🔥 Off Duty 🔥

An Exclusive Bonus Chapter from The Heir’s Last Order by Rafe Calder

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This bonus chapter takes place one year after the end of The Heir’s Last Order and contains spoilers for the whole novel, including its ending. It contains very explicit sexual content (18+), including consensual light bondage, and it runs hotter than the book. Read the novel first for the full experience.

Roman’s birthday, a year on: no gun, no earpiece, no orders, and a man who has to ask out loud for everything he has never let himself want. Explicit content — 18+.

Off Duty

Adrian took his gun at the door.

Not the way Noah did on Sundays, with a look and an open palm. Adrian stood in the front hall of the house on the water in a dark blue sweater with his sleeves pushed up and simply held out his hand, and when Roman didn’t move, he said, “It’s your birthday. Give it to me.”

Roman gave it to him. Then the spare magazine. Then the earpiece, which Adrian dropped into the bowl on the hall table with the dog’s lead and the car keys, as if it were nothing. As if it were loose change.

“Phone,” Adrian said.

“Adrian.”

“Noah has the gate. Ortiz has the road. Dez is asleep in the boathouse with Pancake and a shotgun, and he will shoot a heron if it looks at him wrong.” Adrian’s hand stayed out. “Phone.”

Roman put his phone in Adrian’s palm. Adrian turned it off without looking at it and set it face down beside the earpiece.

Thirty-nine today. Six feet four. He’d walked into burning buildings in two countries and once carried a man down nine flights of a Prague stairwell with a bullet in his own hip. He stood in his own front hall without a single thing on him that could hurt anybody, and he felt lighter than he had since he was a boy, and more naked than if he’d been stripped.

Adrian watched him feel it.

“Good,” Adrian said quietly. “Now come upstairs.”

Every door in the house still stood open. They’d never put the locks back. The bedroom faced the bay, three tall windows with no curtains, and across the black water the lights of Glass Harbor Tower climbed into the sky, phase one finished now, the crews’ names on a bronze plaque in the lobby that Celia had made them reword four times.

Adrian had lit nothing. No candles, no lamp. Just the city across the water and a single low light on in the bathroom, spilling a warm bar across the floorboards.

On the bed, laid flat on the grey cover, was one of Adrian’s ties. Black silk. Nothing else.

Roman looked at it for a long time.

“Here’s how tonight works,” Adrian said behind him. He didn’t touch him. “I’m not giving you a single order. Not one. Not come here, not take that off, not lie down. If you want something, you ask me for it, and I give it to you. If you don’t ask, nothing happens.” He came around to stand in front of him, close, the bay lights silver on one side of his face. “That’s my present. All night. Anything you’ve ever wanted and didn’t say.”

“Anything.”

“Anything.” Adrian’s mouth moved. “You’ve spent a year teaching me to ask. I want to watch you do it.”

Roman opened his mouth. Nothing came. A year, and it still didn’t come easily; it came up out of him like something heavy being hauled from deep water.

Adrian waited. He was very good at waiting now. He’d learned it from the best.

“Undress me,” Roman said finally. His voice was rough. “Slowly. I don’t want to do any of it.”

“Yes.”

Adrian did it the way Roman had done it to him the first night, two years ago, with the lamp on. One button at a time. His mouth on every inch as it showed—the hollow of Roman’s throat, the old knife line across his ribs, the scar on his forearm that still bore the ghost of eleven crooked stitches. Adrian kissed that one for a long time. Then the belt, drawn out slow with that long hiss of leather. Then he knelt and unlaced Roman’s boots and took them off one by one, and his socks, and Roman stood in the bar of light and let himself be handled like something valuable.

When Adrian drew his trousers and shorts down together, Roman’s cock was already hard, heavy, the head dark and wet, and Adrian, on his knees, looked up at him with that pale steady gaze and didn’t touch it.

“You have to ask,” Adrian said.

“I know.”

“So ask.”

“Your mouth.” It came out of him low and cracked. “Please. And don’t let me move. Hold my hips. I don’t want to be able to do anything but take it.”

Something went hot and dark across Adrian’s face.

“Yes,” he said, and put his hands on Roman’s hips, and held him to the edge of the bed, and took him into his mouth.

