🔥 After Dark 🔥

An Exclusive Bonus Chapter from Sugar & Steel

Thank You for Reading! 💙

You made it to the bonus content — which means you’ve survived the croissant catastrophe, the fondant peonies at midnight, the thunderstorm kiss, the tattoo chair, the walk-in fridge incident (the cupcakes survived, for the record), a man who reverse-engineered a brownie recipe as a love language, and a scone on a doorstep that changed everything. You’ve watched Luca learn to stop flinching and Knox learn to stop shrinking. Thank you for giving Knox and Luca your time. This exclusive chapter is our gift to dedicated readers like you.

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⚠️ Content Warning: This bonus chapter contains extremely explicit MM sexual content including oral sex, penetrative anal sex, restraint with a leather belt (consensual, negotiated, with color system), praise kink at maximum intensity, D/s dynamic, body worship, edging, emotional intensity, and extensive aftercare. Set between Chapters 18 and 19 — Knox and Luca’s first scene with restraints. Intended for readers 18+ only. This content was deemed too explicit for retail platforms.

After Dark

Set between Chapters 18 and 19.
Knox’s POV.

The belt was Luca’s idea.

Not a new belt — Knox’s belt. The one he wore every day, black leather, heavy buckle, worn soft from years of daily use. It was hanging on the back of the bedroom door where Knox had tossed it after undressing, and Luca had looked at it for a long time while Knox was brushing his teeth, and when Knox came back into the bedroom, Luca was sitting cross-legged on the bed holding the belt in both hands with an expression that was equal parts nervous and determined.

“I want to try something,” Luca said.

Knox looked at the belt. Looked at Luca. His pulse, which had been operating at a reasonable resting rate, shifted into a gear he didn’t know he had.

“Tell me,” Knox said.

“I want you to tie my wrists.” Luca held up the belt. The leather caught the lamplight, dark and supple. “With this. I want — I’ve been thinking about it. Since the night you held me down. My body learned something that night. That your weight was safe. That being pinned was safe. And I want to go further. I want to not be able to move. I want to give you everything — not just control, but the ability to control — and feel safe doing it.”

Knox’s throat was dry. He stood in the bedroom doorway in his boxers and nothing else, and the words coming out of Luca’s mouth were rearranging something in his chest — something structural, something load-bearing, something that had to do with the intersection of trust and desire and the specific, devastating responsibility of being given power by someone who had been hurt by it.

“You’re sure,” Knox said. Not a question — a check. A verification.

“I’m sure.” Luca’s eyes were steady. Clear. “Color system. Green, yellow, red. I’ll use them. I promise.”

Knox crossed the room. He sat on the bed, facing Luca, their knees touching. He took the belt from Luca’s hands. The leather was warm from Luca’s grip, and the weight of it in Knox’s palm felt different than it ever had — heavier, more significant, charged with the meaning Luca had given it.

“If you say red, I stop,” Knox said. “Immediately. No questions, no hesitation. And after, we talk about it. Whatever happened, whatever triggered it, we talk.”

“Agreed.”

“And if I see something — if your body does something that concerns me, even if you haven’t said red — I’m going to check in. That’s not me doubting you. That’s me doing my job.”

“Your job?”

“My job is to take care of you. Especially when you’ve handed me the ability to do anything else.”

Luca’s breath caught. “Yeah,” Luca whispered. “That’s exactly what I need.”

“Lie back,” Knox said.

Luca lay back on the pillows. His arms were at his sides, palms up, an offering. Knox leaned over him and took Luca’s wrists — one in each hand, first — and held them. Just held them. Feeling the bones, the tendons, the pulse hammering under the skin.

He brought Luca’s wrists together above his head. Crossed them. Wrapped the belt around them once — snug, not tight. He threaded the end through the buckle and pulled until the slack was gone. Two fingers fit between the leather and Luca’s skin. Good.

“Pull,” Knox said.

Luca pulled. The belt held. His wrists strained against the leather and the resistance was firm, absolute, and Luca’s eyes went wide and dark.

“Oh,” Luca said. Quiet. Wondering. “Oh, this is—”

“Color.”

“So green. Extremely green. The greenest—”

Knox kissed him. Hard, deep, swallowing the rest of the sentence. Luca arched up into the kiss — his whole body responding to the combination of Knox’s mouth and his own immobility, the helplessness amplifying every sensation. His hands strained against the belt, and each failed attempt to move produced a sound — a gasp, a whimper — that went through Knox like an electrical current.

Knox pulled back. He looked at Luca — restrained, flushed, his chest heaving, his wrists crossed in soft black leather above his head.

“You’re beautiful,” Knox said.

“Knox—”

“I’m going to take my time. And you’re not going to rush me.” He ran one finger — one, a single point of contact — down the center of Luca’s chest. From the hollow of his throat to the waistband. Slow. The lightest possible pressure.

Luca’s entire body shuddered. His hips jerked. The belt creaked.

“You can’t touch me,” Knox murmured. “You can’t grab me, can’t pull me closer, can’t set the pace. All you can do is feel.”

“That’s cruel and unusual—”

“That’s the point.” Knox’s hand spread flat on Luca’s stomach. Warm, heavy. “You spend your whole life giving. Taking care of everyone. Tonight, you don’t give anything. Tonight, you receive.”

Knox undressed him. Slowly — the shirt lifted over the restrained wrists, the boxers drawn down. Luca was bare, restrained, and Knox sat back and looked.

