“I feel him everywhere,” Mikko said, eyes shifting, darting his gaze about the room. “Every breath is tainted with him. He’s too strong.”
For a moment, that green-eyed vision ghosted through the room again, and Ken felt the familiar, constricting sadness of failure. He brushed those feelings away, pretty sure he knew Mikko was talking about something completely different. “Who, Mikko? Who is too strong? Too strong for what?”
“There shouldn’t be another Dom in this house.” Mikko’s gaze came back, fixing on Ken’s face with the light of fevered command in them. “He’s not welcome.” His head wagged from side to side, nostrils flared, like a dog searching for the right scent and not finding it. He strode away from the bed, quick steps carrying him across the room and back.
“Dean is here to help us, Mikko.” Ken knelt, letting the soft folds of bedclothes fall away, and took his lover’s face in both hands, stilling the agitated shifting of his head. “He has no interest in me.”
“He’s a Dom,” Mikko snarled. “And you’re—”
“I belong to you,” Ken said firmly. “You and only you. I have no interest in him.”
“You did once.”
Ken shook his head. “In the convenience of him, maybe. He was there, and it wouldn’t have mattered who he was. That was a different time, and I don’t need that kind of temporary comfort now. I have you. You are all I want or need.”
How many times over the past few days had he made this very same argument? How many times had he had to reassure his partner he was not going to stray, that he didn’t want anything but what Mikko had to offer. It was feeling far too much like what he had escaped with his last lover. The constant reassuring and placating, giving over and over again until he was depleted and lonely had finally driven him out then. He was stronger now. But he was still submissive, still needed the touch and guidance of a firm hand. He quailed at the thought of losing what was still so new.
“There’s something wrong, Kenny. Something…” Mikko trailed off. His gaze lost its focus and the air once again crackled with an excess electric charge that had the hairs on Ken’s body dancing upright. Mikko’s fingers idly traced patterns over Ken’s sides and every few seconds, a tiny discharge of static electricity shocked along Ken’s skin.
