Twisted Secrets

by Ace Gray

  “Is this your world?” she asked, her voice low and rough. “Is it mine?”

  “It was an anti-war protest piece in the late 30s,” I answered as I stepped toward her.

  “I know what it is. Guernica depicts suffering on a global scale.” Her small fingers reached out and followed the line of a broken body at the bottom of the recreation. “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Do I live in chaos and terror?” I paused. “Yes.”

  “It was theirs too, wasn’t it?”

  I knew she was asking about her parents and I remembered how thoroughly she’d been dismantled in the past forty-eight hours.

  “I don’t know if I love them or hate them for keeping this from me,” she continued, her arm reeling back in and her fingertips digging into her flesh. “I don’t know if I’m terrified or relieved that they can’t find me.”

  “I’m relieved.”

  She shot me daggers from over her shoulder then reached up for the painting just one more time. Her fingertips followed the line of a crushed human then made the same shape across her chest. With dainty little steps, she retreated from the wall to the corner of my bed furthest from me. Her delicate body arched as she slumped onto the sheets.

  “If Picasso painted me, I’d be in pieces too, trampled to bits,” she whispered.

  “That first day,” I started with a deep breath, wanting nothing more than to put her back together. “You told me that you love art because it was ugly. This is ugly, and yesterday you were ugly.” Her eyes met mine with a fierceness that I recognized, but this time I wasn’t going to fight her. I was going to feed her. “And, Filly, for the record, I find you beautiful that way.”

  I was a tilt-a-whirl spinning in one direction only to fling back the other way. My parents loved me. My parents lied to me. My parents who fucked and fought and killed. Brye had just looked at me with those pure and innocent artists eyes. Brye who defiled me.

  The artwork on the walls was my only touch point. I could find missing pieces of me in Girl with the Pearl Earring or The Night Watch. The Persistence of Memory seemed to call loudly to me. Probably because I was dripping across the landscapes I’d thought I’d known and puddling on the floor.

  Which way was up?

  How did I hold my shape anymore?

  Why in the fuck did I wonder if Brye could help me keep it together?

  I hated him. Or wanted to hate him. I hated what I’d seen, I hated what he’d done, but not him. He spoke of darkness, but there was light too. It was all mangled up and ugly. But I’d always been a sucker for a tragically beautiful and truthfully ugly piece of work…

  “I lost it last night, but I’m finding my balance again. Come with me.” Brye reached out for me.

  I swallowed as I watched his steady hand. If my parents could be both wonderful and wicked, could he? Did I even want to give him the chance?

  “I can pick you up and dump you in the bath, ya know,” he said as he stretched his hand farther.

  With a heavy sigh, I grabbed it. He was right, and if there was anything that I wanted right now, it was some semblance of choice. And a hot shower.

  He pulled me into his bathroom which was just as opulent as his bedroom. The marble surfaces and filigreed silver mirrors complimented the deep, dark luscious wood from his bedroom. Where the bedroom was art print on top of art print all in an immaculate boy’s club setting, this room was clean and crisp. There was one single sculpture that hung along the back wall of the massive bath, above a huge tub.

  I knew the artist immediately and gasped. The steel was too familiar. The style of the flame coming to life despite being metal. Only one set of tiny hands, crisscrossed by burn marks could have made it.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “My dad had it shoved in the basement. He never said how he acquired it.”

  “It’s my mom’s.”

  I pushed past Brye and all but hurdled the tub wall to stand closer. There were violent images hidden in the flames—racehorses, guns, money—that seemed to both fuel and smother the way her sacred heart sculpture burned. I understood the truth of it so deep that it crashed into me and leveled me into the tub.

  “I’m not going to see her again,” I murmured against my knees.

  Brye wordlessly started the water, shielding me from the cold despite being numb all over again. The rushing water from the faucet was the only reply. When warm water crept up around me, Brye slid a wash rag into the water and reached for my chest. I shot back and slapped at his hand, sending water splashing in every which way.

  “I’m going to take care of you,” he said, his voice leaving no room for question.

  “I don’t need your brand of care,” I sneered.

  “Yes, you do,” he said sharply. “None of us—none of them—made it through this alone.”

  Through this. I sighed. Did I believe I could make it through this? Did I know if I wanted to? I slid back into the tub, resigned to the pain of everything still crashing through me in unrelenting waves. Resigned to Brye.

  He washed me gently, only scrubbing where his cum had struck across my chest. His hands roved over my breasts and then beneath the water and below my belly button, but he didn’t take advantage. Each dip and groove of his shirtless torso moved as he worked on me. The longer he did, the more the hate and hurt and confusion melted and my body followed my brain.

  I focused on the body flexing over top of me. He still sported crusted on blood and big purple bruises, both crisscrossing his roped torso. If I was honest, it was drool-worthy. He was drool-worthy. When he wasn’t being Satan himself. And even then…

  “Do you want me to wash your hair?” His voice was as warm as the water holding to me.

  I’d look up into his questioning eyes and saw him for what he was in that moment. A man who put me before himself. Who cleaned my filth before he tended to his own wounds. He didn’t have a heart, but maybe, just maybe, he had something inside of him worth wanting.

