Bad Company

  But after what he’d just done to another human being, he gave repression, rationalization, and outright denial his best shot. He sprinted down the stairs, slamming against the wall and the handrail as he tried to do up his pants, started his scooter, and took off down the sidewalk, going the wrong way, fighting the accusations screaming in his head with every step. But there was no denying it. He was a rapist. Nate Gray, columnist, assistant editor of Charming Rag, Baltimore’s Premier Alternative Weekly, was a fucking rapist. He’d taken classes in every -ism known to sociology and knew there was no excuse for such a blatant abuse of an unbalanced power dynamic. He pictured one of the separatist wimmin from his Feminist Analysis of Twentieth Century Literature course sharpening a blade for his imminent castration. If it weren’t Nate’s equipment she planned to render inoperative, he’d have supplied her with the whetstone.

  Desperate to distance himself from his own behavior, he tried framing it as a letter to his advice column.

  Hey Gray,

  My dad threw me out of the house, so I went to see an old friend. He said I could stay with him if I blew him. What do you think I should do?

  Homeless

  Hey Homeless,

  There’s a word, a legal word, for coercing someone into sex. That word is rape. Run. If he contacts you, call a cop.

  Except he had been the one to run.

  A pathetic whining excuse in his head tried to purify some of the guilt. Nate hadn’t forced Kellan, hadn’t so much as touched him. No one had pushed Kellan to his knees. He wouldn’t have gone that far if he hadn’t wanted to. For all Nate knew, the whole thing was some bizarre initiation game in some weird heterosexual conspiracy in straight men’s endless quest to humiliate gay men. Kellan had definitely earned his way into that club.

  Maybe if Nate was out of the apartment long enough, Kellan would disappear back into his own life. There had to be someone to take him in. Someone who wouldn’t demand a blowjob as a rent payment. Someone who wasn’t a despicable rapist.

  And if he was still there, well, Nate’s conscience would have to scrub itself clean by letting Kellan stay there as long he needed. And Nate’s libido was going to have to find a way to live with that.

  Chapter Five

  KELLAN LICKED his lips, still tasting Nate’s come, the skin of his dick. Nate probably figured Kellan would be dashing to the sink to scrub the evidence from his mouth, and Kellan would have thought he would too, but it wasn’t like they’d gotten far. If either of them was honest, it wasn’t the first time one of them had had his dick out when they were together. They’d dressed together after sleepovers, gone skinny-dipping, and when Kellan had finally managed to shoot his first load right after he turned twelve, he’d gone running to tell Nate about it, fucking showed him how until Nate could do it too.

  Not that what had happened back then—or that other time—was anything like today, but Kellan didn’t feel any need to wash away gay cooties. All he felt at the moment was hungry, vaguely turned on in the kind of way he would be at the thought of getting some later, but mostly hungry. The beer he’d sipped while they talked sloshed around his empty stomach.

  He rolled to his feet, stomped over, yanked open the fridge door, and glared at a whole lot of empty space. He sure as hell hoped Nate would come home from his freak-out with some food.

  As a kid Nate had been eerily neat, so it wasn’t too much of a shock to find the fridge clean, but Kellan had expected there would be some sign of edible food in there. Nate wasn’t some stick-thin model living on sips of lemon-flavored water. Instead Kellan found a jar of brown rice—uncooked—another jar of uncooked oatmeal, and one with a tan paste, the beer—thank God—and some nectarines and grapes. Back then, Nate had loved pizza and Chinese buffets and burgers. When did Nate become a health freak?

  The answer came easy.

  Sometime in the fifteen years since you stopped being his friend.

  Kellan would find a way to make it up to him—or at least pay him back for this. Though he hoped it wouldn’t involve any more seriously awkward blowjobs.

  A check of the cabinets showed more tasteless things with labels like organic and healthy and whole grain taking up lots of space in the front. There was some tea, but Kellan didn’t need to be hyper and hungry. He pushed the doors closed again. The cabinet next to the sink squeaked when he opened it, and Yin trotted over with a hopeful meow. He shrugged at her and then opened one of the cans of cat food onto a dish. The smell reassured him that he wasn’t hungry enough to fight her for her ocean whitefish and salmon entree.

