Chapter 10: The First Temptation
Damien lay on his narrow cot in the attic room, the springs digging into his back. The collar was a lead weight. He traced its smooth curve with a finger, remembering the click of the lock, the finality of it. The silence up here was different from the study’s—thicker, freighted with the muffled bass of the club two floors below, a dull heartbeat in the building’s ribs.
Croft. Serenity. A gilded cage.
Tyris. The chisel. Broken foundations.
He kept replaying his own humiliation, the way he’d stood there naked and wet, thinking he was being brave, only to be told he was reading from an old, tired script. Pathetic. The word burned.
A soft tap at the door. Not Elara’s rhythmic cadence. This was a single, firm knock.
Damien didn’t move. “It’s open.”
The door swung inward. Tyris filled the frame, then stepped through, closing it behind him. He’d changed into a simple black t-shirt and dark trousers. He looked older in the room’s dim light, the lines around his eyes more pronounced. He didn’t speak, just crossed the space between them and, to Damien’s shock, went down on one knee before the cot. The posture was so jarring, so utterly wrong, that Damien sat up sharply.
Tyris’s gaze was level, his voice low. “I was an asshole earlier.”
Damien stared. He had no script for this.
“I wanted to give in,” Tyris continued, his words deliberate. “When you did that. I wanted to throw the ledger across the room, bend you over that desk, and fuck every bit of that frightened defiance right out of you.” He breathed out, a slow, controlled sigh. “And then I saw Carson from financial aid walk past the doorway. A fucking spreadsheet meeting in ten minutes. The real world, right there.”
He reached out, his hand hovering near Damien’s knee, not touching. “So I defaulted to the easiest route. I shut you down. Called it a tantrum. It was. But I handled it poorly. I’m sorry.”
The apology hung in the air, more disorienting than any command. Damien’s throat tightened. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you deserve to know the cost of things.” Tyris’s hand finally settled, warm and heavy, on Damien’s thigh. “My time. My attention. The constant calculus of this place. It makes me cruel when I don’t mean to be. And I was cruel to you today.”
Damien’s eyes pricked with hot, sudden tears. He looked away, toward the single bare bulb.
“Look at me.” The command was gentle, but a command nonetheless. Damien obeyed. Tyris’s gray eyes were soft, an open sea. “Let me make it up to you. Not as your potential Dominant. Just as a man who hurt you and wants to make it right.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. His hands moved to the fastening of Damien’s trousers. This time, there was no defiance in the act, only a yielding so profound it felt like sinking. Tyris pushed the fabric down over his hips, easing them off, tossing them aside. The cool air hit Damien’s skin, and he trembled.
“Beautiful,” Tyris murmured, not touching him yet, just looking. “So fucking beautiful.”
He leaned forward, his breath warm against Damien’s inner thigh. Then he pressed his mouth there, a soft kiss that made Damien jolt. He moved inward, slow, deliberate, his stubble grazing sensitive skin. When his tongue finally swiped a long, flat stroke through Damien’s folds, Damien cried out, a short, shattered sound.
Tyris didn’t rush. He ate him with a focused, devastating patience. His tongue was a ruthless instrument, licking into him, circling his clit, flicking over the tight, clutching entrance of his cunt. He used his lips to suck, his teeth to apply the faintest, most exquisite edge of pain. Damien’s hands fisted in the thin blanket, his back arching. The wet, filthy sounds filled the small room, obscene and perfect. Tyris groaned against him, the vibration traveling straight to Damien’s core.
“So wet for me,” Tyris muttered, his voice thick. “This pretty, soaked pussy. All for me. Taste like fucking honey and sin.”
He drove his tongue deeper, fucking him with it, and Damien’s hips bucked off the cot. The orgasm built not as a wave but as a sharp, coiling tension. Tyris sensed it, slipping two fingers inside him while his mouth worked on his clit. The stretch was perfect, filling. Damien came with a raw, sobbing gasp, his body seizing, clenching around Tyris’s fingers as the Dominant kept licking, gentling him through the spasms until he was a whimpering, oversensitive mess.
Tyris crawled up the length of his body, kissing his stomach, his chest, his throat. He tasted of Damien’s own salt. He settled over him, his weight a grounding comfort. His cock, hard and thick, pressed against Damien’s thigh. He reached between them, guiding himself, and pushed in with one slow, relentless inch.
