It was more nerve-wracking to pierce Steve than it had been to flog Randy, but it was ten times as powerful. The bliss Chenco felt reverberate through his lover as the sharp slid through his skin, the white-hot pleasure he knew his papi felt, the sensation he, Chenco, had given him—flogging didn’t come close, didn’t compare.
They went back and forth for hours, one needle, two, three into Steve, then as many or more into Chenco, until their bodies were pincushions. At first they laughed and nuzzled as they shared, but as the euphoria built between them, so did the passion, and soon Chenco felt himself start to go under, sliding into subspace, yearning for the familiar, safe place with his lover.
“Please,” he whispered, and bit at Steve’s shoulder, shuddering as he saw the needles decorating his papi.
Steve turned him around with the deliberation one handled a drunk, and Chenco went on his knees, presenting his flexing hole like a dog waiting to get humped. He didn’t get fucked though, not right away, taking more needles first, down his back, on his thighs, and four across each sides of his ass.
Steve’s hand scraped his balls, and Chenco whined in sweet, sharp terror. Yes. “Give it to me, Papi,” he all but growled.
He screamed when that needle went in—it was a cry of pain-pleasure like nothing he’d ever felt, leaving him raw inside and out. He spread his knees wider. He began to babble, not even begging anymore, simply speaking in tongues.
Steve stroked his hip. “Doing so good, baby. You’re so pretty, all full of my needles.”
And you’re wearing mine. Chenco began to cry.
He shivered as he felt Steve’s tongue along his crack, as it entered him, toying with him. He grunted and thrust into it, whining, whimpering. Steve’s hand brushed his thigh. His balls.
Chenco started to shake.
Fingers moved in his ass, and he began to grunt through his tears, and when Steve’s cock slid almost raw inside him, he burned and buzzed and flew.
He barely remembered coming down. The plug went in, and he squeezed it, drooling, moving his lips, trying to thank his papi, to reassure him he was glad for his gift, but he couldn’t keep himself upright, let alone speak coherently. He wanted to fall, but he couldn’t, not with the needles.
Steve pulled a needle out, and Chenco gasped in displeasure—then sobbed as Steve’s kiss sealed the wound.
He removed all the needles, kissing each inch of flesh as they departed, and there was a lot of flesh needing that kind of attention. A few times Steve stopped to give water, then continued on. Before he turned Chenco over to tend to his front, he slid antiseptic wipes all over the now-naked flesh, stopped to cover a bleeding wound with a bandage. Then he lay Chenco down on the towel and gave the same treatment to the front.
He took the needles from Chenco’s cock last, and when he was done cleaning up, when every needle was gone and safely tucked away, when every wound that needed covering was covered, when there was no blood left to wipe away, Steve drew him tenderly into his arms.
“I need to take care of you,” Chenco slurred, gesturing to the needles between them, all around them in Steve’s skin.
“In a minute. I want to wear you a little longer.” Steve kissed his brow. “I love you. I love you more than anything in the world, anything or anyone I ever thought I could love. Stay with me, please. Marry me, live with me—here, Texas, on the moon, wherever you want.”
Steve kissed him again, on his lips this time, a desperate kiss that made Chenco hum to the bottom of his soul.
“I love you more,” Chenco said when he was able, shutting his eyes as he floated happily on his bliss. “And yes. I’ll marry you whenever and wherever you like.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
WHEN STEVE AND Chenco returned home late that night, they found everyone still up and sitting in the kitchen, grim and sober. Crabtree was there too, and Steve knew where this was going before anyone told him.
“Gordy ran away from the party,” Randy said when the silence went on too long. “We tried to chase him down, but he got away.”
“I have reprimanded my staff for letting him go—twice now.” Crabtree’s voice was tight, as if each word were painful to get past his lips. “I am deeply sorry for my failure, and I assure you I’ll do everything I can to correct it.”
Steve nodded, not sure how to respond. In fact, he felt strangely numb about it all. He didn’t feel guilty, which seemed strange, but good. At least he thought it was good.
Tired, that’s what he was. Very, very tired.
