Getting It Twisted (Unforgivable Needs #1)

9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Nathan

I was right.

Daniel knows exactly how to fuck me the way I want. He knows how to give me the sick thrill of pain I need to come, knows how to drive his cock into me until I feel like I’ll ignite with the sheer intensity of it.

I can’t believe my luck. I’m so giddy I don’t even care when he blue-balls me in the laundry room by telling me we have to care for Jessie, which I suppose is fair enough.

After dinner, I walk down the corridor to check out his old room. The door creaks in the same way I remember, but other than that, the place is unrecognizable.

The walls are bare, the sketches, posters, and drawings all gone. His furniture is replaced by rehab equipment. Even the smell is all wrong and different. Still, it doesn’t take much to remember the countless hours we spent here as kids.

The hot summers we stayed up all night, talking and playing video games. Smoking out the window. Skipping school. Evading his parents’ notice.

“Taking a trip down memory lane?”

I turn around. Daniel is leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, a smile playing on his full lips. Holy shit he’s attractive.

“You remember the night I showed up here with my face all screwed up?” I ask.

“I remember,” he says quietly.

I don’t have to explain how my mom socked me in the head with a broken bottle. I don’t have to tell him how she yelled at me to never come back. I don’t have to tell him how fast I pedaled my bike while blood stung my eyes, or how relieved I was to see him when he opened the window.

He already knows.

Nothing in my youth was ever easy. Except for Daniel.

My safe zone. My haven. The only port in my crazy storm of a life.

When I look at him now, it all comes rushing back. My throat thickens. My face burns with heat. It’s horniness, it has to be, but there’s something else there too: a tenderness I ache for but do not deserve.

The people I fuck are not my friends. They’re not my safe zones. And that mind-bending dichotomy is exactly what drove me to near madness all those years ago.

At that game of spin the bottle in senior year, I kissed him because I wanted proof he wanted me. But as soon as I got it, well . . . It just complicated matters even more. As soon as his eyes turned heated whenever he saw me, my fucked-up brain spewed up feelings of hate in return, and what happened at the grad party made it even more obvious.

The people I fuck and the people I like can’t be one and the same. The people I fuck are usually nameless, dumb assholes I don’t give a fuck about beyond what pleasure and pain they can bring me for the night. Now Daniel wants me to lay off the anonymous fucks and have sex with only him? A week ago, I’d call bullshit if you told me I’d ever agree to something like that, but with a tongue in my mouth and a crotch pressed against mine, I’ll agree to just about anything. Stupid.

Gillian Hasting’s shrill voice cuts into my thoughts.

“Jessie! Where are you, darling?”

Daniel sends me an urgent look of don’t fuck this up before he hurries down the corridor. I follow him, hands in my pockets.

“Did you leave her unattended?” Gillian kneels in front of her daughter, sending Daniel an accusatory glare.

“She’s just watching TV, Mom.”

Her gaze cuts up to me, her blue eyes so cold they send a chill down my spine. “Daniel,” she says, voice stern. “That boy is not welcome here.”

That boy. She says it the same way George says my name: as if it’s poison they’re spitting from their tongues.

Daniel motions to Jessie. “He’s good with her. You should’ve seen how she lit up when she saw him.”

“I don’t care,” Gillian snaps. “Jessie deserves better than to spend even a second with a criminal under her roof. If I find anything missing or broken, I’ll know who to blame.”

“Oh, come on!” His voice grows louder, more high-pitched, a childish tone peeking through. “Mom, don’t be like this.”

“It’s cool,” I say. “I’ll leave.”

“I’m driving you,” says Daniel.

Jessie stretches her arms out to me. “No! Nathan, stay.”

Under Gillian’s watchful, icy blue gaze, I walk up to Jessie and ruffle her hair. “It’s okay, little Jess. I’ll catch up with you later.”

Once we’ve packed ourselves into his car, Daniel clenches his hands around the steering wheel. “Sorry about that.”

I shrug. “Whatever.”

“No, it’s not whatever. She shouldn’t treat you like that.”

“I’m used to it.” I send him a tired smile. “You’re the only one who can stand me.”

“That’s . . . not true.”

