Wes followed Nick’s gaze back to the two sets of cuffs dangling from his fingers then up at Nick again. He flushed bright red and licked his lips. “I decided that after… after Beau said those awful things to me that I wouldn’t feel bad about my… ideas anymore. I bought these five or six years ago and they just laid there in one of my dresser drawers and when I was packing, I saw them… so I… I thought maybe one day… Is it okay? Do you mind, Nick? If you don’t want—”
“It’s fine as long as I’m not the one wearing them,” Nick said.
“Oh, no, I would never do that.” Wes passed the cuffs to Nick when he held out his hand for them. “The keys are in the locks.” He tugged his sweater over his head, leaving his hair sticking up all over the place. He absently smoothed it down as he kicked off his shoes. He unfastened his belt and slowly pulled it from the loops in his pants, head down, watching the black leather slide and hiss across the fabric of his pants. He folded it in half and, head still bowed, he cut his eyes up to look at Nick. They were burning bright and hot, the light color like molten gold.
Wes held out his hand, offering the belt and when Nick took it, Wes smiled and shivered. “Make it hurt,” he whispered.
Jesus, Nick mouthed when Wes bent to slide his pants down his legs. When he was down to his boxers, Wes made a soft, ah sound and held up a finger for Nick to wait. He got the bag from the table and pulled out four long garlands, two of silver and two of gold. He held them bunched in his hands and rubbed his cheek against them, the glow from the lamps catching in it and throwing little spots of light across Wes’s face. Then he reached into the bag again and pulled out a Santa hat. On one side, embroidered along the edge of the faux fur ruff at the bottom were two holly leaves with a trio of berries between them.
By the time he passed that to Nick as well, he had quite the bizarre armful. “So, Wes,” he said, glancing down at the perverse bundle in his hands. “What do you want me to do with this stuff?”
“That’s the best part.” Wes blinked and then said, “Sorry, oh, gosh, sorry. I should’ve told you. God, I’m bad at being kinky.”
Nick looked down again. Silver and gold… silver and gold… “No, no, I think you’re really good at it,” Nick said. “You just got wrapped up.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Wes said. “Wrapped up.” He closed his eyes like he was tasting something delicious and exotically rare.
“What’s what, Wes?” Nick jangled the handcuffs.
Wes walked to the foot of the nice cherry wood four poster bed, turned his back to Nick and stretched his arms out. He gripped the smooth wood in his hands and let out a shaking breath.
“Cuff me,” he said.
As Nick snapped the cuffs around Wes’s wrists, he hummed “Jingle Bells” and swayed to music that only existed in his head.
“Now what?”
“Wrap the tinsel around my wrists and arms, up to my neck.” Wes was shaking, muscles in his back jumping with excitement. The shadow of his erection jutted out across the nice, white eyelet lace coverlet on the bed. “Then… then put on the hat.”
Nick did as he was told. As he wound the garland around Wes’s neck, he leaned back into Nick as far as the cuffs would allow and hummed “Silent Night”. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he really liked Christmas. Before Wes, Nick had his share of weird johns, but most weren’t bent in the same direction as Wes. One he remembered was a guy who had liked being slapped in the face. Hard. Nick had stopped seeing him after the night he backhanded the guy so hard he busted the man’s nose. The john had come all over himself, hunched over his thighs where he knelt on the floor, hands on Nick’s bare feet, kissing them and saying, Thank you, over and over.
He stepped back from Wes and while he put on the Santa hat, Nick took Wes in hanging there by his cuffs. He was relaxed and tense at the same time, back jumping and jerking with the anticipation, but his head was down, his heavy breathing even, almost like a sleeping man. Wes was waiting for Nick, his holly-jolly hooker, to hit him.
Who was Nick to disappoint?
He unfurled the belt and let it fly, almost pulled back at the last second, but stopped himself. The first smack of the belt was gentle though, hesitant. Nick had never beaten anyone with a belt. Wes’s soft moan egged him on, however, because Nick knew how loud Wes could be; he’d had a lot of experience with that lately. Nick wondered if he could make Wes arch his pretty back and scream his name.