  “Be gentle.” I matched his tone.

  “Lean forward,” he commanded and I wrapped around my knees again, this time with honey flowing through my veins.

  “Shit, sorry.” He swore when he poured water over my long, matted locks and it ended up in my face too.

  A singular giggle of mine bubbled up on its own. “Not exactly like the movies, is it?”

  “Nothing about us is.”

  I tensed at the mention of us.

  “I can stop if you want, Filly.”

  “No, maybe just don’t say anything.”

  “I can do that too.”

  His big, strong fingers went to work on my hair, bumbling as he washed, rubbing more than massaging. But something about it felt good. Right even.

  “You wanna wash it out?” he asked as he dunked his hands in the water and sat back onto his heels.

  “Sure.” I managed a small but real smile for him.

  I plunged back into the water and blew out a deep breath. My arms didn’t feel as hurt or heavy as they reached back and waved in my hair. When my chest tightened from lack of oxygen, I didn’t think about sucking in the bath water and ending it. There was a spark inside me that needed air. That needed life.

  When I sat up, Brye sat facing away from me, his brutalized back on display. It was worse than the battering I’d imagined. His skin was splayed wide, blood crusted in wild streaks and rivers. I yelped.

  “You okay?” He twisted and scanned me up and down, worry crinkling his brow. “Here.” He blew out a deep breath then stood and handed me a towel.

  I unwound and wrapped myself up while he bent to drain the tub. My fingers reached out, drawn to the lashes I’d given him. They were agony captured and entombed. His detailed wings where they rested across his back were hope rendered pure. Without thinking, I touched them, running my finger along the art, in awe of all that it said about the artist, about the canvas, and about me.

  He shuddered.

  “I didn’t want you.” His confession
was low and this time it was he who didn’t meet my eyes. “And not because you were a Ryan, or because you weren’t good enough, or beautiful enough, but because you were too much. The only time I’ve ever had someone that was anything more…” he searched for his words. “You were too good, too beautiful to end up like that.”

  I nodded even though he wouldn’t turn to look.

  “Do not make me explain it again.” His words were sharp but not like before, not cruel and heartless. I reached after him, but he walked away too fast, leaving nothing but a soft cotton t-shirt in his place.

  I liked the soft side that came out with Filly. I remembered the man that had found her in the museum and I remembered Roz. I wanted to be him.

  I fucking hated him too.

  She hadn’t noticed Emmett’s blood washing from my hands as I started the bath, and I wasn’t sure if it was a good or a bad thing. If she was going to let me near, she was going to let me near dammit. Both sides. I sat looking at Guernica wondering just who was being trampled beneath the hooves of their circumstances.

  “I used your toothbrush.” Her voice pulled me from the Picasso and to her legs.

  Her mile-long legs. Filly may have been short, but she was all legs that made perfect soft lines beneath my oversized shirt. She fisted the seam of the cotton and fidgeted with her foot behind her. Her long hair was piled on top of her head and flopped to the side as she watched me.

  “You’re trying to figure out what you see in that contorted mess,” she said so matter of fact.

  “I’m trying to figure out what I see period.”

  “And?” She turned toward me, her eyes begging me to answer from a very deep and real place inside her.

  “Death and destruction are the obvious answers, right?”

  “But?” She wanted more from me and for the first time in a really long time, I wanted it from me too. But I was out of practice and didn’t quite know how to string together the right words. She sighed.

  “You don’t always have to see what’s right in front of you. You don’t always have to see dark.”

  “What else do you see in this.” I gestured to the painting that held little else besides tears and torment.

  “Hope,” she answered and I cocked my head back. She smiled her new, tentative and untrusting smile. “I see Picasso’s hope that his voice would be heard. That things could change and that there was light somewhere in the dark.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and held it. I didn’t know why but those words…

  “I used to have the same feeling when I looked at you,” she said with a heavy sigh.

  She turned from me, but the blush of her admission still lit the back of her neck on fire. I understood her temptation to brush fingertips across art, I wanted to outline that bloom of crimson. I stood staring at her skin for far too long. She was as bewitching as a piece of art with deep layers and multiple meanings. Something to devour until I understood the meaning of things.

  “And now?”

  Her body twisted the slightest bit and her eyes flitted up to find mine for only a split second but then dropped back to the carpet.

  “I’m trying to figure out what I see too.” Her words cut through me.

  “You can’t just say things like that to me,” I lashed out.

  “Just like you can’t murder, maim and rape?” she challenged me with a quirk of her eyebrow. “I’ve come to learn that can’t is a relative term. Specially around here Brye.”

  “Filly—”

  “No.” Her eyes slipped back to mine and her uncertain smile came back. “I’m done fighting with you. At least for tonight.” She sighed. “Speaking of tonight…Do I go back downstairs?”

  “Only if you want to.”

  A shiver wracked her little body and she wrapped her hands around herself in response.

  “Just sleep in my bed. It’s no big deal.” But picturing her in my bed suddenly became a very big deal. Her skin against the soft silk of my sheets. Her blonde hair fanned out on my pillow. Her body fitting against mine.

