Chapter 5
FIVE
HAVOC
I bolt the door to my apartment shut, then turn to Seven. “Okay. Three locks, and a camera system, and an alarm system. Vortex says the apartment is as safe as it can get.”
We’d done a thorough vetting of not just my apartment, but the entire complex, too. We’d done background checks on all the tenants, and Alice had personally assured us that she wouldn’t rent out a unit to anyone without checking with Caleb first.
She’s a much more attentive landlady than my Step Asshole had been, that’s for sure.
Vortex had been irritated the entire time we’d done the final check, but I don’t care enough about his problems to have asked about what’s going on.
“Okay,” Seven says, but he still looks uncertain. He nibbles on his bottom lip, then glances around. “So show me around?”
I nod, although I feel a bit self-conscious. I show him around the small apartment—a combined living/dining room, a small kitchen, and a bedroom. There’s next to no furniture in it, with a mattress in the bedroom and a few chairs I’d picked up off the side of the road. A TV and gaming system are on the floor near the secondhand couch .
“I figured there’s no point getting much furniture until the walls are painted,” I explain hastily. “Which you’re still helping me with, right?”
Seven stops biting his lip, but there’s a shade of wariness in his expression as he replies, “We’re going to paint it all blue, right? That shade we decided on?”
“Yeah, I got a blue for the living room.” I walk over to the paint supplies and heft up two cans of paint. “And bright red for my bedroom.” I grin at him. “Race car red, because I always wanted that color as a kid and never got it.”
His shoulders relax as he shakes his head. “That sounds… loud.” But he smiles back at me. “Have you ever driven a race car before?”
I start laying the tarp out around the living room. I’ve already taped off the edges, so hopefully we’ll get at least one room done today. “Not an official race car, but one of my buddies in the army owned this flashy car, and… okay, it’ll sound bad, but me and the others, we were really fucking jealous, right? So one night when he was really drunk, we took his keys.” I pause for effect and grin at Seven. “It would have been irresponsible to let him drive, right?”
Seven looks more confused than anything. “Yeah,” he says, but it’s more like he’s giving me the answer he thinks I want to hear instead of what he’s actually thinking.
I shrug it off and hand Seven one of the paint rollers. “Anyway, we all took turns joyriding that car, with my drunk buddy in the backseat. The car wouldn’t have won any races, but it drifted like a dream.” I pour paint into the tin, then cover my roller with it. “In the morning, he noticed the tires were completely worn down. None of us fessed up to who had done it.”
“What’s drifting?” Seven asks, taking the paint roller. He looks at it in fascination, then mimics what I’d done. “Oh, crap. It’s dripping everywhere,” he says in dismay.
“That’s why the tarp is there,” I say. “Just roll it out a bit more in the pan.” I show him how to do that, then get to work with painting the wall. “Drifting is when you do a, um, really sharp turn with the car, so it skids sideways. It’s fun as hell but killer on the wheels.”
“Oh,” he says, concentrating as he starts to paint, too. It’s messy and crooked, but he’s trying so hard that I can’t bring myself to correct him.
“Make sure to keep spreading the paint,” I say. “So that there are no obvious drips anywhere.”
Seven nods, and when he focuses, he doesn’t do a bad job. It’s clear he’s never done it before, but he doesn’t protest the work, either. “This doesn’t look like the color on the thing,” he says.
“It’ll look different when it dries,” I explain to him.
His brows furrow, but he accepts that answer, going back to the pan to put his roller back through the paint.
Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that he knows next to nothing of life, but at other times, it’s painfully clear that he hasn’t experienced much at all.
“So, did you figure out some place you want to visit in the city that isn’t the casino?” I ask. “I’m not kidding about a trip out to a national park or something. It sounds scary but we’ll be able to see for miles, so it’s not like anyone can sneak up on us.”
“But they could easily hide our bodies,” he says, and he’s deadpan enough to where I’m not sure what to say to that until he adds, “Of course, you could hide their bodies out there, too.”
I pause in my painting to look at him. “Do you want me to teach you how to fight?”
He goes completely still, the paint roller still against the wall, and I see that he’s trembling as he gives a quick shake of his head. “No! No. I couldn’t. That would be… No.”
I set my paint roller into the pan and grab Seven’s shoulders. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to. It’s not for everyone.”
Seven shivers, but when he looks up at me, I see only blind fear.
I want to find who put it there and beat the shit out of them.
“I can’t ,” he whispers. He drops the paint roller onto the tarp and wraps his arms around me .
