Bad Things (41 page)

Fucking suit.
Puta zapatos estrechos
.

Fucking lawyers, so determined to neutralize, to neuter that carnal body, convinced the fucking jury would listen more closely to his testimony if he was hidden under those clothes designed by hordes of sadists.

Waiting made him itch; Xavier struggled to resist the urge to fidget because he needed to feel his muscles flexing. Instead he made himself breathe. Slow. Even. Deep. Breath by breath the thoughts bouncing around in his head took on weight and one by one settled at the bottom of his skull like grains of sand.

On the terrazzo floor of the courthouse, waxed to such a sheen it doubled everyone in the hall as they perched on benches or scurried through the corridor, footfalls clicked and reverberated. Traveling in a little herd, one small woman flanked by two men who Xavier guessed to be a lawyer and a cop, and an unusually tall woman who might have been some kind of social worker or government pencil pusher. Their brisk pace slowed as the one who looked like a lawyer reined his little herd to a halt so he could talk to a middle-aged woman, stout, her naturally nappy hair straightened to stiffness that didn’t move when she nodded or shook her head. Another lawyer, Xavier decided.

The petite woman from the herd looked familiar. A slight blonde. At first glance, he guessed she was in her late twenties, but looking more closely he realized she was much younger. But she had the worn look you see in photographs of wars and famines. Probably she felt him looking at her, because she turned and fixed her pale green eyes on his face.

It was like seeing a ghost. Every inch of skin on his body broke out in goosebumps. It was her. The girl from the video. The one he’d watched learning her first phrases of English. The one he’d watched being tortured and raped.

The way she was staring, it was like she’d seen a video of him, too. Like she recognized him. She started shaking so hard, he could see her tremors even though she was probably twenty feet away. Tears were rising in her eyes but she came toward him like a warrior: courageous, sure.

“
You. You are witness in trial?” Her voice small and hard and spiked as nails. Thick Ukrainian accent.

“
Yes.”

She smiled, and an unsettling, unfamiliar prickle of fear made Xavier’s spine stiffen. “Like me. I am witness too. Did they rape and sell you, too?”

“No.”

“
No. I did not think so. You work for them. They pay you with money they get selling girls to men who rape them. And now? Why you are not in the jail? My lawyer tells me how this work. You are witness. You tell what you do and what your boss do, and you don’t jail.”

The lawyers were still talking, but the other two from the herd were coming over to flank their charge.

“You don’t jail,” she said in her small spiked voice, “but you are monster.”

“
Olga,” the social worker touched her arm, “come on.” She tried to guide her away, but Olga didn’t seem to realize she was there.

“
You take money that is my pain. Pain of hundred other girls. You buy car with my pain. You buy your fancy shoes with my tears. My shame.” With her tiny foot, she kicked one of the shoes he’d bought for his father’s funeral.

“
Olga, stop. We’re leaving, now.”

“
You eat my pain. Live from my pain. The more I hurt, the more strong you are. You are monster,” Olga said, and slapped him hard across the face.

“
Olga!”

When the social worker grasped her arm and pulled her back, Olga’s eyes went wide. Her face blanched.

Without getting up, Xavier caught the social worker’s wrist. Leveling a hard look at her, Xavier said, “Let go of her.” When he squeezed, the woman’s fingers sprang open. “Let her.”

“
Monster!” Olga said again, tears falling. She hit him again.

The lawyers were running over.

“Monster! Monster!” The sting of her slaps should have flooded his body with adrenaline, but he was emptying out. Wilting.

“
Don’t touch her,” he said, glaring at each member of the herd in turn. Then to her, “You’re stronger than that. Hit me harder.”

She startled. Then hit him. Much harder. Once. Twice. Again. Tears streaking her face. Behind her tears, the shards of rage in her eyes dulled, and her hands fell to her sides. The shuddering stiffness of her small frame went suddenly lax. Xavier thought she was about to collapse in a fit of sobbing, but second by second she calmed, and when the cop and the social worker lightly touched the backs of her arms, she docilely let them guide her away from Xavier, down the long corridor and down the steps.

