Authors: Dani Alexander
“Hurts less.”
“Asshole,” I muttered.
“Was that a directive?” He bit the uninjured side of my ass, sending a trill of heat from his mouth straight to my cock.
”No,” I replied breathily. I heard the rustling of his clothes.
My fists clenched as I looked over my shoulder. Something brushed lightly against my stitches. My hips bucked away. “Ow.
Fuck!”
“Sorry. I’ll kiss it better.”
“About time you kissed my a—
ah, Jesus, God
!” He flicked a tender spot near the stitches. “Don’t be a jerk.” I ground out, “What are you doing?”
“Applying ointment because you were too stubborn or stupid to wait until I had put plastic over—” he flicked again, causing a string of expletives to explode out of me, “—your wound.” “All right, already. Fucking-hell-shit-damn! You bastard!” My cell interrupted my tirade, playing an old NYC cop show theme.
Luis’s persistence was a pain in my ass—a second pain in my ass. With gritted teeth, I stretched for the phone, punching the answer button while trying to ignore the fact that Peter was on his knees fondling my ass. “Glass— ah, mother-fucking-shit!” I muffled a groan when Peter began applying the cream, as unprepared for his touch this time as I was the first. Delicate or not, it fucking hurt.
“I don’t want to know what you’re doing, just get your ass
here,” Luis said. “You’re late.”
“Yeah.”
My ass is occupied at the moment
. I garbled out an apology between pained, choppy exhales and did my best obscene-phone-call breathing into the receiver.
Luis, neither impressed nor aroused, hung up.
After slamming the phone down, I pressed my forehead against the wall, unleashing another stream of curses. “What the fuck is that you’re spreading on there, acid?” “It’s Neosporin. Be good, or I’ll poke you again,” he warned.
“Asshole.” I laughed breathily. “Also not an instruction.
Especially in the context of poking.” “Nice. You kiss your mother with that mouth?” “I don’t know my mother.”
His fingers stilled. “Why?”
I didn’t want to talk about my mother. Not while my ass was bared and Peter was on his knees attending to it. There were other things I wanted to discuss—or enact. But the words tumbled out anyway. Because I could cockblock myself better than any fucking phone. “She left for Europe the day my dad brought me home, and she didn’t come back.” “She’s back now,” he said softly, resuming his task.
“Good for her.”
Given the positions we were in, I was unnerved by the silence—I didn’t know what to expect next, but based on the immediate history, I was convinced it would be unpleasant.
“She’s dying,” he said.
What to make of that? Was I supposed to feel something? I didn’t. Maybe a little numb. “Well, I’m sorry for her. Are you done back there?”
He pulled up my boxers as an answer and snapped the elastic back into place at my hips. Grabbing my pants, I jerked them on and turned around. So much for Peter at my naked ass. I wasn’t going to ask the very wrongly-timed question of how he liked it.
“That’s it?” He looked up at me, brow pinched.
“What do you want me to say? I don’t know the woman.” I moved to the closet, turning my back on him to grab a shirt and tie.
I heard more rustling behind me, and then he was leaning against the closet door. “Then why are you angry all the sudden?”
“I’m not angry.” I yanked a shirt off the hanger and shoved my arms into it, fingers shaking so badly I could barely button it.
Peter gently brushed my hands aside to do it for me.
“Sero-something. Liver disease?” he hedged. Both of us watched the quick rise and fall of my chest; another dead giveaway that I was upset.
“Cirrhosis,” I amended. “And fuck her. I don’t give a shit.” The muscles in my mouth were beginning to hurt from being pinched.
He nodded, remaining silent while his fingers ascended the button ladder. “You didn’t ask me how I knew about it.” “My asshole father and his passive-aggressive way of getting me to help. He told you, assuming you’d relay it. I’m surprised he gives a shit. When she croaks, he’ll be free and clear to continue schtupping that fucking gold-digging bitch of a secretary.”