He went slow. He’d always gone slow, the first time, and the fiftieth, and the two-hundredth; it was the one thing about Adrian that had never changed. A long wet lick from root to tip. His tongue curling under the head, lapping the slit, tasting him. Then his lips closing and sinking, an inch, two, the heat of his mouth swallowing Roman down until the head bumped soft against the back of his throat and his nose pressed into the dark hair at the base. Adrian held him there. His fingers dug into Roman’s hips, pinning him, and when Roman’s body tried to rock forward on its own, Adrian didn’t let it.

Roman made a sound he’d never once let out of himself while he was on duty.

Adrian pulled off, wet and gasping, and looked up at him. “Again?”

“Yes. God. Again.”

Adrian took him again, deeper, throat working, and kept him there until Roman’s thighs were shaking. Then he set a rhythm—slow, wet, relentless, his hands locked on Roman’s hips so he couldn’t push, couldn’t chase it, couldn’t do one single thing but stand there and feel himself being taken apart by a man on his knees. The obscene wet sound of it filled the open room. Roman’s hands opened and closed at his sides. He didn’t put them in Adrian’s hair. He hadn’t asked to.

“Stop,” he gasped, when the heat began gathering low and tight at the base of his spine. “Stop. Not yet. I don’t want it to be over yet.”

Adrian stopped at once. He sat back on his heels and wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist and smiled, the same smile he’d worn the morning Roman put a plain platinum band on his hand. “Then what do you want?”

Roman looked at the bed. At the black silk tie lying on the grey cover.

“I’ve never let anybody tie my hands,” he said.

“I know.”

“I’ve never wanted to. I’ve spent my whole life making sure that if anything came through a door, I could reach it.” He swallowed. “I don’t want to reach anything tonight.”

Adrian rose. He picked up the tie and wound one end slowly around his own hand. “Ask me.”

“Tie my hands. Above my head. Tight enough I can’t get loose.” His heart was going like a fist on a door. “And then do whatever you want with me.”

“That’s not how tonight works,” Adrian said softly. “Tell me what you want me to do with you.”

Roman closed his eyes.

“Fuck me,” he said. “Slow. Hold me down. Tell me I’m good.” The words scraped his throat on the way out. “Tell me I’m yours while you do it. I want to hear it the whole time.”

When he opened his eyes, Adrian was looking at him as if he’d been handed something he’d waited his whole life to be given.

“Tell me to lie down,” Roman said.

Adrian’s brows went up. “That would be an order.”

“No,” Roman said. “It’s a request.”

Adrian laughed, startled and shaky. “Lie down, Roman.”

Roman lay down.

The tie went around his wrists twice and knotted to the iron rail of the headboard, and Adrian tested it with two fingers the way Roman had taught him to test a holster. Roman pulled. It held. The silk bit, just slightly, and the feeling went through him like a current—not fear, not quite. The opposite of fear. A door closing behind him that he hadn’t had to close himself.

Adrian knelt over him, naked now, all clean lean lines in the light from across the bay, the platinum band on his left hand catching silver as he braced it on Roman’s chest.

“Okay?” Adrian asked.

“Yes.”

“Say stop—”

“—and you stop. I know. I won’t.”

“I know you won’t,” Adrian murmured. “That’s why I’m asking.”

He took his time. He’d always take his time with Roman; he’d said so, once, in this bed, early in the spring, you waited six years, you get six years of slow. His mouth on Roman’s throat. On his nipples, one and then the other, teeth just grazing, until Roman’s back came up off the mattress and the tie snapped taut and held him. Down the center of his stomach. Across the hard ridge of his hip. He licked the bullet scar there, slow, and Roman swore at the ceiling.

Then Adrian pushed Roman’s knees up and apart, and settled between them, and put his mouth on him.

Not his cock. Lower. Roman jerked against the silk and felt it hold, and Adrian’s palms pressed his thighs open and wide and kept them there, and Adrian’s tongue moved over him in one long, broad, unhurried stroke that made Roman’s whole body seize.

“Adrian—”

“Mm.” Adrian didn’t lift his head. He licked him again. And again, slow and filthy, the flat of his tongue and then the point of it, circling, until the tight muscle fluttered under his mouth, and then he pushed in—the tip only, then deeper—and Roman heard himself moan, a low broken sound that rolled out of the bottom of his chest and kept going.

No one had ever done this to him. He’d done it to Adrian a hundred times and never once asked for it back.

