The pressure I put on the nape of his neck is so firm that I can feel his racing pulse under the skin.
Maybe there is only pleasure for him at the exact limit between pain and surrender.
I intensify my grip, forcing his face against the cold concrete, and the feeling of the heat of his body in contrast to the cold of the wall is erotic.
“That’s it,” he moans, his forehead now pressed against the cold wall. “Fuck, show me I was wrong...”
I should just drop everything, go to the bathroom to cool my head, look at myself in the mirror, and say that this means nothing, that it’s just about power, about keeping the variables under control. But when I realize it, my fingers are squeezing his hip with enough force to leave marks. I pull his waist back, sticking our bodies together. He’s hard, of course he is. He laughs again when he realizes I am, too.
“Fuck,” he says, panting, “I thought it was just psychological torture.”
“You have no idea what torture is,” I retort.
I want him to break. I want him to beg. I want to hear the exact sound of the moment when Griffin stops pretending he doesn’t need anyone. But he’s stubborn—incurablystubborn.
I let go of his nape, suddenly. I hear the pull of frustration in his breath. He turns his face with effort, attentive, waiting for the next move.
I face Griffin—even from behind, he manages to look like he’s the one in control. There’s something in his arrogance that magnetizes everything around him. A crisis magnet.
I pull the waistband of his pants, rip the button, and expose him without ceremony. His body reacts immediately, his skin marked with bruises, his muscles tense.
It’s not enough. It won’t be enough as long as he keeps challenging me with that glint in his eyes.
“I want you to remember, for days, who owns you.”
The defiance wavers, but he doesn’t say a word to stop me.
I don’t waste time. I open my own belt, hold Griffin by the hips, fix his body against the wall, and position myself behind him.
I enter him at once, dry, with no warning. He groans a painful sound, and I feel the reverberation vibrating in my ribs, his body protesting, but he doesn’t say stop. He never says stop.
“Alexei,” he whispers, unrecognizable.
“I know.” I lean into his ear. He doesn’t pull away. “Shut up and take it.”
I start to move.
The first movement is slow. The friction is dry, relentless. Griffin lets out a sharp hiss, and the rawness of the contact is like fire on raw flesh. I hold him with both hands, fingers digging deep grooves into his hips, my nails almost tearing his skin.
“Fuck,” he pants, and the timbre of his voice hits me in the center of my chest. The name he carves into the concrete—“Alexei”—is an involuntary surrender.
“I told you to shut up.” My voice is strange even to me, distorted, hoarse.
He tries to push back, to press his hips against mine, to force a rhythm. I hold back.
I pin Griffin in place, so still that I feel the tremor of frustration growing from his bones to the outside of his skin. He is vibrating under my hands, but he doesn’t risk disobeying for real.
I advance again, deeper. His whole body curves in a way that makes me lose my reason.
“Fuck...” he grunts, his face against the wall, and tries to look at me over his shoulder with his face red. “No one’s ever fucked me like this.”
“No one would ever dare.” I pull him back with more force, burying myself in him to the hilt, and the groan he gives is muffled against the wall. He molds himself to what I impose. He breaks. He remakes himself.
He laughs, a twisted sound of pleasure and pain. “Fucking the Malakov’s Fighting Dog dry? That’s it, Alex...”
I establish a rhythm. Each thrust is a punishment for his recklessness: the restaurant, the blood, the insults, the threat at the car door. Griffin translates everything into moans, curses, irregular breaths.
He scratches the wall, leaving marks that will stay for days. “Faster,” he asks, but it’s not an order. His voice no longer has arrogance, only raw need. “Please. You’re killing me.”