Bad Things (21 page)

Xavier lied to himself far less often than most people. But laughing silently and bitterly at himself, Xavier cheated, opening the door to the stairs, knowing Carson would hear it, a warning his time was almost up, but then pretending to himself he had to go back to the kitchen to refill Carson’s water bottle. Then he crossed the dining room and the living room slowly, descended the stairs slowly, too. Giving Carson all the time in the world to talk himself up, or talk himself down. Whichever he needed to do. Xavier had various doubts about what he’d been doing, about the things left to do in his unorthodox plan, but one thing he didn’t doubt was that left alone and untouched in that basement, it was a hundred percent possible for Carson to will his hard-on away, if he didn’t want this to happen.

Xavier was so, so rarely surprised. Fifteen years, dozens of lovers, countless encounters, almost every single one of them twisted and dangerous in its way. But the sight of Carson took his breath.

Kneeling at the base of the post, arms bound back, he had the aspect of a martyr. A saint awaiting a destruction that would set him free. Gaze full of fear and resignation. His cheeks dry, but his hard cock weeping, shaft streaked with glistening tears.

The heat ripping through Xavier’s body wasn’t want. It was possession. A burning, starving beast wearing his body like a skin was lunging at its tethered prey. Wiping away those pre-seminal tears with his tongue as he tugged the glass plug free of Carson’s grasping flesh.

Condom on, cock lubed, he relished the feast before him. Taunting aroma of arousal and fear rising off the victim’s flesh. The taste of him. Skin under his tongue. Throat. Jaw. Lips.

Trembling and panting as Xavier pushed his thighs open, as he hefted him up onto his lap and rose up against him from underneath. And his surrender. God, his surrender, facets bright and dark, blue and gray, kaleidoscoping madly as Carson’s flesh gradually yielded and Xavier sank into him.

There. Just that. Inside him. Still. Carson’s body hot and wet, tense and quivering against his. Jagged whimpers. Looking into his eyes, like holding someone’s gaze as they fall from the edge of a cliff, as they plummet down into an abyss so deep you can’t see the rocks that will break them.

He had to. Had to taste him. Feed on his mouth. Devour his kisses. Succulent lips firm under his tongue, between his teeth. Wet warmth of his mouth. Delicious, seeking, velvet tongue.

Xavier growled against those parted, wet lips, “
Te voy a dar un cojidon
.”

He was going to fuck the both of them senseless. Grasping Carson’s ass, holding him suspended, Xavier flexed and thrust. Swallowing each warbling cry. Sucking down each gasp.

Still clutching one meaty cheek, pumping, he wrapped his hand around Carson’s engorged cock, and started milking it. Carson rewarded every tugging twist of Xavier’s hand with a shudder, a groan, squirming on his cock, asshole grasping his dick so maddeningly Xavier had to let go of his ass and belt him down on his lap and hold him still so the feast wouldn’t end too soon.

Carson’s fretful grunts were killing him. Making the need to thrust, to pump, to fuck absolutely unbearable. Just a little. Watching the furrow between his brows deepen, its shadow darkening.

And then, fuck, already, from the tensing of his jaw, the contortion of his mouth, the flare in his eyes, Xavier knew Carson was going to come. Trying to hide his face, smother his cries against Xavier’s chest, but Xavier drove him back, exposed his surrender and watched it, slowly milking the cock in his grip as he rocked his pelvis under him.

There. Looking into his eyes, watching his pleasure swallow his soul as his body convulsed and his throat contracted and a howling cry broke against his teeth.

Too ravenous to resist, Xavier nursed at Carson’s quivering lips, licked his tongue, and fucked him. Desperate clutching, back, ass, thrusting upward, wringing the poisoning need from his body, emptying his aching balls, the burning beast tearing its way out of his body, leaving him limp and gasping.

In that moment, he would have given damned near anything to savor what was still trussed up before him. That sweat-damp, come-drizzled body. Carson’s open, panting mouth. His eyes, not burning with a martyr’s surrender anymore, but lit up with all the dread his need had kept at bay until the second it was sated.

