By the end of the second week after I moved in, the number of nights he’d stayed at my house outnumbered the nights we’d spent at his apartment. By the end of the third week, his overnight bag always contained enough clothing for several days. A stash of factor became a permanent fixture in my refrigerator, because that was easier than hauling it back and forth.
Sundays became our day to play, the day we could go all night, exhaust ourselves with pain and pleasure, then sleep until noon.
On the fourth Monday at my house, I stood in the doorway of the bathroom that connected the bedroom and the playroom, watching Geoff crane his neck to peer at the dark purple welts that crisscrossed his back and ass, and even the backs of his thighs. Last night had been our first time trying a single-tail whip. I hadn’t broken the skin and wouldn’t for some time, if I ever did, but he’d been sobbing and incoherent by the time we were done. Then I’d bound him to the straps of the swing and fucked him until he damn near passed out. And today . . . today he had the thing he’d craved most since we’d begun playing.
Marks. Welts. Bruises created deliberately, with aforethought, not as a result of some mishap relating to his clotting disorder.
Trophies, in other words.
I thought seeing those sorts of marks on him would bring back unpleasant memories of Kyle, but it was not even remotely similar. There was a simple, innocent joy to Geoff’s pleasure in being marked that Kyle had never had.
He looked triumphant, twisting to see them better. They were livid against his pale skin, and spread wider from the line the whip had traveled than perhaps they might have in someone who wasn’t a hemophiliac. But not dangerous. Not life-threatening. No deep-muscle damage along his spine or in his pelvis to threaten the nerves and blood supply to his lower body.
And the sounds he’d made when I fucked him with those lines of molten fire still blazing on his ass and thighs . . .
“Preening?” I couldn’t help asking with a smirk.
He peered up at me, still sleep-tousled and utterly delectable. He scrubbed a hand through his sandy-brown hair, which was flattened on one side and stood in wild clumps on the other.
I wanted to eat him with a spoon. And maybe some whipped cream.
He gave me a slow smile and twisted to admire my handiwork again. “Not preening. Just—”
“Anticipating how I’m going to make sure from here on out that you’re never without marks of some kind on your back?” I stepped close, pinning him between my body and the bathroom counter. My morning wood pressed against my stomach, and he gasped as the cold edge of the counter rubbed against his welts. His dick palpably decided it liked this state of affairs just fine. “Thinking of ways to thank me for giving you those marks?”
My lips found his ear, and my nails raked lightly down his back to reawaken the memory of pain from the whipping.
“Mmm, God, yes.” He practically purred.
I captured his mouth, and he grabbed me by the hips and jerked me closer, in no way passive this morning. He took control of the kiss, deepening it, seizing my hair to hold me still while he tried to suck the breath out of my lungs.
I was panting and flushed when he pulled away, and it was Geoff’s turn to smirk.
“Shower?” I drew him by the hands toward the glass and tile stall with its dual shower heads. He nodded eagerly, stepping inside and leaning against the wall while I adjusted the water temperature. When I turned back to him, he shoved me out of the stream against the opposite wall and dropped to his knees.
He hissed when the water hit his welts, but it didn’t stop him from licking the rivulets that trickled down my abdomen. “You said something about thanking you?”
I groaned. “Fuck, yeah.” I threaded my fingers through his damp hair as he ran his lips up and down the side of my cock, stroking me with his wet hand from root to tip before he sucked me into his mouth and all the way down his throat.
After that first lunge, he took his time with it, drawing it out as long as possible for me. I moaned and gasped appreciatively, thrusting into his mouth until I came down his throat.
Afterward he knelt there, catching his breath, as I stroked his hair and shoulders.
“You okay?” I smiled down at him.
“Never been better,” he answered with absolute sincerity in his eyes, and accepted my hand to help him to his feet.
All the caution in the world can’t guard against a random accident. I didn’t realize his knees were stiff from kneeling on the tile—maybe Geoff hadn’t either—but he wobbled and slipped. I grabbed for him, but my hands and his skin were wet, and in the end he hit the wall anyway.
