“Are you all right?” Alex asked.
“Yes, I think so. I’m overwhelmed. This is a lot.”
Then, at the pleading he could read in Alex’s eyes, he tried to find the words. He’d never needed them before. Never had to explain himself, because the aunts had already known and others didn’t care. Never had to make himself understood because Carbon and Jasmine and Lex and Finnian all understood already. Of course they did; they were him. And Wolf was Wolf, but Wolf didn’t use words anyway.
“I always knew I’d be alone,” Corbin said, trying to unravel the strands of thought that were tangled together, hovering just out of reach. “I always knew it, so I just made ways of keeping myself company. And that made it better. But now you’re here, and you’re . . . real, in a way they aren’t quite.”
“The people in your notebook. The ones you draw.”
“Yes. I— Do you think that’s weird.”
“No, I think you’re an amazing artist and it makes sense that art would be the medium you’d use to connect with people. Bakers bake, and writers write, and you draw. Each of us puts something of ourselves into our work.”
Corbin blinked slowly. That’s right.
“I don’t understand why you’re so different from everyone else,” Corbin said. “I don’t understand why you don’t think I’m a freak. Why, even if you don’t believe it’s all real, you can see me so clearly.”
“I don’t know that I’m so different. Maybe a lot of people out there have their own Corbins. They’re just not you.” Corbin sat quietly, digesting that. “When I first moved to New York, I would stand at my apartment window and look out at the dozens of high rises I could see. Each one of them had hundreds of windows, and behind those were hundreds of people living completely singular lives, just like I was. And those were only the buildings I could see from my window. Across the city were thousands of buildings just like it. More, maybe. That’s so many people. So many possibilities. So many ways of experiencing the world.”
Alex shrugged and tucked Corbin’s hair behind his ear.
“I don’t really believe there’s one destined soul mate for each person,” he went on. “But I do think that with numbers like those, it’s likely that no matter what you believe or who you are, there’s someone out there—probably a lot of someones—who could see you clearly. Who could understand you, and care about you. Who could love you.”
If Corbin hadn’t already cried himself bone-dry downstairs, he thought he might cry at that. His throat tightened instead. “You really think so.”
“Yeah, I do. You don’t have to be all alone, Corbin. Not only because I’m here. I am here,” he emphasized sternly, fingers possessive on Corbin’s shoulder. “But you’re going to have a whole life, and a lot of people are going to care for you. I know it.”
“How,” Corbin whispered.
Alex leaned in and kissed his mouth, soft and lingering.
“I just know, baby.”
Corbin’s dreams were up among the stars—pinpricks of light and swooping galaxies—and then they were in the dirt—seedlings shooting up in bloom, hair-delicate tangles of roots creeping down into the earth. Corbin’s dreams were air and earth, a balance he rarely dreamed in.
As a child, Corbin had often watched Bethesda, a fluffy marmalade cat, fall asleep in a perfect circle of sun, her tail wound around her, and thought that she must be the most comfortable thing alive.
This morning, with the pale winter sun streaming through the open window, Corbin half awoke thinking of Bethesda, because he was held in the warm embrace of muscular arms, his head tucked under a stubbly chin, and his limbs splayed on the bed, making him feel as if he’d melted. His head was fuzzy and his breath even and he made a sound in his throat as if he were trying to purr.
The arms around him tightened and he came awake.
Alex Alex Alex.
Alex nuzzled his hair and made a low grumbling sound before he said, “Mmm, good morning.”
Corbin squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them again to double check.
“Are you real.”
He felt Alex press against every part of him, turning him so they faced each other.
“Yeah, I’m real.”
Alex’s face was relaxed from sleep, his eyes heavy-lidded, his hair mussed, his lips slightly chapped. He slung an arm over Corbin’s waist and dragged him in as close as they’d been spooned before.
“You’re everywhere,” Corbin murmured, surprised, and he felt Alex’s groan rumble through his chest.
“Yeah, well. I’m right where I want to be.”
