Don't... (33 page)

I looked back up to the ceiling, then down at my hands. “I’m... I need a shower,” I said, and headed past him, up to the bathroom.

The water was set to hot, and I stepped in and felt like hitting something when it touched my back and leg, but I needed to be clean now, and the pain of anything compared to easing the need to clean was paled into the distance. Facing the showerhead helped, and I dipped my head, ignoring the pull of the collar on my throat, to let it run over my shoulders.

A kiss feathered the back of my neck. I hadn’t even heard Jan come in. His body pressed flat against mine, chest to back, his hips shaping mine from behind.

“I need to know how you met Gray, Jack. How did you become involved in all of this. Why do you like what you do? How does it help you?”

I drew Jan’s arm around my stomach.

“Medication started pre-puberty, the condition itself termed early onset OCD, or so they told me. I was prescribed a mix of Paroxetine and Citalopram, as well as CBT’s, or cognitive-behavioural therapy.” I sighed. “I hated both; I think—I
knew
it conflicted with my conduct disorder and being told to take something day after day. After juvy, I stopped taking my meds. It was that awkward time, caught between admitting I’d got a serious problem and doing all I could to deny it.” I leaned back into Jan, our fingers twined, my head on his shoulder, almost cheek to cheek. “I was seventeen, and I met this guy.” I snorted a bitter smile. “I guess I was Jess, only without the dress and makeup.” A kiss brushed the side of my throat and I closed my eyes. “He was older, about twenty-seven, not my usual type, what you’d class a real bear, I suppose.” Yeah, I hated that term, but he’d been fucking big. “At first we’d meet just to talk; then it started getting a little heavier. He’d take me for a ride.” I snorted. “Had this great Subaru, glowed like a fucking space ship in the dark.”

I sobered up. “Sex was pretty normal to start off with, the odd blow job in his car, him letting me fuck him on the back seat,” I hadn’t bottomed at that point. “Then one night he brought these handcuffs with him.”

Jan’s other arm sneaked around me.

“He teased me beyond fuck at this point; I’d have agreed to anything just to get off.” More kisses played down the side of my throat. “So with my consent, he blindfolded me and handcuffed my hands behind my back. There was this praise coming from him, a whole load of bollocks that made it feel... normal. Then I felt those first knife cuts to the inside of my thighs, something exploded in my mind, maybe more so because those whispers of encouragement made everything feel okay. Christ, it was the first time I’d come without anyone actually riding my dick. He didn’t fuck me either. I’d asked him not to on condition I wore the cuffs. He listened the first few times.”

The hold tightened around my waist.

“It wasn’t rape, Jan. Not with what Cutter did with his dick. It wasn’t even torture with what he did with his knife.”

Jan scoffed, and I half looked at him.

“I enjoyed it, Jan, and that’s the whole twisted point.” I stroked distractedly at Jan’s arm, enjoying the fine hairs I could feel there. “I wish I could explain it. It was like all of my meds and therapy in one go. I couldn’t think of anything else but feeling his knife on me, it became an ease to feeling the need to disobey, to worry about easing the crawling I get in my skin when something isn’t where it’s supposed to be. Only that new release, that relief I’d found, Cutter started to deny me it, and I had to earn it; rough a kid up here, steal the odd car there, burn a warehouse.”

Jan tensed.

“I didn’t realise I wasn’t the only one he liked to cut in order to get things done. One copper had cottoned on to some of Cutter’s handiwork, what he did if guys didn’t do what he asked. Never really bothered me, there was a lot to be said about being under his knife. I was given an order to persuade the copper to drop his investigation, not too hard considering he represented everything my body and mind had come to loathe about authority.”

“Jesus,” murmured Jan against my ear.

“It was me, or Cutter had his eye on the bloke’s seventeen-year-old. I think that was the first time I saw him without lust clouding my view. I figured rather the old guy than the kid. Like I said, head fucked back there.

“I followed him to a restaurant where he met this guy in a suit. They looked pretty friendly, so I waited until they’d finished and gone their separate ways, then jumped him down an alley not far from the Old Kent Road. Seems I’d got common thug down to a T back then.”

Jan whispered something, maybe an encouragement to carry on; I didn’t quite catch it.