  He didn’t actually think there’d be any better food behind the door in the hall, but he looked anyway. Coats, a couple of suits, and a worn guitar case. He didn’t remember Nate going in for band or anything. Probably played—whatever kind of music went with granola and gay.

  If he forced himself to answer, Kellan would say he was snooping around to distract himself from his empty stomach, but he knew damned well he was looking for some idea of who Nate was now. What he’d kept from back then, what he’d let go of.

  So far he had liking animals, being neat, and staying decent enough to not throw Kellan’s ass onto the street. That was the Nate he remembered. Nate’s computer bag was next to the desk, but since a park bench would make a worse bed than this hardwood floor, Kellan didn’t go that far in his search. Instead he opened the drawers. More signs of OCD neatness—paper, pencils and pens, and paper clips in trays—but in the bottom right drawer, he hit a jackpot. A folder overfull of newsprint and the edge of a photo sticking out. Kellan tugged it until he could see more of it. Nate and his parents in some restaurant, Nate in a suit with his mom and dad. Based on Nate’s age, Kellan was guessing college graduation, but his mom and dad looked thirty years older than Kellan remembered them.

  Kellan slid the picture back inside the folder and tipped his head upside down so he could see to the back of the drawer without disturbing anything.

  “Score,” Kellan whispered.

  He got his fingers on the box he’d spied back there, and even before he pulled it out to where he could see it, Kellan knew what he’d find. Berger cookies. Baltimore’s best. Vanilla cookies covered with an inch of chocolate frosting. Kellan grabbed two and stuffed them in his mouth before tucking them back out of sight. The rich buttercream reassured more than his empty stomach. Nate hadn’t changed that much. He’d always been a sweets hoarder, like eating candy or cookies in public was some kind of sin.

  Somewhere downstairs a door slammed. Kellan jumped like he’d been stealing cash instead of a few cookies. When the thunk of solid feet hit the wooden stairs, he ran for the bathroom like his ass was on fire. It wasn’t so much that he needed to hide evidence of sneaking into Nate’s stash, but Kellan was hot and sweaty and needed a few minutes to get ready for whatever was going to happen when Nate came in. A shower would be good right now.

  As Kellan backed into the spray, his hand reached for the first bottle of gel it could find. For an ancient-looking place, the apartment had good water pressure. Hot needles beat relaxation into his shoulders. Now that he was wet and naked, his neck and back weren’t the only things that would be better off with a release of tension. Looking down at his dick reminded Kellan of the grinding they’d done. It had been good enough to get the usual reaction from close contact with another human body. But when he’d knelt in front of Nate, Kellan’s junk couldn’t seem to make a collective decision about whether it was time to play or duck and cover. Then Nate had made that sound when Kellan licked him….

  Maybe if he took advantage of the time to give his little soldier some R&R, neither of them would be thinking about how far he’d deviated from a straight line when he was on his knees. Or how flexible his dick was about what would make it jump up and salute. Because Kellan couldn’t remember it ever getting that interested in the sound of a man’s gasp tearing out of a stretched-taut neck. That his dick didn’t care that the sex-moan sound was the result of Kellan having his lips on another m
an’s cock was something he wasn’t sure would wash away just by draining his balls. Especially not when the climb up to shooting kept filling his head with the hoarse sound Nate had made and the way his eyes had drifted closed and how right it had felt to shove Nate up against the counter.

  WHEN NATE let himself back into the apartment, the room was empty, but the sound of the shower had him muttering “Fuck” and trying to paste on a calm he didn’t feel before he put the bags on the counter.

  Dragging himself toward the bathroom door, he called, “I’m back.”

  No answer. Fuckety fuck. What if Kellan really did feel all victimized and was hiding in the shower to avoid further assault?

  Nate couldn’t picture Kellan cowering from anyone. He was too fucking arrogant for that. Besides, it wasn’t as if Kellan couldn’t defend himself from Nate. Rape didn’t have to be about physical power, his feminist studies reminded him.