When Chenco led him to bed, he didn’t fight. His soul was weary, but his body hummed with remembered pleasure, of the needles Chenco had given him, of those Chenco had taken. As they spooned together naked in their bed, his hand stole down to feel the butt of the plug his boy still wore for him, and the heaviness inside him eased. He fell at once into a deep, peaceful sleep, where his dreams were nothing more than floating on a soft, sweet cloud with Chenco snuggled sweetly in his arms.
He stayed there, happily ensconced, until the shouting started.
By the time he stumbled into sweatpants and headed into the hall, everyone else was awake and stumbling out too. When he tried to follow Randy and Mitch down the stairs, though, Chenco stopped him with a tug on his arm.
“Don’t.” Chenco stared over the railing toward the front door. “It’s him, and this isn’t going to be pretty.”
“The police are on their way,” Ethan said from the bottom of the stairs, a cordless phone in his hand. “So is Crabtree.”
“Stevie, come out here right fucking now, or I swear to God, I’ll kill myself.”
Bile rising in his throat, Steve gripped the railing and shut his eyes. “He will,” he bit off when Chenco’s arms went around his waist. “He’s not bluffing. He’ll do it. As soon as the police or Crabtree’s men get here, he will.”
“Then let him.”
Chenco’s words made the hair on Steve’s arms stand up. The grit in his lover’s tone, the complete and utter lack of mercy—it startled him, yes, but it made him shudder, not in fear, but in a bone-deep sense of relief.
Immediately, guilt washed that release away. “Chenco—” he began, but his lover cut him off with the same steel he’d faced Steve down with in the driveway the night before.
“If he’s that far gone, if he truly will go to that kind of length to manipulate you, then let him go.” When Steve’s knees began to buckle, Chenco pressed him to the wall and held him up by his shoulders, staring him squarely in the eye. “This isn’t your fault, Papi. This is all on him.”
“I can’t—”
Chenco kept tight hold of Steve. “You can. You must.”
“Stevie!” The anguish in Gordy’s tone tore at Steve, made him want to push Chenco aside and tear down the stairs, to go out the front door and make it stop. He didn’t though. He only clung to his lover, as if he could draw strength into his body through the contact.
“Hush.” Chenco pulled Steve’s head down on his shoulder. “It’s going to be all right.”
Steve sank into him. “How?”
“Whatever happens, it’s nothing you did. You’re going forward, not backward. The choices he makes are not your responsibility, and at the end of the day, no matter what we promise to be to one another, no matter how much we want to save the ones we love, we can only ever save ourselves.” Chenco kissed Steve’s hair. “Save yourself, Papi. Save yourself.”
Steve swallowed around the truth, willing it to go down, not choke the life out of him. “That’s hard.”
“Tough love, baby. It’s the most painful, wonderful kind there is.” He drew Steve closer. “Just let him go. Stay here with me, keep yourself safe. Let him go.”
Steve stared at Chenco, wanting to argue. But the steel he saw in his lover’s face wouldn’t allow him to say a word, didn’t give him space to run away. I see you, Chenco said without uttering a breath. I see you, Steve Vance. Your weakness and your strength.
I see you, beyond all your
walls, and I love you.
Steve exhaled a shuddering breath and buried himself into Chenco’s embrace.
As if he could hear and see Steve’s surrender, Gordy’s frustrated scream rent the air. “You fucker. You’re choosing him over me? A goddamned fence fairy?” There was a pause, and Gordy’s next shout was tearful, desperate. “Come on, Stevie. Come on. Don’t leave it like this. Come out, please, and talk to me. Don’t leave it like this.”
“Don’t you dare let him get to you.” Chenco held Steve so tight he could barely breathe.
Steve was going to be sick. His guts churned. He buried his face in Chenco’s shoulder, nipping at Chenco’s bare skin because he couldn’t take it, couldn’t bear this. He wasn’t strong enough for this.
“I’ve got you, Papi,” Chenco promised, his teeth grazing Steve’s ear. I’ll be strong enough for you.
“He’s going to do it,” Steve whispered, choking on the words. “He’s not making it up. He’ll do it.”
