by Jo Raven
“What’s wrong?” he asks, propping an arm on the doorjamb, frowning at me. He’s pulled his pants back on, too, and he’s standing there, dripping sexy bad-boy attitude, looking none the worse for wear from our armchair sex wrestle.
Still.
“I fucking hurt you. Bruised you.” It comes out as a hiss. “And you didn’t even enjoy the sex. I fucked up.”
He sighs but meets my gaze dead on. “I wanted it.”
“The fuck you did. Stop lying to me.” I grab the hand towel and dry my face, then throw it on the sink. “You need the fucking money. I’d have given it to you anyway.”
His brows go up. “What?”
Fuck, is it a mistake, opening myself like this to him? Showing him how much I want him, the things I’d do for him. He could take advantage of my weakness for him.
I steel myself.
“Fuck this.” He bows his head. “Look… I really wanted it, okay? Sure, I need the money, not gonna lie. But I don’t… I don’t normally want it. The sex, I mean.”
I stare. Is he telling the truth? There’s a glitter to his eyes, that telltale flush in his cheekbones. “You didn’t even get fully hard.”
“Stop… trying to understand my mind. We’re not the same.” He looks up. “I told you, normally I don’t get it up at all. This, today, was… good.”
He seems to have trouble getting out the words. A good sign, one more sign he’s telling the truth, or something else?
I stare at him, and he turns his face into his arm for a moment, hiding it. He looks so vulnerable like this.
“I don’t get it,” I mutter.
“What?”
“If you don’t enjoy sex, why the piercings?”
He lifts his head off his arm, blinks at me as if he didn’t quite expect this question.
Good. If I catch him off guard again and again, maybe he won’t be able to hide anymore from me. I need to see the truth of him. The whole truth, good or bad.
He looks away again, avoiding my gaze, and shrugs. “Pain,” he says.
I process that. “You like pain?”
He huffs a laugh. Shoots me an amused glance and damn, it shouldn’t be so hot, and it shouldn’t get me hard right on the heels of the most intense orgasm of my life, but it does. Jason Vega laughing, smiling… it’s beautiful.
He’s beautiful.
“I didn’t say I like it,” he says softly. “But I can take it. I understand pain.” He shrugs again. “And it’s something. Gotta feel something, or else…”
A chill goes through me. “That’s fucked up.”
And of course I’m running my mouth without connection to my brain.
He blinks as if he’s just realized what he’s said, and what I replied. A scowl tightens his features. “Fuck you, Raine. Like you know anything about it.”
He turns around and goes, leaving the doorway empty.
Hell. I don’t move from the spot, trying to process everything. Because he seemed painfully honest, and what he’s saying is…
Pain. He’d rather feel pain than nothing. But he doesn’t like pain, he likes… pleasure, like that’s any fucking wonder. He’s used to pain, but that doesn’t mean he wants it.
And he said… that he gets off with me. Okay, not really, but… he likes it? He wanted me to fuck him, and shit, now I’m so hard I have to give my dick a squeeze to relieve some of the pressure.
Shit, what’s he doing to me? His words, the expressions on his face, the shadows in his eyes… I don’t know why they speak to me like that, straight to the heart, why they turn me on and twist me up inside. He’s so broken I don’t even know where to begin picking up the pieces. And I shouldn’t fucking care.
But the problem is, I do.
Too damn much.
I find him holding his jacket like he doesn’t know what it is. I pry it gently from his hands, and he lets me.
“Come sit with me.”
“I should be on my way.” But he doesn’t move to take his jacket back and leave.
It gives me hope. “I meant what I said about sleeping here. Did you know it’s a sofa-bed? I’ve never opened it, but it’s supposed to be comfortable.”
He scowls at it, then at me. “Raine—”
“I’ll put a sign on it. JASON’S. If it makes you feel more comfortable.”
“More—” He huffs another laugh, and it seems to catch him by surprise. The expression on his face is priceless. “No.”
“Okay.” God, I love these soft, huffed laughs that mean he’s forgotten to be defensive for a moment. “No sign. But it will be free for you every night. You can bring your stuff, wash your clothes, use the shower.”
“Why?”
“You like that word, don’t you?” My mouth is pulling into a smile without my permission. Just as well.
“Not really.” He glares at the sofa so hard I’m afraid he’ll set it on fire. “I just never get any answers.”
Here we go, that twisty, achy feeling returning to my chest. This guy will be the end of me. “The sofa is yours to sleep on for as long as you need it. As to why, it’s because…” I think again of all the things I’ve wanted to tell him, my apology, my insistence that he’s worth it. That I like him. “Because you shouldn’t have to ask why.”
I expect him to scoff, or snap at me for being vague, for evading his question like everyone else. But he just turns and stares at me with huge eyes.
I grab his hand, lead him to the sofa, and when I sit down and tug on his hand, he sits down with me. Still staring as if he’s looking for a different answer on my face. Another explanation.
But I think he understood what I meant, and didn’t run from it, and that, my friends, is the biggest win of all today.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jason
Tonight I’ve gone off the rails. Can’t stop my fucking mouth from running, saying things I’ve never told anyone. Feeling and wanting stuff I have no business wanting.
