Chapter 6: Owned
Roman’s grip on his wrists tightened, a warning bite of pressure against bone. He didn’t push Reese away. He held him there, frozen in the humid night, the city lights reflecting in his unblinking eyes. The bandage on his neck was a white flag of violated territory.
Reese didn’t wait for permission. He leaned in again, his mouth a breath away from Roman’s skin, just beside the gauze. His voice was a low, shattered murmur lost in the rustle of distant palms. “I heard the stories before I ever saw you. The consolidation of the Docks. The warehouse with the cement floors. How you handled the Bertinelli problem. They talked about you like you were a force of nature. A disaster that paid well. I wanted to see the architect.”
He let his lips brush the unmarked skin, a whisper of contact. “Then I did see you. At the auction for the Korean imports. You were in a charcoal grey suit. You didn’t say a word for forty minutes. Just watched. And when you finally named a figure, the room… settled. Like a law had been passed.” Reese’s laugh was a hollow puff of air against Roman’s neck. “I didn’t want a job. I didn’t want money. I just wanted you to look at me. Just once. To have that focus land on me, for a second. However you wanted to give it. A nod. A threat. A bullet. It all had the same weight.”
He kissed the spot then, properly. Not tender. Not romantic. It was an assertion, a claim staked on the only part of Roman Sionis that seemed momentarily vulnerable. A tactile echo of his words.
He started to pull back, to see the effect, but Roman moved.
The hands that had been imprisoning his wrists released and shot up, one tangling in the short, sweat-damp hair at the back of Reese’s head, the other splaying across the small of his back. The pull was absolute, a violent reeling in. Reese collided with him, a stunned exhale forced from his lungs, his injured side flaring in protest. Roman’s face was buried against his shoulder for a second, a mask of fine wool and heat, and Reese could feel the rapid, angry hammer of his heart.
Then Roman’s head lifted. His eyes were black in the terrace gloom, all pupil. “You’re a fool,” he rasped, but there was no heat in it, just a stark, bewildered conviction. “You built an altar out of rumor and shadow.”
“I’m looking at the god right now,” Reese whispered, his hands coming up to clutch at Roman’s sleeves, holding on as the world tilted. “And he’s bleeding.”
Something in that—the blunt acknowledgment of his injury, the sheer, stupid reverence—seemed to snap a final thread of Roman’s control. The hand on Reese’s back slid lower, gripping the swell of his ass through the soft sweatpants, pulling him flush. Reese felt the hard line of Roman’s arousal through their clothes, an aggressive, undeniable pressure. Roman ground against him, a slow, deliberate roll of his hips that was less an invitation and more a demonstration of ownership, a physical punctuation to the conversation. A low, rough sound escaped him, part pain from his neck, part something else entirely.
“This is what you wanted?” Roman’s voice was a blade of gravel against Reese’s ear. “This attention? It’s not a reward. It’s a consumption. You understand that? I will use you up.”
Reese arched into the friction, a sharp gasp catching in his throat. The pain from his wounds melted into a different, brighter ache. “You already are,” he managed, his words slurring with a dizzying cocktail of agony and want. “Started the minute I walked into The Panic Room looking like a ghost. Probably before.”
Roman’s cruel smile returned, a familiar shape in the dark. He leaned in, his mouth hovering a millimeter from Reese’s. “The ghost is gone. I dressed him in gold and sent him to war. He’s mine now.” He didn’t kiss him. He held the excruciating distance, letting the promise of it hang between them, mixed with the scent of his cologne and his blood. “Say it.”
Reese didn’t hesitate. The words were true, the simplest truth he’d ever spoken. “I’m yours.”
For three more heartbeats, Roman held the pose, a statue of withheld violence and desire. Then he moved, erupting into motion. He half-dragged, half-carried Reese backwards, away from the parapet, through the open glass doors. Reese stumbled, his legs uncooperative, but Roman’s hold was unbreakable. They crossed the vast, darkened living space, a trail of disrupted stillness in their wake.
Roman didn’t take him to a bedroom. He shoved him against the cold, steel frame of the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city. The immense view of Gotham sprawled behind Reese, a glittering, indifferent witness. Roman pinned him there, his body a solid, heated bar against Reese’s back, one hand firm on his hip, the other fisted again in his hair, tilting his head to expose his throat to the glass.
“Look at it,” Roman commanded, his breath hot on Reese’s ear. “That’s the only thing I love. That chaos. That machine. And you want a place in that?”
Reese’s eyes focused on the skyline, on the endless grids of light and shadow. “I want the place next to you while you take it.”
The hand on his hip yanked the waistband of the sweatpants down. The cold of the window kissed the bare skin of his ass. Roman’s touch was not gentle. It was probing, assessing, devoid of tenderness. It was the practical, brutal claim of a man taking inventory of a new asset. Reese pressed his forehead against the cool glass, a shudder wracking his frame. It wasn’t fear. It was a profound, terrifying surrender to gravity.
