I wanted to laugh at what those townspeople who kept talking to me like I was some hero would have thought after I’d ripped that room to shreds, believing I was back in the desert and Jett was screaming in agony as he called my name and pounded the end of his M240 machine gun against the roof of the overturned Humvee.
I wondered if Isaac had told Dallas or if Dallas had noticed for himself. I’d been too out of it to see if my brother had seen my reaction to the events that had occurred after the council had dismissed the case against him.
Didn’t matter.
I’d done what I’d come here to do. I’d never expected Dallas to actually forgive me or give me a second chance at being his brother. He was in a good place, better than I could have even hoped for. It was time for me to move on.
Maybe I’d head down to Oklahoma and check on Jett in person. I had enough money that there was no need to work anytime soon, so maybe I’d just explore the country a bit. Any place that didn’t have too many people in it would work for me. Maybe I could even convince Jett to come with me.
Yeah, because he’s so eager to talk to you on the phone. Of course the next step is being cooped up in a car with you for hours at a time.
God, my inner voice was a sarcastic asshole.
I automatically smiled as Newt’s voice rang in my ear, calling me out for the swear word. But my humor died as I considered whose job it would be to “punish” me for the oversight.
God, Isaac’s touch had been so soft the night before.
Soft, but still firm.
Such an odd contradiction.
He was such a contradiction. Such a unique mix of strength and vulnerability. I wanted to know what made him tick, but I didn’t know why I wanted to know that.
I mentally shook myself. Didn’t matter. I needed to focus on the next steps, and not the weird kid who wore makeup and smelled like lemons. With that thought in mind, I raised my head with the intention of crossing the road so I could turn around and walk home while still facing oncoming traffic. But when my eyes caught on a familiar truck parked outside the Sleep-EZ motel across the street, I paused.
The motel had been around forever and wasn’t known for its stellar accommodations. It was basically just a cheap place for truckers who were forced to travel the backroads instead of the interstate for one reason or another. Occasionally, tourists would stay at the place, but only if everything else in Pelican Bay and the surrounding towns was sold out.
So what the hell was Dallas doing there?
I supposed it could be Nolan.
Or both.
But still, the place was a dump. Even on the off chance they needed some alone time, there were far better places to go.
Realizing it was none of my business, I was about to continue on my way when I saw a man hurrying to the door the truck was parked in front of. He knocked a couple of times and then nervously looked around him. I wasn’t close enough for him to notice me or for me to make out his features, but he was clearly on edge. The door opened and he disappeared inside.
My brain said to leave it alone, but my gut had me striding forward.
What if Nolan was cheating on my brother? I mean, Nolan was a sweet guy, but no way in hell was I letting him use my brother like that. And if on the off chance it was Dallas? Well, I’d kick his ass too, because he had an amazing thing going with Nolan.
I trotted across the two-lane highway and reached the door within a couple of minutes. There was only one other car parked in the lot and it was right next to the truck.
I didn’t even bother to knock on the door, because I wasn’t interested in making my presence known. I figured it would save a lot of time if I caught my brother or his lover in the act and didn’t have to listen to excuses that the whole thing wasn’t what it looked like. I could get around to kicking the stranger out much faster that way and asking Dallas or Nolan, whichever one of them it was, what the hell they were thinking.
It took practically nothing to use my shoulder to break the door. The damn thing was so flimsy it almost seemed like a waste to leave some cash behind to pay the motel owner for breaking it. Both the door and the frame were so rotted through, he could probably use tape to put the damn thing back together and have it be more secure than it’d been.
Despite how easy it’d been to break the door down, it made a lot of noise, so I had no trouble finding the two occupants of the darkened room the second the sunlight filtered through the open door.
And I recognized them both.
But it wasn’t the man I’d seen coming into the room that interested me. It was the man kneeling at his feet that I had my eyes on.
“What the—” the standing man sputtered, his eyes going wide with shock as he suddenly reached down to try and grab the pants that were currently at his ankles. “Oh, God!” he whispered.
I knew who he was right away. His name was Arthur Tomlinson and he’d been Pelican Bay’s librarian for years. I felt sick as I watched him yank up his pants and try to get them closed. I didn’t miss the fact that his small but very hard dick was shiny with moisture.
Bile rose in my throat as my eyes went to Isaac who hadn’t moved, even after Arthur had shoved him out of the way to reach his pants.
“I’m sorry!” Arthur shouted. “Please, I’m sorry!” he said. “Don’t tell my wife!”
There was a wad of cash on the bed that Arthur actually tried to grab, but when his beady eyes met mine, his mouth opened into what looked like a silent scream and he only managed to snag a few of the bills, then he was darting past me and out the door, the sun glistening off his wedding ring and the buckle of the belt holding up his still half-undone pants.
Isaac didn’t move for several seconds. When he did, it was only to get up off the floor. My gut clenched when he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth.
In my mind, I understood what I’d walked in on, but in my heart, I didn’t want to believe it.
Isaac glanced at the cash, then went to the bathroom. It was the kind where the sink was outside the actual bathroom. I saw him reach for a toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste. Besides the strip of condoms and bottle of lube on the nightstand, they were the only other items in the room that didn’t already belong there.
