Bad Things (40 page)

“
I want to give you what you need,” Xavier said, immediately sorry he’d said it that way when he saw Carson’s frenetic blue eyes calm in relief. “But I don’t think I can. Dario can’t. Aidan can’t.

“
I think you’ve been hurt and sad for eighteen years. I think your wounded soul is fucking starving for the kind of love Dario and Aidan have, but you can’t let go of your shame long enough to enjoy it, even when they try to give it to you. With me, you can. But only when I’m so rough with you, you feel more battered than loved.”

Fuck, it was like watching him die, seeing Carson’s gaze cool and harden. Dimmed in resignation.
“Yeah. I figured.”

“
Figured what?”

“
I’m too screwed up to ever figure out how to be happy.”

“
Fuck that. Fuck your bullshit self-pity. You look like I just passed your death sentence. But if you decide to curl up in a corner and fucking rot, that’s your decision, not mine.”

Carson’s wounded, bitter laugh. “I tried with Dario and Aidan.”

“Good.”

“
And I’ve been trying with you.”

“
Good.”

“
I don’t know what else to do.”

“
Stop expecting this to be easy. To fall at your feet and open up like a flower from a lover. You fought really fucking hard for eighteen years to be straight. Maybe now you’re going to have to work really fucking hard to be gay.”

Carson couldn’t stop feeling angry. Xavier was trying to be kind, trying to talk all this crap through with him. But he was still trembling with rage. Rage at his ignorant, bigoted fucking parents. Rage at Xavier for not feeling sorry enough for him.

Of course, there was that ugly lump of truth sinking through the acid in his belly, that mostly he was angry at himself for so many wasted years. Not just wasted, not playing and learning and loving and maybe even stumbling into a love like Dario and Aidan’s. The thing that really made him bitter was that he’d spent all those years hating himself. What a pathetic cliché.

Or, not hating, maybe, but neglecting. Never nurturing himself, his few precious years of existence, because he’d always felt ambivalent about it. Because everything had always felt so pointless.

“Will you try something with me?” Xavier asked, looking into his eyes like he was trying to find something lost in a dark room.

It didn’t seem like such a radical experiment, at first. Actually, it was the tamest bondage, yet. Xavier got up, found the lengths of cloth he’d bound him with, earlier, laid Carson down on his back and tied his wrists to the headboard. No teasing grin or playful glint in his dark eyes. Expression serious, Xavier mounted the bed and lied down on top of him. And then he was still. Just looking into his eyes like he was mining his mind for secrets.

When he moved, Xavier slowly propped himself up on his elbows, and lightly combed his fingers into Carson’s hair. For long moments, that was all. Just that gaze—maybe not somber, maybe serene—and the lazy, gentle wandering of Xavier’s fingertips over his scalp. Calming. Almost tranquilizing. Maybe it was a different way of playing with him. Lulling him, so the taunting and roughness after would be more shocking.

The flex of Xavier’s body against his as he rose to kiss him, just softly, just briefly on his forehead. Then a moment where it was like floating. Just looking at each other. And that fragile wall in Carson’s chest started to crumble and crack again.

“Don’t be scared. You’ll be okay,” Xavier said, quietly, but not the way Dario would have said it. Not like a promise. Like an order.

Kisses at his temples. Kisses next to his ears, across his eyebrows.

Another searching look, and then Xavier kissed him. A real kiss, lips soft on his lips, tongue deep in his mouth.
Oh God, oh God,
everything in Carson condensed to a point and resonated against that kiss.

For long delicious minutes—God, maybe even an hour—Xavier kissed every inch of skin he could reach with Carson bound as he was. Not ravenously, biting and sucking and raking his teeth across sensitive flesh. Tenderly.

When his lips and tongue had touched everywhere they could reach, Carson was terribly, painfully hard, and wanted to be fucked so badly he was ready to beg. As if he’d read his mind, Xavier grabbed the lube, got a glob on his fingertip, and settled his finger into the crack of Carson’s ass. Bending down, giving him a slow, deep, determined kiss, he teased his hole, rubbing back and forth, massaging in concentrated little circles, then penetrated him, slowly sliding his finger into him to the hilt, then out again. Tormenting him with a few shallow thrusts before taking another squirt of lube and using two fingers to stretch and open him.

Tied up and forced to wait, desperate and needy as he felt, Carson was still thrown off by how quiet and careful Xavier was being. This was nothing at all like the frenzied, consuming, sometimes maybe even vengeful battle of a fuck he’d thought he was offering himself up to each time he put himself in Xavier’s control.

Condom on, cock lubed, Xavier pressed his hips between Carson’s thighs, kissed his lips, then, holding his gaze, pushed inside of him.

Nothing like the way he’d taken him in the basement, like he’d been fucking starving for weeks and devoured him to beat back death. Nothing like that sudden, demanding fuck on the dining table, like he was exacting a confession that Carson’s ass—and maybe his soul, too—belonged to him, still, even beyond the walls of the basement. This felt like a prayer for forgiveness. Not that Carson would forgive him, but that he would forgive himself.

That look, like Xavier was trying to touch him with his gaze. Slow, undulating penetrations, so deep, so seeking, each one took Carson’s breath. Those kisses that felt like going into space or to the bottom of the sea where the pressure was too much or too little and there was no oxygen.