Nick took it upon himself to find out. He was not accustomed to hurting people outside of the times when he found he absolutely needed to, but as he beat Wes, as his back went from softly pink to deep, angry red, Nick began to like it. Not because he was causing Wes pain, but because the pain Nick was causing was so clearly getting him off, and because Wes was so goddamn loud about that fact.
It reached a point where Nick had to stop; the muscles in his arms burned and his shoulders throbbed. Wes was making sobbing sounds between the short, sharp breathless screams tearing from his throat. Nick loved them loud, he did, but he couldn’t risk someone calling the police either or at least downstairs to complain. Even if it was consensual, handcuffing someone to a bed and beating them with a belt was still considered assault in the eyes of the law. The cops might let them slide, but then again, they might not.
Nick pressed against Wes’s back and covered his mouth with the hand still holding the belt. “Shh,” he said. “Hush.”
Wes’s breath was hot against Nick’s cupped palm and warmed the already heat-softened leather even more. He moaned low in the back of his throat and rocked back against Nick. “Please,” he said behind Nick’s hand. He licked over the belt and Nick’s palm. “Please.”
“Please what?” Nick breathed against the shell of Wes’s ear.
“Fuck me.” Wes whimpered and moved against Nick; restless, shivering, skin pebbled with goosebumps. “Please.”
“Okay,” Nick said. “Okay.”
He moved away from Wes to go to the nightstand where Wes kept the condoms and lube. He could feel Wes’s eyes on him, the weight of his need thick in the air; arousal a damp, musky scent threaded through with the delicate odor of clean sweat.
Nick un-cuffed Wes from the bedposts and wrapped the tinsel around his neck a few more times, leaving the ends trailing down the column of Wes’s spine that darkened with freshly forming bruises. Nick pushed him down to lay his torso over the foot of the bed, wrapped the ends of the tinsel around one hand and tugged.
“Oh, God,” Wes moaned. He rocked against the foot of the bed and panted, breath stuttering in his throat when Nick gave a firmer tug on the garland. He wouldn’t choke Wes again, he had his limits, but he could tease him with it, give him a taste.
Nick pushed inside of him slowly, listening to Wes’s voice crack then rise in pitch before he buried his face against the mattress. Nick stopped halfway inside of him and waited; he liked the next part a lot. After a minute, Wes grew frustrated and shoved back against him, taking him deep with one smooth motion.
Nick bit his lip and Wes moaned low in the back of his throat only to gasp and suck in a harsh breath that he let out on a soft scream when Nick ran his hand up his back. It hummed in his fingertips, a deep bass vibration like angry insects as Wes began to fuck himself on Nick’s cock, gasping, biting at the lace coverlet. Nick pressed deep into the dark red lines on Wes’s delicate skin and he bucked against Nick, crying out. His grasping, clawing fingers bunched up the bedclothes until he had wads of bedspread and sheet clenched in his white-knuckled fists.
“Do it,” Wes gasped. His voice was smoky and hoarse. He shuddered all over. “Please, Nick, please. I want to be your whore.”
The words went through Nick like an electric shock as he gripped Wes’s hips, fingers digging bruises in the gently concaved shell of bone. He thrust into him hard, hips snapping against Wes’s ass with a smack.
“Thank you.”
Wes sighed as he braced his forearms on the mattress and began to move with Nick, each thrust b
ack to follow Nick as violent as Nick’s inside of him. Wes unraveled quickly after that, breath gasping, rasping as Nick pounded into him. He groaned and screamed and begged, mindless, almost wordless sounds of pleading rising in his throat. He began to tremble harder, body growing tense and he gasp-gasp-gasped. Nick let go of Wes’s right hip and smacked his hand down in the middle of Wes’s back.
Wes didn’t scream Nick’s name when he came, but he did scream; a throaty, aching sound as he jerked and bucked on the mattress.
Nick followed right behind him, the sound of Wes’s scream of pleasure like a song in his blood as he leaned over him and kissed the back of one quaking shoulder.
There wasn’t a lot to say afterward; Nick stayed with Wes until he came back to the land of the living. He lay on the bed holding Wes in his arms until the shaking subsided and his eyes lost that far away dazed look that came into them after the fever in him had been slaked. Wes stretched against him and groaned low in the back of his throat.
“Do you need some ice?” Nick asked.
“Yes, please, if it isn’t too much trouble,” Wes said.