  “I got some stuff,” Nate tried in a louder voice.

  “Food?” Kellan’s voice seemed normal.

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank God.” The water shut off, and Nate leaped back from the door like it was radioactive. He retreated to the kitchen and got out some chopsticks for the noodle bowls he’d picked up at Thai Supreme.

  Wearing nothing but a towel that clung precariously to his hips, Kellan sauntered over to the counter.

  He sure wasn’t acting like he had anything to fear.

  Nate sucked in his breath, thankful he hadn’t already started eating. He wasn’t sure his respiratory system could handle any more inhalation of fluid along with his air.

  Maybe Kellan prancing around like that was his way of dishing out payback. Or maybe it was a hell of a karmic kick to the nuts. Either way, Nate was feeling good and punished, the scourge of unrequited lust doing worse to him than his conscience ever could. Oh yeah, thirteen-year-old Nate had had a crush on his best friend, but the memory was purely emotional.

  This was lust.

  Nate had never thought he had a type. He’d dated all kinds of guys, found lots of them hot enough to take to bed. But he sure as hell had a type now.

  Kellan Brooks.

  Kellan Brooks standing in Nate’s kitchen with lickable drops rolling down his sculpted abs. A drop caught in a line of hair that started in the middle of his rib cage to darken a few inches before it disappeared under the edge of the towel.

  He’d stared for no more than a split second before Nate turned his focus to the fascinating clumps of soba noodles wrapping around the tofu in his bowl, but the image burned into his brain with indelible clarity. Whatever kind of fun Kellan was wasting his life having, it wasn’t doing much harm to his body. With clothes on, Kellan was tall, seeming thin and rangy, but there was no absence of muscle on his frame. He would have made a Renaissance sculptor crawl over broken stained glass for a chance to use him as a permanent model.

  Kellan looked in the container he’d uncovered and then back at Nate. “What’s that?”

  “A noodle bowl. It’s like a Thai stew or soup.”

  “Yeah? Chicken?” Kellan’s nose wrinkled in suspicion.

  “It’s tofu.”

  Kellan looked in both the other bags, then sighed. “Why?”

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since the amount of water wasted to raise a beef cow is equivalent to the yearly use of a family of four. Since many animals are still alive when they are processed for their—”

  Kellan held up a hand. “Fine. Tofu. Whatever. I’m so hungry I don’t care what I put in my mouth.”

  That doomed Nate’s diaphragm to another round of eye-watering coughs and gasps. The matching pair of familiar dark red spots burst high on Kellan’s cheeks, but by the time Nate had his breath back, Kellan was offering a twisted smile.

  “Just so you know, the idea of tofu is worse. Isn’t it, like, scum off of beans? You know I hate beans.”

  “You hate string beans. This is different.”

  Kellan picked up the chopsticks. “Still beans, man.”

  Nate waited to see if Kellan would have to ask for a spoon and fork, but he scooped up noodles and vegetables and stuffed them into his mouth without difficulty. Nate tried to pretend he wasn’t disappointed that Kellan didn’t need standard utensils.

  Next up was trying to pretend he wasn’t looking at the expanse of chest across the counter, at the dark pebbled skin around brick-red nipples that had Nate biting his tongue to stem his need to find out what they tasted like.

  He looked back at his noodle bowl, but the bean sprouts reminded him of sperm, and that was no help.

  Silently begging Yin to leap up and create a distraction didn’t work.

  He felt fifteen again, popping wood because the breeze rubbed him right. But this wasn’t a breeze. This was Kellan. Grown-up, sexy, untouchable Kellan. And Nate deserved every unfulfilled tingle and pulse in his dick, every ache in his balls that wanted to paint that chest with streaks of his come. Deserved feeling like he was wearing some kind of cock-and-ball torture chastity harness because of how he’d treated Kellan.

  Kellan dropped his chopsticks as his hand went to his hip to grab the towel.

