Ben glances up at him, questioning.
“You tried to pick a fight with me that time you came over and found Dorian and my club friends here.”
Ben shrugs, pulls off his jeans. “I guess. That doesn’t really count.”
Xander takes off his shirt and throws it aside, but leaves his black jeans on. There are an old set of sheets on the bed and towels on the chair, but other than that, nothing’s changed. Ben kind of expected a lot of plastic. You’ve watched too many serial killer movies, he thinks.
The knife is nowhere to be seen.
“So how do you want me?” Ben asks with a grin when he’s finally naked. He starts stroking his cock brazenly, because Xander likes watching him do that.
“You can wipe that smirk off, for a start,” Xander says mildly, closing the bedroom door. He never closes the bedroom door. But Ben doesn’t register that, not yet. He raises an eyebrow at Xander.
“Oh, yeah?” he says.
Xander is all up in his personal space faster than he thought possible, and before Ben can move, shoves him hard enough to knock him backwards. Ben doesn’t get it; gives a bewildered smile. Xander moves forward and shoves again, more force behind it.
A third time, and Ben bangs backwards into the wall. But Xander still won’t quit it. He pushes again as Ben steps forward, making his head bump lightly against the plaster.
“Hey – cut it out!” Ben doesn’t understand yet.
“Make me,” Xander says, and there’s no trace of a smile at all. He grabs Ben’s shoulder and squeezes too tight.
“Ow,” Ben says, and clutches at Xander’s hand. “Ow!”
Xander leans forward and says into his ear, “You are such a fucking little bitch, Ballard. You always take it and you never push back.”
Ben is confused. He knows it’s part of the game, but he’s never heard Xander sound so cold and so mean, especially after the last three weeks of strange affection. “You’re hurting me,” he says.
“You like it when I hurt you.” His fingers dig in again.
“Fuck! Quit it.”
“You’ve been begging me to hurt you.”
“Not like that!”
“Then stop me.” Xander gives another excruciating twist to his shoulder. Ben thinks, Fine, whatever, it’s your game. And pushes his hands gently into Xander’s chest, trying to move him away. It’s like gently pushing a fridge.
“See? You like it,” Xander says, and squeezes even harder, somehow, and Ben really pushes him this time because goddamn it hurts. His arm feels weak, but he manages to force Xander backwards this time.
“Finally,” Xander drawls. “Jesus. I was beginning to think there was no fight in you at all.” But he shoves back again and Ben collides with the wall, again. Xander looks at him. “No. I was right the first time,” he says under his breath.
“Don’t,” Ben growls, and he’s beginning to get annoyed. This is confusing, and Xander doesn’t seem like Xander.
Xander grasps his face, squeezing his fingers into Ben’s cheeks, and Ben bats him away; Xander grabs again, looks his face over. “Yeah. You just take it, like always,” he says. “Don’t you ever get tired of just taking it?”
Ben pulls his head away and tries to get past, but Xander blocks him. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“You said you were going to cut me,” Ben says, and he can’t meet Xander’s eyes. He can’t think what else to say, not when Xander is looking at him like this. “And you’re – you’re not cutting me.” He doesn’t even see the knife anywhere in the room. He feels uneasy, but there’s undeniably something sexy about the feeling.
But Ben won’t give into it that easily.
Xander is appraising him, and Ben becomes uncomfortably aware of the pulse beating rapidly in his neck. He feels perverse; he’s not going to show anything if Xander won’t.
“Just – just get on with it, just cut me,” he says, trying to step forward. Xander shoves; Ben bangs into the wall again. “Stop doing that! I’m not going to hit you.”
Xander gives him a look Ben has never seen before, and it’s not a nice look. A smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, worse than if he weren’t smiling at all. “Of course you’re not going to hit me. As if you could.”
Ben searches his face then for a trace of Xander, other Xander, his Xander, but there’s nothing there. He knows, rationally, that this is exactly what Xander said he was going to do, and exactly what Ben agreed to, and so, rationally, it’s okay. But it doesn’t feel very rational, not with Xander’s soul-blank eyes a few inches away from his own, watching him like he’s a zoo animal. A curiosity.
