Sure, over the year or so they’d been here, living in this quasi-normal domesticity on the Isle of Wight, they’d had the occasional fast and filthy. Moments when the control snapped, and Aaron clawed at him ‘cause he thought the world was ending and the only thing that could ground him was skin, sweat, and cock.Kenny’scock specifically. He’d climbed onto Kenny’s lap before the man could protest, rutted through layers of clothes, dragging feral lips along his throat, yanking his hair, begging without saying a single bloody word. And Kenny, when he read him right, let it happen.
Because that was the point.
It wasn’t about surrender, not in those moments.
It was aboutrescue.
Intercepting whatever spiral Aaron was mid-fall through and giving him something solid to hold onto. Something real and unfiltered. Kenny didn’t give in because he lost control in those moments. Oh no. He gave in because hesawAaron and knew when he needed rough over ritual.
So on those occasions, Kenny had unzipped himself,pulled Aaron close, and fucked him hard. Right there. On that sofa there, the one in front of the roaring open fire. Curtains wide open, no nets, anyone could’ve walked by on their way to the patch of the beach that was a dog walker’s heaven.
Theyhad been hot fucks.
But more than that…they were hislifeline.
They’d done it in the kitchen a few times, too. Kenny mid-stir of some sad bastard dinner and Aaron was antsy and needy. He’d ground himself over the counter, give a sultry dance or two to the classics being played on the jukebox, like the one that was playing right then, Peggy Sue’sFever, and Aaron would whisper filth until Kenny shoved him over the worktop and gave him a stuffing with the oven timer still ticking.
And once—fuck, yeah—once Aaron had crawled under Kenny’s desk and sucked him off while he marked some dead-eyed student’s half-arsed essay on Erikson’s psychosocial stages, Kenny’s red pen trembling with every bob of Aaron’s head.
But see, those weren’t the norm.
They were lapses. Cracks in Kenny’s carefully constructed control. Rare enough to be treasured. Dangerous enough to be addictive. Because most of the time, Kenny made him wait. Made him want. And the fucker made him beg.
Fuck, he was so fucking horny right now.
He shoved the forms aside and clicked his pen closed. More for dramatic effect than actual productivity. Chaos, ever the loyal golden retriever who left his side even less than Kenny did, huffed at his feet, reshuffled himself, then promptly fell back to sleep. Aaron glanced up to Kenny again, leaning against the counter mid-phone call, all calm and businesslike, talking rotas and lecture prepunbothered that he was dismantling Aaron’s will to function.
And that fucking hand.
Not the one holding the phone to his ear. The other one. Resting there. Fingers long and elegant, tapping the rim of his coffee mug. Those fingers had beeninsidehim. Knuckle-deep, curling slow, ruthless. Stroking that spot again and again until Aaron was sobbing, tears spilling down his cheeks, begging for more, for anything, foreverything. Until he didn’t know where the pain ended and the praise began.
And now, over the next few days, those same fingers would trace a languid, ruinous path across Aaron’s body as part of this sadistic little edging routine Kenny had him trapped in.
Aaron knew the order. Had memorised it.
He’d counted them. Those chess moves. Subtle touches. Every place Kenny touched him during this gradual, exquisite torture. As if it was science. A bloody forensic exercise.
Fifteen. At least.
His inner wrist, where he now had a new tattoo. A Scorpio glyph inked in fine black lines curling into a barbed tail with the feint outline of a moth inked above the curve. It was a quiet nod to the part of him that still chased the light even when it burned. Kenny liked to press his thumb there and say, “Steady.”
The notch at his collarbone, where praise turned to punishment.
The back of his knees. Who even knew?
His ankles. Psychosomatic now; a single stroke and Aaron twitched as if shocked.
The soft indent at the base of his spine.
His ears, where Kenny whispered filth in that calm, clipped tone of his, and Aaron would melt.
The arch of his foot.Fucking hell.
The underside of his cock. Naturally.
His hipbones. Bitten, not kissed.
His throat. His mouth. His scalp. The curve of his jaw. The insides of his arms. And right beneath his navel where Kenny sometimes rested a hand and waited.