Bad Things (35 page)

A little color came back into Dario’s face. After a few moments, his voice more tentative than it had been earlier, Dario said, softly, “He dominated you. He convinced you to do things you never could have imagined yourself doing. He probably tied you up.”

“
We weren’t playing a fucking game.” Carson was trying to hold on to some thin thread of control. Not turn all his anger at Xavier against Dario, trying not to fall apart again. “I know I’m clueless and inexperienced, but I’ve watched my fair share of porn. More than my share, probably, since my virginity was so far past its expiration date. But that S&M shit has nothing to do with what Xavier did to me.”

“
Neither of you has told me what happened between you, so I can’t speak to that. But Xavier isn’t an abuser. What he is, is someone who’s not scared of anything. Someone who can look at you, see the thing you need, the thing you could never be brave enough to ask for, or even admit to yourself that you need, and give it to you.

“
If your dad was abusive, and he used his power to keep you from yourself, maybe you need Xavi because he’s just as big and tough and scary as your dad. But instead of using his power to twist you into something you’re not, Xavier forces you to be yourself.”

“
He got off on it. Torturing me. Making me suffer. Just like my father did.”

Dario was quiet for a long time. Finally he said, “Xavier has a kind of curse.”

“He’s a sadist.”

“
No. He’s…terribly empathetic.”

One of his weird, spiteful laughs rolled out of Carson’s chest.

“Really,” Dario said. “He knows people too deeply. Reads them too easily. He doesn’t respond to the surface signals the rest of us have to go on. What someone says. A smile. An overt gesture. He reads the things in you that you yourself don’t want to face, and that’s what he acts on.”

“
Exactly. Which is the really scary thing about him. When you meet him, you’re intimidated because he’s so big. Because you feel like he could just squash you, if he decided to. But it’s his fucking mind reading that’s really terrifying.”

Dario’s steady gaze and kind smile. “What’s so terrifying about someone being able to read what’s going on in your mind?”

Carson laughed. Lately he kept laughing at things that weren’t funny. It was annoying. “Because he uses it against you.”

“
Does he?”

“
Yes!” Carson was practically shouting. “It’s like fucking Nazi vivisection. He’s got you there,” he almost said ’tied up,’ but caught himself in time, and said, “helpless,” instead. “And he pokes around inside you, figuring out what hurts you, what scares you, what breaks you down to fucking nothing, and he…”

Dario waited patiently.

“…he makes you…”

Very quietly, Dario said, “He fucked you.”

Why did that shock Carson? Dario and Aiden already knew that. He’d pretty much told them straight out. But hearing Dario say it out loud twisted his guts and made him feel sick.

“
You were a virgin. You’d never been with a man before. And Xavier fucked you.”

Dario waited until Carson finally said, “Yes,” his voice barely audible.

“And before Xavier fucked you, he did his vivisection thing. His mind reading thing.”

“
Yes.”

“
He looked into your eyes, stared at your soul, and decided to fuck you. Why?”

“
So I’d know how they feel. The girls they abduct and rape.”

Just slightly, barely perceptibly, Dario flinched. “Is that how you felt when Xavier fucked you?”

The agonized face of the girl in the video flickered in Carson’s mind. Her voice, begging in words that didn’t mean anything to him, but which reverberated with her terror and pain.

“
No.”

“
How did you feel when Xavier fucked you?”

He could almost feel it as if it was happening again. That hour of waiting, his shoulders and jaw aching from all the hours and hours in those restraints, that gag stuffed into his mouth.

“Scared.”

“
What else?”

The sound of Xavier’s heavy tread on the stairs, coming for him.

“Helpless.”

Xavier’s touch igniting his nerves, his whole body with violent pleasure. Hoisting him, holding him up as he fucked him. Xavier’s mouth, fierce and cruel, as if he wanted to tear his meat from his bones, every bite, every scrape of teeth over his electrified flesh terribly, unbearably delicious. Xavier’s eyes locking on his soul as he rose into him.

