Page 39 of Branding the Bat

"You built a machine over eight months. That's patience."

"That was obsession. Different thing."

"Is it?"

Head cocked, Trevor looked at him. The amber light from the lamp caught his face, sharper now, thinner. The hardware store and the ramen diet were sculpting him into a leaner version of himself, the expensive-restaurant softness giving way to something harder and more defined. He looked like a man who was being rebuilt from the inside.

"Maybe not," Trevor said.

They didn't have sex. They didn't have scenes. They held hands at the steakhouse and sat close on the couch.

They spent New Year's Eve at Sero's apartment. Neither of them suggested going out. The Strip on New Year's was a crush of humans and noise that would overwhelm any shifter's senses within minutes. Instead, they sat on the couch with a bowl of grapes and a bottle of sparkling cider. Sero didn't drink and Trevor had stopped, quietly, without announcing it, and watched the fireworks through the warehouse windows. The explosions painted the ceiling in bursts of gold and white, and at midnight Trevor said "Happy New Year" and Sero said "Happy New Year" and neither of them kissed because they hadn't gotten there yet, but their shoulders were touching and the space between them was warm and deliberate and enough. It was the first New Year's in four years that Sero hadn't spent alone. He didn't say that out loud. He didn't need to. Trevor's hand found his in the dark, and the fireworks kept going, and the new year started the way the old one was ending — carefully, together, with a long way still to go.

And once, on the third week, Trevor kissed him in the doorway of his apartment, a slow, careful kiss that asked permission with every millimeter of pressure. Sero kissed him back. The kiss tasted like mango and uncertainty and the sweetness of a second chance that neither of them was sure they deserved.

At the door, after the kiss, Trevor rested his forehead against Sero's.

"I want to do terrible things to you," Trevor whispered.

Sero laughed. "That's the most romantic thing you've ever said."

"I mean it. Not—" Trevor pulled back, his expression caught between desire and caution. "Not the machine. Never the machine. Just me. The flogger, the whip, my hands. I want to take you to the space again. I want to watch you go there. I want to be the one who holds the door open."

Sero's body responded before his mind could weigh in, a flush of heat, a tightening low in his stomach, the familiar pull of something deep in him that recognized Trevor's voice the way a lock recognized a key. The space. The vast, warm, floating place that had been quiet for weeks. Not gone. Waiting. Dormant, like a bat in winter, preserving its energy for the moment when the dark turned warm again.

"Not the space," Sero said. "Not yet." But his voice was rough, and his hands were already moving, finding Trevor's hips in the doorway, pulling him inside. "But I want to give you something."

Trevor's eyes went dark. "Sero, you don't—"

"Stop." Sero pressed two fingers to Trevor's mouth. "Every time we've been together, you've done things to me. The flogger, the machine, the handcuffs, the whip. You've been the one with your hands on me. I've never had mine on you. Not like this."

Trevor was very still against the doorframe. His pulse pounded through the thin fabric of his shirt, fast and hard, the heartbeat of a cat caught between wanting to run and wanting to stay.

Sero dropped to his knees.

The sound Trevor made was small and wrecked and immediate. Sero looked up at him from the floor of his own apartment, his hands on Trevor's belt, and watched the Dom dissolve. Trevor's mouth was open. His hands were flat against the wall behind him. He looked like a man who'd been handed something he hadn't known he was allowed to want.

"Can I?" Sero’s fingers were on the buckle, not moving, waiting.

"Yes." Trevor's voice was barely there. "God, yes."

Sero undid the belt. Pulled down the zipper. Trevor was already hard, straining against his underwear, and when Sero freed him and wrapped his hand around the base, Trevor's headdropped back against the wall and his hips jerked forward. Sero took a moment to look at him. He'd never seen Trevor like this, not from this angle, not with Trevor's cock in his hand and Trevor's composure coming apart above him. The man who held the flogger, who counted orgasms, who controlled every element of every scene, had his hands pressed flat to the wall and his thighs trembling and was making no attempt to take charge.

Sero licked the tip. A slow, deliberate pass of his tongue over the head, tasting salt and skin and the faint musk of arousal that was purely Trevor. Trevor hissed through his teeth. His hips jerked again, and Sero felt the restrained power in it, the effort it took Trevor not to thrust forward.

"You can move," Sero said. "I'll set the pace. But you can move."

He took Trevor into his mouth.

The heat of it, the stretch of his lips around Trevor's cock, the weight on his tongue. Sero had done this before, with other men, but this was different in every way that mattered. This was deliberate. This was a choice made with full knowledge of who Trevor was and what he'd done and what he was trying to become. Every inch Sero took was a sentence in a conversation they'd been having for weeks: I am here because I want to be. You are not taking this from me. I am giving it.

Trevor's hands left the wall and found Sero's hair. Not gripping, not directing. Just resting there. His fingers trembled against Sero's scalp, as if he needed to touch but didn't trust himself to do more.

Sero set a rhythm. Slow at first, his mouth working the shaft while his tongue pressed along the underside, then deeper, taking Trevor to the back of his throat and swallowing around him. Trevor groaned, a raw sound that Sero felt in his own chest. He pulled back, tongued the slit, tasted a fresh bead of precum, and took him deep again.

"Sero." Trevor's voice was shattered. "I'm going to, if you don't stop—"

Sero didn't stop. He took Trevor deeper, his hand working the base, his mouth tight and wet around the head, and he looked up. Eye contact. The thing that had broken Trevor open during the sessions, the thing that made the Dom lose control. Sero looked up at him with Trevor's cock in his mouth and watched Trevor come apart.