Unhinged by Onley James

Noah sucked in a sharp breath as Adam breached him, the thick head of his cock working past the first tight ring of muscle with a slow steady push that robbed him of thought. He squeezed his eyes shut, wincing at the flash of pain, waiting for his body to relax.

He tried to focus on anything but the burn. The feel of the wood floor beneath his feet, Adam’s hands squeezing his ass, the sound of his strained breaths as he forced himself to wait for Noah’s body to adjust.

When he opened his eyes again, Adam was staring at him with such intensity it robbed him of breath. Nobody had ever looked at Noah the way Adam did. It was too much. Noah kissed him, had to do something to distract himself before he did something stupid like blurt out, “I love you,” to a stranger.

Adam said Noah was his and looked at him like he meant it, like it was something he couldn’t fight, like he needed Noah to know that he wasn’t going to let him go. Ever. That should have scared him, but it didn’t. It just…overwhelmed him, because if Adam changed his mind, it might fucking kill Noah. He had nobody. Nobody but Adam.

It made no fucking sense. They didn’t even know each other, but he wanted to be Adam’s, wanted his heat, his passion, hell, even his violence. But, buried deep down, Noah wanted Adam because he knew he would burn the whole fucking world down for him and never feel a shred of remorse.

His cock leaked between them at that thought. Adam’s protection was a heady thing. Knowing that it was Noah he wanted to protect made his chest ache in the best kind of way. He buried his face against his throat, eyes rolling at the pleasure shivering over his whole body as Adam drove into him. “Fuck me. Hard,” he begged.

Adam growled, hooking his arms under Noah’s legs and standing, forcing him even deeper. Noah hadn’t thought it was possible to be this full. When his back hit the wall, he hissed at the rough brick biting into his bare skin, but then he didn’t think about anything else. He couldn’t. Adam was giving Noah just what he asked for, pounding into him relentlessly, driving all thoughts away and leaving behind only feeling.

“Oh, fuck. Yes, that’s it,” he heard himself say. He wrapped his fist around his cock, jerking himself in time with Adam’s thrusts, realizing after just one stroke that it wasn’t going to take long to get him there.

“I’m going to come,” Adam snarled as he watched Noah.

“Oh, fuck. Do it,” Noah rambled. “Please. I’m so fucking close. I want to feel it. I want to feel you come inside me.”

“Beg for it,” Adam demanded. “I need to hear you.”

Noah let his head fall back, too close to orgasm to worry about being embarrassed. “Come for me. I need it. I need you. Please, Adam. Please. Please.”

Adam’s hips stuttered and ground against Noah, and he dropped his forehead to Noah’s as he throbbed deep inside him. That was all it took. Noah spilled his release between them, working himself until he was shivering from the overstimulation.

“Put your legs around me.” Adam shifted his grip, folding Noah into his arms. He could only hang on as he walked them back to the bed, lowering Noah onto the mattress and following him down, hovering over him to ask, “You okay?”

Noah nodded. “Yeah. I think so. Are you?”

Adam grinned, then dropped a kiss on Noah’s nose, his cheeks, his eyelids. Each kiss was so fucking gentle it made him ache. “Yeah, I kind of want to stay inside you forever.”

“I’m okay with that,” Noah assured him. “But I think we might eventually start to get hungry.

Adam sighed, slipping free of him, leaving Noah feeling empty and disconnected until Adam kissed him once more.

“Did you mean it?” Noah asked, after a minute or two.

“Wanting to stay inside you forever? Definitely. Forever and ever and ever,” Adam said.

“No. When you said I was yours. Did you mean it, or is this, like, a…thing you do.”

Adam propped his chin on his hand to look down at Noah, brows knitted together. “A thing I do?”

“Yeah, it’s hot. Don’t get me wrong. But if you don’t mean it…if this is just your game, tell me now. I’m fine with it,” he lied. “Whatever this is. Letting it play out until you’re sick of me—”

“Stop,” Adam said, covering Noah’s mouth with his palm. “This isn’t a game. I don’t play games. If I didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t say it. Honestly, if I said half the things I think when I look at you, you’d run screaming into the night.”

Noah’s pulse hammered in his throat. He pulled Adam’s hand from his lips. “Like what?”

Adam searched his face like he was truly uncertain whether what he said next would send Noah running. “Like I want to stitch my body to yours. Like I want to live inside your skin. Like I would handcuff you to the radiator if you tried to leave me.”

