Tough Love (19 page)

With almost no warning, he began to cry.

There wasn’t much pain, not really, only the uncertainty of when the pain would come and to what degree. His brain didn’t care. His brain spun and spit and made him howl, drew up every curdled bit of tension inside him and projected it out of his mouth. He cried, sobbed as if he were being beaten, no longer able to fake it, no longer able to be strong. He could pull the edge of his emotions back, keeping the tide at bay but only just.

As if this was what he’d been waiting for, Steve changed.

Oh, he still tortured Chenco, still teased and tormented his backside, his thighs, his hole—but he stroked Chenco’s skin reverently too. He nipped and poked and scrambled Chenco’s senses, but he petted too, and as Chenco tipped toward the edge, Steve crooned between tastes of Chenco.

“Let it go, baby. Let me have it. Don’t hold back. I want you undone all the way.” He licked, long and wicked, down Chenco’s crack. “I got you. I’ll catch you when you fall.”

Chenco tried to fight. He didn’t want to fall, not like this. This wasn’t part of the deal—he’d signed up for pain, but not for this, not to be exposed like
this
—

Steve kissed the crease of Chenco’s leg at his thigh, nuzzling the line of skin with his nose.

A deep, cracking sob broke out of Chenco, and his whole body went rigid as he resisted.

Steve sucked and nipped, dragging the flat of his tongue down Chenco’s taint. He thrust his tongue inside a few times, then whispered against Chenco’s wet, heated skin.

“Dance for your papi.”

Chenco danced.

It was a dance of pain, of loss, of sorrow—he slammed back into the memory of the trailer, when he realized he had to go, when he knew everything had changed and would stay changed forever. Steve had instructed him to put the pain away, but it all returned now. He was homeless. Even without the gangs, the trailer would go, and not to him. Cooper had promised to fuck him over in death, and he had. Chenco had worked hard for his life, sweat blood and tears, and yet it was gone. Taken by his father, the parent he had dreamed since he was a little boy would someday love him.

He cried. Oh, how Chenco cried.

When the physical pain returned—blows to his backside, his thighs, rough grips at his nipples—he sighed, relieved, because thank God, at least he had something to focus on other than how lost he was. As the pain went on it began to burn, a sweet, aching yaw lighting a tiny flame inside his darkness and spreading through him, grounding him, showing him the way. To what he wasn’t sure, but it was better than darkness, and he followed it.

All the while he struggled, Steve held him. Grounded him with whispers and with his touch, sometimes soft, sometimes sharp. When Chenco had agreed to step into Steve’s sadism, he’d expected floggers and benches and ropes, titillating games and kinky thrills. He had not expected this, to be drawn so into pain, to be fucked by it—not by blows or bonds but by the pain itself, his own pain.

To be released.

This was no game, no kinky giggle. This was more reverent than a church service, more personal than any priest-led confession. This was closer to the bone than putting on a dress and wig and makeup and releasing his inner queen.

This was only the first time of playing this way, the barest introduction to a whole new world.

When Chenco felt Steve move behind him, felt the cock nudging his hole, felt Steve’s hairy chest and thick pectorals rubbing along his back, his body crowding as he prepared to enter, Chenco shut his eyes. He reached back to clutch at Steve’s neck and released the deepest, heaviest breath he had in him. When Steve thrust inside, unleashing a new burn, Chenco sobbed, finding a new pit from which to pull the pain.

Steve bit down on the back of Chenco’s neck, holding him still like a dog beneath his thrusts, Chenco let go, and when Steve growled and laved the skin caught beneath his teeth with a rough, rude tongue, Chenco flew away.

There was pain, there was rough fucking, there was everything that had been, but now there was space and light and freedom. Oh God, so much freedom he started crying
again
, and he couldn’t stop. He exploded, he turned into light, he danced with stars.

He danced for his papi all across the pain, so happy, so grateful, so free.

He lost time, somehow—the shift was subtle, a fuzzy burn on his brain, a space between being fucked like a dog and lying tangled in Steve’s arms on a couch, surrounded by his heat and scent and strength, accepting soft kisses and strokes and the widest, brightest smiles he’d ever seen on the other man’s face.