It wasn’t and Nick went to get the ice both to help and as a way to escape the mess of welts and bruises rising on Wes’s back in a sloppy crosshatch pattern. Wes was smiling, sleepy-eyed and satisfied, but Nick felt a little bit like a bastard for what he had done.
He came back, bucket of ice in hand, to find Wes tottering around the room like a drunk that had been in a brawl. “What are you doing?” Nick asked. “You should be lying down.”
“I have to get your money,” Wes said. He had threads of tinsel caught in the fine hairs on his arms, wink-twinkling in the lamplight. “I should’ve thought of that beforehand, huh?” His laughter was hoarse as he bent down to get his wallet out of his pants. He hissed in a breath as the skin across his shoulders pulled and stretched.
Nick winced and looked away.
“Here.” Wes’s hand on his arm was cool and dry, fingertips trembling lightly against Nick’s skin.
Nick turned and took the money, looked down into Wes’s toffee-colored eyes and tried to return his smile. Wes had a nice smile, shy, a little nervous, sweet. The money in Nick’s hand was crisp and new, freshly withdrawn from the ATM just that day. He wondered yet again what Wes did for a living to have so much disposable income, but he had manners and knew it wasn’t his place to ask.
“Take this,” Nick said, passing back two hundred dollars of the three hundred Wes had given him. The single hundred was shorting himself some for all the extras Wes had sprung on him, but all Nick had to do was think about the bruises and welts on Wes’s back and he didn’t mind.
“No,” Wes said, holding up his hands. “That’s your money, Nick. You earned it.”
“I don’t want it,” Nick said. “Not this time. Just take it.”
“Why? I don’t mind,” Wes said.
Nick’s next inhalation was shaky as he put the ice bucket down and laid the two hundred dollars on top of a stack of Wes’s notebooks. “I mind,” Nick said. On a whim, he kissed Wes, a quick press of his mouth against Wes’s. He tasted like the salt of sweat and the sweet mints he sucked all the time. “Merry Christmas, Wes.”
“Nick?” Wes’s eyes were troubled as he cocked his head, a V forming between his brows.
“Goodnight,” Nick said. “I’ll see you in a few days.”
Before Wes could answer, he opened the door and walked out into the stuffy, too-warm hallway. He needed to stop, he didn’t have to whore himself anymore and sometime between going to prison and where he now stood, Nick thought he had lost some of his edge. It wasn’t as easy to turn it off anymore and detach himself from what he was doing. It wasn’t as simple as it used to be.
He walked away, down the long, narrow staircase and out into the blustery cold night air. The wind scraped his cheeks and dried the tiny beads of sweat on his brow as he went to the truck. Once inside, Nick turned off the heater and cracked the window some so he could breathe. He had a real job, hooking was not a thing he needed to consider any longer, but he felt adrift without it. Lost and confused, plopped down in a world where normal was the order of the day and Nick didn’t know a single damn thing about normal. He knew sweat-slicked skin and cheap motel rooms where the stains on the carpet probably were blood and cockroaches lurked in the shower drains, spreading the infections they picked up on their hairy little legs.
Merle Haggard gushed out of the speakers when he flipped the radio on to tune out his thoughts and Nick spun the dial, hoping to find something better.
14
The winter sunset came on quick, throwing the twisting country road into darkness as the blazing globe of the sun fell below the tree line. The sky above was still burning with molten orange and gold, but the road was thick with shadows cast by the overhanging tree limbs. They twined and writhed, hideous creatures being birthed by the oncoming night.
Wes shivered as he switched on his headlights and glanced through the windshield up to the light above him. It was easy to imagine he was somewhere deep inside the earth, maybe one of the caves of ice in “Kubla Khan” and looking up toward the sunny pleasure dome, longing for it. It amused him and his good humor eased the creepy-crawly sensation the thrashing shadows on the road left him with.
He had gone to visit Gallagher House earlier that day and enjoyed himself immensely. Dawn Marie had led him on the tour; she was a small, vivacious woman who cursed like a sailor and had a husky voice that made Wes think of Janis Joplin. The oft-mentioned Tobias was nowhere to be found and Dawn Marie extended his apologies, though she didn’t seem all that sorry really. Instead, she had seemed kind of sad when she told him that Tobias would have liked to be there, but felt it was better if Dawn Marie showed him around. Wes, for one, was anxious to meet Tobias; there was a shroud of mystery that hung around him with every mention of his name and Wes did so love a good mystery.