I hold him and kiss the top of his head. Yeah, whoever hurt him deserves the worst hell. I’m going to enjoy beating the crap out of them.
After several long moments, Seven pulls away from me. “Sorry,” he whispers.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I answer gently. “You know I’ve always got your?—”
I’m interrupted by my phone ringing loudly.
I want to ignore it, but it’s the ringtone I reserve for my mother. I curse and reach for my phone, stabbing at the screen.
“Mamá!” I say. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh, mijo,” she says sadly. “I miss you so much.”
It takes me a few seconds to realize she’s drunk. “Why are you drinking? You never drink.”
“You left me again,” she says with a sob. “I miss you.”
Crap. If she’s getting sentimental like this, if she’s drunk , it’s not only because I moved out. “Did he do something to you?” I ask. “I’ll come over right now and pick you up.”
“No!” she snaps. “No, I’m fine! I wanted to hear your voice, Javier, that’s all. You don’t have to come.”
“Mamá, I will go over there right now. Pack your bags?—”
She hangs up on me.
I curse and glare at the phone. I call her back, but she rejects the call immediately. “What the fuck, Mamá?” I growl.
Seven is watching me with wide eyes. “Is everything okay?” he asks, then shakes his head. “No, obviously it’s not. What’s wrong?”
I grit my teeth. “My mother. She doesn’t call. I mean, she does, but not like this. She was drunk! She doesn’t drink, Seven. My asshole stepfather drinks!”
He swallows hard, then wets his lips with his tongue. “Do you need to go get her? Vortex can come pick me up.”
I call her again, and once more, it goes straight to voicemail.
“I don’t know,” I say seriously. “Even if I go, she might not come with me. Scratch that; she definitely won’t come with me. She never does.”
I switch tactics and call the Step Asshole. He answers on the third ring. “What do you want?”
“Where are you?” I ask suspiciously. “If you’ve hurt her?—”
“What the fuck are you on about?” he interrupts. “I’m at work.”
That would be plausible, if I thought he kept regular work hours. I hang up on him and call the hardware store he works at. “Hi, can I speak to Mr. Marcus Shultz? I had some follow up questions about the window treatments he sold me the other day.”
The person at the other end answers, “Oh, sure. Let me see if I can track him down. I saw him a minute ago...”
I guess he was telling the truth about being at work. I hang up on the clerk and let out a frustrated sigh. Then I shout and punch the wall. My fist goes into the drywall, and the freshly painted wall crumbles around it.
Seven inhales sharply. “Havoc!” I hear him take a step closer to me, but he doesn’t touch me. “What’s going on? Is your stepdad…” He trails off. “If he’s hurting her, you should go get her.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I snap at Seven. “I have tried over and over to get her out of there, but she always refuses to come with me!”
He flinches and takes a step back, his eyes flicking to the doorway before going back to my face. “Does sh—” He cuts himself off, then asks, “Did he hurt you too?”
“Not like he hurt my mom.” My hand hurts. I pull it away from the wall, staring at the smeared paint on my knuckles. “Fuck.”
Seven falls silent, but he doesn’t continue to move away from me. Instead, he says quietly, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” I repeat. “Why are you sorry?”
I need to calm down. I need to think rationally.
But all I want to do is hunt the Step Asshole down and beat him to a bloody pulp.
“Because…” Seven hedges, and his eyes flick to the door again. “Because I’m not… I don’t know what to say. Do you want me to look at your hand?” He smiles, but it looks forced. “You’re gonna break your fingers one day.”
I reach out to Seven, my thoughts hazy. My hand wraps around his throat.
His breath catches sharply, but he leans into my touch instead of pulling away from me more.
I squeeze for a few seconds. I’m going to hurt him.
I loosen my grip, but I don’t let go. “Tell me to stop,” I whisper.
He gives a quick shake of his head. “I don’t want you to stop,” he says. I realize he’s trembling, but he takes a step closer to me.
He’d been upset even before I’d hit the wall.
I scared him.
But the rage is still roiling inside of me, and I can’t stop myself. I shift my grip and push—slam—Seven up against the still-wet wall. He lets out a mewling gasp, and I grind my cock against his perfect ass.
“I’m going to fuck you right here,” I growl.
“Yes,” he says.
I think he’d say yes even if he didn’t want it, and that should stop me.
It doesn’t.
I push his long hair aside and bite the back of his neck, frotting against his ass. His hands clench against the wall, but he pushes back, too, increasing the friction.
He needs to stop playing with fire, I think, as I claw at his sides.