“I’m looking at every part of you and I’m telling you what I see. I see the burn scar on your thumb from the oven rack. I see the flour callus on your palm. I see the lemon branch on your forearm—” His hand moved up, fingers brushing the tattoo. “—that I put there because you told me about your grandmother’s trees.”

Luca’s breath was ragged. His wrists twisted in the belt — not pulling, not trying to escape. The involuntary motion of a body that wanted to reach for something and couldn’t.

“I see every mark on your body and I know where each one came from and I love every single one.”

“Knox, if you don’t touch me properly in the next thirty seconds—”

“You’re going to lose your mind anyway. The timing doesn’t matter.”

Knox took his time. He mapped Luca’s body with his mouth — throat, collarbones, the ridge of muscle along his shoulders, the soft inner skin of his arms above the belt. Each kiss was placed with the precision of a tattoo needle. By the time Knox reached Luca’s hip bones, Luca was incoherent — a stream of Spanish and English, his body arching and twisting against the restraints, the belt creaking with each pull.

“Color,” Knox said against his hip.

“Green — God — green — please, Knox, please—”

The begging undid him. Knox gave Luca what he was begging for.

The first touch of Knox’s mouth made Luca cry out — not a gasp, not a moan, a cry, ripped from somewhere primal. His back arched off the bed, his wrists strained against the leather, and the sound of the belt creaking against his desperate pulling was obscene and beautiful.

Knox was thorough. He used his mouth and his hands and the full, devastating attention of a man who had spent fifteen years learning to focus for hours at a stretch, and he applied every ounce of that focus to taking Luca apart.

And Luca — who couldn’t touch him, who was bound and bare and utterly at Knox’s mercy — Luca surrendered. Total, instantaneous, freefall surrender. The kind that happened when every defense was removed and all that remained was trust.

“I’m close — Knox, I can’t — please let me touch you—”

“Not yet.” Knox pulled back. Luca made a sound that was almost a scream. “Not yet. I want to be inside you when you come.”

The words hit Luca visibly — his whole body contracted. His eyes were black, his face flushed, and the tears that had been threatening finally fell — not from pain but from the sheer, overwhelming intensity of being wanted this thoroughly by someone he trusted this completely.

Knox prepared him slowly. One finger, then two, the stretch gradual and patient, and Luca’s sounds scaled — moans to gasps to the broken, hitching sobs of a man whose body was being played by someone who knew every note.

When Knox finally entered him, Luca’s cry echoed off the walls.

The belt held. Luca’s wrists strained against it — hard, pulling — and the resistance amplified everything. Every thrust pressed Luca into the mattress, and the restraints converted what would have been motion into pressure and the pressure into sensation that had nowhere to go except through every nerve in Luca’s body simultaneously.

“Look at me,” Knox said. “Luca. Look at me.”

Luca’s eyes opened. Wet, dark, blown. He looked up at Knox through the blur of tears and pleasure.

“You’re safe,” Knox said. Thrusting. Slow, deep, relentless. Each word punctuated by a movement that pressed deeper. “You’re mine. You’re safe. You’re so good.”

“Yours,” Luca gasped. “I’m yours. Knox — I’m — oh God — I’m—”

He came. Untouched. The orgasm hit him like a detonation — his whole body arching off the mattress, the belt straining to its limit, every muscle contracting simultaneously. The sound he made was not a word. It was a frequency — raw, primal — and it carried Knox over the edge with it, both of them falling at the same time, held together by the leather and the trust and the love.

Knox collapsed beside him. His hands were shaking. He reached up and unbuckled the belt. Carefully, with trembling fingers, he unwound the leather from Luca’s wrists and set it aside. He took Luca’s hands in his and pressed his lips to each wrist — the right, then the left. The skin was pink where the leather had been, warm to the touch.

“Color,” he murmured against Luca’s wrist.

“Green.” Luca’s voice was destroyed. “The greenest. The most green. I’m the green champion.“

“Bath,” Knox said.

“Can’t walk.”

“I’ll carry you.”

“My hero.”

Knox carried him to the bathroom. He ran the bath — the tub was tiny, absurdly small for a man Knox’s size — and added the lavender bath oil. Luca lay against Knox’s chest in the warm water. Knox’s arms were around him.

“Knox?”

“Hmm.”

“That’s the paradox. Being restrained by you is the freest I’ve ever felt. Because the restraint is my choice. The belt is my idea. The power is mine even when the control is yours.”

“The power is always yours,” Knox said. “I just hold it for a while.”

He dried Luca off. Carried him back to bed. Went to the kitchen and came back with a plate — a slice of dark chocolate cake — and sat on the bed and fed it to Luca, one forkful at a time, while Luca lay in the sheets with the belt marks still pink on his wrists and the taste of chocolate on his tongue and the look on his face of a man who had finally found exactly where he belonged.

“Goodnight, Knox.”

“Goodnight, Luca.”

The belt hung on the bedroom door. The cake plate sat on the nightstand next to two fondant peonies. The apartment was dark and warm and full, and the man in Knox’s arms was sleeping, and Knox pressed his lips to his hair — sugar, cocoa butter, lavender from the bath — and the feeling in his chest was the one he’d spent thirty-four years looking for and had found in a bakery on Clover Street in a town he’d chosen because it was quiet.

It wasn’t quiet anymore.

It was full.

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With love,
Jace Wilder