CHAPTER 21 Rowan
CHAPTER 21
Rowan
W hen Charlie finally gets home, I attack him, because he looks way too yummy, and I missed him all day long. It’s time to sex him up.
I try to push him down on the couch. Problem is, he’s a brick wall, raising an amused eyebrow at me.
“Come on, man,” I grumble. “Let me rub my dick on yours.”
My soon-to-be boyfriend (already boyfriend?) bursts out laughing, and seeing him so expressive makes me smile in return. “Is that what the kids say these days?”
“It’s what I say. Don’t you think it will feel good? I’m dyyyying to come.”
“All right, baby boy.” He lets himself be pushed, and even if it’s not my physical strength that got him to lie down, it still makes me feel powerful. “Where do you want me?”
“On your back, Daddy.”
“Not your fucking dad?—”
“I know, Charlie. Just get on your back, sexy man.”
He complies, and again, he looks so damn sexy lying on his couch. He’s got his hands behind his head like he’s posing. Letting me look at the fabric-covered planes of his body. His beautiful torso. Those strong arms. His long legs and that hard dick in his pants. It wasn’t hard a few moments ago, so this is a positive development. Working outside in the sun with Cam keeps Charlie strong and toned. He likes to move his body, use his hands. He doesn’t like pushing paper. He’s really in the wrong line of work.
I straddle him, which takes a bit of effort, because these pants are tight. I need to buy ones with more stretch.
But I need money for that, so these’ll do.
Leaning down, I kiss him, and it quickly turns hungry. I’m fumbling to undo his pants while he’s fumbling to undo mine, and once we get our cocks out with our zippers out of the way, I breathe a massive sigh of relief, taking both of us in my hands. He’s a little big for me to handle with one hand, but I make do. I’m leaking precome, which I use as lube. It feels really good to rut against him. To get out this sexual tension.
Charlie seems as desperate as I am, given how he’s panting and clutching me to him. His hips are thrusting into mine, and he pulls our pants down lower.
I love this. I love how we can’t keep our hands off each other. How we can barely stand to waste the time to take our clothes off. How we just fucking go for it.
But more than getting me all hot and horny, he makes me feel safe. I can show him how much I want him, and he can take me at my most blunt.
“I really want to sit on your cock,” I say.
Charlie groans a garbled noise. I take that as assent and climb off him. I race down the hall to get lube, shedding the rest of my clothes as I go, and he follows me to bed, climbing in with his clothes still on. Charlie’s grin turns feral when I hover over him, my ass lining up with his cock. He’s rucked up his shirt, and his pants are down to his thighs, but otherwise, he’s totally dressed and I’m totally naked, and I have no idea why this is my thing, but it is. I like being naked around him. I like the way his clothes feel against my skin .
I like it when his dick violates my hole, too. I make so damn much noise as I push myself onto his cock. Ow. Fuck. This hurts. I should know better.
Charlie’s eyes widen and then close. His expression goes blissful. I love that I made him look like that.
My body relaxes faster than it did before. I’m getting used to this.
“You are so goddamned hot and tight and wet,” he growls. “Bounce yourself on my cock. Come on, I want to see it. Go fast. Now.”
I do what he says, because I’m very much on board, too. I want to fuck and fuck and fuck Charlie. I want to spend my entire life with him inside me. I want to go to sleep with his dick in my ass and wake up with it there—or have him start humping me as soon as humanly possible.
I start babbling.
“I want you to hunt me down and fuck me,” I whisper, my thighs burning as I raise myself up and down. “I want you to scratch me. To take me. I want you to claim me as yours.”
“You already are fucking mine, and you know it,” Charlie says with a possessive edge to his voice.
That makes me smile. I play with his nipples and scratch my nails across his chest. Charlie holds my hips tighter. “But I’m serious. If you wanted to chase me down and fuck me like you have no tether …” I shiver. “I’d so be into that. I’m picturing a forest where I can hide in the trees and you’re my scary stalker. When you capture me, wherever you find me, you rip off my clothes and take me right there.”
Charlie gasps and comes.
I almost laugh, but it’s so hot that my words, my kinky fantasy, made him come. He groans, shoving into me hard, then starts jacking my cock, fast, and I come all over his hand and belly. Some lands on his shirt, too. I collapse onto him, content. And wanting to do it again .
“Will you do it sometime?” I whisper, as his dick slips out of me.
“Fuck you in a forest—against a tree or something? Or with your face in the dirt? Scraping you up? Making you bleed for me?”
“Yes,” I whisper, and if I could come again so soon, I would.