“Sir,” the lawyer said. “My client is extremely distraught by the—”

“
Save your theatrics. I don’t want to press charges.”

The lawyer shifted his weight and raked his fingers through his thinning hair. “Can I get you a glass of water? Or a wet paper towel for your face?”

“No. I’m just going to sit here and enjoy the sting for a minute.”

The lawyer got that unique look of fear on his face that comes over people when they collide with something they don’t understand. But he stopped talking, and left.

Xavier closed his eyes, listening to the diminishing echo of the lawyer’s shoes clacking against the terrazzo, trying to focus on the tender hurt at the center of him. Swelling, swelling. A poisonous infection, pressure increasing until it ruptured.

Strange; his warm tears felt cool on his burning cheeks.

When Carson had finished testifying, they went with Porter back to the hotel, checked out, and after one canceled and one delayed flight, six hours later they were back in L.A.

Carson was so brave, touching his arm while Porter was getting the car and they stayed with the bags, looking at him like he already knew the answer, but saying anyway, “Come home with me. I can drive you to your place later.”

In some ways, Xavier knew, saying that to him now cost Carson even more than coming to his room at the hotel for the first time. In the hotel, Carson had only been looking to give up his power. Now, he was looking for something much more dangerous. And he was confessing it so sweetly, saying it out loud. “Come home with me.” Looking up at Xavier, his soul unguarded. Naked.

But he didn’t want to make love, carefully taking care of someone’s body and their feelings. He didn’t even want to fuck hard. He wanted to tear something apart. Kill it while it screamed.

He tried to dig down under the poisonous sludge eating through his chest, and find an affectionate smile for Carson. “Not tonight. Not for a few days, probably. But soon.”

Carson didn’t look hurt. He looked pissed. “I’m angry too, you know.”

“
Of course you’re angry.”

“
I don’t want to be alone with all this shit.”

“
If you need a group therapy session, go have a drink with Porter.”

Carson’s pissed off laugh. “I don’t want to have a drink with Porter. I want you to fuck me until I can’t walk.”

Holy Christ. He’d created a monster.

Carson came so close, his pec brushed against Xavier’s arm. “It’s okay. I know you can’t be gentle right now. I don’t want you to be.”

Summoning every fragile remnant of his dried up store of human feeling, Xavier curved a hand against Carson’s head. “Carson. I’m not going to disappear. I promise. But today, I have nothing but hate and cruelty left. And I don’t want to be hateful and cruel with you.”

He was so spun on toxic malice, he couldn’t even read the look in Carson’s eyes. Was he wounded? Or moved?

His empathetic gauge being out of whack was all the proof he needed that he had to go home alone. On the best of days, being hyper-attuned to whoever he was with was the best guard against his over-driven need to feed and purge every emotion though the body of another.

When Carson got out of the car and walked up the cement path toward his apartment building, Xavier started feeling untethered and nauseated, as if gravity had let go of him. For no real reason, he had the unpleasant feeling he wouldn’t see Carson again. He tried to beat that useless, baseless bit of intuition back with his rational mind, but the slightly nauseated feeling stuck to him.

But now, with Carson out of the car, he could finally ask. “Who do you know at the FBI, who could find out where Max Ulianenko is?”

James turned and looked at him like he was fucking crazy. Then he laughed.

“I’m serious.”

James took another look at him. “I’m going to pretend you never said that.”

“Don’t pretend I never said it. Give me a name.”

“
No one at the FBI is going to tell you that.”

Xavier laughed, and then, knowing James would take it as a very subtle threat, said, “Oh, James. It’s like you’ve already forgotten how persuasive I can be.”

James was quiet for a long time, but that was fine. The drive would be another thirty minutes, at least. Let him stew. Let him be pissed or offended or whatever that reference to Xavier getting him to suck his cock, getting him to bottom did to him.

Maybe five minutes later, James said, “You think I wouldn’t love to see the news tomorrow, and find out someone had shot that piece of shit in the face?”