Adrian ate him until he was shaking from his thighs to his shoulders. Until he was soft and wet and open and his hips were rocking helplessly against Adrian’s mouth, his bound hands clenching on nothing, his cock leaking a slick line onto his stomach. Until he heard his own voice saying please over and over, without any idea of what he was asking for.

“Tell me,” Adrian said against him. “Tell me what you want.”

“Your fingers. Please. Open me up.”

Adrian reached for the bottle on the nightstand. Roman heard the cap. Then one slick finger pressing into him, slow, steady, all the way, and his breath went out in a long ragged hiss. Adrian worked him gently. Crooked his finger and stroked, searching, patient as a locksmith, and found it—

Roman’s back came off the bed. The headboard rang.

“There. Oh, fuck, Adrian, there—”

“I know.” Adrian added a second finger, and rubbed that place again, and again, a slow circling press that turned Roman’s thighs to water. “Look at you. Look how good you’re being. You’re taking it so beautifully.”

The word went into Roman like a hook and pulled. Good. Two years ago he’d watched it wreck Adrian at a firing range. He hadn’t known, then, what it would do to a man who’d never once heard it.

“Again,” he begged. “Say it again.”

“Good.” Adrian kissed the inside of his knee. “So good for me. My good man. Lie there and let me have you.”

A third finger. The stretch of it, thick and burning and perfect. Roman pulled against the tie and it didn’t give and he didn’t want it to. Adrian fucked him slowly on three fingers, rubbing that spot on every stroke, watching his face the whole time, until Roman was gasping and his cock was jerking against his stomach and the room had gone hazy at the edges.

“I’m ready,” Roman said hoarsely. “I’m ready. Please. I want you in me. I want to feel you.”

Adrian drew his fingers out. Roman’s body clenched on nothing and he groaned. Adrian slicked himself, slow, his eyes never leaving Roman’s face, and hooked one of Roman’s heavy knees over his forearm—braced, the way he’d learned to brace for a man twice his weight—and lined up, and pressed in.

The head pushed through, thick and slow, and Roman’s breath stopped in his chest.

“Breathe,” Adrian whispered. “Breathe for me.”

He breathed. Adrian gave him another inch. Another. A long, steady, unstoppable slide, filling him, stretching him open, until Adrian’s hips were flush against him and Roman could feel him all the way in, deep, hot, pulsing. Adrian stayed there. He bent forward and laid his palm flat on Roman’s sternum, over his heart, and held him down with it.

“You’re mine,” Adrian said.

Roman’s eyes stung.

“Yours,” he said.

Adrian began to move.

Slow. God, so slow. Long rolling strokes that drew almost all the way out and sank back to the root, grinding into that place inside him on every pass. Adrian’s hand stayed on his chest. His other hand found Roman’s cock and wrapped around it, loose, and stroked him in the same unhurried rhythm. And he talked. He never stopped talking. Low and steady in the dark, the way Roman had talked him down from a hundred edges.

“You’re so good. You’re so good for me. Look at you, tied to my bed, letting me in. Nobody’s ever had you like this. Nobody ever will. You’re mine, Roman. All of you. Every door you ever stood outside, it was always going to be me on the other side of it. You hear me? It was always me.”

Roman broke.

Not all at once. In pieces, the way old ice goes out of a river—a crack, and then another, and then the whole thing moving. He felt it go. His chest heaving. His bound hands pulling at the silk. His hips rising off the bed to meet every slow thrust, wanting more, wanting all of it, the stretch and the fullness and the heat and that voice, that voice, saying good and mine and his name.

“Harder,” he gasped. “Please. Please, Adrian. I want to feel it tomorrow.”

Adrian gave it to him. He shifted his grip, both hands on Roman’s thighs now, pushing them back and open, and drove into him—deep, hard, the bed knocking against the wall, the wet slap of skin filling the open room. Roman shouted. He didn’t know he could make that sound. He pulled against the tie and it held, and he couldn’t touch, couldn’t grab, couldn’t do anything but lie there spread open and take it, and the not-being-able-to was the best thing he’d ever felt.

“Come for me,” Adrian said, ragged. “Come on, my good man. Let go. I’ve got you. I’ve got every bit of you.”

