Alluring Passion: A MM Contemporary Bundle

by Peter Styles

  All that being said, I still hadn’t seen him around.

  I searched for him, trying to look casual, but I found nothing. Gary must have noticed the dejected slump of my shoulders because, after Leonard had left in his mom’s car, he hung around in the parking lot with me for a few minutes. “Still no sign of him?” he murmured, keeping his lips completely still.

  “No,” I said. I wrinkled my nose at him. “Also, you don’t need to talk like that. He’s not a lip reader.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Did he tell you he’s not a lip reader?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No.”

  “Well, then, I think my method is pretty sound.”

  I didn’t have the heart to smile. I was starting to miss Jonah’s comforting presence more than I wanted to admit. I missed being able to talk and laugh with him. I missed our jiu jitsu lessons and our nearly-constant texting.

  More than anything, I missed having someone I wanted to work for in my life. I’d spent years coasting by in a doomed semi-relationship with Gary, and I was ready for more. I’d found the perfect guy for it, and I’d fucked it up. It was painful to think that I would have to accept defeat without ever getting to tell Jonah I was sorry for being so difficult.

  “I miss him,” I finally said. I didn’t say it quietly or softly either; I nearly yelled it. I was so desperate for him to hear that it burst forth from me with all the power I could muster. “I really, really miss Jonah.”

  There was a rustle in the corner of the parking lot. A shadow loomed out of the darkness. My heart leapt, and I had the ridiculous urge to go running up to him and throw my arms around him and never let go.

  And then I saw the two figures behind him.

  “Look out!” I shouted, but it wasn’t enough warning. Jonah had been caught off-guard listening to me speak, which gave the other two men time to tackle him to the ground and start beating the living hell out of him.

  Without thinking, I raced toward them. Gary lurched forward, trying to catch my shirt, but I dodged him. I knew it was stupid and needlessly heroic, and I knew that it might get me killed, but these guys were beating up my would-be boyfriend, dammit, and I wasn’t going to let that stand.

  Jonah really seemed to be off his game; every time one of the thugs—who I soon identified as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum—came after him and he went to defend himself, the other would come swooping in. Whatever they’d been doing the past month or so had really helped them work on their fighting technique; one of them had Jonah locked in what looked like a deadly chokehold.

  The other one had a length of chain in his hands.

  The chain nearly made me stop dead in my tracks, but I persevered, even when Tweedle Dum swung the chain down hard across Jonah’s chest. I heard something crack and prayed it was the armor.

  I thought I saw his eyes flash over me and I ducked behind an errant bush growing out of a crack at the edge of the parking lot. I heard a squeal of tires and realized that Gary’s fear had gotten the better of him; he’d gotten in his car and torn away. Figures, I thought. I loved the guy to death, but he was hardly a picture of courage.

  I heard a couple more blows rain down and I heard the mechanically lowered voice of the Shadow Hunter cry out in pain. I knew I had to do something, but my mind was racing with wild panic. I suddenly wished I hadn’t spent so much time staring at Jonah when we were supposed to be meditating; maybe, if I had actually tried to learn, I’d be able to stop being so distracted over the cries of pain coming from the guy that— even though he could be an idiot—I was at least a little bit in love with.

  “Fuck it,” I whispered to myself. “I guess we’re going with gut instinct then.”

  And that’s what I did.

  I jumped out from behind the bush and charged into the shadows of the neighbor’s trees. Tweedle Dum stopped, looking at me stupidly in shock, as I remembered one of the things Jonah had taught me during our few classes: go for the knees.

  I hadn’t expected the hit to be so successful, but I took him down like a lumberjack clearing a forest. He hit the ground with a strangled cry and his surprise gave me an even greater advantage; I grabbed his arm, shoved it between my legs, and twisted his body toward the ground, smacking his skull against the pavement. He let out a panicked scream, but I didn’t let up; I tightened my grip and improvised, jerking my body to the side, and was surprised to hear a snap. Tweedle Dum’s shriek went up a full octave and dissolved into a sob as I held him there. I heard myself shouting the words, “Arm lock, bitch! Tap the fuck out!”