Clearly he and James didn’t have the same ideas about how to punish Max Ulianenko.

“
Even if I was gung ho to team up with you and kill that sack of crap, I probably have a better chance of becoming President. No one who’s been involved with the case, or even with vice, is going to know that shit.”

“
Yeah, so who does know that shit?”

James laughed. “I have no fucking idea. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Shit, my best contact at the FBI is your sister. Go fucking ask her.”

Yeah. Right.

“
My advice to you? Do what I’m going to do. Go home. Do three or four shots of tequila, and hope that the Ukrainian mafia will take care of Max Ulianenko. Somehow the syndicate guys always seem to sniff out their rat, sooner or later.”

Xavier went home, but instead of tossing back a few rounds of Avion Añejo, he went down to the basement, did half an hour of upper body work on the bars, then worked the bag for another half hour, reining himself in, against a rampaging urge to beat the bag until he collapsed. But even more than wanting to pound all his rage, all his bitter frustration from his system, he wanted to cherish and nurse his dark fantasy.

It was remote. Ridiculous. But he couldn’t bear to let go of the hope that, if he couldn’t hunt down Max Ulianenko, Max would come after him. To punish him for his betrayal.

So, he couldn’t wear himself down to exhaustion. He had to work himself up, just until he was primed for battle. Maybe Max’s ego was big enough, he wouldn’t just shoot him on sight. If he took the chance of trying to get his hands on him, so he could savor a few hours of slow vengeance, Xavier might be able to get the upper hand, depending on how much muscle Max brought with him. And if he did manage to turn the tables, he had an endless list of ideas of how he’d make Max suffer, until his screams were louder and even less human than those of the girl from the video. Olga.

He made himself eat. He showered. He sent out a few emails. He got in bed, and meditated until he fell asleep.

A light morning workout. Breakfast. Two answers to his emails. Three hours of sparring matches at the Wing Chun studio. Neither opponent a real challenge, but far better practice than the heavy bag.

At six o’clock, he was supposed to meet Elena for dinner at The Fig on the strand. He spent the hour he had to kill stalking the Promenade, shirt in his hand, feeding off the furtive glances and bold stares of passing men. Searching their eyes and deciding which gaze was appraising the ink on his skin, which was guessing at his workout routine, which was hating him for being too big, too cocky, too much of a fucking showoff, and which was inviting him to fuck. And of those lingering, slithering stares begging for a fuck, which only wanted to be mounted and pounded in their imagination as they jerked off, and which were silently pleading with him to turn around once they’d passed each other, follow him, and go to the nearest by-the-hour room and fuck him unconscious. There were two of those. A third was fluttering indecisively between wanting the fuck, and wanting the idea of the fuck.

When Elena showed up—ten minutes late, as usual—the first thing she noticed, of course, were the faint bruises along his cheekbone and by his lip. The marks Olga had given him in the court house.

“
I was sparring,” he said before she could even ask. “A bit off my game, I guess.”

She took a long, deep look at him—not at the bruises, but at his festering soul—and frowned.

“Still out for blood?” she asked.

“
Aren’t you?”

“
No. I’m not. Enough people have suffered for Max Ulianenko. He doesn’t get me, too. I’m having a great day. Those eighty-six women they were running out of their operation are getting set up with nice rooms, with some English and college classes, and counseling. I’m basking in the idea that instead of being sent off to two or three johns each, today, those women are safe. And tomorrow, I’m going to dive into a new case. There are too many other victims to think about. I don’t have one fucking minute for that
puta mierda
.”

Xavier grinned, which made her smile. It surprised him, how fucking good that felt. God, Elena. The way she could put things in perspective in sixty seconds flat. Not that he still wouldn’t like to rape Max dry, then slowly carve all the flesh from his bones, one thin strip at a time while he screamed. But the thought of Olga sitting in a classroom, diligently doing grammar exercises neutralized some of the poison in his system.