Seven continues to make soft sounds, pleading with me, and he rubs back against my hard cock. “Fuck me,” he pleads. “Don’t wait.”
Arousal spikes through me. I reach for his zipper and loosen his jeans enough to push them down and expose his pert ass. I grip his ass cheeks, smearing more of the blue paint on him.
I can almost hear Vortex admonishing me, telling me to slow down.
Caleb would egg me on, though.
I spread Seven’s cheeks and spit on his hole .
He jerks — in surprise or pleasure, I can’t tell — and whimpers something unintelligible. It doesn’t matter what he’s saying. He wants this, even if he’s scared of it.
Of me.
I undo my own fly awkwardly, wiping my hand on my shirt first to avoid getting paint onto my cock. When my erection is free, I spit on Seven’s hole again.
“I’m going to fuck you raw,” I growl into his ear. “Unless you want me to be gentle?”
Tell me to be gentle.
He shakes his head quickly. “Don’t be gentle,” he pants. “Don’t… Don’t be gentle. Please. I need…”
I push in, penetrating his tight hole. The spit barely helps at all, and it’s a rough, dry squeeze to get inside him.
It’s so fucking good though, especially when Seven cries out and pushes against me, urging me to continue.
His hands are pressed against the wall, fingers splayed and covered with blue paint, but he doesn’t seem to care any more than I do.
All he wants is this, every bit as much as I do.
I pound into him ruthlessly, not giving Seven a chance to relax or meet my thrusts. He only has to take it, his torso flat against the wall, his mouth parted in desperate cries.
I don’t last long, not with this frantic pace I’m setting. It’s anger and frustration and the sheer hotness that is Seven taking it. I let the pleasure take me as I slam into Seven and empty my load into him.
Seven shudders at the feeling, but he doesn’t touch himself.
I pull away and watch my cum trickle out of Seven’s ass.
There’s blood there, too.
Shame floods into me, and I stumble a few steps back. “Shit. Seven, I’m sorry.”
He looks over his shoulder at me, blinking several times. “What?” he asks, and his voice is slurred. “Why are you sorry?” he echoes my own words back at me, but unlike him, I have every reason to apologize.
“I used you. I forced you.” I clumsily tuck my cock back in, but I’m completely filthy. “I’m no fucking better than he is.”
He shakes his head, but he leans hard against the wall without bothering to pull his pants up. His forehead is pressed against it, too, getting as covered with paint as the rest of him. “I wanted it,” he says. “I wanted you . I always want you.”
“I tore you up,” I point out. “Crap, we need to get you clean. Showered. I… I don’t have ointment… Fuck. Fuck, I’ll go buy some?—”
He startles and spins around to face me. “What? No! No, you can’t leave me here.” There’s very real panic in his voice now, the fear he should’ve had directed at me instead directed at the idea of being left alone.
I deflate and rub my brow. “Okay. Um. We can still shower. I did buy a first aid kit. Maybe there’s something there I can use. You can chill on my mattress after; I’ll do all the painting.”
“But I’m fine,” Seven says, finally pulling his pants up. He’s still a complete mess, blue from head to toe from where I’d shoved him against the wall and fucked him so hard. “Just… blue.”
How the hell is he okay with all of this? I would hate me—hell, a lot of partners had hated me, for being too rough. I was more than “too rough” with Seven. For all that I got on Caleb’s case for being a bully, I’m the real problem.
I take a step toward Seven, and he doesn’t back away. “Do you want me to help you shower?” I ask quietly. “I can wait outside the bathroom too, if that’s better.”
His expression flickers with confusion. “Havoc… Why are you being so weird?”
He really doesn’t get it. I sigh and shake my head. “Okay. Never mind. Let’s get cleaned up. And start over on the paint job, if your ass isn’t too sore. You really don’t have to help though, you can sit there and keep me company.”
So I don’t think about everything, so I don’t keep worrying about my mother even though there’s not a damn thing she’ll let me do to help.
“I think my ass would be less comfortable sitting down,” he points out. “But I really do want to help.” He glances at the wall. “Wow, we made a real mess, didn’t we? Should we wait to clean up until we’re done?”
“You don’t want it to dry on your skin,” I point out. “It’s fine. We’ll fix the wall with a few extra coats of paint.”
I extend my arm out, and despite everything, Seven steps into my personal space without hesitating.
I knew he was fucked up, but I don’t think I realized to what extent until now.
I have to get myself under control.
I can’t do this to him again.
I don’t want to be like my stepfather.