“I was a black belt at this point and easily knocked the guy out with a few punches to his head. Pretty easy night’s work, all things considered. And I was all up for cashing in on some of Cutter’s thanks on my body.” I didn’t like myself much at that point, maybe that was why I hadn’t heard Jan. Guess I didn’t deserve the comfort. “Only I didn’t really take into account the guy he’d been having dinner with.”

I shivered and Jan tightened his hold again.

“Gray pretty much beat the shit out of me that night in the alley. Then he dragged my ass to some obscure room I thought only existed in movies. Just me, a chair, and a guy with more bastard in him than I could ever dream up.”

“Room?” Jan pulled back a touch. “Who the hell is Gray, Jack?”

“Do you know, I’ve never really asked? I just know he has ‘departments at his disposal,’ ones that go above the Master’s Circle, and ones that always seem to be on the end of the phone when the UK has seen terrorist activity. Coincidence? Maybe. But I know after the 7/7 bombings in London a few years back, I didn’t see him for a few months. Christ knows what he was doing on Cutter’s heels; Cutter was no terrorist.” I snorted a smile. “You kind of get an immediate sense of Gray, strange enough, he did with me too. I never spoke a word, didn’t have to, within a few short minutes he read out my entire life, finishing with how, by the age of twenty, I’d be dead in some alley, fucked over by someone bigger and better than me.” I opened my eyes and looked up at the shower as water hit my face. After a moment I gave up and stopped looking up for answers. “He stood me in front of a mirror, and Gray showed me the beating he’d given me. Then he pulled these photos out of his pocket and threw them on the floor. They fanned out in this big semi-circle, and Gray forced me to the floor, his hand on the back of my neck, my nose inches from the first few photos.”

Like back then, vomit churned in my throat.

“The first was a picture of a kid, about twelve, fourteen maybe. He’d had a stroke, the left side of his face pulled down making it so he’d never smile properly again. Gray told me the stroke had been caused by Cutter slicing off a few fingers for not stealing a car. Then Gray pretty much stripped me and started dragging me toward the door saying ‘Shall we go show that kid what sick fucks are out there? Maybe go show that kid’s parents the kind of guy who gets a kick out of the hurt that their kid has been forced through?’” More kisses ran along my neck.

“I threw up at that point. All the cuts, the bruises, how I’d loved it, how I’d go out hurting other people just to get off on someone hurting me.”

“But Gray does exactly the same thing to you, Jack.”

His voice sounded so quiet, and I shook my head. “No. Not even close, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. For this part, I didn’t see what was happening to those kids. Fuck, Jan, I couldn’t even see how that bastard screwed with my head. I wasn’t given the option of helping Gray at that point, just a simple fuck Cutter over, or be fucked in prison, this time with no get out of juvy early because of your age. I’d just turned eighteen.”

Another whisper off Jan. He sounded like an echo of my conscience.

“Cutter was sent down, but it seems he took exception to being sold out. Late one night before my old man got home, three guys broke into our house. One was only my age, and I managed to deck him one before the other two got close.”

“It’s okay, baby.” I caught that one that time and closed my eyes.

“It’s funny, until that point I thought I was the bees fucking knees as far as tough guys went.” I laughed, but it didn’t sound happy. “It’s funnier how having a gun dig in to the back of your head can make you re-evaluate really fucking quickly just how tough you are. I mean, Christ, I’d had a pretty middle-class upbringing, I hadn’t even seen a gun let alone had one pointed at me.”

A kiss brushed the back of my head. “Jack, what the fuck did they do to you?”

I gave a cold snort. “They didn’t take Gray into account either.”

I felt Jan nuzzle into me a little closer as we stood there in the shower. “And?” he whispered. “What the hell did Gray do, Jack?”

I shrugged, still not sure today whether it was Gray who had done the shit that went down next. “The guy with the gun to my head behind me, he hit the floor, the one off to the left who was still grinning at this point, he was left lying on my settee with this patch of blood surfacing midchest on his shirt.”

“Jack, Jesus Christ.”

“If Gray shot them, I don’t know,” I said honestly, and I’d never asked. Like I said, some places you just didn’t go to with Gray. “He came from behind me in his suit not looking like he carried a weapon. But I suppose that was how he was supposed to look, right?” I gave a shaky laugh. “And that was when I found out the true meaning behind “housekeeping.” On Gray’s word, my old man’s house was suddenly full of bodies, then it was clean and looking normal before I could find the will to move.” I rubbed at the back of Jan’s hand just to make sure he was still willing to react to me. He caught my thumb and held on to it.

