Chapter 8: Housewarming
The keys were heavy in Aaron’s hand, a dull brass weight. He turned the new deadbolt—a solid thunk that resonated through the empty hallway. Their hallway. The late afternoon light slanted across bare hardwood floors, painting long, clean rectangles of gold. The house smelled of fresh paint, pine sol, and the faint, dry whisper of emptiness.
Zack dropped his duffel bag on the floor with a thud that echoed. He stood in the center of the living room, hands on his hips, surveying the space. No furniture, no curtains, just clean lines and potential. “Place fucking echoes,” he said, his voice bouncing off the walls.
“It’s ours,” Aaron said softly, the words feeling foreign and monumental. The bank loan, the frantic week of viewings, the offer, the closing—it had been a blur. Now, they were standing inside it. A three-bedroom bungalow on a quiet street. One car garage. A backyard with an oak tree. It was normal. It was everything he’d said he wanted.
Zack turned to look at him. In the stark, empty light, his expression was unreadable. “You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
Zack moved then, not with his usual languid prowl, but with a direct, purposeful stride. He crossed the space between them in a few steps, his boots loud on the bare floor. He didn’t kiss him. He grabbed the front of Aaron’s shirt and shoved him backward, through the open archway, into the master bedroom.
Aaron’s back hit the wall beside the window with a force that knocked the air from his lungs. The cool, smooth paint was a shock against his skin through his thin t-shirt. Zack’s body pinned him there, a solid line of heat and muscle.
“First rule of our house,” Zack growled, his mouth against Aaron’s ear. His breath was hot. “I fuck you in every room before the furniture arrives. Claim it. Make the ghosts fucking nervous.”
Before Aaron could process the words, Zack’s teeth sank into the side of his neck, not a love bite but a sharp, claiming puncture. Aaron cried out, a short, sharp sound that did indeed echo in the empty room. At the same time, Zack’s hands went to his jeans, wrenching the button open, yanking the zipper down with a violent rasp. He didn’t bother pushing them down. He just shoved his hand inside, past the waistband of Aaron’s boxers, his calloused fingers rough against his skin.
Aaron gasped, bucking against the wall. “Zack—wait—”
“No waiting.” Zack’s voice was pure gravel. He spit into his own palm, the sound obscenely wet in the quiet room. Then his hand was back, two fingers, slick and insistent, pushing against him. There was no preparation, no gentleness. Zack spit again, directly this time, the cool wetness a shocking contrast before the blunt pressure returned.
“Fuck!” Aaron shouted as Zack’s fingers breached him, shoving in deep without warning. The stretch burned, a dry, tearing friction barely eased by the spit. It was a violation, purposeful and crude. Zack scissored his fingers, a brutal, quick stretch, his other hand clamping over Aaron’s mouth to stifle his yell.
“You hear that?” Zack whispered, his fingers working inside him. “That’s the sound of this room being mine. Of you being mine in it.” He removed his hand from Aaron’s mouth only to bite down on his collarbone, right at the base of his throat, a deep, possessive clamp of teeth that promised a bruise.
Pain and overwhelming arousal twisted together in Aaron’s gut. He was hard, achingly so, trapped in his half-open jeans. The emptiness of the house, the golden dusk light, the sheer audacity of it—it was terrifyingly exciting. This was the “life” Zack had promised. Raw, immediate, and unconcerned with comfort.
Zack withdrew his fingers. Aaron heard the clink of his belt buckle, the rustle of denim being shoved down. He expected more spit, more roughness. Instead, Zack just turned him around, face first against the wall. The paint was cool on his cheek. He heard Zack spit into his palm again, the slick sound of him stroking himself.
Then the broad, hot head of Zack’s cock was pressing against him, relentless. “This wall’s gonna have your handprints on it,” Zack muttered, and he pushed.
The entry was a searing, white-hot stretch. Aaron screamed, the sound echoing off the bare walls and high ceiling. It was too dry, too fast, too much. His nails scraped against the paint. Zack didn’t stop. He pushed until he was fully sheathed, his hips flush against Aaron’s ass, his body a furnace against his back. He held there, buried to the hilt, letting Aaron feel every burning inch.
