Page 33 of Broken Highway (Cult Boys #1)

NOAH

A flurry of hands tear at the worn blinds.

My hands.

Seven’s hands.

Wrestling for control, but I let him win. His fingers tangle over mine, holding my hand in place.

Hair hangs over my face, droplets of sweat landing with a whisper on the folded pillow breath me.

Sweat rolls down the length of my bare back, too.

Can feel it pooling between on ass crack as Seven pounds away.

The worn mattress moans and creaks to the tune of his thrusts, growing harder and deeper by the second.

He shifts a hand to my chest, right at the base of my throat.

Holds me in place, completely in control.

I once feared losing control, terrified to the point of making the worst possible decision at any given time just to avoid losing it. Now, I hand him the keys anytime he wants to take a drive. Literally. Figuratively.

“Who’s the bottom now, Daddy?”

It still kills me a little inside every time he calls me that, but I pick my battles these days. “I’ve had a rougher ride on a gravel road.”

He takes my taunt as bait. Pushes my head down into the pillow, and I’m left staring at the oscillating fan atop the dresser beside the bed. Every thrust of his cock against my prostate sends a giggle-moan scrambling from my throat.

“Fuck,” he groans, pushing my head deeper into the pillow.

He rides the waves of release with uneven thrusts, spilling his load inside. When he’s finished, he can’t pull out fast enough. I roll onto my back, my leaking cock slapping against my belly button.

His load seeps from my ass, or maybe it’s the endless sweat.

Maybe it’s both. He hooks an arm under each of my knees as he crawls between my legs.

Looks so fucking sexy as he kisses his way up the length of my cock and then back down the side.

He takes a slight detour, stretches out his tongue, and laps up the precum slicked over my belly.

My hands roam through his hair and settle on the back of his head. I give him a little hint by tugging him forward gently. He grabs my cock in one hand, puckers his lips, and breathes onto the tip. It’s enough to send my toes curling into the sheets. My knees jump when he swallows me whole.

I tighten my grip on him, take control, and fuck his mouth.

“Fuck, punk!” I throw my head back, gasping for air as I come down the back of his throat.

He swallows every bit, his mouth like a hoover as he cleans my cock from balls to head.

When he’s had his fill, he climbs up my body, his soft, drained cock rubbing against the hardness of mine.

Gazes down at me with those eyes that first set me ablaze on that broken highway.

Sweeps a hand through my hair, parting it to the side.

Smiles like only he can smile, with cum-slicked lips hitching at the corner.

I’m a fucking feral animal. A lot has changed lately, but the one thing that remains the same is a sex drive that refuses to run out of gas. Still, it’s these quiet moments that steal my breath more than the beautiful scenery on endless highways.

The moments that circle like clockwork, always at just about the same time. Right after I’ve come. No longer am I ready to run. In the quietness that follows release, I’m reminded over and over again of what it’s like to stay.

And every kiss shatters my world like orgasms with strangers used to.

Seven kisses me gently. Lips on lips, the salty taste of my own jizz overwhelming the taste of him.

I round my hands over his ass, squeezing a mound in each hand, pulling him deeper into my kiss. It’s a different kind of hunger, like eating the same food every damn night and never growing tired of it. A hunger for comfort, for forever.

He pulls away, breathless. Braces a hand on either side of my head and stares at me because he’s always watching, but there’s no such thing as watching for too long. I watch him too, all the fucking time. When he’s making breakfast, when he’s writing his memoir, when he’s sleeping.

He collapses, his head falling sideways on my chest. With each sharp inhale, the heaving of his chest settles. His head rises and falls to the rhythm of my breathing. Quiet. So damn quiet. Nothing but the oscillating of the fan.

A whoosh shatters any semblance of peace.

“Fuck.” I push Seven to the side and jump to my feet. “Is it really four o’clock already?”

Over the past few years, we’ve gotten used to getting decent in a hurry.

I throw on a pair of jeans and pull a blue plaid shirt—what else would I wear—over my bare chest. Seven scrambles into a pair of shorts and a tee.

Then it’s chaos as we both try to wash our nasty hands in the same stained sink.

Seven rips open the fiberboard door and jogs down the narrow hall as I follow behind.

It’s as if we’re racing through the Titanic as it sinks, except this ship is a trailer and only about eighty feet long.