I felt like I was going to be sick.
Isaac calmly brushed his teeth, never once looking over his shoulder at me. When he was done, he turned around and leaned back against the vanity, then pulled out his phone.
“You mind?” he said as he nodded toward the still-open door. “Since you just cost me a client, I need to book another one. And my next one should be here in a few, so you should go.”
I wasn’t sure if it was his lackadaisical attitude or the talk about more clients that had me slamming the door shut and striding toward him. I snatched the phone from him and slammed it down on the countertop behind him. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
If I hadn’t been so close to him, I would have missed the fine tremor running throughout his entire frame. He might have been pretending to be unfazed, but he sure as shit wasn’t. His makeup was heavier than usual, and his mouth was stained bright red with heavy lipstick.
No doubt the same color was on some part of Arthur Tomlinson’s dick right now.
Rage tore through me as I snatched a tissue from the dispenser on the vanity and wiped at the lipstick, mindful of the small hoop piercing in his lower lip. I tried to keep my touch gentle, but inside I was battling the urge to find Arthur and rip him limb from limb.
The red color was somewhat smeared, but mostly gone. I threw the tissue aside and stepped back.
“Feel better?” Isaac asked dully. “Because it won’t undo what you saw.”
“Why?” I asked, because that was the only word I could get out.
“What difference does it make?” he asked. “It’s what you wanted, right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You knew I was shit from the moment you saw me. A thief, a troublem
aker, a fag… why should whore be such a stretch? Now you can run to your brother and tell him you knew it all along. Don’t worry, Newt and I will be gone by tonight.” He nodded at the door again. “Now, unless you want to stay and watch, which will cost you by the way, you need to go.”
When he went to reach for his phone, I grabbed it and threw it across the room. I stormed toward the door but stopped abruptly when a man pushed open the broken door.
“Blaze?” he asked in confusion.
“Yeah, here,” Isaac called. “Come on in. My friend here was just leaving.”
“Oh, okay, cool man,” the guy said, then he actually started entering the room. I grabbed him by the shirt collar and propelled him backward so hard and so fast that when I released him just outside the room, he stumbled backward and hit the front of Dallas’s truck. When he opened his mouth to protest, I glared at him. Then he took off like a bat out of hell.
I slammed the door shut and used a side chair to prop beneath the knob to keep the door closed.
“You asshole!” Isaac screamed as he came up behind me and shoved me hard. “I needed that trick to pay for my fucking car so Newt and I can get the hell away from this town!”
He didn’t say and you, but I suspected he wanted to.
But I was still stuck on what he did say.
Jesus fucking Christ.
He’d done this because of his car?
Pure fury went through me and I wanted to rip the room apart. “You foolish—” I began, and then shook my head. Because as fucked up as all this was, it wasn’t actually his fault. And that just made my anger so much worse. Never in a million years would I have thought my decision would have such an ugly consequence, but it had. An image of Isaac’s pretty mouth wrapped around that old fuck Tomlinson’s dick went through my head and before I could stop myself, I slammed my fist into the wall and yelled, “I fucking tampered with your car so you couldn’t leave!”
Chapter Six
Isaac
I was still reeling from both Maddox’s discovery and his show of temper, so his words didn’t register at first. In fact, I’d just grabbed ahold of the wrist of the hand he’d put through the wall to check the bloodied knuckles when my brain began to process what he’d said.
“What?” I whispered in disbelief a solid fifteen seconds later. “You did what?”
“Jesus, I just wanted you to stick around long enough so if you wanted to ask for help you could, or so that you could see that you could trust Dallas and Nolan… fuck!” he snapped. I released my hold on him and he immediately began pacing.
Humiliation coursed through me as I realized what I’d almost done because of his actions. I felt the telltale sting of tears, but I forced them back. I hadn’t cried in a really long time and hell if I’d give him the satisfaction of seeing me do that.
“Get out,” I whispered.
“Isaac, I’m sorry—”
“Get out!” I screamed. “You don’t get to say those words to me! You had no right!”
“I know, I shouldn’t—”
I ignored him and snatched Dallas’s car keys off the small table in the room. I didn’t bother with the condoms or any of the other shit that was part of my “toolkit.”
But when I tried to storm past Maddox, he grabbed my arm. “Don’t touch me!” I shouted, hating the panic that began to take over me.
“Please, Isaac, just listen—”
“Dallas,” I spit out. “He was in on it, wasn’t he? He looked at my car yesterday. Kept putting me off about it today! Did you guys laugh about it behind my back? Was all this some stupid, fucked-up way to get back at me?”
“No!” Maddox said. “Jesus Christ, no!” He ran his free hand through his shorn hair. “God, even if that was true, which it isn’t, do you think we’d do that to you after what you did last night? For Dallas?” His voice softened just a little as his eyes held mine. “For me?”
God help me, between his voice and his striking eyes, it was like being sucked into the eye of a storm. Hell was raging all around me, but all I felt was this momentary weird sense of calm.
“I didn’t do anything last night,” I murmured.