  Nate seized on that with relief and shoved one of the bags toward Kellan. “I grabbed some sweats for you while I was out. Hope they fit.”

  Kellan tipped his head. “Oh? Thought maybe part of me staying here would mean I had to walk around naked.”

  Nate would have been perfectly content to die on the spot, hard-on and all.

  “Or maybe you wanted to reciprocate? Isn’t that how you guys do it?”

  The comment would have provoked a corrosive sneer about generalizations and heterosexual assumptions and obsessions with gay sex if Nate wasn’t drowning in guilt.

  Unclenching his teeth, he forced out, “If you really need a place to stay—”

  “Your dick in my mouth wasn’t enough to prove how desperate I am?”

  “Okay, fine. You can stay here until you find someplace else to stay. The rest of that—” His back teeth slammed together so hard he thought they’d shatter. It was too dangerous to play games. The want burning in Nate was enough to make him forget anything he’d ever learned about power and abuse. There’d be no more touching—not even if they were only screwing around. He’d help Kellan until he had a job and a place of his own, and that would be it. Kellan would be gone, and once Nate wasn’t burning alive with frustrated lust, he’d be able to concentrate on constructing a coherent sentence again.

  “That stuff.” Nate gestured downward. “It was a game. You won. That’s it. All right?”

  “What about the rest of it?”

  “What about it?”

  “My plan to put old Geoffrey in his place.”

  “Look, being gay is not like dying your hair blue to freak out your parents. It’s not something you can play with like that.”

  “So you get to call that stuff”—Kellan mimicked Nate’s gesture—“a game, but I can’t play.”

  Nate ignored him. “You can’t be gay because it’s convenient. It’s not what sexuality is about.”

  “Is it?”

  “What?”

  “Convenient. Is being gay convenient?”

  At the moment, being attracted to men—with this one standing in front of him—was as far from convenient as Nate ever hoped to get. So far from convenient that he couldn’t come out from behind the counter, couldn’t move without waddling with that spike in his jeans.

  He scooped up more noodles. “No. Gay is what I am. It’s not something you decide to wear for a while and then throw it out when you’re done.”

  “What if I make it worth your while?” Kellan arched his brows.

  “I told you that was a game. I don’t want to have sex with you, Kellan.”

  Nate couldn’t decide which called him a liar loudest, his balls, his dick, or the look in Kellan’s eyes, so he concentrated on finishing his supper.

  “That’s not what
I’m offering. You say you won’t do this just to get back at my dad. Even after what he did to yours. What if it wasn’t only about my dad? What if I could tell you something that would prove some of that stuff in your column about the South District deal being a fake? Proof to get the whole mess shut down?”

  Geoffrey Brooks had promised that his company’s expansion into vitamin water would use the waste in the district for power and reopen the abandoned bottling plant to create ten thousand jobs—in exchange for millions in tax concessions from the city. The deal was set to go down in September. “Real proof?”

  “Papers, emails, blueprints, budget statements. He’s already bought a plant in China for the bottling.”

  “Are you bullshitting me?”

  “No, but you’re not getting the proof till I get what I want. Here’s what’s on the table. You get to make Geoffrey Brooks’s head explode, possibly causing several bigoted politicians and media moguls to cut off contact with him—or not take his donations—and in the end, you get the big prize. Geoffrey’s big-deal scam blows up in his face, and you save the city. Like Superman.”

  “Batman’s cooler,” Nate said. “And what’s my end of the bargain?”

  Kellan’s cheeks got those two dark patches of color. Did he really think Nate would bring up sex again? “Um.”

  “In exchange for what?” Nate clarified.

  “You pretend to be my boyfriend. Wait—you help me pretend that we’re madly in love.”

  It wasn’t as if Nate didn’t owe Geoffrey Brooks a gigantic knee to the balls. And it wasn’t only personal. In the end, those tax concessions would cost more jobs than they were clearly going to get. Would it be so bad to let Kellan fake coming out?

  “How long are we talking?” Nate said.

  “I don’t think it should be longer than a month or two—hell, maybe Geoffrey will be kissing my ass in a week.”