Mutual Release

by Liz Crowe

  God almighty, Evan, the guy just lost his mother, and his father threw him away like yesterday’s trash. Stop being such a prick. Have some sympathy.

  Damian dropped back into his seat and put his hand over his eyes. Evan was frozen in place, unsure of what to say or do.

  “Here.” Evan stumbled back, out of Olivia’s way, when she pressed a tissue into the other boy’s hand. He hadn’t even heard her come in; he’d been so busy trying to process how much he did not like the new family member within five minutes of meeting him, in a very alarming, visceral way.

  Damian looked up, his tear-streaked face still perfect, as if he were posing for a camera, having just been directed to “hold that emotion, then look relieved. That’s right, exactly like that.” The boy visibly gulped at the sight of Evan’s sister. But even more alarming to him was the way Olivia’s eyes lit up at the very attractive young man’s supposed breakdown. She pulled a leather ottoman right up next to him and took his hands between hers.

  Evan had a quick and disturbing image pass across his vision – Olivia sobbing her heart out at the feet of this… this… person his parents had brought into their lives. He licked his lips, fidgeted, glared at his mother and willed her to step between his sister and this boy. Wondering if he were the only one on the planet who instantly mistrusted Damian Slate, or the only one in the room who saw the obvious predatory shift in Damian’s gaze when he looked at Olivia.

  His heart pounded nearly deafening him. He took another step back, and watched Olivia drop right into the steely gray depths of Damian’s stare. His mother gazed at them, a goofy, hypnotized look on her face. He cleared his throat, hoping to break up the moment, and wishing he could order Damian back to England and far away from them all.

  Chapter Two

  Evan glanced up from his calculus book, irritated by the interruption. He was drowning in the damn subject but was determined to make it through with a decent grade. There was only a month left before seniors were dismissed from high school forever, and all that stood between Evan and a decent scholarship to Michigan State was to not fuck up this one class.

  Damian stood leaning in the doorway, his casual posture making Evan’s aggravation ramp up about a thousand fold. He had settled into his life as the token cute guy with the English accent amongst the seniors with ease – too much ease, as far as Evan was concerned. He’d even already gone out with the hottest girl in the school, and everyone knew what she did for all her boyfriends. Evan sighed, ran a hand through his still-wet hair, and tried not to be rude.

  “What’s up?” He watched the other boy saunter into his room and make himself comfortable on Evan’s bed. “Uh, I’m kind of busy, so…”

  “I’m bored,” Damian declared. “Let’s get the hell out of here, what d’ you say, mate?”

  “Go away, Damian,” Evan muttered, uncomfortable as always in the other boy’s close presence. “I’ve gotta study, and I have two soccer games this weekend.”

  “I know, I know.” He laid back on Evan’s pillow and tossed a soccer ball into the air over and over again. Evan returned to his homework, content to ignore the guy until he left. “But seriously, let’s get out of here.” The ball hit Evan’s hand making him jump and curse.

  “And where do you propose we go?” he asked, not caring. He did not want to be Damian’s friend, not on any level. There was enough stress in his life as it was. He worried about his sister’s mental health, now that the ballet school auditions were only two weeks away. The girl he’d finally taken out on a couple of real dates, and groped rather successfully on her couch after the second one, was making him a walking hard-on, and his soccer team was about to play for the state cup finals. He sighed and glared at the tall blond guy who’d invaded his life and manipulated his parents into thinking he was a sweet, innocent, well-meaning human being. Evan did not like anything about him, especially the way he’d stare at Olivia at the dinner table.

  “C’mon, just trust me.” He jumped up and sauntered out of the room, as if assuming Evan would follow him. Which he did, to his own chagrin. Damian stopped in Olivia’s doorway. “Let’s go, love. I talked him into it.”

  Evan frowned at the thin girl as she rushed out, eyes alight in a way he’d not seen in years as she followed the compelling boy-man down the stairs. He wanted to stop, to call her back upstairs, and to tell Damian to take his field trip or whatever the fuck it was and shove it up his British ass. But he didn’t. And would regret it for the rest of his life.