“Are you going to cry?” Xander asks in a little sing-song voice. “Are you going to cry again, Benjamin? Cry for me?”
Ben feels like he’s been slapped in the face, and yeah, he’s angry now. “I. Don’t. Cry,” he tells Xander, stabbing a finger into his shoulder with every word. He’s walked them back to the middle of the room and he can feel his own naked chest and shoulders flushing with resentment. “And I’m not going to.” He shoves back, figuring if Xander’s allowed to, so is he.
Xander tilts his head slightly and looks into Ben’s eyes, but it’s like he’s not seeing Ben, just a set of reactions. “I think you are,” Xander says softly. “I think you’re going to cry.” He reaches up and grabs a handful of Ben’s hair, pulling hard.
Ben makes a sudden decision to get a shorter cut again. At least then Xander won’t be able to get such a goddamn vice-like grip in his hair.
“Stop it,” Ben spits. “Stop it.” But it doesn’t stop. He’s getting really pissed off, and Xander is really fucking hurting him. He grabs Xander’s wrist, but Xander just yanks harder. Ben gets down on his knees, because that’s the way Xander’s fist is directing him.
For a second Ben thinks Xander wants a blow job, and reaches tentatively for his waistband, but one look into Xander’s face tells him he’s way off. Xander’s eyes are glassy. He looks high. Unrecognizable. Ben thought Xander might look like he does when he’s practicing for his part in The Hunter, because he assumed it would be an act.
But it’s not an act. Xander is not playing a part.
This is Alexander Romano, unleashed.
In that moment Ben feels, with a horrible queasy sensation, an unwilling camaraderie with Adam. If Xander looked at Adam like this, Ben can kind of understand what went down between them.
“You’re such a child,” Xander is telling him. “You cry all the time. Scared of frogs? Horror movies?” Ben swears to himself he’s never going to make a list of anything for Xander again.
Xander slips a hand into his pocket and pulls out the knife. It’s still closed.
Xander has used a million things on Ben by now. Crops, canes, paddles, belts. They were all just props. This is not a prop.
It’s all carbon steel and black inlay and so, so ugly. In the shop, it was a beautiful thing; and it was beautiful when it was lying in its box, inert, and Ben watched Xander’s face glowing as he looked at it. When he’s seen Xander playing with it, flipping it open and closed like a meditation, it was a beautiful thing.
Xander keeps hold of Ben’s hair, forcing his face towards the knife, and flicks it open with a soft snick — too close to his eye, Ben thinks, way too close to his eye.
And it doesn’t matter at all how much Ben knows his Xander wouldn’t really hurt him, because his Xander isn’t there, and there’s a fucking knife in his fucking face.
Ben doesn’t make a conscious choice. He scrambles backwards, ripping his hair out of Xander’s hand. There are only three things in the room: the knife, the person who used to be Xander, and his own pulse points, which are throbbing out in his skin like they want to be opened.
Little traitors, every one.
Ben grits his teeth, tries to stand, his palms too sweaty to give him much grip on the wall, but he gets most of the way up before Xander moves forward again, the knife still in Ben’s eye-line and too-casually held.
Ben
doesn’t even have to think about it. He starts forward, trying to attack back. But Xander is expecting it, and crashes heavily forward into Ben instead before he can impact.
Ben feels like an asteroid meeting a small planet. Fingers grab him hard at the shoulder, digging in painfully again, and he crashes backwards into the wall. The hanging picture above the bed clatters on its hook. His back and shoulders take the force and he yelps from shock rather than pain.
He has no fucking idea where the knife is, and he has to know.
“Stop!” he wheezes. Xander smashes his mouth into Ben’s, teeth breaking the skin of his lip, enamel screeching. Ben tastes blood and Xander. He’s L.A. enough to worry about his veneers.
His mind is trying to form the words that will stop this happening, but his mouth won’t say them. Xander is clenching a fist in his hair again, teething at his torn lip, making it worse, but all Ben can think to say is Stop but he knows that isn’t the magic word.
He’s in a nightmare, unable to run. Unable to chant the incantation that will stop the monster from tearing him apart.