  “What the shit?” Tweedle Dee said, but it wasn’t long before he joined his partner. Jonah reached back, grabbed the thug by the nape of his neck and flung him forward. Tweedle Dee spiraled over Jonah’s head, hit the ground hard and went limp; it sounded like his head had a fairly unfriendly meeting with the ground.

  Jonah looked over at me and I could swear I could see a grin under his mask. “Not that you’re not doing a great job,” he told me, “but you can let him go now.”

  I released Tweedle Dum, who curled up around his arm and whimpered. I then scuttled backward and jumped to my feet, adrenaline still pumping through my veins. “I get it!” I hollered triumphantly, as I sprinted to my car. “I totally get why you do jiu jitsu now! That was fucking awesome!”

  I reached my car and slid into the driver’s seat, then looked over, expecting Jonah to already be sitting in the passenger side, but I saw him still limping toward the car. It took him way longer to reach it than it should have and, even when he finally made it, he looked far too pale. When he got in, he didn’t even speak; he just slumped down into the seat, his breathing labored.

  In that moment, my head was completely clear. I headed straight for home.

  Jonah was so out of it when we reached the boardinghouse that Ronaldo had to, begrudgingly, help me pull him out of the car and haul him all the way up to my apartment. Once we made it, he pretty much passed out on my bed.

  I thought back to all of the Batman comics I’d read and movies I’d seen, seeking out some disinfectant, bandages, clean towels and warm water, then I got to work.

  I took off his mask and helmet to find him sleeping like a baby. When I went to check his pupils, he complained, but there were no signs of a concussion and I let him drop back off, which he did quickly. He didn’t seem to have any head injuries; he just seemed exhausted.

  His capelet had been torn off and the heavy black shirt he wore was in shreds. I cut it off of him as surgically as I could and moved on to his heavy black pants. There were thick pads of plastic sewn and glued onto a layer of padding over him. No wonder I hadn’t recognized him as the Shadow Hunter when I first met him; his clothes made him look about a hundred pounds heavier. The padding on his legs seemed to be unscathed, but his breastplate had been cracked almost in half. I removed it delicately and found the skin on his chest turning a mottled pink. It was already starting to bruise, but at least nothing had broken the skin.

  I removed the rest of the padding and his shoes, which I was surprised to find had stacks of newspaper in the bottoms. He had gone through a lot of effort to make himself completely unrecognizable.

  He had a few scrapes on his knuckles, which I cleaned gently. He woke up halfway through the process, wincing at the way the disinfectant stung. “Harris.” His voice was a little bit hoarse; I suspected the Tweedles had choked him. He looked around the apartment. “Nice place. I like it more from the inside.”

  “Me too,” I agreed. “Way less thugs trying to beat the shit out of people.”

  He blinked owlishly at me, his deep eyes almost distracting me from my work of caring for him. “You saved me back there.”

  I shrugged. “Least I can do”

  He smiled. “You didn’t have to. Especially if you hate me.”

  “Look at you, being all melodramatic.” I rolled my eyes. “I don’t hate you.”

  “You walked out on me.”

&nb
sp; “That doesn’t mean I hate you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I tried to glare at him, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t blame him for being insecure. Hell, that was half of what had gotten us there in the first place: my insecurities. I’d been too afraid to tell him about my actual life and let him in. I’d even been too afraid to listen when he tried to apologize for not telling me about his alter ego, which, when I really thought about it, was something I probably never would have told him.

  I had done enough freaking out for a while. It seemed to be his turn.

  “I’m sure,” I told him, firmly, starting to press lightly at the spots on his chest. Though he winced a few times, it didn’t seem that anything was broken. I brought him a large ice pack to spread over the center of his stomach. “Better?”

