Introduction

8 Years Ago

Malik is walking down the street, headed to Cienage House, as the rain intensifies from a drizzle to a steady downpour. His belongings were shoved into the bag strapped to his back. I’ll kill you before I let you turn into some Pájaro, remembering his mother’s words as his tears blend with the rain falling. He shuffles past the people turning into bars and restaurants, trying to escape the rain. He slips into the bar attached to the Cienage House and finds a seat close to the door. His hair wet, sticking to his back, he stands to adjust himself, slamming into a guy running in from the rain. He apologizes quickly, slipping his wallet from his chest pocket, that his third is tonight. He goes into the bathroom to go through its contents and passes a large man with an MC cut on with a guy slammed to the wall. I don’t give a fuck about what happened before, you pay before you play around here, he says as he squeezes tighter around the man's throat. He slips into the women's restroom and eyes the sign on the men's door. He counts his money from the wallets and heads back out to the bar, ordering a burger and soda. How much for a room he asked, eyeing as the Vacancy sign lit up. 45 an hour, his server responds, popping gum, sounding exhausted. Can you help me with that? Go see the front desk. Freddy will help you with that. She says as she walks away. Malik finishes his dinner, savoring it, not knowing when the next time he will be able to eat will be. When he’s done, he walks up to the front desk. A man sitting behind a glass, watching a small TV. Malik notices the paint peeling as he approaches, How can I help you, little lady, the guy she’s assuming is Freddy asks. A sheevers is sent through Malik’s body, the same one he gets when he is referred to as a girl or sweetheart. He asks for a room for 45 for the first hour, 25 for every hour after that. 8-hour limit, Freddy explains. Malik hands over the last of the money he stole and heads to the back courtyard to enter room 212. Walking through the courtyard, he notices all of the bikes hanging around and whispering. He feels the eyes on him from all directions as he walks with his head down, just trying to make it to the stairs. As he approaches the stairs, he eyes the one from the bathroom hallway. Their eyes connect, and he runs his tongue over his bottom lip, which is full but fits his face perfectly. Malik continues his ascent up the stairs, making it to the room.  He settles quickly, showers quickly, and puts on an oversized t-shirt and some boyshorts and lies down. He knows that tomorrow is a new day, a hard day, but a new day nonetheless. 

Something doesn’t feel right, Jax explains as he trails behind his father, trying to get him to listen. Jax’s father, Shawn, waves him off. They should’ve been here by now, Dad, Jax yells. Shawn swings around with a backhand across his face. Here I am, not your father, I am your president, and I say this is the move. Jax stands straight up and takes the punishment and public humiliation like a man turns locking eyes with Spider. Spider gives him a look of concern, and Thorn looks like he’s ready to pounce. Jax shook him off and went to stand by the stairs where he was told. Then she enters the courtyard through the main lobby door. We all fall silent, Shawn and his court, and sit whispering about our latest interaction. Jax has been more defiant in front of the club, and it was only a matter of time before Shawn reacted that way. Jax and the young lady lock eyes as she walks up the stairs. He licks his lips, staring until she has made it to the door and lit a cigarette, and waits like they’ve been doing for the last two hours. 

Mailk is ripped from sleep by the brutal cacophony of gunfire tearing through the courtyard, a chorus of screams and guttural yells echoing the violence. He recognizes the harsh, biting sound of Russian accents slicing through the chaos. A shadow darts past his window—a brief, menacing silhouette—then pauses, a firearm raised. A deafening crack from the weapon rattles his very bones, and the shadow pitches backward into the darkness. Tires shriek, protesting the sudden halt of a vehicle, followed by a fresh wave of Russian shouts. Shawn's desperate yell is cut short as a key enters his door lock and a large man rushes through the door. Malik opens his mouth to scream, but Jax is already there, a finger pressed hard against his own lips, silencing him. Jax slams the door shut, slides across the room, and yanks Malik violently down to the cold floor just as a hail of bullets stitches a deadly pattern across the building's facade.

They stay there for what feels like forever, pressed together on the cold floor, listening to the gunfire fade into sirens and distant shouting. Adrenaline keeps them glued to each other long after the danger passes, every shuddering breath drawing them closer instead of apart. By the time the courtyard falls quiet and the night finally exhales, the raw edge of fear has blurred into something hotter, messier, impossible to shove back down. Jax’s phone rings, and as he digs his waist deeper into Mailk and the wetness between his legs betrays him once again. Jax answers the phone with a low, whispered tone. 

Malik stares up into Jax’s eyes as they lock onto his, a shared moment of desperate, breathless connection. He watches, mesmerized, as Jax’s lips part, words slipping from his mouth in a low, husky rumble, but Malik misses the conversation entirely, lost in the powerful, intoxicating trance of their proximity. He can feel the shocking, undeniable wetness seeping into his thin boy shorts, his own body a traitor in this moment of raw vulnerability.

With a sudden, decisive movement, Jax pulls himself up from behind the bed, the moment shattering like glass. "Pack your bag, you're coming with me," Jax commands, his voice hard, ending the call with a curt click. He snatches Malik’s arm in a non-negotiable grip, not allowing him a moment to put on shoes or jeans, and yanks him forcefully from the room.

Malik stumbles, moving quickly to keep up with Jax’s furious pace. The scene outside the room is a nightmare: bodies are scattered around the opulent hallway and courtyard like discarded dolls, the walls and stone columns decorated with an obscene scattering of bullet shells and fresh bullet holes.

"Take her to your treehouse," a man Malik recognizes as Shawn says to Jax, his face grim as he shoves two heavy, black duffel bags into Jax’s free hand. "Wait for my call, keep her close, don’t want her saying shit to the police," Shawn’s voice drops to a chilling vice, his eyes narrowing with a dark, predatory hostility as they rake over Malik’s half-dressed body.

Malik walks in a frantic, sutter-step, fighting to maintain his balance and keep pace with Jax. A woman named Cipher wordlessly thrusts a key into Malik's trembling hand. They walk toward the back of the courtyard, where a hidden gate lets out directly onto the dark, winding path of Los Pasillos. Jax helps Malik into Cipher’s massive, lifted black truck, and as Malik scrambles up, the movement offers Jax an undeniable, fleeting view of the taut curve of his bubble butt and the telltale, shameful stain of wetness visible between his legs. Driving fast but still undetectable, Jax is winding through the tight streets of Los Pasillos, eyes darting from the road back to Malik, lingering a second too long on the sharp planes of his face, the dark intensity in his stare. The oppressive heat of the city is nothing compared to the slow, internal burn coiling low in Malik's gut, a heat swelling acutely between his thighs as Jax takes a corner a little too sharply. The ride is a silent landscape of charged glances and barely contained tension, the air thick with unspoken desire as they make it to the desolate outskirts of the city, where the forgotten warehouses meet the dark, restless ocean. They arrive at a warehouse, Jax hops out, leaving the truck running, opens a gate, and pulls into a parking lot, parking the truck. The warehouse sits on the outskirts of the city, where the streetlights thin out and the pavement gives way to cracked gravel. From the outside, it looks dead, a rusting roll-up door, busted windows patched with plywood, graffiti older than most of the kids who tag out here. The only signs of life are the faint, warm slit of light at the base of the main door and the low, constant hum of a generator tucked somewhere out back.  Don’t move he says to Malik with a harsh tone. Jax pulls his gun and heads over to lock the gate back. Comes over and opens Mailk’s to help him out of the lift truck. As his bare feet hit the ground, he feels Jax’s hand slide to the shelf of his ass. The heat returns between his thighs, and he feels the fabric between his legs moisten and cling to his folds. As they enter the warehouse, Malik notices it still feels like a warehouse: high ceilings lost in shadow, steel beams crisscrossing overhead, the smell of old oil, dust, and rain that sneaks in through the seams. A few naked bulbs hang from long cords, throwing small circles of yellow light over stacks of old pallets and mismatched crates that now serve as tables, seating, and makeshift barricades. There’s a scarred workbench against one wall, cluttered with tools, spare parts, and the kind of things you only keep if you don’t want anyone asking questions.

There is a bathroom behind the bedroom if you want to clean up, Jax says as he motions his head towards the bedroom. Malik grabs his bag and walks to the carved-out corner turned into a bedroom by framing it in with salvaged sheetrock and a sliding barn door that doesn’t quite close all the way. Inside, it’s rough but lived-in: a mattress on a low wooden frame, clean sheets that don’t match, a heavy blanket, and a couple of pillows that have seen better days. A metal locker stands in place of a dresser, its door plastered with old stickers. There’s a single lamp on a crate nightstand, a half-burned candle, a glass with last night’s drink still in it, and a pair of boots kicked off in the middle of the floor. An old rug, threadbare but soft, breaks up the cold of the concrete. Mailk sets his things down and notices the bathroom Jax mentioned tucked behind the bedroom, boxed in with cinderblocks and metal piping that still shows where it was hacked into the old building’s guts. The door is solid, the only one in the place with a lock that actually works. Inside, there’s a small sink with a cracked mirror above it, a toilet that groans when it flushes, and a narrow shower stall rigged from corrugated metal and plastic sheeting. The water runs hot thanks to a temperamental heater bolted to the wall, and there’s a jumble of toiletries lined up on a makeshift wooden shelf, evidence that, for whoever hides out here, this isn’t just a stash spot. Malik strips from the shirt and drops his boy shorts and feels the fabric sticking to his openings. He takes a brief shower, allowing the blood and gunpowder to rinse away. The warm water allows his nerves to settle as he mentally prepares for what he has to do next in order to make the life he wants for himself. 

Jax zipped the duffel bags, the crisp stacks of $75,000 counted, and the brick of cocaine secured. He snatched his phone and called Shawn.

“It’s Jax. Everything’s squared away here, but what the hell is going on?”

Shawn’s voice was a low, strained growl over the line. “The Russians, Jax. They hit us. Everywhere. The clubhouse, the factory… a coordinated strike on all fronts. It’s a goddamn mess.”

Jax’s grip tightened on the phone. “Who’s left? What’s the damage?”