He panics, tries to punch, tries to kick Xander right in the fucking balls, but it does no good. Xander flattens him against the wall, and Ben finds his wrist seized painfully tight; his other arm pinned between them and immobilized. His cheekbone is scraping over the wall.
His heart is thundering in his ears, and he’s never felt so excited in his life…or terrified. Oh God, oh God, how can dread and desire co-exist like this?
He still doesn’t know where the knife is.
He hears Xander breathing heavily, hot breath damp on his neck. Xander is saying something in his ear, forcing the words out clearly.
“This is quite a drastic odyssey.”
Xander knows. He’s telling Ben his safe words, asking him if he wants to tap out.
“I said –”
“I heard what you said,” Ben snarls, finding his voice. “Fuck you.” He hears the words but doesn’t recognize himself. He sounds savage, ferocious.
Xander bites down on his shoulder, hard enough to pierce skin, and Ben chokes on his own scream. Gets a hand free and tries to claw at Xander’s mouth, rip those teeth out of his flesh.
Xander drags him across the room to slam him into the opposite wall, right next to the plastered-over hole. He pulls Ben’s hands down behind his back and gives him another vicious kiss.
“Your face,” he pants. “It just looks so much better with some color in it.”
“Not here, please, not here,” Ben hears himself saying. This spot is a good spot, it’s supposed to be a safe spot.
“You know what to say.” Xander lets him go, but Ben finds he can’t stand on his own. His lip is bleeding, he can feel it, and his entire face stings. His nose is aching. He takes a brief moment to feel grateful that it’s not bleeding too, because once he gets a bloody nose it just doesn’t stop.
He’s sliding down the wall slowly. “Stand up,” Xander hisses. “I want to watch your face.” But Ben can’t stop sliding. His vision is slightly fuzzy now too. His head is starting to buzz.
“I’m flying,” he says, and smiles.
That’s when Xander grabs him between the legs. “Not yet,” he breathes, and it’s a command. “Only when I say.” It brings Ben’s focus back, sharp, into his body. Xander literally has him by the balls, but the weird thing is, Ben is hard. Not just hard, but throbbing.
Xander runs light fingers over Ben’s cock as though testing it, checking to see if it’s real or just an act.
“You do like it,” he says, almost wondering.
Ben’s urge to fly, to slip into the clouds and up above the atmosphere, is almost overwhelming. But Xander has the knife in his hand.
“Please, please.” Ben can barely hear himself. He places his hands carefully against Xander’s chest. He doesn’t want to make any sudden moves. His legs are trembling with the effort of standing up. He shoots his eyes sideways, past the plastered hole, at the closed door, wondering if he could make it in time. But it’s locked. It’s locked shut.
And then the knife is too close to Ben’s face for him to concentrate on anything else. “I could do anything I want to you right now,” Xander says, leaning in for another kiss. He sucks at the wound on Ben’s lip, then pulls back. Spits blood back in his face and Ben flinches like it’s a slap. “Say it. Tell me, baby.”
“You could do anything you want to me right now,” Ben parrots. Xander squeezes his fingers round his cock, and Ben clenches his hands against him. “Please,” he says. He doesn’t know whether he’s begging to cum or begging to stop.
“Oh, fuck, you’re beautiful like this,” Xander breathes. Ben looks at him properly, makes an effort to focus his eyes, and still doesn’t recognize him. Xander’s lips are stained red and drawn back from his teeth in something that is not a smile. There are scratches clawed into his face.
Xander puts the knife up against the wall next to Ben’s head, and if there’s one thing Ben is thankful for, it’s that he can’t see it anymore. The relief makes him lightheaded. The buzzing comes back, stronger than ever. He thinks about frogs. Phobia cured. Frogs don’t eat people, but Xander–
“You can stop me.” Xander is waiting for something.
“No,” Ben says. “I don’t want to stop you.” For a horrible second he thinks he’s going to piss himself, like a child. His mind stops. This time he’s sliding no matter what.
