had enough, Chris locates the bottle of lube by Tom’s instruction, slicking up his cock and giving Tom’s a teasing stroke from root to tip.
Tom whimpers, baring his teeth, but he quiets down when Chris presses the head of his cock to his hole. He’s tense for long seconds until Chris trails his mouth across Tom’s jaw in an approximation of a kiss. He cups Tom’s hip, whispers, “relax,” and starts pushing into him in staggered strokes, stopping only once he’s fully sheathed. A clear drop of precome slicks the head of Tom’s cock. He groans when Chris starts to move, a little sound of pain each time Chris pulls out and leaves only the head.
“How long has it been hm?” Chris asks, angling his thrusts to brush Tom’s prostate. “A month, two months? You’re so tight. It’s like a bloody vice.”
“Bastard,” Tom hisses. “Bloody—unnngh.”
Chris smiles down at him and paces himself, fucking Tom with endless patience until he’s pliant and open, hot and giving inside. His face and neck are flushed, his hair limp with sweat and product. His eyelashes fan out delicately across his cheeks. His lips part in a trembling breath with every thrust.
“Tom,” Chris says, tipping up Tom’s chin. “Tom, look at me.”
Tom does through slitted eyes. “I want you to remember this,” Chris says, soft. “When you let another man fuck you, I want you to think back on this moment and remember how good my cock felt inside of you. Nothing will ever feel as good or satisfying as having me stuff your arsehole with my cock.”
“Fuck you,” Tom spits. “Fuck—” but he never gets to finish, as Chris fold him in half and pounds into him with all he’s got. Tom whimpers for Chris to stop but his body tells a different story, opening up for Chris like a cunt and tightening sweetly around his cock.
Tom wraps his legs around Chris’ hips, his heel digging into the small of his back, dragging him forward and deeper still like he can’t get enough of it, like he’ll die if they’re not joined. And if this is what Chris gets in return for his servitude then Chris will offer up his loyalty on a silver platter. Like a dog, he will always follow: coming when called but always refusing to stay. Nothing more than a creature of dumb hunger and uncontrollable rage.
He fucks Tom like they both need it, rough and pounding and stopping for nothing, kissing his nipples, nipping at them until Tom shudders and keens. He leaves marks wherever he can: in places that are surest to bruise. When he loosens Tom’s bonds, Tom immediately throws his arms around him, riding him with his hips bobbing frantically and meeting Chris halfway thrust for thrust. He’s so eager he’s shaking, begging for release, begging for cock, rubbing himself shamelessly across Chris’ chest and smearing his front with drools of precome.
“Fuck,” Tom whines, baring his neck for Chris to bite down on. “Fuck, come in me. Come in me, come on.”
Chris tips Tom’s body forward, spreading his legs by the ankles, and fucks into him once, twice, in strong powerful bursts that sway the mattress. He pumps him full of come and Tom shudders and moans, keeping his legs open for Chris to be able to bend down and lick his arsehole clean.
Chris laps at him hungrily, and Tom grabs him by the hair and jerks his cock in his face until he comes, splattering across the bridge of Chris’ nose with a hoarse shout. He laughs when Chris wipes his face with a corner of the bedsheet.
“Well?” he says later, lighting up a cigarette and rubbing his wrists. He’s sitting naked on the edge of the bed, calm and serene it’s almost terrifying if Chris didn’t see right through him.
But Chris is already sliding on his jacket, adjusting his cufflinks, smoothing out his hair and swiping his tongue over his teeth where he can still taste Tom. He grabs Tom to him once he’s fully dressed, pressing his lips to his ear and feeling around his gape with two fingers before bringing them up to his mouth to taste.
Tom makes a face at this, but doesn’t resist Chris completely when Chris kisses him, dirty and full of tongue. In fact, Tom shakes a little, making a throaty noise that goes straight to Chris’ cock as Chris deepens the kiss.
“It’s a tempting offer,” Chris murmurs, squeezing Tom on the hip. “I’ll let you know by the end of the week.”
“You don’t need a week,” Tom says incredulously, with the kind of confidence Chris has never expected of him. “You know as well as I do what your answer’s going to be.”
“But you’re not asking the right questions,” Chris tells him. “I want a better offer.”
“Of course.” Tom looks at him meaningfully, his face lighting up with a lazy smile. He walks his fingers up Chris’ cheek before cradling it in one hand, bringing them nose to nose, forehead to forehead. He enunciates his words perfectly, putting that expensive education to good use:
“Don’t pretend this isn’t everything you ever wanted, Chris: my father dead, no one looking constantly over your shoulder. And you can have it. All of it.” He pauses to slip his hand along the handle of Chris’ gun, right under Chris’ suit, and smiles when Chris clamps a hand around his wrist, stopping him. “You can have me,” Tom says, standing on his toes to give Chris’ ear a gentle bite, his lips moving to trace the shell, “all you have to do is say yes.”