“Everyone who could fight is fighting for their lives, son. The rest are holed up until first light to see what’s salvageable. Listen to me, and listen good,” Shawn’s voice sharpened, cutting through the chaos. “You stay put. Do not move. Do not lose focus on what you’re holding. This is what we fought for. Keep your phone on, and don’t you dare lose that stash. I need you to be solid right now, you hear me? We’ll ride this out.”

For a fleeting second, Shawn didn't sound like a leader, but like a father issuing a life-or-death order to his only son. “I hear you, Shawn. I’m locked down. Just stay alive.”

Jax hangs the phone up and places the stash in a cabinet under the workbench. He heard the water stop a while ago, but no movement since. He approaches the door and sees the light on, but is unable to see anything on the bed. He moved to the door and opened seeing just feet on the bed. He opens the door and turns quickly to close the door.

Malik is waiting on the bed, lying on his elbows with his feet placed on the edge. As Jax turns from closing the door, she spreads her knees, showing me her red lacy panties that barely cover his fat pussy. “Jax, make me feel good,” he whispered shily. Jax kicks off his shoes and takes off his shirt, and dives on top of him. As their lips meet, Malik releases a moan into Jax’s mouth. The moment his finger tips find Jax’s back, he gives Malik one back. They’re locked like this, exploring each other's bodies and mouths. I want you, Jaxson, he moans as Jax brushes his finger over the top of his panties, finding them soaked. As Jax swallowed those words into his mouth, he thought about how Malik knew his full name. No one ever calls him Jaxson, and he feels him tense up. Ever since the first time Malkik played around with a guy, she has always been shy as Jax runs his hands up and down the sides of Malik’s body, licking his lips. He stands to undo his jeans and let them drop with his boxers, and falls to the edge of the bed with half of his body hanging off. Jax pulls him to the edge of the bed and sinks his face between Malik’s wet thighs. Even with her panties as a barrier, Jax can feel her wetness painting his face. Malik feels his body tense as he tries to hold in the moans. Jax pulls the fabric away with his teeth, exposing the opening to him. He moans with an exhale and licks his way from the bottom of Malik’s slit to the top of his clit. Jax feels his body shudder under his tongue. Jax repeats this until he is leaking around his tongue. Malik’s moans are uncontrollable. Jax has his breathing heavy, his long, jet black hair a mess from him throwing his head back and forth. Jax takes her wrist and pushes them to the bed, locking them there to keep her from her continued assault on his head at bay. Malik’s moans become louder, and his legs start to shake as he drops the left on. “Keep it up, baby”, Jax says as he lifts it back into place and exhales right above her opening. Malik has left a puddle of her juice on the edge of the bed from Jax and his tongue assault. What do you want, baby girl Jax asks as he slides up next to Malik. “You inside–” he is unable to finish that and releases a moan as Jax invades him with his middle finger. I didn’t catch that. “Is this what you want, baby?” He asks with a snicker. Malik moans and tightens around Jax as he inserts his ring finger and slips one of his nipples attached to his perky little tittie into his mouth and suck hard as he sucks him into his opening. Malik begins to move his hand around like he is looking for the remote until he finds what he is looking for - Jax’s dick. He wraps his hands around my 9-inch length and starts stroking. Trying to find the rhythm of Jax’s fingers, the softness of Malik’s hands is sending waves of pleasure through Jax’s body. The precum from Jax’s dick makes the strokes glide easier. As Jax’s fingers explore Malik’s opening, he feels the wave that he as only granted himself once before. He feels his face go flush as Jax releases his nipple with a nibble. “Yes, baby, let go for me, let it happen,” he whispers in Malik’s ear with his forehead pressed firmly against the side of his head. Malik’s hips start bucking, and he bears down on his bottom lip and lets it go, and clutches his walls around Jax’s fingers as he cums around them. “Good girl”, Jax giggles and pulls his fingers out and slaps them on Malik’s clit with a chuckle as he kneels on the bed. He grabs a handful of Malik’s long black hair, gathering it in an unorganized ponytail. He drags him to his knees and brings him to his dick, standing at attention and leaking. “My turn, baby girl, open up,” Jax says in a deep, sexy tone. Malik shudders as he opens wide and then immediately gags, and Jax pushes directly to the back of his throat. “You’re going to have to open up for me, baby,” Jax says, and he stays thrusting forward, poking at the back of Malik’s throat. He swallows, and in a single thrust, Jax is nuzzled against his nose. Jax holds Malik’s head in place, and as Malik begins to swallow around his length, a moan escapes his mouth. Jax begins shallow strokes, pulling back just enough for Malik to inhale through his nose for brief moments. As his pace increases, the length he pulls out with each stroke increases until Jax has his dick at the tip of Malik’s pouty, full lips right before he dives back into his throat, burying him to the hilt. This makes Malik gag around Jax’s length. Slob and precum leak out of the side of his mouth, “Your throat is as wet as that pussy is.” Jax exhales with a guttural moan, his breath ragged. His fingers dig into Malik's scalp, pulling his head back as his pace quickens, driving a rhythm that Malik can't possibly match. Malik can only open his mouth wider, a desperate, silent plea as he lets the relentless, primal assault take place. Malik feels his body betray him as the wetness of his fold becomes noticeable as it drips down his legs. Jax’s eyes lock on Malik’s watery, ash grey ones and sink deep in the back of his throat until he bottoms out. Swallow it all he says as he swells and pumps shot after shot deep down Malik’s assaulted throat. Still holding Malik tight around his now throbbing dick, he shifts himself so he is now lying with his back against the makeshift headboard. “Suck it all out.” Jax says in a low, demanding down shift to Malik, so they are making a T shape on the bed. His feet landed in the spot wet from Malik’s open during the face fucking. “Oh, so you like being throat fucked, baby,” Jax says as Malik is milking all of the remaining cun out of his dick. Jax reaches under him and finds the slickness that has been leaving Malik since they were laid on the floor at the Swamp House. Jax begins to circle Malik’s clit, and Malik lets out a moan around Jax’s dick, allowing him to sink deep into his throat. “Use your hand this time, you're gonna have to work for it”, Jax exhales with a moan. Malik brings his lips to the head and, with a deep suc, swallows the whole thing down to the base. As he comes up, he wraps the slick member in his hand, leaning in on his elbow, giving Jax’s fingers better access to his wetness. As Jax’s fingers speed in their circular motion, Malik’s hand finds a rhythm that matches he swallows. They both let moans escape their mouths. Jax has shifted himself so now his lying at an angle that allows a better view. As he leans up and takes his swollen clit into his mouth, he sinks two fingers into his warmth and begins an aggressive onslaught. They are now in sync, following each other's moans, chasing pleasure together. Malik’s body tenses up, and Jax sucks harder and dives his fingers deeper. Malik tries to pull up from his dick to warm, and feels a hand on his hand shoving his down to the hilt, and then it happens a wave of pleasure rushes through him. He tightens around the fingers that force a moan and an inhale of breath, which forces that large throbbing dick in his throat to reach another level of deepness. Malik gags, and then the fingers are withdrawn, and the sucking stops. Three hard slaps on his pussy match with the strokes of Jax’s hips, making it happen, sending him over the edge. He squirts all over Jax’s face. Malik was still gasping, the remnants of the first climax vibrating through his spent body, when the assault intensified. He thought the worst was over, that Jax was finally finished with his torment. The realization that he was wrong hit him like a physical blow, a sudden, jarring change of pace. Two quick, sharp slaps against his slick, tight entrance, an almost playful prelude to the invasion that followed. Three fingers, thick and ruthless, shoved past his resistance, forcing his passage wider with an almost casual brutality.

 

A muffled cry escaped his throat, swallowed as his head was immediately, brutally seized and jerked up and down in a rhythmic, punishing motion. The unfamiliar sensation of the fingers deep inside, combined with the rough manipulation of his head, overwhelmed his senses. It was a dizzying, humiliating new layer of pleasure and pain, the deep, invasive pressure hitting a new constellation of nerves. His body, already sensitized and raw, buckled and arched against the mattress, an involuntary response to the relentless, pounding rhythm. The air was thick with the scent of sex and sweat, and the only sound was the wet, sliding noises of the penetration and Malik's ragged, choked moans.

This relentless, deep work continued, a grueling, grinding rhythm dictated solely by Jax’s returning hunger. The throbbing in Jax's dick—a hard, demanding pulse against his lower stomach—grew more intense, signaling the imminent return of his own climax. Just as the tension became unbearable, right on the precipice where Malik felt the next wave of blinding, involuntary release begin to coil in his own belly, the fingers were yanked free with a quick, decisive pop. The sudden emptiness was as shocking as the invasion had been, leaving Malik to spasm weakly, utterly spent and on the verge of tears, with the promise of Jax’s final, crushing blow hanging heavy in the air. Malik collapsed on the bed, panting, pussy still wet and pulsing. He hears Jax leave the room, and he lies there and closes his eyes in defeat, realizing his plan didn’t work out as he had planned. He closes his eyes, planning on sleeping until the morning.

Suddenly, a sharp, unyielding force yanked him up, his knees slamming into the mattress, his eyes flying open in a gasp of pure shock. Malik’s body was being ruthlessly positioned, every movement controlled by Jax's dominant hands. Jax’s massive palm pressed hard against the center of Malik's back, a pressure that stole his breath and anchored him in place, while at the same time, his hips were hoisted into the air. Malik’s knees were brutally knocked apart, exposing him fully. The suddenness of the maneuver was dizzying, leaving him breathless and vulnerable.

Malik managed a shaky, deep inhale, the sharp scent of dust and Jax's leather-and-sweat filling his lungs, as he felt the unmistakable warmth and bulk of Jax lining himself up precisely at his entrance. A wave of intense, terrified anticipation washed over him, momentarily eclipsing the shock. The air was thick with tension, the silence between them a heavy blanket broken only by the ragged sound of his own breathing and the soft, unsettling shift of Jax's heavy weight. Every muscle in Malik’s core clenched in a futile act of resistance, knowing full well that any true escape was impossible. He could feel the heat radiating from Jax's body pressed close behind him, a suffocating, inescapable heat. Before he can let out another breath, he is invaded by Jax. Jax buries himself to the hilt, pushing past any internal barriers standing in his way. A sharp moan leaves Malik as Jax pulls himself from him and dives back in deep. Jax continued the rhythmic thrusting until Malik's breathing became ragged. "What do you desire, sweetheart? Tell me what you crave," Jax purred, a smirk playing on his lips as he knocked the thick head of his dick against Malik's wet entrance, sending a jolt of intense pleasure through Malik's core.

