And if I’m not sure, should I even be doing this in the first place?
But then he reaches for me, stretching one hand out blindly, and he says Xander, and that one word brushes everything from my mind but taking care of him.
This is about control too, but it’s sweeter. He wants kisses from me. He wants to touch me. He wants me to let him come. I slide out of him and kneel on the floor between his thighs, bowing my head like I’m praying. Maybe that’s blasphemous, but it feels holy to me.
I suck his delicious cock and I murmur encouragement until he spurts hot in my mouth, and his whole body droops with relief.
I never realize how tense he is before an orgasm until just after it.
Ben looks up from the notebook.
“This is. Um.”
Xander bites his lip. “You asked,” he says, and he can hear how defensive he sounds.
“I was going to say, this is hot,” Ben says with a grin. “So take it down a notch.”
“Oh. So it’s—you’re okay with it? Even the…”
“The not-so-okay thoughts?” Ben shrugs. “People have them, Xander. Sometimes you seem to think everyone else is a perfect, selfless, giving human being, and that wanting stuff is a sign of a damaged person.”
Xander looks at him, not sure what to say.
“It’s not,” Ben adds. “FYI. We’re all pretty much assholes deep down.”
“We all have an id, like Freud said,” Xander suggests, and ignores the way Ben rolls his eyes. “Okay. Well, there you go. Now you know.”
“But you haven’t written much about your past,” Ben says, a pout in his tone if not on his lips. “This is mostly about us.”
It’s times like this that Xander feels his Shadow rearing up. Does everything about him have to be laid out for Benjamin Ballard’s perusal? Can he keep nothing to himself? But he thinks about his therapy, and about sharing even when he’s uncomfortable, and finds a compromise.
“It’s hard for me to talk about some of the things in my past,” he says to Ben. “I want to, though. I want you to know, so I’ll try again, sometime. But…maybe not right now, if that’s okay?”
Ben puts the notebook down immediately and comes to hug him. “Sorry,” he says. “I know it’s hard for you. I’m just interested. Like Elijah says all the time, you can tell me to fuck off if you like.”
Xander would like, but it would be counterproductive and mean, and actually, he can see how it might be helpful for the relationship as a whole to share the most difficult things, even if it’s tough for him.
He’s been working on his give and take with Paul lately.
But for now, he just enjoys the kissing Ben initiates, and settles for sucking a painful mark into Ben’s neck, just below the hemline of his shirt.
Mine.
There do seem to be rewards for sharing.
“Tell me about Adam?” Ben asks a few days later. He’s just come back from a studio meeting, and Xander figured his pensiveness was about whatever superhero problems superheroes have, but no. It’s an Adam-style pensiveness.
Xander, who’s been lounging on the sofa studying some new scripts that have come through, since he can’t be Jasper Crane for the rest of his damn life and no one will cast him in a play, stifles his sigh. Sighing has never been the most helpful response to Ben’s requests for information. “Baby, I’ve told you about him.”
“How did you meet him?” Ben persists. “Was he one of the guys hanging around the clubs?”
“Noooo,” Xander drawls out, trying to play for time. He really, really doesn’t want to talk about this. “You could tell me about all your previous lady-loves, perhaps?” he suggests.
But Benjamin is not in the mood for kidding around. “I don’t want to hear about what you did with him,” he says with a scowl. “I just want to know how you met. What went down between you. If he’s coming after us, I’d like to have a bit of context. I mean, is he—is he dangerous?”
“Of course not,” Xander says. “He’s just an opportunist. That’s all. An opportunist who bit off more than he could chew with me. I think he got in too deep before he realized what I—” He breaks off.
“What?” Ben demands.
“Before he realized exactly what I wanted from him,” Xander says at last. But what he’s thinking about is Benjamin, and fear.
Xander doesn’t like the idea that Benjamin, his Benjamin, might be afraid of Adam.
No. That will never do.
