Psycho by Onley James

Lucas felt like a child. He was thirty-three years old, sitting on a couch, while a kid barely old enough to buy beer babysat him. Lucas wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he thought of August’s family, but it wasn’t his supermodel brother or his freckle-faced, cherubic boyfriend.

His anxiety spiked when he overheard Adam’s side of his and August’s conversation, especially when Adam grabbed his keys and smacked a kiss on Noah’s forehead, promising to come get him as soon as they were finished cleaning up ‘the mess.’ What mess? Was August okay? Adam hadn’t seemed concerned, more annoyed and slightly amused.

Lucas hadn’t asked. Adam wasn’t much of a talker anyway. Noah, on the other hand, seemed like he’d been waiting for an opportunity to get Lucas alone.

As soon as the door closed, he turned towards him, pulling his knee up on the sofa and leaning closer. “You get used to it.”

Lucas frowned. “Get used to what?”

Noah waved a hand. “The weirdness. The possessiveness. The acting like we’re incapable of taking care of ourselves. I have to constantly remind myself that Adam only does it because it’s his only way of showing he’s concerned about my wellbeing.”

Lucas frowned. “August doesn’t have any reason to be concerned about my wellbeing. We’ve known each other for less than a week.”

Noah snorted. “You act like time matters to the Mulvaney boys. It doesn’t. They’re like animals. Once they’ve locked onto a scent they like, whether it’s been ten seconds or ten years, you’re theirs. August won’t allow you to walk away from him. I know that sounds scary, but being around the family is…never boring. And nobody will protect you like they do.”

“Don’t I have a say in this at all?” Lucas asked, trying to maintain Noah’s casual tone.

A fond smile spread across Noah’s face. “He’ll tell you that you do. Thomas has drilled societal niceties into all of them—and they know this behavior isn’t right—but it’s like putting a fresh coat of paint directly over a cracked one. Eventually, the original stuff begins to…push through. You know?”

Lucas had seen it time and again as a profiler. Compulsions couldn’t be tamed or forgotten. Sometimes, even years of therapy was no match for the incessant, gnawing need to enact the most depraved fantasies. Eventually, the person had to meet that need and that was when things got messy. But August met that need regularly… Did that make him better?

“What do you think of him? August, I mean,” Lucas finally asked.

Noah’s gaze slid away from Lucas. “He’s funny… Intense. He tries really hard.”

That was an accurate representation of August. Intense, funny, but also charming and passionate. It made Lucas smile just thinking about August scrawling silly sayings on his morning coffee cup.

“But you like that, though, huh?”

Lucas’s gaze jerked up to see Noah studying him intently. “What?”

“You like being the object of August’s attention.” Lucas started to protest, but Noah shrugged. “You don’t have to explain yourself. I get it. Believe me, nobody understands where you’re coming from better than me. Adam is intense in his own way, but he looks at passing as a normal person as a game. He slides in and out of being the bored socialite and the relentless vigilante seamlessly. August…not so much.”

This time, it was Lucas who leaned in. “Why do you think that is?”

Noah thought about it. “I think, when you have a brain as big as August’s, it’s hard to remember the little things and, to him, it’s all little things. That’s why he smiles when he’s not supposed to and then it slips away. That’s when he’s recalling his training from Thomas. So, it makes him seem off.”

The thought of August trying so hard tugged at something inside Lucas. Was he really feeling sorry for a murderer? “He told me he likes it. Likes torturing people.”

Noah’s tongue darted out to lick over his lower lip. “Does that freak you out?”

“It should, right? I should be horrified by it. I used to hunt guys like him, ruthless killers who enjoyed what they did. August isn’t a good guy, not by any standard. Any normal person would run screaming in the opposite direction.”

Noah shrugged. “You can’t be normal and be with a Mulvaney. It’s just not possible. They live equally extreme yet polar opposite lives. They have to be the over-achieving sons of a billionaire one minute and calculating, cold-blooded killers the next. There’s no room for screw-ups because the consequences would be a domino effect, ruining everything Thomas has tried to accomplish and landing all of them in prison. Maybe me, too.”

“You kill people, too?” Lucas asked point-blank.

Noah’s chin jutted forward, his expression guarded, almost antagonistic. “I killed a person, yeah. A man who raped me repeatedly before I was old enough to write my own name. I made it hurt, too. Made him suffer. And no, I didn’t lose a second’s sleep over it. Maybe that makes me a psychopath, too.”

