Unhinged by Onley James

He was watching him again. It was an almost nightly occurrence now. At first, Noah thought he was going crazy, imagining phantoms in the shadows. But no, it was him. Adam Mulvaney. The man who killed his father. His father…the child predator. Noah’s stomach lurched at the thought, the images from that video trying to claw their way back into his brain. But he wouldn’t let them in and had found a million creative ways to keep them out.

Noah could feel his eyes on him even now. Despite the throbbing bass of the dance music, the dizzying display of neon beams shooting across darkened walls, and the sea of bodies moving in one cohesive wave, Noah could feel Adam’s eyes on him. He had no idea what Adam wanted.

At first, he thought maybe he was coming for his revenge or maybe just taking out a witness, but Noah had given him a million chances to end his misery, and the bastard never took them. Instead, he just watched him. Maybe he got some kind of sick thrill seeing Noah suffer. The joke was on him, though, because Noah was too high to feel anything but good.

He fell out the side door of the club into the brisk night air. He didn’t bundle up. The synthetic happiness coursing through him made him hot all over. The alley smelled like rotting garbage and piss, but Noah twirled along the alley like a ballet dancer, stumbling when he heard the alley door open and slam shut behind him. He didn’t look, didn’t acknowledge his stalker in any way. Just stumbled out of the alley and into the parking lot.

It was early enough that others still lingered on corners, in parking lots, outside the bodega. But Noah had never felt so alone. He was always alone, even when people were packed around him. No matter what he tried, nothing filled the hollowness inside him. Not drugs, not alcohol, not meaningless hookups. His lip curled at that last one.

He’d left his friend, Bailey, and her girlfriend at the bar to follow a random stranger into the bathrooms, but the guy was too wasted to get it up. Noah had left him passed out in the stall.

He couldn’t help the laugh that escaped, the sound startling in the still of the night. He was destined to be alone. He wished Adam would just do it already. Shoot him in the head, slit his throat, shove him in front of a moving car. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than living with what he’d seen.

Maybe he needed to help him along. Maybe Adam didn’t want to take him out with a crowd around. The thought of death was a balm that soothed Noah’s frayed psyche. It didn’t make him sad or scared; it just gave him a sense of peace, a peace he’d never experienced before. He giggled once more, blinking back tears. He retraced his steps, hopscotching over puddles and cracks in the sidewalk. Two blocks over. Three blocks down. The screech of protesting metal as he pushed open the heavy door.

Did he follow? Was he curious? Noah had come to the building a lot after their first encounter, but he never found anything. Whatever Adam had hidden there that kept him coming back again and again had been moved after that night. Not that Noah blamed him. Just because he hadn’t killed Adam didn’t mean he wouldn’t turn him in to the cops. But he hadn’t. After the video—after he’d seen what his father had done—it all came back to him in a rush. All of it. A shiver ran through him as he tried to drive the thoughts away. What would he do when the drugs stopped working?

Once inside the abandoned building, he sat on the metal steps that led to the second floor, waiting. Now that he was still, the drugs finally took hold, doing their job. Perspiration gathered at his hairline and beads of sweat slid down his back. Time ticked by, fast then slow, then fast again, like he was in a spaceship, warping through space and time.

He tilted his head back until he was gazing up at the metal rafters. There was a hole in the ceiling framing the night sky above, a singular beam of moonlight spearing through the darkness. How had Noah not noticed it before? He smiled as the stars and moon blurred and sharpened, then danced, chasing each other in and out of the opening on the roof to wind around the supports. He held up his hand and the stars poured through his fingers like sparks, the embers popping against his skin like tiny rubber bands.

“Noah?”

He inhaled sharply at his name on Adam’s lips. He jerked upright into a sitting position, hanging onto the rusted metal banister so he didn’t tumble forward. Adam glowed. His skin shimmered like he was a vampire in a bad teen movie, like his skin was made of light. His aura throbbed a deep red that made Noah want to touch it. He wished Adam wasn’t so beautiful. It would have been better that way.

