Getting It Twisted (Unforgivable Needs #1)

10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Daniel

I awake with the memory of Nathan nuzzling into my shoulder and pressing a kiss to my neck in the night. His face is half-obscured now, with part of it covered by his messy black hair and the rest smushed into the pillow.

In sleep, his face looks soft and unguarded—jaw slack and eyebrows softly tilted. In sleep, he can’t use his body or his words to throw me off. He can’t spin me sweet lies or deflect my questions with sarcastic remarks.

He yawns big and wide, his eyelids flicker open, and our eyes meet.

There’s a tense moment as I await his reaction. You never know with Nathan. He might be embarrassed about last night—though he has no reason to be—and he might attempt to hide his embarrassment with sharp glares and sharper words.

But there’s nothing like that. His face lingers in the peacefulness of sleep, and the corner of his mouth quirks upward in a soft smile.

I slide my fingers through his hair, and our lips graze now and again in the lazy type of morning kisses I’ve shared with former girlfriends. Never did it cross my mind I’d experience this with Nathan one day. The thought has me pulling back from his embrace, because this newfound thing between us feels too fragile to even think about, let alone speak of.

“So,” he drawls. “Now that I’m not crying anymore, are you gonna fuck me the way I want?”

“Are you going to tell me what yesterday was about?”

He sighs and rubs his forehead into the pillow. “There’s nothing to tell.” I send him a look, and he rolls onto his back, frowning. “Fine. That old man with the dog . . . He’s an old neighbor, all right? Seeing him, talking to him . . . It just reminded me of what it used to be like out here. Back when I was a kid.”

“If you don’t like to be reminded of it, why stay here?”

He lifts his shoulders in a strained shrug. “Dunno. I like suffering, I suppose.”

My jaw clenches at the casual truth in those words. He likes suffering, all right. It’s a bad type of suffering—not the one when I have him writhing and begging in bed. Not like last night. He opened up to me so sweetly then, and he even cried, like he used to on a few rare occasions when we were kids, like the time he came to me with fresh blood on his face.

No matter what has transpired between us, no matter the broken promises and broken hearts, when he calls out for me, I can’t help but answer.

I need to do something. I need to get him out of here.

He doesn’t want to rent an apartment, but perhaps he could move in with me, April, and George. Yeah, that could work. We’ve been looking for a roommate anyway. But I have to be careful about it—he’ll pull his defenses up high if he sniffs out the barest hint of pity.

“You could move in with us, you know,” I say slowly. “We’ve got a spare room.”

He snorts. “With you and George?”

Right. Bad idea. The chances of George allowing him to move in are as slim as the chances of them getting along, but it’s worth a try.

“Don’t bother,” Nathan says. “I like living out here. The nature and shit. It’s a nice change of pace from the highways and concrete. At night, it’s a different story.”

“Can’t sleep?”

He shakes his head. “Not for shit.”

“You slept tonight.”

“Only ’cause you were here.” He shifts closer and closer until he ends up half on top of me. Chin on my chest, he gazes into my eyes, and his stare is so intense that for a moment, he looks like he wants to eat me. “Without you, my world’s all black.”

Nathan says the most outrageous things without meaning them, but this feels all too real, and I swallow against the lump forming in my throat.

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?” he mutters. “It’s the truth. You wanted me to open up to you, didn’t you?”

“Not if it’s just gonna be yet another manipulation tactic.”

“I’m not trying to manipulate you. I’m trying to make you mine.”

Mine how? My friend, my boyfriend, my sex toy? To Nathan, there’s unlikely to be a difference, and what comes out of my mouth I neither planned for nor expected to say.

“If I’m yours, then you’re mine.”

His eyes widen, and with a sharp exhale of breath, he hisses, “Fuck.” He climbs on top of me, pinning me to the bed. “Yeah, I can be yours.”

I grab both his ass cheeks, kneading them as he grinds down on me. “At the very least, you’re my hole. My slut.”

He’s hard already, and his small, desperate whimper makes my own cock twitch and swell. He gets hold of the bottle of lube on the nightstand and squeezes a dollop onto his fingers. Then he reaches behind himself, and . . .

“Shit.” It’s my turn to hiss as he pushes his fingers inside himself. I’m rock-hard in seconds as he looks down at me, cheeks flushed, wanton need written all over his features.