"I want you deep inside me," Malik gasped out.

"Demand it like you truly mean it," Jax commanded.

"I want you to fuck me," Malik insisted.

"I'm not convinced," Jax responded, starting to rub the tip of his dick seductively between Malik's slick folds.

“Please fuck me!” Malik exclaims with a moan. 

“You want me to fuck you?” Jax asks with a giggle, taking Malik’s wetness on his finger and rubbing it on his back hole. 

“Fuck Me Goddamnit,” Malik yells, and as Jax plunges back inside him and releases a loud moan and his eyes roll to the back of his head, feeling the fullness he requested. “All you had to do was ask, baby”, Jax says as he starts to stroke deep inside of Malik’s wet pussy. Malik didn't recognize the desperate sounds escaping his own throat. He was pressed face-down against the worn bed, his backside exposed and his hips lifted in a vulnerable arch. He was taking the pounding of a lifetime from Jax, the biker who had stormed into his room during the chaos of a brutal shootout. And to his utter shock and shame, Malik was loving every minute of it.

Jax's thrusts were punishing, a relentless assault that drove him deep with every single stroke, burying himself to the hilt. Malik couldn't catch his breath, his chest heaving with exertion and pure, raw pleasure. He felt the familiar, unstoppable rush; another orgasm building in his gut, a dizzying, exquisite pressure. A searing heat rushed to his lungs, his toes curled so tightly they ached, and his eyes crossed in a white-hot haze of sensation. A deep, guttural moan tore from his throat as his body betrayed him completely, his pussy. “That's right, baby, keep on cumming” Jax said with a possessive growl,  as he was gushing all over Jax’s throbbing, hard length.

The room was a cacophony of animalistic pleasure and residual danger. Jax's own low, ragged moans of release mingled with Malik’s whimpers, the wet, slapping sounds of skin colliding, and the rhythmic creak of the cheap bed frame they were bruising against. This violent, beautiful intimacy blurred the brutal memories of the night for both of them, the gunfire, the blood, the fear, leaving only this visceral, consuming need. In this moment of intense, shared ecstasy, the rest of the world, and all its ruin, faded away.

Jax’s barrage of strokes quickened, a relentless, intoxicating rhythm that drove Malik to the very brink of sensation. Each thrust was a hammer blow, meticulously aimed, leaving Malik an unresponsive shell of pure, overwhelming pleasure. His body was a vessel for the constant waves of sensation, all centered around his throbbing core, a blinding supernova of desire. His eyes were wide but unfocused, a silent scream of ecstasy trapped in his throat. His hips lifted instinctively with every connection, a reflexive movement born of an unbearable need.

Suddenly, with a final, deep surge, Jax ripped out of him. The sudden void was a shocking change in pressure, but before Malik could even register the loss, Jax executed a fluid motion, flipping Malik onto his back in one powerful movement. Then, Jax descended, driving his hardened length back down into Malik's waiting, slick depth with a grunt of satisfaction.

Their lips met in a furious, hungry collision for the first time tonight. The kiss was deep, invasive, and shocking in its intensity, a new, unforeseen wave of sensation that slammed into Malik's already overloaded system. The jolt was electrical, a final catalyst that fractured his control. He surged into action, squirming and pushing his body away from under Jax’s weight and dominance.

With a sharp, ragged exhale, a sound that was half relief and half pure release, Jax was slipped from inside him for the second time. The immediate change in internal pressure was all it took. A tremor ran through Malik's entire frame, his muscles convulsed, and he climaxed in a violent, messy gush, squirting a thick, hot wave of his release all over Jax’s taut, descending abdomen. The sensation was immediate and total, a brilliant, white-hot oblivion that left him breathless and spent. Malik lay there completely spent, eyes closed, and he felt Jax’s lips touch his, and with a whisper, “Just a little longer, I’m almost there.” Jax says as he slides himself back into Malik’s swollen, throbbing, sensitive pussy. With a painful moan, Malik accepts his invasion and relaxes into the kiss. Jax’s steadying rocking motion and unbreakable kiss are pulling Malik back into the world of pleasure. His hands wrap around Jax’s back, pulling him closer, and he parts his lips, letting his tongue enter his mouth and tightens around his rock-hard dick. The husky moans, leaving Jax’s mouth. He breaks the kiss, eyes shut tight, reaching down to pull, and Malik locks him in place with his legs and runs his tongue up the tattoo that covers his Adam’s apple. With two more deep strokes, Jax grunts so loud that it shakes the walls, and Malik can feel the throbs as he releases deep inside his walls. 

Chapter 1

Present Day

Malik –

The knot of anxiety in my stomach tightened with every step I took toward the entrance of the Ruined Chapel. It was less a place of worship and more a monument to decay, its stone walls crumbling, ivy choking the broken arches. The air inside was thick with the scent of stale beer, cheap perfume, and something acrid—maybe dried sweat or something far worse. This was only my second day working the cover, a raw, exposed nerve masquerading as a world-weary biker's bartender. Three months out of the police academy, I was still navigating the chasm between textbook procedure and the murky reality of the street. This assignment, infiltrating the inner circle of the Saints of Ruin, was my baptism by fire, my first proper duty.

The Saints were not just a motorcycle club; they were the iron fist gripping Puerto del Morro. They were the poison peddled in small cellophane bags to the spoiled children of the affluent neighborhoods, Las Cuchillas and Altos de Ore. Their reach extended into the desperate corners of Los Pasillos, where they ran guns like a lethal, efficient delivery service. They laundered their profits through a network of aggressively neon-lit nightclub fronts scattered throughout The Barrio, places throbbing with a synthetic energy that masked their true, criminal purpose.

Malik’s history with Puerto del Morro wasn't just professional; it was deeply, violently personal. The last time I had breathed this city's air, I had been someone else entirely. Malika Rivera. A name that felt like it belonged to a ghost now. She was the girl defined by quiet solitude, a necessary defense mechanism erected after that devastating, late November Sunday morning that shattered my family. Even her silence couldn't stop the venomous whispers that followed her everywhere—whispers about my father, about that day, about the failure of justice.

I had fled the city at seventeen, the final, brutal words from my mother—her last refusal to accept me for who I was—ringing in my ears. I packed a single duffel bag and took the first bus west, landing in the sprawl of Los Angeles with nothing but a desperate need to reinvent myself. Eight years melted away, filled with grueling academics, intense physical training, and a singular, relentless focus on becoming the kind of person who could fight back.

Now, after all that time, I was back.

Captain Groves of the precinct was the only person who knew the full, unvarnished truth: my father’s unsolved case, the raw, burning need for justice, the insatiable hunger for revenge that drove me. He’d seen the file, understood the deep, complicated well of anger I was drawing from, and, crucially, he saw the potential. He looked at the hard, disciplined cop I’d become and decided this was the crucible. "Prove it," he'd said, his eyes drilling into mine. "Prove you’re not just a good cop, Rivera. Prove you can be the badass cop this city needs."

Stepping over the threshold and into the chapel's oppressive darkness, the adrenaline was a cold fire in my veins. Malika Rivera was dead. Here stands Malik Rivera, the cop, who was about to earn my stripes. I pushed a stray lock of my aggressively dark hair from my face and forced a predatory smile. The game had begun.

I adjust myself, the worn vinyl of the diner-style booth creaking softly beneath me, and settle into the seat. The air in this place—a mixture of stale beer, old tobacco smoke, and a faint, metallic tang—is thick and heavy. Jax sits directly across from me, the man they call President, and I allow my gaze to linger momentarily on the two patches stitched prominently into the back of his sleeveless denim cut: President above the club's insignia, and Viper beneath it, signifying his road name.

He is a mountain of a man, his build suggesting a life spent either lifting engine blocks or lifting weights, or both. His dark olive skin is taut over thick muscle, and his hair, cut close on the sides but left longer and slicked back on top, is darker still, the color of rich espresso. But it is his eyes that hold me, beds of dark chocolate that possess a depth and intensity one could easily get lost in.

A palpable tension rises between us, a silent exchange that has nothing to do with conversation. He looks at me, then back down at the laminated photo page of my passport resting on the greasy table between us. I can feel the weight of his scrutiny, the evaluation of a man who makes judgments that carry permanent consequences.

“So,” he finally says, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that vibrates through the booth, “you understand precisely what we need from you.” His tone is absolute, no-nonsense—a statement, not a question.

“Yes, sir,” I answered, my voice barely above a murmur, careful not to raise my eyes too quickly to meet his. I am a ghost here, and the less I appear to be a threat, the better.

Jax picks up a cheap, branded plastic lighter from the table, turning it over in his massive fingers. “What you hear and see here stays here. Every single whisper, every face, every conversation. The second you walk out that door, it’s gone. You got me?” He pauses, letting the implied threat hang in the stagnant air. Groves, my contact, had been explicit: the last bartender, a young man who thought he could make some extra cash, was caught feeding information—“tips,” as Groves euphemistically called them—to the Russians. The club has been looking for him ever since. You’re a spy, but you’re only spying for yourself, Groves had warned. They catch you, you’re on your own.

“Yes, sir,” I answered again, this time forcing myself to lift my head and meet his unwavering gaze. I want to convey true understanding, a genuine, if terrified, commitment to the rules.

Then Viper leans back, his expression unchanged. “Pour drinks, reheat food from the industrial microwave, and keep the damn place clean. We don’t require much more than a ghost behind the bar. If you follow those simple rules, you’ll stay on my good side. You need anything, anything at all, you let me know.” He concludes the meeting by standing, an action that makes the entire floorboard seem to dip.

He turns and strides toward the backroom, a restricted area I know better than to ever approach. As he reaches the entrance, he pulls open the two heavy, bolted doors, revealing the dark cavern beyond. Before they swing shut, I catch a glimpse of the brutal artwork etched into the wood: a skeleton hand crushing a seraphic halo, and beneath it, the club's motto burned into the lintel: “We ride the damnation we earned.”

