Intoxicating, page 6
“No. ’Cause I was pretty sure you wanted to fuck me in my kitchen earlier.” The words left Wyatt’s mouth before he could stop them.
Teeth grazed Wyatt’s shoulder, and his cock twitched, the hand that had been on his belly now scraping over one hard nipple. “You’re imagining things. I find you repulsive,” Linc rumbled.
Wyatt smiled despite himself, his hand reaching back to rub Linc’s hip. “Yeah, same. When you kissed me, I almost puked.”
Once again, that gruff laugh before they descended back into silence. Wyatt waited for Linc to do something more. He could feel Linc’s half-hard cock resting against his ass. Linc was driving him nuts, just kissing and licking at his neck, touching him like he owned him, like he had some claim to Wyatt’s body, like it was his to access any time he wanted. The thought had the blood rushing south, but Wyatt couldn’t let this happen again. It just felt too good.
He turned in Linc’s arms until they were practically nose to nose. “I don’t know what this is that we’re doing right now. I don’t know what you expect from me. I don’t do cuddles and kisses and just breathing in each other’s space. Like…this isn’t me.”
Linc pressed his lips to Wyatt’s forehead. “Relax. This was just a temporary moment of insanity. We just needed to get it out of our systems. You’ve been locked up in this house for six months and were probably bored. I haven’t had the time or the energy to find a hookup since I was discharged. We’ve got another six months stuck together. It’s good we got this out of our systems now. Right?”
Wyatt’s stomach curdled like spoiled milk, his chest tightening, but he gave Linc a nod and a tight smile. “Yeah. Totally.”
“In twelve days, you’ll be on the outside and I’ll just be the old guy lurking in the corner, keeping you out of trouble.”
Wyatt rubbed his nose against Linc’s before stealing a kiss. “You are pretty old,” he agreed somberly. “You’re, like, what? Fifty?”
Linc snorted. “Forty, you little shit.”
This time, it was Wyatt who laughed. “Same difference. Old is old.”
“Go to sleep. Tomorrow we go back to the real world.”
Wyatt wanted to tell him there was no way he could sleep with another person hot and sweaty against him, but a yawn interrupted his plans. He tucked his head under Linc’s chin. He shifted, jostling Wyatt not unpleasantly, and then the blankets were around his shoulders and Linc’s arm wrapped around his waist. He drifted to sleep in the cocoon Linc had made for them, his heart beating beneath Wyatt’s ear.
It was a scorcher. Just the sun reflecting off the pool’s surface was enough to have Wyatt regretting his plan to sit on the patio and pretend he wasn’t stalking Linc as he paced back and forth through the kitchen with the phone pressed to his ear. Three days had passed since Linc had rocked Wyatt’s world, and he was equal parts frustrated and furious. He wasn’t sure why he was angry, exactly. He didn’t want Linc. There was no use wanting something he could never have. Nothing could come of the two of them fooling around.
Except for maybe a few thousand orgasms.
No. Wyatt didn’t want that. He couldn’t. But the fact that Linc had so easily slammed the door on their sexcapade with seemingly no regrets left Wyatt’s ego as bruised and raw as his throat.
The fingerprint-shaped bruises were now purple and green, which were not Wyatt’s colors, but he refused to cover them. Sometimes, he stared at himself in the bathroom mirror and wrapped his own hand around his neck and tried to remember exactly how it felt when Linc choked him as he’d jerked him off.
Linc obviously didn’t think about it at all. He barely looked at Wyatt. Even now, Wyatt lay by the pool in his smallest swim trunks and Linc hadn’t so much as flicked his eyes in his direction. The dick. Well, maybe not a total dick, a voice nagged. He made Wyatt dinner every night, even if he just left it for him in the microwave.
From somewhere deep inside the house, the front door opened and slammed shut, and then Charlie was striding toward him through the living room in a flowy belted white dress with big blue flowers and a huge wide-brimmed hat. She looked like she’d just stepped off a cruise ship. “Hey, new security dude whose name I don’t remember,” she sang with a wave.