There’s no reason for Ben to be afraid, but Xander can see his point. Ben doesn’t know the history there; keeps getting sucker-punched by Xander’s past, in fact. With his new friends in the community, with the weird blind items…It’s not an unreasonable request that he’s making.
It’s just that Xander really, really hates reliving that whole thing, and his analyst Paul has made him relive it more than once. More than ten times, actually, over the course of Xander’s sessions. Every time Paul seems to be looking for something, or at least, waiting for Xander to see something, which Xander never does.
Maybe Benjamin will see it, like he did with the rubber band thing, and the Jung quote.
“It’s a long story,” he warns. “And spoilers: doesn’t end well.”
Ben tumbles over the back of the couch to land next to Xander in the way that always makes Xander roll his eyes and Noah give a startled huff.
“Tell me,” Ben says.
There’s a key piece of information that Xander has to give him at the start. “So I decided to quit the scene for a while after the breathplay incident,” he says, oh-so-casually, and thankfully, Ben just raises an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t interrupt. “And I was looking for a new place to live because my brother was getting on my nerves, kept telling me to get a real job if I wasn’t getting acting gigs.”
Ben grins like he can picture it. “Continue,” he says.
“Wait,” Xander says. “I’ll start on dinner while I tell you.” Ben follows him into the kitchen, where Xander takes out a chopping board and a knife. He needs to keep busy while he tells this story. “Okay, where was I?” he muses, while he begins slicing up a tomato. “Right. Joe wanted me out of his place. Then a friend of a friend told me he and his boyfriend were looking for a third housemate to help make rent.”
Chapter Seven
The house is dark and dingy, but just as Xander is deciding he’s going to turn it down, Raj leads him into the living room. Cross-legged on the couch, wearing linen draw-waist pants and no shirt, is a golden god. He has deeply tan skin, blond hair falling around a cat-like face, and wide-set sea-green eyes that appraise Xander without shame.
Xander tries to pull himself together. Dropping out of the scene has really taken a toll on his self-confidence, but at least there’s no chance of killing anyone anymore. But he’s uncertain about what are and are not normal behaviors in what he’s now calling the Real World. Coming across a guy like this blond in the dark, sexually-charged atmosphere of one of the clubs, or at a private party, it would be easy, even if his boyfriend were standing right there next to him like Raj is now.
Xander would just lean over him on the couch, watch his body language to see if the guy stiffened up or relaxed at a touch on the arm. No harm, no foul, if Xander had misunderstood anything, or if the boyfriend objected. My mistake, Xander could say. He’d come away with his pride and reputation intact.
This guy, though…For all that he’s bright and shining, a beacon of light in the shadowy room, Xander can’t read him at all. He’s rolling what seems to be a joint, licking slowly up the seam of the paper and sticking it down. He looks up at Xander, who can’t help staring at the tip of his tongue, still peeking out between his lips and still wet.
“You want one?” he asks Xander, who shakes his head.
“Thanks, but I have an audition later. They don’t look kindly on actors turning up baked.”
“It’s just a cigarette, dude.”
“Oh. Thanks, then.” He takes it, and watches t
he long fingers graze his own as the cigarette is exchanged.
“So you’re an actor?” the guy asks, reaching into a pouch of tobacco to roll a second cigarette. “Anything I might have seen?”
“Uh…I was a patient in Grey’s Anatomy last season?”
“Come on, man, we talked about this. No smoking inside,” Raj says, and looks at Xander. “He’s already corrupting you.”
“Sorry,” Xander says, but he’s distracted by the golden-haired boy’s conspiratorial smile.
“Don’t start laying down the house rules on him already, Raj. He’s just walked in. You might scare him off.” The blond licks his own rollie and smoothes the seam down, looking at Raj this time.
Raj drops his hands, which have been folded firmly across his chest. “Whatever. Open a window, at least.”
The guy uncrosses his legs, unwinds from the couch, and cracks a window. “Happy?” he asks Raj.
“Yes.”