Still and all, the visit had been satisfying and he felt he might have made a new friend in Dawn Marie. They had plenty in common, including a morbid curiosity for all things shady and strange. She promised him he was going to love living in Sparrow Falls and had left him pleasantly surprised when it turned out she knew of a house to rent. It was too late to contact the realtor by the time he left Gallagher House, but he had the address and was currently on his way to check out the property.
His entire family thought he was nuts for moving to Louisiana and setting up shop, but Wes tuned them out. After what had happened with Beau on top of what was an already growing unhappiness with life in Atlanta, Wes thought it was as good a time as any to make a change. Sparrow Falls, Louisiana was one of those weird old towns that many people outside of the region might not know about, but those that lived down south and were interested in weird things heard about first. Sparrow Falls was a hub of uncanny happenings and eccentric, sometimes violent but always interesting, characters. Wes had practically been salivating to see the place since he’d first heard of it years ago.
He could understand the concern of his family, but he wasn’t worried. This was a chance at a fresh start and what he hoped would prove to be a new adventure. He had money from his job as a website designer and had inherited well from both sets of grandparents; money was not an object. Wes was a careful spender and the most extravagant purchase he had made in a while was the company of Nick Lange. Nick who had left him puzzled the last time they were together. That had been four days ago and Wes had not heard a peep out of Nick since. With the holidays looming around the corner, Wes was left feeling lonely and homesick; he thought he might call Nick later and see if he wanted to come by his room at the inn. If Nick wasn’t interested in anything more than talking then Wes didn’t mind; he liked the sound of Nick’s soft, gravelly voice and he was a treasure trove of Sparrow Falls stories.
“Ow,” Wes said softly when he forgot himself and leaned back in his seat.
The pain was warm and spread under his skin like spilled ink, moving through him and leav
ing little tingling curls of desire dancing along his nerves. He thought maybe that was what had sent Nick flying out of his room, thought maybe he had pushed it too far and freaked Nick out. He really hoped not because it didn’t matter to Wes that he paid for Nick’s company, he genuinely liked Nick. He had been entertaining the idea of asking him if he’d be all right with being friends because Wes thought he’d very much enjoy that.
A couple hundred yards ahead of him, something darted across the road and Wes instinctively hit his brakes. Heart thudding in his chest, he leaned over the steering wheel, eyes wide as he tried to see better. “What?” Wes said softly to himself as he sorted through what he had seen, trying to make sense of it.
It had looked like a tall, black shadow darting across the road in front of him. With the wind-whipped trees and bad light, he hadn’t been able to make out anything specific. But golly, that thing had been moving. Wes wanted to say it was maybe a runner out for their evening exercise, but dressed in black like that and crossing the road, not running along the grassy shoulder, didn’t make sense. Maybe it had been a trick of the fading light working in tandem with Wes not having his high beams on. Maybe he hadn’t really seen anything and only thought he had. That time of day was good at playing havoc on the brain’s ability to sort and process images, so it could have been a large barn owl swooping down to catch something, wings outstretched, giving it the vague impression of broad shoulders. Satisfied with the explanation he spoon-fed himself, Wes moved forward again, picking up speed as he continued looking for the driveway that would lead him up to the rental house.
It had been a tense couple of days around town; another body had been found, that one courtesy of Sparrow Falls’s original psycho killer. Twenty-three year old Anaise Corgan’s body had been found on the playground where Sparrow Falls Elementary School had originally been. Only burned out brick remains still stood and a few sad and rusted old playground toys that the town had never gotten around to removing, like they had left those things there as monuments to the memory of the young lives that had been lost fifteen years ago. Anaise had been tied to the steel frame of the rotting old merry-go-round, naked and on display like a martyr broken on the wheel. Originally from Gentilly, no one knew why or how she had ended up in Sparrow Falls, drained of all her blood, mouth stuffed full of flowers, eyes sealed closed with black wax that had run down her cheeks like tears of crude oil.
Shades of Night (Sparrow Falls Book 1) Page 15
