Deliver Us (49 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“And you keep your fucking mouth shut, like I assume you have so far.”

“Of course. Yes, sir. Are you going to tell Ben?”

They lock eyes, and Trace debates it, the consequences of involving him, and those of not involving him.

With a sharp, angry exhale, Trace nods, “Yeah. You, me and Ben. That’s as far as it goes.”

“Ben will be able to keep this from Kyle?”

Trace growls his frustration, squeezing Micah’s arm until Micah is simply waiting to feel the bones snap. “
Ahh
, s-sorry.”

“No,” Trace eases up. Micah is grateful. “You’re right. Kyle might be able to help in his own way. I’ll discuss it with Ben.”

“Okay.”

Trace releases him.

“We’re in this shit now, you know that, right?”

“Yes. I know. Whatever it takes.”

Slipping the paper into his pocket and turning toward the house, Trace recedes into the gloom, muttering only a gruff, anxious but resolute, “Goddamn it,” before he disappears entirely from sight.

Gabriel is bored. And not the normal kind of pleasant, lazy bored, but a niggling, pestering, restless sort of bored. There are only so many distractions he can indulge in at home, only so many power tools to explore and projects to tinker with, only so many times he can take Sierra for a walk, or go online to check the status of his and Darrek’s various accounts before he starts getting stir crazy.

Or at least, that’s what he tells himself.

He’s stir crazy. That’s all.

Putting the computer to sleep without remembering to close the browser window — which is currently displaying the results of his search for a
particular
person’s information — he gets Sierra into her collar and leash, and takes her outside, loading her into the back seat of his SUV.

He feels terrible about the current impasse in communication between himself and Darrek. They haven’t had a real conversation for over a week. What happened with Micah at Diadem is still something Gabriel just cannot bring himself to open the floodgates on. Soon he’ll open up, and ‘talk,’ but not yet.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot he wants to talk to Darrek about regarding
his
issues. They’d never discussed the visit from Darrek’s father, or the reality that his family might know all about his status as a gay man now. And the worst part is that Gabriel can
see
how much it’s fucking Darrek up to keep that stuff bottled up inside. Darrek’s issues are right there like an elephant in the room, rubbing its big, wrinkled, pink shoulders with Gabriel’s elephant. No wonder he feels suffocated in the house — it’s stuffed full of huge, pink elephants. Also, the fact that Gabriel can’t help Darrek and get him to start venting about
his
fears and worries without sounding like a complete and utter hypocrite is very, very plain to him.

Gabriel asks himself if he is actually taking the first steps toward destroying his relationship with Darrek. Is he sabotaging his happiness just so that he can keep his demons under lock and key? Is it really worth losing Darrek over?

He knows it’s not worth it. He
knows
that and feels it in the ache of his heart.

But still, Gabriel isn’t the type of guy to only go part of the way. He needs to dive right in to murky, churning, shark-infested waters until he’s buried up to the tippy-top of his skull in them. And truth be told, his feet have already left the diving board. It’s too late to turn back now.

So, he goes to talk with the shrink that Kyle recommended—Sophia O’Malley. He brings the dog with him, because Sierra is tangible, panting, slobbering, smelly, beauteous, incredibly reassuring proof that his life is not what it used to be. He’s not just a scared kid on the run anymore. He loves Darrek, and even when he messes everything up, Darrek loves him back. So, Gabriel takes the hot seat in Sophia’s office, holds on to Sierra, and starts talking.

It’s a nightmarish hour.

It’s only an hour, though. That’s all. Sixty minutes. And when every single question takes a good five minutes just for Gabriel to figure out what to say in response, the time passes rather quickly.

Feeling only the slightest bit more purged, but purged nonetheless, Gabriel leaves the psychiatrist’s office, and plans out his next move.

“Damn. That’s... weird.”