He seems desperate to do it—desperate to get my cock inside him. He ruts against me, whining and gasping. Then he pulls his fingers out and grabs the base of my cock, sliding the sensitive crown along his tight, puckered hole.

“Condom,” I grit out.

He shakes his head. “Want you to fuck me raw. Wanna feel your cum inside me.”

“We can’t. It’s not . . . it’s not safe.”

“Why, you think I’m some disease-ridden whore?”

I try to scoff, but it comes out more of a groan as the tip of my cock nudges against his opening. Given his recklessness when it comes to . . . well, everything, a lack of protection would hardly be the worst of his missteps.

“For your information,” he says, “I tested myself before I came here.”

“And?”

“ And I’m fine.” He lines himself up and bears down.

“But I haven’t . . . ,” I say, teeth gritted, having to muster up all my self-control not to grind upward, “. . . gotten tested.” I had it done before Lydia and I got together, but since then I’ve lacked both the time and the headspace. Because of . . . reasons. The reasons being mostly Nathan.

“I don’t care. Fuck me. Now.” The words are raw in his throat, teetering on the edge between a command and a plea. He aligns our bodies, breaching himself on the head of my cock. Eyes closed, he ruts his hips, burying my cock inside him. He seems lost in another world—a perfect world of blissful pleasure. His mouth falls open, and his eyebrows pinch, the tousled locks of his hair bouncing as he moves.

“Fucking perfect,” he whispers.

It’s done. There’s no more use in acting prim and proper, because apparently Nathan is depraved enough to override all semblance of safety, and with the next rut of his hips, he snaps the already thin thread of my sanity as well.

I grip his buttocks harder, kneading them in the back-and-forth motion. “You like my cock that much, huh?”

“Like it? I fucking love it. Love everything you do to me.”

“Oh yeah?” In one swift motion, I flip him over, and he lands on his back with a huff. With my knees under his thighs and my hands on his hips, I gain a better position to really hammer into him. Slow and deep at first, making him moan. Then fast and rough, my balls slapping against his quivering ass. I want to stretch him wide open, fuck him so hard he’ll always feel me.

Arm muscles straining as I pull him back and forth on my cock, I shift my hips, trying to hit his prostate.

His eyes widen as his cock twitches and dribbles with precum. “Oh god.”

“Yeah, there you go.”

“Wanna come,” he whines, meeting my thrusts so desperately our skin slaps with obscene sounds.

“Go ahead, baby.” The term of endearment comes out without warning, and why did it feel so right?

I want to see just how much his pretty little ass can take. I want to fuck him until he’s a ruined, sweaty mess, until he’s covered in my nail and bite marks. I want to fuck him until he’s too exhausted to string two words together.

And I want to fuck him until he’s mine, through and through.

But my what?

My friend? Well, we’re way past that. Boyfriend? I don’t know. All I know is I want him to stay, and I don’t want him to suffer except by my hand.

I don’t want to find him on the kitchen floor again. I need to make sure he’s safe, away from this haunted, horrible house where he endured so many horrible things.

He needs someone to take care of him. He should be in my bed, in my arms, where no one can harm him and none of our pasts can come back to haunt us.

If only I can erase the last five years from my mind, I’ll have what I’ve always wanted. When we were kids, I wanted him, and when we got older, I wanted him in a different way.

Now I have him, and nothing can make me give that up. He’s mine. My hole. My slut. My baby.

A growl rumbles in my chest as I keep drilling my cock into him. “Gonna come inside you now. That’s what you wanted, huh?”

“Yeah,” he gasps. “Oh god, yeah . . .” He wraps his hand around his straining cock and gives it a few jerks, and then he’s erupting all over his stomach and chest.

I follow suit, emptying myself inside him. With a satisfied grunt, I collapse on the side of the tiny bed, crowding him against the wall.

He brings a hand to his chest, wipes up the cum there, and licks it up. Yeah, he’s a slut all right.

I press a kiss to his cum-stained lips. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“What?”

“Made me fuck you without a condom.” I push him to lie on his side and slip my hand between his buttocks to tease his sticky, stretched hole.

He makes a sound between a snort and a moan. “Oh, please. As if you didn’t wanna blow your load in me.”