“You feel that?” Zack’s voice was strained with the effort of holding still. “You feel where you are? This is our bedroom. This is where you’re gonna wake up every morning with me already inside you.”
He began to move. Short, deep, punishing thrusts that forced choked gasps from Aaron’s throat. The friction was intense, a maddening blend of pain and direct, brutal stimulation. Each drive hit his prostate with a jolt that sparked up his spine. Zack’s hands gripped his hips, fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks, using him for leverage.
The room filled with the sounds of them: skin slapping against skin, Zack’s grunts, Aaron’s ragged breaths, the creak of the floorboards under their weight. Aaron’s cock, trapped and neglected, leaked onto the pale hardwood floor beneath them. The setting sun threw their frantic, joined shadow against the opposite wall—a grotesque, moving silhouette of the act.
“Tell me whose room this is,” Zack demanded, his pace increasing, becoming erratic, harder.
“Yours,” Aaron panted.
“Who do you belong to in it?”
“You! Fuck, Zack, you!”
Zack’s rhythm broke. He fucked into him with a series of frantic, deep strokes, his control shattering. With a final, guttural roar that seemed to shake the windowpane, he came, pulsing deep inside. The hot flood was a shocking, intimate claim. He collapsed forward, his weight pinning Aaron to the wall, both of them slick with sweat, breathing in ragged unison.
After a long minute, Zack pulled out. Aaron winced, his body feeling used and hollow. He turned, sagging against the wall. Zack stood before him, jeans around his thighs, his cock still glistening. His eyes were dark, satiated, but with a lingering edge of that restless energy.
He looked at Aaron’s flushed face, his swollen lips, the vivid bite mark on his collarbone. He looked down at Aaron’s hard, dripping cock. A slow, possessive smile touched his lips.
“On your knees,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Clean it up. My mess is your mess. That’s the second rule.”
Aaron’s legs trembled as he slid down the wall. The hardwood was unforgiving on his knees. He didn’t hesitate. He took Zack into his mouth, tasting the sharp, salty evidence of their coupling. He licked and sucked until Zack was clean, until he softened in his mouth. It was an act of submission that felt, perversely, like an act of ownership. Of acceptance.
When he was done, he stayed there, forehead resting against Zack’s thigh. Zack’s hand came down, rough fingers carding through his hair, not quite a caress, but an acknowledgment.
“Got a beer in my bag,” Zack said eventually, his voice returning to its normal casual rasp. “And the number for that Chinese place. We’re eating on the floor.”
Aaron looked up. The room was dimmer now, the golden light fading to deep blue. The perfect white wall had smudges from his hands, from his back. Their shadow was gone. The house around them was no longer just an empty space. It was inhabited. Claimed.
He stood up, wincing at the soreness, and fastened his jeans. “Sounds good,” he said, his own voice rough.
He followed Zack back out into the living room. They sat on the bare floor, their backs against opposite walls, the cardboard containers of lo mein and kung pao chicken open between them, two bottles of beer sweating rings onto the new wood. They ate in silence, the only sounds their chewing and the distant rush of a car passing outside.
Aaron watched Zack across the shadowed space. This reckless, brutal man was now his partner. On a loan application. On a deed. In this empty house that was already marked with their violence.
Zack caught him looking. “What?”
“Nothing,” Aaron said, taking a long pull of his beer. It was cold and sharp. “Just thinking about where to put the couch.”
A ghost of a smile touched Zack’s mouth. “Who needs a couch?” he said, but his eyes scanned the wall behind Aaron, already measuring for something. A tool bench, maybe. Or a TV.
Aaron leaned his head back against the wall. The paint was cool. Somewhere in the city, in a sleek apartment, Dakota was probably having a clinical, chef-prepared meal. Aaron had cold Chinese food on a dirty floor and a throbbing ache in his body that felt more like home than anything ever had. He had rules. He had handprints on a wall. He had a tomorrow that was utterly, terrifyingly his own.
Zack finished his beer, crushed the bottle in his fist with a casual strength that sent a shiver through Aaron that had nothing to do with fear. He tossed the crumpled glass toward his duffel bag. It missed, skittering across the floor with a loud, grating sound.
“Tomorrow,” Zack said, stretching his legs out, his boot nudging Aaron’s foot. “We start on the garage.”