He actually pulled me a little closer to him. “Yes, you did,” he said so softly I almost didn’t hear him. “Fuck, Isaac, I’m so sorry.” He shook his head. “If I’d thought even for a second it would drive you to this…” His hand tightened on my arm momentarily, then gentled. Then, to my disbelief, his fingers came up to wipe at some of the remaining lipstick on my mouth, but his touch was soft. “I want to kill him for doing that to you.”
His voice was so low it sounded scary, and I knew he was talking about my trick. I couldn’t make any sense of this. The guy didn’t like me and he sure as shit wasn’t gay, but the way he was touching me and his anger, it almost seemed like he was… jealous.
I knew that wasn’t possible, so it had to be the guilt he was feeling.
“I didn’t do anything to that guy,” I suddenly blurted out, though I had no idea why. I didn’t owe Maddox any kind of explanation. No, he hadn’t forced me to do any of this, but the reality was that I had only done it because of my car. I would have done it eventually in some other city, though, so it didn’t seem fair to make it sound like it was solely on him. “I touched him, but that was it. Only long enough to get the condom on.”
Jesus, Isaac, shut the fuck up.
“But you brushed your teeth,” Maddox blurted.
I felt my cheeks heat. “Yeah, well, whenever I, um, am… working… I brush my teeth before and after, no matter what.”
Oh God, I needed to stop talking. Why the hell did he need to know that I hated what I did so much that it made bile rise into the back of my throat every single time?
Maddox looked horrified, but to my surprise, he didn’t pull away. In fact, he stepped even closer to me and I instinctively moved back.
But there was no place to go.
The wall was hard at my back as Maddox studied me like a bug under a microscope. His eyes were… dear god, they were on my mouth. His fingers were still there too.
Why was he touching me? Why wasn’t he telling me what a disgusting freak I was for selling my body?
Why the hell was I not moving?
This man was the only reason I was in this shit hole. He was the reason I’d lied to Dallas and Nolan when I’d asked if they could watch Newt for me while I walked to the store to buy Newt some snow pants and better winter gear. Hell, they’d even offered to let me borrow Dallas’s truck. I’d whittled down the half-dozen responses I’d gotten to my online ad to find a few guys who hadn’t appeared particularly dangerous and had been willing to pay my normal rates. Then I’d had to steel myself to meet them and let them use me in the vilest of ways, all because of this man.
This man who was still touching my mouth.
What the hell was happening?
“I like the other stuff,” Maddox said softly as the rough pad of his finger trailed along my lower lip, dragging briefly over my piercing that was just to the left of the middle of my lip. My cock wasn’t the only part of my body responding. I couldn’t stop the little tremors that began swimming through my body.
“What other stuff?” I managed to ask.
God, he really needed to stop touching me.
So why wasn’t I telling him that?
“The shiny stuff.” He shook his head. “The red, it isn’t… you,” he said on a quiet sigh.
What?
What?
Was he seriously upset by the lipstick, but he liked the clear gloss I typically wore?
Jesus, what was happening here?
“The lipstick was his,” I suddenly said. “The guy,” I said, motioning toward the door with just my eyes. “He wanted me to wear it. He brought it with him.”
What the hell are you doing, Isaac?
Hell if I knew. But now that I’d opened my mouth, it was like I couldn’t shut it again. It was like Maddox had found the secret door to Narnia the
second he’d touched my lip because it was all just spilling out.
“Every guy’s got his kinks, you know. Some like to tie you up, others want you to say certain stuff…”
Maddox’s jaw hardened, and his eyes turned flinty.
Shut up, Isaac.
But I couldn’t. It was like I was in some kind of trance and the only way I’d escape it was if he looked away. And he seemed in no hurry to do so.
“It’s gloss,” I sputtered as I reached into my pocket and pulled out my tube of gloss. “The stuff I normally wear. It’s just clear gloss.” I held the tube between my fingers awkwardly as I said, “It’s hydrating… winter weather leaves them kind of chapped.”
God, Maddox had beautiful lips. Nothing rough about those babies.
“Put it on.”
I was in the midst of sliding the tube back into my pocket when the softly spoken order came through.
And it was an order.
“What?” I choked out as I lifted my eyes from his mouth.
His big thumb was still sliding back and forth along my lower lip. He gave the flesh just the tiniest of tugs and I was sure I came in my pants a little bit.
“Put it on,” Maddox repeated.
I tried to remember everything that was wrong with the situation, but something about the way he said the words and the way he held my gaze while doing it sent me to a place I’d only ever allowed myself to go in my most secret of fantasies. My whole body grew warm and relaxed, even though I was also completely turned on. I tried to remind myself that even if Maddox had somehow gotten caught up in some weird bi-curious moment, it wasn’t real. I had the kind of features that could pass for more feminine than masculine at times, and that was all this was.
So why was I considering this? Why was I reaching for the cap of the gloss with one hand instead of using that hand to shove Maddox away from me? Why wasn’t I laying into him about manipulating me by messing with my car? Why was I even still here? I should be back at the sanctuary ripping Dallas and Nolan a new one and demanding Dallas fix my car while I got Newt bundled in the back of it.
Sanctuary Found_Pelican Bay [Book 2] Page 7
