thirteen
Duke Dolce
“What’s the big deal,” I say again, following Colt to the back deck. “Mabel’s fucking my brother. Why shouldn’t I fuck hers?”
“Because I’m with Lo.”
“She’s been locked up for a year,” I point out. “You expect me to believe you were sitting around celibate as a monk that whole time? Come on, Colt. I know you.”
“We have an arrangement,” he says, flipping open the cover on the hot tub. “We promised never to put limits on each other. We can hook up with other people if we want.”
“Then what’s the problem?” I press, peeling off my shirt before he’s even slid the cover all the way off the tub.
“I don’t want you.”
His words lacerate my soul, but the more he hurts me, the more I crave. I stand there watching him through the curls of steam rising into the muggy morning. It’s too warm out to sit in a hot tub, but I don’t care. I undo the button and let my jeans fall, holding his gaze, daring him to look away.
“God, your cock is huge,” he says, shaking his head.
“Thought you said you didn’t want me,” I say, wrapping my fingers around it while he watches.
He grimaces and turns away, hangs his robe on one of the four hooks on the wall. Their family probably sat out here in the tub together. It seems like something sick that the Darlings would do.
He climbs into the tub in his boxers, not waiting for me.
“Afraid to be naked with me?” I challenge, climbing into the hot water and sinking onto the bench opposite him.
“Not afraid,” he says, setting his cigarettes on the edge of the tub. “Smart enough not to hang a juicy steak in front of a hungry dog.”
“Fuck you,” I say. “You know I don’t bite.”
“Yes, I do.”
For a second, we smirk at each other across the rippling water.
Finally, I look away. I tip my chin at him. “Gimme another cigarette.”
“Take off your glasses.”
“Why?” I ask, leaning back and resting one arm along the rim of the tub while I stroke my cock with the other. “You don’t want to pretend you’re glazing Baron’s dick instead of mine?”
“No,” he says, making a face.
He didn’t say he wasn’t glazing my dick, though.
“You sure about that?” I ask, but I take off my glasses and fold them before setting them on the ledge. “Everyone knows Baron’s the better brother. Don’t you want to dom the best of the best?”
“No one with a working brain thinks Baron is better than you.”
He takes his cigarette pack and flips it open with his thumb, then taps until a few slide out.
He bites down gently on the end of one, sliding it free with his teeth so he doesn’t have to touch it with his wet hands.
He closes his lips around it, picks up his lighter, and flicks it open, sucking until the tip glows bright in the blue dawn.
He inhales deeply and then drops his head back on the edge of the tub, exhaling smoke into the sky like a chimney.
“I hate you,” I say.
“Atta boy.”
I sink down in the water, laying back and staring up at the last few stars with him.
“If I hadn’t done all that to you and your sister,” I say. “Would the answer be different?”
“We can’t undo the past,” he says. “What’s the point in wondering?”
“I just want to know.”
“Why? You did what you did,” he says. “You are what you are. That’s your burden to bear. We all have our own. I can’t absolve you of yours, no matter what answer I give.”
He didn’t say no.
Somehow, that’s worse. I thought I wanted him to say yes, it would all be different, and of course he’d want me.
That maybe part of him does anyway. But it only makes me hate myself more.
I lift my head and bang it down on the side of the tub hard enough to make pain blossom in the base of my skull.
“I never see until it’s too late. Why don’t I see? ”
He shakes his head. “No, Duke. There was never a chance for us. Not since the day you put me on my knees in the basement.”
“That was years ago.”
“Yeah.”
“So it was over before it began.”
“It was never over because there was never anything to end.”
At last, he takes one more drag and hands the cigarette across the water.
“So, what now?” I ask.
“So, you go home,” he says. “You sleep in the bed you made. As soon as Lo gets out, we’re leaving town.”
“Why would you leave?” I ask. “You’re the king of Faulkner again.”
The past year, I made fun of him for staying, but now I don’t like the thought of him leaving. I like the thought of him here, rotting, doing nothing with his life and going nowhere.
“Nah,” he says. “Devlin and Preston can have it. It’s too full of memories.”
He doesn’t say the rest. He doesn’t have to.
It’s too full of memories of what we did to them, both him and Lo.
“It could have been worse,” I say. “You may not see it because I had to hide it so well even my brothers wouldn’t see it, let alone you. But I tried.”
He lets out a quiet scoff. “Burning my arm until there was no skin left was your way of protecting me?”