“From the moment I met you, you’ve brought out desires I kept buried so deep I didn’t realize I had them,” Charlie muses. “I wanted to mess up your face, and not because you mugged me. But because I thought you were such a devil with an angel face.”
“And that triggered your feral instinct?”
He chuckles. “Maybe. These dirty fantasies weren’t even a possibility before I met you. Everything in my life had to be just right.”
“We’re so fucking wrong, aren’t we?”
Charlie nods.
“But it’s right for us.”
He nods again.
I note that he doesn’t protest that we’re not an us. Forward movement.
“We should get cleaned up. Wanna take a bath?” Charlie asks.
I snort. “I haven’t done that since I was a kid.”
“I’d rather be naked with you in a hot tub, but I don’t have one.”
“Sold,” I say, and hop off him.
Charlie laughs and follows me, discarding his clothes. Once the bath water is warm, we get in, Charlie behind me, my back to his front, and let it fill around us.
Charlie starts tracing the tattoos on my body. “You have so many cartoons. Teddy bears. Anime. Cute things.”
“A psychologist might say I’m reparenting myself.”
“Do you think that’s what you’re doing?”
I shrug. “I never got the hugs and the cuddles. Maybe I want them on my skin. ”
His arms tighten around me. “So that’s what your tattoos mean? Loving touches?”
“In part.”
“Tell me about them,” he says gruffly, running a hand down my arm. He touches one image. Then another. And another.
“If you look closely,” I say slowly, “you can see that they all cover up scars. In one house, my foster siblings liked to cut me. With scissors. Knives. Whatever.”
He goes ramrod straight, sloshing water over the side of the tub, and holds me tight. “What the fuck?” he mutters.
“Yeah.” I swallow. “After I got out of there, I decided to take my body back, so I made them all into art.” I hold my hand out, and Charlie trails a finger down my arm, stopping on one of the tiny—and not so tiny—pink scars that I’ve covered up. “I think I have thirty or so.”
“You have no idea how angry that makes me.” Charlie’s voice is deadly quiet. “No one should get away with hurting you. I’m seeing blood running down the street from what I’d do to them, I swear.”
“It was a long time ago. I’m fine now. It’s all good.”
“No, it’s not.” He pauses. “Do you mind talking about it?”
I’m feeling warm and safe. Floaty. “I’m good to talk,” I say. “Anders would hold me down, and Billy would cut me.” I gesture at one of the Naruto clouds on my ribs. “They carved their initials here. They were two years older than me and much bigger, although that’s nothing new.”
“That’s absolutely barbaric. Why didn’t you tell someone?”
“They said they’d kill me if I did.”
“And you believed them.”
I nod. A lump forms in my throat.
Charlie’s arms wrap me up tighter. “I wish I could fix this,” he whispers. “I wish I could fix all of it.”
“Some things can’t be fixed.”
He shakes his head. “I want justice.”
“Oh, so do I.” I grimace. “You know that line from The Princess Bride about how he’s in the revenge business?” Charlie nods, so I continue, “I’d love to be in that. To make sure everyone who has ever wronged someone—I’m talking big wrongs, not cut-someone-off-while-driving wrongs—get what’s coming to them. Besides the ones I have a personal bone to pick with, I’d love to take out all the rapists and murderers. The child molesters and the abusers. The ones who’ve gotten away with it.” I sigh. “That’s a dream of mine. To just … right the world.”
“I’m on board with that,” Charlie says. “Although I guess that’s part of why I’m a lawyer. It’s more complicated than that, but it’s why I’m working at the firm I’m at. Because the lawyers there are fighting to do the right thing. To make changes in the world for LGBTQ people.”
I grin. “That’s what I want to do, too. Just a little bit more violently.”
We sit in the warm water, letting it settle around us.
Charlie squeezes me again and murmurs, “Do you know anything about your birth parents?”
“No. Nothing. I read my case files. My birth certificate is utter crap, with almost no information. Guess I was a home birth. Off the grid. It says I was abandoned at a police station with a note that said ‘my name is Rowan’ on it. They did a search for recent births at hospitals, but there was nothing, so they don’t know who my parents are. That’s why I don’t know what day I was actually born on. They just guessed I was three days old when I was dropped off.”
“Holy shit,” Charlie murmurs.
“So a foster family took me in. It must’ve been hell for them to have a newborn. I dunno. I don’t remember the first families. Foster parents would keep me for six months, a year. Maybe more. But then that was it. I’d be moved to a new place. I had behavioral problems, the counselors told me. I have a few photos from families I was with when I got older, but I don’t have that many of me growing up.”