He traced Corbin’s mouth with his fingertip, and Corbin let his eyes flutter shut.
He must have slipped back into sleep, because the next thing he knew, he woke with his head on Alex’s chest and his arm flung over Alex’s stomach.
“You awake?”
Corbin muffled a noise in Alex’s shoulder then slowly opened his eyes. It was sunny outside and he was perfectly warm with Alex’s heat around him.
He sat bolt upright. “We’re late! What time is it.”
“It’s okay, Hector’s going to work today.”
“I’m supposed to work today.” Shades of all the jobs he’d been fired from played in his mind. They were always worse than the ones he’d simply stopped going to because the signs had told him he should.
Alex grasped his shoulders as he tried to roll out of bed.
“Hey. We’ve still got a lot to figure out. Please, take today off.”
“I— You want me to,” he asked. He wanted Alex to say yes, wanted to stay here, warm and held.
“I want you to,” Alex said, and that made it all right.
Corbin nodded and let himself be drawn back into bed.
“I have a lot of questions,” Alex said. “I don’t want to overwhelm you, or be intrusive. I know sometimes I can seem like I’m giving an order or something when I’m really asking. Something about my voice, I guess. People have always said it.”
Corbin swallowed around a lump in his throat and looked down at the duvet, suddenly intensely aware of Alex’s eyes on him.
“Unless . . .” Alex’s voice took on an edge. He lifted up on one elbow so he was looking down at Corbin, but kept his expression neutral. “You like when I’m giving orders. You like when I overwhelm you.”
Corbin blinked rapidly, all the blood rushing from his head.
“You do,” Alex said.
Corbin squeezed his eyes shut. It was too much. It was too much of everything he’d always wanted at once, and he felt like he might fly to pieces.
“Corbin, open your eyes.” Alex infused his voice with command and Corbin opened his eyes. “It’s okay. That’s very good to know. We’ll come back to that in a bit.”
Alex went downstairs in his underwear to make coffee, and Corbin drifted. He closed his eyes and sought other signs. Smells and sounds were more trustworthy than sights at moments like these.
But outside his window things were still, sounds muffled, smells blank. He walked to the window, shivering, and looked out onto a world of white. The sun shone, but the ground and trees and Alex’s car were blanketed in a foot of snow.
A fresh snowfall is a clean slate, perfect for trading truths.
An arm wrapped around his stomach and he startled, but Alex caught him and steadied him.
“Well, hello, Michigan,” Alex said, breath ruffling Corbin’s hair.
“It’s so beautiful.”
They got back into bed and Alex pressed a mug of coffee into his hand. Corbin sipped, the earthy bitterness of the coffee a welcome jolt back into reality.
“You have questions,” he said.
Alex studied him, then ran a hand through his hair. “You know what? Don’t worry. I got ahead of myself. We don’t have to figure everything out today. We have plenty of time. Let’s just talk, okay?”
Corbin nodded. He wasn’t sure if he felt relieved to be off the hook, or disappointed not to have everything dragge
d out of him, once and for all.
“You said that you started drawing your friends in your notebook because they made you feel less alone.” Corbin nodded. “Did you ever have other friends? Real-life friends. Or lovers?”
“Is this just talking. It feels like questions.”
“Well, talking can include questions,” Alex said sheepishly. Corbin rolled his eyes.
“Not really. I had a couple friends when I was small. I’d see them in the park or running around in the woods. But when we got a little older and they knew where I lived . . . People thought the aunts were . . .” Freaks, witches, sorcerers, devils, criminals. “Frightening.”
“Why?” Alex asked gently.
“Because they seemed a little scary to kids, I guess. They were twins and they would dress the same. But Aunt Jade’s mouth was all twisted because of a scar, and when she smiled, it looked wrong. Aunt Hilda didn’t like to make eye contact. She saw their futures when she looked into their eyes, and she didn’t want to see.”
“And did you ever have lovers?”
Corbin felt the blood rush into his ears again, oceanic and deafening.
“I— No, I— Not exactly.”
