“Stand up.” Dante told him.

He did.

It was then that Dante repeated everything Ben had done to him, only he started with Ben’s jacket, then his tie. He slowly unbuttoned each button before kissing Ben’s collarbone, licking his throat and then kissing there as well.

Ben moaned when Dante went to his knees. The man was beautiful down there, his eyes dark and commanding. Ben traced the lines of Dante’s back tattoos with his eyes, loving them but wanting them gone. They were beautiful but they were Abel’s mark on Dante.

Ben didn’t have one on him.

Ben’s pants were undone. They slid down his legs and like Dante had, he stepped out of them. His underwear were next. As though Dante had read Ben’s thoughts from earlier, he leaned in, forehead against Ben’s stomach and inhaled his scent.

Ben fought not to grab Dante’s head and hold him there. Not to push his dick between Dante’s lips the way he’d wanted Dante to do to him.

Dante was grounding him and Ben wouldn’t do anything to mess that up.

After he stood, Dante said, “Get in bed.”

Ben did. Dante turned on the small lamp beside his bed, and then turned off the overhead lights before lying on the other side of the bed. He didn’t reach for the lube, or his blindfold, just laid there beside Ben.

And Ben waited.

Waited until he felt like he would lose his fucking mind.

“I won’t be your drug of choice,” Dante finally said.

Ben rolled to his side and looked at Dante. “What does that mean?”

“I won’t be your drug of choice,” he said again. “I made that mistake once before. I won’t do it again. I can’t. I’m not fucking you. Not tonight. Maybe never again.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Ben lay there, didn’t move as his head spun out of control. Fuck Dante. Fuck him if he didn’t want Ben. Ben could find someone else. He’d found it when Tristan didn’t want him and he’d find it again.

Only he didn’t move. Couldn’t make his God damned legs move so he could get out of bed. I don’t want anyone else... I want him.

He only wanted Dante and that made his head spin faster. Made him feel more detached, like he was floating away.

“I won’t do it because that’s what I did with him, and it didn’t help. I won’t do it because I don’t want to lose you the way I lost him.”

Ben held his breath. His body still strumming with the need to come. For release. For Dante to possess him...but there was something else there now. He wanted more of Dante. Wanted inside him in the only way he could be...by knowing what made him nearly as broken as Ben was.

Ben didn’t move, didn’t reach out and touch Dante the way he wanted. He lay still, waited for Dante to make the first move because Dante would need that.

Finally, he spoke. “He was young when I met him—a kid in a lot of ways. Much younger than me. Twenty. Alone. On the streets. On drugs. I was walking one night, when I heard a sound from the alley. I was reckless, didn’t really give a shit what happened to me, so I followed the sound. He was there, in the darkness, beaten and bleeding, lying in a ball.”

So similar to the way Dante had found Ben one night, only for them, it hadn’t been the first time they met.

“I couldn’t leave him. I told him I would call an ambulance but he begged me not to, begged me not to leave him either, so I took him home. Took him home because I was alone as well. It was obvious after the first day that he was an addict. He was coming down, needed his fix. I don’t know what it was about me that made Abel think he could trust me, but he did. He asked for me to help him get clean, to keep him in my apartment and not let him out, no matter how much he begged.”

Dante rolled his head to the side and looked at Ben. “I did it for the reason you said, it feels good for me to be needed. Maybe that’s my drug of choice, to take care of people. For them to need me because if they do, they can never walk away from me the way my family did.”

There was a part of Ben who needed that, too. To really be wanted.

“We were only friends at first. He needed me and I needed that. He got clean and never left. He got a job, lived in my spare room.”

That gave Ben comfort, the fact that it had to have been a different apartment since this one only had one room.

“From the beginning, he wanted me. I held off at first. He was so much younger than me. He was fragile, but Abel didn’t back down, and I found it hard not to give him whatever he wanted. We became lovers. He liked it rough and I gave it to him that way. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it, too. You know I do. Abel wasn’t the first that I dominated but it was different with him. Everything I did was for him.