But he was. Adam was so pretty. His hair was so black it appeared blue in the moonlight, and his eyes were the palest blue. Maybe he was a vampire. No human should look that good. He narrowed his gaze as his eyes fell to the deep vee of his t-shirt. The top of a moth or butterfly wings peeked out from the center of his chest, and his neck was adorned with a large wraparound snake tattoo and a necklace with a bullet hanging from it.

“Are you real?” Noah heard himself ask, then snorted at the wonder in his own voice. What the hell had Bailey given him anyway? It was clearly the good shit.

“Are you high?”

Noah lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Are you a cop?” His heart caught as Adam grinned, revealing perfect teeth. “Probably veneers,” he muttered.

“What?”

Noah could have said nothing, but, instead, he said, “Your teeth. They probably aren’t even yours.”

Noah knew he wasn’t making any sense but he was unable to stop himself from saying whatever popped into his head. He wanted to touch him, to pet him, to comb his fingers through his hair and taste his skin that still glittered like spun sugar. Did he taste sweet?

“They’re mine,” Adam assured him. “But if it makes you feel any better, my dad paid a lot of money for them. They were pretty jenky when I was little. My birth mom wasn’t real big on dentists. Or hygiene. Or kids for that matter.”

Noah processed that bit of information. Adam had a birth mom. Had Noah known that? Maybe. He knew Adam had been adopted. All of Mulvaney’s children had been. He was the Gen X Daddy Warbucks.

Noah fell back onto his forearms. “Are you here to kill me?”

Adam moved closer, head cocked like a German Shepherd. “No.”

Disappointment settled inside Noah. “Are you following me?”

Another step. “Yes.”

“Why?”

That seemed to stop him in his tracks. “I…don’t know.”

Noah sighed. “You should kill me. I know too much.”

“You probably shouldn’t say that to somebody you suspect is a murderer.”

“If I was going to tell anybody I would have by now,” Noah admitted. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It’s not. I’m…not.”

“That’s good,” Noah managed before his eyes unfocused and his head lolled on his shoulders.

Adam’s palms suddenly cupped his face. “Hey. What are you on?”

Noah shrugged, his lids going to half-mast. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Adam echoed, his thumbs pulling at the skin just beneath Noah’s eyes, like he’d tattooed the answers under the skin there.

“I told Bailey to surprise me. I have to admit, I’m surprised,” Noah confided, his hand reaching out to cup Adam’s face the way he was cupping his. “What are we doing?”

Adam snorted. “I’m trying to make sure you don’t die of a drug overdose. What are you doing?”

Noah splayed his fingers over Adam’s knife-sharp cheekbones. “You’re really pretty. Has anybody ever told you that?” Noah asked, examining him for even a single flaw but finding none.

Adam snorted. “Yes.”

“Oh,” Noah said, letting his hands fall. He hated how defeated he sounded.

Adam didn’t drop his arms, though, just continued to cup Noah’s face in his large hands.

“You’re really…big,” Noah said, letting his gaze roam from Adam’s booted feet to the top of his head. Well, as much as he could while Adam held his face hostage.

Adam tilted his head once more. “No, I’m average in size. You’re just kind of small.”

Noah scoffed. “Not where it counts.”

That wasn’t really the truth either. He was pretty proportionate in every way. He didn’t know why he said it, but Adam grinned and Noah’s heart tripped in his chest. What was wrong with him?

Noah couldn’t help but notice Adam’s pointy incisors. He pressed a finger to the sharpened point. “Are you secretly a Cullen? You have vampire teeth. Is that why you’re so pretty?”

The grin slipped from Adam’s lips, and he closed his mouth, trapping Noah’s finger between his jaws briefly, just enough for Noah to feel the pointed tip press into him. Not hard enough to break the skin but hard enough to leave an indentation. Still, Noah’s dick took notice.

When Adam released his finger, Noah ran his thumb over the mark. Adam had marked him. Like an animal. Adam was an animal. A predator. A killer. A killer who was still holding his face. “What are you doing?” he asked again.

“You have stars on your cheeks,” Adam mused, a strange look in his eyes, one that made Noah’s half-hard cock thicken behind his zipper.

