13. Abel

I twitchagainst the concrete wall when the door slams closed, signaling Peris’s leisurely departure. With a shaky inhale, I drop my head back, relishing in the dizzy elation of the last twenty minutes, hand to my chest as I catch my breath.

I can’t fucking believe Peris finally gave me what I’ve always wanted from him—his surrender. It was so much better than I ever imagined it could be—and color me surprised at the revelation he’s a bit of a kinky fucker. I was prepared for his anger and venomous words, but not for him to taunt, to tease, and then shove his dick down my throat like he needed it to breathe.

And now, I’m finally in a place that feels like home: throat aching from abuse, skin itchy with drying spit and cum, face still hot from a few quick slaps. All new yet achingly familiar.

With a shaking hand, I press my fingers to my aching neck. They slip through a streak of cum pooled in my collarbone. My tongue flicks out against my chapped bottom lip as I smear it around and spread my digits apart, lost in the milky texture.

What the hell am I supposed to do now that it’s over?

I pushed. I burrowed. I exposed.

Does it just end here?

The concrete is frigid against my palms as I push to my feet, hissing at the pins and needles blooming from my upper thighs down. My steps are light and hesitant as I round the wall of lockers, coming into view of a large, rectangular mirror on the front wall.

My feet bring me closer of their own volition, drawn by my new reflection. But it’s not until my hands press against the glass that I let myself absorb what I’m seeing to be true.

I don’t look as ugly as I’ve always felt.

My face is blushed a bright, pink color, still vibrant from Peris’s slaps—which were surprisingly hesitant at first—giving a great contrast to his release drying on my skin. I follow my mirrored image with a rapt gaze as I reach up to touch what’s still wet on my chest, near my pierced nipple. My fingers find my mouth. I watch my lips part, tongue sneaking out to lap it up. It’s cold and tangy as I swallow. My larynx rolls.

Maybe… I’m not so worthless after all.

My nails scrape along the inside of my pocket as I dig my phone out. With a slightly shaky hand, I open the camera app and hold it out in front of me. Unnerved at the face staring back at me, I drop my eyes to snap a couple of photos, angling the phone so half of my face is cut off but all of my body is in view: stained and reddened skin, baggy jeans stained with my own release, and sweaty hair, now knotted from his fingers.

I can be pretty now… with his stain on me.

It takeslong minutes of scrubbing my face with paper towels that are the texture of literal fucking sandpaper to be able to leave the locker room. Can’t exactly walk around in the general public with cum drying on my face—but I do leave the rest of the mess beneath my clothes ‘cause I like the dirty reminder.

With my bag slung over both shoulders in preparation for the walk home, I falter when I push through the front doors and see Peris’s car waiting by the curb, staticky bass thumping with a song I’ve never heard before. The passenger window rolls down as I draw near, gaze locked forward in opposition. The streetlamps down the road are dim and yellow, illuminating the sidewalk every few dozen feet or so.

“Get in,” Peris barks sharply. My feet stop short even as I bristle, clutching the straps on my bag like doing so will keep my legs from following the rest of his command all willy-nilly.

He may have ripped my hair out, slapped my face, and fucked my mouth until he came all over me, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to magically start listening to his barking orders. I have dignity. And rules.And his jizz dried on my skin might beg to differ, but that’s neither here nor there.

“Now, runt.” He snaps the name like it means something, and damn everything to hell because it does. It’s demeaning and crass, and I, unfortunately, love every humiliating moment of it.

It’s gotta be the trauma. Some crisscross of wires in my brain ‘cause even as I look down at myself—paltry, a little freaky, and definitely unsightly—I’ve gotta admit the fucker is right. I really am a goddamn runt. The thought makes me snort, which draws a frown from his puffy lips.

With a sigh, I say, “If you try something, I swear I’ll?—”

His index finger taps the wheel twice before he twists around. “You’ll… what? Never suck my dick again? Ignore me to death?” Peris laughs mockingly, fingers curling around the wheel as he leans over, looking up through lashes boys like me are envious of. “We both know those are empty threats.”