The words send a sudden, icy chill down my spine, a sensation that has nothing to do with the draft from the backroom. This isn't a bar; it's the anteroom to a hell reserved for men who embrace their own darkness.

I walk tentatively behind the long, scarred mahogany bar, the sole occupant of the room. A few hours pass, stretching out into an eternity of silence. Nothing happens. No one comes out of that back room, and I can't hear so much as a cough or a muffled conversation through the thick doors. I haven’t located the hidden cameras yet, nor have I found the slightest crack or weakness in the walls that would allow me to approach and try to get a listen. The need for patience is a heavy cloak.

So, instead of acting on my espionage, I act on my cover. I sweep the concrete floor, meticulously clean off the sticky bar-top and the scattering of mismatched tables, and finally settle in to organize and inventory the liquor bottles, mapping out the geography of my new cage.

I’m halfway through counting the bottles of cheap bourbon and tequila when the heavy front door rattles open with a groan. A cold, thick wall of fog from the alley outside momentarily floods the room, making the single overhead fluorescent light fixture flicker.

They come in a staggered line, emerging from the obscurity like figures in a nightmare—a formidable wall of leather, denim, and aggressive attitude. They are big men, narrow men, men soft around the middle who compensate with a ferocious scowl, and others cut lean and hard like knives. There is no matching size or shape in the group, but they all share the same second skin, the one thing that binds them and identifies them as one: the cut. Their colors, the black and silver patches of the Saints of Ruin, are their uniform, their bond, and their curse.

The crowd of leather parts, and from the back they come—four men who move like the room is already theirs.

All four wear the same cut as the others: cracked black leather like it’s been dragged through harbor fog and cemetery dirt, the skeletal hand crushing a broken halo stamped huge across their backs. Spanish moss curls around the bones; twisted wrought-iron scrollwork cages it in, like the balconies and grave fences of Puerto del Morrow itself. Above, the top rocker arches: SAINTS OF RUIN. Below: PUERTO DEL MORROW, CA. And stitched in a small, brutal tab beneath the main patch, in faded gold thread, sits the club’s promise: WE RIDE THE DAMNATION WE EARNED.

Jax Torres, nickname: Viper, The President leads them, tall and broad through the shoulders, his cut sitting heavy over a body built from fights and long rides, not gyms. Gray threads his beard, and the ink on his throat disappears under his collar—old, dark work that hints at a past longer and nastier than anyone asks about twice. When he pauses, the bar seems to hold its breath. His halo on the patch is almost scrubbed colorless, like he’s been rolling in that damnation longer than the rest. On his left walks his Vice Spider. Real name is Cristain Morales, he is a lean, whipcord man whose sharp cheekbones and unnervingly watchful eyes gave him a predatory, unhinged look. Though not as physically imposing, the casual, almost eager readiness of his hands kept people from ever crowding him. His biker cut was longer than most, its frayed edging a testament to fingers that never stopped moving. The motto patch, stretched tight by his thin, humorless smile, never quite masked the unsettling blankness in his eyes.

To the President’s right is Milo Cortez. Road name Thorn, the Enforcer, all bulk and menace, built like a wrecking ball. His cut strains at the seams over thick arms inked in black saints and bleeding thorns. When he turns, the cracked leather across his back ripples, the skeletal hand and shattered halo flexing with the muscle beneath. He wears his damnation openly, like an invitation and a dare. The fourth man lags half a step behind the President’s shoulder, but no one mistakes him for lesser. Javier Ortega, road name Cipher. He’s slighter, narrower through the chest, almost pretty in the wrong kind of way—sharp jaw, full mouth, eyes that miss nothing and care about even less. His cut fits him clean and close, the edges still neat, the rope-like gold stitching catching the light when he moves. On him, the broken halo looks almost delicate, like a promise of ruin dressed up as grace. The club jokes that Viper runs the table, Spider spins the web, Thorn cleans the mess, but it’s Cipher who makes sure they all stay rich enough to be dangerous. Together, the four of them form the spine of the club—different sizes, different brands of danger, but all wearing the same mark: saints stripped of halos, riding the damnation they earned, and making sure everyone in Puerto del Morrow remembers it.

Jax –

I pull the heavy oak door of the boardroom shut with a resonant thud, the echo dying quickly as the men settle in the main room of the clubhouse. Another meeting concluded, another quarter projected for soaring profit margins. The club’s business is stable, thriving even. With the weight of the club’s affairs momentarily off my shoulders, I head toward our sanctuary. Our booth. It used to be where the altar stood back in the day—a symbolic, deliberate choice to place us at the heart of everything, allowing me to see and survey the entire floor. And tonight, that vantage point gives me an unobstructed view of the new guy behind the bar.

Mailk, his name is a quiet echo in my mind. Those smoky grey eyes have been seared into my consciousness since I met him for a quick, perfunctory introduction before the meeting started. A quick handshake, a brief assessment, and a fleeting moment where I felt a strange, inexplicable familiarity. Then I am yanked from my silent appraisal by the sharp jab of an elbow to my ribs.

“Did you hear me, Jax?” Cipher questions, his voice a low, insistent rumble.

I don’t turn my head, my gaze still fixed on the controlled, almost clinical way Mailk is polishing glasses behind the bar. “If we keep moving at this rate, we will be approaching a new quarterly high,” I repeat, the facts condensed, delivered in a clipped, noncommittal tone. I don’t need to hear the whole spiel. I know the numbers better than anyone.

Spider lets out a dry, rasping chuckle from beside me as I casually raise my hand, a silent command that instantly pulls Mailk’s attention toward our booth.

“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, Ciph, I’m always listening, even when you think I’m not. I hear everything,” I state, finally letting my eyes drift to the men at the table.

“And what he doesn’t hear, I do,” Spider leans in conspiratorially, his whisper husky and close.

Mailk approaches the table with a quiet efficiency that’s unnervingly professional for this place. He stands ready, his expression neutral as he plainly asks, “What can I get for you?”

Thorn, ever the meticulous one when it comes to club custom and hierarchy, looks him dead in the eye and replies in a low, commanding voice, “Viper and I take our tequila straight, and keep them coming. Cipher will take a Modelo and only bring him another when he asks. Spider will have water or soda unless other specified by one of us.” He holds Mailk’s gaze, a subtle test of his attention and compliance.

Mailk nods, a quick, almost reflexive motion, and then repeats the entire order back quickly, as if he is downloading the data directly from Thorn's brain and confirming the upload. It's a precise recitation that speaks of either intense focus or practiced service.

As I continue to stare at him—at the sharp curve of his jaw, the precise set of his mouth—the feeling of déjà vu intensifies. I can’t shake the sense that I’ve seen him before, or rather, felt him. Those lips are achingly familiar, yet the only man whose lips I’ve truly known, truly felt the heat and desperation of, is Cipher. Javier.

He was my cellmate during my last, unforgettable prison sentence. The only people who know about that raw, foundational time are the men sitting at this very table. It is a time we collectively choose to leave untouched. The things Javier—Cipher—had to do to survive inside, the compromises he made, the boundaries he crossed, are off-limits. They respect that boundary with an unspoken ferocity. When the nightmares inevitably hit him—the ghosts of those years—he’ll slip into my or Thorn’s bed late at night and be gone before dawn, always thinking we don’t notice. He won’t mention it, we won’t either. Jax’s know it’s just what Cipher needs, a silent anchor back to the present.

Mailk returns swiftly, silently, placing the drinks before us with an economical grace. I take a long, burning sip of my second tequila and lean back into the booth’s leather cushioning, letting the alcohol settle the persistent unease. The boys immediately turn their focus to the mounted television screens for the late-night soccer game. Soon after, the girls start to trickle in, signaling the true commencement of the night’s inevitable chaos. The club shifts from business to pure indulgence.

Hours bleed into each other, marked by empty glasses and rising noise. After a while, the usual cycle begins: a few of the patched members have left for the night, others have disappeared into the back rooms with one of the clubhouse women for a night of unchecked indulgence, or simply passed out in a corner booth.

I glance at the ornate clock above the bar. It's well after 2 am. Mailk is still moving, his eyes scanning the carnage: the scattered bodies, the discarded bottles, the sheer mess of a successful Saints of Ruin night. He looks exhausted, the energy he displayed earlier starting to fray around the edges.

“It can wait until tomorrow, go home,” I say, my voice cutting through the lingering din, pushing myself out of the booth, I explain, “They’ll be here when you return in the morning.”

I stand, take a long stretch revealing the thin line of hair running from my jeans up my navel disappearing into my shirt, and start walking toward the club’s back door, needing a lungful of cold night air to scrub the tequila and the club’s stale atmosphere from my head. As I reach the threshold, I hear him release a long, heavy sigh of relief from the center of the room. The sound is startlingly intimate, rushing right to my center, hitting me with a bizarre, hormonal jolt that settles in my dick. What the fuck is going on? I swear I have seen him before. I know I have. I just can’t place the where and when.

“Can I have one?” I hear Mailk ask, the question pulling me sharply back to the present. Mailk is standing a few feet behind me, his eyes now fixed on the pack of cigarettes in my hand.

I extract a cigarette and hand it to him, then light my own with a sharp, practiced flick of a lighter. Malik follows suit, the small flame illuminating the sharp planes of his face for a split second. He takes a deep, lung-filling inhale. I watch his nostrils flare subtly before he slowly exhales. A light, cold breeze catches the smoke and whisks it away from us in a sudden gust.

With a single, tired exhale—deeper and more resonant than the sigh of relief he gave inside—he sighs again. This time, the weight of it, the weary acceptance in the sound, hits me like a physical blow, as a ton of bricks dropped directly onto my chest.

In that instant, the world tilts. I am transported. The familiarity slams into me with the force of memory and repressed desire. I am no longer standing in the cool night air outside the clubhouse. I am back in the suffocating heat and humidity of that one night, years ago, in the treehouse. And I remember the lips. I remember everything.