I remember that moment, though. He’s right.
I loved doing it. I loved the softness of the skin on the inside of his forearm, how warm it was.
I loved watching it bubble under the flame, ravaged by the beautiful spear of fire.
If there’s a god in this world, it’s that.
The pure, incinerating heart of a flame.
I remember how he moaned and cursed and screamed.
I loved that the most. The raw, carnal brutality of it, when it burned us all down to bone and hunger.
“If Baron had done it, he would have cooked your arm until the flesh fell off the bone,” I point out, shaking the memory away. “You wouldn’t have half your arm.”
“Well, gosh,” Colt drawls. “Let me run right down to the trophy store and get you a gold medal.”
“And if I hadn’t convinced him to take your finger, he would have chopped off your dick, just like they did your dad and your grandpa.”
“That one doesn’t surprise me,” Colt drawls. “You always were obsessed with my dick.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, you want to.”
I finish the cigarette in miserable silence. There’s no point in denying it now.
“You know, it’s hard to make it work with three people,” I say at last. “I’ve done it. I know how.”
“Good for you.”
“I’m just saying. Maybe I need more than your sister can give me now.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
“You have to admit, I give you something Lo can’t.”
“On the contrary,” he says. “Lo gives me exactly what I need.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“What about what I need?”
“I’m not in your relationship, Duke. I can’t help you with that.”
“What if you were?”
“I’m not.”
“Hypothetically,” I insist. “It’s not that unthinkable. You like guys and girls.”
“Lo doesn’t like to be shared.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“She did, didn’t she? That was her job. To make you believe you weren’t a bad guy because you didn’t really mean it.”
“I didn’t,” I growl, glaring at him.
He just shakes his head. “You forced her every bit as much as you did me.”
“So, we’ve all fucked,” I say. “That just makes it make even more sense. We’ve been together, so Lo wouldn’t worry that you’d go find some other dude to give you what she can’t.
I’ve already been with her, so you wouldn’t have to be jealous.
I’ve fucked you both, you’ve fucked us both, and she’s fucked us both. What difference does it make?”
“Fucking isn’t love.”
I stare at him through the steam, the smoke. My heart does a thud in my chest, a flop like a fish turning over on the boat when you first haul it up. “Is that what it would take? You want me to say it?”
“No,” he says. “In fact, please don’t.”
“Good,” I say. “Because I’m not a very good liar.”
His brows jump. “With all that practice lying to yourself, I’d think you’d be an expert by now.”
“No limits, huh,” I say. “With you and Lo? If you really think that’s going to work, it sounds like you’re the one lying to yourself.”
“I’ve had enough of controlling women to last a lifetime. And she’s had… You.”
“Exactly,” I say, chuckling. “You really think she’ll be happy with you after she got fucked by the biggest three cocks in Faulkner for three years in a row?”
“Haven’t had any complaints yet.”
He hands a new cigarette across the water. I take it, my damp fingers brushing his dry ones.
“She won’t tell you and hurt your ego,” I say, taking a puff. “But she’ll want more. So will you.”
“I don’t.”
“But you will,” I say. “That’s what marriage is for. To tame you, tie you down. It sounds bad, but it’s a good thing. Otherwise… There are no limits for men like us.”
“That’s the goal.”
“We need limits,” I say through a mouthful of smoke, leaning in to hand the cigarette back. “It’s human nature to always want more. When there’s nothing you can’t have, you have to want things you shouldn’t have.”
“Like what?” he asks, watching me from the corner of his eye while he draws on the damp filter.
“I started looking at porn at the regular time,” I say, laying back again.
The sky is getting lighter already, blue edging out the darkness.
“You know, eleven or twelve. It didn’t much matter to me what I was watching.
It was all hot, because I wasn’t allowed to watch it.
But then Mom caught me, and she took me to Dad to explain why I was watching a video with no girls in it. You know what he did?”
Colt shakes his head and hands the smoke across the steaming, shimmering water around us.
“He told me it was okay to watch porn, but not to let Mom catch me again. And that I had to watch the right stuff. So he showed me what that was, and then he brought me a girl to fuck.”
“That’s… Unorthodox.”
“Just wait, I have a point here.” I hand the cigarette back to him, though it’s not much more than a filter.
“The thing is, after that, I watched what Dad told me to, but it wasn’t the same.
Watching the shit he told me not to watch, that I wasn’t allowed to watch, made it more exciting. So I snuck it.”