Page 27 of Ravaged Devotion

Was this karma?

Karma for all of those times he’d failed to stop it from happening? He’d tried. Usually. Whenever Ryker’s anger got the best of him, Rue had tried to talk him down from the ledge. His last name ensured he could get away with literal murder, but Rue had always been openly against taking lives.

That didn’t mean he’d done anything serious when it happened though.

It’s not like he stopped speaking to Ryker.

Ryker had been right when he’d accused him of being a fraud on the field the other day. Rue wasn’t empathetic, not really. His kindness had a limit. His threshold for forgiveness, at least where the Black Hart was concerned, endless.

Even now.

Even with the threat of the knife stopping at the spot at his narrow back, slipping partially between his cheeks.

Rue held his breath and remained still and inwardly hoped this would be over quickly so they could move past it.

“It’s good that you found out,” he surprised them both by saying suddenly.

“Excuse me?” there was a clear thread of warning in Ryker’s tone, but Rue pushed onward anyway.

“Now I don’t have to carry it,” he said. “I don’t have to hide—”

“That you’ve fucked my identical twin? That you betrayed me?”

Rue’s brow furrowed. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t betrayal. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“Oh? So you accidentally found my brother in your bed and accidentally opened wide for him and accidentally found yourself full of his cock?”

He flinched. “That isn’t…Ryker. Please.”

“You keep saying that. Please,” he sneered. “But you aren’t saying it the way I want to hear it.” The knife came into view as Ryker brought it pointedly to Rue’s throat, ensuring he saw it. The blade remained an inch or so away, but the message was clear.

Rue didn’t try to lift himself when the hand holding him down released him, terrifyingly aware of the knife and the meaning behind it. There was a rustle off to his other side, and then his legs were kicked further apart, causing him to gasp and quake.

He heard the Black Hart spit, dread crawling over his skin as he waited. There must have been some merit to Ryker’s accusation though, because his dick remained flushed, his hole even going so far as to twitch, as if in anticipation despite the fear of the unknown dialing up his nervous system.

Something blunt pressed between his cheeks then, wet and solid, not warm. Not flesh. His mind blanked as it was rubbed against his tight entrance, circling his sealed bud, enticingly at first, before growing more persistent.

“Is this how it happened?” Ryker asked. He pulled whatever he’d held against Rue’s entrance away before Rue could respond, and then his fingers were there, prodding him and pushing their way inside, two at a time.

Rue cried out, the forceful thrust stinging at first. The knife at his throat kept him from pulling away, but his hands flattened over the polished wood surface of the table, and he focused on controlling his breathing.

“You’re actually trying to relax your muscles,” Ryker stated. “You horny little fucker. Does it really not matter? You’ll take anything up this slutty ass, is that it?”

“No,” he said, struggling to keep himself from pushing back on those exploring fingers, especially when they located his prostate and brutally rubbed against it. Rue moaned. “No.”

He wanted to tell him that he was only like this because it was Ryker. That he’d fantasized about feeling his touch for so long, that now that it was finally happening, he didn’t care how he got it.

But Ryker would call him a liar. Would think it was some excuse to get him to forget that he’d also slept with Ryder.

How could Rue convince him?

What could he do?

“You’re beet red from getting spanked with a book, there’s a knife at your throat, and my fingers stretching you open, and you have the audacity to still be hard? To leak all over my boots? To tremble as though you—” Ryker abruptly cut himself off. “This is an act just like all the others. You make me think I’ve got you, only to disappear on me. Run off planet. Escape. Return only so I can find out that you seduced Ryder too.”

“No, I never—” Wait.

Wait.