  “So,” Damian said, passing him a corner of the brownie, which he claimed contained “mind-blowing weed.” “This girl you’ve been seeing. She put out?”

  Evan chewed the foul-tasting morsel. “None of your business.”

  “I hear she does for every other guy.” Damian leaned back on the hood of Evan’s beater Volvo as they watched the sun go down on a late spring evening.

  “Just shut up, will ya?” He grabbed another bite, embarrassed to admit he’d barely made it to second base with the girl who claimed to be as inexperienced as he was.

  “I didn’t think so. You,” he jabbed Evan in the chest, his dark eyes narrowing, “should not take no for an answer. I hear she likes it rough. You know, like spanked and shit. You ever do that?”

  “No.” Evan refused to rise to Damian’s bait and admit he was, for all intents and purposes, still a virgin, and pretty certain inept blow jobs and random strokes from female hands gave him zero say in the sex department. But he was not about to listen to bullshit boasting.

  “Huh, you should try it sometime.” The boy lay back again, holding his hands out as if framing the clouds for a photo shoot. He stayed quiet, which helped ease Evan’s anxiety, until he saw Damian move his hand-frame down and catch Olivia between them. She was by a tree, doing some sort of ballet move, as always, and giggling like a crazy person. Evan felt his head spin, and the world got ever fuzzier as the pot made its slow way into his system. She lifted one leg up to the side, then behind her, leaning over to graze a bush with one hand over and over and over again. Evan heard Damian’s breathing, aware of his odd, overwhelming presence all over again.

  “If you tell me my sister is hot, so help me…,” he whispered.

  Damian kept staring at Olivia, staying silent in an eerie way, then turned suddenly, startling Evan out of his pot buzz. “Seriously, I’ve been fucking around with Janice, you know, the girl from the coffee shop? Yeah,” he went on, not even giving Evan time to process that he was talking about a woman who was twenty-five if she was a day, “and so she’s showing me just how much harder I get off when I… you know, smack her ass, tie her hands together, and tease her and stuff. Wild, I tell you. You should try it.”

  Evan attempted not to react. But images were shooting through his drug-addled brain and causing all sorts of embarrassing physical sensations. The concept of a woman on her knees in front of him, offering herself to him on every level, made a bolt of raw lust jolt him off the car hood. He paced, keeping well away from Damian, whose fault this was, thanks to his bragging crap. Evan understood himself fairly well, even for a teenager. He knew it was his lot in life to be that proverbial walking erection for a few years until he gained some control.

  But the dark, somewhat fuzzy image of Rachel – the girl he’d been groping after a year of chasing – wrists bound, dressed in nothing but a pair of high heels, lying back and letting him pleasure her until she came again and again, would not dissipate. He could even imagine himself reining in his own impulses, his own base need for release until the very last minute. The concept of that kind of mastery over his own body and the pure, unadulterated submission of a woman to his will made his cock so hard he grunted. Turning away, he stomped off through the field to get as far from Damian and his damn mind games as possible.

  By the time he’d walked, and even ran some, to clear his head and soften his body, he returned to find Olivia lying on the ground, still giggling, while Damian fed her small bites of the pot-laced brownie. A bright w
hite fury hit him behind his eyes, making him blink rapidly as he froze, dumbfounded, when the asshole rose up on an elbow and pressed his lips to Olivia’s mouth. His entire body chilled, then flamed hot as he watched the jerk who’d just told him he should “spank and shit” in order to get off touch Olivia’s face with a gentleness that seemed completely out of character.

  “Unacceptable.” He heard his voice coming from far away, cleared his clogged throat and said it again, louder. Olivia scrambled to her feet, blushing and not meeting his eyes. Damian merely lolled on his side in the grass, observing the two of them as if studying a science experiment. Evan grabbed Olivia’s ice-cold wrist and yanked her to his side. He didn’t get how Damian seemed so fucking nonchalant, while his sister’s breathing was ragged as she tugged out of his grip.