But this was the moment. Right now, while Carson was vulnerable to his cruelest doubts and fears, because he’d leaped, he was free-falling with no idea where he’d land, if Xavier was going to catch him or let him break on the rocks. Xavier only allowed himself the indulgence of licking him clean because doing that tweaked Carson’s mounting torment to a perfect pitch. A silent, intimate reproach for coming while he was being fucked. Then Xavier gagged him, masochistically swallowing Carson’s wounded look like bitter medicine, nauseating but necessary.

Because he was pretty fucking sure—not positive, but really hopeful—that when he came back from his shift at the club, after being fucked, after being left, at the culmination of his days and nights locked in that basement, Carson would be at his most malleable. His most valuable. Teetering in precariously perfect balance between being afraid and dependent. That their twisted, dangerous bond would finally be forged to a strength where Xavier could trust Carson would choose him over Brian and Max. That he’d never value their patronage or fear their threats more than his again. Which meant, he’d be able to use Carson to help him save the girls.

Even though he was sure he was playing his hand well, it was hard—unexpectedly, painfully difficult—to leave Carson like that, looking at him with those reproachful eyes. More than resentment at being left bound and gagged after he’d yielded so much, so willingly. If Xavier didn’t know better, he’d almost think Carson’s feelings were hurt. Like he’d hoped, maybe even believed that after their fraught, soul-melding fucking session, Xavier would feel too much for Carson to go on treating him like a hostage.

The sound of keys in the door threw Carson’s heart into overdrive. Xavier was early. Like, must have faked being sick after two hours of his shift, early. Which probably meant he was afraid to leave his hostage alone. Afraid he’d figure out a way to get free. A way to get hold of a weapon. Or a phone.

Footfalls upstairs. Different shoes. Maybe dress shoes for the club. Not the boots he usually wore, the ones he’d been wearing when he’d pressed the thick tread of his sole to Carson’s balls.

Carson felt his face warm a second after the rush of heat hit his groin.

No. It wasn’t him. No way. Too quick-tapping. Too light. Not his long-striding, heavy tread.

Why wasn’t he trying to scream? Why wasn’t he getting up, jumping around in case there was a monitor up there with the feed from the camera going? Heart hammering hard. Horribly hard. Sickening dread. It could be someone worse; not Brian, but someone like Brian.

He squirmed against the vertical beam as the footsteps traveled from the front door to the top of the basement stairs. He knew exactly where they were standing even before the door knob squeaked through its rotation, because he’d listened, time after time, listened with every cell and synapse, as Xavier approached.

Maybe Brian had sent someone. Carson wanted to hide. But he needed to be found. To get out of those restraints. Out of that basement.

A woman. Not one of Brian’s girls, though. Why did she look like that? Like he had her trapped in a dark corner with a knife? Carson pulled his knees in toward his chest, pointlessly, pathetically trying to hide his nakedness, because that look on her face made him feel like he was hurting her. Torturing her. Even though he was the one with his wrists bound behind his back. He was the one who was gagged and couldn’t cry out for help.

For fuck’s sake, wasn’t she going to come over? Get the gag off him so he could tell her how to unlock the cuffs? She just stood there, eyes locked on him but weirdly vacant. Nostrils flaring quickly. Like a cornered animal.

Finally she moved. Not toward him. Her eyes locked on him, like she was afraid he was suddenly going to jump up and come at her, she fumbled blindly in her purse, and pulled out a phone.

Then her face changed. Her terror turned into something else. He felt like he was watching someone’s heart break.

Her hands shaking, she tried to put the phone back in her purse, but it fell and clattered on the floor. She didn’t even pick it up. She took two steps toward him, then stopped, staring at him like she was gauging whether or not he was really unable to escape the restraints. Finally she uprooted herself and came toward him, each step small and cautious, each inch she crossed looking like it cost her a piece of her soul.

When she squatted down and started working the clasp on the gag he realized she looked like Xavier. Barely half his size and probably five years younger, but something so familiar to the shape of her eyes. The set of her mouth while she was focused. Maybe she was his sister.

Maybe that was why. This woman had loved Xavier all her life. Her big brother. Her protector. And she’d just found a naked hostage bound and gagged in his basement.