“Jax Down!” Malik’s voice, raw and desperate, was the only warning. It ripped me violently back from the quiet, cold void of my own thoughts, the kind of stillness that precedes the storm. Before my muscles could even register the command to twitch or move, the corner of the clubhouse lot exploded in a cacophony—the screech of tires, the metallic groan of impact as a vehicle slammed into something unseen, and a deafening, tearing volley of automatic gunfire.

Malik didn't wait. He was a force of instinct, a solid wall of flesh and leather that collided with me, his shoulder slamming into my ribs and driving my spine viciously into the unforgiving, oil-stained asphalt. The breath whooshed from my lungs. I twisted instantly, rolling the weight of his body off mine, the practiced motion as natural as breathing. My 9mm, a comforting extension of my own arm, was a blur, pulled from the secure holster at my hip.

Squatting low, over Malik’s stocky as a brief shield, I pivoted on the balls of my feet. The sedan was already a dark, retreating shape, windows likely tinted and indistinguishable, but I spat lead in its direction anyway—a burst of warning, a promise of what was to come. I heard the sharp crack-crack-crack of my own weapon slicing through the night air.

Then, the cavalry arrived, erupting from the open maw of the clubhouse door like a vengeful specter. Thorn, a lethal silhouette against the dim interior light, appeared first, two 9mm's leveled and tracking, his stance wide and terrifyingly controlled. Cip followed, not in a rush, but with the steady, menacing gait of a man who knew his weapon. He cradled a pump-action shotgun, its barrel gleaming faintly in the streetlamp's spill, the heavy thwack of the pump action a sinister punctuation mark.

Shit. I hadn't seen them passed out; I’d just assumed they were sacked out in the back rooms, chasing sleep or cheap thrills. Cipher being awake was the real shock, a rare occurrence; he was usually chasing the early morning grind, not guarding the door.

The sedan vanished, tires protesting one last time in a desperate, high-pitched squeal as it rounded the next block. The sudden silence was heavier than the gunfire had been. I turned, ready to haul Malik up, but he was already on his feet, his eyes darting, scanning the empty street and the shadows for secondary threats, his combat senses fully engaged.

“You okay?” I demanded, my own heart beginning to slow from a frantic sprint to a measured, heavy drum.

“Yeah, just lost my damn cigarette,” he grunted, running a hand through his sweat-dampened hair.

I managed a short, dark laugh, the sound grating in my throat. “I’ve got more. Inside.” I shoved Malik toward the splintered doorway, the wood near the frame chewed by shrapnel or a stray round. Thorn was on his heels, taking point again, his weapon still up, muzzle-flashes temporarily blinding. Cipher, shotgun held ready across his chest, held the damaged frame open as we plunged back into the smoke-filled, stale air of the clubhouse.

“Look alive, pussies!” Thorn's voice was a ragged, furious roar that cut through the lingering buzz of the attack. He snatched an empty beer bottle from the bar, hurled it against the far wall, where it shattered. “You hear that?” Bang-bang-bang. He slammed his fist, hard, against the closest support pillar, the sound echoing like a fresh round. “That’s how close your president just came to getting his fucking skull ventilated while you were all in here snoring, drunk, or balls-deep in some club bunny!”

He began to pace, a human cyclone of fury, banging on doors, kicking discarded boots and slumped bodies awake. He moved through the main room, his eyes blazing with molten rage. “You flying the patch or you playing dress-up? ‘Cause right now, I see a whole lotta leather and not a single goddamn brother who had his back.”

He wheeled back to face the main cluster of stumbling, groggy men. “He was alone out there. Alone. President of this club, target painted on his back since the day he took that top rocker, and where were you? Huh? Where the fuck were you when that car rolled slowly past the curb and lit up the sidewalk? I was on the door. Cipher on my back. You know what I heard behind us? Not boots. Not guns. Not engines. I heard snoring and giggling and some cheap-ass heels on the hallway floor.” His voice cracked with genuine disgust.

Thorn jabbed a finger, his hand shaking with adrenaline and righteous anger, sweeping it across the room. “You wanna get high, get drunk, get your dick wet? Do it on your own time. You walk through those doors, the cut on your back says you live and die for the man wearing ‘President’ above his. That’s not a patch, that’s a promise. It is a vow of blood. And every single one of you broke it tonight. Every single one of you left him exposed.”

He leaned forward, his face inches from the stunned face of a patched member who was still trying to find his balance. “You think they won’t try again? You think the people who just took a shot at our president are scared of you lying there with your pants around your ankles? They saw what I saw: clubhouse wide open, brothers scattered, no eyes on the street, no guns ready, no formation. We looked weak. They drove by this temple, saw a goddamn target practice. WE ARE NOT FUCKING WEAK.”

He let the silence hang heavy, the air thick with fear and shame, before he leaned in again, his voice dropping. It was no longer a yell; it was a deadly, contained quiet, far more dangerous than the shouting. “From this minute on, you breathe when I say breathe. You stand watch when I tell you to stand watch. We tighten up, or we bury somebody. Those are the choices. Next time that car rolls by, they’re not missing. Next time, it’s not a warning shot meant to scare us. It will be the execution. So you decide, right fucking now, are you his shield, or are you dead weight I cut loose before they cut him down?”

I took the opportunity in the momentary lull to slide a fresh cigarette into Malik's hand. He took it with a nod, his eyes still fixed on Thorn. “Thanks for that out there,” I said, my voice low, sliding a lit Zippo forward and holding the flame steady for him. The blue smoke curled up between us, a small moment of calm in the chaotic storm of Thorn's verbal assault.

I notice Malik's hands shaking, “Sit,” I say, because if I don’t give him orders, he’s going to unravel. “Before you fall on your face and ruin my heroic moment.”

Malik smirks but lets himself slide down into the seat next to me. “You’re calling it heroic now?”

“You’re welcome,” Malik mutters, inhaling a puff from his cigarette. His thighs protest, adrenaline burning out, leaving him hollow and shaky. “Couldn’t let you decorate the pavement on my second day.”

“Glad you didn’t,” I say quietly.

Malik eyes the graze along my ribs where the bullet kissed leather but didn’t claim flesh. An inch. Less than that. If Malik hadn’t tackled me when he did.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I say.

“Like what?” Malik’s voice comes out rougher than he likes.

“Like you’re counting exit wounds.”

“Somebody has to,” Malik snaps, more to cover the way his pulse is suddenly pounding in places that have nothing to do with fear. “You ever think about not standing in the open like a big, stupid target?”

I tip my back against the barstool, closing my eyes for a moment. The bruised purple of the cut above my brow makes my lashes look darker, my mouth softer. “Didn’t realize I needed a babysitter.”

“You don’t,” Malik says. “You need a brain.”

That pulls another laugh out of me, low and hoarse. “You are always this nice to guys you save, or is this a special occasion?”

Malik reaches up and thumbs away a trickle of blood from my temple. The touch is meant to be clinical; it isn’t. My skin is hot beneath his fingers, my breath catching just enough for Malik to feel it.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Malik says softly. “I was saving the expensive tequila behind you.”

“Liar.”

The word slides between them, slow and sure, and Malik feels it like a hand on the back of his neck.

He drops his gaze first, focusing on the shallow scrape. “You’re gonna need that stitched,” he murmurs, leaning in. He can smell smoke on me, the ghost of cologne, leather, the sharp metallic edge of adrenaline.

“You offering?” I ask, and my voice has gone low, intimate, not the bark of a president, but something closer to the man who kissed him in the backroom of a stash house.

Malik’s throat tightens. Eight years drop over him like a net: the humid air of Ciénaga House, the rough scrape of my stubble against his jaw, the way the bed creaked, the bag of cocaine and money stored under the bus. It all covers him.

He pulls back just a fraction, enough to breathe. “I’m not a medic.”

“Didn’t stop you from throwing yourself into gunfire.” My eyes open again, pinning him. “You could’ve stayed inside. Let someone else handle it.”

“Someone else wasn’t there,” Malik says. “I was.”

I study him like there’s a puzzle I'm halfway through solving. “Why?”

Malik feels suddenly bare, like the hallway’s stripped him down to nerve endings and bad decisions. He shrugs, but it feels brittle. “You’re the president. They hit you, and everything goes to shit. Club, Barrio, all of it. Don’t pretend you don’t know that.”

“That’s the official answer,” I say. “Try again.”

He’s close enough that I can see the faint ring of gold around his dark pupils. Close enough that I am aware of every breath, every inch between us, the remembered weight of my body pinning him to a cheap mattress, the way it had felt terrifying and right all at once.

“Does it matter?” Malik asks quietly.

“It does to me.”

The words hang there, heavier than the gun Thron dropped on the bar the second we made inside.

Malik huffs a humorless laugh. “Then chalk it up to bad instincts. I see someone about to get shot, so I move. So next time, try not to stand in my line of fire, yeah? I’m fond of my internal organs.”

My mouth curves, slow and dangerous. “You’re assuming there’s gonna be a next time.”

“There’s always a next time with you people,” Malik says, but it comes out softer, almost fond despite himself.

I watch him, gaze dropping to Malik’s mouth and lingering there. “That sounds an awful lot like you plan on sticking around to see it.”

Heat crawls up Malik’s neck. He’s suddenly aware of how close we are, how his knees bracket my thighs, how one wrong move would put him straddling the man. He clears his throat and shifts, feeling the heat between his thighs, but my hand comes up, rough fingers closing around his wrist.

“Hey,” I say. “Look at me.”

Malik does. He can’t not.

“Thank you,” I say. No swagger, no joke to soften it. Just those two words, delivered like a vow. “You saved my life.”

Malik’s heart gives an uncomfortable lurch. He tries for a shrug. “You’d have done the same.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But you actually did.”

The air between them tightens, electric. Malik can feel it crackling along the surface of his skin, raising goosebumps. My thumb strokes once, absently, over the inside of his wrist where his pulse is beating itself stupid.

Malik swallows. “Careful,” he murmurs, because if he doesn’t say something flippant, he’s going to say something true. “You keep talking like that, people are gonna think you’re soft.”

My lips twitch. “You complaining?”

“Didn’t say that.”