It wasn’t a hard hit. It didn’t have to be. Horrified, I heard his skull knock against the tile with a solid thud. Dread settled on Geoff’s face, along with a sort of annoyed resignation.
“Ow. Fuck!” He rubbed his scalp, scowling.
“Are you all right?” I steadied him, running my hands uselessly over his body to assess him for injury. I reached for his head but then pulled back, not sure I should touch.
Shit. He hadn’t missed that quick withdrawal. His eyes narrowed, and he grabbed my hand, pressing it against his head where it had struck the tile.
“I won’t break,” he growled.
Shit.
“I know. I’m sorry. You are all right?”
“Yeah, probably.” He mustered a smile, trying a bit too hard to project a nonchalant attitude. “It’s probably not a big deal. We just need to be on the lookout for a brain bleed.”
“What do we need to watch for?”
“Um, headache, dizziness, nausea, blurred vision, irritability, disorientation, lethargy . . . The list goes on, but I think those are the major points. They can be slow bleeds, so it might not show up right away.” He tried for another smile, but it still looked forced. “Really, it’ll be fine. I’ll infuse once we’re out of the shower, and we’ll watch how things progress for the next day or two.”
“Let’s do that now.”
I knew he was taking this seriously when he didn’t argue. I turned off the water and hustled him into the bedroom, still dripping wet.
“Can you get us some towels and breakfast?” he asked, shivering as he gathered his factor and supplies.
“You don’t want me to—”
He shook his head emphatically. “Not this time. Just . . . let me do this myself. Don’t hover, don’t make a fuss, just get us some damn breakfast, okay? Will you do that?” Annoyance was creeping into his tone despite his obvious attempts to rein it in. “This is no one’s fault. It was a stupid fucking accident, and I really don’t want to let it fuck everything over.”
I nodded uncertainly and went for towels as he began to prepare a larger-than-usual dose of factor. “Enough to get my levels up near a hundred percent,” he explained without making me ask. I left him to it and ran downstairs in a pair of sweats to hunt up breakfast.
“Okay, should I read this as you being irrationally irritable, or are you just pissed off about something?” I demanded that evening, after the third or fourth time Geoff had snapped about something inconsequential in less than an hour.
He growled, folding his arms over his chest. Then he sighed and dropped them. “I don’t know. I guess I’m rational enough to admit that I really won’t be able to tell if I’m being irrational. I have a headache and my mood is shit, and maybe that’s a sign of a bleed. Or maybe my head just hurts because I bumped it against the motherfucking wall or because I’m stressed out. And I’m annoyed because this isn’t how I wanted to spend my day.”
I nodded soberly, studying his eyes to detect any changes in his pupils. But I kept my distance. He likely would have torn into me if I’d tried to be snuggly. Never mind that six hours ago we’d wanted to spend the day being snuggly. It was a bit of a quandary because we both knew I needed to monitor him, but he clearly wanted to be left the fuck alone. I wasn’t going to try his temper further by being oversolicitous, but neither was I going to let his ir
ritation push me so far away that I missed something I needed to be looking out for.
“This won’t affect how I see or treat you,” I murmured. I saw the doubt flicker in his eyes and knew that was at least some of what was worrying him. His jaw flexed, but he didn’t answer.
I let him mull that over for a while until I saw the slight twitching of his eye that said his head was hurting badly enough to make him wince.
“Do you want me to get you your pain medication?”
“What?” His head came up sharply, and he winced again and glowered.
“I said, do you want your pain meds? For the headache?”
“No.” His lips tightened, and he tried to walk that bit of pissiness back. “Can’t. Need to keep an eye on what the pain is doing.”
“All right.” I got a grip on my own irritation, reminding myself that this was hitting several buttons for him and he didn’t handle his illness gracefully on the best of occasions. “Okay, I’ll tell you what. I’m going to fix dinner and do some work in my office, and I’ll check back with you every once in a while.”
