Bound by Lies (44 page)

Brayden would ask if they could go with her. His father, Anthony, would say no. It was a party for grown-ups only.

Brayden would ask,
Why?

It’s held at a bar, a few blocks from here. They serve alcohol. No teenagers allowed, I’m afraid. But that’s okay. We’ll make our own fun. Someday, you’ll be old enough, and we’ll go with her.

Brayden had wanted that—to finally be old enough to go along with Lara on her adventures, for his father to be there, too, and for them all to be a family again, if only for a night of make-believe.

Now here he is, old enough, at last, to go to the party with the grown-ups, and the people he most wanted to go with have left him behind.

There’s no way he can go, to be there, with part of him looking for them, the ghosts of his departed parents. It would be nothing but an awful reminder of everything he’ll never have.

What he told Jenner was true, also. Showing up in costume would go against every instinct of self-preservation in him, even if, technically, he would be showing up before any customers arrived. He would have time to scope out his co-workers in advance of any public exposure. If they weren’t also dressed up, the joke would still be on him, but it wouldn’t be as bad as if the whole town was laughing at his expense. Not that he actually thinks Jenner would do something that cruel to him, tricking him into making a fool of himself. That’s the ingrained paranoia talking, the little voice in his head that still sometimes thinks of Jenner as ‘the popular quarterback’.

Brayden rolls onto his side, facing Jenner and twists a curl of Jenner’s dark hair around his fingers. The beginnings of thick ringlets tumble over Jenner’s forehead and spring up all over the top of his head. Brayden is completely unable to resist playing with them, winding the curls around his index finger and letting go to watch them bounce right back into shape.

“Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?” Brayden asks, pulling a curl down the center of Jenner’s forehead, right between his eyes. “You know, if you slicked the rest back, you would totally look like Superman. Fuck, that’s hot.”

“Slut.”

“Do you have a suit here? And maybe, like, a royal blue shirt? That’s not secretly your costume, is it? I’ve kind of always wanted to have Clark Kent screw me.”

With a playful snarl, Jenner detangles Brayden’s fingers from his hair. Twisting Brayden around, Jenner pulls him close to lay curled up in front of him. Both of them have been sleeping naked. Slowly but intentionally, Jenner begins thrusting through the crack of Brayden’s ass.

“I thought you were anti-Halloween, that it brought back bad memories. How about we skip the dorky costumes and get right to the good part?”

“Oh, now where’s the fun in that?” The tiredness and paper-thinness of Brayden’s good humor seeps into his voice.

“You sleep at all before I got back?”

“Not so much,” Brayden admits, caressing over the dark hair covering Jenner’s arm. It calms him to feel Jenner’s body wrapped around his like armor. Things seem less scary when he has tangible proof of the strength of his partner, especially when he’s not feeling very strong himself. Jenner’s existence allows Brayden to embrace his own limitations as a beautiful thing rather than a hindrance. It’s a good thing that he’s not tall or as physically powerful as other people, just as it’s a good thing that he craves the ability to give over the decision-making and control. It’s their balance. It’s how they work, not something he needs to be ashamed of or want to fix.

“I can help you relax,” Jenner offers. His baritone voice softens as his hand pushes down under the sheet and between Brayden’s legs.

Because he wants to give Jenner room to maneuver, Brayden gets his hands out of the way. He reaches behind himself to grasp at Jenner’s thigh and over his head to run his fingers through Jenner’s curls some more. Then, Brayden shifts his legs wider. He makes a soft sigh as Jenner wraps a big hand around Brayden’s cock and starts to tug on it. Sliding his fingers from root to tip and back down again, Jenner whispers, “Imagine you’re back in the ocean, feel the push and pull of the tide on your body.”

Brayden’s hands tighten their grip as Jenner pumps a little faster. Arching his back slightly, then rolling his hips forward into the hand clasped snugly around his cock, Brayden closes his eyes and imagines it, letting Jenner’s deep, sexy, rough voice help him escape.