He smiled indifferently, flipping my collar up before reaching for the tie and winding it around my neck. Wisely, he changed
the subject as my anger amplified. “Schtupping?” “It means—”
“Do you think I’m stupid?” He pulled tight on the knot and glared at me.
“It was just an old-fashioned word. I thought— Never mind.
And, no, I don’t think you’re stupid. Anyone who teaches himself seven languages without finishing seventh grade is not stupid.”
“Sixth grade.” He smoothed out my tie and looked up at me.
I frowned, checking the knot. “I didn’t finish sixth grade. I wasn’t good at school.”
“Even more impressive,” I said softly, thumbing his lips.
“Thanks for the help.”
He nodded again, pulling away to sit on the bed, propping up on his hands. “I’m not fluent in them, either.” I grabbed my suit jacket from the closet as a distraction, trying to think what he was driving at. “It’s not like you to belittle yourself.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.” He blew a puff of air, sending his hair flying wildly off his brow.
“Then why diminish your accomplishments?” “Why use words like ‘schtupping’ and ‘diminish your accomplishments’?”
“Because they’re words I know?” Jesus, I was becoming Cai, answering questions with questions.
“Exactly.”
If I had a list of my most used phrases with Peter, this would be zenith among them: “Huh?”
“You and your big words and fancy education. Your two-thousand dollar suits and your ridiculous million-dollar haircut that barely needs to be combed after a shower. You’re either pushing me away by calling me a whore or trying to fit me into your world by making me more than what I am. I’m just Peter. A guy who didn’t finish sixth grade and had to have his younger brother help him with college work.” I was stunned by this progression of conversation and required restraint not to lash out at him. Or check my hair.
“Why are
you
so angry now?”
“Why are you trying to make me some gifted student who magically learns things and has a great future?” “Why wouldn’t you have a future?”
“I have a future, just not one that fits into what you expect!” “And just what do I expect?” Our voices progressively grew louder.
“Some fancy linguist or interpreter or something like that. It’s not going to happen.”
“Because you won’t ask for help? Is it money?” “Oh, it’s always about money with you, Austin, isn’t it?” He stood up, our noses barely inches apart. My eyes flickered to his lips, tongue darting out to wet my own.
“You’re lucky my ass hurts or I’d throw you on the bed and show you exactly how much it isn’t about money with you!” I twisted on my heel, snatching the cell off the bureau and slipping it into my pocket as I shrugged my jacket on.
“And if your ass didn’t hurt I’d fuck you so hard into the mattress you’d forget every word except ‘more’ and ‘please’!” I froze in the doorway, heart marching like an army platoon, and came face-to-face with a wide-eyed, red-faced Cai.
“Oh, um…yes…well…there it is,” he mumbled, eyes darting frantically around as he pointed down the hall. “I—there’s—they—” His face was so red I half expected the glow to light my way downstairs as he zoomed away mid-sentence.
When had I become so self-involved? Answer: always “Shit,” Peter muttered, ready to chase after him. I stopped him before he could get out the door, slamming it shut and closing him in.
Cai had dialed my anger down to simmer, allowing my tone to come out calm. “This conversation isn’t over,” I said.
“We’re not fucking, so if that’s what’s—” “Peter, goddammit, you’re the one with a mood disorder!” He glared at me. I sighed, running a hand through my hair. “How did we go from helping me with my tie to your screaming at me?”
After too long a wait, he answered, “I don’t get you. Your mother is
dying
and that doesn’t even merit a thought. You’ve haven’t known us two weeks, but you do all these insane things for Cai and me, and Darryl even. What matters to you? What do you want from me? It’s not just sex, and I don’t have
anything else.”
I had been so focused on my own problems that I had completely disregarded Peter’s. He’d lost his home, his books, his livelihood—and was about to lose his brother. He was now completely reliant on me. He was even wearing my clothes. Not even minutes had passed since he’d had to help me with my expensive suit, and before that I’d told him to ask me for
more money. If he was keeping some kind of tally, he was destined for
a terrifying number at this point.