“Oh, honey.” Steve nuzzled Chenco’s ear as he kept petting, never ceasing his gentle and grounding attentions. “Sweetheart, you were so amazing. So brave, so wonderful, so beautiful.”

It was amazing,
Chenco tried to say, but he could only make a soft sound, his hand grasping weakly at Steve’s rough jaw.

“Shh. Take it easy. You went in hard, deeper than I’ve ever seen anybody go on their first try. Take a minute to find your feet, baby. Just rest. There’s no rush. I’ve got you, and I’m not going anywhere.” He pressed another kiss on Chenco’s forehead. “You’re safe,
cariño
. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

Okay,
Chenco tried to say, but still couldn’t. The rest, though, he fought for, swallowed several times and made his lips shape to say the words. “Thank you.”

This earned him a kiss on his lips, slow and full of tongue and teeth. “It was my pleasure.”

Chenco smiled.

Chapter Eleven

The morning after the contract and the best sex he’d ever had in his life, Steve offered to give Chenco his punishment for stabbing Randy. “If you still want it. It’s been awhile, and it’s not usually good to leave things this long. I’m sorry I let you down in this regard.”

“You didn’t let me down, and yes, please, I do want it.” Chenco leaned into Steve’s warm, naked chest. “I don’t feel bad all the time, but sometimes I catch him wincing and holding his shoulder, and it eats me up.”

Steve tangled his fingers in Chenco’s hair. “If I do this, it means you have to stop punishing yourself. If his shoulder bugs him, you don’t get to be upset about it because you already paid. Got it?”

“Got it,” Chenco said, but he worried he’d have to work on following through.

“All right. Then your punishment is spending six and a half hours with Randy, one hour for each inch of the shoe heel you put into him.”

“That’s it?” Chenco sat up and glared at Steve. “I hang out with Randy all the time. This isn’t a punishment.”

Steve tweaked his nose. “You’ve never spent six straight hours with Jansen when he knows you’re his to command. It’ll be punishment enough.”

Uh-oh. “He can’t… I don’t want to have sex—”

“No sex. He won’t try.”

“Okay,” Chenco said, but he wasn’t sure it really was okay yet.

Steve laughed. “You don’t get to agree to the punishment, baby. You just have to take it.”

He rose from the bed, leaving Chenco to wonder whether or not this had been a very good idea after all.

A few days before his husband was supposed to arrive, Randy called in his hours, announcing he was kidnapping Chenco for a ride. “I need something to keep my mind off my man still being days away.”

Chenco tried not to let on how nervous he was, wondering what Randy would make him do, hoping it wasn’t too embarrassing, doing his best to trust Steve wouldn’t put him in such a position. “What do you have in mind?”

“I want a Chenco tour of the RGV, starting with the beautiful fucking flea market in Alamo. Please tell me it’s still there.”

Chenco relaxed. “That’s all you want?”

“I didn’t say it was all I wanted.” Randy linked his arm through Chenco’s and hollered down the hall toward Steve’s office. “Monk, I’m taking your truck and your boy, and I plan to get comfy.”

It was the first time someone had called Steve Chenco’s boyfriend, and it made him feel slightly out of body. He said nothing all the way to the truck. As he settled into the lush seats, Randy adjusted the mirrors, wheel and seat, and he plugged an MP3 player into the stereo. Captain & Tennille began to sing, and Chenco couldn’t help it, he laughed.

Randy flipped him off. “This is my day, so I get my music. Old school all the way, all the songs my uncle used to sing to me. C&T, Journey, AC/DC, Pat Benatar, Styx and of course Queen.”

Chenco noticed the way Randy’s face softened as he spoke of his uncle. “Sorry. I won’t make fun.”

“Damn right you won’t.” Randy pulled onto the main highway. “It’s been a long fucking time since I went to Alamo. Direct me, Princess.”

It took a good forty minutes to get there, and by the time they parked, Chenco sang along with the golden oldies. In fact, as they crossed the parking lot to the main entrance, he hummed the chorus to “Open Arms”. He was excited to be back at
la pulga
. He hadn’t been in years, and it brought back good memories of when he’d sneak away with friends in high school.

