If anyone else were doing this to him, I wouldn’t have hesitated to defend him. But I can’t defend him against himself.
I see him stiffen, the belt falling to his side.
“You aren’t supposed to be in here.” His voice is rough, threaded with pain.
“You didn’t lock the door.” Part of me wants to run away from this, from whatever tortured thing Max is facing here, this new secret about him that I hadn’t been privy to.
But I won’t leave him here to face it alone. No matter how frightening I find this side of him, or how ill-equipped I feel to deal with it, I won’t leave him.
“A closed door should be enough.”
“Max.” I step forward, my fists still at my sides. “What are you doing?Whyare you doing this?”
“It’s none of your business.” He still hasn’t turned to face me, but the hand not holding the belt is clutching the side of the desk. “This isn’t about you, Sasha.”
“Isn’t it?” I demand, taking another step forward. “You’re telling me that it’s just a coincidence that after what happened in the pool today, you’re in here…hurting yourself? I’m supposed to believe that? You got upset when you thought I said you were being ridiculous–well, now you’re treating me like a fool.”
“You weren’t supposed to see this.” Every muscle in Max’s body is tensed, his back bunched with it. “Sasha–”
The pleading in his voice is for me to leave–I know it is. To pretend like I never saw any of this. But Ican’t. Maybe there isn’t a future for Max and me–maybe we’ll never spend another night together again like the one before we left New York–but I can’t stand by and pretend I didn’t just walk in on something awful.
“Max, please tell me what’s going on. As–as your friend, if nothing else. It goes both ways.” I take a deep breath, forcing my voice to come out evenly, not to break and crack with the fear and confusion I’m feeling. “I want to be there for you too.Iwant to protectyou.”
“I know.” His voice is ragged, breathless. He drops the belt to the floor, both of his hands squeezing the desk suddenly as if he would crush the side of it, his back and biceps flexing in a way I’ve never seen before–a way that would be intensely arousing if not for the seriousness of the moment.
Max turns suddenly to face me, his expression dark. “I lost control of myself today.” There’s a ripple of disgust in his words, but I know it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with howhefeels. I can’t make this about myself if I want to help him, no matter how quickly my mind jumps to react, to sayhow the fuck is it supposed to make me feel, that you fingering me in the pool makes you feel like you need to beat yourself afterward?
“What I did to you today–” The words tear out of him, sharp and jagged, as if he’s forcing every single one out. “It’s a sin, Sasha. All of it is–touching you, touching myself, the urges and needs that I’ve kept buried for years that sprang up when I met you. I hadn’t so much as jerked off since I left for seminary, and I didn’t miss it all that much, to be honest. I just pushed all that out of my head. When the desires did spring up, when I had wet dreams, when I found myself lusting–this is how I took care of it. I punished myself for it, tried to teach my body with pain to forget about pleasure.”
I feel my eyes go wide as I stare at him. “That’s some fucked-up medieval shit,” I whisper, feeling vaguely sick at the idea of Max hurting himself, punishing himself for something as natural as desire. “I’m not judging you. I just–”
“It’s fine if you are.” Max shakes his head, his hands still gripping the desk as he leans back against it. It’s hard not to think about how gorgeous I find him even now, his muscled, dark-haired chest on display for my hungry eyes, that same dark hair running down to his carved abs, trailing into the top of his black pants. His arms are still flexed, and I want to run my hands over every inch of him, to fall to my knees and take him in my mouth and soothe away all the pain. “I want you to understand, Sasha–when I say that the desire hit me hardest after I met you, that the need to do this to chase it away became more necessary–I’m not blaming you. These are my failings, my inability to control my lust, to face temptation, and my weakness. I’ve broken my vows, again and again, fallen to my own desires, and I know it’s wrong of me–”
“No!” I shake my head, interrupting him with one sharp, snapped word that makes him jerk his head up, staring at me as if he’s never seen me before. I take another step closer and then another, until I could touch him if I reached out, although I don’t. I stare up at him fiercely, hands still bunched at my sides, the sudden anger radiating off of me in waves. “Stop it, Max. Stop saying you’re wrong for wanting, that you deserve to be punished, that you’ve doneanythingwrong.”
“I–”
“No!” I shake my head. “What was done to me in that warehouse, in Alexei’s safe house?Thatwas a sin. The men who hurt me, who raped me and beat me and violated me?Theywere wrong. The men and women at that party who would have bought me and Sofia and Caterina and the children?Theywere evil.”
I can feel tears welling up in my eyes as I stare up at him, breathless and almost shaking with the force of the emotion rising in me. “What we have together, Max–what we want from each other, that’s not a sin. It’s something good and beautiful. I don’t care what you were brainwashed into believing about sex, but ifIcan believe it after having it warped into something so horrible for me, then you can too. Us wanting each other isn’t wrong. The way you touch me isn’t a sin. And if it is–”
Slowly, I step forward again, until I’m very close to him, close enough to feel the heat radiating off of his body. I look up at his hazel eyes, his handsome, chiseled face, and I feel the ache of so much love in my chest, so much need to make Max see himself as I do, even if nothing between us ever changes.
“If this is a sin,” I whisper softly, placing my hands gently on his chest as I go up on my toes. “Then I’d happily burn for it.”
I feel him stiffen when my mouth brushes over his, feel the flex of his muscles as he holds himself back from reaching for me. He groans, a painful sound as his lips graze against mine, and then he twists his head away, refusing to look at me.
“You weren’t there.” The words come out so low that I’m not sure I heard him correctly, and I frown, pulling back a little.
“What?”
His head swings back to face me, his brows knitted together in an angry expression as he pushes himself away from the desk, dislodging me from my spot nearly pressed against him and making me stumble back. “You weren’t there!”
Max is looking at me now, a darkness in his hazel eyes that I’ve never seen before. “It’s good that you weren’t. But you didn’t see what I did to Alexei, what I helped Viktor and Niall and Liam do. You didn’t know that Ienjoyed it.”
The word comes out like a vicious hiss, his eyes narrowed. “I fucking enjoyed it, Sasha. I thought of his hand hitting you, hurting you, and I cut his fingers off and enjoyed his screams. Ibelieved, more fiercely than I’ve ever believed anything in my whole life, that he deserved what we did to him. It wasn’t a hardship to cut him to pieces, not after what he did.”
Max shudders, his hands clenching at his sides. “You don’t understand, Sasha–the things I want sometimes, the things I would do to you if I could. I look at you sometimes, and I want to grab you, fuckingdevouryou, fuck you hard and rough until you scream. And how can I want that, after what was done to you? After the way others have handled you? How can I be the kind of man who wants to make you beg for me and scream for me?”