“Can you tell me more?” Alex slid a hand to his shoulder and squeezed, and Corbin took a gulp of his coffee too quickly and coughed.
“A couple of times people asked me. Men. Asked me. But I didn’t want them. I didn’t want them to touch me.”
The thin, dark-haired man sitting with his wife outside the movie theater, holding their infant daughter. The man’s eyes raking over Corbin’s face and body. The lust there. Inside, in the bathroom, Corbin washing his hands and the man coming in, closing the door behind him. Coming up so close Corbin could smell him—fabric softener, and milk, and shame. Want to? And Corbin saying No. Pushing open the door and walking outside into the sunlight because the dark of the movie theater left too much space for wondering.
“You said ‘not exactly.’” Alex took his hand. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you. I don’t know if it’s the kind of thing that people talk about.”
“I want to know everything.”
Corbin swallowed hard. “I have sex . . . with myself. But I, um. One of the people I draw in my notebook. Finnian. He— We have sex. I imagine that he tells me what to do, and then I do it.”
Alex’s hand tightened on his shoulder.
“Do you do it that way because you like him telling you what to do?”
“Yes. It’s just what I’ve always imagined. I— He sits there.” He pointed to the bed where Alex was sitting. “And he tells me how to, um. How to touch myself. What to do. When to . . .”
“When to come?” Alex’s voice was low, and Corbin darted a glance at Alex’s lap. His underwear was bulging.
Corbin nodded. “Is that . . . Do you think that’s strange.”
“I think that’s outrageously hot.” Alex leaned closer. “How does he play with you, Corbin? What does he make you do?”
Corbin couldn’t quite get a full breath. “It depends. Sometimes he makes it take a long time, makes me touch myself softly until I’m . . .”
“Begging,” Alex growled.
“Yeah. Sometimes he has me, um . . .”
“Does he have you fuck yourself, baby? With your fingers or with a toy?”
A broken whimper escaped from Corbin’s throat. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Do you like it when he makes you fuck yourself?” Alex’s voice was low and hypnotic and scraped over Corbin’s skin.
“Yes,” he gasped.
“What do you think about while he’s making you fuck yourself open? Do you imagine he’s fucking you?”
Corbin’s heart was pounding so fast he was lightheaded, and beneath the covers, he was rock hard.
“No, I— Oh god. I . . . I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid it’s weird. Everything about me is weird. What if I do this weird too and I don’t know it.”
Alex put his hand on Corbin’s chest, fingers spread and palm pressed against his heart. He pushed a little, and Corbin fell back on the bed.
“I want you to imagine that there’s no such thing as weird. Do you know what I want most?” Corbin listened harder than he’d ever listened to anything. “I want to know everything. Do you understand? I want to know everything you fantasize about, everything that makes you feel good, everything you want. There’s nothing you could say that would make me think you were doing this wrong. Do you believe me?”
He believed that Alex meant it, but he didn’t quite believe it could be true. That’s just what Alex said last night.
“I’ll try.”
For that he got a kiss on the cheek, and Alex moved closer, propping himself on his side next to Corbin. “Tell me what you imagine when he’s making you fuck yourself. Tell me what you think about.”
Corbin closed his eyes. “I— Sometimes I imagine that my hand can reach all the way inside me. That my fingers grow like tree roots all through me, twine around my heart and reach up into my throat and . . . take me over from the inside.”
Alex whispered, “Jesus,” and Corbin squeezed his eyes tighter shut. “What else?”
“The same thing when I imagine it’s a person. He has me use a toy . . . a vibrator or— And I imagine . . .”
“You imagine it’s a cock inside you? Deep inside you, filling you up?”
Corbin whimpered and nodded. “Yes, and—and it expands until it’s everywhere and I can’t breathe and I can’t think and it’s just that inside me and it doesn’t ever stop.”
“Corbin, fuck, what else?”
“I, lately, well. It turned into you.” He said the last sentence in a whisper, but he knew Alex heard because he groaned and dropped his forehead to Corbin’s shoulder.