They wouldn’t be—but I can’t even finish the thought because my face tingles with heat. I yank on the door handle, then stumble when it retracts back with a snap. Peris’s lips twitch as he reaches down and presses the unlock button.

The chug of the locks releasing is magnified between us—a sort of ceasefire, but only for the moment. I throw myself into the seat with a huff, arms encircling my backpack now against my front.

I’ve gone and showed my ass, and now, I’ve lost my advantage. The reality is… uncomfortable. And stifling. And his cum is itchy.

What’s supposed to happen now?

I think, maybe, I should have planned further ahead. But ever getting this far never seemed feasible.

“You piss me off,” Peris snaps as I slam the door, his words cutting off my train of thought. He doesn’t even wait for me to get buckled before he’s squealing out of the empty lot, quite literally burning rubber. I tear my gaze away from the rearview mirror to pin him with a glare.

“I didn’t even do anything,” I argue. “And your lack of respect for my safety is quite concerning,” I add dryly as I stare out the window, blatantly watching his reflection instead of the dull silhouettes of trees passing by.

Peris barks out a haughty laugh as he turns down the volume. “You just choked on my dick with no qualms that I wouldn’t let you breathe. I could argue your lack of respect for your own safety says a lot more about you than it does for me. I’ve never pretended to like or care about you in any capacity. In fact, I thought I made it abundantly clear I don’t.”

Well, he’s certainly not wrong about that—and my aching throat agrees.

“Even when I offered to be your fucking friend,” he sneers the word like the joke it is. As if we could ever be anything but this insidiousness. “But you, on the other hand,” he continues without even taking a breath, “just got in my car without any regard for the consequences.”

I hum quietly. It’s all so different now—to be on the other side. The side I usually dip out of immediately. Because this is the unknown. Unchartered territory I steer clear of, but it’s so obvious we’re already deep inside each other.

All I have to do is pluck a string, and he moves. I wonder if he’s realized that, or if he thinks the same, but reversed because he had me on my knees.

“As if there are any real consequences to sitting in a car with you, Peris.” Said car swerves, tires screeching at a decibel that makes my ears ring. I lurch in my seat as the car jerks to a stop, and my head knocks against glass. My eyelids flutter, and I mewl a pained groan. “Peris, what the fu?—”

Peris caresses my jaw with the backs of his knuckles, eyes soft, dark holes before they pin in a flash, and he shoves my face against the cool glass. I struggle against his hold, but he keeps me thoroughly pinned as he leans across the center console. His breath is the only part of him that gives away his true feelings—shallow and hot and unsteady. The strongest contradiction to the brute force he’s exuding.

I didn’t think my dick could get any harder, but low and behold, it does as his lips brush over my ear. “There are many consequences to being around me, Abel.” He sneers my name, mimicking how I mocked his—heavy with heated disgust.

“Let me put it into perspective for you. No one knows you’re here. No one knows you’re locked inside a car with me.” His words send a cold rush through my bloodstream, honing the pain, making my dick throb. “I could do a lot with that kind of freedom.”

My eyelids fly open, one mostly shut while the other is pinned forward, stuck between two halves of a whole—the world outside this car and the very tiny one inside.

“There’s no one to hear you scream or cry out for help…” he muses, tongue dragging along the shell of my ear. The skin of my nape prickles in awareness. His breath hitches, giving him away as he says, “But then again, I don’t think you’re a screamer. But it would be fun to find out. Can you, Abel? Can you do anything other than fucking beg for scraps?”

His fingers against my skull burrow into my strands, gripping tight before they yank back, stretching my throat taut. He comes into view on my left, and my eyes strain under the pressure of looking at him, but I can’t not.

Nostrils flared, lips slick and wet, he mouths something I can’t make out in the darkness, and then, with a trembling arm and a moment’s hesitation, I’m shoved forward. My forehead ricochets off the window with a sharp thud. “Fuck,” I whimper, curling against the nausea, disoriented as spots flicker behind closed lids.