“
Thank you,” he tried to say when she’d gotten the gag off, but he was thirsty and had barely spoken the past three days, and only managed to mutely mouth the words. He tried again, and got the two rusty words out.

“
Are you hurt?”

“
No.”

Weird. She looked so afraid, he felt more anxious of startling her than eager to get the fuck out of that prison of a basement. She bent in and started fumbling with the restraints on his wrists.

“The key is on the shelf.”

She turned, tracking his gaze. When she reached for the key she paused. Went oddly still, like someone had gotten her with a ray from a freeze gun. She was staring at the surveillance camera aimed at his spot at the base of the beam. Then she reanimated. Got the key and came back to him. Unlocked the first restraint, immediately stepping back. Out of his reach.

She seemed so scared of him, for a second, he was afraid she wouldn’t undo the second restraint. But after a minute of hesitation, she walked around the beam he was cuffed to, unlocked the other restraint, then took three or four big steps back, never taking her eyes off him.

He wished he had something to put on. “Is there a towel in the bathroom? So I can cover up?” he asked her.

Looking back over her shoulder practically with each step, she went to the bathroom and came back with a towel, which she tossed to him from at least five feet away.

Holding the towel in front of him, he struggled to his feet, stiff and clumsy, then wrapped the towel around his waist as Elena turned away and practically ran up the stairs. He’d imagined finding the front door wide open, seeing her dashing toward her car, but when he crested the landing, she was standing with her back to the door, watching him.

“Why’d Xavi have you cuffed like that?”

She wasn’t crying. Whatever was happening in her eyes, her expression, the weird way her shoulders were hunched and her hands suspended in front of her was worse than if she’d been crying.

Sounding like every word cost her another piece of her soul, she asked, “Do you need me to call the police?”

He laughed, as if the idea was funny.

“
Do you need a doctor?” She was so serious, so earnest, so hurt, he felt ashamed of laughing just before. As if she were the victim in this, and not him.

As serious and earnest as her, now, he said, “No. I’m fine.” And then, because the brokenness in her eyes was wrecking him, he added, “It’s not like that.”

Some part of his brain sent a weak signal of alarm that he was fucking up any chance of pressing charges, of ensuring he was safe from Xavier, but he was so desperate to calm her down he barely cared. It was weird how easy it was, acting sheepish, embarrassed, as if he were the depraved one.

She nodded, like he’d given her some tiny scrap of hope she desperately needed, and by moving her head like that, she could make that hope something true and real.

“I’m just a…friend of Xavier’s.” He watched her emptiness fill back up, word by word, drop by drop. “I guess it seems strange, shocking, what it looked like down there. But, that’s just a…kind of game we like to play.” He knew he sounded like he was talking to a ten year-old kid, but putting it any other way embarrassed him too much.

“
You play a game where he leaves you tied up naked in his basement?”

She didn’t sound very comforted. Actually, she sounded fucking horrified, her quiet voice tight and rough. Had she never heard of bondage before? He’d thought he was naïve and inexperienced, but she was taking the prize.

“Yes.” It came out sounding more like a question than an answer.

“
How long has he been gone?”

“
Just a couple of hours,” he said, thinking that would soothe her fear, but she looked even more aghast.

“
Hours? With that thing in your mouth?” Her face had been going more and more gray, and sweat droplets were dotting her forehead and upper lip. She crossed her arms over her belly. Was she going to get sick? “When is he coming back?”

He should have told her five minutes. Another lie to calm her down. But he wasn’t thinking. “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. He’s at work. At the club.”

“You mean the tattoo shop?”

“
No, I mean, he’s a bouncer at—” For some reason, he suddenly felt like he’d fucked up.

“
Where is he a bouncer?”

Why did he fucking care about guarding that man’s secrets? A wild, weird rush of elation whooshed through him at the faint, unformed notion that he had the power to expose something Xavier wanted kept hidden. “He’s a bouncer at Gomorrah. It’s a…well, they call it a Gentlemen’s Club.”

Xavier’s sister must have been some kind of puritanical churchgoer, because now she really did look like she was about to throw up, gaze remote in glassy eyes, her pallor startling. And now he felt bad again. Like he was the monster in all of this.