“No chlorine from the pool. No buzzing, yellow fluorescent lights. No echoing voices off the old tile walls. Just fresh air, sunshine and open space above you and nothing but the sea below. Can you feel it?”

Jenner swipes a thumb over Brayden’s cockhead. “Yeah. Feels good. Damn good.”

In his mind, he is back there, wrapped in the sea like he’s wrapped in Jenner. Every inch of his body, everything but his face is hugged, covered by the sliding caresses. Seawater or skin, it doesn’t matter. They’re the same. Brayden pushes into Jenner’s hand. It’s his private ocean. He’s picking up speed. Jenner is as huge and unyielding as the waters, demanding all of him, pulling him under. Jenner’s mouth latches on to the side of his neck, sucking at him like the kiss of the tide’s surge. With abandon, Brayden rides the pumping fingers like he rode the waves.

Flattening his hand, Jenner runs his fingers up the underside of Brayden’s cock.

“More,” Brayden gasps, breathless.

Jenner moves to lie on top of him, chest-to-chest, pressing down into Brayden’s body. He draws back and thrusts forward. Their cocks, squeezed together, slide between their hips and begin to rub with delicious friction. Thick, warm fluid pulses from them, slicking the way. The harder Jenner thrusts down against Brayden, the more fervently Brayden grabs on to Jenner, pulling him down tighter, rocking up with ever-sharper movements.

With his tan fading, Brayden’s skin flushes more visibly with his passion. Jenner moves against his lover and indulges in the luxury of gazing down upon him while Brayden stays lost in the fantasy. The love of wildness is there in him; that urge to delve into the untamed forces of nature and unearth the secrets of the world. It was born with him and will live in him, somewhere, even if buried, as long as he lives. As Jenner thrusts harder still, it feels like he does so to trap Brayden’s spirit, keeping him there, caging him in passion and love.

Jenner is Brayden’s ocean. He pulls the orgasm from Brayden. With a throaty cry, he unloads against Jenner’s belly, shivering with aftershocks as Jenner rubs off against him. Grinding against his lover’s come-soaked, throbbing hard-on, Jenner climaxes a moment later with a hard grunt, christening the merging of forces. Their spend mixes as he slides in rocking movements against Brayden. Jenner kisses his parted lips gently, brushing against them. Shifting off without letting go, keeping Brayden encircled with an arm, Jenner urges, “Sleep.”

“Mmm,” Brayden hums with a smile, and drifts off.

In a way, it’s self-sabotage. He doesn’t ask Jenner for those phone numbers and websites he’d mentioned, even though Brayden becomes privately more sure that he’s likely to go to the Halloween party, if only to observe from the sidelines. There are a few costume rental places in driving distance which he could go to, and check out the pitiful leftovers, maybe something with a mask that covers his whole head so that he would be even more inconspicuous.

That would be the best thing to do—the easiest thing, psychologically speaking.

Which is why he gets more and more angry at himself for not getting in his Jeep and driving to one of those stores.

Because, unfortunately, he already has a costume. It’s the most awful, embarrassing, humiliating thing he’s ever worn, and it’s buried at the bottom of one of the boxes in the closet, along with his wetsuit and all of the other things that got a lot of wear in Florida but which he no longer has any use for.

The costume has been worn too many times to count. It was tailor-made for him out of the finest materials—rich brown leather, shining metal rivets, buckles and straps that hug his form immaculately. It’s not one of those cheap pieces of crap they pawn off at those pop-up Halloween outlets that appear and disappear every fall, catering to the masses and robbing them blind. Technically, it’s not a Halloween costume at all.

It’s his uniform.

His uniform from the last bar he worked at, in Miami, the job he hated. It was where he’d learned to flirt with customers, even if he wasn’t interested. Because, of course, flirting was part of the job description. The way the staff were dressed was just one aspect of the theme of the place, reflected from floor to ceiling in the décor, the music, and, hell, even the drinks and goblets they were served in. Long hair was encouraged amongst the male employees, and was one of the reasons Brayden let his grow and grow. Bartenders and wait staff also had to be in spectacular physical shape, so he swam and exercised every day just to fill out the uniform. It was either that or quit, and the tips were too good for him to be able to quit.