Linc covered the mic on his phone. “Hey, future real housewife whose name I don’t remember,” he called, giving her back the same wave.
Charlie gave a delighted cackle as she made her way to the far side of the pool where Wyatt had taken up residence. She wrinkled her nose when she realized he sat in the shade. “Why are you lurking in the shadows like a creeper? Are you stalking Father Time in there?” she asked, tone suspicious as she dropped to sit in the chaise beside him.
Wyatt’s eye roll was lost behind his sunglasses. “Of course not. I just don’t want to look like one of your leather handbags when I’m thirty. My skin care routine takes a solid hour, and I’m not going to ruin it by scorching myself with this brutal noonday sun.”
“You’re ridic—” She shut her mouth abruptly, lurching forward and snatching his chin, jerking his head upward. “What the hell is that? Are those… Wyatt Edgeworth, is that a handprint around your throat?”
The blood rushing to Wyatt’s face felt worse than any sunburn could. He stared at his own horrified expression in the mirrored lenses of Charlie’s aviators before he cut his gaze to Linc, praying he couldn’t hear Charlie’s high-pitched shrieking.
“Shh, keep your voice down.”
Charlie gasped, lurching to her feet. “Keep my voice down? Did he do this to you? Did he hurt you?”
Before Wyatt could say a word, she was off like a shot, charging toward Linc as fast as her Espadrilles would allow. “What the fuck is your problem, dickface?”
Linc’s brows ran for his forehead in confusion, though he looked disconcertingly unflustered. “Uh, I’m a little busy here,” he said, giving his phone a jiggle in case she had somehow missed it.
Charlie plucked the phone from Linc’s fingers and tossed it into the pool. “Now, you’re not,” she shouted. She shoved Linc with both hands, but he stood firm, staring down at her like she was a rather annoying insect ruining his picnic. That did nothing to dissuade her. “Do you think that because you’re bigger than he is and stronger and…older that you can just bully him? That you can abuse him and hurt him? Do you have any idea what he’s been through? Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size? You’re disgusting!”
Linc blinked down at Charlie stupidly as Wyatt tried to pull her back. “Charlie, it’s not like that at all. Please, shut up before you make it even worse.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. Both Linc and Charlie stared at him, mouths agape, which Wyatt might have found hilarious in any other situation, but which was not at all funny now. Charlie balled her fists at her sides and turned on Linc, whose eyes went wide at the horrific screech she emitted just before she punched him in the face.
“Ow,” Linc muttered, putting a hand over his now injured eye.
Jesus. What the hell was happening right now?
“Charlie, stop! What is wrong with you? Let’s go talk in my room, okay?”
Before she could answer, the front door once again opened and closed, and all three of them turned toward the sound. Wyatt’s stomach dropped, and he did his best not to vomit. Of course, his father chose today to show up.
Wyatt prayed the entire building would suddenly collapse and take them all out in one spectacular mess. But alas, the building held firm. Money couldn’t buy happiness but it could buy top-of-the-line construction materials.
Charlie’s blue eyes went feral at the sight of his father, and Linc and Wyatt could only watch in horror as she marched toward the older man and poked her claw-like nail into his navy blazer. “This is all your fault. Are you just so desperate to control him that you’ll let this savage kill him? Look at him! Look at his throat. You just won’t be happy until he’s dead, will you? Do better! Be better!”
She didn’t wait for an answer, just made one last terrifying girl noise before flouncing out the door, slamming it in her wake.
“That girl is as bug-shit crazy as that heathen mother of hers. I don’t know what Craig was thinking marrying that woman.”
When neither he nor Linc responded, his father’s gaze darted between the two of them. After a moment, he strode forward, snatching Wyatt’s jaw hard enough he feared he’d incur more finger-shaped bruises. An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of his stomach as his old man turned to scrutinize Linc once more. There was nothing Wyatt could say to get Linc out of this. If he told his father how it really happened, Linc was out of a job, and if he didn’t, Linc was still out of a job.
