Resistance (Replica) (3 page)

“All right, skip that. Tell me why you’re here.”

Enough light from the rising sun filtered through the curtains that Nate could now see Kurt’s face more clearly, could see the little smile that curved his lips.

“Well, first of all, for this,” Kurt said, then put his hand behind Nate’s neck and pulled him in for a kiss.

Nate made a little sound of protest. His mouth had to taste disgusting right now, and he and Kurt had about a thousand unresolved issues between them. But Kurt didn’t seem to mind the taste of his mouth, nor did he seem to care much about the issues. With anyone but Kurt, Nate was too much of a take-charge kind of guy to give in on even the most trivial matter, at least not without a fight. But giving in to Kurt had always been frighteningly easy, and he did so now, abandoning his commonsense objections and losing himself in the moment. Kurt was the best kisser Nate had ever known, though there were other things he was equally good at.

The kiss ended way too soon, and the possibility of progressing to “other things” faded away. Kurt kept his hand on Nate’s neck, kneading the tight muscles there as he stayed intimately close.

“You gotta know that you came first,” Kurt said, looking intensely into Nate’s eyes. “I was already with you when the resistance asked me to take advantage of it.”

So much for ignoring the issues that lay between them. Nate’s chest hurt, and he dropped Kurt’s gaze, hardly able to swallow the truth that he had learned: Kurt—his valet, his friend, and his lover—had spied on him for some shadowy resistance movement Nate hadn’t even known existed.

“How can you expect me to believe that?” Nate asked, his hands clenching into fists in his lap. “You’ve obviously lied before.”

“You think I could have guessed where things would lead when I hooked up with you at Angel’s? I thought you were just some uptight Exec kid looking for a good time. No way I expected us to hit it off and that you’d actually
hire
me.”

Nate was glad for the semidarkness, which might help hide the redness of his cheeks. Theirs had not been what you’d call a storybook romance, and he wasn’t exactly proud of how it had begun. There was a time not that long ago when he’d treated the Basement—or Debasement, as its residents called it—as his own personal playground, taking advantage of the unfortunates who lived and worked there without really thinking about what their lives must be like. He’d never been cruel or unfair to any of them—at least, not that he knew of—but his well-meaning ignorance was a source of shame anyway. How could Kurt possibly have loved the privileged, self-centered bastard he had been before the rude awakening of his death?

“So you weren’t a member of the resistance when we met?”

Kurt looked away briefly before answering, and Nate braced himself for a lie. But Kurt was a master of not doing what was expected.

“I was,” he admitted. “But I wasn’t active. What’s a teenage whore going to do to help bring down a government?”

Nate flinched. “Don’t call yourself that!” He had no illusions as to what Kurt’s former profession had been, had known it from the moment he’d first laid eyes on him prowling the club, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“What? A teenager?” Kurt grinned at him. “I suppose I could be as much as twenty, but I’m pretty sure it’s more like eighteen.”

Just another indication of how different life in the Basement was from the life Nate had always known. He couldn’t imagine not knowing how old he was. “You know what I mean,” Nate said with a tired sigh.

Kurt patted his thigh. “Yeah. But I’m not ashamed of it, like you are.”

“Kurt—”

Kurt silenced him with a brief kiss. “It’s all right, Nate. I get it. Really, I do. But I stopped being a whore the day you hired me. And I came to your bed because I
wanted
to, not because it was part of a job. I love you, you idiot.”

Even in the midst of his turmoil, Nate couldn’t help laughing. “You’re such a charmer.”

“You want charm, marry Nadia. Oh, wait. You will. My bad.”

His words drained every drop of humor from Nate’s body. The fact that Kurt might have been using him all along had certainly bothered Nate, but it was a sin he was prepared to forgive, knowing that however things might have started, Kurt’s affection for him in the end had to be at least somewhat genuine. Other things he had done were far harder to forgive.

“Dante put a tracker on Nadia, and you
knew,
” Nate said, shaking his head in disbelief. “You set her up so your resistance buddies could
kill
her.” He wanted Kurt to deny having known, wanted it all to have been Dante’s idea, but he knew in his heart that wasn’t the case.