“I sure don’t know of anyone else who can.” My tone is light, but something burns at the back of my throat as I say it.

“Jessie likes you.”

“Jessie likes everyone.”

“Not everyone.”

I don’t have to ask; he’ll spill it anyway if I’m quiet for long enough.

“My uncle,” he mutters. “She doesn’t like my uncle.”

I grin and cross my arms, leaning back in the seat. “Who does?”

We spend the rest of the ride in silence. Dark patches of trees and a dreary, cloud-covered sky greet us at Wayward Road, and as the car rolls to a stop, Daniel turns to me.

“I have work in the morning. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Try to stay out of trouble until then.”

A sick, nervous feeling surges up in my chest. Part of me wants to kiss him. Part of me doesn’t want him to leave at all. But when I glance over, his gaze is too guarded, his mouth a tense line.

I get out and watch him drive away. My hands clench in my pockets, and as the nervousness recedes, a great emptiness replaces it.

Why? I’ve got everything all sorted out. Daniel promised he’ll come here and rail the shit out of me at my convenience. Only . . . I don’t think that’s all he wants.

He wants what lonely people trap themselves into so they can get a consistent fuck.

He wants a relationship.

A boyfriend.

Love.

Pleasure is easy to understand and easy to forget about. I know how to take a man to heaven in three minutes flat. But this? I haven’t got a clue.

I’m fucked. Completely and utterly fucked, in all the wrong ways.

The sky reaches above me, black and moonless. Smoke and pollution from the nearby factories drift over these lands. Perhaps that’s what poisons the minds of the people out here. Perhaps that’s why my mother was such a crazy bitch. Perhaps that’s why I am the way I am.

I exhale a cloud of smoke and lean back on the patio bench. The effects of the weed tingle into my fingertips and make me feel light and heavy at the same time. Dizzy. Weightless.

It’s eight in the evening the next day. Daniel told me he’d come after work, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Maybe George has finally convinced him of what a bad seed I am.

Ennis’s dog barks in the distance. The sound echoes in my ears and seems to go on forever. I lean back and let it take over my mind for a while, annoying as it is. It’s better than what’s moving in there on its own.

Sometime later, Jagger barks again, closer than before. Back when my mom was around and that dog came within ten yards of our house, she used to yell and wave her off. Once, she’d riled the dog up so bad Ennis had to come hobbling to calm both of them down.

Theresa tended to make even the kindest, most docile creatures lose their minds. And I’m not kind; I’m rotten, so the effect she had on me is no surprise.

She gave me life, but she damn near killed me.

“Jagger! Come here, girl!” Ennis yells in the distance.

I stand from the chair, flick the joint to the floor, and snuff it out with my boot. Jagger emerges from the darkness and runs up to me, tail wagging.

I kneel to run my hands over her coarse fur. She smells the way wet, unwashed dogs tend to smell, but I don’t mind. She licks my hand, my fingers, and my face when she can reach it.

Ennis hobbles over the yard with his walking stick. His cloudy gray eyes peer at me from the darkness. “You still here, boy?”

“Guess so.”

“Jagger doesn’t like you being here.”

“She seems to like me just fine.”

“I don’t mean she doesn’t like you. She doesn’t like you being here is all. And I don’t either.”

“Well, where else would I be?” I mutter, taking refuge in Jagger’s warm, soft fur and encouraging whines. She sits on the porch while I ruffle her sides with both hands.

“Young boy like you, surely you’ve got places to go and people who care about you. You don’t want to become like me, an old man who no one gives the time of day.”

I roll my eyes. Will this geezer give me the same tired old spiel as Daniel?

“It’s not good for you to stay here, kid.”

There it is.

“I know.” The words settle like a heavy weight in my gut. “I know it’s not.”

“So why’re you still here?”

“Didn’t you say you don’t stick your nose into other people’s business?”

Ennis smiles with a broken mouth—half his teeth missing and the rest crooked stumps. “I’m just trying to look out for you, boy. I didn’t do it before. But your mama’s dead now, and this place is of no use to you.” He looks above me, gaze roaming over the house, and a frown creases his wrinkled forehead.