Half way through dinner, Xavier was reminded his compass was broken, because it shouldn’t have taken him that long to see that something other than the rescue of those women had Elena unusually buoyant and lit up.

“
Did the Bureau give you a paid trip to Tahiti, or something?”

“
Of course. They do that for every agent, every time we get a conviction.”

“
Tax dollars well spent.”

“
And I’m seeing someone.”

Well. That was a surprise. Not that she was dating. She dated. She’d just never said it like that. An involuntary smile spreading wide, baring the perfectly straight teeth she’d earned by suffering through three years of braces.

“Jeremy. I met him through work—of course, not like I have time to be going to clubs or doing that online dating crap—but he doesn’t work at the Bureau. He’s in charge of one of the integration programs we work with, mainstreaming the women into society.”

So strange, so great, hearing her ramble giddily on about this guy. An amusing contrast to her usual laconic tendencies.

“You know, I pretty much never tell men I’m seeing about what happened to me, because they always get so fucking weirded out. But with him, it just came out, in the middle of our third date, and he took it right in stride. Even when I told him I tried to kill myself. You know, it’s just really nice. He’s seen so much, heard so many stories, with him, I’m not this rare, fragile thing he doesn’t know how to talk to, or touch.”

“
He touches you?” Xavier feigned a protective, big brother air.

“
Fucking right, he touches me. And he’s damned good at it, too.”

He really couldn’t remember when he’d seen her so happy. Maybe someday, the girl from the video, the woman who’d hit him over and over in court, would smile like that. Let someone love her.

After dinner, he walked toward home along the strand. From fifty yards away, he spotted one of the guys who’d been looking him over earlier with blatant, feral hunger. A big rutting buck of a man, just blond and angular enough to remind Xavier of Max. Just enough that he ached to hurt him.

Seeing Xavier coming, as if he’d been waiting for him to double back the way he’d come when they’d first seen each other, the prey who thought he was the hunter leaned back against a lamp post, offering himself up like a ten dollar rent boy. Hell, why not? Maybe he was a ten dollar rent boy.

Xavier walked past, close, but without slowing, until Max Light leaned forward and reached out to tap his shoulder.

Xavier stopped, turned and met his gaze, just as pale as Max’s but nowhere near as sharp.

“Hey.” Sly, flirty smile. “Got a smoke?”

“
Sorry, no. I don’t smoke.”

“
Then it’s my lucky day, because I hate that ashtray taste when I’m sucking on a guy’s tongue.”

The mouth was wrong. Too full. Too soft. But the nose was almost exactly right.
Puta Jesus muriendo
, he’d love to hear that nose breaking under his fist. See blood stream down that angular jaw, over that pale throat.

Max Light hooked a finger through Xavier’s belt loop and pulled him close, until their pelvises barely brushed together, and he leaned in and audibly sniffed at Xavier, just under his ear. “But a clean, good-smelling guy like you, I’d enjoy sucking your tongue. And your cock. You got a nice big one?”

“I doubt we’re in the mood for the same thing,” Xavier said.

“
Yeah? Try me.” Max Light shifted his hips forward and slowly ground his groin against Xavier’s.

“
I think if I got you alone, I’d fuck you so hard, you’d beg me to stop. And you’d mean it. But I wouldn’t stop.”

The guy grinned, looking half turned on, half confused and doubtful. “Yeah? I like it rough. You want to fuck my tight ass with that big cock of yours?”

Xavier slid his foot between the guy’s feet and shifted forward, pressing his pelvis to Max’s, pinning him against the lamp post. He leaned in, until he felt the brush of Max’s blond stubble against his lips.

“
Yes. I want to tear you. I want to see your blood on my dick. I want to hear you sob and beg, then cry even harder because you know I don’t give a shit that you’re in pain. I want to choke you
‘
til you can’t breathe. But keep you alive, keep you conscious so you can feel everything I’m doing to you. I want to come while you lie there, hurt and helpless, afraid you’re going to die, I’m hurting you so badly.”