The two-story office building in front of him, sandwiched between a long row of other buildings on the opposite side of town from his shrink’s place, looks perfectly normal from the outside. The brickwork is completed, the windows installed, the roof tarred and the sidewalk fully paved. But the inside of the structure is nothing but a shell. There are no floors, no walls are framed out, nothing. You open the front door and there’s a sheer, nine-foot drop to the loose gravel ground of the basement level below. It gives Gabriel vertigo and an insane fear that he might walk right off the edge, falling far enough to break an ankle or two just because he knows, logically, that he
shouldn’t
do something that crazy.

He’s so transfixed by it, that he doesn’t see
or
hear Kyle mosey over to him until his voice sounds from Gabriel’s right side in a chuckle, “Cheap bastards.”

“
Shit!
” Gabriel yelps, jumping a few inches right out of his skin.

“Scared ya?”

“No,” Gabriel scoffs. “Absolutely not.”

“Yeah, I did,” Kyle grins proudly, with something thin jutting out between his teeth.

Gabriel squints at it, so Kyle digs in his pocket, holding out a small plastic container and offering, “Toothpick? I’ve got some gum, too.”

“Dude, oral fixation much?”

“Heh. ‘Oral.’ Yeah. Totally,” he nods. “Well?”

“Eh, sure. Thanks.”

He takes one of the toothpicks and bites down on it.

“What’re you doing here?” Kyle asks, “Checking up on the wife?”

It’s said with affection, but Gabriel can hear the protectiveness in it. He wonders, fleetingly, if Darrek has been complaining at all about the recent tension at home with his best friend.

“Dare’s the wife now?” Gabriel retorts.

“Well,
he
doesn’t think so, but I keep telling him it ain’t so bad. He should just give up fightin’ it and embrace it. I know I have.”

“Have you?”

“Oh sure. I know I’m the wife. But it all works out. I get what I want. And Ben still has ‘issues’ with bottoming, so....”

“Still?” Gabriel squints over at Kyle. They’ve walked a little closer to the building’s entrance and are peering down at the workers below. Spotting Darrek immediately, Gabriel watches him work at framing out the sections in to which concrete will be poured.

“Yep. Can you believe it?”

“And I thought
I
was bad,” Gabriel says. “I’m, uh... just stopping by. I was in the neighborhood. What’s the deal with this place, by the way? Why isn’t there anything inside?”

“Plumbing contract hit a snag, as did the electrical. So, they finished the exterior work while negotiations went on. Plus they’re still trying to lease the place to someone, and once they do that they’ll know more about what they want the inside to be, the layout and all. Detail work.”

“Oh. Makes sense.”

The silence draws out, punctuated by low banging from the pit in front of them. Darrek hasn’t looked up, too focused on what he’s doing to notice that he’s being watched.

Sensing eyes upon
him
, though, Gabriel glances over at Kyle who’s watching him closely.

“Okay, so I went to see Sophia today. Er, well, Dr. O’Malley, I guess. Whatever.”

“How’d it go?” Kyle asks, and it’s the gentle easiness of his tone that gets Gabriel to answer.

“Good. Better than I thought it would.”

Kyle lowers his voice and tugs Gabriel away from the doorway and the tall step-ladder set up for the workers to use to climb down into the basement level. “Look, I know it’s none of my business, and Dare hasn’t told me much, but I can see it in his face that stuff ain’t right between you. He’s acting like a kicked puppy. And I
get
how it’d be easy for you to use the whole Dominant thing to keep stuff balanced how you want it to be, but it’s
not fair
to him to do that. Because he won’t fight you on it. He’ll just get more and more unhappy. With me and Ben, it’s... different. I don’t need to talk about my feelings and shit like Dare does. I hate talking about emotional crap. That’s why I appreciate that Ben doesn’t need me to do that. But Darrek has this need to make people happy. He’s gonna do whatever it takes to make the people he loves feel better, even if he fucks himself over in the process.”

Gabriel sighs and turns fully away from the building. He walks a few feet away to a short wall and sits on it. Kyle hesitates, but when Gabriel motions him over, he follows and sits next to him.