“Free. Exalted.”

A sunset swim in the ocean, the three of them. Carson kept thinking, while they were diving under the waves, while they raced to the outer breakers, while they body surfed, then floated and frolicked in the relative calm between the churning waves, that life with them was like a second childhood. A safer, more playful childhood. With brothers—he laughed and let go of the incestuous analogy—who would never have pretended he wasn’t there at the dinner table. Dario and Aidan always saw him. Always heard him.

Carson started it, terrified he’d used up all his chances. But their patience seemed to be infinite. Just one hopeful, wet kiss behind Dario’s ear, one tentative caress of Aidan’s thigh, and their cozy, fraternal cuddle at bedtime turned into a lovemaking marathon that lasted until the black night sky yielded to the first deep shades of blue.

Unbelievably sweet, how intense, how nervous Aidan was, between Carson’s thighs, getting ready to enter him. Cradled in Dario’s arms, Carson had to suppress the urge to laugh when Aidan said, “Tell me if it’s too much, if I’m not being gentle enough.” As if he’d forgotten Xavier had been his first, and what that meant.

Dario reached past and combed his fingers through Aidan’s hair, and Carson could just imagine the tender look he was giving him. “I think Aidan’s a little nervous,” Dario whispered, a delicate, teasing note in his voice, “because he hasn’t been with very many men.”

Aidan’s luminous, just-for-Dario smile. But it was turned on Carson, too, making his heart feel big and heavy as it thumped. Sweetly, a little sheepish, Aidan confessed, “And this is my first time with someone less experienced than me.”

But he was perfect. His green eyes intent, searching for every sign of pleasure or pain, want or worry, his kisses shallow and cautious at first, but every time Carson yielded and kissed him back, he got more and more excited, until he was actually trembling on top of him, as if he was as overwhelmed by the pleasure and beauty of what was happening between them as Carson was.

Aidan entered him so slowly and carefully, it was like he was afraid of breaking him. But as soon as he started moving, the pleasure stole Carson’s breath. Holy hell, Aidan knew how to fuck. And lying there, pressed between both of their bodies, skin to skin, kissing and touching and being touched, Carson thought he might go mad from the pleasure.

And fine. Good. It was worth it. He promised himself it was. And that he’d hold on to this happiness. This incredible fullness. Wholeness.

But he still wasn’t ready to do the other thing. To mount Aidan, or Dario. To penetrate.

They didn’t even suggest it. When Aidan got too close to coming, he pulled out—almost as slowly and cautiously as he’d first entered him—and Carson got on his knees, straddling Dario’s thighs. For a long time they just kissed, only caressing each other innocently. Fingers combing through hair. Palms breezing over shoulders and backs and bellies.

But then Dario and Aidan were both mouthing his neck and throat, the pleasure rushing up on him so hard and fast he forgot to breathe. Braver and braver, Carson kissed a path across Dario’s chest, taking his time, relishing the delicious feeling of his warm skin against his lips. Even the radiant heat rising up off his skin, before his lips even made contact. Then dared to kiss one tawny nipple. God, the way Dario sighed, the way he arched and rose, pressing himself to that kiss. Aidan sighing, too, as if he were so perfectly in tune with Dario, he even felt his pleasure.

Then Aidan whispered against his neck, “I want to be inside you again, Carson.”

And Carson reached back, curved his hand around the back of Aidan’s thigh, and pulled him against him, blushing as he rocked his hips, rubbing the furrow of his ass up and down Aidan’s hard cock. Because he still wasn’t over being too shy to say out loud, “Fuck, yes. I want you inside me. I want you to fuck me.”

Fuck. Even though he wasn’t nearly as big as Xavier, even though he was still doing everything with incredible restraint and care, it was still a shock, a strain, as Aidan worked himself inside him. But after that, after the first few cautious, tentative strokes, as Carson’s body reluctantly relaxed and opened to him, Jesus Christ, that filling and friction felt good. Pure, physical joy. Dario’s tongue teasing and touching and sliding against his, Aidan’s cock straining and filling and working his hole. All of them touching, whispering, sighing and groaning.