“
Hey, he’s just the bouncer. It’s not like he’s doing stuff to the girls.” He realized what he was saying, and laughed. “Obviously.” Since she’d found a naked man tied up in his basement.

“
How long?”

“
What?”

“
How long has he been a bouncer at that club?”

“
Around three weeks, I guess.”

“
Three weeks?”

Fuck, the way she said it he felt like he’d just reached into her chest and torn out her heart. Afraid the next thing out of his mouth would do even more damage, he escaped for a couple minutes with the excuse of looking for his clothes, which was actually a pretty legit thing to do. He found them in Xavier’s room. Obviously Xavier had gone through his things, but everything was there. Except his phone. Fuck.

He pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and went back out to the living room. The woman was standing exactly where he’d left her. Catatonic. Lost in whatever new life her brain was constructing around Xavier.

“
Are you his sister?” He had the sudden terror she was going to say she was his wife, that she hadn’t known he was gay, or that he worked at a glorified titty bar ogling naked women all night. Which would hurt her more?

“
Yes. Elena,” she said absently.

“
I’m Carson.”

She receded back into her still silence.

“Look. Let’s text him. Let him know you’re here, okay?”

Nothing.

“I can’t find my phone. How about we use yours?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “You dropped it, remember? It’s in the basement. I’m going to go get it.”

He dashed down the stairs and plucked the phone up off the floor. Then his eyes fixed on that spot on the floor, at the base of that beam. The restraints dangling from their eye bolts. The gag laying on the floor next to the empty piss bottle (Empty. How much more freaked out would she have been if it had been half full of his piss?). That fucker had really done it. Kept him down there, a fucking prisoner. And the things he’d done to him.

A sickening mix of indignant rage and perverse arousal twisted through Carson’s belly. Then he noticed the surveillance camera aimed at the abandoned post, the empty restraints.

Fuck, he was an idiot. Xavier has probably seen everything. Maybe he was already speeding down the street, about to pull into the driveway.

Carson jabbed at Elena’s phone with shaking fingers until it lit up. No text from Xavier. No voice message.

When he got back upstairs, trying to ignore the hammering of his heart and act calm, Elena was perched rigidly on the edge of the couch.

“I’ll send Xavier a message, all right?”

That euphoric rush flashed through him again at his double entendre. Because, unless he made some vow of allegiance to the contrary, any message, under these circumstances, would be a threat.

He found Xavier in her contacts list, and wrote, “This is Carson. Sending you a message from Elena’s phone. You might want to come home.” He hesitated, then hit send.

His heart thumped hard and started speeding. What had he done? Sure, he’d alarm the guy. Sure, that soothed some of the sting of his total humiliation over the last three days. But now Xavier would be worried about his sister. And angry. Much, much angrier than he’d been about him nosing around in his things.

But Xavier wouldn’t do anything in front of Elena. Would he? No. Carson was almost positive that Elena had never seen anything that had even slightly prepared her for that scene in the basement. She was already so shaken up. Xavier wouldn’t do anything to upset her more.

He couldn’t stop checking the phone. What if Xavier didn’t see the message? He couldn’t sit there with Elena, his heart trying to crash through his sternum, until Xavier’s shift was over. He’d be dead of a coronary before then.

He should just leave. No matter how sure his rational mind was that Xavier couldn’t do anything to him with Elena there, Carson couldn’t stop feeling afraid. But for some reason, he couldn’t make himself leave Elena alone while she was so shaken up.

“
So, you’re his…boyfriend?” She was alive in there, again, behind those eyes, the same shape as Xavier’s, but light hazel rather than the color of two dark, wet stones.

“
We work together.”

She looked perplexed. Of course. Because working together didn’t explain why she’d found him naked in the basement.

“Xavier let me stay here for a few days, while I was looking for a new place to live. And…things just happened,” he finally said, trying to keep his answer vague enough that Xavier wouldn’t contradict when she demanded his explanation. Although he didn’t know why the fuck he cared if Xavier wrecked his relationship with his sister. “Didn’t you know he was gay?”

She laughed. A brief, fragile laugh, but a genuine one. Carson saw a flicker of Xavier’s mocking grin in the shape of her mouth.