The Foster Family (9 page)

“Can’t.” I shuddered but pressed back into his comforting touch.

“’Course you can. Come on.” His big hand covered my entire shoulder, and he pulled me inexorably around to face Malcolm. “You sure have a lovely cock,” he said, lips close to my ear as he stepped in behind me. He tugged me back until I gave some of my weight over to him and let my back settle against his chest. His big hands stroked over my body. I thought he was going to jerk me off, but after a few minutes, he pressed lips to my temple and left me alone in the shower again.

I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to watch them watch me, but I was too far gone not to find some sort of relief from the relentless assault my libido was making on my body.

If I didn’t get off, I’d explode, and it wouldn’t be an attractive sight.

“He’s a pretty boy,” Malcolm said, and I could imagine how he might be touching Charlie, caressing him as he dried him off, just because he could. But I couldn’t bring myself to know if I was right. It would have meant acknowledging I was putting myself on display for them. Acknowledging that it was not only okay, but that I was enjoying it.

I stroked slowly, making long, easy motions, drawing it out, because if I didn’t it would be over embarrassingly fast. I raised a hand to splay over my chest, because I liked a little nipple action with my masturbation, but Malcolm cleared his throat and I opened my eyes to look at him.

I was right. Charlie leaned against him, wrapped in a towel and Malcolm’s arms while Malcolm looked past him to me. He trapped me again, drawing me deep into his gaze, and I swallowed so hard I nearly choked.

“Just your cock, Kerry.”

I dropped my hand, partially fascinated that I didn’t question him, partly exhilarated that he thought I was worth the bother of directing. Not knowing what else to do with it, I pushed my palm against the cool tiles and spread my fingers, rested my shoulders there too, and stroked more firmly.

It was hardly a shocker that it only took a mere count of seconds to get myself too close to turn back.

“Let it go, Kerry,” Malcolm said, voice almost tender. “Just let go.”

My head thumped back against the tiles and my knees wobbled, but still, I couldn’t make that last short leap to release.

“Let go.”

But I couldn’t, and the frustration was enormous. I ground my teeth and my breath caught. Once again, my eyes stung, and I desperately wanted to turn my back on them. Suddenly, getting off was less important than not letting those tears out, wherever they had come from.

The shower door rattled, and I forced my eyelids up to find Malcolm just on the other side, hands gripping the bar tight.

“You have to let it out, Kerry,” he said softly. From the distance, his face was blur, his eyes dark pits. His mouth might have been turned down slightly, and my chest tightened at the idea I might be upsetting him.

My hand had stopped on my cock, and I stared at him, trying to focus through the water and my own nearsightedness. I knew my eyes would be glassy and red. I was too close to breaking down, and there was no way to blame that on the shower.

He splayed his own huge hands over the glass and frowned. “God, I wish I hadn’t made Lissa that promise not to touch you. Trust me.” He leaned his forehead on the glass and held me with his gaze. “Just let it out. It’ll be okay.” His voice was so soft. So tender. He wasn’t upset. But there was something I wasn’t getting. I could see it in the tension of his fingers against the glass and feel it in the thinness of the air in the room, in Charlie’s hovering presence.

It was impossible. A guy didn’t come and cry in the same breath. And I had no reason to be crying. Here were the two most gorgeous men on the planet wanting me, watching me. I was in fantasyland. All I could think was Lissa was right. They didn’t belong to me. They belonged to one another, and I was just temporary amusement.

A temporary son.

A means to a free government payoff.

A temporary roommate.

An occasional, despised fuck.

My erection wilted in my hand.

I pressed my back against the tile wall and stared at Malcolm. I wanted to beg him, again, to please go away. Let me get myself under control.

Instead, I said nothing as he opened the shower door, turned off the water, and wrapped a thick towel around my shoulders.

“I’m fine,” I muttered.

He dragged me bodily out of the enclosure and led me down the short end of the hall to their bedroom, where he sat me on the edge of their bed and vigorously rubbed me dry.

I let him, even closed my eyes and sighed when he draped the towel over my head and scrubbed some of the water out of my dripping hair. It brought back an old, faded memory of some matronly foster mom doing the same when I was very small. I didn’t remember a face or a name. Just a feeling that clean and warm and safe were close enough to loved for a kid who didn’t have a lot of other choices.