When Dario shot a squirt of lube into his palm, Carson put his hand out, too. A playful light in his dark eyes, that boyish grin pumping Carson full of adoration, Dario squeezed a blob into the center of his palm, too. Watching each other’s hands and cocks and faces, they started stroking each other.

“Oh, fuck, the two of you are killing me,” Aidan groaned as he went still, panting, trying to get hold of himself before he started pumping again, slow, straining to hold off.

Carson was the first to lose control. It was too late before he even had time to tell Dario to wait, to grab his hand and hold it still. His cock caught in Dario’s grasp, he had no control, and watched as he erupted all over Dario’s belly, Dario’s cock, his own hand, still squeezing and sliding up and down. The last few lazy spills slid down his cock, over Dario’s hand. Embarrassed at seeing his mess all over Dario, he was also turned on as hell by the sight.

“Oh, fuck, “Aidan huffed against his neck, finally letting go and really fucking him. “Fuck, I can’t…wait.”

That shudder. Desperate, clutching, frenzied humping. Sudden, almost stillness, seizing, trembling, tiny fervent grinding movements.

Dario’s face. Pure love, watching Aidan come.

Aidan’s hand on top of his. Squeezing and sliding over Dario’s cock. Together, they milked a long, copiously sloppy orgasm from him, Carson holding him tight with his free arm while Dario and Aidan kissed. Pure bliss.

As if the FBI and the LAPD had surveilled their lovemaking and deemed it an ideal farewell, a Detective Porter phoned Carson the next day, told him all the key players in the human trafficking ring were in custody, and it had been deemed safe for Carson to return home and resume his normal existence.

“
You know this isn’t the way to LAX, right?”

James gave Xavier one of those slightly weary, must-you-always-challenge-me? nods. “We gotta pick up the other witness.”

“What other witness?”

“
The bartender. Carson something.”

A weird, calcifying sensation spread through Xavier’s brain, and then his body.

“I thought his testimony was coming later.”

“
You think I make the trial schedule? They tell me to bring him to Sacramento, I bring him to Sacramento.”

“
Does he know I’m with you?”

James shot him a look that more or less meant, “What the fuck do I care?”

“Does he?”

The tone of his voice sobered James up a little. “I don’t know. I didn’t talk to the guy. It’s not like I’m the fucking secretary of the social calendar.”

Xavier waited in the car while James went to Carson’s door. No. No one had given him a fucking clue. That was pretty fucking obvious from the look on his face when he saw Xavier in the car as he followed James down the narrow concrete path from his building entrance.

It wasn’t quite as obvious how he felt about discovering Xavier in the passenger seat of the car about to take him to the airport, about possibly sitting next to him on the ninety-minute flight to Sacramento, and then spending an unknown number of days and nights sequestered together in the hotel and going to court every day, waiting until they were called as witnesses.

“Hello, Carson,” Xavier said when he slid into the back seat while James put his bag in the trunk.

“
Xavier.”

He’d changed. Xavier was almost sure it wasn’t just Carson trying to mask whatever reaction this unexpected reunion provoked in him. Even walking out from the apartment building, he carried himself differently. There was less showmanship. He was less masked. Paradoxically, though, he was much harder to read.

“Are we the only two witnesses from the club?” Carson asked James en route to the airport.

“
Well, you know already, Brian’s up on charges. So he’s already up there, not in the same luxury accommodations as you two. And the girls from the club are lumped in with the victims. And they’re all in a separate hotel.”

From the front seat, Xavier couldn’t see Carson’s face without turning around, which he did only once, just to meet his eyes. Just to let Carson look him in the face, and hopefully see that he didn’t need to be scared of him. That he’d resolved not to re-attempt anything like his ambush at Carson’s apartment the night after the surreal scenario in the basement had come to an end.