  “Let go of me.” She rubbed her hands along too-thin arms. “Jesus.” She stomped away, wrenched open the car door. Evan watched her, then turned in a weird, still dopey slow motion and glared at the blond boy who was rising to his feet, graceful, catlike. Bizarre sensations shot through Evan’s brain and body again. Those new images made him squeeze his eyes shut to will them away. Women, in various stages of bondage, nudity, and orgasmic bliss – women he’d never seen and certainly never touched, much less pleasured like he imagined himself doing right then – draped over his subconscious.

  “Let’s go,” he mumbled, turning away from Damian before he punched the jerk’s lights out. The pot was well out of his system, but the fury still boiled, and their ride home was silent.

  Chapter Three

  By the time his senior class had gutted out the last month of school and was ready to walk the aisle and receive diplomas, Evan was officially no longer a virgin. Efforts with Rachel had proven effective, if a little anti-climactic, so to speak. She’d actually not been that difficult to convince, and once they’d progressed from mutual oral sex she’d finally just laid back and let him do what he wanted. It had been short but sweet. The next time was marginally better, as were the following ones. But overall he felt sort of let down, as if the final act itself was not as good as the buildup. And that made him feel as lame as shit, confused, and completely pissed off at himself.

  He couldn’t put his finger on the issue, but the urge to take control, to give her what she wanted in exchange for her… what, exactly? Submission? Begging? He was tied in knots, and the graphic books Damian kept leaving in his room, tucked into his desk drawer, did not help in the slightest. He’d jacked off so much in the last four weeks, pondering those photos and the descriptions of Master and slave, of Dominant and submissive, he was raw. So when Rachel would lie back and just spread her legs for him, half the time he didn’t even want it.

  Again, lame as shit.

  He sighed and made his way to the dinner table, the one thing his parents insisted on – that everyone gather, eat, and pretend all was well every single night it could be managed. But Olivia dropped a bombshell on them within minutes, making their father choke on a bite of food, their mother clench her jaw in silence, while Evan sat gripping his fork so hard that when he finally let go the thing was bent.

  “I’m not going to New York,” she said, cool as a cucumber, keeping her eyes on her plate.

  “But, honey, you worked so hard…I mean, we… I thought… all those years,” Evan’s mother stuttered then looked away, biting her lip.

  Their father stared at her, got red-faced as if he were about to raise the roof, then looked over at the boy sitting to Olivia’s right, shrugged, and looked down. “Whatever you want. You got into Michigan, after all. Can’t sneeze at that. I’ve always said that you should have a backup to all this dance nonsense.”

  She beamed at her father and leaned ever so slightly against Damian who kept his eyes on Evan.

  Evan was speechless at first, unable to compute it, while his pulse raced and his head pounded with the realization of what she really meant. His parents had been supportive to the point of obsessed the minute his sister had shown real talent as a dancer. They’d paid for private lessons, training sessions, long camps in the summer designed for a single purpose: to land her an offer to dance in New York. Which had just happened, after a grueling round of local and then on-site auditions. It had been as if it were his mother’s pet project – the New York goal. One she pursued via her daughter until her natural tendency to drop things kicked in, leaving his sister to navigate the rest of her way alone.

  He and Olivia were used to it by now. Her obsessiveness combined with benign neglect was their norm and, while probably not ideal, all they knew. But Evan still could not square why she was so convinced Damian was a nice guy or in any way good for her own daughter. And now this? They were just okay – fine and dandy – with her sudden, radical shift of focus away from her career and onto this… boy? Was he the only fucking adult at this table?

  “Olivia,” he ground out finally, furious at the way she seemed to sink closer to Damian, and at that boy’s smug, satisfied look. “You’re crazy. You got in… to the damn school… you can’t throw it away because… because of him.” Evan pointed at Damian, who had the nerve, and the wherewithal, to look surprised.

  Evan’s mother put a hand on his arm, but he yanked it away. “Mom, he is manipulating her. Can’t you see that? He’s taking her away from the one thing she’s always wanted.”