He’s first out the door, running down the steps, and reaches the yellow school bus just as the doors part open.

Little Silas hops from the last step and launches himself into Seven’s arms.

I lean against the doorframe and chuckle to myself. To this day, Seven swears up and down he hates children. But every time that kid gets off the bus, Seven’s face lights up like a kid on Christmas morning. I suppose there’s a difference between hating other children and hating your child.

That’s what Little Silas is.

He is ours.

Our own found family.

Little Silas slings his red and blue backpack onto the ground and searches through it. He pulls out a hand-drawn picture

Seven gestures for me to come over. “Show Pops what you got.”

I uncross my arms and jog down the wobbly wooden steps that I swear I’m going to fix someday. Make my way to my two favorite boys and kneel in the yard.

Little Silas grins ear to ear as he proudly displays his art—two stick figures sitting in what I think is the front seat of a car, the sun rising overhead. “Miss Lewis had us draw our heroes.”

Flattering. “Is that your dad and I?”

He nods and runs into my embrace, wrapping his tiny arms around my neck as he hugs me.

Around here, we hug all the time. Neither Seven nor I grew up with open displays of affection.

The boy’s body is so diminutive compared to mine, so fragile.

I always fear I might hug him too hard, but then I remember, there’s more than one way to break a boy.

The way I was broken, beat-down by a world that demanded me to be someone I wasn’t.

When I let go, Seven takes the boy inside while I take a longing glance around the yard. It’s small and the views aren’t spectacular. Our yard ends where the next trailer sits.

There are two vehicles in the driveway. An old red Ford Ranger parked behind a car that doesn’t run.

It’ll roar to life someday, but for now, it’s a lawn ornament fit for a trailer park.

An old Challenger that’s seventy percent rust and thirty percent beauty.

Same year as my father’s dearly departed classic, but she needs a lot of work before she’s ready to drive to the grocery store, let alone a cross-country road trip.

Someday, maybe when Little Silas is older, Seven and I are going to give this road trip thing another try. The only ghost that’ll chase us is the thought of Little Silas throwing an underaged party when we’re gone.

He’s a good boy, though. Charismatic like his father, without the penchant for human suffering.

Sometimes, I wonder how much he remembers about his life at the compound.

How much he remembers about that night. Every now and then, he talks about his mother in hushed whispers.

Seven stresses over the thought of Little Silas becoming like his father, and I’m left to remind him that people aren’t born evil.

I don’t think so, anyway, but I’m not a psychologist.

In the future, when he’s old enough to understand, we’ll tell him the whole truth. Maybe scribble a few parts out. That day probably won’t be until Seven and I are gray and wrinkled, but someday he’ll know.

Fight or flight. Ask anyone on the outside and they’ll swear up and down I’ve always been a fighter. If they peered any closer, they’d know I was born a runner. These days, the only place I’m running is straight home after a long day of work.

I make my way back inside to find Little Silas at the small round dining table parked against the window in the kitchen.

He colors pictures of dinosaurs while Seven sits in front of a laptop, tapping away.

I grab a package of fresh hamburger from the fridge, toss it into a pan, and begin browning it for the kid’s favorite meal. Spaghetti and hamburger bits. Gag me.

Some days, Seven writes like a madman. The words come like we do—fast and hard. Other times, his fingers linger on the keys a little too long. I think he doubts himself sometimes, or maybe he gets lost in the memories of the trauma we experienced out there on that broken highway.

In the immediate aftermath of the violent path of destruction left behind us, I felt extreme remorse for getting away scot-free.

No evidence exists that I pushed Kevin down the stairs, though anyone with eyes can see the truth.

As for all the bodies littered along the way, chalk it up to self-defense and the testimony of a few survivors.

A hundred and seventy bodies were recovered from the compound. They call it The Silent Massacre, and it’s one of the biggest mass-suicides in history. I was dragged into that place contemplating my own existence and walked out with a will to never think about dying again.

What few survivors there were couldn’t recall seeing Silas take a swig.

One even swears she saw him coyly spit it out.

She claims watching him do it gave her the conviction to do the same.

The shadow of Silas hangs over our little family—a ghost who’s always there in the periphery of our vision. Dead, but still his shadow hangs.