“Yeah, okay.” He frowned and blew out a breath. “I’m sorry I’m being such a bitch about this.”
“Thanks. It’s okay.” Wow. He really was trying.
I brought him a plate of stir fry that he hardly touched, and retreated without a word. Geoff stretched out on the sofa to channel surf idly.
When I emerged, he had dozed off. My first gentle attempt to wake him up didn’t accomplish anything, so I took the opportunity to call the number of the Hemophilia Treatment Center hotline without pissing him off again. Ten minutes later, I shook his shoulder and called his name. Geoff tried to bat me away, his brow furrowing as though his headache was worse.
“Come on, baby, up you go,” I urged, trying to help him sit.
He blinked at me with bleary eyes and tried to lie back down. “Lemme sleep.”
“Didn’t you say something about drowsiness being a symptom to look out for?” I won the battle to keep him upright. I don’t think he even realized he was groaning softly.
“It’s also a symptom of I-didn’t-get-enough-fucking-sleep.”
“Well, let’s at least get you upstairs to bed.”
“Anything to get you to shut the fuck up and let me sleep,” he muttered, but he allowed me to tug him to his feet, then promptly swayed against me.
I caught him, making an effort to keep my voice calm and even. “Okay, that’s it. I’m going to take you to the hospital in Holland.”
“Just call the HTC. They’ll tell you it’s all good. I put the number in your phone.”
“Yeah, I called them ten minutes ago when you wouldn’t wake up the first time. They said if I saw anything else that gave me concern, get you to the hospital. Better safe than sorry and all that. Now come on.”
I watched him struggle with that, part of him clearly wanting to tell me to fuck off. Luckily there seemed to still be a rational corner of his mind that suggested maybe getting checked out wasn’t such a bad idea.
Nodding and grumbling, he let me escort him to the car.
Geoff
After a CT scan, the hospital admitted me for observation overnight. By the time we were done in emergency and I had a room, visiting hours were already over, and they made Robin leave. He promised to return in the morning, and despite my earlier irritable mood, I was not happy to see him go. From the moment we entered the hospital, I had a bad feeling about the whole thing. The emergency nurse was professional, but I didn’t think I had imagined the way her mouth tightened when she saw Robin stroke my hand. It brought back to me the fact that, whatever the sexual minority demographics that made up the Saugatuck area, we were in ultrareligious, ultraconservative West Michigan. The politics in Saugatuck didn’t hold true for the rest of the county, much less the whole region.
With that single grimace from the nurse, the sense of safety that should have come with being in the hospital was gone. I would have felt better with Robin at my side, so that we could deal together with whatever bullshit they might try to give us.
For all my weariness earlier, that vague sense of alarm made it difficult for me to get to sleep once I was in my room. I dozed fitfully and woke up in the wee hours of the morning to hear a murmured conversation near my door.
“Did you see his back?” It was a woman speaking. A nurse? One had introduced herself to me when I was admitted, but I wasn’t familiar with her yet.
The woman she was speaking to—another nurse?—made a derisive sound. “He came in with a man. Who knows what those guys get up to?” I was sure only the fear of losing her job kept the woman from substituting “fags” for “guys.”
“No one deserves that sort of treatment, no matter who they are. I’m going to call a social worker and the police. That man he’s with has to be stopped before he kills him.”
Shit.
I spent the next several hours cursing myself for being so stupid. I’d been in such a lather for kinky thrills that I hadn’t even considered the potential consequences for Robin. I knew better. I knew parents and partners of hemos were sometimes suspected of abuse when people misinterpreted the bruises and bloody noses. It was one of the things we were warned about when beginning adult relationships.
I debated calling Robin to come get me and checking myself out of the hospital AMA before anyone had a chance to cause trouble for us, but the fact was I knew I needed to be there. If I had a brain bleed, it had to be monitored. If I left, I might save Robin legal difficulties, but only at the expense of my own safety.
