19. Eighteen

I was too tired to go back to my bed, and I didn’t want to be alone anyway. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Harold’s dead eyes staring back at me.

I didn’t feel guilty for killing him. The fucker deserved worse. If he hadn’t pissed me off, I would’ve started cutting off pieces. Slowly. But I learned I didn’t have the patience for torture, and it felt pointless anyway. He wasn’t going to give me the information I wanted. I was going to have to find his clients some other way.

If Xavier had a list of names on his computer, that meant Leo had it as well. All I had to do was get Boone to order Leo to give me the list, and then…

I wasn’t sure what. Boone hadn’t exactly agreed to help me kill all those people, and I didn’t think I could do it by myself.

My stomach twisted as I looked over at him in bed next to me. Even in the dark, his red hair stood out like fire. It was a mess, knotted in places and sticking out every which way. I wanted to comb my hands through it, but that would wake him, and I was enjoying watching him sleep. It reminded me of the days when Xander would have a nightmare and wake us all up. We’d pile into my bed because there was just the right amount of light, and Xavier and me would hug him until he fell back asleep. It was nice to have someone breathing next to me again. Someone real.

Even if what we were doing was completely insane.

What am I doing with him?I turned over on my side and curled my arms around his. He let out a soft sigh that made my heart race, but he didn’t wake up. That was happening more and more whenever he did something small around me. Things that used to irritate me were suddenly sexy. And when he called me Pup, it meant more than to hear my name on his lips. He’d called me that since the beginning, almost like he knew me better than I knew myself.

Whatever this was between us, it could only end badly. What was it my old therapist used to say? A house built on shifting sands was doomed to fall. That’s where we’d built everything we had. He said he wanted to protect me, but he couldn’t save me from the biggest danger to me: myself. Eventually, he was going to realize that and do what everyone else did when they got tired of me. He’d dump me and move on, and I couldn’t even fault him for it. My life was a fucking mess without adding sex to the mix.

So why was there this awful ache in my chest that only went away when we were together? Why did touching him feel like such a damn relief when I hated touching anyone else? Why did I like having sex with him when I should hate it after what Harold did to me?

My mind still wasn’t right, but it was quieter with him. Calmer. Boone was my medicine. How the fuck was I ever supposed to function without him?

How could I function with him? He was everything that was bad for me. Willing to give in to my every wild impulse. Incapable of saying no. Entrenched in violence. Desperate to save me from myself. That was a foundation of shifting sands if ever one existed.

There was a tic in his eye like he was dreaming, and I couldn’t resist anymore. I reached out and pushed some of his wavy red hair away from his face. His bicep flexed and that was all the warning I got before Boone rolled on top of me, pressing a knife at my throat. I closed a fist around the knife, but it wouldn’t have been enough to stop him from opening my throat if that was what he really wanted.

Boone stared through me, murder flashing in his eyes and sweat on his forehead, but I wasn’t afraid. I let go of the knife and tipped my head back, exposing more of my throat. There were worse things I could do than die for him. The thought nearly punched the air from my lungs.

“Fuck.” He flung the knife away. “Don’t wake me like that.”

“All I did was touch you.”

He sat back on his knees and swiped a hand over his face. “Guess I’m not used to waking up with someone in my bed.”

Something ugly twisted in my chest when I thought about other people spending time in Boone’s bed, whether they stayed over or not. I’d never known him to bring men home, but I wasn’t an idiot. I knew he’d been with other people. I also knew that if I ever met one of those other people, my list of names might get a little longer.

I scraped my fingernails through his chest hair. “You’ll get used to it.”

I gave his cock a light pull. He was half hard already. My poor hole throbbed from earlier use, but I didn’t care. The pain Boone gave me was the best medicine for my fucked-up mind. “What were you dreaming about?” I asked, tracing my finger down his shaft.

He pushed my hand away and rolled off of me. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Your twin brother?” I pressed, and I knew I was right when Boone’s shoulders stiffened.

He sat on the edge of the bed, looking back at me. “How do you know I had a twin brother?”

“Ragnar told me.” I’d been wondering about him ever since. It felt important, like something I should’ve known about the man I’d been living with for months, yet I didn’t. There was a lot about Boone I didn’t know yet. “He told me you lost him. Is that why you don’t ever talk about him?”

Boone closed his eyes and sighed. “Fuck.”