Damien gasped. It was different. Softer. Tender. Tyris moved in a deep, rocking rhythm, his forehead pressed to Damien’s, his eyes closed. It felt like love-making. It felt like a goodbye.
A new kind of panic, cold and clear, cut through the pleasure haze. This wasn’t what he needed. This careful, apologetic fuck. It was just another cage, a prettier one.
He wrapped his legs around Tyris’s hips, pulling him in deeper. “Don’t,” Damien whispered.
Tyris opened his eyes, his rhythm faltering. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t be gentle. Not like this.” Damien’s voice gained strength, edged with a desperate challenge. “Fuck me like you used to fuck Elara.”
Tyris went perfectly still inside him. The air vanished from the room. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.” Damien held his gaze, the rebellion now cold and purposeful. “Before you promoted her. When she was just in the attic. She told me stories. When I couldn’t sleep. How you’d come up here, how you’d use her. How it wasn’t soft.” He tightened his muscles around Tyris’s cock, felt him twitch in response. “Do that. To me. Now.”
Tyris’s expression darkened, a storm cloud moving in. The tenderness evaporated, replaced by something razor-sharp and dangerous. “She shouldn’t have told you that.”
“But she did. So you can’t pretend it didn’t happen. I’m not her. I know that. But I’m not this… this precious thing you have to be careful with right now, either.” Damison’s breath hitched. “I want to know what it costs. All of it. So show me.”
Tyris searched his face for a long, endless moment. “Are you sure? Once I start, I won’t stop. This isn’t making love. This is taking.”
“Yes.”
The word was barely out before Tyris moved. He pulled out roughly, flipping Damien over onto his stomach with a brutal efficiency that stole his breath. He dragged him up onto his knees, his face pressed into the thin pillow. One broad hand pushed between his shoulder blades, holding him down.
There was no more preparation. Tyris’s cockhead nudged his soaked entrance, and then he slammed back in, a single, brutal thrust that buried him to the hilt.
Damien screamed, the sound swallowed by the pillow. It was too much, a blinding stretch, a claim that bordered on violation. Tyris didn’t pause. He set a punishing pace, fucking into him with deep, animalistic drives of his hips. The bed rocked, its iron frame banging against the wall in time with the savage rhythm.
“This what you wanted?” Tyris gritted out, his voice a growl against Damien’s ear. “This rough, dirty fuck? You think Elara liked this?”
He punctuated each word with a thrust. Damien could only sob, his fingers clawing at the blanket. The pain was a live wire, sparking into shocking, unbearable pleasure.
“She took it,” Tyris snarled, his hand tangling in Damien’s hair, yanking his head back. “Because she knew her place. Because she wanted to earn what came after. You think you’re ready for this? You think you can handle what comes after a man uses your cunt like a fucking fleshlight?”
He sped up, his balls slapping against Damien’s skin. The raw, wet sounds of the act were deafening. Damien felt split open, owned in the most primal way. His own cock, trapped beneath him, leaked helplessly onto the sheets. The orgasm building this time was a tsunami, drawn from a dark, deep well of submission he didn’t know he had.
“Come for me,” Tyris ordered, his voice cracking. “Come on my cock like the filthy, desperate thing you are. Prove you can take it.”
It was the permission, the filthy command, that broke him. Damien shattered, his vision whiting out, his cunt milking Tyris’s cock in frantic, involuntary pulses. His cry was a ragged, broken thing.
Tyris followed him over, with three final, jagged thrusts, his groan long and guttural as he emptied himself deep inside. He collapsed over Damien’s back, his weight a crushing, welcome anchor, both of them slick with sweat and spent.
For minutes, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing. Tyris finally softened and slid out. He rolled to the side, pulling Damien with him, tucking him against his chest. Damien trembled violently, a full-body shudder he couldn’t control.
Tyris held him, his hand stroking his hair. The touch was gentle again, but everything was different now. The room smelled of sex and salt and truth.
“The full moon is in forty-eight hours,” Tyris said into the dark, his voice quiet, drained. “Croft arrives tomorrow at eight.”
He didn’t say anything else. He just held him until Damien’s trembling ceased, until the club’s heartbeat below seemed to sync with his own. The choice was no longer abstract. It was in his bones, in the ache between his legs, in the safe, terrifying circle of Tyris’s arms. He had felt the chisel. It had cut him to the core.
And part of him, a part he could no longer deny, had loved the sharp, defining pain of it. “I don’t want Croft. I want you Papi.”