Noah smiled despite himself. “You don’t have a radiator.”

“I don’t want to be like this.”

Noah frowned. “Like what?”

“This,” he said, sounding frustrated. “Crazy. Possessive. I know my brain doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to, but it never really mattered before because I knew why I was put on this planet. My dad said the world needs people like me to maintain order. Balance. But I never thought I’d meet somebody and feel the way I feel when I’m with you.”

“I like that you’re possessive.”

Adam scoffed. “You won’t be saying that when you’re chained to the bed.”

Noah lifted a hand to cup Adam’s face. “I like the idea of being chained to your bed.”

Creases formed on Adam’s brow, his expression almost pained. “I won’t let you go.”

“I’m not trying to leave,” Noah said. “But you don’t get to leave either. You don’t get to walk away when you’re done with me.”

“I will never be done with you,” Adam promised.

Noah shook his head. “You can’t promise that. We’re strangers. You know nothing about me.”

“I know you’re mine. I know it. Deep down, in that part of my brain that doesn’t care what is right or how society dictates how people choose a mate. I chose you. I want you. Just you. My brain has picked you, and now, I can’t undo it. You’re trapped. With me. For life.”

Noah’s heart hammered in his chest. “Nobody has ever picked me. Most people don’t even notice me—”

“Bullshit,” Adam said, shaking his head.

Noah gave a half smile. “It’s partially my own fault. I never wanted to be noticed. In foster care, nothing good ever comes from standing out. That’s just the way it is.”

“That’s my fault.”

It wasn’t a question, just a blanket statement of guilt, like he knew he should feel bad, even though he wasn’t capable.

Noah sighed. “I’d already been through the worst things in my life. I was just lucky enough not to remember. I don’t know if I’ll stay lucky, though. I’ve been having nightmares, flashes of memories. I keep them out of my head with pills and booze, but, eventually, they’re going to break free. And I don’t know who I’ll be after that happens. So, you should be careful of the promises you make.”

Adam dropped his head, kissing Noah softly. “The thing about being raised in a house full of psychopaths? We’re pretty accepting of other people’s crazy. I think I’ll be alright.”

Noah didn’t know what any of this meant long term. Maybe Adam would tire of him, maybe he wouldn’t. It was all lip service until they both just did the hard work of staying, of making it happen. There were people in arranged marriages who stayed together for years. Who was to say Adam and Noah couldn’t make their relationship work off of kinky sex and a shared understanding that neither of them would ever be mentally sound?

“I’m hungry,” Noah said, needing to break the tension.

“Do you like Greek food? There’s a twenty-four hour place that delivers.”

Noah nodded. “Yeah, that sounds amazing.”

Adam jumped up, padding naked down the stairs, probably to find his phone. Noah rolled over and buried his face in Adam’s pillow, inhaling deeply. This was definitely an upgrade from the trailer.

* * *

They ate sitting cross-legged on Adam’s bed, both of them sharing bits of food with the other. There was plenty to choose from as Adam had ordered what looked like half the menu to the house. After the dishes were cleared away and they were both stuffed, they lay in bed, in the dark, Noah’s head on Adam’s thigh as he combed fingers through his hair.

"Can I ask you something?”

Noah startled as Adam’s words broke the silence. Between his full belly and recent orgasm, he was practically in a food coma, lingering somewhere between sleeping and awake. He blinked his eyes open, struggling to adjust to the darkness. It was a moonless night and not even the glow from the kitchen downstairs could penetrate the shadows of the loft.

“Sure,” he mumbled, snagging Adam’s free hand and playing with his fingers.

“How’d you find me?”

Noah’s heart rate shot up. It was only a matter of time before Adam’s curiosity got the best of him, but still, Noah hesitated to say it out loud, though he had no reason to hide his detective skills. “Does it matter?”

“Yeah, of course, it does. We’re so careful at covering our tracks. It would be good to know if we’re missing something,” Adam reasoned.

Noah sighed. “Yeah, but you have to remember, I had something others didn’t… I saw you.”

There was a long silence. “What?”

“I saw you running away. Before I found my dad. I didn’t get a good look. You left the front door wide open. I went to close it and you were taking off down the stairs. You turned around and glanced back over your shoulder for just a second.”

“There’s no way you could have found me off a split-second glance over my shoulder. You were ten.” Adam sounded breathless but skeptical.