  “A little. Hopefully it’ll numb it for a little while.” Jonah stared at the ceiling, apparently avoiding eye contact with me. “I’m really sorry, Harris. I should have told you everything before.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, maybe so. But I should have listened. For someone who does as much lying as I have, it’s not really fair for me to judge when you decide to tell me things.”

  He didn’t reply.

  I reached out and put a hand on his arm. He didn’t move away and I let my grip tighten. “I’m glad you’re okay. And I’m glad you’re here,” I said. “I was starting to worry you were done with me.”

  He smiled, then weakly brought one hand up and rested it over mine. “I thought the same thing.”

  “So we’re both idiots.”

  “Pretty much.”

  I smiled, then laid down beside him, being careful not to touch his injuries. “I’m sorry for how I reacted. Your secret identity is sacred. I know that I should understand that. I mean, me of all people, getting mad that your identity is a secret?”

  “I get it,” he said. “And you were right that I should have been open with you about things when I wasn’t wearing the mask. I was doing it to hide and I shouldn’t have. I should have told you that I care about you and I wanted you to take a chance on me as me, not as the Shadow Hunter.” He thought for a second. “Hell, I should have told you I was doing stuff that could get me killed.”

  “We all do stuff that can get us killed,” I pointed out. “It’s part of living.”

  He smiled at me. “Maybe so.”

  I took one of his hands in mine, my touch light and gentle. Without hesitation, he laced his fingers with mine, holding me tight. “So,” he said.

  “So,” I replied.

  He let out a small sigh. It was one of utter contentment; a nice sound and I realized it was an emotion that looked good on him. “Do you think we can do this for real this time?” he asked, his voice unsure. “Can we just start over without all the deception and decide to give this thing a shot?”

  It was a heavy question. I knew it was. After all, he was asking me for my trust, and that was something that could be hard to give. I was asking him to give me access to every part of himself and I knew that would be hard for him.

  But I also knew that, through this whole thing, I had learned a lot about what makes a hero. I had discovered that a hero isn’t the biggest guy, or the strongest guy, or even the one with the most impressive power set. In fact, every hero only shared one thing: when the chips were down, they took a leap of faith, and that leap was what made them fly.

  And I wanted to be a hero.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. I pressed a kiss to his soft, supple lips and felt him smile against me. “Yeah, we can give it a shot.”

  Bonus Chapter

  In the years that we’ve been together, Jonah has introduced me to a whole, amazing, wide world of things that I never realized existed. He taught me about jiu jitsu, bad kung fu movies and Filipino cuisine.

  But by far my favorite thing he introduced me to was real, good, hearty, bona fide shower sex.

  Steam billowed up around us in clouds as Jonah’s strong tongue swept teasingly across my bottom lip, his teeth coming out to nibble at it ever so slightly. Even after years together, he could always make me gasp with pleasure from the simplest touch—even when it was just his tongue in my mouth and his hands on my hips

  His lips trailed kisses over my cheek and up to my ear. “God, you’re so fucking sexy,” he growled, and I felt myself starting to grow hard already. His hands glided down from my hips to grab my ass, and I whimpered. “I want you so bad.” His right hand slid even further, his fingers slipping into the cleft of my ass and playing with my hole. I let out a wanton moan of pleasure and my hands dropped from my second-favorite place —his chest—to my absolute favorite: his rapidly hardening cock.

  “What do you want, baby?” he asked, his breath coming out even hotter when I started stroking him gently.

  I planted a kiss on the hollow of his neck and felt him melt. “I want to suck you,” I murmured.

  He smirked against my neck. “That’s what you always want,” he teased. “Are you really that cock hungry?”

  “For you? Absolutely.” I gave him a quick grin and slid to my knees.

  With Jonah, there was never any preamble; I didn’t have the patience for it. Whenever I saw him naked, I was filled with the overwhelming urge to suck him off and feel him hardening in my mouth. I started working on the hot, plump head, wrapping my lips around it and tonguing the slit, letting my lower lip stroke against the sensitive flesh at the base of the head. He groaned and slid his hand into my hair, gripping it firmly and making me moan. He never forced me or gave me a brutal face-fucking, but I enjoyed the illusion of control that he had over me. It only made me hungrier for him.