“You know I live to make you happy, baby.” He brushes past Raj and comes up close to Xander, right into personal space territory, and Xander refuses to step back.
“I’m Adam.”
“I’m Xander.”
Adam raises an eyebrow and looks down until Xander follows his eyes. He’s holding a lighter, waiting.
“Thanks.” Xander’s current map to normal human relations is out of date. Centuries out of date, missing whole continents. He bends his head until Adam’s fingers are brushing against his cheek, and lights his cigarette from the small flame between them.
Adam doesn’t flinch away from the stream of smoke when Xander blows it out of his nose, and Xander thinks that must be a good sign. Adam turns away and walks a step to Raj, pulls him into a long, sloppy kiss, only moving away when Raj gives into it. He smiles right into Raj’s face and hugs him, but looks at Xander over his shoulder, blinking sleepily like a Siamese cat.
Xander mentally rips up his useless map and throws it away.
Here be dragons.
Xander does his best to avoid openly leering at Adam—both when they’re alone and when Raj is around—and tries to stay out late at least three times a week to give them some privacy. His brother Joe is getting tired of his company, though, especially since he was the one who wanted Xander to move out, and Xander is running out of places to hang out where he’s not likely to run into anyone he doesn’t want to right now.
After a few weeks, though, Xander is feeling antsy. Raj is out every day, working, which leaves Xander alone with Adam for a solid six to eight hours daily. Adam walks around in his underwear most of the day until he goes out to…well, do whatever it is he does, and gets over-friendly sometimes in the tiny bathroom when Xander is trying to brush his teeth or manage his eyebrow situation. Adam will squeeze into the room, look over Xander’s shoulder in the mirror, and smile at him.
“I need to shower, dude,” he’ll say. “I got a thing. You mind?”
Xander will turn to leave, but is always blocked by Adam already stripping and stepping into the shower.
“You can stay,” he’ll call from under the stream of water. So Xander stays, glancing at Adam’s sun-burnished body glistening in the shower and hating himself a little more each day for feeling tempted.
Xander has been trying to make his masturbation perfunctory, keeps it as clinical as possible so he won’t fall into the same fantasies he used to have so he can get better. Be better. But Adam is too much for him, so at first he tries to simplify. Vanilla-fy. He thinks about stepping into the shower with that glorious tanned body maybe, or finding Adam in the living room watching porn and ‘helping’—but it’s not enough.
His fantasy might start with Adam sucking his dick in the tiny shower cubicle, looking up at Xander with those luminous eyes, and it’s okay, Xander can imagine how his mouth might feel, but his cock stays half-hard until, in desperation, he thinks about tugging on the blond hair, watching the green eyes squeeze shut at the unexpected pain…
Every orgasm leaves him feeling bad about himself, because he’s fantasizing about someone else’s boyfriend, but even worse, he’s fantasizing about hurting someone else’s boyfriend.
Adam’s suddenly-needing-a-shower act happens with such regularity that Xander has to suspect Adam is doing it on purpose. Raj never says anything, but then he’s out every day until six, sometimes seven p.m. He’s quieter these days, two months into their new living situation. He watches Adam over the dinner table, sad and worried. They all end up eating together most nights, and Adam will either eat what Xander has cooked or what Raj has cooked, depending on his preference.
It only takes another week or so before Adam is choosing Xander’s cooking more often, and Raj grows more agitated. He’s more likely to snap about Xander not taking the garbage out or not doing the dishes, even when it was Adam’s turn.
As a result, Xander finds himself gravitating to Adam more naturally than he does to Raj. Adam is around during the day, when Xander is too, although he’s going to have to pick up some table-waiting shifts soon to supplement his bank account. Auditions seem to have dried up completely for the moment, and it’s easier to spend the day in Adam’s company than to give into the fear and panic that he can see waiting for him.