Roman spun him around. His expression was fractured, the impeccable mask gone, replaced by something raw and hungry and perilously close to confused. He caged Reese against the window, his hands braced on either side of his head. The bandage on his neck seemed to glow.
“This changes nothing,” Roman stated, as if convincing himself. “You are still a tool. A favored one, perhaps. But a tool.”
“I know,” Reese said, and brought his own hands up to frame Roman’s face. The gesture was shockingly intimate, a deliberate softening against all the hardness. He brushed his thumb over the edge of the bandage. “The tool just wants to be useful. In every way you need.”
That was the final key. Roman’s resistance, already brittle, shattered. He crushed his mouth to Reese’s.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a collision, a transfer of authority. It tasted of bourbon and copper and a furious, yawning need. Reese yielded to it, opening for him, letting Roman dominate the space between them, the fight, the fear, the years of careful isolation dissolving into that single, punishing point of contact. Roman’s hands left the glass and were everywhere—pulling at the sweatpants, mapping the bandages on Reese’s ribs with a shocking, fleeting care before gripping his thighs and lifting him.
Reese wrapped his legs around Roman’s waist, a jolt of pain-white lightning up his side. He swallowed the sound, turning it into a sharper bite on Roman’s lower lip. Roman carried him away from the window, dropping him onto the vast, unforgiving surface of a polished steel dining table. The cold metal was a shock against his bare skin.
What followed was not lovemaking. It was a possession, conducted with a ruthless, focused intensity. There was little preamble, no gentle coaxing. Roman was blunt, almost clinical in his preparations, his fingers quick and efficient. When he entered him, it was with a single, relentless push that stripped the air from Reese’s lungs. Reese cried out, his back arching off the cold steel, his fingers scrambling for purchase and finding none.
Roman stilled, buried deep, his body trembling with the effort of his own restraint. Sweat beaded along his hairline. In the dim light, his face was a stark monument of conflicting impulses—rage, desire, and a dawning, unsettling recognition.
“Well?” Roman’s voice was wrecked. “Is this the attention you coveted?”
Reese, breathless, pain and pleasure fused into an indistinguishable fire, looked up at him. He smiled, a real one, bright and broken and triumphant. “Yeah,” he panted. “It is. Now move.”
A gruff, approving sound escaped Roman. He obeyed.
The rhythm he set was punishing, a direct reflection of the violence hours before. Each thrust was a re-enactment of a battle won, a reassertion of control in a world that had dared to breach his walls. The table shuddered and squeaked against the floor. Reese held on, his nails digging into Roman’s forearms, meeting every slam with a roll of his hips, transforming the assault into a collaboration.
He whispered into the space between them, fragments against Roman’s throat. “I’m here… I’m yours… See me…”
Roman’s only answer was a tighter grip, a harder drive, a low, continuous growl that seemed to vibrate from his core. His bandage had begun to seep a faint, rosy colour. He was bleeding again, and the sight of it, the smell of it in the air, sent Reese spiraling closer to the edge.
It was Reese who came first, with a choked, silent scream, his body seizing as waves of brutal release tore through him, blurring the lines between pleasure and obliteration. The intensity of it seemed to trigger Roman’s own end. With a final, deep thrust that held Reese impaled, Roman followed, his head falling forward onto Reese’s shoulder, a strangled curse vibrating against his skin.
The silence that descended was absolute, save for their ragged, syncopated breathing. The city hummed outside, unchanged.
Roman did not collapse. He slowly, carefully, withdrew. He stood over Reese, who lay splayed and wrecked on the table, the cool metal slowly warming beneath him. Roman rearranged his own clothing with quick, precise movements, a king redressing after a necessary but messy bit of business. His face was already recomposing itself, the mask sliding back into place, though his eyes remained dark and unreadable.
He looked down at Reese, taking in the sweaty hair, the heaving chest, the fresh, vivid bruises already blooming on his hips, the old bandages holding. He reached out and traced the line of Reese’s jaw with a single, bloodstained finger.
“Clean yourself up,” he said, his voice restored to its usual dry command, though slightly hoarse. “The south guest bath has supplies. There are clothes in the closet.”
He turned and walked away, heading for the hall that led to his private study. At the archway, he paused without looking back. “Don’t linger. We have a response to coordinate for Maroni. Your function,” he said, the word hanging heavy in the air, “begins in earnest at dawn.”
Then he was gone, his footsteps fading on the polished concrete.
Reese lay on the table, staring at the ceiling. His body felt both ravaged and remade. He could still feel the ghost of Roman inside him, the sting of the glass window on his back, the crushing weight of that focus. A slow, shaky smile spread across his face. It had cost him everything—his autonomy, his safety, his old, quiet life of calculated risks.
He had gotten exactly what he wanted.