Whatever the Cost (9 page)

Della’s right. He can’t say no. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t want to do it. He has no choice.

Without waiting for a reply, seeing the resignation on Liam’s face, Della stands and slides her purse strap higher on her shoulder. “I’ll send you the details in a few. And if it goes well, hopefully it’ll become a regular thing.”

“Yeah,” Liam murmurs.

He walks Della to the door. They pause when she turns to him and says, “You made the right call, Will. Just think of who you’d rather Jacen be with, Spencer or you.”

Nodding, wearing a hollow expression, he holds the door open for her, watching as she gets in the backseat of the Lincoln and her driver slowly pulls away.

Once alone, Liam goes online to check the balances on his accounts, not thinking too hard about why he’s taking stock of his available funds and, in the recesses of his mind, debating his options concerning the future, only that it makes him feel better to see over three hundred thousand dollars there, and even more in investments. Possibilities spin out before him, taking vaporous form, then dematerializing before becoming too tangible.

This doesn’t have to be forever. It can just be for right now. He’ll make the most of it, keep saving and bide his time. And then, one day, he’ll be free, whether The Company likes it or not. He’ll just gather his things and vanish. There one day, gone the next. Nothing but a memory. He’s done it before, countless times. In some ways, it’s who Liam is—someone temporary, changeable, someone who knows how to slip through fingers for a quick escape. It has never been as tempting as it is right in that moment. Liam has always been mostly happy doing what he does. It defines him. It’s his outlet. So he’s not sure why it suddenly feels nothing but toxic and wrong.

Sure you do
, a ghost whispers in his ear, a very young voice both desperately welcome and grotesquely bitter; one he knows very well; one that haunts him day and night, and will do so until the end of his days—Timothy’s voice.
I don’t even recognize you anymore. How did you let yourself become this? How did you stand by this long, letting Jacen whore himself out to monsters?
There is no good reason, is there? Greed? Fear? Hmm. Maybe a little. Maybe something else, too.

“You. It’s your fault,” he spits into the air, knowing his own bitterness, his own hurt, is the cause of the words. He wants to take them back as soon as they’re spoken, but it’s too late. It’s been too late for years.

Meanwhile, outside and standing by the motorcycle, Yasha and Jacen are inches apart. Yasha is getting ready to go. He’s stayed longer than he planned, but Jacen needed it. There is still a sense of heavy foreboding and dread around the big lug. Only one thing will dispel it, and it’s nothing Yasha can give him.

“So, in conclusion,” Yasha says, laying a hand flat on the center of Jacen’s chest. “It’s fully possible for you and Liam to fuck like bunnies and still stay friends. If you want it that badly, make it happen.”

“He’s one of the best things in my life,” Jacen admits sadly, hanging his head, making cascades of shaggy, dark hair fall in his eyes. “I don’t want to lose him over a shitty job.”

“Then don’t. Keep hold of him. You can do that much.”

Jacen thinks this over, then nods.

“What’s the first thing I ever told you about The Company? Huh? Day one?”

“You don’t get a say,” Jacen responds with resignation. It was Yasha’s biggest argument against Jacen signing a ten-year contract of his own, but Jacen was absolutely confident that he could handle it.

“That’s right,” Yasha agrees. “The client, the request, the gender, the fetish—it’s their call, not yours. You don’t get a say. Liam doesn’t get a say. If they think you’re capable of delivering with a moderate degree of success, it’s a go.
This
is a go. It has nothing to do with feelings or your preferences, it’s a fucking
job
. Do your job. Then get paid and walk away.”

Yasha reaches up and wraps his hand around the side of Jacen’s face, his thumb dragging in a slow arc over Jacen’s cheekbone, his fingertips sliding back over his jaw. Jacen leans in and down, his lips losing their tension, going soft as Yasha reaches up to kiss them tenderly. There’s a slow series of light brushes of lips on lips as they take the moment to enjoy each other, remembering vividly what they’ve shared and how much they trust one another. They were strangers, then friends, then suddenly, almost inexplicably, lovers—for a time. They went back to being friends after that, but the intimacy never left, and probably never will. The force and passion of the kiss deepens. Yasha’s fingers slide farther back, around Jacen’s head, bringing him in closer so that he can get more, licking over his tongue, sucking on it, mapping out his mouth, his taste, remembering how it felt to be wrapped in the soft, pulsing heat of him, how Jacen had given over to him completely, how good it had been.

They break apart, dizzy, and Yasha’s fingertip traces over the healing wound on Jacen’s lower lip where Patrick hit him, drying the silken skin, feeling heat emanate from it.

“It’d be his loss, you know,” Yasha tells him with more affection than Jacen can bear.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Jacen hisses.

“Well, that’s your decision. You might never see money like this again, though. Remember that. Give it a try. Make it work for
you
.”

“You’re so smart,” Jacen smiles, his cheeks dimpling.

“Oh, no you don’t. Your charms have no power over me,” Yasha says sternly, even as his fingers tighten in Jacen’s wavy hair, which tickles over his face when Yasha dives in for another, dirtier kiss.

“Liar.”

Jacen licks the taste of Yasha from his lips and pushes his hands down into his pants pockets as Yasha straddles the bike and pulls his helmet down over his clipped-short, spiky, light brown hair. Warm brown eyes shot through with amber gaze out from the shadows the helmet casts over his angular features.

“You know where we are if you need us,” he says with a pointed look. “Let me know how it goes.”

“Yeah,” Jacen nods. “Thanks, man. Give Val my love.”

Yasha laughs and revs the engine. When he’s gone, all that’s left is the urgent pull at the core of Jacen’s being, telling him to go inside, to find Liam and face him.

