by Lila Rose
Clenching my jaw, I hissed out, “Are you certain it was his father this time, Melissa?”
She sniffed and nodded. “Yes, I saw him leave. I raced up to Julian and…I found him on the floor, his phone near his hand. He’d managed to call for help. I stayed on the phone until they arrived.”
Looking from Melissa, I turned to my Dad. He gave me a chin lift, which was the answer I needed. “Mum, stay with Julian and Melissa. Dad—”
“No, son, I’m coming with you.”
Chapter Eleven
Mattie
Melissa gave us an address and Mum sent us on our way with a kiss, telling me she would pray for my man and never leave his side while I took care of business.
Why couldn’t Julian’s parents be like mine?
I would never understand how there could even be parents who treated their child with nothing but hate. It disgusted me, and to find out Julian had suffered through his whole life with parents like his, caused deep grief inside me.
His father needed to hurt for what he did to his son.
He needed to suffer like he’d made his son suffer.
He needed to feel pain like his son had.
“Dad—”
“Don’t even say or think about it. I am coming with you, no one deserves…fuck, Matt, fuck. A father should never lay a hand on their child. A father…he needs to pay for this and something tells me the police won’t be enough.” The disgust in his voice was noticeable.
“Will we be enough?”
Dad actually smiled. “Yeah, kid, we will.”
Good.
Silence filled the car, our own thoughts probably different to each other’s. I just wanted to get the shit over with…then again, I wanted to drag it out, make Julian’s father pay slowly…but what I wanted the most was to get back to my man. I wanted to be there when he woke, which he would. He had to and when he did, I didn’t want him to live in fear. I didn’t want him to feel dread or anxiety.
I wanted all his pain, all his concerns to go away and I was going to make it happen.
We pulled into a long gravel driveway, which led us up to a three-story brick home. Everything about it screamed money; everything about it screamed control. There were a few cars parked out the front. Dad pulled in beside some rich sporty car. I climbed out, walked to the front of the car and waited for Dad. When he joined me, he whistled low. “Like I was saying, cops won’t do any good. It’s fuckin’ obvious he’d just buy them off.”
Nodding, I started for the front door and rang the bell. My hands opened and closed at my sides, my heartrate picked up, only it wasn’t from nerves. No, adrenaline was being pumped into my body.
“We get in there, get him into a room without witnesses and then we’ll have a chat,” Dad whispered.
“I get first chat,” I growled low just as the front door opened.
In the doorway stood a man in his late fifties. He wore slacks, a dress shirt and jacket over it. He was home, yet he was still dressed as though he was going out to dine. A smirk touched my lips when I saw his nose was swollen. Julian had fought back.
That’s my man. Pride filled me.
“Can I help you?” he asked, his tone snotty. He looked from Dad to me and back again. His broken nose raised in the air like he could smell something bad. Behind him, a woman passed by. She looked out to us and swiftly away, dismissing us to be nothing.
“Evenin’, I wondered if we could have a private word with you?” Dad asked.
“I’m sorry, but I have my family visiting tonight. Can I ask what this is about?”
“Your son,” I sneered.
“In that case, I’d really rather not talk to you at all. My son and I don’t see eye to eye,” he said.
I stepped up. He quickly backed up inside the house. “This really can’t wait and won’t take long, a quick word in your…office maybe?”
“Like I said—”
“Listen, Mr Jacob, if you don’t talk to us, you’ll soon find a reporter at your doorstep asking questions about why you sent your son to your father,” Dad barked and stepped up behind me.
“You, I, this is uncalled for,” he stuttered, turned and then walked off to the right. We followed him to the first door. He opened it, stepped in and walked around to the back of his desk.
Dad went in first. As I entered, I quickly closed the door behind me and locked it. Mr Jacob must have heard the lock click into place as his eyes widened.