Lucas had struck a nerve. Noah was telling the truth. He didn’t feel bad about killing the man, that much was clear, but he was guarded, ready to attack anybody who told him he should feel bad about what he did. Lucas wasn’t going to be that person. He’d had a crappy childhood, but the kind that made him feel sorry for his grandfather, not traumatized. He had no idea what it would be like to experience trauma at that level, no matter how long he’d studied it from an academic standpoint.

“You’re not a psychopath. Maybe we’re not supposed to say this out loud but not every death leaves a mark, not every person deserves to be mourned. I’ve interviewed hundreds of killers in my day. I’ve sat across from every type of murderer you can imagine. People who murdered strangers, family members, co-workers, friends. By and large, the people who are most at peace with their decisions are the ones who killed their abusers. They knew the only way out was through. They do their time with smiles on their faces.”

Noah’s shoulders slumped, and Lucas felt like he’d passed a test he hadn’t known he was taking. Noah studied him closely before asking, “Why haven’t you turned August in? You’re a Fed. He’s a killer. His brothers are convinced you’re just gathering evidence on all of us, but I don’t believe that. Like, I know August. He’s so into you, he’d tell you anything. You could have had this case wrapped up in a bow in a day and a half. You obviously like him, even if he’s super weird. But why turn your back on everything you worked so hard for? Didn’t it take a lot to become an agent?”

Lucas almost didn’t answer. He’d kept his thoughts and feelings about his past to himself. “They turned their back on me. I had a spotless reputation, had a dangerously high level of accuracy with my profiles, and when I finally came clean about how I did it, they not only didn’t believe me, they threw me in an institution and threatened to keep me there while leaving a serial killer free to torture women. I guess I learned that good versus evil isn’t really black and white. Not every life is sacred. Some people have forfeited their right to keep breathing.”

Noah propped his arm up on the back of the couch. “If you’re part of this family, you have to know how to think on your feet, be prepared to move a body, provide an alibi, shoot a gun, wield a knife, remind your psychotic boyfriend why he can’t murder a man because he winked at you in a Starbucks. Being the significant other of a Mulvaney is a full-time job in and of itself.”

Lucas’s gaze dropped to the ring on Noah’s left hand. “One you’ve agreed to take on permanently.”

Noah smiled, cheeks pinking, as he looked at the brushed nickel band on his finger. “Yeah, but the decision was easy for me. Adam and I just…get each other. Like, we see each other, flaws and all, and it just works. Our crazy fits. Adam is my family. The Mulvaneys are my family. Being one of them was the easiest decision I ever made.”

“I don’t have any family either,” Lucas heard himself offer. “And the ones I did have weren’t exactly going to win any awards.”

Noah nodded. “I can’t even imagine what my life would have been like if I had the ability to see things or feel things each time I was touched. With my background…I’d be locked in a padded cell for life or not alive at all. How do you do it—keep yourself from losing it?”

It was strange to not have to convince somebody he could do what he did. “I call it shielding, like a partition in my brain I can put up and down at will. But, sometimes, I slip. It’s exhausting trying to force my brain to actively not observe something.”

“Is that why you like August? Because he’s like you?”

Lucas frowned. “How do you mean?”

Noah tilted his head. “You haven’t noticed that August has headphones in practically around the clock?”

Lucas racked his brain, trying to remember a time when he’d seen August with anything even remotely resembling headphones. The day they collided. “I never noticed. How does that make him like me?”

“Did you know he has an eidetic memory? He can recall every word he’s ever heard or seen without even trying. But he hates it. He said it makes his head too noisy. He plays music almost all the time so he doesn’t carry around stranger’s voices in his head for the rest of his life.”

Lucas shrugged. “He never wears them around me.”

Noah once more studied Lucas before saying, “Then he must really like you. Because August values silence over almost anything.”

Lucas did his best to ignore the warmth that pooled in his belly at Noah’s words. He couldn’t let himself get sucked into this twisted fairytale.

Except, he already was.

* * *

It was after eleven when Noah rose, telling Lucas that Adam waited for him downstairs and August was on his way up. Lucas suddenly didn’t know what to do with himself. Did he sit on the couch? Wait for August to come up? Would he knock? Were they past knocking? He’d never been so struck with indecision before.

August didn’t knock, just breezed in the door with a brown paper bag in one hand and an overnight bag in the other.

“Whatcha got there?” Lucas asked.

August raised the brown bag as he brushed a kiss across Lucas’s ear, making him shiver. “The best thing you’ve ever put in your mouth.”