“I’ll hold you the whole time. I won’t let you go.” Chenco kissed Steve gently on the temple as another incoherent cry came up from the drive. “You cry all you want, boy. I can hold all your pain.”
Tears streaming down his cheeks, Steve clung to Chenco and waited, Gordy’s cries shaking him to his soul.
When the crack of a gunshot cut through the night, he jolted and the tears came faster, but he didn’t move, only kept holding on. The door opened, and Steve could hear others talking with the police—shaking, he didn’t look up, didn’t open his eyes, just kept holding to his rock, his solace, his only safe space in the world. In the distance someone spoke to him, but he didn’t listen, didn’t acknowledge anything but the beautiful thud-thud of Chenco’s heartbeat, the soft whooshes of his breath.
My boy. My Chenco. My Crescencio. My Caramela, my queen.
Steve clung to them all, to the man who was so young but so wise and so, so strong, the only one in the world who could have ever carried him past this dragon.
When Chenco brushed his lips to his ear and whispered, “He’s gone,” Steve wept.
Right there on the stairs, where anyone could see, he sobbed like a baby, bleeding out all the pain he had carried for so, so long. Every frame of the movie of his life with Gordy, the good and the bad, the sacred and terrible, the wonders and the mistakes—he lived them all, and he bled for the friend he had loved, who had chosen to go away. Steve let it all flow, every ugly, awful drop, gave every last bit of his sorrows over to his beloved, to Chenco. Because he’d said he could bear it.
Because Steve knew he could.
There at the top of the stairs, Steve Vance let go. To the man who had come to save him. To the love he had for Chenco. To the sorrow of what he hadn’t been strong enough to stop. To the hope they had, together, for the future. He let go and he listened as Chenco repeated, over and over, that this was not Steve’s fault.
He couldn’t believe in the words by themselves, but he could believe in Chenco. He could follow him anywhere, and he would, as long as his boy would allow him. Maybe Chenco only sometimes needed him, but Steve needed Chenco every minute of every hour of every single day.
As the last of his burdens fell away, as Chenco expertly scooped them up and insisted he could take even more, Steve followed the promise of hope, of happiness, of joy.
He followed his heart up the stairs as his lover enfolded him in his arms, Chenco’s strength bearing him up, carrying the pain.
With Chenco there to keep him safe, Steve let himself be loved.
Chapter Twenty-Six
IN SEPTEMBER, ON the day of his wedding, Chenco got an email from Booker.
He’d been fooling around on the internet while Randy did something with Chenco’s tie, and there it was, right in his inbox. Chenco almost didn’t open it because he didn’t want anything to spoil the day, but he clicked anyway. He was glad he did.
Booker, it turned out, had gone to L.A. He’d run away from Trist after a bad fight, hopped a bus and left, determined to get his own fresh start. Of course he’d ended up getting high and in trouble, and then he met a guy.
We’re not fucking, Book wrote, but he said this guy was super-solid, a total ace who’d kept him up all night talking on Malibu beach and the next day got him into rehab. The email, it turned out, was one of his steps. He said he understood if Chenco didn’t want to talk to him, but he wanted to apologize for what he had done wrong, and then he proceeded to list, in painful detail, all the ways he felt he’d let his friend down. It went on and on and on, and by the end Chenco was crying.
Randy got worried and tried to go get Steve, but Chenco waved impatiently at him and said stop, he was fine. Then he wiped his eyes, squared his shoulders, and wrote back to Booker, saying of course he forgave him. He said they needed to set up a Skype chat or something soon, whatever his clinic allowed, and then he wrote, OMG, I’m about to get married, bitch. Can you fucking believe it? When he finally sent the email, he felt whole, as if a jagged piece of his life had begun to move into place.
He bustled around with Randy and Sam, getting the house ready for the ceremony. Tonight he and Steve would go to their new home down the street, in the place Chenco had bought, or at least put a mortgage on with his first two checks from Ethan and a significant loan from Crabtree. It was a loan, though, he’d told the gangster. This was his castle, and he’d build every brick of it himself.
Crabtree had seemed very pleased with that declaration and told him to take his time paying him back.