“I don’t want to do this any more,” Jacen moans again, telling no one, telling himself. It’s no use; he doesn’t heed his own words. His feet carry him back through the yard, into the house, up the stairs.

Liam is in the spare bedroom, at the desk they share, their home office. Jacen lingers in the doorway, hands still in his pockets, scuffing his toe on the carpet, hang-dog expression on his face. “Lee....”

“I don’t want to talk about it. That’s my one condition. I can’t. I
can’t
talk about this with you,” Liam says. There’s a strained roughness to his voice that Jacen doesn’t like at all.

“I’m not your client, Liam,” Jacen says softly, hurt by the standoffishness, if not entirely surprised by it.

“You are. Now you are.”

“Look at me,” Jacen pleads.

Liam shakes his head, keeping it turned away. After a moment, though, he caves and sighs heavily when he sees Jacen’s wet, shining eyes.

“I’m glad Spencer’s gone,” Liam allows. “It’s worth it, to get rid of that asshole.”

“You can trust me, you know. I’d never hurt you.” Jacen pledges urgently.

“
I
don’t want to talk about it
,” Liam interjects forcefully.

“So, you’re going to punish me for this? By shutting me out? That’s not fair. This isn’t my fault!”

“I’m not,” Liam starts, then closes his eyes and takes a breath, lowering his volume with effort. “I’m not punishing you. I just don’t know how to do this as your friend.”

“It needs to be a game, doesn’t it? Or an act? Like with Leah?”

Tugging absent-mindedly at the edge of his shirt, shoulders hunched, Liam seems to try to get smaller, to shrink in on himself.

“Okay,” Jacen says slowly. “I’ll be your client. For this, I’ll be your client. But you’re my best friend, Liam. I refuse to give you up over this. You hear me?”

Liam turns his face away, covering his mouth with a hand, the elbow braced on the desk.

“Will you come downstairs and have some dinner with me? There’s a small chance I’ll even let you toss my salad.”

Laughter is surprised out of Liam at this, but it quickly turns into a shaky, pained whimper.

“Liam....”

“No. I’m sorry. I can’t. I just... I can’t.” Liam pushes past him, almost running to his room and slamming the door violently shut behind him.

Jacen reels, fists balled up at his sides. He pounds them against the wall and presses his forehead against the drywall, letting out a wrenching cry of frustration and anguish. Not once for the rest of the night does he see Liam. Dinner is made quietly, on his own. The house is still and the air eerily thick around him as he sits by himself at the table, picking at his food, listening to the clink and clatter of his fork against the china.

The two friends remain close in proximity but separate all that night and the next day, too. In the morning, Liam slips out, headed to Amé and Jacen’s stomach flips at the realization that he’s going partially to get ready for him, that in only a few hours, Jacen will have Liam, naked, willing, begging, underneath him, to be touched, sucked and tasted, explored and adored. Jittery with his own nervous energy, Jacen goes out for a run after doing his daily exercise routine in the small gym set up in their garage with his set of weights and weight bench. He runs for miles, coming back purged, feeling better for it, steadier, ready. Liam is back in his room, closeted away. Time ticks by, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but ever forward, carrying them both toward the inevitable—the moment that will change everything for them, forever.

Jacen and Liam drive to their job separately, in their own vehicles, leaving the house at different times. The messages received from Della directed Jacen to be there a half-hour before Liam, at eight in the evening rather than eight-thirty. But they wouldn’t have driven over together anyway. Liam’s psyche wouldn’t be able to bear it, driving to a strange house with his friend, knowing they were only going there to fuck for someone else’s amusement and about a grand extra in their bank accounts.

Or maybe it won’t have to go that far. The text from Della implied that Claudia was expecting oral, and not more than that, but Liam knows that things can go any which way once they start. It’s best to be prepared for everything. That’s a lesson learned the hard way for him, after a number of overly eccentric paying clients with decidedly kinky tastes. Say they want one thing over the phone, ask for another in person, promising more money,
lots
more money, if only—

At about seven o’clock Liam stops being ‘Liam’. He shifts into the character of a shy, straight-acting jock, who’s meeting a hot guy for sex. All he knows about the hot guy is that he’s the favorite of a rich woman on the east side of town; that she pampers him and spoils him with gifts and favors. Wanting to be with this guy, he’s also freaked about it, about what it’ll feel like to have a man’s mouth busy between his legs, licking, kissing, sucking, while
she
is there, seeing everything, maybe instructing the man to do this or try that, anything to get a louder moan, a sharper cry.

He tells himself it’s as much of a far-fetched fantasy as Tucker’s request for a cowboy, that it’s make-believe, a play where the only audience is the people in the room. It’s secret, private. Anything can happen with no consequences, because as soon as the play is over, and the night is through, they stop being their characters and go back to being the boring, normal, unexciting people they are.

The saddest thing is that a part of him truly believes that.

Nervousness and shyness are not hard for Liam to muster. He’s got both of them in spades as he gets ready, going into the bathroom, washing his cock and balls, douching, scrubbing every inch of his skin and doing absolutely everything he can to not remember that he’s doing it all for Jacen.

When Liam grabs one of his small, tapered butt plugs, lubing it up, pressing it into himself with one leg braced on the edge on his bathtub, coaxing the muscle loose, his stomach ties up in knots. He works it in and out, tugging and pressing until the toy moves easily, rotating it around inside for a greater stretch as dull memories of what Jacen looked like naked flash in his mind. Remembering the size of Jacen’s cock, Liam tries to adjust the amount of prep accordingly to be ready for that. The plug gets withdrawn and Liam squirts more lube all over his fingers, inserting three of them into himself, smearing it around his inner walls, wondering if someone else’s fingers will be in there instead in a little over an hour.