Free The Intersection of Purgatory and Paradise by A.J. Thomas Page B

remembered the horrible mixture of pain, pleasure, and utter terror that had burned through him while Leon fucked him, laughing, with the barrel of Doug’s gun held to the back of his head. “The things I did for him…. One night he brought a revolver. He was so excited, like a kid with a new toy. The sex that night was one long game of Russian roulette, and by the third round, I managed to come on command for him. I’d have done anything he told me to. I begged, I cried, and I willed every cell of my body to obey him, to try to please him. I was sure even if Leon didn’t shoot me, eventually my heart would fail when he pulled the trigger again.” Doug’s breath caught in his throat, his chest constricted, and his stomach clenched. He had to force his lungs to draw in air.
    “How did you escape?” Christopher asked, his voice shaking and hoarse.
    Doug almost laughed. “Escape? The next night he came home with a couple of other guys. He held up a roll of duct tape, and when he looked at me, I kind of lost it.”
    “Lost it?”
    “I beat the shit out of him. I wanted to kill him. The other two guys took off, and I just kept hitting him.”
    “Did you? Kill him, I mean?”
    Christopher asked it so calmly it almost made Doug’s tentative control over his stomach slip. “No,” Doug said quietly. “The rest of that night is kind of a blur, but I’m pretty sure I got my shit and got the hell out of there. I locked myself in a hotel and got plastered. I know he survived, though, because I saw him around afterward.”
    “What did you do?”
    Doug swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. “Nothing. I called in sick for a few days. I transferred to the North County Division, started working homicide instead of narcotics. For a couple years, I kept expecting him to pop up or my old supervisor to show up and relieve me of duty, arrest me.”
    “You just kept going?”
    “Yeah. What else was I going to do?”
    “Report what happened. Press charges. Find out which one of your coworkers sold you out.”
    “No one sold me out,” Doug insisted. “I made a stupid mistake. A lot of stupid mistakes.”
    “Are you….” Christopher swallowed hard. “Are you going to throw up? Because I might, and if we both do, things are going to get messy.”
    Doug shook his head, even though he wasn’t quite sure he could keep his stomach under control.
    The faucet squeaked, and the hiss of the shower died. Christopher wrapped a soft, oversized towel around his shoulders. His arms wrapped around him over the towel, crushing him against Christopher’s wet, hard chest.
    His chest was the only part of him that was hard at the moment. Christopher’s cock was shrunken and flaccid between his legs. Doug didn’t need to be turned on for Christopher to fuck him into oblivion, but Christopher having an erection was kind of a prerequisite.
    “You said if I told you, you’d….”
    “I am not going to fuck you right now.” Christopher tightened his arms around Doug’s shoulders. “Even if it was a good idea, I couldn’t.”
    Doug winced and tried to get away from him. His worst fears had just crashed out of his subconscious, through his imagination, and into reality. He’d finally worked up the nerve to tell Christopher the truth, and Christopher didn’t want him.
    “Tell me what you need,” Christopher said, rubbing his hands back and forth over the towel. “Please?”
    “Honestly? I need you to not care,” Doug whispered. “I want you to look at me the same way you did before. To still want me, even knowing what I let him do.” Doug squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out everything. “But how could you? How could anyone want someone who….”
    Christopher’s lips moved against his temple. “That’s why you stay in Elkin, isn’t it?”
    “Huh?”
    “Why you never went back to Miami. Why you stay in Montana, even though half your coworkers and a good number of citizens hate you.”
    “It’s what I