Carson met that gaze with unexpected steadiness. No amicable smile, no angry glare, no tremor of fear. He seemed so fucking changed, it occurred to Xavier he’d popped a beta blocker, either on the off chance of having to face him, or maybe because he had a phobia about flying.

The flight had been booked last-minute, so the three of them were scattered through the cabin. In Sacramento, they caught a cab from the airport, and it only took a look and a nudge to get James to sit in back with Carson. Then they checked into the hotel, and Xavier shut himself away in his room.

Fuck, this was different. Not bad, but weird. This incessant hum of frenetic energy, and the certainty that he must not act on it. When had he ever forbidden himself to pursue a drive?

Just to feel it, he made himself sit with that hum of impulses darting from some gland at the base of his brain and firing through his blood. Not meditating. Not pacing the room or watching TV. After an hour, though, he changed clothes and found the gym, and worked out until just walking back to the elevator, and then from the elevator to his room, cost him a real effort.

The next day, James checked in with Xavier three times to tell him he hadn’t been called to the stand, yet. But while court was in session, he wasn’t supposed to leave the hotel, in case the schedule got switched up and they suddenly needed him across the street.

He did forty-five minutes of cardio before breakfast. He killed a whole hour at the breakfast buffet. He went back to his room and watched
Los Olvidados
on his computer. He swam laps for an hour in the pool, divided in two by a rope suspended by buoys and half full of splashing, screaming, giggling kids. He showered in the locker area, not in his room. He went back to his room and changed. He went to the bar and drank two shots of tequila while he watched a middle-aged couple argue about whether their college-aged son was responsible enough to take care of the dog while they were gone.

Everywhere he went, he was ready for Carson to appear at any moment. But he never did.

Xavier wasn’t sure how—maybe it was the crisp, perfunctory knock—but even before he looked through the peephole, he knew it was James at his door.

“
Want to buy me a round of tequila?” James asked, breath already smelling boozy.

“
In here?”

“
If you have a bottle. Otherwise we can go down to the bar.”

Xavier grinned at James’s transparent pretext. “Come in.”

He grabbed a fresh plastic cup from the counter above the mini fridge, poured, then topped off his own drink.

“
Salud.” No point clinking plastic cups together, so they just drank. “Any news?” Xavier asked.

“
What? About the trial? Since this afternoon? Nah. You getting stir-crazy already?”

“
Me? No. I know how to bide my time.” He let a cryptic smile creep over him. Let James make of it what he wanted.

“
These babysitting gigs drive me crazy. No offense.”

“
Why would I be offended?”

James finished off his drink and Xavier gave him a refill. James was nervous. He was having trouble meeting Xavier’s eyes.

“So. You and the kid don’t really get along, I see.”

Xavier laughed. “What kid?”

“That Miller guy. Carson.”

“
The twenty-seven year-old bartender? We have our ups and downs.”

“
Have you talked to Elena today?”

“
Yeah. Just to check in and let her know they didn’t call me yet to testify. You know, so she won’t worry.”

“
It’s nice the way you two take care of each other.”

“
Yeah. It is nice.”

This time James reached for the bottle himself, poured himself at least a double, and topped off Xavier’s drink, even though he’d hardly touched it. “Come on. You’re making me drink alone.”

“You’re not the one who might have to testify tomorrow.” Just to put James at ease, he took a small sip. “Must be hard not knowing how long you’ll be away from your family.”

It was painful, how visible James’s effort was, forcing himself to meet Xavier’s eyes and say, “Being out of town has its plus sides, too.” Under the table, Xavier felt James’s hand land lightly, tentatively on his thigh.

Weird. He’d thought he’d want to. When the fuck had he misread himself so badly? And when the fuck had he turned down a fuck, in case…what? It would hurt someone else’s feelings? Not even that. Or, not only that. All of a sudden, he just didn’t want to. At all.