“Bailey’s girlfriend turned my freckles into stars,” he said, hand raising once more against his will, this time to drag a thumb along Adam’s bottom lip, gasping when he felt Adam’s tongue against the pad of his finger. “Your lips are so red,” he said, voice full of wonder. “Are you wearing lipstick?”

Adam shook his head. “No.”

“Why are you following me?” Noah asked again.

“Because I can’t stop thinking about you,” Adam said, sounding confused, like he hadn’t meant to say it.

Noah’s eyes widened at the words. “Am I… Are you a hallucination?”

Adam shook his head, leaning into Noah’s space. “I’m real.”

Noah’s head tilted closer, until he could see the pale blue pools of Adam’s eyes in the barely-there moonlight. “Nothing about this feels real.”

Adam’s fingers traced the stars on Noah’s cheekbones. “Does that feel real?”

Noah’s tongue darted out to lick over his bottom lip. “Yes. Your hands are so warm.”

“I run hot. Always have,” Adam said, kneeling on the riser just below the one where Noah sat, forcing his legs wider.

“Are you going to hurt me?” Noah asked, voice almost hopeful.

Adam scanned his face for a long moment. “Probably, yeah. But you might like it.”

Noah surged forward, crashing their mouths together. For a second, Adam’s lips were unyielding, but then they softened, and the hand on Noah’s cheek slid to his chin, tugging it down so he could slide his tongue inside.

Noah didn’t know what he’d been thinking but he wasn’t sorry. None of this seemed real, not the metal risers digging into his back or Adam’s thighs parting his or the heat of his body trapping Noah in place against the staircase.

Adam controlled the kiss, tilting Noah’s head however he wanted, lazily exploring his mouth like he had all the time in the world, like he had a right to take what he wanted. Maybe that should have made Noah mad, but it just turned him on. He finally let himself bury his hands in Adam’s silky tresses, whimpering when Adam shifted and their hips met. Adam was just as hard as Noah, maybe harder. Definitely bigger.

Noah didn’t think anybody had ever kissed him like this before. Kissing—when there even was kissing—was always just a precursor to the main event, it wasn’t ever the goal. The more they kissed, the more Noah thought this was just a vivid fever dream. There was no way he was kissing the man who killed his father in a dirty, deserted warehouse. He was probably passed out in that disgusting club bathroom.

“You smell good,” Adam growled against his lips.

“That can’t possibly be true. I smell like sweat.”

“Yeah, but beneath that…you smell different. Something that’s just you.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Noah whispered before kissing him again.

Noah startled as his body vibrated. In his haze, he thought he’d been tazed. Then he realized it was Adam’s phone buzzing in his pocket. He ignored it, his hands threading in Noah’s hair, holding him in place so he could bite at his lips, his chin, his earlobe.

Once more, the phone began to vibrate. Adam dropped his forehead to Noah’s, breathing hard, before sitting up and retrieving his phone. “Yeah?” Noah couldn’t hear what the voice on the other end was saying, but they seemed just as irritated as Adam sounded. “Busy. Yeah, busy. None of your business?” Adam snorted. “I’ll be there. I said I’ll be there, Atticus. Damn.”

Atticus Mulvaney. Adam’s brother. A doctor. Both MD and PhD. Left practicing medicine to research rare diseases. Another golden child.

When Adam hung up, he examined Noah’s face. “Give me your cell phone.”

Noah frowned. “What?”

“Your cell phone. Give it to me.”

Noah fumbled in his pocket until he pulled out the ugly flip phone. Adam frowned at it like he’d never seen one before. “What? It’s all I can afford.”

Adam didn’t say anything after that, just punched something into the keypad. When Adam’s phone rang, he disconnected the call and saved it, then handed the phone back. “I have to go. I’m calling you an Uber. Text me when you get home.”

“What—”

“Don’t argue with me. Just do it.” Noah opened his mouth to tell him to fuck off but then snapped it shut. Adam pushed off from the bottom riser and walked three steps before turning back around and coming at Noah with enough momentum it triggered an instinct to run. Before he could get his addled brain to comply, Adam’s lips were on his again, kissing him in a way that had his toes curling in his sneakers.

Then he was gone and Noah was alone, wondering if he really had just hallucinated all of that. What the fuck was happening?