A Life Chosen (Montreal #1)

Chapter Seven

T he journey from the ninth-floor corridor to the car park seemed to take a lifetime. Rayan snuck furtive glances at his capo as they walked. His eyes were dull and his shoulders stiff. The pale sheen to his skin made him appear unwell. Rayan felt a hollow ache as he looked away. Despite Mathias’s cool reply to the woman in the hallway, Rayan knew the exchange had cut him deeply.

He hadn’t realized the man’s father had a wife and a family, one Mathias had clearly not been part of—denied not just his name but apparently any form of legitimacy. Rayan had bristled at the look the woman had given his boss as she stood between a son and his last moment with his father.

Outside, a light rain was beginning to fall. By the time they made it from the garage elevator to the car, they were both damp. Mathias seemed not to notice. He stood by the car, pulling out his cigarettes. He flicked on his lighter, which sizzled in the rain, and tried once, twice, before giving up and hurling it to the ground with a clatter, the unlit cigarette still clenched between his teeth.

Rayan stepped over to retrieve it, pushing back his wet hair before returning to Mathias’s side. Cupping the lighter between his hands, Rayan clicked it several times, leaning forward silently. Mathias ducked his head until their foreheads were almost touching, and within the shared shelter, it finally leapt to life. He brought the end of the cigarette to the flame. It took a moment for the sodden tobacco to light. Rayan looked up to see Mathias’s face inches from his own, staring at him with a strange expression. The man’s mouth parted, letting the half-lit cigarette fall to the ground at their feet.

Rayan felt a jolt run through him. Then the two of them snapped together like opposite ends of a magnet, lips meeting with a force that shattered him. The tension he’d harbored for years, his resistance to this incessant tug, slipped away in an instant .

Mathias grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him close, Rayan’s mouth opening frantically around his. Their tongues met, and Rayan felt the blood rush to his cock. How is he so warm? All that coldness and detachment, while underneath it was this. He dug his fingers into the back of Mathias’s neck, pushing against him, desperate to be enveloped by this heat.

Then, just as suddenly, they tore apart. Rayan sucked in a shuddering breath and turned away, blinking furiously to get ahold of himself. Mathias stepped back, giving him a wide berth. The lighter lay on the ground between them where it had fallen. Neither of them stooped to pick it up.

Rayan erased the need from his face before turning around, slipping back into the role of unquestioning second. Their eyes met, and he was reunited with his capo’s shuttered gaze.

Mathias held out a hand. “Keys.”

Rayan fished them from his pocket, stilling the shake in his fingers, and handed them over. Mathias unlocked the car, yanked open the driver’s door, and got in. Rayan didn’t move. Mathias fired up the engine and, with a squeal of tires, pulled out of the lot and tore down the ramp toward the exit.

Rayan stood there as the rain fell, heavier now, soaking through his jacket, his shirt sticking to his chest as his heart pounded beneath.

Mathias stared at himself in the mirror hanging in the hallway of his apartment. He did not recognize the man looking back. His sodden jacket lay crumpled at his feet. The car keys were still gripped in his fist. Up until this point, Mathias had remained vigilant. He had never sought men out in Montreal.

It had begun as an indulgence while he was attending university in Paris—an itch he’d waited years to scratch. He remembered getting off the plane, feeling as though he’d left the rest of himself behind. The freedom of knowing no one knew him. Mathias was careful to strictly curtail these encounters to when he was out of the country. Even then, it was confined to bathhouses—anonymous, discreet. That way, he was able to compartmentalize, separate the deviation of himself from who he was in the real world. His reputation, his standing in the family, and quite possibly his life depended on that separation.

Rayan had blurred that line. And Mathias had allowed it. There’d been something there—though he could barely admit to it—ever since their first meeting, when the young man’s face had captured him, compelling him against his better judgment. But this felt different from the urge that had led Mathias to those faceless men. He didn’t just want to fuck Rayan—he wanted to consume him.

With his father gone, a space had opened inside his mind where the old man—a phantom of Mathias’s own creation—used to be, reproaching him, voicing his disdain. For what was this but further proof of his deficiency as a son? The man had never known—never been close enough to suspect—yet the voice had always been there. Until now.

Mathias stalked into the kitchen, tossed the car keys on the counter, and poured himself a drink, then another. But the taste of Rayan remained: sweet, wet, wanting. He pulsed with longing, raw with loss, his carefully governed life splintering around him. He did not want to think of his father. He did not want to think of his own ambition, the path he’d committed to. A single thought pierced through his muddied mind. It stuck, unrelenting, spurring him on. Mathias grabbed the keys and headed for the door.