The Alamo flea market was a mighty beast, sprawling ten aisles wide and probably a thousand feet long. Half of it was permanent, shops with wiring and even air conditioning in a few instances. Chenco drank it all in, letting it take him back. “My mom got so pissed when I came here. Once, on a dare, I got my hair cut in the barber shop. Mama pitched a fit, but the cut actually wasn’t too bad.”

Randy had been thumbing through some old vinyl albums, but he looked up when Chenco told him the story. “She flipped out? Why?”

“She hated everything low-brow Mexican. You’d think being half Latino I’d get a pass from racism in at least one parent, but no.”

“Damn, that had to bite.” Randy crooked his finger at the shopkeeper, who was in the back of his booth reading an iPad. Randy asked him several questions in Spanish, something about did he have any other albums, as far as Chenco could tell. The man nodded, replied with something too swift for Chenco to translate, and rooted under a table for another box.

Chenco grimaced. “Jesus, do
all
of you have better Spanish than me?”

Randy flashed him an apologetic smile. “You can probably still beat Sam, but he’s catching up fast. It’s an asset for him to be a bilingual nurse. Maybe the two of you can learn together.”

“I kind of suck at languages. I tried to learn in high school, sneaking CDs from the library, but it didn’t really work.”

“You’ll get there. Mitch’ll teach you. He’s who taught me. But you have to ask.”

He ended up buying three albums, and he seemed pleased with himself as they went on to the next booth. When they got to the shop with fancy prom dresses, Chenco beamed. “Oh man, this is where Caramela got her first costume.”

“No shit?” Randy ducked inside, flipping through the racks. “Think we can find her anything today?”

“She’s too refined for the flea market now.” Still, Chenco had fun window-shopping, remembering when it felt wickedly dangerous to even dream of shopping for his alter ego.

“What color was the dress?” Randy asked as they gave up and went on to the next shop.

“Blue sheath, full of sequins. I bought it, a pair of silver heels, a blonde wig and a gaudy necklace and earrings set. I was seventeen. God, I thought I was so fierce.”

“Something tells me this story doesn’t end well.”

No, it didn’t. “Mom found it and burned it all. Cried for a week. Both of us did, actually.”

Randy shook his head. “Ah, family. Can’t live with them, can’t shoot them.” He brightened as he saw the food carts up ahead. “Shit, do they still have those slushy things?”

They got mango slushies and tacos. Randy laughed about the live chickens a vendor sold, telling a story about how once he had Mitch buy one and they kept it as a pet until it shit on the carpet. He had a million stories about Mitch, some which involved Sam too. He talked some about his husband, though not much as he said it made him twitchy and homesick.

It amazed Chenco how carefree Randy could be so attached to somebody, and eventually he told him so.

Randy shrugged and took another sip of his slushy. “Everybody needs someone they can lay themselves down with. I never figured I’d get it, assumed I’d have to sort of cobble my release space out of other people, and then there was Ethan. Slick, my sexy man, the fool who wanted me, warts and all.” He stirred his straw in his drink, frowning at it. “Honestly, I’m half afraid being away from me this long will make him come to his senses.”

Chenco elbowed him. “He
married
you.”

“Yeah, well.” He ran a hand through his hair. “God, I wish he’d fucking get here.”

Chenco smiled and jerked his head at the next aisle. “Come on. Tell me another story, and let’s go find him a present.”

They did find one—a truly ugly coffee mug reading
Welcome to Las Vegas!
with a 1960s stylized faded scene plastered around the sides. Chenco was dubious, but Randy only chuckled and declared it would be perfect.

“Yeah. He’ll love this.” He wiped sweat from his brow with his fingers. “Okay, I think I’ve had enough of this fucking heat. We still have an hour and a half. Let’s get in Steve’s air-conditioned beast, grab us some Starbucks and soak up more RGV.”

It was kind of fun to hear what had changed about the valley over the years—they had some overlapping memories, but Randy knew more stories of days past, most of them secondhand from Mitch, but they were still cool. “I should take this tour with Mitch sometime.”