I reached for the cigarettes. “You don’t have to tell me if it’s personal shit,” I said, placing one between my lips. “Believe me. I know talking about family can be rough.”

Boone eased back against the headboard, staring into the distance. I knew that stare intimately. I knew how empty it felt to wear it, how easy it was to get caught up in some memory and relive it on repeat. It was a personal kind of hell to be stuck in one of those loops. I fucking hated it.

He shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about Mason. It’s just…” He rubbed his chest like he was in pain and looked away.

I struck the lighter and held it to the end of my cigarette before inhaling deeply. The first rush of nicotine felt stunted. “Did anyone ever tell you why I got locked up in the first place?”

He looked over at me. “You assaulted your brother.”

“I almost killed Xander,” I corrected. “My first psychotic break. I was paranoid. I thought the government had turned him into a monster. My delusions had me convinced I had to kill Xander to save Xavier, so I attacked him with a brick.”

“That’s fucked up,” Boone said.

I shrugged. “The real fucked-up part was that I didn’t want to do it. I really thought I had to kill one brother to save the other. It fucked me up real bad inside for days the first time I thought it. Weeks. I begged, bargained, even thought about running away, but I couldn’t leave my brothers. The voices and the delusions, they wear you down. That’s what people always get wrong about this shit. I didn’t attack Xander because the voices told me to.” I knocked a fist against the side of my head. “I resisted it with everything I had for weeks until it wore me down. I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. Was failing classes at school.”

“It’s like sound torture,” Boone said. When I looked at him confused, he explained, “To get prisoners to talk, sometimes they’d put them in these concrete rooms and blast noise into the cell twenty-four-seven. Sometimes, it was music, but most of the time it was just noise. Static, the fast-talking portion of radio commercials, random laugh tracks. I never heard of anyone lasting more than three days in that shit before they broke.”

I blew a ring of smoke into the air. “Imagine living with it all the time and nothing you can say or do will make it stop.”

“That’d make anyone lose it.”

I agreed with a grunt. Boone held out his hand. I passed the cigarettes and lighter to him and he lit up, leaning back to smoke in silence.

“At least you had a good reason,” he said after a long time. “I was just a drunk who couldn’t get his shit together.”

I looked over at him.

He stared up at the ceiling, watching the smoke gather like it had all the answers. “Everybody always says twins are supposed to be alike in every way, but that wasn’t the case with me and Mason. Even when we were kids, he was the good one. I was always getting into fights. Stealing shit. Got kicked out of school a few times. He was straight-A’s, straight-laced. While he was making plays on the football field, I was getting high in bathroom stalls and picking fights for the hell of it. Everybody was surprised when I signed up to join the Army, but what the hell else was I supposed to do? I didn’t have the grades for college, and I didn’t want to die in that fucking place strung out like my daddy. I wasn’t cut out to work in the mines, and there was no other work out in the holler.”

“Holler? People really say that?”

“Laugh it up,” I said, giving his shoulder a light shove. “You wouldn’t last a day in the place where I grew up. One road in and out and a fifty-foot plummet on either side. We were poor as shit and twice as paranoid about outsiders, but damn if I didn’t love the sound of thunder rollin’ through those hills.” He pulled his cigarette from between his lips to watch it burn. “I miss it sometimes. The storms, the quiet, the way the air smelled like dead leaves and tobacco. When the wind blew just right, it was like the Appalachians were whispering to you.”

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it. It sounded perfect, almost like a little slice of heaven on Earth. “Maybe we can go out there sometime.”

“Maybe,” he agreed.

“Why did you join the military?” It’d always struck me as an odd fit for someone like Boone who didn’t like to be told what to do.

He shrugged. “Recruiter talked me into it. I figured I’d get kicked out first week I was there. Imagine my surprise when I discovered shooting was the one damn thing I was good at. And I wasn’t just good; I was top one percent good. Good enough they shipped me right off to sniper school. You know that training has something like a seventy percent failure rate. I was the best in a hundred recruits, top of my class. I can shoot the cherry off a cigarette on a moving target from eighteen hundred yards. I was a fucking sniper god.” He took another long drag on his cigarette. “But when you play God, you have to be willing to meet the Devil in yourself too. After all the shit I did overseas, I came back fucked-up. I dealt with it the only way I knew how: getting drunk and starting fights. Mason, he was always there to patch me up. He was a good guy, Mason. He deserved a better brother than what he got.”