I accepted the ministrations silently, as I had then, though I remembered her cajoling me to say something. Anything. I couldn’t remember if I ever had. In fact, I couldn’t remember if I’d ever spoken to her at all.

When Malcolm stopped and moved the towel clear of my face, I clawed back into the current reality and tried to compose myself before opening my eyes.

He knelt on the carpet at my feet, and I was struck by how wrong that seemed, him kneeling before me.

“Talk to me.”

I shook my head.

“Not an option, Kerry.”

“Just been a rough few weeks,” I offered lamely, hauling my rusty voice and that flimsy truth out of my gut, hoping none of it crumbled off along the way. The last thing I needed was a case of emotional lockjaw.

He sat back on his heels and held up a hand, ticking things off on his fingers as he spoke. “Snubbed by a lover, driven to pass out drunk on the beach, robbed, had your home violated and then taken away, everything you own destroyed.” He cupped his hand over my cheek and coaxed me to lift my head. “Your kitten is homeless.” He smiled softly. “That’s not a rough week. That’s trauma.”

I pulled from his grasp and clambered back on the bed, out of his reach. “For some, maybe. Par for the course for me. At least Matt gave me fair warning. Foster parents just drive you to the group home with a suitcase and your homework and leave you there.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and rested my chin on them. “Not like Matt and I were ever really friends.”

“You lived with someone you barely knew and fucked someone you didn’t like who had no use for you other than a convenient hole.” His head tilt was becoming familiar, almost comforting, even though what generally followed was some truth I wouldn’t want to hear.

“What is so unlikeable about you, Kerry Grey?”

“What?” I blinked at his fuzzy countenance. The towel tickled on my back and along my thighs, reminding me I was stark naked, my nuts at his eye level.

“You keep everyone this far away.” He put out a hand, arm straight, palm out, and it came within six inches of touching my leg. “What is it you think they shouldn’t see up close?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me.” Dry, brittle words, traveling through the desert of my mouth, over my parched tongue, through cracked lips. A dryness my tears, even if I let them fall, would never slake.

Malcolm shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong with you. I know that. Charlie saw it right off. You’re the one who doesn’t really believe it, or you wouldn’t always stay on the outside of your life.”

“What?”

Softness changed his face. The planes and angles seemed less harsh. His eyes, always nearly black, were dark and warm. “Get dressed, Kerry. Then come out and eat.” He rose, rooted around in a dresser drawer, and pulled out a pair of sleep pants, boxers, and a T-shirt, which he handed to me. “You want socks?”

I nodded.

He found those too and held them out.

“What’s happening?” I stared up at him, past the clothes.

His smile was as warm as his eyes. “Charlie got attached. Like I knew he would. We’ll have to keep you now.”

“Liar,” I whispered.

He nodded and breathed deep, like he was testing the air. “Yeah, a bit.”

“This isn’t about Charlie.”

Malcolm sat on the edge of the bed, and I tilted slightly in his direction. I tried to right myself, afraid of touching what wasn’t mine and discovering I wouldn’t be able to let it go. A hand landed on my shoulder and pushed, and I tumbled into him. Charlie seated himself on the other side and wrapped an arm around us both.

“It’s about you,” Charlie rumbled, but he glanced at Malcolm and sighed. “Mostly.”

“What are you talking about?” I tried to sit up, but I was squashed between them, and it was an admittedly warm and pleasant place to be, so I gave up after a fairly short, weak struggle.

“We play with a third all the time,” Charlie said. “Mal thinks it’s because he uses me too hard and I want something a little softer to round things out.” He wasn’t looking at his lover, though, or at me. He was staring off into space, looking unhappy.

I gazed up at him. “Do you?”

“We have a comfortable dynamic.”

Spotting a lie when people lied to you all the time was something I was adept at. Spotting a lie from someone who hated to lie—and Charlie struck me as a painfully honest soul—was pretty easy, and he was lying.

“Then why do you need a third?” I asked.