“What do you want? Money to keep your mouths shut, not that there is anything the reporter can prove. Whatever Julian has told you is all a lie. As far as we are concerned, he went to his grandfather’s because he was being a troublemaker. Still, I’m willing to keep you both silent.” He bent over his desk, flicked his cheque book open, and snapped a pen off his desk. He looked up at us and said, “Well? How much?”
Walking around Dad, I kept going. I made it to the side of his desk before he straightened up and took a step back.
“I don’t want anything from you. All I want is for you to leave my boyfriend alone,” I ordered in a menacing voice.
His upper lip rose. “You’re one of them.” He straightened and glared at me. “You need to leave the premises immediately.”
My dad snorted. I shook my head at Mr Jacob. “Yeah, I don’t think so and if what you meant by I’m one of them, then yes, I’m gay. I am also very protective of my man. Which means…” I took the last step to where I was only inches from my target and then snarled, “I really don’t like to see my man lying in a hospital bed right now. Especially finding out it was his own fucking father who put him there.”
“You—”
“No, you need to shut the fuck up and listen to me.” My hand went to his throat and I pushed him against the wall. “You will leave Julian alone. You will never see him again. You will never try to make contact in any way, shape, or form. You will also leave his aunt and cousin alone. If you try to look for them, I will know. If you try to exact any type of revenge, I won’t be fucking happy, and when I’m not happy, things don’t go down well. And they won’t go down well when I ring the police and the media. And I will out all of you and your sick-as-fuck family for what they really are.”
“You have no right—” he hissed.
Tightening my grip around his neck, I brought him forward and then slammed him back against the wall. Loosening my hold, I pulled my arm away so he would listen and concentrate on what I had to say. “Bullshit. I have every right when I want Julian to be safe. I want nothing…or anyone upsetting him again. If I find out you have, I’ll fucking be back to make sure you get my message.”
Dad cleared his throat. “Son, I think he’s got the message.” Dad gestured lower on Mr Jacob. I looked down to see a wet patch.
Scoffing, I added. “It’s you who’s disgusting. It’s people like you that the world would be better off without.” Without another thought, only revenge, I raised my fist and planted it in his jaw. He doubled over. I lifted my knee and delivered it into his stomach. He coughed, and when he landed on his knees, I sent a kick to his side.
Nothing I was doing felt enough. He wasn’t in enough pain.
Raising my fist once again, my dad’s voice stopped me. “Son, enough.” Dad grabbed my wrist before it could land. He brought me back a step, away from the pathetic, snivelling Mr Jacob.
“If my son hasn’t got the message across now, then you’d be goddamn thick. You need to stay away from Julian, his aunt and cousin. What also needs to happen is that your fucked-up father is to be told he’ll be watched. Now, I know you won’t call the cops about what happened here, because if you do, everything will be out in the open. Have we made ourselves clear?” Dad asked coldly, standing with his arms folded across his chest.
Shrugging off his hold, I stalked to the door in his office. I waited for his answer with my hand on the handle. If I stayed near him or in there any longer, I wouldn’t be responsible for what I did. But I needed his answer.
“Yes,” he
whispered. “I understand it all.”
“Good,” Dad said and then added, “Watch your back.”
Opening the door, a woman gasped in fright. She had been at the door the whole time listening in. When I spotted her eyes, I knew exactly who she was. “How could you let that happen to your son?”
She blushed, her eyes diverted to the ground, only to snap back to me, her spine straightened out and her face hardened. “He’s not worth the worry,” she said, her voice devoid of emotion.
My upper lip rose. She was as bad as her husband was. However, what made her worse was that she was only doing it to protect herself from the man she married.
“Seems you heard everything. I want the same from you. You will never see your son again. You understand that?”
“Yes.”
“Good. He deserves so much more than this fucked-up place. You will die old and lonely, and I can’t wait for that day.” With those parting words, words I knew cut her deep from the way she flinched, I stalked to the front door, hearing Dad’s loud footsteps following me.
