I look up at Abel. “You want me to suck your cock, or you want to sit here and bitch about the past?” A calculated prod.
He steps forward, backing me against the mattress. “You know, there was a time when I would have given you anything.”
My throat goes dry. “There was a time when I would have done the same.”
“It won’t be that way again.” There’s no pain in his voice. He’s simply stating a fact. No matter what happens in the future, we can never go back.
I could have told him the words didn’t need to be said. I know better than anyone that our friendship, the partnership that was going to change the entire faction for the better, burned to ash alongside the Paine house. I lick my lips. “I can be just as much an asset as Harlow.”
“You want the same deal I gave her? Partnership and open communication? You have to earn that shit, Eli, and you haven’t even started.” Abel gives his cock another stroke and taps my bottom lip with the wide head. “Put your money where your mouth is. You want to play nice? Stop trying to provoke a response, and suck me off.”
I drag my tongue over the head of his cock and suck him down. Down and down and down, until his width and length border on pain, until my lips meet his base. It’s a fight not to gag, to muscle down my body’s instinctive panic at having lost the ability to breathe through my mouth.
Abel barely gives me a chance to adjust. He brackets my head with those big hands and starts fucking my mouth. He’s not holding me tightly, certainly not tightly enough that I couldn’t move away if I wanted to, but there’s no denying that he’s the one driving the pace. Slowly and then faster, harder. I don’t mean to grab his hips. I simply need to hold on to something to keep from impaling myself farther on his cock.
But then it’s like my hands take on a life of their own. They delve into his jeans, pushing them down a few more inches so I can touch his skin. So I can feel the powerful flex of his muscles as he drives into my mouth.
I make the mistake of staring up at him, and the tormented look on Abel’s face is so fucking sexy, I almost come in my pants.
He picks up his pace, slamming into my mouth. I’m a receptacle for his rage, and I take it willingly. It’s not penance. If I have guilt about how things played out between us, it doesn’t matter. My feelings never mattered when it came to what’s best for this faction. Not when it came to Abel. Not even when it comes to Harlow.
He curses and shudders, orgasming into my mouth. I drink him down without a second thought, holding his gaze. It feels so devastatingly intimate, and the sensation only gets worse as he eases out of my mouth and roughly tucks his cock back into his pants. Abel looks away. “That was serviceable.”
I use my thumb to wipe the edge of my mouth. My jaw aches like a motherfucker, but I’ll be damned before I show any outward indication of it. “You came pretty fast for just ‘serviceable.’”
He shoots me an unreadable look. “We’re going to Old Town this afternoon. If you can act right, you can come along. Prove you really want what’s best for the faction like you always used to claim.”
“Not wasting any time, I see.” The quickest way to win over the faction is to win over the families in Old Town. They’re the backbone that runs through our section of the city. I wish I could say they were loyal enough that they wouldn’t take a new Paine family rule without a fight, but if I’ve learned anything in the last eight years, it’s that this faction is filled with pragmatic people. A long as Abel doesn’t do anything to fuck with their day-to-day life, they won’t challenge him. Three years under my father, and then five under me, and they’ll just keep going on like they were before he and his brothers showed back up again.
I don’t know what about that irritates me. It’s exactly what happened after we staged our coup. My father sat down the families of Old Town and gave them his word that they could continue to operate as before. And that was that.
Abel holds out his hand. I take it on instinct. It’s not until he pulls me easily to my feet that I realize I should have slapped it away and stood on my own. Nearly a fucking decade apart and old habits still haven’t completely gone away.
He raises a brow. “There’s no reason to waste time. The sooner everyone realizes we’re here to stay, the sooner things get into their new normal.”