“Wyatt, go to your room. I think I need to have a talk with your new security detail.”
“Dad—” Wyatt started.
His father turned on him, spitting his words between clenched teeth. “What did I say?”
Wyatt flinched back reflexively, and his father sneered at him with unbridled disgust. Wyatt’s gaze dragged over his father’s shoulder to Linc.
“Go,” Linc mouthed.
Wyatt’s heart sank, but he did as he was told, fleeing to his room, slamming the door closed behind him and sliding down it, clutching his head in his hands. He ruined everything he touched.
Now, he’d ruined Linc too.
By the time Wyatt’s door closed, Linc was prepared to accept any consequence Montgomery Edgeworth doled out. He’d hurt Wyatt. Not on purpose, but the results were the same. Linc had put those bruises on the boy’s neck, no matter how much he’d wanted them there, and now, he’d created an even larger problem between Wyatt and his father.
Linc never should have left the Marines. After just a few months, it was clear he had absolutely no clue how to function in the outside world. Jackson had handed him a job making six figures, and he’d managed to blow it up in a week. A job babysitting a kid on house arrest. That had to be some kind of record. He should’ve just gone back overseas as a hired gun. They made good money and didn’t have to pretend they still belonged in polite society. He should just start packing, but he would let the senator say his piece, for Jackson’s sake.
“Lincoln, I understand more than anybody how frustrating that boy can be. He’s mouthy, he’s lazy, he cares more about his hair than he does about getting a degree or contributing positively to society. He never makes the right choice. He’s my greatest disappointment.”
Blood rushed in Linc’s ears, his pulse skyrocketing. Seriously? The man was blaming Wyatt for the bruises on his own neck. That was some next-level rationalizing, even for a politician. Linc shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from giving the senator a matching set of bruises.
“There have been a million times in my life where I’ve wanted to throttle the boy, but I don’t. You know why? Because I can’t afford child abuse allegations. Nowadays, nobody understands the benefit of discipline. Of corporal punishment. It’s all participation trophies and entitlement. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No,” Linc answered honestly.
“I’m sure by now you’ve realized that my son has certain…proclivities.”
“Proclivities?” Linc all but growled, unable to stop his lip from curling.
The senator’s eyes glittered, his expression mimicking Linc’s. “Yes! See? That look right there. That disgust. I get it. I understand it. It enrages me, too. That boy of mine will do anything to spite me, to make me look bad, even behaving like some…sodomite. It’s completely unnatural.” The man was pacing now, waving his arms like some fire and brimstone preacher. Linc knew the type. He’d spent the first ten years of his life in a tiny town in Mississippi and had been on the receiving end of more than one of these self-aggrandizing sermons. “It’s…it’s spiteful is what it is. Repulsive, morally reprehensible, and God knows I’ve tried to reason with him, tried to get him the best therapists, got him enrolled in the best programs as soon as I saw what he was. Light of God Ministries has one of the best conversion programs out there. I put him in when he was just fourteen years old. Three years in a row they had him and still…still, he behaves that way.”
“What’s your point?” he asked between clenched teeth before begrudgingly adding, “Sir,” remembering he still represented Jackson.
“My point is, I understand your rage. I imagine a Marine like you finds a…deviant…like my son to be an abomination. He clearly makes you angry and I understand. I do. But any discipline you dole out must be out of sight. Even now, on house arrest, that beatnik wild child he cavorts around with could run to the papers and claim he’s being abused by his father’s employee. You see how bad that would look for me, right? I just want one more term in office. I’ll deal with everything else after November.”
Linc’s head spun as he tried to grasp exactly what Monty Edgeworth was saying. Was he implying he was fine with him almost killing his son? Jesus. This man was a fucking monster. A monster paying him six figures. Six figures Linc desperately needed. He mentally shook himself. “Just so we’re clear, what is it you expect of me?”
The man gave him a broad grin and clapped him on the shoulder. “Discretion, soldier, as discussed. Discretion is key. No visible bruises, no life-threatening injuries. You were Special Forces. I’m sure they taught you all the best techniques. Ways to…make an impression without causing any permanent damage or disfigurement. Without leaving behind any evidence.”
