The click of the door lock echoed through the guest suite, a sharp, final sound that signaled Frank's retreat.
Inside the room, the silence rushed back in, but it was no longer the cool, professional silence Davis had maintained for the last forty-eight hours. It was thick and heavy. It was vibrating with the frantic, pheromone-heavy energy the boy had left behind.
Davis stayed exactly where he was for a count of ten. He kept his eyes on the weathered pages of his book, his grip on the spine so tight the cardboard groaned. His face remained a mask of granite, his breathing shallow and controlled, the perfect image of a man who hadn't felt a thing.
Then, slowly, the book lowered.
Davis let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding since he first stepped into the club and saw those wide, searching eyes. He threw the book toward the nightstand—it missed, thudding uselessly onto the carpet—and he slumped back against the headboard, his head hitting the wood with a dull thud.
"Damn it," he hissed into the empty room.
He looked down. The grey cotton of his lounge pants, which had been flat and unresponsive only moments ago, began to stir. Now that the pressure of Frank's body was gone, now that the terrifying risk of being seen had passed, his body finally betrayed him. The swelling was sudden and aggressive, a painful, throbbing heat that had been building behind a wall of sheer willpower.
He had lied. He had lied with every fiber of his being.
Davis reached down, his large hand trembling as he gripped the waistband of his pants and shoved them down. His manhood sprang free, already aching, already reaching for the ghost of the boy who had just been straddling him.
He grabbed himself with a desperate, punishing grip, his eyes snapping shut as his mind flooded with the images he had spent the last two days trying to incinerate.
He saw the gym. He saw the way the light had hit those long, slim legs in the cobalt blue spandex. He remembered the exact texture of Frank's skin—the heat of it, the way it had felt like velvet stretched over steel. He recalled, with a vividness that made his stomach flip, the way he had "aligned" Frank's legs, his hands sliding up the inner thighs, feeling the boy's muscles quiver and melt under his touch.
He's just a kid, Davis told himself, his strokes becoming faster, more frantic. He's just a spoiled, beautiful kid.
But his mind didn't care about the labels. It remembered the way Frank had looked in the bathroom, dripping with steam and silk, offering himself up like a sacrifice. It remembered the ferocity of that kiss—the taste of Frank's desperation, the way the boy had fought to be seen, to be wanted, to be destroyed.
"Frank..." Davis groaned, the name tearing out of his throat in a way he would never allow it to in the light of day.
He envisioned the boy back in the room. He imagined pulling Frank back onto the bed, bury his face in the crook of that sweating, scented neck. He pictured the way Frank's body would arch, the way those long legs would wrap around his waist, the way the boy would moan his name if Davis actually gave him what he was begging for.
He thought about the way Frank had clamped his legs together in the gym, trapping Davis's hands. He remembered the electricity of that "accidental" contact, the way he had felt the boy's heat radiating through the thin fabric. He had felt it all. He had wanted it all.
His pace reached a breaking point. His back arched off the mattress, his muscles corded and straining, his veins popping against his neck as he neared the edge. The image of Frank—flushed, angry, beautiful, and utterly broken by Davis's coldness—flashed behind his eyelids.
"Frank! Frank!"
Davis convulsed, his breath leaving him in a series of ragged, fractured gasps as he released. He slumped forward, his forehead resting on his knees, his chest heaving as he stared at the mess on the sheets. The silence that followed was deafening.
He sat there for a long time, the cooling sweat on his skin making him shiver. The adrenaline was fading, replaced by the cold, hard logic of a man who had survived thirty-five years by never letting his guard down.
He looked at his hands—the hands that had just been used to conjure himself.
"You're thirty-five, Davis," he whispered to the shadows, his voice returning to its steady, clinical rasp. "He's twenty-one. Fourteen years. A lifetime of difference."
He stood up, grabbing a towel to clean himself, his movements returning to their usual mechanical efficiency. He walked to the window, looking out over the dark expanse of the Austin estate.
He told himself he was doing the right thing. The boy was confused. Frank had grown up with everything, and Davis was the first thing he couldn't have—that wasn't love, that was a challenge. Frank didn't understand his own sexuality; he was just reacting to the power shift, to the tension of the training. If Davis gave in, he wouldn't just be taking a boy's virginity; he'd be shattering a career he had spent a decade building.
He couldn't risk it. Not for a "pretty boy" who would probably move on to the next obsession in a month. He couldn't be the one to break the Austin legacy, and he certainly couldn't be the one to let himself be broken by a twenty-one-year-old student.
"He's just a kid," Davis repeated, the words feeling like a shield he was desperately trying to hide behind. "He doesn't know what he's asking for. And I... I'm not going to be the one to show him."
He turned away from the window and began to pack his bag. Every movement was precise. Every shirt was folded. But his heart was still hammering a rhythm that had nothing to do with the chill.
He was leaving. It was the only way to stay away from the trouble .It was the only way to keep the secret that, for a few minutes in the dark of the night, a twenty-one-year-old boy had made him feel like he was made of glass.