  He grew harder and harder under my ministrations until he was at his full, massive size. I moved on from the head, preparing myself to taste all of him; I ran my tongue up the underside of the shaft, then started lapping at the rest of it, following the lines of veins and rigid muscles with my tongue. He started panting, his grip holding strong, but never moving my head. “Please, baby,” he begged. “I want you to suck me.”

  Sometimes I would keep playing with him, teasing him and torturing him until, when the time came, he’d bend me over and fuck me as hard and fast as he could, but this wasn’t one of those times. I didn’t have the self-control to keep up the lighter touches with my tongue and, even though it took a few tries, I managed to relax my throat enough to take his whole shaft and started bobbing my head. My tongue spelled out love poems on the underside of the shaft as I moved, and I dropped my hand to my own length, stroking it until I was fully hard, which didn’t take long. I was absolutely obsessed with the taste of Jonah’s cock, and it never took me long to get hard when I was giving him head.

  I had hoped to get a taste of precum, but he pulled back gently before I could. I let out a little moan and he smiled. “I know, baby. But not this time.” He released my hair, ran his hand down my face and offered his thumb. I brought it into my mouth, sucking it hard and lashing it with my tongue. I loved the taste of him; the part of him didn’t seem to matter, so long as I had something long and hard in my mouth while he fucked me.

  I thought that Jonah was going to pull me to my feet, but instead he bent down and, with one arm, scooped me up in his grasp. I wrapped my legs around his waist obediently, enjoying his strength. With his other hand, I heard him open a bottle and rub slick lube over his shaft before teasing my ass with it as well. I let out a hiss of pleasure. “Please,” I groaned, desperately, “I need to have something in me right now. Please.”

  He chuckled. “Patience is a virtue.”

  “Patience can fuck off,” I huffed. I squeezed his tight, hard waist with my legs.

  He didn’t seem to disagree with the sentiment, at any rate. I felt something hard, hot and almost impossibly thick press against me, then the head of his cock sunk into my hole and I almost screamed with the pleasure of it. There was a dull edge of throbbing pain to it that made the pleasure all the sweeter.

  He pressed my back to the wall, shift
ing his grip to grab one of my ass cheeks. His other hand dropped to my hard cock while I wrapped my arms around his neck, giving myself over to him completely. With Jonah, there was safety and comfort in the surrender, and I could do nothing more than sigh and moan as he pushed inside of me, inch by inch, agonizingly slow, until I felt his pelvis press against me. He planted a soft kiss on my lips before gently pulling back.

  He began to rock into me, slow and sweet at first. I wriggled impatiently in his arms, trying to thrust against him or urge his hand to move faster on my shaft, but it didn’t matter. He was in control and it seemed he was going to take his sweet time with me.

  His head dropped down and his tongue flicked out to tease my nipple. I gasped and dug my nails into the back of his neck. “Please,” I groaned over and over. “Please, please, please…” I wasn’t even quite sure what I was asking for. If I really thought about it, I should have been saying more, more, more.

  “God,” he hissed. He was trying to force himself to hold back, but it wasn’t working well. “You’re so tight, babe. You feel so fucking hot and smooth inside. I just want to pound you into the wall.”

  His words were almost enough to push me over the edge. Instead, they just drove me to that point and kept me hanging there. As revenge, I dove in for a kiss, prying his mouth open and exploring it with my tongue. I moaned into his mouth, my lips desperate, needy and hot against his, which seemed to be all he could take. When we parted, I gave him a grin. “What’s stopping you?” I asked.

  His hand sped up on my shaft, and he started thrusting into me hard and fast, my back pressed against the wall so I could absorb every movement of every inch. I was only vaguely aware of the fact that I was shouting out babbled curse words and declarations of love as he drove into me, all heat and hard flesh and passion. I had little more control than a doll, and I loved it.