Kurt reached for him, and Nate slapped his hand away. He might never be able to love Nadia the way she deserved, but she’d been his friend long before Kurt had come into his life, and the idea that Kurt had been willing to sacrifice her like that …

Kurt didn’t even have the grace to look particularly guilty. “From what I understand, having that tracker on her probably saved her life.”

“That doesn’t make it right! But then, you knew that, or you wouldn’t have gone behind my back.”

Kurt’s gray eyes narrowed, and his voice took on a sharp edge. “Uh-huh, couldn’t possibly be ’cause you would have pitched a fit if you knew. You’d never do a thing like that, right?”

Kurt’s words hurt more than the fading bruises. Both Kurt and Nadia had kept secrets from him. Big ones. And both for the same reason: they didn’t trust him. They thought of him as some impulsive, out-of-control child who’d fly off the handle and act without thinking. And the worst part about it, the part that hurt most, was that they’d been right.

“We couldn’t let her be interrogated,” Kurt said a little more gently. “She knew enough to bring down the entire resistance if she talked, and Mosely has …
had
 … a way of making people talk. Besides, we thought that if she got caught, she was going to die anyway. We
all
thought that, even you.”

Nate closed his eyes, as if that could block out the memory. He had tried everything he could think of to stop Nadia from putting herself in danger. Respecting her decision had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, and when he’d gotten the frantic call from Dante, telling him she’d been arrested …

“You could at least have told
her
about the tracker.” He opened his eyes to glare at Kurt.

Kurt shrugged. “Who knew how she would react under pressure? I thought knowing about the tracker might freak her out, so I told Dante to keep his mouth shut.”

Kurt had no idea what Nadia was really made of. If he’d seen her standing up to the Chairman and to Mosely under threat of death and torture …

“You don’t know her at all,” Nate said, shaking his head at Kurt. Not that he was surprised. Kurt and Nadia had never liked one another. Kurt saw Nadia as a stuck-up aristocrat, and Nadia saw Kurt as a bad influence. But Nadia had the insight to see past her dislike, which apparently Kurt didn’t. “She never once doubted you. Even after you had your friends beat the crap out of me and tell me you killed me, she was convinced you did it for a good reason.” Kurt had been trying to chase Nate away for his own good, but Nate wasn’t sure he could ever shake the memory of Angel jerking the locket off him and telling him Kurt never wanted to see him again.

“I’m not going to apologize for not trusting her,” Kurt said stubbornly. “If that makes her a better person than me, then I’m okay with that.”

Nate reminded himself that growing up in the Basement must have made it near impossible for Kurt to trust
anyone.
Despite his hard, sharp edges, Kurt was a good guy at heart, and that was an impressive accomplishment, considering his background.

“Her family sent her away to a retreat because of all the things she did to try to help you.” Just thinking about it made Nate’s blood pressure rise. How could her own family do that to her? She’d said in her phone message that it would only be for a week or two, but he’d heard the doubt in her voice.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s a real hardship.”

Nate struggled against his urge to snap back. He was hardly surprised at Kurt’s lack of sympathy. When your own life had included not knowing where your next meal was coming from and selling your body to make ends meet, being trapped in a luxurious spa where you were waited on hand and foot didn’t sound so bad. Even so, Nate bet Kurt wouldn’t like being imprisoned there much more than Nadia would, at least once the novelty wore off.

“So are you gonna stay pissed at me?” Kurt said. “Or are we gonna kiss and make up?”

“Can’t I do both?”

Kurt laughed softly. “Are you too pissed to want this back?” He reached into a pocket inside the ratty jacket he wore and pulled out the locket.

Nate’s heart squeezed in his chest. Angel had broken the chain when she’d yanked it off him, but Kurt had either repaired the damage or gotten a new one. Nate had worn that locket against his skin every day since Kurt had given it to him, and he’d missed its comforting weight since it had been taken from him. He held out his hand, and Kurt laid the locket in his palm.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Kurt said, curling Nate’s fingers around the locket.

“And I’m sorry I took you for granted,” Nate responded, his throat almost too tight to let the words out.

They sat like that for a long moment, their eyes locked, their hands clasped around the locket. Nate yearned to kiss Kurt and drag him down onto the bed, but too many things still lay between them.

Nate slipped the locket on over his head, pressing the skin-warmed gold against his chest. Then he straightened up and met Kurt’s eyes again, this time in a challenging stare.

