“Don’t be a bastard.”
“But I am a bastard.”
Nate sat up and rubbed his bleary eyes. His mind was too slow and his heart too heavy for banter. He turned on the light beside his bed, though he quickly dimmed it to its lowest setting, to keep his eyeballs from searing.
Kurt was dressed in his full Basement regalia, black leather pants hugging every curve of his ass and thighs, a red mesh shirt displaying the tattoos that covered his chest and abdomen. A silver bar pierced his eyebrow, and Nate could tell by the slight lisp that Kurt was wearing the little silver ball in his tongue. His eyes were lined with kohl, and his head was covered in a dark fuzz that suggested he was letting his hair grow back. He looked wild, and sexy, and mouth-wateringly tempting. And yet …
“You’re wearing this getup for me, right?” Nate asked with narrowed eyes. “Not because you’re living in the Basement and have to blend in. Right?”
Kurt’s smile looked almost sheepish, which was a rare expression for him. “I’m not gonna lie to you.”
Nate resisted the urge to point out how many times he already had. “I thought we had a deal. I give you dollars, you don’t go back to Debasement.”
Kurt reached out and brushed a caress over Nate’s cheek. “I love that you think you’re a man of the world and that you’re really so naive under it all.”
Nate felt the color burning in his cheeks, but the affection in Kurt’s voice took a lot of the sting out of his words. “I’m not as naive as you think,” he said, because he couldn’t resist trying to defend himself.
Kurt raised his pierced eyebrow. “And you thought an unemployed Basement-dweller could find a place to live somewhere other than in the Basement? They check ID if you try to rent or buy Employee housing, you know. Even if I showed up in the system as employed, you wanted me to keep my head down. If I rent a legitimate place, then I’m out there for anyone to find.”
Nate felt like an idiot. He’d never in his life had to fend for himself, and it had never occurred to him that a Basement-dweller like Kurt couldn’t rent himself an apartment just because he had dollars.
Kurt stroked his cheek again. “It’s okay, Nate. I lived most of my life in Debasement. I know how to stay safe there.”
Nate swallowed hard. “At least tell me you’re not working.”
Kurt showed no sign of being offended. “I’m not working. That’s what your dollars are for.”
Of course. If those dollars weren’t going into rent, as Nate had originally intended, then they were buying Kurt some modicum of safety and security in Debasement. Allowing him to pay off whatever drug lords or gang leaders demanded as “rent” or “dues” or protection money. Food and shelter might be free in Debasement, but that didn’t mean a Basement-dweller didn’t need cash. There was a reason Kurt had sold himself before Nate met him, and it wasn’t because he enjoyed the work.
Kurt’s lips lifted in a sudden, wicked smile. “’Course, not working means I’m not getting any.” He raised his hand to the V of Nate’s pajama top, fingers brushing over the exposed skin there.
The touch peppered Nate’s skin with goose bumps and awakened an instant ache. One he had no right to be feeling under the dismal circumstances.
“We shouldn’t—” he started to protest, but Kurt silenced him with a finger on his lips while his other hand slipped the first button of his pajamas free.
“Forget that shit for a moment,” Kurt murmured. “You look like you could use some serious stress relief. Let me give it to you. We’ll talk after.”
Nate found he didn’t have the strength of character to resist.
One thing Nate could say about Kurt: he knew how to deliver stress relief.
Nate stretched languorously and wished they could stay in bed like this forever, never inviting the outside world back in. A little voice in the back of his head whispered that it was disloyal of him to be experiencing pleasure when, thanks to him, Nadia’s life had been ruined. He cuddled closer into Kurt’s arms in hopes of drowning that voice out, but as the sweat cooled on his skin and real life insisted on intruding, the afterglow dimmed.
“Do you know about the engagement?” he asked, wondering if it was a coincidence that Kurt had made an appearance tonight, when Nate was reeling from his father’s cruelty.
“Yeah.” Kurt gave him one more rib-crushing squeeze, then put a little distance between them on the bed and propped his head on his hand. “Dante overheard her folks fighting about it.”
Nate frowned in puzzlement. Dante and Kurt obviously knew each other from their mutual resistance activities, but Nate was a little surprised that Dante found the engagement news so vital that he had to report it to Kurt on the very day he overheard the argument about it.
Grinning, Kurt reached out and smoothed away the frown line between Nate’s eyebrows. “No, he didn’t rush out to tell me the moment he heard the news.” The grin faded. “He went to visit Nadia earlier tonight.”
“What?” Nate yelped, sitting up in a hurry.
Kurt sat up more slowly. “He meets her at the fence line every night. Not anything official—I didn’t know about it until he called me earlier. Says it’s for moral support.”
Kurt was looking into Nate’s eyes searchingly. Nate tried not to show the irrational anger that spiked through his heart at the thought of Dante having secret nocturnal meetings with Nadia.
“You have a problem with that?” Kurt asked, that pierced eyebrow of his arching higher than ever.
“No!” Nate said, a little too sharply to be convincing. He blew out a deep breath. “I’m being stupid,” he admitted. “I don’t like Dante, and I don’t like the idea of Nadia leaning on him.” It should have been Nate she leaned on, Nate who was there when she needed him. For most of his life, they had been each other’s only true friends, their friendship untainted by jealousy or politics or ambition. He hated that Dante had been out to see her, and he had not.
“You’re jealous.”
“No, I’m not.” Nate mentally rolled his eyes at himself for the childish—and even less convincing—response.
“Yes, you are,” Kurt said with a laugh, ruffling Nate’s hair affectionately. Nate batted his hand away, not in the mood for playful gestures. Though at least the playful gesture told him his irrational jealousy wasn’t hurting Kurt’s feelings.
“Like I said, it’s stupid. I don’t want her like that.”
“But you don’t want anyone else to want her ‘like that,’ either.”
The twinkle in Kurt’s eyes said the teasing was still good-natured, but Nate was uncomfortably aware that Kurt didn’t exactly see in him a pinnacle of maturity. Kurt could have been describing a child throwing a tantrum because some other kid was playing with his discarded toy.
“Maybe there’s a part of me that doesn’t,” he admitted reluctantly. “But I don’t want Nadia to be facing this alone.” Nate wondered if there was some way he could tag along with Dante to one of these secret meetings of his, but quickly dismissed the idea. First of all, they’d probably kill each other before getting to the retreat. Second of all, Nate would probably end up feeling like a third wheel, and a jealous one at that. And third, he had to be extra careful with his movements, sure his father had eyes watching him all the time. If he snuck off to visit Nadia in the dead of night, the Chairman would retaliate by making sure Nadia was moved out of his reach.
“Well, looks like you don’t have to worry about her facing it alone after all.”
“You can stop teasing me anytime now.”
“Why would I want to do that?”