For a moment, his eyes widen, and his face twists into an expression of horror. I look to where he’s looking, but there’s nothing there. Nothing but an old house with old, dark memories.

He clacks his walking stick into the mud and shudders. “What went on out here was the devil’s work.”

A cold feeling settles in my gut, and images threaten to flood my brain. I clench my teeth, refusing to let them come.

Damn this old man. I need Daniel. Where the fuck is he?

“If it was so bad and all,” I say, “why didn’t you do anything?”

“Like I said, I don’t stick my nose into other people’s business.” Ennis points with his stick at the dog. “Now, Jagger here is a good girl. She’s mellow as an old horse. But as soon as we get within a hundred yards of this place, she always goes mad, whining and barking her head off.”

I rub Jagger under the ears and stroke her silky-smooth forehead. She looks up at me, and those large brown eyes feel like they’re staring into my soul. She starts whining again, as if she doesn’t like what she’s seeing.

“Listen to me, boy,” Ennis grumbles. “There’s no use dwelling in what’s dark and what’s evil. What’s done has been done. All you can do is move on and seek greener pastures.”

I shake my head. “There are no greener pastures, old man.”

I’ve tried to find them. I’ve tried everything in my power to feel better, to be better. But still, there is that darkness. Still, there is that fear. From what haunts me there is no escape, and what’s twisted in me cannot be unraveled.

I might as well deteriorate out here, in the place that made me this way. If it gets too much, I can always take my grandpa’s sawed-off shotgun and put an end to it. If everything goes to shit—like things tend to where I’m involved—I have my way out. My exit plan.

Further down the yard, a car enters the driveway, and my chest deflates with a tingling rush of relief. Finally.

Daniel walks toward us. Ennis greets him with a nod and gestures in my direction.

“You keep an eye on this one, boy. And you,” he says, addressing me again. “Remember what I told you.” At that, he purses his lips and gives a sharp, shrill whistle. Jagger bolts to his side, and they both disappear into a dark swatch of trees.

“What was that about?” Daniel asks.

I grip his hand and start pulling him toward the house. “What took you so long?”

“Sorry, work needed me on overtime. I texted you, but I guess you didn’t check.”

“Phone’s inside,” I say, distracted by the pulsing beat of my own heart. “Come on.” As we step up the porch, the door seems to tilt in front of my eyes, and a wave of anxious energy surges through me.

“Here.” Daniel hands me something wrapped in wax paper. “From Sidney’s.”

“Right,” I say without making a move to take it. There’s a more pressing issue at hand: a dark and vicious thing, bubbling up from places better left alone. It tightens my throat, blurs my vision, and sends images flashing through my mind.

I don’t think about that stuff. The old shit. From before. My mother, my childhood. Nothing more than surface-level anyway—memories that don’t sting as sharp or as vivid. But Ennis knocked on the firmly shut door within me, and now clawing fingers are trying to pry it open. I need something to shut it again. I need to narrow my reality down to one pinpoint-sharp focus.

As soon as we’re both inside, I pounce, slam Daniel into the door and kiss him hard and full on the mouth. Clutching his shoulders, I press our bodies close and lick along his lower lip, tasting the salt and grease from Sidney’s fries.

“What about the burger?” he asks, voice muffled between our lips.

“You can feed me later.”

I want him. I want him now. Darkness presses in on me, but I know just the thing to repel it. It always works, never fails to give me what I need.

Daniel gets his hands on my shoulders, pushing me gently back. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you think?” I kiss him again and press my palm to his crotch. “I’ve wanted this all day. You took forever. Come on.” I take his hand again and lead him toward my mother’s bedroom, but at the last second, I change my mind and steer us into my old boy’s room instead.

“Here? But—”

“Shut up.”

I push him onto the narrow twin bed and unzip his pants. When I get his cock into my mouth, his hesitation dissolves, and before long, I have him groaning and grabbing at my hair.

I tear my shirt off. He gets rid of his own clothes, and soon enough we’re naked, with him crowding me up on the bed, kissing me.

“Turn around,” he says, voice husky with arousal.