Noah laughed softly. “The cops didn’t think so either. They grilled me for hours, trying to get information out of me. They were frustrated by my limited details. When I told them you were a kid, they didn’t believe me. They said no kid would leave a crime scene that clean.” When Adam didn’t interrupt, Noah shook his head. “You’re gloating over that, aren’t you?”

“A little. Yeah. It’s nice to know my attention to detail is appreciated. My brothers seem to think I’m reckless.” There was a story there, but Noah wasn’t sure he wanted to probe further just yet. “So, how did you go from barely being able to describe me to hunting me down in a warehouse?”

“I didn’t, at first. For eight years, I just focused on survival. Foster care sucked. I blamed you. Fixated on who you were, why you did it. Figured maybe you were some street kid or a former student of my dad’s. Thought maybe you were a junkie. When I aged out of the system, I went to the cops to ask about my father’s case. By then, it was a cold case. It took forever to even get somebody to return my calls.”

Noah didn’t know why talking about this made his stomach dip, but when Adam laced their fingers together, he felt like crying.

“Keep going,” Adam said.

Noah sighed. “They had CCTV footage that they’d pulled from the bank and a corner store. I begged the detective to let me watch it. She told me it was useless because there were no faces, just people’s backs and side profiles. She eventually caved. I guess the idea of closing a decade old case won out. The bank footage was useless, but then, I saw you. On the footage from the corner store. You’d changed your clothes and you’d even obscured your face from the camera, but I just knew it was you. Something about the way you walked just clicked in my head.”

“Even if you saw the back of my head, I still can’t figure out how you put it all together.”

“Your jacket.”

“My jacket?”

“Yeah. Do you remember it? You weren’t wearing it when you were in my house so you must have changed as soon as you left.”

“Yeah, I shoved my black hoodie in my backpack, which was stashed in the alley, and threw on a jacket I’d stolen from a photo shoot. But there were hundreds of those jackets sold.”

“I know. I went directly to the designer’s boutique and asked. The girl behind the counter looked at me like I was crazy when I asked about credit card receipts from over ten years ago. But when I refused to leave, she called over the manager who’d worked there for twenty years. He essentially told me the same thing, but when I showed him the jacket, he took one look and told me it was a knockoff.”

“No, it fucking wasn’t.”

Noah snickered at Adam’s tone. “That’s what you’re worried about? That somebody thinks you’re rocking fake couture?”

“I’m just saying, that manager is a fucking idiot,” Adam said, tone sulky.

“Anyway,” Noah said. “When I asked the manager why he thought it was a knockoff, he pointed out the red outline on the back of the jacket. He said the real ones didn’t have that red lettering, that they’d shelved it after the Paris show because of some kind of dispute between the label and the designer.”

“Well, shit.”

“Yeah. I knew it was a long shot. But it was all I had. I tracked down photos of the Paris show—which took months, by the way—and as soon as I saw your picture, I knew. It was you. You killed my dad. But I also knew I couldn’t go to the police. You were Adam Mulvaney. Son of billionaire Thomas Mulvaney. I couldn’t accuse you of being a murderer. They’d think I was insane. Shit, I thought I was insane. That’s when I started following you.”

Adam squeezed his hand. “How long did you follow me for?”

“Six months or so. Long enough to start to see the massive discrepancies between where you went and where your social media said you were. That’s a neat trick. Calliope?”

“Yeah, she’s great at manufacturing alibis.”

“I knew you were the man who killed my father before I started following you. I realized you were a serial killer after about four weeks. I didn’t think it was a family affair at that point, but I did think your father was covering for you.”

“You’re kind of amazing,” Adam said.

“No. Just determined.”

“There are a lot of cops determined to put to rest about a hundred homicide cases. But you are the one who somehow put it all together. Off a jacket. But…maybe don’t tell my dad that unless he asks.”

“Yeah, deal,” Noah said, jaw cracking around a yawn. “Can we go to sleep now?”

“Only if you come up here.”

Noah wiggled himself up beside Adam. “Better?”

“Uh-uh, roll over.”

Noah rolled his eyes but did as he was told. “You could have just said you wanted to be big spoon,” he teased.

Adam kissed just behind Noah’s ear, voice low. “In the morning, I’m going to fuck you awake. This just makes it easier.”

Noah’s cock hardened at Adam’s statement. “I’m totally on board with that…but could we make it afternoon?”

“We’ll see.”