We said nothing as we climbed into the car and drove away. There was so much I was feeling, so much I wanted to say, only I couldn’t. Everything was too overwhelming. The car pulled to the side of the road. Dad’s hand appeared on the back of my neck. Forcing me forward, he ordered, “Just breathe, Matt. Calm down, kid, and breathe.”
I did. With my head down, I took big gulps of air followed by a sob, which tore from my throat.
“It’s okay, mate. You’ll be okay. So fuckin’ proud of you back there, son. So proud. You handled it and did a good job of it.”
“I-it’s not enough, Dad. I want him dead,” I snapped, shrugging off his hand and sitting up, wiping my face clear.
“You’ve done all you can for Julian. You were Goddamn brilliant, Matthew. Wish I had recorded it for the boys.”
Snorting to myself, I thought, Yeah, his army mates would have liked it.
Fuck.
“Julian has no family,” I hissed. Except, maybe his aunt, but I felt she wasn’t enough for my man.
“Wrong, he does. He has you and us.”
Tears threatened again. “What happens if…”
Knowing what I was about to say, Dad barked, “It won’t. A man knows when he finds the one he’s supposed to spend the rest of his life with. You feel it deep down on first sight and then that spreads throughout your body, until that feeling consumes you.”
Nodding, I thought that over and realised Dad was right. That was exactly what happened when I first met Julian.
I wanted him in my life forever.
I wanted him protected, yet a part of me still thought I’d failed him. “That…man needs to hurt more.”
“He will. Don’t worry, he will. I’ll get some guys to look into him. I’m fuckin’ sure he ain’t dealing in the straight and narrow. He’s criminal in more ways than one; they’ll find it and they’ll deal with him. For now, you’ve done what you can and you did it fantastically. Now, let’s get back to Julian. He’ll want you there when he wakes, kid. No doubt if you’re not, he’ll scream the hospital down.”
For the first time that night, I smiled. “Yeah, let’s go.”
Julian
Four days later
When I woke, I expected to find myself lying on my living room floor. But the bright lights above me, and the noises from a machine beside me, let me know somehow I had been saved. A rough memory flooded into me, of doctors trying to get me to wake and telling me what happened.
Had that been recent? I wasn’t sure.
Licking my dry lips, I turned my head to the hairy lump on my bed beside my hand. I slowly reached out and ran my fingers through silky hair.
Mattie bolted upright, his red, sleep-deprived eyes wide with worry. “Julian?”
“Hey, poppet.” I smiled.
He stood quickly and reached for the cup on the table beside my bed. He leaned over and held a straw to my parched lips. I sucked back the water, wishing I was well enough to suck back something else, something that was connected to Mattie, but I couldn’t. My body ached all over.
Mattie took the cup away and I sighed, resting back into the bed. I looked up at my toy-boy. Oh, God, he had tears in his beautiful eyes. What the doctors said had been true… frightening my man.
My man leaned over again and touched his forehead against mine gently. “I nearly lost you.”
“Poppet.” Tears formed in my own eyes. Reaching up, which caused my cracked ribs to pinch, still I kept going, rubbing down his back. I wanted to reassure my man. “I’m still here. You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
“Fuck, Julian,” he choked. Wetness touched my shoulder, soaking straight through the thin hospital gown. “I nearly lost you.”
Oh, snap off a strap on. My man was hurting.
Cupping his jaw, I brought his face up to mine and touched my sore lips to his. “I must have bad breath, but you’ll have to suffer through it. I’m fine, honey. I’m alive and I’ll keep surviving.”
“You will.” He nodded. His eyes turned hard. “You’ll never see him again, Julian. He will not harm you. He’ll not come near you.”
My eyes widened. “H-how do you know?”
“Doesn’t matter how I know, babe. I took care of it. Your family is, from now on, dead to you. They won’t cause any shit for you, your aunt or your cousin. Instead, you have a new family, a better one. One who will love, care and cherish you. You have us, me and my family.”
