SE Jakes Bound By Honor (24 page)

From the curtain on the empty side of the room, he remained hidden, feet glued to the floor instead.

And then the door opened and a man came in. Young, handsome, and he headed straight for the bed.

Took Law’s hand and held it and damn it al if Law didn’t open his eyes and look right at him.

Too late. These days, Styx always found himself a day late and a dol ar short and he had no one but himself to blame.

And stil , he couldn’t help but notice that Law looked to the curtain and stared at it for a long moment before turning his

attention back to the blond man who stil held onto his hand.

“What the hel happened?” Paulo asked, his voice steady over the beeping of the machines that surrounded him.

LC didn’t remember much about the ambulance ride or being admitted. Knew that he’d been a pain in the ass when

the doctor was trying to assess his condition but hel , at least LC knew he was okay.

Would’ve been hard to be such an asshole if he’d been dying.

LC shifted in the bed, stared into Paulo’s concerned dark blue eyes. “Are you asking as a detective?”

“As your friend.”

LC tried to overt his gaze but Paulo wouldn’t let him, used a single finger under his chin and barely any pressure to

force LC’s eyes to his. “Did he hurt you?”

“I’m in the fucking hospital.”

“Not what I meant, you asshole. You fucking stupid asshole.” Paulo’s words were harsh but his tone—the look on his

face

—wasn’t. Not at al , and it made LC feel worse about being such a dick.

He swal owed, hard. “JP tried once. And he hurt Damon.”

“I know—I saw the tape.”

“I couldn’t stop him back then because I…” He paused, then let the words rush out, blaming it on the pain meds they’d

given him. “I couldn’t help him then because I was too busy screwing around with someone I thought I’d be with forever.”

The fact that Styx hadn’t stuck around made that so much worse.

“You’re talking about the guy you can’t get over.”

“The past has a way of not staying put when it’s supposed to.” LC winced as he tried to sit up, brushed off Paulo’s

offer to help.

Paulo took his hand back though. “You’re a mess.”

“Tel me something I don’t know,” he muttered, grabbed the ginger ale with the ice chips with his free hand. “Gotta get

out of here.”

“They’re keeping you overnight.”

“Shit.” He lay back o n the pil ows. Damon and Tanner had a n awful lot o f talking t o d o . N o doubt they needed their

privacy…and even though LC wanted out, wanted to beg Paulo to take him to his apartment, he couldn’t do that to either

of them.

“Are you ever going to tel me about the guy or am I wasting my time competing with a ghost?” Paulo asked.

“It’s complicated.”

“Sounds pretty simple to me. You won’t let go of the past because you’re scared to move forward and find out you

might actual y be happy.”

“I’m not scared,” LC said through gritted teeth. “And what the hel —why do you care so much?”

“I don’t know. I guess some things just happen.” Paulo looked as surprised as LC felt. “I didn’t expect you to turn into

more than a fantasy. But when I’m with you…it’s better than that. And that never happens.”

“Don’t do this, please. I don’t…I can’t let it go any further.”

Paulo nodded, let go of his hand. “Got it, loud and clear.”

“I stil want to…hang out. Be friends.”

“I’l believe it when I see it.” Paulo’s words weren’t unkind but LC felt them harder than a punch to the jaw.

“How are you so sure…about me?” LC asked. He didn’t know why he couldn’t just let Paulo leave.

“I don’t know. It’s ridiculous. I push, you run. I come after you.”

“Thril of the chase.”

“Ah, LC, I guess I’m old enough to know better.”

“You don’t know how I grew up—what I’m like.”

“I know more than you realize.” He touched the bruise under LC’s eye gently. “You take care of yourself.”

LC’s throat was too tight to say anything else, and he could only watch Paulo leave.

Tanner let the police do their job while he went inside the club and waited, wishing he could’ve gone with Damon and

LC.

What the hel was he going to do—force Damon to tel him everything?

Yeah, because that’s your only chance at healing him, the way he healed you.

And so he paced and waited and final y Damon pushed through the doors of the club, looking just as pale as he had

earlier.