“You shouldn’t have to ask why.”
What does he mean? And why does it make me wanna smile even though I’m not sure what the fuck he’s saying? He might as well be speaking Chinese for all the sense he’s making.
And yet I know it was something good, something so fucking good I wish I could tell you what it was, but I can’t. The meaning of his words keeps moving out of reach, like the wisp of a dream, gone the moment you wake up, or a word that’s on the tip of your tongue.
Now we’re sitting on the sofa, and he has his arm around my bare shoulders, and it’s warm. His other hand is on my face. I’m drowsy, half-asleep.
Confused, like every time.
He smells so damn good. His fingers slide into my hair, and I groan at the pleasure sparking down my spine. What does he want from me?
What the hell does he want?
The TV is on. I’ve no idea what is playing. Not Shadowhunters. Some show with people wrestling with pigs, I kid you not. And I couldn’t care less. All my senses are focused on Raine’s fingers on my scalp and his body pressed to mine.
“Talk to me,” he whispers.
“Hm.” He massages the top of my head, and I groan into his neck. My arms slide around his hard middle, over his muscular back and toned stomach. “’Bout what?”
“Yourself. What do you like doing?”
I frown against his shoulder, realize my eyes have fallen shut. I open them. “You mean like… what? Like a hobby?”
“Yeah. I mean…” His fingers still, and I swallow a sigh of frustration. I need him not to stop. I need… “Do you get any free time?”
“Yeah.” I think desperately. Hobbies? Fuck. “I, uh. I watch food videos.”
Silence spreads, punctuated by the applause on TV when a pig sits on top of a guy, triumphant.
He’s looking at me, I realize, a brow arched. “Food videos?”
Right. I plod on. “Yeah so, these videos where people… chefs? cook. I like it. It’s soothing. And it’s food, so… and there’s also these mini food v
ideos. Where people cook food in tiny kitchens? With tiny forks and tiny pots and…”
I trail off. I’m not making any sense, probably, and my face heats up. Plus, he hasn’t resumed stroking my hair, so what am I sharing this for, huh? It’s all Mayleen’s fault for showing me those videos in the first place, on her phone.
Which reminds me, I need to find a new phone.
Shit.
“I like cooking series,” Raine says, and I blink stupidly.
“You do?” Fuck me. That’s like… actual normal conversation.
“Yeah. When I was a kid in that fucking trailer park, I swore that one day I’d have my own kitchen and I’d learn how to cook good food. It was one of those dreams, you know? I never told Ocean. He had too much responsibility on his shoulders already and felt bad enough for not always getting us enough food.”
Damn. Every time I get pissed off with him, I conveniently forget that he’s had a rough life, and I can’t lump him together with my other customers, or any other man in my life.
A dark past, and those brilliant blue eyes.
Guess I’m a sucker for both.
“What are your dreams?” he asks, and fuck, it’s hypnotic, those eyes, that low voice, and then I shiver when his fingertips trail down to the back of my neck.
“My…” A light stroke, and bolts of sensation shoot down to the base of my spine—and my dick.
Son of a bitch. Whoa.
“Your dreams,” Raine repeats, and I barely hear him, lost in the pleasure of his touch.
“I want…” Another light caress, and I grip him more tightly. “To break free. To get a normal job. Have my own room. Ah fuck…” His hand massages the back of my neck, and I swear, I feel it right in my balls. “My own bed.”
“What job would you do?”
“I dunno. Shit.” Even that thought doesn’t manage to break through the haze of pleasure and need. I press closer to him. I want that hand elsewhere, his mouth on my skin, his dick… inside me, and Jesus F. Christ, Jason, what in the actual fuck?
This is a fucking bad idea. Falling for this guy. Wanting him so badly.
Oh yeah, worst idea ever.
God, I want him now.
Letting go of Raine, I reach down, press the heel of my hand over my crotch, but of course my dick is still not all the way there. How can my mind and body be so out of synch?
“What do you need?” Raine’s hand slides from my neck to my shoulder, his other hand coming up to flick my nipple bar.
More shocks of pleasure.
I’m breathing hard. But I don’t know what I need. Nobody ever asked me that. I never thought about it.
“Like…” He tweaks my other nipple, then trails his hand down my stomach, fingers slipping into my pants just a little, grazing my pubic hair. “When you jack off. When you get hard, when you come… what’s on your mind? How do you do it?”
Thinking is not easy when all your blood is heading south. “When I’m in a safe place. A shower. A bed. I… imagine things.”
“What sort of things?”
“Just… men.” Damn, why is it so hard to talk about this? He’s stroking my stomach now, and even that is making my dick ache with need. It’s harder now, I can tell, from the pressure down below. I dunno why. Maybe it’s because I do feel safe, here, with him.
“You said men don’t get you hard.”
A particular guy does, though, at least in my hot, wet dreams.
I close my eyes.
“Let me touch you,” he says. “Pretend I’m one of those men you think about. Pretend I’m, I don’t know, a hot chef.”
