Chapter 157 Chapter 158

Chapter 157 Chapter 158
“Yes,” Ravi said. “We were young. You’d lost your dad and had a business empire resting on your shoulders. I understand why you needed to get away from everything, university, Scotland, me.”
He looked sad when he said it, his smile present, but the skin around his eyes was smooth.
Denis swallowed. “I never wanted to be away from you.” He shouldn’t be saying this. It wouldn't do anyone any good. “But you were going to be a star. You are a star. And I was going to run the Arnold House. It wouldn’t have worked.”
The raven-haired boy still had a melancholic look about him. He shrugged his shoulders.
“You agree then?” Denis needed to hear it, needed to hear him confirm the reasoning he’d always been clinging to. Perhaps if Ravi agreed, Denis could sleep at night. “We wouldn’t have worked out.”
Ravi took some time answering. But even before he’d opened his mouth, Denis could tell he'd have a lifetime of sleepless nights ahead. “I would have made us work. Whatever it took.”
He was so fierce, Denis had almost forgotten what it felt like to stand in front of Ravi when he was so certain, so brazen. It hadn’t happened a lot back at uni, but when it had, Denis had been prepared to listen to Ravi like one might a general. He straightened his back, a soldier heeding command.
“Yeah?”
Ravi’s eyes flickered over his face. “Yeah.”
Denis was biting his lips, hands wringing together. Something inside of him told him that maybe there was a chance, a sorry excuse for a tiny chance, but a chance nonetheless. Self-preservation was the one thing holding him back. He feared that if he took this leap, he’d either soar or disintegrate from hitting the ground. Like a red mist, that was what he’d be if he fell. 
He stared at Ravi’s face, the curve of his jaw, the shape of his eyebrows. It was the little things that came to mind, the small things that burned hot like coal. The memory of kissing Ravi’s forehead before sleeping, of blowing a raspberry on his arm, of weaving a small braid in his raven curls before a game. 
Denis braced himself. Then he leaped. 
“Do you think…” His hands were trembling as they clutched together. “Do you think there’s a chance there could ever be something again? Something between us?”
He stared intently into Ravi’s face. He’d never wanted to vomit more in his entire life.
Ravi cocked his head, green eyes holding the secrets of the universe. If only he knew how putty Denis was in his hands. He could demand Denis’s riches, his most prized possessions, his life, and the blonde would give it gladly. If he wanted the House Arnold levelled with the ground, Denis feared he would fall over himself to heed the wish. 
Once he’d thought the House important, legacy important, five years had proved him wrong. Ravi was important.
“Denis,” his voice was dark and warm, but then again, when wasn’t it? The blonde didn’t dare hope.
“Yeah?” His voice was peeling raw. 
“You do know I’m mad for you.”
“Yeah?” He was crying again – had he ever stopped? “Really?”
Ravi smiled at him, his lips so plush and soft, eyes warm pools you wanted to submerge in forever. Denis’s heart was fluttering, his body taking off. Gravity wasn’t enough to tether him, not when he was feeling so light.
Ravi’s hands framed his face, his smile turning brittle. “All these years, and I could never do the one thing you asked of me. I never could move on.”
“Thank god.” 
Ravi turned to a blur, Denis’s vision swimming as his hands reached forward to tangle in the rugby lad’s shirt. He’d have to get him a new shirt, a new suit, with how much he was bawling and tugging at Ravi. 
The tall lad didn’t mind the blonde’s state. He just leaned in to give him a featherlight kiss, the touch more than Denis could have ever dared dream of. An irrational fear took hold, that at any moment he’d wake up alone in bed, breath rattling in his chest as he tried to adjust to a reality where this was all a lie. Where Ravi actually didn’t want him, where he was off playing rugby, dating other people, moving on. 
They kissed again. Denis had to break the kiss, his nose stuffy and his lungs screaming for air. 
“You’re so calm,” the blonde hiccuped, then laughed. “I’m falling apart at the seams.”
He wiped his eyes, seeing Ravi clearly. The dark-haired lad smirked, hands roaming Denis’s body like they were starving. There it was again, the coveting. The world order was restored.
“Well, I was fairly certain the feeling was mutual.”
Denis’s eyes fluttered as rough hands returned to his stomach, sneaking back underneath his shirt and mapping out his body, relearning his curves and edges. 
“Cocky.”
The smirk turned into a grin. “I’m just saying, sweetheart -” Denis was close to combusting at the endearment, “-you spent one hundred million quids to get a date with me.”
“I did, didn't I?”
His smile was lethal, all dark and wanting, but his eyes were still warm, still brimming with so much love Denis feared he might drown. It wouldn’t be a bad way to go. He’d welcome the end if it came for him in the circle of Ravi’s arms. 
“You’re so fucking unreal,” he said. “How fucking rich are you really?”
Denis looked at Ravi, smiling despite the tears and the snot and the blotchiness. “Very.” He wasn’t talking about money. The way Ravi turned quiet for a beat meant he understood. He was rich, as of tonight, probably the richest bastard in the world.
“I’m going to fuck you so good.” His voice was a rumble. Denis wondered what he’d ever done right to deserve this. “Going to take you apart until you’re nothing but writhing limbs and moans. Until all you can think of is me moving inside of you. You need it.”
He did. Denis nodded, groin tightening anew, his pulse picking up. He’d let Ravi take him right here, push him down onto the marble floor, and bully his way in. His toes curled as he prepared himself, melted into Ravi’s hard hands. He was already soaring, his mind turning stuffy and stupid as anticipation washed him offshore. A hand gripped his arse; he moaned, moved.
Mine.
Yours. 
“Ahem.”
Both of them stilled immediately. Ravi held him tight, as if he was afraid Denis would try to spring apart from him – the blonde would rather die. Despite the company, Ravi’s eyes remained dark and hungry, a wild energy coursing through his body, muscles swelling beneath Denis’s wiry frame. 
They turned in unison. It was Shreya.
Denis had never felt quite so caught. His face turned a deep crimson, but he didn’t move from Ravi, refusing to be without the lad’s touch. He’d spent five years suffering the absence of it. He wasn’t about to suffer another second.