I feel it trickling out of him, lukewarm and thick. I catch it with my finger and push it back inside.

“You really want to do this?” He thrusts his ass back against my hand. “You really want to make me horny again?” He climbs on top of me, once again straddling my hips. “I could do this all day, you know. Give me a bump and a bottle of lube, and I’ll let you fuck me until my eyes bulge out of my head.”

“How about we don’t do drugs—how long would you last, then?”

He snorts. “Your loss.”

Soon enough I’m fully hard again, and he grabs my cock and guides it back to his hole. I groan as the sensitive tip slides past his tight rim. He tilts his head back, and I trace my fingers over his neck. Even though I barely applied any pressure, his skin is slightly bruised from last night. For someone with such a dirty mouth and sky-high emotional walls, he bruises easily on the outside.

“I’d do this for you, you know,” I tell him, wrapping my hand lightly around his throat. “But we should talk about things like this beforehand. You may feel like you want it in the moment, when really it’s not what’s best for you.”

“I don’t care what’s best for me.”

“I know you don’t, but I do.”

He stops moving, and the way he looks at me sends a chill down my spine. “Do you, now?”

What the hell?

“I won’t ever hurt you, Nate.”

“Well,” he says with a sneer. “A little too late for that.” He swings his leg off me, and my cock slides out of his slippery hole. “I’m gonna go shower.” He grabs a shirt from the floor, uses it to wipe the cum off his belly, and tosses it carelessly on the bed. And just like that, he’s off.

“What the fuck.” I groan and lean back in the bed, left with a flagging hard-on and a head full of questions.

I don’t get him.

I really don’t.

I spend the workday rewinding the morning in my head. When I come home, I’m exhausted in both mind and body.

It’s weird—I want to drive back to his place and see him, but at the same time, I need the alone time that used to be a constant point of tension with my girlfriends.

Nathan was once exempt from my need for isolation, but not anymore.

Now he confuses and frustrates me too much. I mean, what was that cryptic shit about me not wanting what’s best for him? Granted, I did want to kill him when he first came back to town, but recently everything has changed. And I took care of him when we were younger, didn’t I? With any luck, things will ease up between us once I get him out of that creepy old house.

I catch George in the kitchen, frying up what smells like shrimp and fried rice.

“Any luck with that roommate ad?” I ask casually as I get myself a glass of water.

He shrugs. “I’ve vetted a few, but nothing’s set in stone yet.”

I decide it’s better to be frank with this. George prefers honesty above all else, after all. Maybe that’s why he and Nathan get along so badly.

“Nathan needs a place to stay.”

He sends me a slow, calculating look. “I thought he was staying at his mom’s place.”

“Well, he is, but—”

“But what? That old shack not up to his standards? I thought he was used to sleeping in his car.”

“Will you let me finish?”

“It depends. Are you asking what I think you’re asking?” He turns from the stove to look at me, really look at me, eyes burrowing into me with intent, and his voice drips with near disgust as he asks, “Are you fucking him?”

“Yeah,” I say with a shrug, though my heart starts pounding in my chest. I like to think I don’t care what George thinks of me, but he was the one to drag me out of my depressive hole a few years back. He was there for me when no one else was, and he deserves . . . I don’t know what he deserves. Shit, I don’t even know what I’m doing.

“He’s not a good person, Daniel,” he says in the tone of my father and uncle: slow and firm and commanding.

“If he’s not a good person, what does that make your dad?”

He falters, eyes narrowing. “What?”

“Nathan told me all about Wayne’s visits to Theresa. Did you know?”

“Daniel, that’s . . .”

“Did you know he gave her drugs too?”

His cheeks go bright red, and the vein in his temple starts to pulse. “You know you’re playing right into his hands, right?”

Just then, April enters the room. “Some people are trying to study, you know. What’s going on in here?”

“Daniel wants Nathan to move in with us,” George says in a tone that makes it sound like I want us to finance him a trip to outer space or something.

“Oh. I thought he already had a house?”

“He’s in a bad way out there,” I say. “He needs me.”

“Needs you to stroke his ego maybe,” George says. “Fucking hell, Daniel, you’re more gullible than I thought.”

“His mom died, if you forgot.”