Linc’s blood wasn’t rushing, it was boiling. The only person Linc wanted to damage and disfigure was this smug piece of shit in front of him smiling while he detailed all the ways Linc could abuse his son. “You can’t be serious?” Linc heard himself say.
The senator held up both hands, like a blackjack dealer signing off. “This isn’t a setup. Honestly, it couldn’t work out better for me. If the L.O.G. couldn’t save him, maybe a little military discipline can.” His voice dropped low. “Listen, if you’re worried about Wyatt telling anybody or going to the police, I promise he won’t. If those three summers taught him nothing else, it’s how to keep his mouth shut and protect the family. Thank God for small favors.”
Linc was grateful his shaking hands were in his pockets. He was ten seconds away from tossing a state senator off his own balcony, and the only thing keeping him from acting on his instincts were thoughts of his own father two hours away and the boy down the hall. If Linc left now, who knew who the man would hire next? Black market mercenaries? Linc was no saint, but Wyatt was much safer with him than with anybody else. What if the next guard found Wyatt as reprehensible as his father? What if the previous guards had already abused him?
“I’m sorry for the bruises. I assure you, they won’t happen again,” Linc managed, forcing the words past his lips. Chewing ground glass would have been less painful. He promised himself when all of this was over and he had penned his resignation for Jackson, he was going to punch this guy squarely in his smug fucking mouth. Twice. At least.
“Don’t worry about it, son. These things happen. I think you might be just what my son needs.”
He turned to walk toward the door but turned back at the last minute. “Your father must be very proud. Thank you for your service.” And with a jaunty salute, he was gone.
Linc counted to thirty before he picked up the nearest object—a highball glass Wyatt had used for his orange juice—and hurled it against the wall with a shout. A bit of tension left him as it fractured, glass scattering across the floor. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. He wanted to rip the other man apart, wanted to torture him slowly. Linc knew the things that went on in those conversion programs. Every gay kid had heard the horror stories. Some he knew had stories of their own. He couldn’t imagine what three straight summers would be like.
He needed to call Jackson. He needed to call Ellie. He reached for his cell phone before remembering it was now at the bottom of the swimming pool. Charlie. His eye throbbed a bit as if suddenly remembering the girl’s fist. She was a melodramatic psychopath, but at least she actually cared about Wyatt. That still left him without a cell phone. Shit.
He cleaned up the glass and tossed it in the garbage before brushing his teeth and snagging his wallet off the dresser. On his way out, he stopped to knock gently on Wyatt’s door. “He’s gone.” There was no response. “I need to go to the office and talk to my boss, and then I need to replace my cell phone. Are you going to be okay here by yourself?” Still nothing.
He cracked Wyatt’s door open. The boy was on his stomach under the covers, a pillow on his head, only his right shoulder and left calf visible. He likely wasn’t sleeping but Linc left him as he was.
Hopefully, he’d heard none of the conversations between Linc and the senator, though he imagined it was nothing the boy hadn’t heard a thousand times, possibly while on the wrong side of Monty’s fists.
He sighed and shook his head. “I’ll be back,” he said again before closing the door. Back in the kitchen, he spied Wyatt’s cell phone. It was unlocked. He keyed up Wyatt’s texts and found Charlie’s name, quickly tapping out a text.
Can you come back? I need you.
He held his breath as three dots danced, shoulders easing only when he saw her response.
On my way.
At least Wyatt wouldn’t be alone while Linc was gone. Not physically, anyway.
“The guy’s a cocksucker, man.” Jackson huffed out a laugh from behind his desk, his deep, booming voice filling up the large office space. “All the best homophobes are.”
Linc dropped into the chair on the other side of the enormous desk. “I don’t think this guy’s in the closet. I think he’s just a sanctimonious prick. He stood there, with that fucking smirk on his face, asking me to beat the gay out of his son but not to leave bruises.”