I’m snatched up by my nape and dragged backward. Lips crash into mine with such a bruising intensity, every trace of air is sucked from my lungs. It’s all teeth and tongue. I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t…

I whimper—a pathetic, feral sound—as our tongues rub together inside of my mouth. Peris is deep inside me and humiliatingly thorough as he licks along my cheeks and crooked teeth. My skin tingles when our teeth clack together, and then he pulls back to sink them into my tongue. I yelp, but the sound is muffled as he pulls back, the muscle trapped between teeth, exposing the flesh to the stifling, damp air around us.

He keeps me pinned with that touch alone, presumably exactly how he wants me. Throbbing with pain, eyes too close to his, every ugly part laid bare. All the while he just stares.

Drool pools along my lips, then drips down my chin and neck where it soaks into the collar of my shirt. It’s cold compared to the humidity, to the sweat oozing at my pores, and it’s so humiliatingly good.

Peris is much nastier than I thought he’d be, and I’m gone for it.

And to think I was gonna walk away.

Peris rips away with a soft grunt and slams backward into his seat. I let out a pained hiss as I pull the sore muscle back into my mouth. It has its own throbbing heartbeat I feel down my throat.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Steady and hot and painful.

I drop my head against the doorframe as Peris silently pulls away from the curb, fingers loose where they curl along the bottom of the wheel, thumb tapping away. I keep my eyes locked on the dash, on the tiny cracks and sun-worn spots. The fingers on his free hand flex, then drag through his hair before dropping into his lap. Seemingly unable to keep still, he taps them against the gear shift, then shifts back to his thigh—a glimpse into his uncertainty.

Muscles flex beneath tanned flesh as he shifts from the gas to the brake, and back to the gas again, through every stop sign on Main Street. A dark smattering of hair covers his skin. I follow downward, though my vision is stolen by the shadows.

“Comedown” by Bush crackles through the speakers in a low hum. I stare at the radio station numbers on the small screen as I reach over to turn it up, up, up, until every thought I have is drowned out and replaced by the lyrics.

When Peris pulls into the drive, the song comes to a close. He shifts into park, turns the ignition. And then, we both sit in silence; the only sounds caressing our skin are those of our breaths and faded guitar notes.

Those sixteen seconds feel like an intense lifetime within a flash.

Once it cuts off and the radio station hosts start talking, he spares me a quick glance before he grabs his duffle and slams the door behind him. I stare through the fogged glass, eyes so dry I think if I blinked, they’d shatter. His long legs take him up the sidewalk in quick strides, an ability I’ll always be envious of.

The front door is nothing but another barrier as it slams closed between us, dozens of feet away and yet close enough to feel the smooth steel against the back of my hand. And now, I’m alone with Peris’s smell. Trapped within the confines of his car. It’s suffocating. Notes of citrus and spice mixed with faint traces of sweat long since trapped in the fabric of the seats.

My eyes burn when I dig the pads of my fingers into my sockets before I drag both hands down my face, gritting my teeth when my skull pulls.

I can’t fucking believe I let him see me cry. Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware a few tears can work wonders coming from a pathetic foster kid in the right situation—we’ve all been there. I’m a tortured individual, after all. Years of built-up trauma cresting at the peak, ready to spill over and wipe me out. It’s all too easy to bring forward. But to expose myself like that? To make myself vulnerable…

I roll my shoulders against the chill raking down my spine, coiling tightly in my gut. The tears may have ultimately been another ploy to get what I wanted—and fuck,did Peris eat it up. If I had known he would snap at the sight of a few sea salt drops, I would have tried them a lot sooner—but they were real, nonetheless, and I think he knows that.

What his friend said sits heavy and cold against my chest. A cinder block that’s still crushing me, despite my best efforts to expel it. Not the crass comments about me being a whore, but how I’m nasty…

And I know. Peris has spewed much worse. So has everyone else. But it’s… it’s different coming from Peris. When he says nasty and worthless and disgusting, I hear good boy and pretty runt between each vile word. And it’s perfect.

It’s the game we play. I dig, push, burrow. He snaps, resists, hates. Both hands clutching the tether, vying to see who has the upper hand while we both shake with the unsteady weight.

I roll my head against the headrest, index finger dragging through the condensation, watching through a half-lidded gaze as the water beads and then spills over, trickling in a fat drop to the bottom of the window.

Peris really flipped the script when he let his demons come out to play.

How am I to return the favor?