By the time a woman arrived the next morning—her gentle, sympathetic bearing screaming crisis counselor—my headache was beginning to recede and dismay had been edged out by anger. When I refused to speak to her, she left.
I tried to call Robin. It went to his voice mail. I didn’t hear back from him within the next couple of hours, at which point a cop showed up to talk to me. Typical middle-aged, white, overweight, doughnut-eating cop. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes at the predictability of the whole dog and pony show.
“Look, man.” He settled into a chair by the bed with a world-weary sigh. Oh, yay. This was where he’d try to do the “straight talk” approach. “I get it. You’re used to people discriminating against you, not listening to what you have to say, not believing you. No one wants to think a guy can be the victim of abuse, and half the people around here probably think a gay guy deserves what he gets. But I’m not one of them. So why don’t you tell me about those bruises on your back?”
Well, hallelujah! My good buddy, Officer Straight-Able-Bodied-Privilege, was here to tell me he wouldn’t dismiss me. The day was saved.
I shrugged and offered him a somewhat vacant smile. “I gave myself those bruises.”
“I don’t care what he told you. You weren’t asking for it.”
“No, I mean I put those bruises on myself. Performance art. I’m an artist. Went to art school and everything. I’m working on this act that uses a whip, and I just keep hitting myself.” My smile got toothier, and I held out my hands in a helpless, What can you do? shrug.
His eyes narrowed. “You smash your own head into the wall too?”
“Slipped in the shower.” I fluttered my eyelashes. “Should’ve been more careful getting up after sucking my boyfriend’s dick.”
He flushed and looked away, squirming. I felt a savage stab of satisfaction at having discomfited him. It took him a moment to regain his composure enough to level that no-nonsense gaze at me again.
“You realize impeding a criminal investigation is a crime, right?”
I blinked, suddenly all wide-eyed innocence. “I know some performance art can be edgy, but criminal? Would it make a difference if I said it was for charity?”
“You wanna end up dead?” I could see his patient, tolerant, understanding act wearing thin. “I’m not your enemy here. I want to help you. Doesn’t matter to me who you screw. I just don’t want this guy killing you or anyone el
se. Next time you might not be so lucky.”
“Robin had nothing to do with it.” I didn’t have to feign sincerity. “I’m a hemophiliac. Accidents happen, and accidents are a little more dangerous for me than for your average guy. It’s no big deal. I know you mean well, but you’ve made the wrong assumption here, Officer.”
“Would it make a difference to you if I told you your boyfriend has done this before?” He pulled a notepad out of his inner jacket pocket. “I did some checking. Seems Mr. Brady’s last boyfriend filed a complaint against him for domestic abuse not long before Mr. Brady moved here from New York. He’d been beaten with a cane.”
I went still, a shiver rippling through me. “So he claimed. It was awfully convenient that the accusation happened to cast suspicion on the credibility of Robin’s testimony against him for embezzling.”
The cop’s eyes gleamed, and he pushed a business card into my hand. “You decide you’re tired of being his next victim, give me a call. Let’s just hope it’s not too late by then. Guy with your medical condition’s got to be careful.”
I remained mute, my eyes burning as I waited for him to leave. Then I grabbed the phone and dialed Robin, who thankfully answered this time.
“You okay?” he asked anxiously.
I nodded, even though I knew he couldn’t see it. “Yeah. They don’t think it’s serious enough to keep me here. They’re going to release me this afternoon, probably. I just need to be really conscientious about keeping my factor levels up until we’re sure, and not risk any more injuries for at least a few weeks.”
I could hear Robin digesting that. “All right. I’ll close the gallery early and come get you.”
“Okay.” I fell silent, trying to figure out how to bring up what had happened. Finally I went for broke. “Um, I got a visit from a guy from the Saugatuck-Douglas Police Department today.”
Robin’s sigh crackled through the speaker of the phone. “Me too. We can talk about it when I pick you up.”
I nodded, closing my eyes wearily. “Got it. I’ll see you this afternoon.”
Risk Aware Page 24