Page 57 of Craving Sin

“No.” I give a humorless laugh. “He used me the way he does everyone else. My mom and I were only around to look good on his arm, to make him a family man. He never cared about me, and when she died, he cared less about pretending he did…unless cameras were around, of course. Then he was the grieving widower, the broken father who just wanted to raise and do right by his son. I was nothing but a way for him to get ahead, and unless he needed me, he forgot I existed.”

Rian tenses against me. “You deserved better…you still do.”

Yes, I did, but it’s too late for all of that now. “I listen to the way you talk about Cillian and try to imagine my father ever loving me that way.”

“I walked away when Moira died. I wasn’t even at her funeral. I abandoned my son for a long time, Abbott. I’m not a good father.”

“You did all those things, but no one will ever make me believe you don’t love him. The way you talk about him…and you’re trying now to make up for it. That’s what matters.”

“I don’t know about that,” he says.

I push up onto my elbow and look down at him. “I do. And Cillian does. You love your son. You loved your wife. You would have never done the things to Moira that he did to my mother, and you would have never done the things to me he did either. That’s who you are, Rian, and after this, I need you to remember that. Just…treat Cillian well. Call him more. Take risks. You’re afraid of doing the wrong thing and pushing him, but it’s important you remind him that you’re there. And don’t hate yourself too much for this, us, because you showed me what it’s like not to feel lonely anymore.”

He closes his eyes tightly, squeezing them shut, and when he opens them again, a tear rolls down his face.

Rian is crying for me.

For what he’s going to do.

Yet he’s still going to do it…and I’m going to let him.

“Go to sleep,” he says.

“Will you fuck me again? Before the night is over?”

“Yes.” He kisses my forehead, a tear hitting my skin.

“Talk to me. Tell me things.”

“Okay…I think I want to open a concert hall…bring an orchestra in. It would be another avenue for us to clean money and—”

Surprisingly, I chuckle. “Because of course it would.”

“I’m a businessman, pretty thing.”

I like being Rian’s pretty thing. “Go on.”

“I’ve thought about it in the past, but now…”

“Now because of us?” I ask, knowing the answer.

“Yes. Because of us. Would you like that? I won’t do it if you don’t want me to.”

My hand moves absently over his chest, playing with the hair on his broad pecs. “I would like that. Something for us.”

“For you,” he adds and then…keeps talking. Eventually, I must fall asleep, and just like always, he keeps his promise, waking me up twice more to fuck me throughout the night, filling me with his cum.

After he takes me for the third time, I pass out again, limp, sated, and feeling like, for the first time in my life, I’ve found where I belong…and knowing that soon, it will be taken away from me.

*

“Wake up,” Rian says, nudging me.

I roll over, eyes grainy and sleepy. By the looks of the soft light coming in from outside, it’s early morning. Rian is dressed already. “Your sling.”

“I don’t need it,” he says, voice harsh and cold—distant—as if even though his body is in this room with me right now, the rest of him isn’t. “Put those clothes on.” He nods toward the jeans and T-shirt sitting on the bed, but doesn’t look at me. In fact, it’s like his eyes will look anywhere except at me.

“Rian,” I say, wait, and when he doesn’t respond, I say his name again. “Rian.”