Their eyes catch and hold. For half a second, Malik swears I am going to pull him in, close that last inch, kiss him as I did eight years ago when we were nobody to each other but heat and hunger and a name whispered in the dark.

My gaze drops to Malik’s mouth again, then flicks back up, sharper now. Whatever war is happening behind my eyes, Malik doesn’t get to see the winner. I release his wrist, the loss of contact immediate and stupidly painful. Malik rose from his seat, searching for his keys.

“Need a ride?” I ask in a low tone.

“No, I’ll be fine, I’m a big boy,” Malik says with a snicker.

“Seriously,” I say, and there’s that raw undercurrent again, the one that makes Malik feel like he’s teetering on the edge of something dangerous and familiar. “I owe you.”

Malik holds my gaze for a long, long beat. “You don’t owe me anything,” he says. “We’re square.”

He opens the door before he can say something wild like You already paid me once, and you don’t even remember, before he can betray just how long that one night has lived in the spaces between his ribs.

The noise of the clubhouse crashes back over him as he steps out, swallowing him up—voices, footsteps, the smell of gunpowder and smoke. He lets the door shut behind him, cutting off me.

Inside, alone again, I tip my back against the chair and exhale shakily.

Eight years, and Malik still walks out on me like that.

Eight years, and Malik still has no idea that I remember every second of that night in the treehouse—the soft, tentative way he’d given himself to me, the taste of his mouth, the feel of his body under mine, the guilt that chased him out before dawn.

Eight years, and I am still thinking about the girl who stole the stash and gave me the club in the same damn night.

I drag a hand over my face, a grim smile tugging at my mouth.

“Yeah,” I mutter to the empty bar. “We’re nowhere near square.”

Chapter 2

Cipher— 

I was leaning against the doorway that leads towards the backrooms, the cool metal edge a welcome pressure against my spine. Out in the main clubhouse, the noise level was finally dropping, but the tension was thick enough to chew. Thorn was still a live wire, pacing and spitting fire at the few low-level members and prospects still standing around. They looked like whipped dogs, shrinking under the barrage of his fury.

“You’re supposed to be on your toes! Shots were fired at the Prez, and you assholes were standing around with your thumbs up your asses!” Thorn’s voice was a ragged roar, his face a mask of scarlet rage. Jax had let the new guy, the one who’d was out front when the shots rang out, go home a good half-hour ago, but Thorn’s venom wasn't depleted. He looked like he could keep this up until sunrise.

I felt a slight shift in the air, a silent command. Jax, sitting at his usual corner stool at the end of the bar, nodded subtly in my direction. I straightened up and walked across the stained concrete floor toward him. The scent of stale beer and gun oil was stronger here.

“What up, Prez?” I asked as I approached. Jax was nursing a whiskey, his eyes locked on Thorn, who was still visibly fuming. Thorn was gripping a beer bottle so hard the veins in his hand were popping out, his pacing leaving a visible track in the sawdust.

"From now on, if he so much as takes a piss outside that door, I want eyes on him and guns up!" Thorn was shouting across the floor now, his voice cracking with the sheer force of his frustration. "Nobody breathes easy while our president is standing in the open, you hear me? You move! You scout! You take a fucking bullet before he does!"

Jax took a slow sip of his drink, finally peeling his gaze from Thorn to meet mine. His expression was heavy, etched with exhaustion and the cold focus of a leader who'd just been reminded of his own mortality.

“You been able to figure out what’s eating at Tez? He’s been like a damn ghost since the funeral,” he asked, his voice low and gravelly, the concern unmistakable. He leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on the bar. “And where the fuck is Spider? He’s supposed to be here running point.”

“Spider went to cover the count at the club tonight,” I quickly explained, turning to lean against the bar myself, putting my back to Jax and facing the perpetual cyclone of Thorn’s anger. Thorn ripped the cap off a new bottle of beer with a violent hiss. “I was trying to talk to Tez earlier, right after the hit went down, but he was still holding back. I think he’s shaken up, Prez. He saw the whole damn thing from the roof, you know? And whatever he saw, he’s bottling it tight.”

I paused, watching Thorn stop his pacing to take a long, aggressive pull from his bottle. "He’ll talk eventually," I finished, feeling a familiar tightness in my own chest. "He always does. Just needs time to process, you know how he gets about kids."

The air was thick with the scent of cheap tequila and lingering aggression. Jax’s presence, always a demanding force, seemed to vacuum all the oxygen from the small, crowded space. I felt the familiar, almost magnetic slide of his hand up the back of my neck. His grip tightened, a proprietary squeeze that was both comforting and utterly forbidden, sending a sharp, electric sensation through my body. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, internalizing a low, involuntary groan that threatened to betray my carefully constructed composure.

“Thorn, that’s enough,” the command was a low rumble, the bass of his voice cutting through the tense atmosphere like a sonic boom. Every head in the room—a mix of scarred faces and hardened eyes—snapped toward him, all attention forcibly diverted from the man Jax was now protecting. Thorn, a bulky shadow of a man, paused as he was about to get started again, his own anger momentarily eclipsed by Jax’s authority.

Jax didn’t wait for a reply, his gaze sweeping over the gathered crew with a chilling finality. “Everyone sleep in your own bed tonight.”

He turned his back on the audience, a dismissal more absolute than any direct order, and picked up the last half-empty glass of tequila from the makeshift bar. He tossed the amber liquid down his throat with a practiced ease, the burn seemingly unnoticed. As he set the glass down, he whispered, low enough that only I could hear the need in his final command.

“I need him better by the morning, Thorn. I don’t care how you do it, but I need his mind back on task.”

With that, he straightened, his large hand briefly resting on my shoulder in a gesture that was half possessive warning, half promise of protection. He then moved, a silent, powerful anchor, leading the pack of men, his men, his pack, away from the defeated, simmering fury of Thorn and the wreckage of the confrontation. I was left alone, the echoes of his voice and the fading pressure of his hand the only anchors in the room. My focus locked onto Thorn's, a silent challenge in the depths of his eyes. The severity of the task crashed down on me, not the one man standing before me, but the Better by the morning. It wasn't a request; it was a deadline, and I had no idea how I was going to break through the walls he'd built around himself.

The clubhouse finally goes quiet in stages—engines fading, boots on gravel, last drunk laugh cut off by the door thudding shut. What’s left is the hum of the beer fridges and Thorn’s breathing.

He’s a big, dark shape at the end of the bar, shoulders rolled forward, cut hanging heavy off him. In the low light his beard is more shadow than color, jaw clenched so hard his cheek twitches. Ink climbs both his arms in dense black-and-grey, a full suit of stories from wrist to shoulder, disappearing under his sleeves. Even slouched on a barstool he looks like he could pick me up and break me over his knee, but right now he just looks…spent.

I lean my hip against the bar a few feet away, flicking a bottle cap between my fingers. “Prez says your head’s so far up your ass you’re seein’ daylight out your own mouth.”

Thorn’s eyes cut over, slow. “He send you to say that?”

“He sent me to ‘get your head back in the game,’” I quote, wiggling my fingers. “That part’s free. The poetry’s mine.”

Thorn snorts, but it’s a tired, ugly sound. “Tell Jax I’m fine.”

“Yeah,” I say dryly. “That’s why you damn near walked straight into those Russians tonight, right? ‘Fine.’”

Thorn’s jaw works. He grips the edge of the bar, big hands going white-knuckled over scarred wood. His forearms flex, tattoos bunching and shifting like something alive under his skin. “I saw ‘em.”

“Not fast enough,” I say. “You were somewhere else.”

Thorn doesn’t answer. His gaze is fixed on a dark patch on the floor where somebody’s tracked in blood and beer, like he can still see smaller bodies there, not bullet casings and boot prints.

I watch him for a beat. Thorn’s usually all sharp edges and volume, a wall of muscle and threat that fills a room. Tonight he looks like someone dropped that wall on top of him instead.

“You think you’re the only one who hears ‘em?” I ask softly. “Those kids?”

Thorn’s head snaps toward me, eyes flashing. “Shut the fuck up, Ciph.”

“There it is,” I say under my breath. “The Thorn I know. Loud, mean, likes to throw things. I was starting to miss him.”

Thorn stands so fast the stool screeches backward and topples. Suddenly he’s right there, all six-and-a-half feet of him, heat and leather and sheer weight. One tattooed arm slams the bar beside my hip, boxing me in. Up close, the details blur—skulls, saints, barbed wire, a whole history inked on skin thick with muscle.

“You wanna say that again?” Thorn growls.

I just look up at him, unblinking. “You’re not scaring me, big man. You look like shit, that’s all.”

Thorn’s nostrils flare. For a second I think he might actually swing; instead the enforcer blows out a breath and sags back an inch, like all the fight leaks out with the air.

“They were kids,” Thorn rasps. “I was right there. Right fucking there.”

“I know,” I say. My voice loses its usual razor edge. “We all were.”

“No.” Thorn shakes his head, eyes going distant. “They looked at me. Like I could fix it. Like I was… I don’t know. Bulletproof. I told ‘em… I told ‘em they were safe.” His throat works. “Then they weren’t.”

I let the silence sit for a moment. Thorn fills it anyway, with his size, his ink, his ghosts. He towers, but he’s hollow in the middle.

“You fucked up,” I say finally. “We all did. But you living in that second on loop doesn’t bring them back. It just gets more people killed.”

Thorn’s gaze snaps back to me, wounded and furious. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I think tonight proves you don’t know it enough.” I flick the bottle cap at his chest; it pings off leather and drops to the floor. “You’re our hammer, Thorn. You lose your grip, the whole damn club catches the swing.”

Thorn swallows hard. His hands twitch like he doesn’t know if he wants to punch something or hold onto something. The tattoos on his knuckles—letters, symbols, tiny grim saints—flex and curl.

“They were just—” He breaks off, jaw locking again. “I keep seeing them.”

“Yeah,” I say quietly. “Join the fucking club.”

Thorn stares at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. My fingers are still moving, even empty now, drawing invisible patterns on the bar top. My eyes look flat, shark-blank, but my voice isn’t.

“You think Jax sent me ‘cause he’s worried about the kids?” I ask. “He sent me ‘cause tonight you left his flank open. ‘Cause you want so bad to be where they died, you’re not where he is.”