“So what, didn’t she beat him or something? From what I know, he hated her guts.”

“All the more complicated,” April says. “The death of your abuser, look it up.”

George waves a dismissive hand. “That guy doesn’t have the capacity for grief.”

“Fuck off, that’s not true,” I growl.

“I’m guessing he still doesn’t have a job?”

“No.”

“What’s his plan, then?”

“We . . . haven’t really talked about that.”

“I heard Sidney’s needs people.”

“Sidney’s?” I can’t for the life of me picture Nathan flipping burgers and taking orders. I have a hard enough time wrapping my head around his odd jobs on the road.

“What, he’s too fancy for a burger joint?” George sneers. “He doesn’t have a degree, so—”

“Neither do I,” I cut in.

“—it’s either that, drug-dealing, or whoring, but I assume he’s already tried the latter.” The mocking glint in his eyes makes my blood boil.

April slaps his arm. “That’s not it at all. Let’s look at it like this: What sort of stuff is he good at? People? Things? Animals?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But even if he’d get a job, he can’t think straight when he’s living in that house.”

George shakes his head. “You can’t keep doing this, Daniel. He’s just using you and taking advantage of your kindness. That’s what people like him do.”

April’s black-painted nails pull at a thread in her cardigan, a thoughtful smile on her lips. “I don’t know. He didn’t seem so bad. He was funny.” She wiggles her eyebrows at me. “And cute as hell.”

George scoffs. “Yeah, yeah, we all know how hot he is. That ain’t even half the point, though it sure doesn’t help the situation. And this is all without even mentioning what he does to Daniel.”

“And what does he do to me exactly?”

George looks at me as if I’m the most gullible person in the world. “He hurt you, didn’t he? He left town and changed his number like he didn’t even know you. But I know you, and nothing you could have done would’ve warranted that.”

I’m not so sure anymore. The venomous look in Nathan’s eyes this morning spoke differently.

George sighs and points between the three of us. “Look. This is what he does; he drives wedges between people. He’d be rubbing his hands in delight right now if he heard our squabbling.”

“Fine,” I say. “Let’s hear the verdict, then.”

“I wouldn’t mind him moving in,” April says. “At least for a time.”

“Well, I would mind,” says George. “He’s not some homeless puppy, Daniel, and we sure as hell aren’t a shelter. And by the way, don’t think I’ve forgotten how you acted at the party.”

“How I acted?”

“You stepped in front of him and told me off. As if he wasn’t the one who started that shit in the first place! He doesn’t need your protection, Daniel.”

“Apparently he does, since you fucking hit him!”

“Don’t tell me he didn’t deserve it. He was begging for it, in fact.”

“It’s not up to you to decide what he deserves,” I growl.

“No? ’Cause that’s your job?”

“Guys!” April yells over our raised voices. “Enough. Going by our house rules, we all have to agree about a new roommate. I’m sorry, Daniel. I do hope to see more of you though. You’ve been so busy lately.” She winks and gives me a sly look.

“Don’t count on it,” George says. “Now that Nathan’s back, Daniel won’t pay much attention to his other friends.”

Well, that went to shit.

If I can’t even find a place for Nathan to live in the short term, how can I hope to make him stay in the long term?

I need something—other than sex—that will root him in the here and now. Something to connect him to this town. To me. I need to make him remember the good times we shared here. And then hopefully he’ll realize it’s madness to live in his childhood home.

It’s a bit of a stretch, I do realize, but it’s what’s on my mind and keeps interrupting my attempts to practice my pencil drawing techniques. I’ve been so scatterbrained lately that I’ve neglected my art. Although I’ve banished it to hobby territory for now, it’s still one of the things—along with physical activity—that keeps me sane and level-headed.

At least, it used to.

I give up on the drawing. Instead, I look through the set of Polaroids for the fifth or sixth time. Nathan’s confident grin shines back at me, his arms around my shoulders, me smoking a joint . . .

But something is missing. I shift through them all once more, and yeah—my sketch of us by the mansion at Mumphrey Hill is nowhere to be found. I look in the other drawers and under the bed. Nothing.

Did he take it?

I imagine him sitting on his bed in his dark, run-down room, a smile on his lips as he studies the picture in his hand.

And suddenly I know what to do.