Charlie shrugged and leaned back against the pillows. I watched, twisted around to see him, as he rubbed his hands over his hairy chest. “He’s the boss and I’m not. I’m the slave and the whipping boy at work. Well, metaphorically speaking. I’m a personal assistant to one of the biggest bitches in the known universe.” He lifted one big hand, and I imagined the warmth of it on my skin a breath before he flattened his palm over my back. His smile was indulgent and wistful behind a crooked leer. “I want someone to indulge who I don’t also have to obey.”

“He wants someone he can stick his big dick into,” Malcolm said.

Charlie’s grin angled more toward that leer. “That too.”

I was such a bottom boy. I’d seen his dick. He could definitely stick that anywhere he wanted anytime. “Okay.”

“Not so fast.” Charlie sat up again and pinned me between them once more. “You’re still pretty raw.”

“Um.” I glanced between them. “What?” I fought the weight of sinking excitement in my gut. If they would just roll me over already and take what we all knew I was here to give, the universe would slot back into the proper gear and start moving forward again. I needed to move forward. If I stopped, even slowed, everything always caught up. I kept my face neutral, I hoped, but there went my eyes again, welling, watering, threatening to leak everything out for the world to mock. They were close enough that even without my glasses, I could see the looks of concern on their faces.

“It isn’t about pinning you down and fucking your brains out your dick,” Charlie said. He touched my face, thick fingers warm and gentle. Just enough to force a tear over the edge.

“Fuck!”

Malcolm touched my lips. “What did we say about swearing?”

I pinched my lips tight and shoved forward, trying to clear their bulk to get to the end of the bed. “What fucking difference does it make what comes out of my dirty little mouth?” I asked, tainting the spill of tears with acid in my tone so that at least they’d sting everyone, not just me. I made it free and launched to my feet on the mattress, ready to spring to the floor. “You just said—”

A hand clamped on each of my shoulders and hauled me back so I landed with a grunt and a healthy bounce between both men.

“The difference is, a self-respecting person finds a better way to communicate.”

“I have a shitload of self-respect.”

Malcolm tilted his head and I sighed.

“Leaving aside the access to yourself you’ve granted to a man who despises you, self-respect does not mean having the thorniness to fend off every single person who tries to help you.”

Maybe he was confusing self-respect with self-preservation. Maybe I was confusing it with self-destruction.

“Rules,” Malcolm said, and a soft shiver coursed over my entire body at his tone. “There are rules in this house.”

“Who says I’m staying in this house?”

He gripped my chin and turned me to face him. “I say.”

The soft shiver turned hard as I fell into him.

His eyes were so dark, suddenly, close enough for me to see the ring of midnight blue around the irises and the slate-hard will behind.

“Why?” I asked, barely a whisper.

He broke the spell building by glancing at Charlie, then staring at Charlie, then sighing and looking back to me. “Because I’m attached. You worked hard for me today. You obeyed, and you need this.”

“I don’t.”

But he was nodding and gripping my face tight again, and it should have been too tight. Too constricting. But it wasn’t. It felt good. Safe. For once, in the week or so since I’d first watched Andrew sneer from across the dance floor, drape his arm around his girlfriend, and turn his back, I felt like I could relax. I didn’t remember when the world had begun to feel so scary, but inside this small pocket of it, nothing touched me.

Well, almost nothing. Malcolm was definitely touching. Pushing, and OMG, kissing like no one had kissed me, ever.

I was drowning.

He wasn’t supposed to touch me. There had been promises made, but suddenly I was on my back under him, and God, did I need this.

“I’m breaking my own rules,” Malcolm whispered.

“I don’t mind.” I lifted my chin so he could nuzzle and nip at my throat, have whatever parts of me he wanted.

He pushed up so he was hovering over me, gazing down, and there was a dark, puzzled frown on his face. “You should.”

“Mal.” Charlie touched his shoulder. “Let’s let him get dressed and we’ll get the pasta cooking. Come on.”

“Wait!” I sprang up as Charlie eased him off the bed. “I’m not complaining!”

Malcolm stopped in the doorway to look back at me. “I know. That’s the problem. You should be. But you’ll learn. Trust me.”

“I don’t want to learn! I want to….” I spread my legs, showing off all my goods. All my sluttiness.