“I thought Gray had set me up, used me as bait, brought all this shit to my door when I’d tried so hard to make things right for my old man. He’d been through enough. And I let Gray know it, calling him all the bastards under the sun.” I frowned. “Gray never said a word, just looked at me, and left. It took me all of five seconds to work out he’d killed two guys and fuck knows what had happened to the third. Usually the bad guys were questioned, given a lawyer, then sent to jail in my small world. Yet Gray had by-passed all three. Not really questionable with the guy who had the gun to my head, but the second one I hadn’t hit? He wasn’t holding any weapon.”

Jan wanted to know, I had to be straight with him. “I had no idea of how to get in contact with Gray to say thanks, so I went and sat outside of the copper’s house, the one I’d put in hospital. Gray pulled up twenty minutes later and told me we needed to go for a ride.”

“He took you to his.” Jan’s voice was still so ghostly.

I nodded. “This big fucking mansion, with staff and a butler that addressed him as Lord. Gray brushed it off saying blue blood could get you anything bar a soul, the latter you worked at.”

Jan stroked at my stomach and I shivered into the feel of his hands on my wet skin.

“I had no money on me, so decided to thank him the only way I knew how. I made a pass at him there in his study.”

I chuckled and this time meant it, although I felt warmth heat my cheeks.

“Wasn’t that hard to get my body used to the idea; looking in his early thirties, in that suit, he was,” I weighed up the options here, “still is as fit as fucking fuck. But as I stood there giving it my all, mouth on his, my dick more than threatening to come with the slightest draft, the only thing that had remained less excited than the lack of action from his lips, was the lack of life in his suit trousers.”

“Couldn’t have been good for your ego, huh?” Almost sounded like Jan was smiling.

“Yeah, well, eighteen, arrogant, thinking I was the best offer he’d ever get.” I chuckled nervously. “All that bullshit.”

“Jack.” A heavy sigh. “You’ve got no fucking clue what you do, have...” Whatever else was said was lost to the murmurs and kisses along the back of my neck. Jan’s semi swelled against my ass, not full, just murmuring into life like Jan and his ghosting of my shoulders, fuck, his ghosting of my life lately.

“He never even told me no, just to phone my old man and let him know I’d be staying out tonight. I could have a guest room in the west wing. Kind of got the hint when I saw it was as far away as possible from him in the east side. And that’s how it went for eight months. Three nights out of seven, I’d sleep at Gray’s in his west wing. Half the time he wasn’t even there, yet I was allowed to go wherever I wanted. Has a fantastic pool room,” I mumbled my way through the last bit. Jan’s haunting making me lose concentration beyond his lips.

“Eight months?” whispered Jan. “What then?”

I dropped my head to give Jan more access to my neck; he was alternating between lip and nip, almost threatening to mark. Fuck, I wouldn’t mind him claiming some part of me away from a fucking piece of paper.

“I’d had a bad few days, conduct disorder and OCD rearing their itching fingers, all to accumulate in one night of me being a real bastard with everything Gray said to me. I found myself wandering his mansion in the dark. Gray found me out in his courtyard staring off into the woods. It was one of those times I could have walked and walked and not come back even if my old man had called out to me. Instead, Gray took me up to his loft and....”

Jan seemed to catch his breath. “And what?”

“We painted it.”

The burst of laughter jerked me slightly and I couldn’t stop it infecting me.

“Fuck, Jack, I thought you were gonna say he hung you from the rafters and fucked you senseless, or something.”

“Yeah. As if I’m in to
that
kind of kink,” I said, trying to control myself. I got a thump in my side. “By the time dawn came, I was exhausted. Knackered, but pretty chilled. I didn’t realise I’d climbed into Gray’s bed until I felt the covers pull back and he got in.”

Jan fell quiet again.

“But he didn’t touch me. For a year and a half, I’d get in his bed, lie next to him, hump his leg like hell knowing I had him there, feeling just how fucking fit he was, but he never returned my touch.”

I felt that burn to my cheeks again. “Fuck knows what he thought of me feeling my come on his thigh most nights.”