The idea of wearing that outfit to Parrish Pub, with god-knows-who in attendance of such an event, brings Brayden right back to the terror he felt when Enrique showed up, but worse. It wouldn’t be a question of secrets being shared. There’d be no question about it. People would stare. They would talk, and point and make comments. He would make a spectacular ass of himself just by setting foot outside the door to the apartment.

As he digs out the box, opening the flaps, reaching to the bottom and pushing contents aside, he asks himself,
What am I doing? Jenner doesn’t expect me to be there. No one does. Just stay home
.

“Stay home and watch a scary movie, order in some Chinese food,” he murmurs, finding the evergreen colored subligaculum. It’s a canvas loin cloth that covers most of his ass, if not
all
of it. At least the groin is heavily padded. He sets it on the bed. “Pretend I’m still a child too innocent and fragile to be able to handle a
real
party, with
grown-ups
. Yeah right.”

Next he finds the makeshift manacle, wraps of thick leather and cloth for forearm and wrist padding. Beneath is the cingulum, a wide, ornamented leather belt, designed to protect the waistline. The last things he draws from the box are the fascia, or leg padding, and his sandals. Because his old boss was just much of a stickler as Jenner, though much more obsessed with history—particularly that of Ancient Rome, Brayden learned all of the proper names for what he was made to wear every day. It was all crafted to appear authentic, with hidden zippers and Velcro. He has never willingly told a soul that he waited tables and bartended while outfitted as a gladiator, surrounded by gorgeous women in beautifully draped stolas. One of the few bright points about moving back to Robertsville was that he would never have to demean himself like that again, for money.

“Well, I’m not doing it for money,” he sighs.

He’s not doing it for a job, or even for Jenner, either. He’s doing it for his father, and his mother, and because he has nothing left to be afraid of, except the cost of brutal honesty. But, if time has taught him anything, it’s that nothing stays private forever and that sometimes the ones hurt most by dishonesty are those holding on to the secrets. Walking into the Pub as the man he was in Miami, and also the small town boy who has been shunned by the popular kids, as well as the person he currently identifies as—who is simultaneously a slave, a lover, a friend, a grandson and a cousin—feels like a gift he will be giving himself.

He puts on the clothing and gear, looks in the bathroom mirror, and says, “This is who I am. Maybe it’s not who I intended to be, or hoped to be, but that’s okay because it’s the truth. Dad, if you’re up there, somewhere, and you can hear me, I want you to know that I’m not lost anymore. I belong here. No more hiding in shadows. No more trying to disappear. No more lies.”

As the floor thumps below his sandal-clad feet with the force of the music from the bar, the party already well underway no thanks to his hesitating about whether to go or not, Brayden thinks of all of the people he wishes were there with him—Enrique, Andre, Lara and Anthony. Then he thinks of who is there, waiting for him just downstairs. Art, Max and Jenner don’t feel like a consolation prize; they feel like hope and happiness.

“I can do this,” Brayden realizes, and smiles.

The last thing he puts on is the collar,
his
collar.

“Okay,” he says, liking what he sees, heart pounding but confident in what he has chosen. “Here goes nothin’.”

For years, Jenner’s Halloween has been marked only by the fevered rush and manic endeavor to host a celebration for all of Robertsville. The staff of Parrish Pub is strained at the best of times, but when they’re packed to overflowing, the sheer numbers of humanity testing the law’s willingness to overlook the fire code regulations, keeping up with demand is akin to torture. It’s not fun, it’s an endurance trial. No one gets the night off, for any reason. He even tries to bring in temporary help from friends, family and acquaintances who typically work at other bars or restaurants, promising fabulous tips if only…