“You’re right,” Gabriel sighs tiredly.

“Gabe, man, I admit that I didn’t like you for a long time. But maybe that was because I didn’t understand where you were coming from. Obviously Dare loves the hell out of you though. And he would never
hurt
you. You know that, don’t you?”

Gabriel doesn’t respond, only staring out into the sunshine, chewing his toothpick to splinters.

“Are you just being a dick to make yourself feel better? I mean, I don’t see what the problem is.”

“
I
do.
I
see it,” Gabriel murmurs, almost too low to hear.

But he can’t say any more. It won’t come out.

Kyle’s talent, however, is reading people. He reads people better than anybody. It happens naturally, with little effort. And Kyle loves Darrek in a way entirely different from the way he loves Ben, but it’s still real love, and he still would do anything for Darrek.

So, he calls Gabriel on his problem. Because otherwise, everything might just go to hell and hurt the man he loves so very much.

Leaning in close, so that the warm puff of his breath slides over the back of Gabriel’s neck, making his skin pebble as much from the tickle of air as much as Kyle’s words, he says, “Darrek’s easy to hurt. He’s
easy
to break apart and I bet he’s real fuckin’ pretty when he breaks, isn’t he? I won’t deny I haven’t thought about it, what it’d be like to be in your place. I bet he lets you push him really fuckin’ far before he says stop, and that it makes you feel better when you do it. But
hurting Darrek
is not going to ever make you feel better, Gabriel. It just makes shit worse. Because what you are doing to Darrek is like what happened to you. You are taking advantage of him, and Darrek’s fear of making you unhappy. Why didn’t you collar Darrek? Hmm? What stopped you?”

“I don’t know.”

“
Bullshit
,” Kyle hisses almost angrily.

“Fine,” Gabriel relents. “Fine. I didn’t want to.”

“Why not?”

Because that’s not what I want. That’s not what Darrek wants, either. Not at all.

“You should know better than
anybody
that it’s all right to get off on weird shit. What makes
you
so special? Huh?”

Gabriel pulls away an inch or two, just enough to let him get a better look at Kyle’s face.

“I don’t even know why I’m talking to you about this.”

“That’s a good point, Gabe. Why talk to me about the stuff you’re afraid to confront when you’ve got Ben and Trace waiting to take care of you? Matter of fact, why are your best friends a couple of
Dominants?
And why did you start screwing around with them? What were you hoping for? Maybe you wanted a little taste. Maybe you wanted them to keep going and treat you like a client instead of an equal.”

“No,” Gabriel says, but it’s a whisper, faltering and hushed.

“Maybe that’s why you never got emotionally attached to your clients before. Your heart wasn’t in it. Because
you
wanted to be in the restraints, to take their place.”

Gabriel stands up and walks away, down the alley next to the building, but he’s not walking quickly and Kyle catches up easily. Even
Gabriel
isn’t aware when his footsteps slow more and more the closer Kyle gets. Gabriel is almost at a full stop when he feels the presence of the other man behind him.

It’s for Darrek when Kyle pushes Gabriel. Grabbing his wrists hard enough to feel the flutter of his pulse in the thick veins there, he shoves him up against the brick, hidden in shadows. Pressing bodily up against his back, slipping a knee easily between his thighs, Kyle says into Gabriel’s ear, “See? See how easy it is? Comes naturally to you, doesn’t it?”

His knee pulls up snugly into Gabriel’s crotch, his hands tighten on his wrists, pinning them to the wall on either side of Gabriel’s shoulders.

Eyes closed and cheeks pink with a mixture of heat and shame, Gabriel tries to bottle up his soft sigh. It comes out anyway as a grunt. There’s plenty of nausea and self-hatred behind it though, rising up in his gut.

“What do you
really
want to know, Gabriel? What do you want to ask me?”

“How do you do it? How do you let Ben do
all this shit
to you and still seem so....”