I roll onto my stomach. Yeah, go ahead. Fuck me the way you did before . . . Use me as your hole, rip me apart, wreck me. Cover me in cum and spit in my face. Hurt me, hurt me . . .

But what I feel instead is his kisses on my neck. Slow and unhurried, he makes his way down my spine, and I shudder with the pleasure-pain of him kneading the sore skin of my ass. He parts my cheeks, opening a path for his tongue to slide over my hole.

I can’t help but squirm. People rarely do this to me, and for some reason, I have a hard time relaxing when they do. I twist my neck up, and my eyes fixate on a scratch on the windowsill. A memory resurfaces—voices this time. Voices, and loud music. The crack of a beer can. Laughter. A breath hissing by my ear . . .

“Relax,” Daniel says, bringing me back to the present. “I want to open you up.”

I bury my face into the pillow, shut my eyes, and give a muffled, “Okay.”

He grabs onto my hips and tilts my ass into the air until I’m halfway on my knees. He groans as he buries his face between my cheeks, licking into me. Bit by bit, he coaxes me open. His thumbs pry my cheeks apart as he pushes the tip of his tongue past my tight rim.

“Wow,” I gasp, “that feels . . . so fucking good.” I rock my hips and try to lose myself in the warm, wet swirl of his tongue. Something blunt presses into me—his finger, thrusting in and out while his tongue moves alongside it, maddeningly slow. I whine and rock my hips back and forth, trying to get more friction, more pleasure, more pain, more, more, more.

He pulls back and snaps open a bottle of lube. The cold drizzle into my crack makes me shiver with anticipation, and with a deep, dark hunger I can’t make sense of.

“Do it,” I grit out, pushing my ass into the air, baring myself to him. “Daniel, please.”

“Turn around.”

I turn around and reach for him. “Do it.” My brain runs in two lanes, split apart by conflicting chants: fuck me, fuck me, fuck me , and hurt me, hurt me, hurt me . Just when it’s getting too intense to bear, Daniel sheathes his cock with a condom, hikes my knees over his shoulders, and presses inside.

“Oh fuck —” I choke on my next breath, and it turns into a sob.

“Feels good?”

“Yeah. More.”

He bends over, bracing his hands on either side of me. His face is tight with concentration, as if he’s not doing this for his own pleasure as much as he does it for mine.

The thought makes me frown, but the next thrust wipes away my annoyance. Never mind. I don’t care. I rock my hips, desperate to impale myself on his thick perfect cock.

Yes. This is what I need, this is what I need . . .

But it’s not enough. I need more.

I grasp his wrist and press his hand to my throat. He keeps it there without increasing the pressure.

“Hold me.” It comes out more of a plea than an order.

Daniel tightens his hand, fingers closing around the tendons of my throat.

I grab his arm by the elbow. “Do it really fucking hard. And don’t stop.”

He frowns. “You want me to hurt you?”

“Yeah.” Pathetic tears well up in my eyes from how worried he sounds. How disturbed he sounds. “Please.”

He withdraws the hand. Panicked, I grab his forearm, trying to put it back.

“Why?” His eyes are narrow and questioning as they flit from my face to my throat.

“Don’t you want to put me in my place? Punish me? You hate me, right?” It takes all I have in me to keep my voice steady and emotionless. “You hate me for leaving. You told me so.”

He stops moving entirely, and his hand goes soft and slack. “What’s going on? What happened outside, with that man?”

“Daniel, please.” I squeeze my hand around his arm. “It’s the only thing that makes me feel right.”

“You feel right when you’re hurting?”

“Maybe. You think it’s too fucked up?” My mouth twists, and something like real fear slips through the cracks of my voice. “I’m too damaged for you? Not hot anymore?”

He shakes his head. “No, that’s not it. I’m just trying to understand you.”

The warm reassurance in his voice frustrates me to no end. I don’t usually have to convince guys to hurt me. If they don’t do it of their own volition, they’re quick and eager to obey. No one has ever refused.

Except for Daniel. Fuck! Why does it always have to be him?

“Well, I don’t know what to say,” I mutter. “You’re gonna have to fuck this out of me, I guess.” But the dust has settled, and in its wake we’re both soft.