“All right. Mushy time is over. Now tell me why you’re
really
here.”

Kurt rubbed a hand over his bald head. He’d shaved off his hair when he’d gone into hiding, and he looked older and more sinister without it. Nate hoped he’d let it grow back.

“I’m gonna guess that the news feeds have it all wrong about what happened,” Kurt said. “Except for the part about Mosely being a murderer, that is. Thought you might be able to clear some things up.”

“
You
thought that? Or your resistance buddies did?”

“Does it matter?”

Actually, it did. Nate was all for opposing Paxco’s oppressive governmental practices, as long as that opposition was nonviolent. The problem was that Nate didn’t know much about the resistance movement and what they were up to. He had high hopes that when he eventually became the Chairman, he’d be able to make Paxco into a better, more just state, but that would be a lot harder to achieve if the resistance staged some kind of coup in the meantime.

“Probably not,” Nate said with what he hoped was a careless shrug. “I can’t tell you much anyway. Nadia and I … actually, mostly Nadia … negotiated a deal with my father. In return for us keeping our mouths shut, he granted you full amnesty.”

“He granted me amnesty for something he knows perfectly well I didn’t do?” Kurt shook his head, and Nate couldn’t blame him. “Your father is a tool, and a crooked one at that.”

Kurt didn’t know the half of it. “It’s not legal amnesty,” Nate clarified. “Legally, you were cleared of all charges. I mean he’s promised not to come after you off the books.”

Kurt frowned. “Why would he do that, anyway? I didn’t do anything to him.”

“He’d do it because I pissed him off and he knows how much it would hurt me if something happened to you.”

Kurt pondered that a moment without comment. “Okay. So I’m free to show my face in public again.”

“Yes.”

“Do I still have a job?”

Nate ached to say yes. He missed having Kurt so close, missed the opportunities for stolen kisses and shared secrets. But no matter what his father had promised, Nate’s gut told him Kurt would present too tempting a target.

“I’m sorry,” Nate said, “but no. I don’t trust my father, and it’s not safe for you here.”

A muscle ticked in Kurt’s jaw, and there was a hint of hurt in his eyes. “You mean you don’t want me here now that you know the truth about me. At least have the balls to say it.”

Nate jerked back in surprise. Kurt’s involvement with the resistance had nothing to do with it. Nate was near the top of the Executive establishment the resistance wished to topple, but he refused to think of Kurt as any kind of enemy. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he disagreed with Kurt’s cause, though he suspected he was in a better position to effect eventual change than the resistance ever would be.

“That’s not why you can’t stay here,” Nate said, his voice rising only because Kurt’s had. “My father knows about us.” Kurt’s eyes widened with shock. “Knows, and doesn’t care as long as we’re discreet. But he also knows how much you mean to me. He can’t afford to do anything to
me.
” Not when he hadn’t had the foresight to follow the old British adage of producing an heir and a “spare.” “But I can’t tell you how ugly it got between us. He never really loved me, but now he
hates
me.” And it was a damn good thing Nadia had forced the Chairman to destroy Thea. Otherwise, he’d have killed Nate again and animated a new Replica, one who knew none of his secrets and would continue his career as a spoiled playboy without ever getting in the way. “Having you close to me is too risky.”

Kurt’s face said he wasn’t entirely convinced by Nate’s argument, but he let the issue drop. “So what exactly
did
happen when Nadia was arrested? How did you and Nadia get the Chairman to agree to anything?”

“I told you: we agreed not to talk.”

“That’s bullshit. If you and Nadia throwing around wild murder accusations had a chance in hell of making him back down, you’d have been singing to the skies an hour after I told you what happened on the night of your murder.”

Nate shuddered, his mind still having trouble dealing with the reality that his father had been present and had ordered Mosely to kill him. It was one thing to believe your father hated you, another to
know
it.

“I said we agreed not to talk. I didn’t say what we agreed not to talk about, and it’s not the murder.” His long habit of trusting Kurt made Nate want to blurt out the whole truth, but this particular truth was like an infectious disease. Nate didn’t like the idea that he was helping his father cover up his crimes, but there was enough unrest in Paxco already. He wanted his father out of power, but not at the cost of starting a civil war.