“How’s LC?”

“He’s fine. They’l keep him, but he’s going to be fine.” Damon acted like if he repeated that enough, it would be true.

“Paulo’s with him.”

“As his lover or a cop?”

Damon grimaced. “Little of both.” Then he turned and locked the front and back doors tight, set the alarms. “I need

some sleep.”

“Come on.” Tanner tugged him gently up the stairs to the loft, but he had no intention of letting Damon sleep. And

when they got upstairs, Damon slumped onto the bed, and Tanner went over and knelt down in front of him. Unlaced his

boots and took them off, massaged Damon’s feet and calves while the man watched him.

“Good to me,” he mumbled. “Too good to me.”

Instead of commenting on that, Tanner asked, “How did LC know that guy?”

“The same way I did.”

Tanner stood and retrieved a bottle of Jack Daniels and Damon took a grateful slug. And then Tanner sat next to

Damon on the bed and said, “Tel me.”

“I don’t want to,” he said quietly. “Please, Tanner…I don’t want to tel you.”

“I know. But I didn’t want to talk about Jesse either, and you made me. You made me do a lot of things for my own

good and you were right about al of them. And I know I’m right about this.”

Damon took another long sip of the JD, letting it burn al the way down. It would take away the pain, the numbness…

maybe it would make him strong enough to get the whole thing out once and for al .

“There’s so much you don’t know. That you shouldn’t know about me.”

“I know that you loved Jesse…and that you know me better than I know myself.”

Damon stared at Tanner. “You’re brave. Brave and strong and you deserve so much better than me.”

“No way, Damon. I deserve you. Want you,” Tanner whispered. “I know you want me too.”

He was right—so right. And this was truly his final barrier. His past, come back to do more than haunt him. His past

had literal y walked into his life and LC had nearly kil ed the man for him. “I couldn’t even look at JP. I’m stronger than he

is now…and I stil couldn’t look at him.”

“What did he do to you?”

Damon closed his eyes and felt Tanner take one of his hands into his. Squeezed it and then Damon started with his

story.

“I was eighteen. Stupid. Thought I’d been around the block enough to know everything.” He paused, could picture

himself walking into the club, breaking his and LC’s pact to do everything together when it came to clubbing, since that

wasn’t Styx’s scene at al .

But LC had been with Styx that night, and Damon hadn’t wanted to break up their night together.

He’d been sure LC and Styx would be together forever—the way those men looked at one another, it always made

him jealous and hopeful that he could find that for himself. “Styx left that night and L C didn’t see hi m again fo r a while. It

started the pattern of Styx appearing and disappearing, and LC final y had enough. Now, it’s been over ten years and

Styx hasn’t tried to get in touch. It was just another memory that got ruined that night.”

“That’s the reason LC pushes Paulo away,” Tanner said and Damon nodded.

“He never got over Styx. Never wil , it seems like. He also feels guilty as shit for not being with me that night, although

he never admits that to me because he knows it’l make me angry. He has no reason to feel guilt—I did it to myself. I was

stupid.” He paused. “I was too restless to stay home. And I went to a club—leather and chains. Thought I could take care

of myself. God, was I fucking wrong. From the second I walked in, I was bait.”

He could stil remember the catcal s, the feeling that he’d walked into the wrong place at the right time for the

predators that fol owed him. “I got propositioned right away. I took a shot because I was nervous—thought I was safe

because I took it right from the bartender. I didn’t know he was in on it.”

“You were drugged.”

He looked at Tanner. “Yeah.”

“Jesus, Damon…when you found me…”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t say anything else, couldn’t think about what he’d saved Tanner from. It had just been important that

he’d saved him.

“They hurt you when you couldn’t fight.”

“They took me into the back room. At first, there were only two of them—they were al right. They got me hot. And then

they tied me down,” he said, saw Tanner’s jaw twitch. “Chains. There was no way to get out—and I didn’t have any of the

training I have now. I fought like the street kid I was. But I couldn’t do anything.”

It was something Damon tried to block out completely and was rarely successful.

“A gang rape,” Tanner whispered.

