“What’s already there,” Hayes repeated.
Ren cocked his head, a wry look on his face. “You think I would’ve put up with your broody ass for so long if I didn’t already love you?”
Hayes blinked, the words like a cymbal crash in his head.
“I mean, goddamn. I’ve had to deal with you for all these years, pine and write you letters while you were in prison, accept your questionable taste in music, share women with you and not touch you, too. And I’ve gotten absolutely no fringe benefits from all these selfless acts. Not even a hand job every now and then. You suck as a boyfriend. Just so you know.”
Hayes stared at him, the words hitting him like a cattle prod. “You love me?”
Ren crossed his arms over his chest, brashness there but also a hint of vulnerability. “What? You don’t love me back, asshole?”
“Well, yeah, but . . .” The words hung in the silence. They’d slipped out easily, without effort or angst. Hayes had never told anyone except his family that he loved them, but he felt the simple truth of the statement like it was part of his DNA.
“But?” Ren lifted a brow.
He shook his head, the mild buzz from the alcohol doing nothing to soften the impact of this revelation, and scrunched his brows. “But nothing, I guess.”
Ren grinned. “Excellent. So you love me.”
“I . . . Yes.” Yes. “I love you.”
Something flickered in Ren’s eyes, relief maybe, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. He leaned forward and braced his hand on the counter, a smug look of challenge replacing the tender one. “Good. Now, what are you going to do about it?”
Hayes stared at him, and it was like a curtain parting, a new world revealing itself. They loved each other. Had for a long time. He could have this. Without guilt. He could touch Ren. They both wanted this.
That knowledge felt like chains falling away from his limbs, that dragging pull of weight lifting from his chest.
He rose from the stool, a jolt of something powerful and freeing moving through his veins, and reached out to grab the waistband of Ren’s pajama bottoms. Ren’s fists clenched, like he was fighting hard to keep himself still, fighting not to take over. Hayes dragged him closer, the warmth of his skin radiating against Hayes’s knuckles. “I’m going to take you to bed.”
Desire darkened Ren’s gaze. “You sure you remember how to do this, Master Hayes?”
The sound of the old name rang through Hayes, rousing long-dormant things. It’d been a hell of a long time since anyone had called him that, and Ren’s roughened voice saying it was like a physical stroke to Hayes’s cock. But he wasn’t go
ing to require that formality from Ren. The last thing he wanted to do tonight was trigger bad memories for him. “You don’t have to submit. I just want you.”
Ren swallowed hard and held the eye contact. “Maybe I need it as much as you do. Maybe you’re not the only one who’s been living a little scared.”
Hayes inhaled through his nose, trying to bank the need fighting to overtake him. Four years. It’d been four years since he’d had anyone in his bed, since he’d touched or been touched. Four years since anyone but Lenore had kneeled for him. And over a decade since he’d first wanted Ren that way. His voice was strained when it came out. “What’s your safe word?”
Ren’s gaze flicked away. “I never had one.”
The admission twisted Hayes’s gut. That fucking sociopath hadn’t given Ren any kind of reprieve. A sixteen-year-old kid trapped with someone with no mercy, no heart. “Well, you’ll always have one with me. Pick one.”
“Black.”
“Good.” His hand was still gripping Ren’s waistband and he let his fingers slip below the elastic. It didn’t take long for him to reach what he was looking for. He brushed his knuckles over the damp head of Ren’s cock, earning a hissed breath from Ren and an answering punch of desire in his own gut. Hayes groaned. It took everything he had to reel in the impulse to yank Ren’s pants off right there, turn him around and bend him over the counter. The primal ache to just fuck and fuck until they were both raw and spent was like a beast snarling at the gates. The years of deprivation pressed at his will, those years in a cage urging him to act like a starved animal. But he wouldn’t rush this. He wouldn’t fuck this up. “Take me to bed, Muroya. We’ve both waited long enough and I don’t want to do it on the kitchen floor. At least not this time.”
Ren smiled this smile of dirty intent and grabbed him by the shirt. “Let’s go, Master Hayes.”
They were quiet as they made their way down the hallway, but Hayes was sure his pounding heart could be heard down the block. Ren had asked if he still remembered how to do this. He sure as hell hoped so.
Ren bumped open the door to Hayes’s bedroom with his elbow. Stacks of books lined the side of the bed and a big-screen TV dominated the other wall. Other than that, Hayes hadn’t put out any personal things. All his stuff was still in boxes in storage. It was like he’d re-created an upgraded version of his prison cell. Bland. Empty. Temporary.
Depressing as shit.
“Not my room,” Hayes said.
Ren didn’t question. He just backed up and went farther down the hallway until they reached his room. Unlike Hayes’s bedroom, Ren’s looked lived-in, comfortable. Modern pen-and-ink artwork on dark blue walls, a king-sized bed with mussed white sheets, clothes thrown over a leather bench by the window, and no television to distract. Ren had always believed that bedrooms were for sleeping and fucking, not electronics.