Thorn’s face twists. “They were ours.”

“So is he,” I shoot back. “So am I. You wanna cash out, you do it after the goddamn war. Not in the middle of a firefight.”

“Who says I’m—” Thorn stops, realizing what he’s about to admit. He looks away, throat working.

I lean in, just enough that Thorn has to feel the truth of it. “You don’t get to check out, hermano. Not yet. You wanna make it right? Fine. Be the meanest son of a bitch those kids ever had fighting in their name. But you do it here. With us. With him.”

The big man goes still. The lines in his face carve deeper, like someone’s drawing them with a knife from the inside.

“Jax thinks I’m a liability now?” Thorn asks hoarsely.

“No, Jax is worried about you, we all are,” I explain to him. “You haven’t been acting like yourself.”

Thorn closes his eyes for a second, big hands flexing on the bar. When he opens them again, something in them has shifted, not fixed, not healed, but anchored.

He nods once. “I’ll be on the door tomorrow. Early.” Thorn stands facing towards the stairs where his private quarters are. He lives above the bar.

I bump my shoulder lightly against Thorn’s arm, inked skin hard under my knuckles. “There he is. That’s my fucking hammer.”

Thorn snorts, some of his usual bite flickering back. “You keep calling me that, I’m putting you through a wall.”

“See?” I say, straightening up, letting myself step out of the cage of Thorn’s arm. “That’s the attitude I’m talking about.”

I turn toward the exit, “Hey, Thorn,” I say. He then glances back over his shoulder. Thorn is still huge and haunted at the bar, tattoos crawling over corded muscle, but he’s standing a little straighter. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow, we make somebody pay for those kids. But tonight, you stay alive. That’s the job.”

Thorn’s eyes meet mine. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I got it.” The ghosts are still there; they always will be. But for the first time in weeks, they’re not the only thing in the room.

I take the last quarter of my beer down in one glup and I remember Jax’s words Better by Morning. 

Thorn –

After talking with Cip, I always appreciated how he was always there for me, a steady, blunt presence even when I struggled to be there for myself. The man had gotten me through some truly rough shit—situations that would have broken a lesser man. I pulled myself up the worn, creaking wooden stairs toward my apartment above the clubhouse, leaving Cip to finish his beer and the quiet night to settle around the Sons of Ruin. A shower was a necessity.

The moment I pushed the door open, my eyes went straight to the cheap, blinking digital clock hanging above the stove: 3:28 in the damn morning. My living space was exactly what you'd expect from a career biker and ex-con. It was cramped, functional, and reeked faintly of stale beer, leather, and cheap disinfectant. A small, cluttered kitchen flowed directly into a meager living room with a beat-up couch. Beyond that were the single bedroom and the only bathroom.

I ripped my cut off, the vest that was more than just clothing, it was my identity and laid across the scratched Formica of the kitchen table. It landed with a dull thump. I reaced in the belt loops of pants and removed my two large combat knives, placing them carefully on top of the vest. I entered the bedroom on the back half of the space, a dark cave I was more than familiar with. I stripped off the layers of my clothes, the heavy denim jeans, the t-shirt, letting them drop where they fell on the floor, ready to be stepped over until morning. All I craved was a shower. Reaching the threshold of my bedroom, I let my boxer briefs fall to the floor with one decisive tug and headed toward the bathroom. I stood before the fogged mirror, waiting for the water to reach scalding. I let loose a deep, weary sigh just as the heavy thunk of the clubhouse gate closing echoed up to the room. Cipher must have locked up and finally cleared out for the night, I figured.

Stepping into the cascading spray, I let the warmth soak into the knotted muscles in my shoulders and back. The tension that had been riding me all day, ever since the meet-up, began to melt away, streaming down the drain with the excess water. I didn't know how long I stood there, letting the heat work its magic, but it was desperately needed. Between the heavy conversation with Cipher and the sheer relief of that hot shower, I thought I might actually catch a few hours of real sleep tonight.

Finally feeling somewhat human, I killed the water, grabbed a thick towel, and cinched it around my waist. I turned, intending to head straight for the bed, and that's when I stopped dead.

My eyes landed squarely on Cipher. He was naked, sprawled out on his stomach across my sheets, completely at ease in my space. The most immediate shock wasn't the nudity, though. It was the fact that he was holding my discarded boxer briefs—the ones I'd just dropped—in one hand, bringing them slowly up to his face. I watched, frozen, as he took a deep, deliberate inhale, a slow, predatory smirk spreading across his lips as he registered my presence.

So much for getting any sleep tonight.

"So, is this what Jax sent you to do?" I asked, my voice flat, masking the sudden, sharp spike of adrenaline and anticipation in my gut. I moved slowly toward the edge of the bed, the towel still cinched tightly, but my steps were heavy, deliberate. His eyes, dark and impossibly intense, tracked my every single move, and the air in the room thickened with a palpable, silent challenge.

Still holding my briefs, he shrugs his shoulders with a shy, almost playful smile and wiggles his hips slightly as he inhales deeply, drawing in the all-day scent of my arousal and sweat. I slowly unhook the knot of the towel around my waist, letting the damp cotton fall silently to the floor. I step close enough to the bed for my knees to brush the mattress, my gaze locked on his. With a slow, deep growl rumbling in my chest, I challenge him, "Then make me better."

A flicker of heat crosses his dark eyes. He lifts his knees, arching his back gracefully, a silent invitation, and rests his weight on his elbows. He never breaks eye contact, still clutching my damp underwear in one hand, a trophy of his anticipation. Then, with a possessive urgency that always sends a jolt through me, he takes my hardness into his mouth. My erection, already straining, swells further as he begins to suck me deep into his throat, instinctively knowing the exact rhythm and pressure I crave. He swirls his tongue around the head, an exquisite tease, before sliding to the tip and then swallowing deeply, taking me into the slick, hot depths of his mouth.

A moan rips from my lips as I throw my head back, a fierce shiver running up my already slick back. I slide my fingers into his black, thick curls, which he keeps high and expertly tapered on the sides, pulling gently to steady the rhythm. I begin to stroke the back of his head, feeling the powerful definition in his back muscles ripple under my touch. The sound he makes—a muffled, desperate gag around my thickness—is pure music to my ears.

"Fuck, I missed this mouth," I moan, my voice raw with pleasure, as I grip the back of his head tighter, quickening the insistent thrust of my hips. He moans in response, a low, guttural sound lost in the suction, and I sink down, burying myself as far as he can take me, my wet pubic hair pressing against his nose. I switch my grip, moving my forearm to the back of his head, holding him firmly in place, controlling the pace and the depth, ensuring he feels every agonizing inch of my desire. The air grows thick with the metallic scent of sex and heat, and the only sound is the wet, rhythmic pulse of his devotion.

He taps my thigh signalling that he is needs me to let up but I swat at his hand and continue my assault on his throat. Lost in my own trance his needs no longer a factor I relentless force myself down his throat. The sudden tap on my thigh, a quick, frantic signal, meant he was drowning, desperately pleading for me to ease the pressure. But the signal, the non-verbal cry for mercy, only fueled the fire in my veins. I swatted his hand away with a dismissive, almost violent gesture, a small, yet definitive act of defiance. The world outside the searing sensation of his windpipe pressed beneath my thumb and the adrenaline-fueled throbbing in my own ears had ceased to matter.

I was no longer operating with the detached, deliberate focus of a seducer; I was an entity possessed. A dark, primal curtain had dropped, cloaking my vision, muffling his struggle, and leaving only the fierce, consuming need to dominate. His needs—the need to breathe, to object, to exist outside of my control—were no longer a factor, merely inconvenient friction I was determined to overcome. A relentless, savage force, a monstrous hunger I hadn't known I possessed, took over. I pressed down harder, forcing my will, my entire desperate being, down his throat, a suffocating, possessive act that had transcended the bounds of pleasure and entered the territory of pure, unadulterated need.When I do back off a enough for him to inhale through his nose he uses the momentum and pushes himself off me and gags harshly. “What the fuck was that” Cip ask the slob and spit drip from swollen lips. “You know me rules”he  adds. I see a fury in his eyes beyond the tears. I nod in accpctace of my fuck up. “Sorry” I say pulling myself out of my trance.

"What the fuck was that?" Cip asked the slob, spit dripping from his swollen lips. "You know my rules," he added, a fury in his eyes that went beyond the tears. I nodded, accepting my fuck-up. "Sorry," I mumbled, pulling myself out of my trance. 

He anger doesn’t retreat until he takes another inhle of my boxers. I go to move in and and holds his hand up in protest. Take two more quick inhales and and I can the euphoria vibrate through his body. His anger, a cold, hard knot in his chest, didn't loosen its grip. It wasn't until he took another deep inhale, pulling the scent of me from the fabric of my discarded boxers, that I saw a flicker of the tension ease. I started to move closer, my hand reaching out, but he held his hand up, palm facing me in a silent, yet firm, protest. He needed a moment.

He obeyed his own instruction, taking two more quick, ragged inhales. His eyes fluttered shut, his head tipping back just slightly, an involuntary reaction to the potent sensory overload. I didn't need to touch him to feel the change. I could sense the sudden, powerful rush of euphoria, a primal, intoxicating vibration, starting in the core of his chest and spreading rapidly through his entire body, finally forcing the lingering shadow of his rage to recede. The scent was a drug, a complete and total reset button for his volatile emotions. For a few precious seconds, the storm inside him was silenced, replaced by a consuming focus on the immediate, animal pleasure. He finally lowered his hand, his eyes opening slowly, now glazed over with an intense, possessive desire that had completely eclipsed the his previous brief fury.

I grab the side of his head, my fingers digging lightly into the thick, dark hair at his temples, and I feel him stiffen instantly in my hands—a small, involuntary shiver of shock or recognition running through his rigid body. His eyes, which moments ago were clouded with a deep, existential weariness, flicker with a nascent panic. The world around us, with its echoing silence and the scent of rain-soaked earth, seems to hold its breath.