A sob took hold and bubbled over. My hands covered my face as I cried.
No one.
No one had ever protected me.
No one had cared so much to want to stop my pain.
To stop the man who’d made my life hell.
Until Matthew Alexander.
Until, my man, my toy-boy and poppet.
He was giving me a gift so precious, only I didn’t know how to show what it meant to me.
He was giving himself and his family to me, to a man who had been lonely, hiding behind humour for so long.
Now I could survive and live, and feel loved.
“Julian, baby?”
Wiping my face, I looked up at him and asked, “You really…you took…you…he won’t bother me again?”
He nodded. “No, never.”
“Well then, can I just say…you’re stuck with me now, and even if you tried to leave, I’ll follow you,” he promised.
“Fuck, I hope so.”
Three weeks later
It was my last day as a masseur in the football club. Once discharged from hospital, a week and a half earlier, I gave my notice. Coach asked me to do one last session while they interviewed possible replacements. I was fine with it, Mattie not so much. My hero was possessive and demanding since I’d been in hospital. I never thought I would see him like that when it came to me, but I had and I liked it a lot. I liked it more than chocolate and that I could live off for the rest of my gay life. Things had changed. I had a new addiction and his name was Mattie.
He didn’t want me to go to the last job at the football centre because he didn’t want me to exhaust myself, even though I was pretty much healed, only bruises showed. I doubted that was the only case. He still let me flirt, that was impossible for me to stop, but he didn’t like me touching other men.
So when my last client had been done, I was shocked when I walked out of the room to see Mattie striding in and toward me. The other team players were still around for a meeting. Mattie was no longer a part of the team though since he quit.
My eyes widened when he stopped in front of me, smiled, and then winked.
“W-what are you doing here?” I whispered.
“Hey, Alexander,” Jackson called, the biggest prick of them all. “What you doin’ here? Come crawling back to the team? Sorry you lost all the footy hype, all the pussy that comes along with it?”
So my man wouldn’t feel as though he was on the spot with me standing there, I started to slide behind him
for an escape. However, he reached his hand out and snagged my wrist.
“Nope.” He grinned at the players. “I just came to pick up my boyfriend.”
Holy butt plugs.
Did he just say that aloud?
He called me his boyfriend…in front of people.
I wasn’t hearing things, right?
“You’re…you…and him?” Jackson stuttered.
“Yeah,” Mattie said, he looked to me, gave me a quick kiss on the lips and then added, “Julian’s amazing in the bedroom and out.”
A deep chuckle filled the quiet room. I looked with shocked eyes to see Lions laughing, bent over holding his stomach. He stood and said, “Good on ya, man.”
“That’s sick,” Jackson sneered.
Mattie tensed. “I don’t give a fuck what you think, Jackson, or anyone in here for that matter. I’m happy with who I am. Those who don’t like it can get fucked.”
Oh, my brave, brave man.
He said nothing else; instead, he slid his hand into mine and led me from the changing rooms. He walked my stunned body to his car. I had wondered why he wanted to drop me off that night, now I knew.
He wanted to show who he was.
He wanted to show that I meant something to him.
That had been the best ‘coming out’ I had ever seen.
Suddenly, my body was twisted and I was pushed up against his car. He got up in my personal space and growled, “If we didn’t have an audience, I would fuck you against my car here and now.”
My balls flew up to my stomach.
I had an aching need to come.
“Well then, poppet, we’d better get home.”
And I meant home. To our apartment. Where he had moved himself in after the incident and hadn’t left.
The drive home was quiet. For once, I was at a loss for what to say because I had so much to say.
As soon as we were in the door, I was once again pushed up against something, that time the door after Mattie kicked it closed. “Naked, now,” he ordered and I would have complied if he hadn’t shoved his tongue in my mouth. I groaned around his attack and thrust my hard dick into his.
