Page 12 of Hold Me Under (Water, Air, Earth, Fire 1)

Victor

Some people thinkholeis the worst thing you can call your partner. It’s degrading and cruel, telling them they have no value except as something warm and wet to come inside.

Maybe that’s why I find it so comforting. It gives a name to the things I am; it simplifies something people like to make complicated. When I use it in my hookup app profile, it attracts the kind of men I’m looking for.

But there was one guy named Ian. He talked to me when he was down my throat, told me I made him feel good. Then he came on my chest and licked it off, which in some ways is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.

So maybe that’s why, now that I’m panicking, I break my never-the-same-guy-twice rule and call Ian.

I made a mistake.

He shows up with four other guys I don’t know. I wouldn’t have let them in, but he had the gate code and the front door wasn’t locked so I find them already standing around my living room when I come downstairs.

I stop and stare at him, and he comes over to put an arm around me, rubbing my shoulder through my thin t-shirt. “It’s not like that,” he says quietly. “We brought coke and music.”

Except I think it is like that.

I lie on the couch upside-down, feet in the air and head dangling, while the strangers put on some beats and turn down the lights, arrange the coke on my coffee table. I’m not a drug addict, but I’ve done plenty of them and if I try, I can dig inside and find that light, recreational withdrawal that makes me want to do them again. I think I need to be high tonight, so I work on talking myself up to it.

Ian grabs my feet and massages the bottom of them with his thumbs. I’m so easy I can already feel myself getting hard. “I’m sorry if you’re not cool with this. You just sounded like you were lonely and they were already with me and I figured, since we had the shit, we could share it.”

I sit up and let him kiss me. “Hey, what if they leave and we sit outside? I’ll make you a drink and you can watch me swim, and then we’ll fuck on a lounge chair and fall asleep out there.”

He stares at me. “You already on something, dude?” I shove him away with a foot to the chest and go back to watching upside-down strangers do lines off my table. One of them eyes me with a look that says he’d rather be doing them off me.

I roll over and accept someone’s silver Visa. Just as I’m about to go to a place where whatever happens next isn’t going to hurt so much, someone bangs on the front door. Everybody jumps and stares at me like I called the cops.

“Calm down.” I don’t know if I’m talking to them or the person outside. My body aches everywhere from swimming all day—I was trying and failing to beat even one of my pre-scandal records—so I limp painfully over and crack the door. I open it an inch further when I see who it is.

That pervert from yesterday crosses his arms and gives me a defiant look. He’s wearing a red polo that’s faded and a little too small. When he hears music, he tries to look over my shoulder.

“Are you here for your boot?” I ask. “It’s still in there; you’re welcome to dive for it.” When I fidget with the hem of my shirt, his eyes drop and I realize I’m still at half-mast in my shorts. His face twitches and he stares down at his ugly black shoes as he speaks.

“I need to talk to you. Did your father tell you anything?”

“The fuck are you doing talking to my father?” I growl, but he presses his lips together and gives me a look that says he won’t tell me anything until I let him in.

I push the door open and jerk my head. His shoulder nudges my chest out of the way as he stalks inside. He freezes, taking in the drugs, the five men staring at him. When he notices the credit card in my hand, he looks like I just slapped him.

“You can’t seriously be surprised. Come on.”

Ian comes over, bristling possessively, and puts an arm around me. “Who is this, babe?”

“I actually have no idea. What was your name again?”

“Ethan,” he grumbles.

“You should leave, dude,” Ian tells him, like it’s his house.

Ethan smells weak. He’s scared of water, scared of me. He talks quietly, has gentle, worried eyes. But when he wanted his card back yesterday, I gave it to him. And tonight, when he fixes his gaze on Ian, the guy lets go of me and backs off. “Whatever. But if he calls the cops, I’m coming after you, Victor.”

Interesting.

He grabs my wrist, towing me down the hall into an empty room. Half the bulbs in the ceiling fixture are out, and dust coats everything, sticking to my feet. I wrench my arm away. “Rule number one. I touch you; you do not touch me. Ever.”

Failing to hide an eye roll—he’s surprisingly sassy for a square—he slaps a piece of paper in my hand.

NDA.

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