  Shit. I had to slyly rearrange my hardening dick.

  “And you?” she asked.

  “It’s big enough for two. Well, three if you wanna get technical about it.” I couldn’t help myself or the smirk that tugged at my cheek.

  “You’re disgusting.” She huffed then stomped around to the far side of the bed.

  My sheets had been cleaned and replaced, the stacks of pillows had been arranged just so by one of the household staff. Filly threw back the covers and yanked the pillows down from the headboard. One by one she used them to construct the great pillow wall of China between the two sides of my bed. I couldn’t help but laugh, a real, loud laugh that reached down below my stomach and shook my shoulders.

  When I caught my breath, Filly was frozen her hands still clutching a pillow meant for construction. She was watching me and her eyes danced along with my ribs.

  “Oh Filly” —laughter was still thick on my words— “as if that would stop me.”

  “If you’re going to force me, I’d rather just go back to the basement,” she snapped, but it lacked the sting from before.

  “I won’t touch you again until you beg.” I crossed my heart then held up three fingers in a pledge.

  “Fine.” She huffed again and rolled her eyes as she slid into her adopted side of my bed. I managed to hide my smirk when I noticed that she hadn’t stolen mine.

  “I’m gonna go take a shower. I’ll make sure it’s a cold one.”

  I tried hard not to think about Filly in my bed while I was in the shower. My semi didn’t make it easy. She was right there. I could take her. I’d done it before. And I’d make it so damn good that she would beg. I had to shake my head again and clear away that fog.

  For once in my damned life, I’d honor someone the way they deserved.

  After I showered and cleaned up my back, I stepped back into my bedroom. Only a soft warm light was left on. It wrapped her in a golden glow. Her breaths were deep and sweet, her body pressed against the pillow wall. For a moment, I thought about slipping into the pillow’s place.

  “Don’t fucking do it,” I snarled at myself under my breath.

  I flopped onto my side of the bed and she murmured when I jostled her. The sound was soft and yearning, intimate even. I shoved my hands under my ass and started to count the frames on the wall, over and over and over again.

  I was on the edge of consciousness when I heard it, soft at first. “Brye,” she moaned my name and my balls tightened.

  “Filly.” I pushed the corner of a pillow out of the way and peeked at her.

  In the faint light of the city filtering in, I could tell she was fast asleep. Fast asleep and calling my name.

  “I need you, Brye.” Her sleep-filled voice was muffled, but I could still make out each of her words. “Please.”

  “Oh hell no.” My words from earlier were being used against me—she was begging me.

  “Brye…” She gasped and shoved her hips up.

  The savage beast inside me roared with want. I tried to tame it. I really, really did.

  “Touch me, Brye. Take me.”

  Right and wrong flew off the bed right beside the pillows that had separated us and my body replaced them. Each curve I’d seen, each contour I’d traced were there for me to hold, and damn did I. My thick legs wrapped around hers and pulled them back, my hand wrapped up and found hers.

  “Touch me.” She pulled my hand and placed it on her hip. I smirked at her insistence.

  I slipped out of her grip and moved forward all on my own. Her skin was butter soft now that I got the time to explore it. Velvet in the best way.

  Filly rolled back the slightest bit and tugged at her shirt. Everything south of her chest shone in the pale city light when she rolled onto her back and groaned. My hand naturally slid to the apex of her thighs. The only question that remained was how far would I go? What would I take?

  She was begging…

 
“What are you doing?” She tensed in my arms.

  “Exactly what you asked.” My fingers hovered against her skin. “Touch me, Brye. Take me,” I mimicked her breathy plea.

  “I didn’t—”

  “You did.” I let my fingertip brush against her.

  I moved ever so slowly as I traced the skin just above her sex. The skin that she left bare and was so sensitive that her hips thrust up just at the sway of my fingers. I buried my head in the crook of her shoulder and moved lower.

  “I was dreaming about you,” she admitted lowly.

  And she was wet. The slick of sex was almost sloppy between her thighs, encouraging me to stroke against her most sensitive bits. I slid against her clit only to find her hips rolling against my hand in a movement more perfect than her mouth along my shaft. My dick twitched hard against her ass.

  “Do you want this? Are you begging me now?”

  Her hips kept up a slow rock on my hand, but I made sure I didn’t move.

  “The you in my dreams…” Her voice trailed off with a soft moan.

  “I’m not him.” I could taste the sadness in my voice.

  “Do you think you can be?” She rolled her hips again.

  The word stuck in my throat. The answer was no. I knew it just as sure as I knew my name. I wasn’t going to grow up and be a decent guy for her. I couldn’t. Not now. I’d lost my heart so there was literally no way to give it to her.

  But she kept moving her hips and it was twisting on every inch below my bellybutton. The only thing I could do in return was take every inch of her. I didn’t answer, but she didn’t make me.

  I slid my pointer finger into her and crooked it up. It was my turn to groan as her tight pussy hugged around me. I held still for a moment feeling the heat of her. She was tighter than I expected and her body twitched just because I was inside her. When I swiveled my finger around…