Laying his own hand over James’s, Xavier gave him a flirtatious grin, trying to keep things friendly. “Not tonight, I’m afraid.”

James broke eye contact, and sat there for a minute not saying anything, then started working his hand upward. Xavier only arrested it by using more force than he wanted to.

“
With everything that’s going on with the trial, things are complicated enough for me right now, James. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Another sad, still silence. Then James dropped to his knees so suddenly, for a second Xavier thought he’d fallen off his chair in a drunken attempt to stand up.

Pushing his face into Xavier’s crotch he said, “I’ll suck you.”

Hot breath seeping through Xavier’s jeans, waking his cock up in two seconds flat. James started mouthing his bulge, teeth raking over the fabric stretched tight over his hardening cock.

Fuck. Why not? What was the point of turning down a blow job on the wildly unlikely chance Carson might come to his room? Not even to fuck. Just to talk. And what would he say? If Carson wanted to talk to him at all, it would only be to remind him he’d hurt him. Gone too far. That he’d done to Carson what those three men had done to Elena.

James started pawing at his fly, trying to get it open.

“Come on, James. Get up.” Xavier stood and lifted James to his feet.

Shit. That look on his face was not good. That wasn’t disappointment or frustration. That was humiliation-fueled rage. Fucking a man now and then was one thing, with a bi-confused guy like Porter. Xavier had pushed him dangerously close to the edge, flipping him. Topping him. Apparently getting plastered and pretty much begging to suck Xavier’s cock had knocked him off the precipice.

“Get your goddamned hands off me,” James slurred, clumsily swatting Xavier’s hands away. “Just because you got a couple shots of tequila in me, don’t go thinking I’m gonna let you pull any sick shit on me.”

Xavier repressed a grin. Christ, some people’s defense mechanisms.

“I’m not trying to pull anything, James. You just lost your balance, and I helped you up.”

“
That perverted shit that went down in your apartment…I was drunk. You got me drunk on your shitty Mexican booze and then pulled that homo shit. You ever try anything like that with me again, I’ll shoot your goddamned dick off.”

Well, fuck. This was getting out of hand.

Keeping his distance, keeping his voice low and his words clear, Xavier said, “James, nothing happened here tonight. We just had a couple of drinks, and you talked about missing your family. And maybe I was drunk the last time we hung out, too, but all I remember is us have a couple shots at Hinano.”

The implied pact of collective amnesia seemed to dull the edge of James’s rage. “Just don’t think you can get away with spreading any lies about me being a faggot like you.”

Hard to say if he was more tempted to punch him, or shove him down on his knees and make him eat his cock, after all.

Xavier took a deep breath. “Don’t worry. For one, I’m not the kind of person who goes around fucking with the reputations of hardworking family men. Two, only an idiot would mess with the LAPD detective who’s protecting him. And I may be a faggot,” Xavier savored the word that had James so scared and angry, “but I’m not an idiot.”

There. A little manna for his bruised masculinity, a little ode to his upright heterosexuality, and James was almost calm. “You should lay off that shit for tonight,” he said with an overdone air of authority, gesturing toward the bottle of tequila. “You want to be sharp tomorrow if they put you on the witness stand.”

Xavier closed and bolted the door behind James, then tossed down the two-plus shots of tequila in his glass. Well, he couldn’t complain life had been dull, lately. Hopefully when his drunken stupor had passed and his hangover had faded, James would snap back to his usual reasonable discretion.

Too wound up to sleep, now, Xavier changed and went down to the hotel’s twenty-four-hour gym and drove himself hard through a 90-minute workout. After he showered and got in bed, he wondered if James was asleep yet, or sitting in his room with a bottle, trying to burn the truth out of his brain. In the end, Xavier couldn’t fall asleep, himself, and James had helped him finish off the bottle in his room. Deciding to go down to the bar, Xavier got dressed.