I lean down, closing the small gap between us, until my lips hover inches over his. The air leaves my lungs on a low, guttural sigh—a sound more of a confession than a breath. "I'm sorry, Papito," I whisper, the Spanish term of endearment laced with a low, husky growl that I barely recognize as my own. It is a sound meant only for him, a raw acknowledgment of the damage done.

The simple, broken apology is the circuit breaker. The light, which had been dangerously dimming, suddenly rushes back into his eyes, not with simple clarity, but with a fierce, questioning intensity. The tension leaves his neck in a rush, only to be replaced by a profound emotional uncertainty. Before he can speak, before he can analyze the meaning of the word or the apology, I close the distance.

I kiss him deeply. It is not a soft kiss; it's a desperate declaration, a collision of need and regret. My mouth covers his, pressing with an urgency that demands a response, demands connection. I run my tongue across the seam of his lips, a silent, pleading trespass. He doesn't resist; instead, he parts them, a silent invitation, and I invade his mouth with my tongue. The taste is profoundly familiar, yet charged with a new, intoxicating blend of something metallic and faintly sweet, and the undeniable, lingering saltiness that is purely my own—the taste of my own tears or the residue of the fear I'd swallowed.

As the kiss deepens, transforming from a plea into a hungry claiming, I feel his hand move. His palm, calloused and warm, leaves the rough fabric of my jacket and finds the rigid, undeniable hardness that aches beneath the fly of my jeans. He doesn't rush it; the touch is reverent, almost surprised. He strokes me once, slow and soft, then again, mapping the taut curve of my need.

It is that second soft stroke, a gesture of acceptance and arousal, that acts as the release. The moment shatters. He breaks our connection, pulling his lips from mine with a wet, sharp sound, and draws a ragged breath. He shifts his weight, the movement a careful rearrangement of his heavy body, until he is no longer pinned beneath me, but lying flat on his back, staring up at the darkening sky, his hand finally resting on his own chest, his breath still coming in shallow, quick gasps. The silence returns, heavier now, filled with the unspoken weight of what had just passed between us. I stand over him looking in amazement. I stand over him looking in amazement. It’s been a while since Cipher was under me. The sight of him, helpless yet radiating that familiar, stubborn strength, is a shock to the system. His caramel skin, usually vibrant and alive, is inkless, unlike the rest of us, devoid of its usual sheen, giving him a matte, soft quality in the harsh, light of my apartment. Despite the unsettling stillness, his short, stocky build is undeniable. Every muscle, honed through years of survial and constant training, seems to pop, a testament to the coiled power he usually keeps leashed.

He cocks his head to the side and with a smile parts his legs giving me a full view of his slick hole and hard dick.“I’m already lubed up for you” he whispers in a sexier tone than he’s used all night. 

I pounce on him, a surge of adrenaline mixing with the sweet, familiar relief of having him close. A breathless, half-choked laugh escapes me as our lips collide, a messy, urgent re-entry into a world where only his touch matters. The sound is swallowed by his mouth, a muffled acknowledgment of the reckless joy I feel. I don't hesitate; my hands, possessing an instinctual map of his body, immediately seek out their favorite territory. They trace the hard, defined lines of his abs, this dips of his hip I reach and pull his leg up around my waist. Cipher releases another moan this its more heady and I know where he is going. Every muscle in his body feels like it's responding in kind, tensing with the same fierce desire that is coursing through me. This wasn't just a kiss; it was a hungry reunion, a desperate attempt to erase the space and time we’d spent apart. A moan escapes his mouth and I grid my dick against his. His hands trail up my back and I nibbles on my ear lobe as trace my name in his neck with my tongue. “Fuck me” he whispers in my ear as I get do the “i” on his Adam’s apple. 

I lean up off his chest and look him in his eye and yank his legs back by the back of his knees. Don’t you move I say with a breathy moan. He grabs his knees and locks them in place. I reach down and stroke my 9 inch length and feel it throb in my hand. I let spit fall from my lips and bang the head of my dick on his hole a few times as it hits his skin. He moans as I let it rest on top of his opneing and he feels my heaviness. I look at him in his eys and place my hands on his over his legs and lean forward. I push my hips forwards start to sink into him. His breathing picks up and I feel his body tence up. His eyes shut hard and I hear him wince. I grab my underwear that he dropped during our kiss and toss them right over his face. His eyes pop open in shock.

“Inhale for me, papito,” I murmured, my voice a low, husky growl that vibrated with a promise of pleasure. ,I began to slowly, deliberately stroke, a gentle friction meant to open him to prepare the aching readiness of my thickness.

A breathless giggle escaped Cipher, a sound that held a nervous excitement, and with a sharp inhale, I felt the immediate, yielding warmth of him around my slow, invading length. The world narrowed to this intense connection, the sweet pressure and the intoxicating scent of him. With every measured, sinking stroke, his thighs eased wider on the sheets, accommodating my increasing depth. The moment my hips fully settled, my thick thighs finally flush beneath the soft curve of his ass, a profound, guttural moan tore from his throat. It was a sound of pure, helpless sensation. He inhaled so sharply, so deeply, that the fabric of my own boxers stirred with the rush of air.

His head fell back against the pillows, eyes rolling into the white abyss of pure sensation. The intensity was palpable, a shared current that made my own blood pound. Then, with a slow, agonizing effort, his eyes resurfaced, focusing—not on the ceiling, or the wall, but intensely on me. They were dark, dilated, burning with a desire that was raw and absolute.

Knees held to his shoulders, “Give it to me, Emilo” he commanded, the words barely a whisper but weighted with undeniable need.

In that single, perfect phrase, I knew exactly where he was mentally. He had shed his guard, abandoned all pretense, and given himself over to the sensation. And I, I was going to give him precisely what he wanted, what he desperately needed. A possessive smirk curved my lips, and with a swift, powerful thrust, I buried myself fully, eliciting a sharp, immediate cry of pure, exhilarating shock. 

I drive myself deep into his opening with long strokes of my length his moans and whimpers invinting me to join him in his trance of ecstasy. I look down at Cipher as I continue plunge myself into him, his lips parted his eyes closed taking what I’m giving him. I lean in and our lips touch and I feel his in shock when he tightens around me. “Do that again, papito” I whisper in his mouth.

With a shy smile Cipher lets go of his legs and places them behind his head and squeezes his hole around me and I feel his pulse in my cock. With another ragged moan, I lay my head against the curve of his neck, burying my face in the damp heat of his skin. The scent of our mingled sweat and arousal was intoxicating, a heavy, musky perfume that deepened the haze of my focus. I began a rhythm of short, quick thrusts, driven by an urgency that was growing impossible to contain. Every shallow retreat and deep surge was met by the exquisite friction of his muscles. I felt the powerful, involuntary tightening and releasing of his back passage around me, a glorious, hungry clench that seemed to pull me deeper with every stroke.

Driven by a need to maximize the contact, to feel every inch of him spread and exposed, I reached under him. My hands were trembling slightly as I found his firm, sweat-slicked ass cheeks, gripping them with both hands. I pulled them apart, spreading him open wider, offering my entrance a fuller, more intense embrace. The deeper penetration sent a spike of pure, raw pleasure through me. The wave of ecstasy, no longer a gentle rise, but a powerful, building swell, began to pool and throb in my heavy, full balls as they slapped hard against the sensitive skin surrounding his back hole with a wet, rhythmic thwack.

The sensation was so overwhelming, so close to the precipice, that I knew I couldn't last much longer. The impending climax was a blinding, electric pressure. Needing a moment of control, a brief pause to prolong the exquisite torture, I forced myself to pull back, sliding out until only the very tip of me was still buried within him. I rested my forehead against his, our heavy, labored breaths mingling in the small space between us. Our eyes were closed, our bodies slick and joined, trembling on the verge of a shared, shattering release. He nods and kisses me gently “I can take -” he doesn’t get to before I slam into with a violent force. The confined space amplified the rhythmic, loud slaps of our skin meeting, the sound echoing throughout the small room like a rapid heartbeat. With each insistent thrust, Cipher’s soft, shy moans grew in volume and intensity, escalating into a loud, ravenous cry that clawed its way from his throat. His hands, which had been gently stroking my hair, tightened, tangling themselves in the strands. He tugged forcefully, pulling my head back and arching my neck, a gesture of raw, unbridled possession that tore another loud moan from him. I felt the sudden, thick warmth of his release between us, a wave of climax that shuddered through his taut body. He collapsed slightly, his breath ragged in my ear, yet I was still chasing the frantic, dizzying height of my own pleasure, pushing against him, desperate for the release that felt agonizingly close. The air was heavy, charged with the metallic scent of sweat and the intoxicating musk of sex, and the only sounds were our gasps and the continued, slick rhythm of our bodies joined together. After some time, I am on the edge my head buried in his neck, Cipher’s hands playing in my hair, our breathing shallow, his hole taking me. “Cum for me Emilo, cum in me Emilo” Cipher pants, signaling that he is tapped out.

 “Again, Papito” I whisper in his neck. 

“Make me yours Emilo.” 

I grown as my grip tightens

"Please, Emilo," Cipher moans, his voice a ragged whisper against the sudden rush of sensation.

I’m already at my peak, takes that plea as permission, the final trigger for release. I grip Cipher's hips, driving forward with a primal groan. The bed groans in protest beneath us. Cipher arches his back, a silent scream of ecstasy caught in his throat as I give two hard, impossibly deep strokes. It's too much, too fast, too perfect.

With a shudder that travels from my core outward, I spill deep inside him. The sensation is all consuming, a hot, thick torrent of absolute surrender. As the last tremor runs through my body, I slump forward, his chest heaving, his weight a comforting pressure on Cipher’s chest.

Cipher doesn't let me withdraw. His body, in a final, involuntary act of pleasure, clenches tight. I feels the muscular squeezing around my dick, milking the last of his cum out, drawing it further into the warm depths of his hole. The tension finally leaves my own body, leaving me utterly spent, my breathing shallow and shaky. Cipher shifts slightly, resting his cheek on my forearm, the mingled scent of sweat and sex heavy in the air. A deep, satisfied sigh escapes him. We lie together, wrapped in the haze of mutual, devastating release, the silence punctuated only by their labored breaths.

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