“Open your eyes.”
Corbin blinked his eyes open.
“That’s the hottest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I can’t even tell you how turned on I am right now.”
“Me too.”
“Is it only a fantasy? Or do you want me to fuck you? I’ll do anything you want. Or we can do nothing.”
Corbin’s head was spinning. Did he want Alex to fuck him? The thought alone practically made him spin apart with desire. But when he thought about Alex that close to him—inside of him—what if the curse . . . what if it did something to them. Struck them dead or rebounded, the way curses do, and turned love to hate, desire to disgust? Such things had been known to happen with curses.
The thoughts ricocheted around Corbin’s mind until he realized minutes had gone by and he hadn’t answered Alex.
Suddenly, he saw a workaround.
“I do want that. So much. But maybe not quite yet. What if . . . would you want to . . . do what Finnian does?”
He risked a glance at Alex. Alex’s eyes closed for a moment, and when they opened, Alex looked like he was about to consume him.
“Would I want to order you around and tell you how to touch yourself while I watch? Fuck yes.”
Corbin relaxed. “I’ve imagined it.”
“You’ve imagined me telling you how to fuck yourself?” Alex ran a hand over his jaw. “That’s . . . amazing. That’s amazing. You’ll have to let me know if I can take any pointers from your fantasy version of me.”
“No. I want real you.”
“Okay, baby.” Alex leaned in and kissed his mouth. “I guess I can’t touch you in this scenario, huh.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Not at all?” Alex kissed the pulse in Corbin’s neck, and Corbin felt engulfed by a cloud of lust. Alex sucked at the spot and Corbin gasped, then pushed him away.
“You—you can’t. That’s how it works.”
Alex’s smile was wicked as he leaned back, but his eyes lingered on Corbin’s neck, clearly making plans for when he was allowed to touch.
“What am I working with here?”
Corbin
opened the drawer of the bedside table and Alex looked through the dildos, vibrators, plugs, and beads.
“Oh, Corbin,” he murmured, half threat and half worship, and suddenly Corbin was shaking with need. Alex wasn’t even touching him, but he could feel sensation zinging through his body, like electricity was jumping from nerve ending to nerve ending.
“Tell me what you don’t want me to have you do.”
He couldn’t imagine a single thing he wouldn’t do if Alex asked him to.
“Nothing. I don’t know. Nothing.”
Alex nodded. “We’ll talk about it later, okay? You just let me know if there’s something you don’t like. Will you?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Pull the bedcovers down. I want to see you.”
Corbin pulled the blanket down, his skin heating under Alex’s gaze. Alex watched him for a long time. It wasn’t the way Finnian had looked at him. Finnian had regarded him as if he were looking in a mirror. Alex stared as if he wanted to climb inside.
“God, you’re beautiful. Close your eyes if you want. Let your mind go wherever it wants to go.”
At that, Corbin knew it would be all right, and he let his eyes drift shut.
“Lift up your shirt and touch your stomach.” For a moment Corbin paused, because it was the way Finnian so often started. Then he smiled. Finnian had prepared him for this, even if he hadn’t known it. Another sign pointing straight at Alex.
Corbin slid his palm to the sensitive skin of his belly and shivered at his own touch. It was more intense with Alex watching, like a feedback loop of pleasure. Him touching himself, Alex watching him touch himself, feeling Alex watching him.
“Touch your nipples. Pinch them if you want to. Let me see.”
Corbin pinched his nipples, flinching away from his fingers and then pressing into them as the pain and pleasure crested and ebbed. As the sensations suffused his skin, his mind spiraled off.
He found himself by the ocean, sand rough beneath his shoulder blades. Abrasive. He could hear the crash of the waves, and the sun shone brightly overhead. Alex was the sun, he realized, his warm regard falling over every inch of his skin.
“Alex,” he whispered. “I feel you.”
“Good. I’m right here. Everything you feel, that comes from me. I want to make you feel good. Do you want that?”