“Yes. There were at least five of them, including JP, who walked in after I was tied down. Told me he couldn’t wait to

make me his. I knew he’d tried to do the same thing to LC a few years earlier but I never thought… Christ, the guy’s

psychotic. He was the ringleader of al of it. I wasn’t the first one he did it to and I wasn’t the last, either. And al I could think

of when it was happening was,
I’m glad it’s not LC
.”

“It must’ve been so horrible.”

Damon shrugged a s though i t wasn’t, but Tanner would know better. “ I wa s i n a nd o ut o f consciousness. There

was nothing I could do. LC found me a couple of hours later—they’d dumped me in the al ey naked with my clothes

dumped on top of me. He got me to the ER. He stayed with me until I healed—physical y, at least. That’s why he didn’t tel

me about the attacks right away—but neither of us thought it could be JP. I shouldn’t have let him get away.”

“You went after the rest of them?”

“Damn straight. Took me years, but I got my own brand of justice on most of them.” Damon didn’t want to tel Tanner

what that had entailed. “The weasel JP ran and hid and then LC and I knew we needed to let it rest.”

“You couldn’t have known he’d do this.”

“I should have. People don’t change.”

But Tanner did so to the subject. “So, in this club, in your life, you make sure to retain al the control so no one else can

ever get hurt again,” Tanner said.

“It sounds so simple when you say it. And I’m so fucking stupid to think I can control anything,”

Damon muttered.

“It’s not stupid at al .” Tanner’s voice was as raw as Damon felt. Tanner’s hand stroked across his cheek, his

shoulders.

“I’m so sorry, Damon. Sorry that happened to you. But trying to control everything doesn’t make the bad stuff not

happen.

And I don’t want to lose you because you’re always afraid that bad stuff wil happen to me.”

Damon nodded, wondered if Tanner was going to just walk out now. It had been what he thought he wanted, but he’d

been so wrong.

“I think you’d be a Dom anyway,” Tanner continued. “You were submissive for me when I asked you to put on the cuffs,

but you never real y submitted.”

No, submission had never been in him. “The attack had nothing to do with sex. Everything to do with power. JP was

the golden boy of the club scene for a little while. And then he got a little older and he started to get pushed to the side.

Couldn’t get everything or everyone he wanted like he’d been used to and decided that being feared would be better

than being ignored. In those days, it was much harder to be believed in a situation like that.”

“It’s over. He can’t hurt you or anyone else,” Tanner said fiercely.

“I didn’t want to tel you. I don’t want you to look at me with pity.”

“I could never look at you that way.”

“If you’re doing this because yo u think Jesse wanted it…Jesse didn’t always know what people needed. H e wasn’t

always right. Just because something worked for him…I want you t o know that yo u need someone strong, yo u don’t

necessarily need a Dom,” Damon said quietly.

“What do you need?” Tanner asked, his hand resting on Damon’s lower back. “Do you need a good fucking, Damon?

Because I’m your guy.”

Damon sucked in a breath at the dirty boy’s words. Goddamn him…this was not the same man who walked into his

club straight from combat and al owed himself to be strapped down.

This was a boy who liked to be ridden hard…and Damon would normal y put him away wet for certain.

But now, Tanner pushed Damon down after taking the bottle from his hand and putting it on the ground. He leaned

over him, stroked his cheek.

“Let me fix this for you. Let me make it better,” Tanner whispered and Damon knew the boy had embedded himself

so deeply in his heart that there was no getting him out now without forcibly ripping him from his chest.

“You can’t.”

“Let me try. Because you haven’t been able to do it for yourself.”

Tanner’s hands were forceful…insistent as he pul ed Damon’s shirt off, and then his jeans, leaving him in boxer briefs

and feeling more naked than if he actual y was. But he wasn’t protesting the way he normal y would have.

Could he real y let this happen? “Tanner, look—”

“You’re afraid to let go with me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yeah, it is. Because you’d have to let me slay you—and you’re afraid of what that might mean.”

Little bastard was right…and he continued, murmuring, “You want to violate me in every possible way…and I want the