Bad Things (25 page)

As soon as it was over, a cold, ugly feeling crawled through Carson’s chest, still ricocheting with his violent, speeding heartbeat.

Suddenly he couldn’t bear it. The horrifying feeling of Xavier’s cock still stuffed up inside of him. Xavier’s bulk pressing him down on the table. Xavier’s hands pinning his hands.

Trying hard to be quiet and still, to just wait, because it wouldn’t be long, Carson’s breath rushing, rushing, until he was hyperventilating and his breaths filled up with a weak, weird cry.

Xavier let go of Carson’s wrists, his weight rose from his body, and he pulled out.

Xavier lifted Carson from the table and turned him around to face him. Unsteady, Carson perched on the edge of the table. When Xavier sank his fingers into his hair and made him meet his eyes, Carson had the awful thought that he was about to kiss him.

“What’s this?” Xavier asked, eyes boring into his thoughts. “No post-coital take-backs. You wanted to. Don’t start trembling and weeping like you just had your virtue pillaged. You don’t like fucking men? Don’t do it again. Life goes on.”

“
Men.” Carson was unsettled by the sound of his own weird laughter. “Men who take me hostage. Men who strip me naked and mess with me while I’m tied up and gagged.”

“
So, what? Now you’re going to cry Stockholm Syndrome? You don’t like fucking me, don’t say ’yes’ next time.”

“
Could you go?”

Xavier still wasn’t letting go of his hair.

“Please. Please go.”

“
Not until we talk.”

Xavier’s hands slipped free of his hair, and Carson turned away as Xavier worked the semen-filled condom off his softening cock. Hands shaking, Carson pulled up his pants. He felt like a hostage again.

“I don’t think you’re a bad person,” Xavier said.

Was Carson losing his fucking mind? Xavier was passing moral judgment on him? He forced himself to meet Xavier’s eyes. Startlingly earnest.

“I hope you’re not waiting for me to return the compliment.”

Xavier smiled. “That’s not a compliment I expect to hear generally. And especially not from you.”

“You really won’t leave?”

“
Not until we’ve straightened a couple things out.”

“
I’m not going to pardon you or absolve you, or whatever. Me lying to you and going through your things doesn’t excuse what you did to me. Even me getting mixed up with Brian and Max doesn’t excuse that.”

“
I didn’t say it did.”

Fuck. He needed a drink. Fuck pot. He didn’t want to be calmed. He wanted to feed his anger. He went for the whiskey.

“Got any tequila?”

“
Are you for fucking real?”

A grin that felt more like a challenge than amused patience. “You and I are going to talk. Why not be cordial about it?”

Could the guy fucking hear himself? Fine. Pour a couple drinks. Get it over with and get him out.

“
You want ice?”

“
However you drink it.”

Ice. Whiskey. Three fingers each.

“I get it. They had you cornered. Brian and Max lured you in with big money for a few errands, and once they had you trapped, they started threatening you with the stick. Not all that different from what they do to those girls.”

Kind of late, exonerating him now, when he’d already meted out the sentence. Xavier searching his eyes, doing that thing where he probed your thoughts like a mind reading psychopath.

“What other extra jobs does Brian have you do for him? Besides the packages. Besides spying on me?”

Carson’s face went hot. “What the fuck are you implying? That I let him fuck me?”

Xavier grimaced. “If you did, I hope he paid you a fucking lot more than a thousand dollars. I mean jobs for the club.”

“
What do you care?”

Pinning Carson under his searching look, Xavier said, “I care, because I want to know what kind of man I’m talking to.”

Carson heard himself laughing that weird, creepy laugh again. Like a crazy person in a movie.

Xavier’s curious, probing gaze. “Why is that funny?”

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s just something comical about the guy who made me wear a gag and do enemas passing judgment on me running errands for some extra cash.”

“
There are errands uglier than anything I did to you.”

He hadn’t thought so, while they’d been playing at being roommates. But that horrific video had changed Carson’s mind in ten seconds flat.

Why was the thought pushing in on him now? The sudden anxiety that Max and Brian had been right.

“
Are you a cop?”

Xavier laughed. “No.”

It felt like a lie detector test, the way Xavier’s stare probed into him. “Is that why Brian wanted me to check you out? Because you’re investigating him? The club?”

“
You tell me.”

“
You said you weren’t a cop. I don’t think you’re allowed to lie about that. It’s entrapment.”

“
Jesus, are fucking kidding me with that? You really think I’m a cop.”

“
I think you’re something. Unless you have another sister, and you think she works for them.”

“
Let’s say that’s it.”

“
I really don’t know anything.”

“
Maybe you know something, but don’t know it’s important.”

Xavier kept pushing. What had he overheard? What had he seen? What errands had Brian sent him on? He told him everything he could think of, even though nothing in particular seemed especially important, or the least bit incriminating.

He went and got the bottle. Poured himself two more fingers’ worth. Xavier had hardly made a dent in his. Because it wasn’t tequila? Or because he wanted this conversation to stay fixed and clear in his memory?

“
I believe you, that you’re not part of it.” Xavier leaned back in his chair, and his invasive stare softened slightly. “So there’s really only one thing worrying me about you.”

“
What’s that?” Drunk now, the squeezing grip of fear in his chest had loosened. He felt almost cocky, like Xavier wouldn’t dare to try to revert back to the weird disparity between them, now that they’d talked like this. As if, now that Xavier knew he’d had an innocent person sequestered in his basement, he owed him something.