When he heard the knock, Rayan knew who it would be. He’d just stepped out of the shower and shrugged on some dry clothes, wet hair dripping onto the neck of his T-shirt. In the taxi on the way home from the hospital, Rayan had cursed his stupidity. He could only guess what would happen now. He’d exposed himself in a way that there was no coming back from, yet a thought kept returning, one that evoked both hope and astonishment—Mathias had done the same.

Rayan opened the door to find his capo’s familiar figure framed in the entrance. He’d abandoned his suit jacket. His tightly combed hair now hung from his forehead. Rayan felt a shiver as he recalled the warmth of the man’s tongue. It was so long since he’d last been touched, and it had never felt like that—as though, for a moment, they’d merged into one.

Mathias stepped inside, and Rayan closed the door behind him, waiting for the words that would shatter the precarious life he’d built for himself around this man. For years, his boss had dropped him off outside the building at the end of each day, but he’d never been inside Rayan’s apartment. Mathias swung his gaze across the room as if he owned the place.

“How do you live here?”

Rayan was momentarily taken aback. Naturally, his small one-bedroom apartment stood in humble contrast to his capo’s top-floor penthouse. But it was the most Mathias had said since the events of that afternoon and was almost comical in its irrelevance.

Their eyes met, and Rayan felt it again—that surge of electricity, blistering and intractable. They closed the distance between them in a matter of seconds. Something had been awakened, and their bodies were simply following through. The intensity of the embrace made him feel as though he was fighting for his life. Mathias was rough, his grip hard, but Rayan matched him. Shirts were shed in a growing fury. Their mouths met with teeth. Mathias grabbed Rayan’s shoulders and swung him into the wall, one hand closing around his neck, the other working the zipper of his jeans.

In a series of struggles, they made it to the bed. Everything was moving so quickly that Rayan barely had time to register what was going on. They were possessed—that much was clear. He felt a deep pull of desire. As scary as this was, he fucking wanted it.

Rayan had spent his youth frightened by this part of himself. It had taken longer than he cared to admit for him to gain the confidence to explore, and there’d been far fewer opportunities in recent years, his increased visibility in the family making him overly cautious.

Mathias straddled him, pinning him to the mattress. Rayan’s breath caught at the sight of his bare chest lined with muscle. He reached out, his fingers grazing the warm skin of Mathias’s stomach. Looking up, he saw the man’s eyes clouded with lust. Rayan lifted his chin, and Mathias lowered his lips and kissed him as he had earlier in the rain, the world blurring out of focus.

Breaking away, Rayan moved onto his knees, strong hands finding his hips, pulling, positioning him for what was to come. He exhaled sharply as Mathias entered him. The sound seemed far away. So little felt real—everything was hot, in extreme close-up. He was agonizingly hard but grateful for the initial sting of pain. It served as an anchor. Without it, he would surely have left his body and simply floated away.

They moved hurriedly, as if time would illuminate a reality neither of them was ready to confront. Mathias’s fingers dug into his flesh. His own hands bunched the sheets in fists, grappling for purchase. Mathias brought an arm around Rayan’s neck, sinking his teeth into his shoulder. Rayan pressed against him, arching beneath the weight of his capo’s body.

Mathias pulled out then pushed back as roughly but hit somewhere deeper. Somewhere that made Rayan’s heart stall. He groaned, a low animal sound propelled from his body by force. Mathias was in to the hilt, draped over Rayan’s back, breath brushing his ear with each thrust. The thought of being so intimately intertwined with his capo, a man capable of commanding intense fear and respect, made Rayan’s skin burn. He lowered his head, exhaling in short bursts as the pleasure built, seizing him. Fuck, fuck. He was going to come.

Mathias’s hand found his straining cock, pulling it through his fist in a series of quick strokes. It was enough to send Rayan over the edge, and he came hard, stifling a moan through clenched teeth. He felt Mathias bear down on him and heard a growl rumble in the man’s chest as he himself finished.

They separated, collapsing onto the bed, heavy, sedated. Rayan tried to string together a single coherent thought, but his mind was foggy, misted over. They lay like that in silence, time crawling as if they were no longer held captive by its rules.

Then Mathias sat up, breaking the spell in one fluid motion. He stood, his broad, muscular back to Rayan and dressed in silence. Rayan turned away, chest tightening. He retrieved his clothes from the floor and tugged them on.

Mathias was already at the bedroom door. “Tomorrow.” The word came out thick, a gruffness so different from the usual severity of his voice. He cleared his throat. “There’s a job on the South Shore. Be at the office by nine.”

And then he was gone.