He wrapped his fist around Roman’s cock again and stroked him fast, and fucked him hard and deep right through it, and Roman came with a cry that tore out of him from somewhere he’d kept locked for thirty-nine years—his back bowing off the bed, his whole body seizing, spilling hot over his own stomach and chest in long thick pulses while Adrian kept moving inside him and kept saying good, good, so good, that’s it, that’s it.

Adrian followed him a moment later, buried deep, with Roman’s name in his mouth and his forehead dropped onto Roman’s heaving chest.

For a while there was only breathing. The bay outside the open windows. Somewhere down at the dock, the dog barked once at nothing and went quiet.

Adrian reached up and untied the knot. He did it gently, slowly, and then he took Roman’s wrists in his hands and looked at the faint red marks the silk had left and kissed them, one and then the other, the way Roman had once watched him kiss his eyelids.

Roman’s face was wet. He let it be.

“Okay?” Adrian whispered.

“Yes.” His voice was gone to gravel. “I didn’t know I could—” He stopped. “I didn’t know.”

“I did.” Adrian lay down on top of him, chest to chest, slick and warm, and tucked his face into Roman’s neck. “I’ve known since the first night you put me against a window. I just had to wait for you to ask.”

They lay there. Roman put his freed arms around him and held on.

He thought, after a while, that they were done. He’d thought that about Adrian before and been wrong every time.

“There’s one more thing,” Roman said into his hair.

Adrian lifted his head. “Tell me.”

Roman rolled them. Slowly, carefully, until Adrian lay on his back on the grey sheets and Roman was over him, braced on his forearms, looking down. Adrian was hard again already, pressed against his hip. He’d always been greedy. It was one of Roman’s favorite things about him.

“I want to be inside you,” Roman said. “And I want you to watch me. The whole time. I don’t want you to close your eyes once.”

Adrian’s lips parted.

“Yes,” he said. “God. Yes.”

Roman slicked his fingers and opened him, and Adrian was already loose and eager, rocking down onto his hand and laughing breathlessly at how fast he was ready. Roman pushed into him in one long slide that made both of them groan. And then he moved, slow and deep, and Adrian kept his eyes open, pale and wide and fixed on Roman’s face, and Roman let him see everything. Every flicker. Every crack. All of it.

“I love you,” Roman said, somewhere in the middle of it. He’d said it a thousand times since the night on Massimo’s desk. He said it now like it was the first. “I love you. I’ve loved you since before I was allowed to.”

“I know,” Adrian gasped. “I know, I know—don’t stop—”

He didn’t stop. He fucked Adrian slow and deep into the mattress until Adrian came apart under him, untouched, crying out, his nails dragging down Roman’s back, his eyes never once leaving Roman’s face—and the look in them pulled Roman over the edge a second time, buried deep, his mouth on Adrian’s, both of them shaking.

At two in the morning Roman sat on the kitchen counter in nothing but a pair of grey sleep trousers, and Adrian made toast.

It was burned. It was always burned when Adrian made it. He put butter on it, and salt, and honey, and cut it into triangles, badly, and held a piece up to Roman’s mouth.

Roman took it from his fingers.

“Have you eaten?” Roman asked.

“Not since lunch.”

“Eat.”

Adrian ate. He leaned between Roman’s knees with his back against the counter and his head tipped back against Roman’s chest, and they finished the whole plate like that, crumbs on the stone, the windows open, the bay going on and on outside in the dark.

“Happy birthday,” Adrian said.

“Is it over?”

“Not until you fall asleep.”

Roman looked out at the water. At the tower across the bay where he’d once stood outside a steel door for fifty-eight minutes with a gun in his hand and his forehead against the cold. At the open doorway of their kitchen, and the open door beyond that, and the one beyond that.

“Then there’s one more thing I want,” he said.

Adrian turned his head. “Ask me.”

“I want to fall asleep first,” Roman said. “And I want you to stay awake. Just for a while. And watch the door for me.”

Adrian tipped his head back and studied him. Then he reached up and laid his palm against Roman’s face, and held it there.

“Yes,” he said. “Go to sleep, Roman. I’ve got the door.”

Roman went upstairs and lay down in the big unmade bed under the open windows with the silk tie still knotted around the headboard rail. Adrian lay down beside him, propped on one elbow, awake.

And Roman Kessler, who had stood outside every door of his life, closed his eyes and slept while somebody else kept watch.

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