But Xander catches him under the arm, almost tender. He helps him to the bed, where Ben collapses, his limbs heavy and indolent.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Xander says, straddling him, making sure his arms are immobilized. “Don’t you fucking dare go flying. Not until I say you can.” He points the knife straight at Ben’s face. A thin rivulet of blood has run down Xander’s face, down his neck, and is congealing gradually above his clavicle. I did that, Ben thinks, and feels satisfaction.
“Unless I safe word,” he says spitefully. He just wants to slip under, to float away, and Xander won’t let him.
Xander looks at him, raising an eyebrow. A moment passes.
Then Xander speaks. “If you’re not going to safe word right now,” he says softly, “Then let’s get on with this.” Ben shivers. “But if you are going to safe word, you’d better do it now.”
“I’m not scared,” Ben whispers. “I’m not scared of you.” His heart is racing and he’s pretty sure Xander can feel it, because he has a hand on Ben’s chest.
“You just keep telling yourself that,” Xander says, and cuts into Ben’s chest. Makes a strangled sigh in the back of his throat. Ben feels sharp pain and warmth welling and he stares at Xander.
“You – you cut me,” Ben says, shocked.
Xander collects his blood on the tip of a finger and smears it on to Ben’s mouth. “I cut you,” he agrees.
“I don’t like this,” Ben says, or tries to say.
“I can see that. You’re crying.” Xander pauses once more. “Safe word? No? You can even just say safe word if you like.” Ben presses his lips together as if the words might escape of their own accord.
Xander reaches down to cut into him again. “You have no idea,” he tells Ben, “how gorgeous this blade looks sliding into you. Like it’s making love to you, sinking into your flesh.” He looks right into Ben’s eyes.
Ben doesn’t remembers what happens next, but Xander tells him later.
He starts screaming, and Xander has to hold a hand over his mouth until he stops. Xander says he nearly stopped everything right there, because he figured the neighbors would be calling the cops.
Once Ben stops screaming and no one shows up at the door, Xander keeps going.
But only because Ben begs him to.
By the time Xander’s finished, Ben is shuddering, clammy, and he could swear the air is cloying with the scent of blood.
“Let me go,” he whispers. “Let me go.”
Xander knows what he’s trying to ask. “I think I’m done here. You can go, if you
like. Go flying.”
But Ben can’t, despite his desperation. There’s too much going on in his head. “Help me. Please.” His whole face is soaked, and he prays it’s not with blood.
“Be quiet,” Xander whispers. “No more talking.” He lays the knife over Ben’s lips, barely touching. The blade is wet. “Shhh. Off you go.”
That does it.
“Where are you?” says a voice in his ear, but Ben has no way to tell.
“Flying,” he answers, amazed, and he can’t speak anymore. He hears something that could be a question, but English is a foreign language to him now. There are sensations, and time passes. He hears Xander’s voice, understands and obeys, opens his mouth when he’s told, because the only thing he wants to do is make Xander happy.
“Oh my God,” he says.
“Not quite,” Xander retorts. Ben feels his legs pull up, bending over Xander’s forearms. Xander is naked now too. “I’m going to fuck you, Benjamin.”
That will be just fine, Ben thinks. Whatever you want. He feels a sharp fingernail pinch on the inside of his thigh, high up. It hurts. Nothing has hurt for a while.
“Come back to me, a little bit,” Xander is saying. “I want you here for this.”
“I’m here,” he mumbles.
“You didn’t safe word.”
“No.”
“Do you need to safe word?”
“No.”
“What are your safe words, Benjamin?”
He has to think about that. “Drastic something?”
“Close enough. Back with me now?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Ben starts to feels his face aching again. He curls his fingers and toes. His eyes are sore. His nose is stuffy, and he has to breathe through his mouth, which is tangy with blood. His chest is one big hurt. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“I told you. I’m going to fuck you.”
Ben feels fingers invading his ass and bucks; it’s almost too much. But Xander is gentle, careful.
“Relax,” he says. “I won’t hurt you anymore.” He takes his time, teasing Ben until he starts asking for it. “You want it?”
Ben looks at him for the first time in a long time. He’s been afraid to look, but Xander, his Xander, has returned. He has blood on his mouth and bruises and scratches on his face, but it’s Xander again.
Marked by Him (Rough Love Book 4) Page 3