I feel almost like I don’t exist now. Living in someone else’s home, using a prepaid phone. My name isn’t on anything but the title to a car.
I swallow. “So, when I was really little, I didn’t know any better. But then I started figuring out that my life wasn’t the same as everyone else’s. There wasn’t any stability in it. Most places were okay. I’m not going to paint a picture like foster homes are all houses of horror. They’re not. Sure, some people do it for the money, but they get inspected and can at least put on a decent show. They were mostly clean, with enough food and clothes and whatever for me.” I scrub my face. “Mostly.”
“What about those kids who cut you?”
“Yeah, that was the worst one. I got all these injuries, but no one called Child Protective Services. And I stayed there for three years, because no one else wanted to take me. No one wanted to take me, because I was acting out, because I was getting hurt. At least that’s how I interpret it now. Back then, I just thought that was what I deserved. That everyone lived in shitty places, and at least I had meals most of the time.”
“That’s horrible.”
“The physical abuse wasn’t all of it, either. I mean, that sucked, but they weren’t actually trying to kill me. Mostly it was little cuts and a lot of intimidation. The name-calling was bad, too. Words do hurt.” I sigh. “Like I told you when I met you, I learned self-defense and how to use a knife from people on the street.”
“I take it you’ve used a knife on someone other than me?”
At some point, I need to admit my crimes to Charlie.
But not yet. “Don’t ask that.”
“Better if I don’t know?”
“Yeah. And maybe I feel a little guilty. I suppose on some level I think revenge is petty. I’m supposed to turn the other cheek. At least, that’s what the foster parents would tell me. ”
“Sometimes revenge is satisfying, though. Sometimes people deserve what’s coming to them, and I get this sick sense of joy in the pit of my stomach knowing that karma got them, even if the law didn’t.”
I nod. “What would you do if you had all the money in the world?”
“Not sure. Probably just quit my job and fix up my house.”
“That’s it? You wouldn’t create a foundation to educate the masses about the creative problems of using klieg lights in movies?”
“Har-har,” Charlie says. “I don’t know what I’d do. Guess I’ve never thought about it. I’d obviously take care of family and friends, but beyond that? I suppose I’d want to fix solvable problems.”
“Me, too. I’d start a business helping people so they’d never be in any of the situations I was in—abused, bullied, without food or shelter. And I wouldn’t make the victim pay for my services. I’d make the motherfucker who made them the victim pay. That makes more sense to me. The person who needs a bodyguard shouldn’t have to pay for it. The payment should be from the people who make it so they need a bodyguard.”
“Interesting philosophy,” Charlie murmurs. “So you want to be a do-gooder vigilante?”
“I guess. Yeah. Kinda. I have a vengeance list that I’d love to start ticking off.”
“You want to kill everyone on that list?” Charlie asks lightly.
I scoff. “No. I’m not that evil. But I do want to get my revenge.”
“I wonder if you ever will.”
“Probably not. Until I met you, I never got anything I wanted. I still can’t have it all. I can’t even find a houseplant that matters to literally no one but me.”
Charlie doesn’t reply.
“What?” I say defensively .
“I don’t have a response to that. Because I know it matters to you, and I don’t have any way to fix it. I could buy you another philodendron, but it wouldn’t be Wilbur. And you don’t want anything but Wilbur. So I don’t want to spout platitudes that aren’t going to make you feel better.”
“Talk about brutally honest.”
“Kinda feels like we’ve been brutally honest with each other all along.”
When we get out of the tub, we go back to bed—to sleep, this time, and I realize he has my whole heart. He’s the first person ever to have that.
What I feel for Charlie doesn’t just frighten me. It’s so much worse. Take all the fears I had as a child about the monsters under the bed, the bogeyman, clowns. The terrors I felt after I learned the horrible things people do to each other—toothpicks under fingernails and terrorism and rape. Take all of those, and Charlie’s worse.
Unlike all those other threats, imaginary and real, I’m giving Charlie the power to change me.
I wiggle in his arms and turn over to face him. When he’s sleeping, Charlie looks softer than he does during the day. Awake, he’s got RBF. Now, he looks content. He snuffles, then draws me closer, and it makes my heart beat faster. I love that he likes sleeping wrapped up together. I’m usually so cold that having his body warm and comfy is soothing.
I look at the stubble on his jaw. Feel his strong arms around me. Listen to his whiffling snore.
He has so much sway over me, and he doesn’t even know it.