Besides, it’s so easy to spend time with Adam. He’s a relaxed presence, a flowing river through Xander’s turbulent emotional landscape. Being with Adam has a calming effect, as though life will always sort itself out, given time. One day, when they’re sitting in the back yard on folding chairs and trying to throw rocks into an empty can several yards away, Xander asks Adam what he does for a living. He’s been wondering for a while, and can’t seem to work it out.
“This and that,” Adam says. “Whatever comes up.”
“Don’t you worry?”
“About what?”
“About…the future? Succeeding at something? Making rent? I don’t know.”
“I never worry about money,” Adam says. “Money always turns up.”
“Turns up?” Xander grins. “What, like buried treasure?”
“Money isn’t something I’m concerned about,” Adam tells him. “I mean, as long as I have a roof over my head, and food daily, I’m doing better than, like, ninety per cent of the world, right? The Universe provides, man.”
It’s not a point of view that Xander has ever held himself, the notion that there’s some universal spirit that will provide for him. When he was a kid, the idea of a personally involved God who could be called upon for money, food, parking spaces, tended to frighten him more than it comforted. If God were really that closely concerned with what Alexander Romano was thinking and feeling and doing—then Alexander Romano was hell-bound for sure. The Saints and Angels weren’t much better, either. Xander had lived for years with the fear that Someone was always looking over his shoulder, or prying into his darkest desires.
Still. The one time he called on God to provide, God did come through. Xander made Him a promise, and Xander intends to keep that promise.
No more kink.
“I try to channel my thoughts into more positive things than making money,” Adam is saying.
“Behold the birds of the heaven. They sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them.”
Adam shoots him a look. “Dude. Are you religious?”
“Not really,” Xander says, uncomfortable now. “Just what you were saying, it reminded me of that verse.”
“That’s a relief. The guy before Raj, he tried to make me go to church with him and stuff. Not my scene.”
“You mean the guy who had my room before me?”
“Well, technically, Raj had your room before you. Hey, you want to stream something? Maybe that show you were in. We could watch it together. Raj doesn’t like many shows. He’s kind of boring that way. He only watches the news or documentaries.”
“What was he like, the guy who was here before me?” Xander asks on Sunday night, when he can’t take the tension over the dinner
table anymore. Any conversation would be better than the strained atmosphere.
Adam takes a huge bite out of the bread roll he’s eating with Xander’s split pea soup. He looks at Raj, who thins his mouth to a straight, tense line. Adam swallows, and says, “Tom? He was nice. He was here when I first moved in, him and Alex. They were together for a while, slept in the big bedroom. But then Alex left and it was just Tom and me, until we figured we needed someone else to make rent. So Raj moved in.”
Xander frowns at his soup, stirs it with his spoon and watches the steam rising up from it, dissipating in the air. “And then Tom left?”
“Uh huh.”
“Before or after you guys got together?”
Raj is glaring at his own plate of grilled chicken and vegetables. “Tom left after he found me and Adam in bed together. Okay? Need any more details?” He stares up at Xander. Adam is placidly re-buttering his roll, biting into it.
“Sorry,” Xander splutters. “I was just trying to make conversation.” He can feel himself going bright red.
“Yeah, so Tom left after that,” Adam continues casually. “It was just me and Raj for a long time. And now…you.” He smiles his lazy smile straight at Xander, licking butter off his lips.
Raj stands, grabs his untouched plate of food and throws it into the kitchen sink before stalking off to the bedroom. Xander and Adam look at each other as they hear the door slam.
“You’re different to Raj,” Adam says, as though nothing has happened. “You’re sort of twisted. Inside.”
“What? No, I’m not.” Adam’s eyes are bean green in the electric light over the dining table.
“Raj said you liked really kinky sex.”
Xander feels his mouth go dry, his tongue drawing up and sticking to the roof of his mouth like he’s ten days into the desert and out of water reserves. “When did he tell you that?”
“Before you moved in,” Adam says. He dunks his roll in the soup and eats, while Xander sits and watches, feeling sick in his stomach and a little dizzy.
Flying Free (Rough Love Book 8) Page 6