I prodded, thinking I’d show him that not everyone expected quid pro quo. “I don’t expect— Peter, Joe didn’t want anything from you, did he?”
“To be near Iss.”
“What?”
“Iss wanted me. Joe wanted Iss. By keeping me, Joe had a hold on Iss.” I was understandably confused. It must have shown on my face, because Peter looked away and added, “Iss was obsessed with me—or that I reminded him of that guy you both knew; Jess. He’d call me that sometimes when we f—” I watched as his eyes widened slowly and turned to meet mine.
“Oh,
now
I get you,” he said quietly.
I blinked slowly at his accusing look, almost taking a defensive step backward. Not that he was giving me more than the faintest clue of his anger and hurt. I read it in the tiny lines formed between his brows and the slack parting of his mouth.
“Jesse’s hair was blond and his skin less fair, but you could be his brother,” I admitted.
He sighed, shoulders almost imperceptibly deflating. “So I’m supposed to be him for you, too?”
“No.” I stepped closer to Peter, fists clenching at my sides to avoid shaking him. “However much you look like him, you’re not him. It’s like comparing honey and sugar. Jesse was uniform, no complexities. And he was weak. When things got difficult for Jesse, he stood on the hood of his father’s car, hooked a belt over a tree limb and around his neck, then kneeled down.
There’s not even a miniscule part of you that’s either passive like that or would give up.”
“Then I don’t know what you want from me. I have no hope of paying you back, and you know it. Not only that, you don’t want me to earn money the only way I know how. I don’t know if I’ll even get back to school. You tell me to stay, and then tell me to go. You push everyone out of your life: your mother, father, that woman you were with. I don’t have any footing here.
I don’t know where to step. If I go the wrong way, do I get shut out? Does Cai?”
“Whatever else happens, Peter, I won’t turn my back on you.
You have a place to stay until you get on your feet. I’m not finished,” I remarked when he opened his mouth to interrupt.
“No strings attached.” Which meant he was free to make money however he saw fit. Not a situation I was happy with. “Unless you want strings.”
“You don’t see how insane that is?” His eyes were so wide and glassy I could see my reflection cast in their blue depths.
Our dynamic was shifting. For whatever reasons, Peter and I were done being coy. It was time I laid it all out there. “Goes hand in hand with being crazy about you, doesn’t it?” I smiled ruefully and stood there letting the room try to breathe out our tension. My exhale was a tangle of shaking stutters, letting him know how difficult those words were to say.
“You’re such an ass,” he whispered. “Why didn’t you just fucking say that in the first place?” My eyes had closed again as he approached, winding his arms around my neck and pressing our foreheads together. The scent of toothpaste and my shampoo hovered around us. Our labored breaths filled the silence.
“What kind of idiot thinks I do this for just anyone?” I
gripped the sides of his t-shirt and pulled him in.
My eyes opened as he lifted my chin. “How did a privileged boy like you get to be such a fucked up man?” “I think you were introduced to the reason yesterday.” “Your dad was…decent to me and Darryl.” He scowled, then bit his lip. When he released it, I refrained, just barely, from pushing him backward onto the bed and doing obscene things to that lip.
“He should be. I’m paying him enough.” Pulling away just in time for the phone to ring again, I answered it tersely and told Luis we were on our way. Again.
The tension in the room had all but disappeared. Only my irritation at a discussion about Desmond Glass remained. “Let’s go.” The subject about my father was hopefully dropped for good.
Speaking of parents, I hadn’t yet asked Peter about his conversation with his mother. I wondered if he’d be receptive to questions about her. Now that we were on better footing, would he open up to me? I was listing the various ways to broach the conversation as we stepped into the living room and found yet more obstacles to our leaving.
Two of the FBI agents I’d seen surveilling the house that morning were in the living room. One was on the sofa and the other leaning against the mantle. They looked casually menacing in a way only men in semi-cheap suits could be.