I grunted, understanding better than I wanted to admit. Xander, Xavier, and me were identical down to our DNA, but we couldn’t be more different. To most people, those differences seemed small, but they didn’t see my brothers the way I did. They didn’t know that Xavier used to set his fingertips on fire just to watch them burn, or that Xander had sobbed until he threw up one time when someone was making fun of him for wearing lipstick to school. Nobody else knew about those secret struggles. They were my secrets to keep, a side of my brothers only I ever got to see. I should’ve protected them better, but how could I have done that when I was the real danger?

“It was early March,” Boone said. “Late thaw that year. I’d gotten myself kicked out of damn near every bar in the county for being a belligerent drunk, so I had to go to the next county over to drink. As usual, I picked a fight and got thrown out, but someone’d slashed my tires, so I called Mason to come get me. Like the good brother he was, he did. The roads were icy, and it was foggy and dark. He was so busy telling me how disappointed he was in me that he missed the turn. We hit a patch of ice. He tried to correct, but it was too late. We went careening through a guardrail and down into the ravine. I pulled him from the wreck, but it was too late.”

Boone closed his eyes. The way his face was all scrunched up said he was in pain, an ache that echoed in my chest for some reason. I rubbed the spot and scooted closer, putting my head on his shoulder and wrapping my arms around him. There weren’t words in any language to take away the pain he was feeling, so I didn’t speak.

I couldn’t imagine going through all that. Being cut off from Xander and Xavier was bad enough, but to watch them die, and because of something I did? No. I couldn’t even wrap my brain around it.

In the days immediately after I attacked Xander, I was either too drugged or too fucked-up to fully comprehend what I’d done. By the time I came out of it, he’d recovered from his coma. The closest I could come were the nightmares. Sometimes, I dreamt he didn’t make it, and I woke up with a gnawing ache in my chest. It was like a miniature black hole was trying to open where my heart should be. If that’s how it felt to imagine losing one of them, Boone’s loss must’ve been soul-crushing.

Not knowing what else to do, I placed a chaste kiss on his cheek. His beard hairs bristled against my skin and my cock responded, but I ignored it for the moment.

“I’m not a good person,” Boone said. “I don’t know if I’m capable of good, but I’m tryin’ real hard not to be a bad man.”

The knot in Boone’s throat bobbed. I wanted to kiss it, but a kiss felt too tender, too familiar, so I licked it instead. “There’s no such thing as good or evil. There are only shades of gray.”

Boone’s eyes fluttered closed. “We live in the shadows so that better men can have the light.”

“That sounds like fortune cookie bullshit,” I scoffed and climbed on top of him.

His lips turned up in a half smile. “I read it in a book, but you’re right. It kinda does.”

“What kind of book?” I was only half paying attention, too distracted by the way my fingers looked raking through all that red chest hair. All that red made everything about him feel wilder and more exotic, like I’d somehow managed to fall into bed with fire itself.

He shrugged one shoulder, running his hand over my chest. “Doesn’t matter.”

I hummed and reached for the bottle of lube, dumping a generous amount onto his hard cock.

“Fuck, that’s cold,” he complained.

“I don’t care. Fuck me again?”

Boone rolled and I fell on my back. He leaned over me to capture my lips in a kiss that felt like we meant more to each other than we did.

“Wait,” I said when he pulled back.

My face heated. I hated asking him for anything, but I didn’t want it to be like before. Not that I hadn’t loved every second of being pounded so hard I couldn’t speak. I had needed it then, and now I needed… It was difficult to put into words what I wanted. A connection, maybe? Comfort? Not exactly something gentle, but something to smooth over some of our rough edges. I wanted to pretend we were like good people who had good sex.

I touched his face, running my fingers gently through his beard, touching him the way someone who loved him would touch him. The way he deserved. “Slower this time?”

He nodded and kissed me again before pushing my legs up. I tensed as his fingers probed my hole and then relaxed. Heat flooded my face as I realized I was still open from the last time. He barely had to do any work at all to loosen me up, but he took his time anyway, kissing me softly.

When he finally lined his cock up and slid it inside, my eyes flared wide and I threw my hands around his neck. Our eyes met, kicking off a slow flood of inexplicable emotion in my chest. My lips parted and words danced on the tip of my tongue that would never find expression. My heart was pounding so hard, I was starting to worry it’d bruise my insides. It hurt a little, but the pain of having him inside me paled compared to whatever was breaking in my chest.

