Linc released him and Wyatt pulled in a few ragged breaths before taking Linc into his mouth once more. He forced Wyatt to take it slow, holding him steady and fucking into his mouth with short, shallow thrusts. Wyatt’s greedy little sucking noises had Linc’s balls pulling tight against his body.
He could see Wyatt’s hard-on tenting those ridiculously tight pants, but Wyatt didn’t try to touch himself. Linc was his sole focus. As soon as Linc released him, Wyatt sucked him back down, his head bobbing as he worked Linc over with a single-minded intensity that had Linc squeezing his eyes shut. “I want you to swallow it all. Every fucking drop.”
Wyatt took Linc down his throat, the muscles there convulsing in ways that had Linc’s vision whiting out. He pinned him in place, driving his cock into Wyatt’s mouth again and again before he came hard, spilling himself so deep Wyatt had no choice but to swallow or choke. He took it all, his wide green eyes locking on Linc’s as he pulled off with a pop, licking every drop off his lips before giving him a huge smile.
“Come here.”
Wyatt climbed back up in Linc’s lap and he captured the boy’s mouth in a filthy kiss, wanting to taste himself on his tongue.
“You did good, sweet boy.” He shoved his hand into Wyatt’s pants, taking his cock and working it over at a punishing pace. “Come,” he growled against the boy’s lips.
Wyatt tensed, a surprised cry escaping as he did as Linc commanded, a full-body shudder rolling over him.
They sat there in each other's arms, trying to catch their breath, Wyatt’s forehead on Linc’s shoulder.
After a moment, Wyatt slipped out of Linc’s grasp, flopping onto his back beside him. The intimate bubble they’d existed in for the last few minutes seemed to pop, leaving only awkward silence and something else… something that felt a lot like loss or regret. Time to get back to the real world.
“Is Graciela coming today?” he finally asked.
Wyatt shrugged. “She’s not scheduled to come, but that never stopped her before. She’s here a lot less now that you’re here, and when she is here, it’s to talk to you, not me.”
Link huffed a laugh. “Are you jealous of my time with her?”
“Maybe, yeah,” Wyatt grumbled.
“Well, don’t be. Tomorrow you are a free man and you’ll return to your old life and your old friends and I’ll just be another of your father’s employees.”
Wyatt audibly swallowed, voice tight. “Sure.”
“This can’t happen again,” Linc said more to himself than Wyatt.
Wyatt sat up, throwing a hurt look over his shoulder. “I heard you the first ten times. I’m going to take a shower. Maybe you shouldn’t be here when I get back.”
“Yeah, kid. Whatever you want.”
“What I want. Right.”
Wyatt lay upside down on his bed, his feet resting against the wall, watching the glowing red light of his ankle monitor blink on and off the way he’d done a thousand times over the last one hundred and eighty days. In just six short hours, he’d be free from this gilded prison. The thought should have pleased him, but it caused a pit in his stomach, growing wider with each passing minute. Wyatt hoped it swallowed him whole.
Somewhere in the kitchen, Linc was running the blender making one of his disgusting green smoothies, while Graciela pretended to vacuum for the fourth time that week and music blared from the recessed house speakers. Wyatt was on overload. There was a pressure building inside him, threatening to rip him in half. He had spent so much time trapped in this apartment he wasn’t sure he could cope with the outside world. If coping had been one of his strengths, he wouldn’t have ended up on house arrest in the first place.
He didn’t know how to be a functioning person. He just wasn’t good at it. He’d spent twenty-two years living a life where somebody—his father—made every decision for him, where there was always somebody to do everythingfor him. He had never once had to worry about paying a bill or changing a tire or even doing his own laundry. Once the cops removed his ankle monitor, none of that would change. Graciela would keep doing the chores and his father’s business manager would keep paying his bills and his father would keep telling him what he would do with his life. Just like before. The thought had Wyatt spiraling. Every single day the same. Nothing changing. Wyatt never allowed to be a whole person, never allowed to be himself, whoever that was.
His nails dug half-moons into his palms, pain converting his panic into endorphins, giving him just a few seconds of peace. He needed to stop feeling sorry for himself. People would kill to have his life. Nobody cared about the poor little rich boy and his rich boy problems. Not even the rich boy's parents.
He swung himself into a sitting position, his gaze drawn to his vanity. He hadn’t dabbled with his makeup in days, not since Charlie’s callback. He glanced at the door. It wasn’t like Linc would barge in. He’d been doing his best to pretend Wyatt didn’t exist since he’d taken Wyatt at his word and left while he was in the shower yesterday. The deputy wouldn’t be there for hours to take the monitor off. There was no reason he couldn’t play for a while.
Fuck it.
He sat in the chair, opening drawers and extracting palettes of richly hued powders and creams and setting them out. Warmth and anticipation rushed over him, soothing his frazzled nerves. Time disappeared when he had the brushes in his hand. Makeup took precision and skill and artistry. There was depth and dimension, blending shades to camouflage any perceived imperfections and highlight desirable assets. When he was doing makeup—his or somebody else’s—his mind just quieted, and the rest of the world fell away.
He could do a full face in an hour or less, but he wasn’t in a hurry. He started with a primer, ensuring his foundation would glide on like silk. He built from there, layering and contouring until he was somebody else, somebody confident and capable. Somebody who handled their shit, who wasn’t afraid to be himself. His smoky purple eyeshadow made his pale green irises look almost supernatural, and he cat-eyed his liner until it was sharp enough to slit a man’s throat.
Makeup was a mask to hide behind, but it also made him feel like a superhero in disguise. He’d managed a lot of anonymous hookups in darkened clubs and nobody had ever figured out who he was behind all the paint. Or maybe they just hadn’t cared. He finished his look with a matte mauve lipstick Charlie had gotten him for his birthday, then realized there was nothing more he could do other than wipe it off and start over, but that thought depressed him even more.
He wished he could take pictures, could show off his skills on Instagram like other artists, could create tutorials on YouTube and help people understand that anybody could wear makeup, anybody could be beautiful, more confident, feel better about themselves. That’s what he wanted… that’s all he’d ever wanted from the time he’d sat at his mother’s vanity and tried on her red lip gloss. But no matter what Linc said, it didn’t matter what Wyatt wanted. He raised his phone to take a selfie to send to Charlie, the flash going off just as the door opened behind him.
“I’ve got a surprise for yo—What the fuck?”