Lincoln had come, and though he was staying at Herod’s, he was at the house today, helping Sam put up decorations. Only fifty people were coming, and half of them were already there helping, but Chenco loved the family feeling of it all.
Married. He was getting married.
To Steve. Today.
It wasn’t going to be a fancy ceremony, but it would be special. Ethan had gotten himself ordained so he could officiate, and Mitch and Randy and Sam stood up as their attendants. As they got ready to start, however, Chenco noticed his brother was a little twitchy, always looking at the front door instead of toward the patio, where the ceremony was all ready to go.
“What’s going on?” Chenco demanded at last.
“Nothing,” Mitch replied, obviously lying. He turned to Sam with a frown. “Will you…?”
Sam kissed him and hurried down the hallway. “I’ll put Crabtree on it.”
Chenco tried to press Mitch about what he was doing, but before he got anywhere, Steve found him and told him they needed to go get ready.
“He’s up to something,” Chenco said as they fussed with each other’s ties.
“Yes, I think he is,” Steve said calmly. “Let him. He’s your brother, and he wants to do something special for your wedding day.”
That was obvious, except something about the whole scenario had Chenco’s belly full of butterflies. When he came down the stairs to get ready for the processional, he glanced out at the lawn, saw who was sitting in the front row on his side, and he fell against Steve, stunned out of his ability to stand.
“Mama.” His throat became horribly thick. “Is—is—?”
“Yes, Carmelita is here.” Steve rubbed Chenco’s back reassuringly, speaking in gentle tones. “Mitch’s last run wasn’t to Los Angeles, it was to the valley, and he made a stop in Edinburg. Part of his cargo was a DVD of your performances.” He nuzzled Chenco’s temple with a chuckle. “I wish I could have seen it. He has to look just like Cooper did when she met him.”
Chenco couldn’t stop staring at the front row, at the familiar, beautiful head of dark hair, now streaked with gray.
She came. For me.
Chenco’s gaze moved from his mother to his brother, who gazed at him with such pride he seemed in danger of exploding with it.
Mama. Here at my wedding. Mitch brought my mama to me. Chenco’s fingers dug into Steve’s arm. Had she forgiven him? Was she truly okay with this, with his getting married to a man, performing in drag in Las
Vegas? Could this be real?
“I’m going to bawl like a baby.”
“That’s fine.” Steve squeezed him close. “Just not yet. Pull yourself together, honey. We’re going to go get married.”
They did. He walked up the aisle with Steve and stood before Ethan, signing a whole new contract, one that would go in his cedar box, with the now-outdated BDSM agreement and the letters from his mother.
The letters from Carmelita, who was here, watching him get married.
When he’d come down the aisle, Chenco had lingered at his mother, unsure if he should hug her, thank her, or what. He couldn’t believe everything was completely okay between them just because Mitch had convinced her to come. Yes, there was work to do between them, he could see this, but when he smiled at her, she smiled back—slightly tentative, but it was a smile.
The biggest challenge came after the ceremony. Chenco’s surprise for everyone was performing his new number, the one he’d cancelled in June when he’d told the L.A. agent he was grateful for the chance to meet her, but his partner was going through a difficult time, and he’d need to either pass or reschedule. He was due to fly down to Los Angeles later in the month for the rescheduled performance. Chenco still wasn’t sure he wanted anything more than what he had, a nice house, a husband, and a regular gig on the Vegas stage.
But as Ethan often said, it certainly couldn’t hurt to see how far he could fly.
Performing was fine, except now his mother was here. Chenco wasn’t ashamed, and in fact if anything he was sorry he’d elected to give the performance not in drag—he wanted her to see the whole thing, the real deal. He was nervous, though, in a way he hadn’t been on any stage. Not once had his mother seen him dance and done anything but tell him he had to stop.
You won’t stop me, Mama. Not today. Not ever.
Gathering his courage and taking strength from his husband in the front row, Chenco motioned to Randy to start the music, assumed his place on the stage Mitch had arranged at the end of the lawn and let his queen fly without a single sequin to hold her up.
Tough Love Page 31