  “Now, Evan,” his father said before shooting an annoying, patronizing look his way and a warm one to the blond boy sitting next to Olivia. “Olivia is capable of changing her mind; of making a more practical choice. Michigan is a great school, and she did herself proud by getting admitted, you know.”

  Evan’s face burned. He’d not gotten into Michigan but had earned a great academic scholarship to Michigan State. Which was completely subpar, according to his father. He stood up so fast the table rattled, watching as two glasses of water tipped in slow motion and emptied their contents over the wooden surface. Then got to observe that smarmy dickhead jump up and grab towels, pretending to be of use.

  Evan used the distraction to focus on his sister. “Olivia, you are making this choice for the wrong reason. Do you hear me?” Something was making his flesh crawl – a helpless, aggravated, utterly out-of-control sensation was the best way he could describe it.

  She sighed and tucked her knees up under her chin in that crazy flexible way she’d always had. “You’re overreacting, like Daddy said,” she said, voice low, not meeting his eyes. Everyone seemed fixated on Damian’s overdone efforts to clean up a simple water spill.

  A hard reality smacked Evan between the eyes at that moment. Damian Slate had seduced them all. His parents believed the guy was an honest, hardworking orphan, eager to help around the house and yard, and had become Olivia’s shiny first boyfriend in the process. But Evan knew better – had seen the guy half-ass every task he was given, many times convincing Olivia and even Evan himself to do the damn work, while taking the credit. How he’d done it, Evan had no idea. But he had, and Evan didn’t know how to change it.

  Maybe that’s what contributed to the mind-numbing fury deafening him at that moment. He had lost something, or better yet, Damian had taken from him the tenuous equilibrium with his busy, disinterested lawyer father and scattered, sometimes earnest mother. More important, he was stealing the sister Evan still felt bonded to on so many levels. She’d been drifting away from him for a few years now, dancing, hanging with her ballet friends, and getting thinner and more unreachable by the day. But now, this… person had dropped into their midst like a ticking time bomb, detonating all over Evan’s life. And his parents were content to watch and let it happen.

  “Fine.” He stomped upstairs, leaving them to their Damian-worship. Fuck them – all of them. He shocked himself some with that reaction. His entire almost-eighteen years had been spent as go-between and caretaker between his parents, and between his sister and his parents. He was the peacemaker, fixer of wrongs both real and imagined. But at this moment he let his inner selfish angry young man ta
ke over. He had sublimated so much frustration at his mother’s flightiness and his father’s distance over the years, all in the name of just keeping the peace. He was sick of it, sick of them.

  He had a job starting the week after graduation making very good money, and was out of here in August. Let Olivia ruin her life clinging to a guy who was a jerk at best, a sadistic manipulator at worst. His chest ached, knowing she was in so far over her head with the guy, and he had a responsibility – should work harder to convince her of her mistake. But he couldn’t. He had no energy left for it.

  After flopping down on his bed, trying to still his pounding head and heart, his fingertips grazed the edge of one of the more graphic books Damian had tucked under his pillow. He pulled it out, unable to stop. Glaring at the cover, at the woman bound, blindfolded, and on her knees, for about a second longer than he could stand it, he heaved the thing against the wall hard enough to put a satisfying dent in the drywall.

  He was positively climbing the walls lately. The edginess that should have worn off once he got laid – and with some regularity, like he’d managed to arrange with Rachel – still hovered. And that, if possible, was even making it worse. He needed more, but what it was, he could not identify. All he really knew was if he couldn’t figure it out soon, he would be in shit shape to face his freshman year of college.

  Evan stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, deciding to forgo shaving for the night’s “All-Senior All-Nighter” party the school threw on graduation night, ostensibly to keep them off the streets and sober. The class was locked into the high school which had been transformed into various fairly impressive rooms of fun, including a fake casino, a disco, a cruise ship with movies, and other stuff designed to make them forget they were a bunch of eighteen-year-olds locked in their high school for the night. It was a well-guarded secret that every year the kids figured out a way to get alcohol, and sometimes pot, into the place. There were a series of signals and goofy codes that sailed right past every adult chaperone, and by the time they were let loose the next morning, there were hangovers aplenty.