And, God, the way Xavier was touching him. The lightest pressure, the smallest movement making him fucking crazy, like Xavier had drugged him and every nerve was suddenly ten times more sensitive.

Xavier kept him in suspense forever, at the edge, needing, aching, hoping. Until Carson was squirming. Until he was almost crying, whimpering but almost silenced by Xavier’s mouth.

Finally, finally Xavier took pity, wrapped his hand around Carson’s cock, and barely squeezing, barely thumbing the ridge under the crown, barely stroking, made him come so hard he convulsed and howled into their deep kiss. As if he’d been holding on with the last breath of will left in his body, Xavier growled and sank into him with three or four sudden, urgent thrusts and muffled his moan against Carson’s chest.

When Xavier caught his breath and lifted his head, finally he smiled. Finally he broke that strange, unfamiliar silence.

“
Don’t worry, lover. I haven’t forgotten how to play rough.” Then the amusement faded from his eyes. “But from now on, I’m not going to be so easy on you all the time. From now on, you’re going to have to survive a little of my tenderness, too.”

Another kiss, the gentleness of it still shocking. A lingering, deep look, and then an amused smile.

After Xavier released Carson from the ties at his wrists, for the first time, they fell asleep together. Everything about it impossible. Somehow, between Dario and Aidan, he’d felt more like a wolf in a warm den, than like he was snuggling with his lovers. Even when they’d just fucked, something about that tangle of torsos and limbs, of deep, sleepy breathing felt innocent. Fraternal.

But this, nestled into the curve of Xavier’s big, protective arms, cheek resting on the rise and fall of his muscled chest, Xavier’s belly hot and smooth under Carson’s palm, Xavier’s fingers wandering through Carson’s hair until his hand went limp and still with sleep, was something else. Something scary. Something strangely joyful.

The vibration of Xavier’s cell phone on the night stand woke Carson up, and he was startled to find Xavier asleep beside him, the memory of curling up together faded and blurred until his dream-dazed brain switched gears. His dark, predator’s gaze veiled behind his closed lids, Xavier barely looked like himself.

Carson nudged him awake, and got a brief, contented look and a sleepy grin before the phone’s vibration penetrated Xavier’s drowsy awareness. Then he grabbed it so suddenly, Carson thought he was going to smash it for disturbing his slumber. But suddenly alert, sharp, he glanced at the display and answered in a perfectly crisp voice.

“
Elena? Is something wrong?”

Xavier sat up, feet dangling over the side of the bed. God, that incredible back. Beautiful V, muscled and tattooed, ribs emerging faintly each time he inhaled.
And just a teasing glimpse of cleft visible above the rumpled bedding.

“
It’s fine, Elena. Just tell me.”

Carson could hear faint notes of her voice coming through, but not the words.

“What do you think I’m going to do? Buy a machine gun on my way to court?”

Those soft, high notes, sounding, then halting, then coming in a long, unbroken torrent.

Xavier’s cold, heavy silence. Even without seeing his face, Carson was worried.

More vague, soft notes from the phone.

“Yeah. I heard you. I know that’s how this works. Yes, I know he wasn’t the most important one. I promise, Elena. Yes, you can trust me. I have to get ready for court. I’ll call you tonight. All right. I love you.”

Even in the middle of his alarmed curiosity, Xavier’s tender, “I love you” to his sister startled Carson, and provoked a sudden surge of warm affection.

Xavier got up and strode through the room, grabbing clothes off the floor and getting dressed. Somehow seeing him naked like that, soft cock hanging against his thighs, huge body looking out of proportion in the dinky hotel room, was all the more shocking because of the mundaneness of that morning routine that had nothing to do with Xavier as a hunter, stalking, hunching and lunging for a fuck.

When he’d gotten his pants on, Xavier straightened, and went strangely still. Carson watched him visibly, slowly breathing. Long, steady inhales and exhales, punctuated by the stillness of held breath each time his lungs filled, each time they emptied. Then Xavier turned and looked at him.

“Elena says Max made a deal.”

Fuck. It was stupid to make it personal. To want so badly for Max and Brian to get locked away for the rest of their lives, and care less about the others: men who were probably even more powerful, and who maybe had done even worse things. Even worse than what he’d seen in the video.

“What deal?”

“
She doesn’t think he’s going to do real time. He’s got enough to build their case against some of the higher ups, so they’ll put him in the program.”

“
The program?”

“
Witness relocation. New identity. New life.”

Jesus. Some things were too unfair to believe.

“I’m not in the mood for breakfast,” Xavier said, not bothering to put on his shirt, just carrying it along with his canvas bag of condoms and sex toys. “Tell Porter I’ll meet you guys in the lobby at quarter to nine.”

“
Xavier—”

He met his eyes.

“Where are you going?”

He grinned. A slightly sad, terribly endearing grin. “What? You think I’m going to go on some kind of homicidal spree, too?”

“Um…no?”

Was that really what Elena thought?

“I just need to go burn off some of this impotent fucking rage before I can sit around in that courthouse all God damned day long,” he said, fishing around in his pants pocket.

Xavier dropped a key card on the table by the door, and for one, pathetically deluded second, Carson imagined he was making an incredibly sweet gesture of reciprocation. But then he realized.

“You can keep it,” Carson said, suddenly feeling horribly sad.

Another endearing grin. “Not today. I don’t trust myself with you, the way I’m feeling right now.”