I want to laugh. But I can’t, not when he’s unzipping my pants, and even though he fucked me not half an hour ago, the sound of my zipper going down is sending electric shocks through my system.
He wants to touch me. He’s gonna do it, and my whole body is one big exposed nerve. When he shoves my pants down and grips my semi-hard dick, I gasp.
“This okay?” he asks, and I nod frantically. What’s with this guy? If any john ever asked to touch my dick, I’d have run away—and not only because he’d discover I never got hard in the first place. But with Raine it’s all I want. All the time. For him to touch me everywhere.
He starts to squeeze and pump, and the pressure in my balls soars. He’s lifted his arm off my shoulders to turn fully and grip my dick better, and now his free hand is pushing me back against the cushions so that I’m sprawled there, legs spread, exposed and so hard.
Damn, I’m fully hard, my dick pointing up at my stomach, the piercing on the underside drawn taut, the silver bar pulling on the skin. The sting has me hissing as he strokes me, a good pain, only stoking the inferno.
Yeah, I’m burning up. I realize I’m gripping Raine’s arm with one hand, blunt nails digging in, gripping the back of the sofa with the other. The world has shrunk to my dick and balls and the urgent need to come.
I shift my hips as he lowers his head, and I think, fucking hell, he’s going down on me, and then fuck, fuck, no condom.
No. Fucking. Condom.
And that pretty much kills the buzz. “Stop. Stop, dammit!”
I push him away so hard he flails for a moment before getting a grip on the sofa. His jaw tightens and his brows pull together. “What the fuck was that about? You want me to stop, you only have to say.”
I glare at him, vaguely aware that my hard-on is deflating and that cold is setting into my sweaty flesh. “What were you thinking? I’m a rent boy. I could pass any goddamn disease to you. You never come near me without a fucking condom. Ever, Raine.”
He blinks. “Okay. Sure.” Which makes me start second-guessing myself. Was he gonna go down on me, or was that just wishful thinking on my part? Fuck. “Don’t you get tested?”
“I do. I was clean last time I checked, but man, you really willing to risk it?”
His grins. “Didn’t know you cared.”
And that really sets me off. “Fuck you. You don’t get to joke about that.”
“I wasn’t,” he mutters, and that makes it worse, whatever it is. He takes my hand, his eyes warm. “This job will suck out your soul. Let me help you get out. Let me—”
Yeah, I can’t deal with this. I yank my hand out of his grip. “Give it a rest, Raine.”
I shove to my feet, drag my pants up and cast about for the rest of my clothes. This isn’t on him. It’s on me. I let it go too far, again.
Ah, there’s my tank top, and my jacket. I lurch in their direction, unsteady on my feet. I’m shaking with anger, and shock, and something that feels too much like disappointment.
Or maybe it’s the weight of reality crashing back down on me.
“Yeah, run away again,” he says, his eyes flashing as I turn around, and he’s back to pissed. With me. “Pretend you don’t give a shit.”
I grit my teeth and drag on my tank top, then my jacket. “I don’t have to pretend. You getting a disease off me is not something I want on my conscience.”
“Keep telling yourself that’s all there is to it.”
I open my mouth to tell him that’s right, but for some reason I can’t.
I can’t lie to Raine. Why can’t I? Dammit!
He’s silent, too, as I force my trembling hands to zip up my jacket. I’m outta here. This has gone too far already. Time to put a stop to it.
But I still can’t force the words out of my mouth—would that mean they’re a lie? I don’t think telling him we should stop is a lie, dammit—and all the while I’m caught up in my inner debate, he approaches me, holding something out on the palm of his hand.
“Here you go,” he says, and I realize it’s a wad of bills.
I stare at the money. Jesus Fuck. I forgot I’m getting paid for this. That this was a job, and not a fun night out with a handsome guy.
Fuck, fuck! This is so not good.
I take the bills as if in a dream, watching my hand reach out, lift the money off his palm. My anger is gone. I avoid looking at his face as
I put the money in the pocket of my jacket, and nod—in thanks? Acknowledgment? Agreement?
Yeah, this evening was business. Nothing more.
I’m not falling for you, Raine Storm. Here’s proof.
But I’ve barely turned toward the door, when he steps around me, putting a hand out as if to stop me from leaving.
“How much for the whole night?” he asks brusquely. It’s as if the words hurt coming up his throat, and I’m so focused on that, and on the way his hands are curled into tight fists, that it takes me a moment to decipher what he said.
And then I do and no, this can’t be right. I didn’t hear him correctly. Right? “The whole night?”
“Yeah. If this is what it will take to keep you off the streets and those men. I know you need the money for Simon Gomez. You won’t tell me why, but that’s all right. Just tell me you want to sleep here.”
I force myself to look up at his face, see if he’s serious or if he’s shitting me. I’ll be honest. I’ve had all sorts of offers in my life on the streets, but I can’t remember any guy asking me this.
And he looks serious, his handsome face drawn in tight but earnest lines.
“You can’t afford it,” I make myself say, and the words taste of ashes in my mouth. “And I can’t afford not to get paid.” Especially since I won’t be receiving any money from Ocean and Jesse Lee anymore.