Xavier pulled back, just enough so he could look into those aqua eyes, just a shade too green. For a minute, Max Light stared at him in dumb confusion. Then he unhooked his finger from Xavier’s belt loop and shoved him away.

“What the fuck, man. Fuck you.”

He turned and hustled off in the opposite direction from Xavier’s trajectory toward home.

Now that it was after hours and he’d have the place to himself, Xavier went to the tattoo shop. Hell, maybe he should keep Paul as manager permanently. Then he could just go in when he felt like it. Take a few clients a week and focus on what he actually liked—doing the art. Forget dealing with schedules and filling in the gaps in his appointment book with first-timers getting hearts and flowers and band names tattooed on their shoulders. Save himself for the big, rich, creative works that excited him.

He shaved his thigh and sterilized the skin. Usually he waited a long time after designing a new tattoo, before inking it. His body only offered so much canvas. He liked to be sure he wouldn’t wish, later, that he’d saved a field of flesh for some other symbolic image. But he wasn’t much in the mood for thinking about the future. For waiting for things. So, even though he’d only thought of the design a few days earlier, in Sacramento, and rendered the drawing in full detail the night before, he went for it.

When he pulled into his driveway, there was a shadow, a movement inside his house. His veins surged with adrenaline and every muscle in his body tensed, ready for battle. Ready to kill.

But when the shadow resolved into a vague form, it wasn’t Max. Hair too dark. Build too lean.

The hunter’s high didn’t abate. Not one fucking iota. But he put the car in park, closed his eyes, and breathed. Encased himself in cool, hard armor. Then went inside.

Carson stood there, visibly bracing himself, and said, “Hello.” Trying and completely failing to sound playful. Confident.

Christ, Xavier could smell the fear on him. The pheromones. Calling to him, like a hungry shark in a tank turning pink with blood.

“
You still have a key.”

Carson patted his pocked and gave him a flirtatious but nervous smile.

“I told you we’d see each other when I was ready,” Xavier said, trying and failing to slow his violently beating heart.

“
I know.”

“
Go home, Carson.”

“
No.”

It cost him everything to root himself there. Not to grab his arm and hurl him out the door. Or onto the floor. Xavier shuddered with a sickening fear of what he’d do to Carson, if he let himself start.

“You think you’re being cute, right now? Provoking me? Let me tell you something, Carson. You may think you have, but you have never seen my dark side. You’ve never seen me angry.”

All playfulness gone, dead serious, Carson quietly asked, “Are you angry now?”

“Yes,” Xavier said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “I am horribly, dangerously angry.”

“
At me?” Carson asked. His eyes so full of sadness, his voice so small and unsure, it leached the murderous toxins out of Xavier’s system.

“
No. Not at you. But I can’t do this right now. Act human, when I’m feeling like…this.”

The sadness in his eyes went away. But the fear didn’t. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want you to be alone.”

He should send him away. Physically throw him out, if he had to. But the adrenaline, the blood priming his muscles, the animal impulse urging him to lunge and strike was overwhelming.

As if he smelled his rising need on him, Carson took a tentative step forward, and touched his arm. Just that touch, so light Xavier barely felt it, melted all the armor he’d tried to keep on. To protect Carson, not himself.

He caught Carson’s arm in a brutal grip that would leave bruises. Watched his fear flare up big and bright. Started feeding on his erratic panting breaths as he undid his belt and yanked it free of the loops, then did the same to Carson’s. The drag, the weight of Carson’s frail resistance as Xavier pulled him toward the chair only made his hunger more fierce and desperate.

“
You sure you want to stay?” Xavier asked.

He only hesitated for a second. “Yes.”

“I don’t know if you can handle what I’m going to ask of you.”

He thought about it. A little, anyway. “I can.”

Xavier planted himself in the wide, low armchair and lashed his own wrist to the arm with one belt, then held the other belt out to Carson, who stared at it, and then at Xavier like he couldn’t grasp what he needed from him.

“
If you want to stay, do my other wrist.”

Realization dawning. Some vague clue of what Xavier was asking of him.