Boone started to move inside of me with long, deep thrusts. His lips closed over mine, but I was incapable of kissing him back. I was incapable of anything when he touched me like that. Did he know the damage he was doing? How easily he made the last of my barriers crumble? It wasn’t fair. I should’ve hated him for it, for making me feel so much all at once.

For making me feel like I was worth something.

Whenever Harold let people use me, I was always face down. Always strapped in place, always helpless and unable to look at the men who raped me. I was treated like an object.

And not just by them, but by the Laskins too. They sold me like I was junk.

In some ways, it was easier to think of myself that way, especially with Boone. I was just his property, to be bought, sold, or used at his pleasure. But he never treated me like that.

Was this what other people felt all the time? If it was so good, why the fuck did it hurt so much? My heart felt like it was being ripped right out of my chest.

He kissed me again and it felt like his lips were the only thing keeping me from disintegrating completely.

“Boone!” I was sure I intended to say something else. Yet it was his name that was on my lips like a whispered prayer, his breath in my lungs keeping me alive, his body moving in mine like it was made to be there.

He held my face in his hands. “I’ve got you, Pup, and I’m never letting go.”

Boone’s words choked the life out of me. They were too much. Everything was too much. His cock pistoned into my body, dragging over my prostate and threatening to rip me open. I was going to bleed out into the world and come completely apart, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I let out a choked cry that he silenced by tangling his tongue in mine. He tasted like cigarettes, regret, and redemption all rolled into one and I couldn’t stop myself from biting down on him to keep him from taking that away from me. I groaned as the familiar coppery tang of his blood coated my tongue, and I dug my ankles into his lower back. If he wanted me, he’d have to take all of me, the good with the bad, and I had a hell of a lot of bad to weigh us down.

Boone grunted and pried his tongue free of me, but it was too late. I’d already staked my claim. His blood painted his lower lip like macabre lipstick, and the sight of it was all it took to push me over the edge.

I came with a desperate whimper, digging my fingernails into the back of Boone’s neck and thrusting my hips up, wishing I’d thought to touch myself. It was too late though. I didn’t even know it was possible to come without touching my dick, and there I was, doing it.

“Look at you,” Boone said, breathless. “Didn’t even have to touch yourself to come. Fuck, that’s hot.” He smirked like he was proud of himself, even though I’d done the impressive thing.

I couldn’t answer him. Every time he snapped his hips forward, he hit my prostate again and took away my ability to think, let alone make words. It sent intense echoes of pleasure racing along my throbbing nerve endings in the best way. It was too much, like he had a knife driven straight into the pleasure center in my brain, but I couldn’t make it stop, even if I wanted to. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

Boone’s hips stuttered and it felt like both a disappointment and a relief. He caught my lips and tongue in a tangle of his. The taste of blood sent a rallying cry to my cock and fresh sparks straight to my balls. I couldn’t come again, but it felt like I was on the verge of it a second time as Boone emptied himself inside me.

“So good,” I heard myself panting as I dug my nails deeper into his skin. “Feels so fucking good!”

Boone pulled out of my ass and shimmied down my body. Why the fuck was he stopping? We couldn’t be done. I was so close! I barely had time to let out a disappointed whine before the warm, wet heat of his mouth closed around my cock. My whine turned into a shout, hips punching up on instinct. Two thick fingers pushed into my entrance and went straight for that sweet spot, massaging my prostate while he sucked me mercilessly. I clawed at the back of his head and gritted my teeth, unsure if I wanted him to stop. No, I’d fucking kill him if he stopped. I’d stab him right in the…

Oh, God.

Fuck whatever threats I was about to make. My eyes rolled back and every muscle in my body seized as Boone ripped another orgasm from me. I would’ve screamed if I could make a sound. Instead, all I could do was gasp, tremble, and writhe as wave after torturous wave of near painful euphoria swept over me.

By the time Boone finally stopped, I was certain my balls had shriveled up beyond use. My cock felt raw, like someone had scraped it with sandpaper. Everything throbbed, but in the best way.

“You bastard,” I panted, still trembling. “You fucking—”

Boone’s mouth was on mine, cutting me off. He slipped his tongue into my mouth and I moaned at the taste of myself on it. “You were saying?” he asked, grinning down at me.

I let out a shuddering breath and groaned, eyes closed. “Fuck you.”

“Anytime, Pup,” he said with a chuckle as he fell into bed next to me. “Anytime.”