Aaron nodded, a faint, real smile finally breaking through. “Tomorrow.”
The house settled around them, whispering secrets of its own. The scent of soy sauce and sex and fresh paint hung in the air, the first true smell of their new life. It was not peaceful. But it was, for the first time in a long time, completely and overwhelmingly alive.
But it was, for the first time in a long time, completely and overwhelmingly alive.
The silence after Zack’s pronouncement about the garage wasn’t empty. It was thick. Aaron watched the muscles in Zack’s forearm flex as he crushed the beer bottle, the tendons standing out in stark relief. The grinding noise of glass on hardwood seemed to last forever. Zack’s gaze, when it lifted from the shattered bottle, wasn’t on the mess. It was on Aaron. It was a dark, appraising look that traveled from his face down to his still-unbuttoned jeans.
“You’re bleeding a little,” Zack said, his voice casual, as if commenting on the weather.
Aaron’s hand went instinctively to the back of his jeans, his fingertips coming away smeared with a faint, rusty pink. The soreness flared, a deep, internal throb. “Yeah,” he said, his own voice flat.
“Good.” Zack stood in one fluid motion, unfolding his body from the floor. He walked over, his boots echoing, and stopped in front of Aaron. He didn’t offer a hand up. He looked down, his shadow swallowing Aaron whole. “Means you’ll remember where you were today. Get up.”
Aaron pushed himself up, his body protesting. The Chinese food sat like a cold lump in his stomach. Zack’s hand shot out, not to hit him, but to grip his jaw, forcing his head up. His fingers were strong, pressing into the hinges. “Look at me. You regret it?”
The question was a trap. Aaron knew it. He saw the wildness in Zack’s dark eyes, a volatility that the sex had banked but not extinguished. He thought of the cold, sleek perfection of Dakota’s apartment, the silent dinners, the scheduled intimacy. He thought of the handprints on the bedroom wall.
“No,” Aaron breathed.
Zack’s thumb rubbed roughly over his bottom lip. “Prove it.”
He didn’t elaborate. He simply turned and walked toward the dark mouth of the hallway, leaving Aaron standing in the living room’s twilight. The instruction hung in the air, a challenge. Prove it. Aaron followed, the soreness in his body a brand with every step. He followed him past the bedroom—their bedroom, now definitively claimed—and into the second, smaller room at the end of the hall. It was destined to be a guest room, or an office. Right now, it was just another empty box, smelling of dust and drywall.
Zack was already at the far wall, by the single window looking out onto the dark backyard. He’d taken his jeans off. They were in a pile by his feet. He stood naked from the waist down, his back to Aaron, a silhouette against the deep blue of the evening. The fading light caught the copper in his hair, glinted off the sweat still drying on his shoulders.
“Here,” Zack said, not turning around. His voice was low, a command that brooked no discussion. “This room, too.”
Aaron understood. The rules were immutable. He walked in, the floorboards cold under his socks. He stopped a few feet behind him, unsure. Zack finally turned. His cock was half-hard already, thick and heavy. His expression was grim, purposeful.
“On your knees. Face the wall.”
Aaron knelt. The hardwood was unforgiving, digging into his kneecaps. He faced the blank, off-white drywall. He heard Zack move behind him, the sound of his spit hitting the floor. Then hands were on his hips, yanking his jeans and boxers down to his thighs in one brutal jerk. The cool air hit his exposed skin. He was already sore, sensitive, the ghost of Zack’s first claiming still burning inside him.
There was no preamble this time, no biting, no words. Zack’s fingers, slick with fresh spit, pressed against him, working him open with a brutal, clinical efficiency. It hurt. Aaron gritted his teeth, a low groan escaping as Zack pushed two fingers in deep, scissoring them. The stretch was sharper now, aggravated by the earlier violence.
“Fucking tight,” Zack muttered, more to himself than to Aaron. He spat again, the wetness landing on Aaron’s skin. He rubbed it in with the head of his cock, a crude, slippery promise.
Then he pushed.
The burn was blinding, a white-hot lance of pain that made Aaron see stars. He cried out, his forehead thumping against the cool drywall. Zack sheathed himself in one relentless, deep thrust, burying himself to the hilt. He didn’t move. He just held there, lodged deep, making Aaron feel every inch of the invasion. Aaron’s body clenched, trying to reject the sudden, brutal fullness, but Zack was immovable.
