Page 99 of The Menagerie

The half whine Mal lets out when they finally part nearly breaks Rowan’s entire damn heart, but he can’t let it get to him.

“Mal…,” he whispers, mind reeling and body still tingling from his unexpected orgasm. “Fuck, I can’t…. I’ve wanted to do that since Isawyou. But not—not now. You can’t—you’re not in the right state of mind. Do it again when you’re back to yourself and I’ll kiss you back. IswearI’ll kiss you back.Promise.”

He’s rambling, tripping over his words, but he needs Mal to know—tounderstand—that he’s not rejecting him because he doesn’t want him. He’s rejecting him because he wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye again knowing he’d taken advantage of him in a vulnerable state. As it is, he’s glad he can’t see Mal’s eyes right now, because he doesn’t want to know what he might find staring back at him.

Mal makes a tiny, strangled whimper of protest.

“Need you to tell me you understand, Mal.”

Thankfully, he nods, a sloppy jerking motion of his head but recognizable as an affirmative nonetheless. He lets his body slump forward into Rowan’s chest, arms falling loosely around Rowan’s hips.

Rowan scrunches his eyes shut, cupping the back of Mal’s neck and squeezing gently, fingers stroking over his short, sweaty hair. He takes it as a good sign that Mal isn’t immediately shooting away from him and denying it ever happened, but he knows they’re not out of the woods yet.

He feels Mal start to shake against him, a tiny quivering of his shoulders, but it makes Rowan let out a long, uneven breath. He’s got whiplash from the kiss, the ringing plaguing his ears earlier now louder than a damn clock-tower bell, but right now, his priorities are squarely on Mal. So he rubs his back as gently as his hands will let him and allows the two of them to sit in the quiet until Mal’s breathing evens out and his muscles still.

It’s only then that Rowan shifts his hips down enough to slide out of Mal. And fuck, he’s still mostly hard. Definitely not as soft as he should be with the shock and intensity of his orgasm. The feeling of his come dripping down back onto his cock is hardly helping the matter either.

“Can you stand?” Rowan asks softly.

Mal nods against his shoulder, and Rowan lightly shrugs Mal’s arms away from his hips. With Rowan supporting Mal’s back, they stand, and Rowan walks them the short distance to the bed.

He helps Mal lie down on his back and sets to work unclasping the cuffs from his wrists and thighs. But when he gets to the blindfold, he hesitates.

“Gonna take the blindfold off,” he says, more to himself than Mal.

But Mal nods again, and Rowan slips the mask off slowly, Mal’s eyes still squeezed tightly shut.

Fuck. He wasn’t prepared for thisat all.

He feels stuck amid a swirling mess ofDo you wannas andCan yous andShould Is andHoly shit, holy shit, holy shits in his head, and he doesn’t know what the hell todo.

But then Mal blinks his eyes open, and Rowan’s sucker punched back to the moment.

He looks… God,vulnerable? Shocked? Ambivalent? It’s hard to tell. Like thousands of years of human evolution has completely left Rowan’s brain, and he suddenly doesn’t know how to read another person at all.

Rowan mentally runs through his aftercare checklist.

Unbind… get him comfortable… talk him down… soft touches… hydrate… shower… walk… diner….

He cups Mal’s cheek, the skin heated under his palm, and swipes away a bead of sweat trickling down from his temple.

And he knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help dipping down and brushing his lips against Mal’s damp hairline, lower lip catching a stray droplet of sweat poised to fall.

“Did so good, Mal,” he tells him, voice low and tone—hopefully—soothing. Rowan feels like a broken record with the number of times he’s said that tonight. “Listened and did everything I asked.” He brushes the longer locks of Mal’s hair away from his face. “Asked for whatyouwanted.” He rubs each of Mal’s wrists in turn, though there are no visible marks from the cuffs. Presses another light kiss to the inside of his palms.

It doesn’t linger, barely more than a whisper of a press, but Mal slowly tugs his hands back to drape heavily across his chest.

Right. Despite what’s happened, they’re not there yet. Rowan has risked some small kisses to Mal’s skin in past sessions, mostly when he’s been teasing him, and almost always followed by a hard smack or thrust or bite or pinch orsomethingto dampen it. And tonight there’s been next to nothing to dampen the action. No spanks or slaps or biting words to take away the fact that Mal broke one of his own boundaries and kissed him.

Rowan lies beside him, ignoring the stickiness on his skin and the cramp in his side, and talks him down. Watching the rise and fall of his chest and his eyes moving gently behind his eyelids. It feels exactly like it did after the gangbang. Like he’s talking with little thought behind the words, despite the fact that he’s done it multiple times now and knows more or less what to say.

Feels like he’s back at square one.

But he keeps going, making sure Mal knows that he did so well for him. That he looked gorgeous. Felt even better. He doesn’t mention the kiss. Stays far,faraway from that particular subject for now.

It normally takes only a few minutes for Mal’s breathing to fully even out, but this time it feels like it takes ages. Of course Rowan would give him as long as he needed. Even if their four-hour booking ended, he’d find a way to make sure Mal was okay before they left the club. But he can’t deny that he’s worried, a sharp thorn of concern wriggling into his side and worming its way up into his chest.

Eventually Mal sits up, elbows resting on his knees and staring straight ahead.

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