Daniel gazes into my eyes with intent, as if he’s trying to decipher some kind of code, but it’s a code that can’t be solved; I don’t understand it myself.

“If you’re not gonna fuck me, get off me, then.” Because if he won’t let me escape, what good is he to me?

I hurl myself upward, but Daniel grabs my wrists and pins them to the bed.

“I told you to relax. I want to make this good for you.”

“You already know what would make it good for me.” Scowling, I buck my hips in another half-hearted attempt to get him off me.

Sweaty strands of hair dance around his face as he shakes his head. “I won’t be like them . The other men you’ve slept with.”

“Why?” My mouth twists into a dirty smile. “They give me what I want, and I don’t even have to ask.”

“This is not what you want.”

As if he knows anything about it. Fuck! My eyes are burning again.

“You’re right; I don’t want this. Now get the fuck off me.” I buck again, but Daniel holds me down, his weight pinning me in place. It’s not aggressive; it’s more like he’s trying to relax the anxious beat of my heart by molding his body against mine like a weighted blanket.

But nothing can relax me. Nothing can get this awful feeling out of my chest, except the one thing Daniel refuses to give me.

He runs his hands along my sides, slow and soothing. I let out a sigh and tilt my head back.

The moon shines in from the window, painting Daniel’s strong jaw and broad shoulders in soft blue light. Those biceps of his, those hands that could bring me so much pleasure if he’d only give it to me . . .

Time slips away. The pressure of his body weighs me down, deep into the mattress, and my tight muscles unwind, leaving me utterly exhausted. But it’s a good kind of exhaustion, like the feeling when you’re so insanely baked you can’t tell one thought from the next. I feel floaty and strange as I buck my hips upward with a whine.

“That’s better,” Daniel whispers.

He eases up on me, and I stay put as he makes his way down. His mouth closes around my left nipple, worrying the nub with his tongue. He licks my stomach, the trail of hair by my belly button. He kisses the insides of my thighs, runs his hand up my leg. Presses his lips to the arch of my foot.

It’s too tender, too . . . loving. Worlds apart from my one-night stands with men who’d hold me down and plow my ass until I screamed.

One sadistic, unhinged fucker handcuffed me to his bed out of nowhere midfuck. There I was, chained to a stranger’s bed in an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night. He fed me poppers, rubbed coke into my gums, and proceeded to press all sorts of toys inside me until I felt stretched and sore and gaping.

The flogging came next. My muffled screams only egged him on further. Then, interchanged with lines of coke, he fucked me for what felt like hours.

Through it all, I didn’t feel a lick of fear.

I’m scared now though. This is a whole other type of danger—one I’m not equipped to handle or understand. One that threatens to blow open my carefully barricaded doors, beyond which there is nothing but terror.

Daniel runs his tongue up the length of my cock, flattening it against my stomach carefully and slowly. When I start squirming, he holds my hips down, keeping me in place.

Through it all, my eyes are burning. I hide my face in my arm and blink, trying desperately not to let the tears spill, but they do. Oh god, they do. My chest clenches and tightens. My voice breaks on a moan.

This . . . this is not what I want . . . This leaves me feeling raw and vulnerable. Awkward and unsure.

When Daniel finally takes me into his mouth, I gasp in surprise. My cock throbs. I’m so hard I ache. Again and again, I moan as he sucks me, kisses the tip of my cock, and slides back down to the hilt. A finger nudges my wet, stretched hole and pushes inside. The combined pleasures send me tumbling over the edge, far sooner than I expected, and my cock twitches as I spill into his hot mouth. I buck my hips, I gasp, I shake. A gaping chasm opens within me and leaves me a boneless, tingling mess, and the memories recede to the back of my head.

Finally.

Alongside the relief, a great well of emotions descends over me, and I can no longer hold the tears back. I hide my face in Daniel’s neck, and he holds me as my body quakes with sobs.

It’s horrible. It’s wonderful.

We stay entangled for a long time, until I’ve soaked his skin with tears and my throat is raw and aching.

He nudges his face into my neck. “Better now?”

I manage a whimpered, “Yeah.”

In some ways, I do feel better. In others, I feel worse than I ever have.