“This is the room where nobody else will ever sleep,” Zack growled, his breath hot on Aaron’s neck. His hands clenched on Aaron’s hips, his fingers like iron. “You understand? Any guest comes, they’ll be sleeping in the smell of my come in your ass. This is my house.”
He began to fuck him then, a hard, piston-like rhythm that stole the air from Aaron’s lungs. Each thrust was a punishment and a possession, slamming Aaron’s body against the wall. The drywall gave a little, a faint thump-thump-thump in time with Zack’s hips. Aaron’s own cock, trapped beneath him, was hard and leaking onto the floor, a useless ache. Pain and pleasure blurred into a single, overwhelming current of sensation. He was just a vessel, being used, being marked.
Zack’s pace quickened, becoming frantic. His grunts were animal, raw. “Tell me whose you are,” he demanded, his voice cracking.
“Yours!” Aaron gasped, the word punched out of him with the next deep drive.
“Say my fucking name!”
“Zack! I’m yours, Zack!”
With a final, snarling thrust, Zack came, a hot, pulsing flood that filled him. He collapsed forward, his weight driving Aaron harder into the wall, his teeth sinking into the meat of Aaron’s shoulder to muffle his own roar. They stayed like that, locked together, trembling. Aaron could feel Zack’s heart hammering against his back, a wild, frantic rhythm slowly slowing.
Zack pulled out. The loss was immediate, a cold, empty ache. Aaron stayed on his knees, forehead against the wall, listening to the wet sound of Zack’s semen dripping from him onto the floorboards. He was shaking.
He heard Zack step back, the rustle of denim. A moment later, something soft and cloth hit him in the back. It was Zack’s t-shirt.
“Clean yourself up,” Zack said, his voice now drained, flat. “You’re dripping on the floor.”
Aaron used the shirt to wipe himself, the fabric rough against his tender flesh. He saw the dark, wet smear on it. He pulled his clothes up, the denim agonizing against his skin. When he turned, Zack was already at the doorway, leaning against the jamb, watching him. He’d pulled his jeans back on, but they were still unbuckled. His expression was unreadable in the dark.
“Bring the food,” Zack said. “We’re eating in bed. Our bed.”
He disappeared down the hall. Aaron gathered the cold cartons of Chinese, his movements slow and pained. He walked back to the bedroom. The overhead bulb was on now, a harsh, single light in the ceiling fixture. Zack was sprawled in the center of the bare mattress, a king-sized island on the floor, his back against the wall where he’d pinned Aaron hours before.
Aaron placed the food between them and lowered himself carefully onto the mattress. He winced as he sat. Zack wordlessly handed him a fresh beer, their fingers brushing. They ate in silence, the lo mein cold and greasy, the beer the only relief. Aaron’s whole body felt branded, inside and out. The bite on his shoulder throbbed. The ache deep in his core was a constant, humming reminder.
Zack finished first, tossing his empty container toward the door. He lit a cigarette, the smoke curling up toward the ceiling in the still room. He offered it to Aaron. Aaron took it, drew the smoke into his lungs, and handed it back. It was a quiet, shared ritual. An after.
“Garage needs a new door motor,” Zack said finally, staring at the opposite wall. “Hinges are shot. I’ll start on it at seven. You make coffee.”
It wasn’t a question. It was the blueprint for their tomorrow. A domestic instruction, laid over the foundation of raw dominance still cooling in the air. Aaron nodded, too raw for words.
Zack stubbed the cigarette out on the floorboard, ground it with his heel. He shifted down, lying on his back, one arm thrown over his eyes. “Turn off the light.”
Aaron got up, his body protesting every movement. He flicked the switch, plunging the room into a darkness broken only by the streetlamp glow filtering through the sheer curtains. He lay down beside Zack, not touching. The mattress was firm, the room quiet. The smell of sex, smoke, and cold Chinese food was their new reality.
He listened to Zack’s breathing even out into sleep. Outside, a dog barked once, far away. Aaron lay awake, sore and completely claimed, staring at the ceiling he couldn’t see. The house was no longer empty. It was full of them. It was full of Zack.