“
How afraid are you?”

His buzz-fueled courage evaporated. “Of you?”

Grinning. “Of them.”

“
I’m going to quit.”

“
Because you’re scared?”

“
No. Because I don’t want to work for a bunch of scummy pimps.”

“
Even if you could hurt them?”

“
Hurt them? These fucking Ukrainian gangsters? How the fuck could I hurt them?”

“
I don’t know. But that’s why I’m staying.”

“
Well you have fun with that.”

“
I’m sure going to try.”

Carson emptied his glass into his mouth, not even tasting the booze before he swallowed. “So, you don’t just get off on torturing hostages. You get your jollies pretending you’re some kind of PI crime hunter.”

Xavier took another brain scan with his laser gaze. “Yes. I do. And if I pull it off, if I somehow help to get them busted, I am going to get a hard-on when Max and Brian and their bosses get cuffed. And I’d much rather see the live show than have to jerk off to a replay on Youtube. And I have an excellent memory. I’ll make a fantastic witness for the prosecution.”

Carson poured and took another swig of whiskey. Fuck, he was drunk. “And why the fuck do you give a shit about whatever they’re doing, anyway?”

“
What? Running a prostitution ring? Keeping a bunch of women in shackles, and basically collecting a service fee for making them available for rape on a pay-as-you-go basis?”

“
Yes.” Xavier’s indignation was going to make Carson sick. Well, Xavier’s indignation, and the whiskey. “What the fuck do you care?”

Something terrible came alive in Xavier’s gaze. Suddenly that thorny cold was twisting around Carson’s chest again, crushing his warm buzz.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Xavier asked with cold calm.

Carson laughed. Nothing was funny. Everything was scary and ugly and nothing made sense.

“Because of the basement?” Xavier asked.

“
Yes. Because of the fucking basement.” He’d wanted to sound angry. He’d wanted to sound brave. But he heard his voice, and it sounded small and weak and scared. “I didn’t know a fucking thing about it, before. What Max and Brian were a part of. What I was a part of.” Voice shaking apart with every word. “And I guess you just decided I was as bad as them. I guess that was a convenient excuse so you could torture me.” Almost crying. Almost screaming. “But you never asked me if I was part of it, or not!”

“
Is that what you think? I was punishing you for being complicit in their crimes?”

“
Yes. That’s what I think.”

“
I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Carson. Not to scare you into talking. Not to punish you for hurting those kids.” Xavier went quiet and still, except for pulling in a few slow, deep breaths. Trying to calm himself, maybe. “But I admit I was manipulating you.”

“
Breaking me.”

Voice so calm and even, it was almost gentle. “I didn’t mean to break you. I meant to make you fear me and need me more than you feared and needed Brian and Max.”

“Well, congratulations.”

“
You’re really afraid of me?”

“
Fuck you.”

“
I’m not playing with you. It’s an honest question.”

“
Yes. I’m fucking afraid of you.”

“
And you...” Fuck, Xavier actually looked scared. Weird. Disappointing. Carson thought it would make him happy, make him fucking elated, seeing Xavier afraid. “Did I rape you?”

“
It doesn’t matter that I...gave in a couple times.”

“
I didn’t say it did. Did I rape you?”

“
Your sister is scared of you. You did something like that before, didn’t you?”

“
Leave Elena out of it. She can’t decide if you were raped. I can’t decide if you were raped. Only you can answer that.”

“
You cuffed me to that fucking post. You held me hostage. You gagged me.”

“
I know.”

“
I couldn’t say no.”

“
Did you want to say no?”

Carson wanted to throw his empty glass across the room. He wanted to smash it against Xavier’s face.

“Look. You’re probably too drunk and too angry to hear this, but I’ll tell you anyway. I cuffed you for one reason. To put things on pause. To get some control over the situation. To have time to figure out what to do about the fact that Brian sent you to dig through my life. I figured there were two things I might do with you. Let you go right away. Or keep you down there for a few hours, or maybe overnight, and try to scare you into telling me why you’d set up your trap of being my pal and needing a place to stay, so you could spy on me.

“
Doing anything sexual to you did not cross my mind, until I saw those photos. Until you reacted the way you did, to me finding those pictures. And from that moment on, my whole idea of tactic did a one-eighty.”

“
What? You decided I was gay? And that made it okay to rape me?”

“
No. I saw that there was something I could give you. That there was a way I could make you choose me over Brian and his money or whatever he was giving you.”

“
That’s what you thought you saw all those times you stared at me like you thought you were reading my fucking mind?”

“
Yes.”

“
That’s the scariest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. Fuck, you’re scarier than those fucking pimps! At least they don’t pretend they’re on some evangelical mission. Spreading the Good Word.”

“
Was I wrong?”

Carson sloshed whiskey into his glass. Almost half full. He was going to make himself puke. He wanted to puke. Purge out everything that had happened over the last three days. “Fuck you.”

“So. I was right.”

“
I’ve never seen that interpretation of fuck you in the dictionary.”

Xavier laughed.

“What?” Carson hissed through clenched teeth.

“
You’re witty. I might not have kept you gagged the whole time, if I’d known.”

“
You’re laughing about it.”

“
Tell me something.”