Lucas raised a brow, unable to stop the smirk forming. “Is that so?”

August’s mouth hitched up on one side. “That’s what the girl at the bakery said.”

“Did she say it with a straight face?” Lucas asked.

August paused as if lost in thought. It occurred to Lucas then that he was recalling the conversation—verbatim if Noah was to be believed.

“Is it true you remember every word ever said to you?”

“Did Noah tell you that?” August asked, dropping the dessert on the counter and his overnight bag on the barstool.

“He said you always wear headphones to drown out the noise. I’ve never seen you wear them.”

August brushed his hair aside, removing the tiny earbuds from his ears. “They’re not on. I don’t wear them around you.”

“Why not?”

August frowned in confusion. “Because I want to remember every word you say to me.”

It was such a casually breathtaking thing to say. August was somehow insanely romantic without even trying. Lucas crossed the room and slanted their lips together, catching August off guard. He recovered quickly, gripping Lucas’s jaw as he plundered his mouth. Lucas’s hands ran along his biceps, jumping back when August hissed in pain.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just had a little incident tonight.”

Lucas frowned. “Incident? What kind of incident?”

August slipped his shirt over his head, revealing a deep two-inch gash along his arm. “How did that happen?”

August grimaced. “I underestimated her. She caught me off guard while I was on the phone.”

Lucas rolled his eyes, tugging August into the guest bathroom and forcing him to sit on the shut toilet lid. “Well, why did you answer the phone in the first place?”

“Because it was you,” August said, as if the answer was obvious. “When your significant other calls, you answer.”

Significant other. Is that what they were? Their relationship was moving at warp speed. Arranged marriages took longer than dating a psychopath, apparently. “We’re not in a relationship.”

“Says you,” August murmured, flicking his gaze upward, his tone letting Lucas know he found his resistance amusing. “You’ll come around.”

“Consent is a thing,” Lucas reminded, but his tone was light.

“Is this nonconsensual?” August asked. “Do you not want me to keep pursuing you?” Lucas looked back over his shoulder, watching as August grew broody and confused. “Am I pushing you into something you don’t want?”

Lucas stopped rifling through his things to stand and sooth August. Who knew psychopaths were so sensitive? He sighed, cupping August’s face and tilting it upward. “I want you to keep pursuing me, but I need to feel like it’s not already a done deal. I’m an adult and I have bodily autonomy. ‘I licked it so it’s mine’ isn’t a thing in dating.”

August’s hands came around to grip Lucas’s ass, his gaze heated as he said, “I did, though. I want to do it again. Right now.” Lucas shivered at the thought of August’s tongue probing all the parts of his body, trying not to get swept away by memories of last night. “I’ll try to be more mindful of your feelings.”

Lucas snickered. “Did you read that in a relationship book?”

There was no humor at all in August’s answer. “Yes.”

Lucas’s heart flip-flopped in his chest. “You did?”

August nodded. “Several.”

“Really?” Lucas couldn’t help the surprise in his voice.

“Noah thought it would help.”

“Did it?” Lucas asked, tilting his head.

“Yeah, but none of them seem to agree on anything.”

Lucas quickly went back to looking under his sink so August didn’t see the smile that split his face at his disgruntled tone. August had read books on relationships for him. Several. Several? They’d known each other for so little time. When had he found time to read a bunch of books on relationships? Is that why he wrote silly sayings on Lucas’s cups?

He gave a triumphant shout when he found the first aid kit buried in the back. He set it on the back of the toilet, opening it and pulling a small bottle free, snapping the seal. He held a wash rag just under the wound as he poured sterile water over it. “This is really deep.”

August stared at the cut in disgust. “Scalpels are meant to do that.”

“A scalpel? You let that bitch cut you with a scalpel?” August smirked at Lucas’s indignant tone, but he wasn’t sure what August found funny about some psycho killer almost slitting his throat. “She could have killed you.”

August leaned close, his nose pushing up Lucas’s t-shirt to kiss his belly. “It was just her last ditch effort to save her life,” he said, his hand sliding up Lucas’s jean-clad thigh. “She didn’t stand a chance.”

Lucas knew the feeling. He sucked in a breath at the feel of August’s lips grazing his hip bone and the way his fingers squeezed his inner thigh. “You probably need stitches.”

“What I need is you,” August countered, hand sliding upward, his thumb tracing the ridge of Lucas’s obvious erection. “Seems like you need me, too.”

Lucas pressed against August’s palm, groaning at the pleasure that bloomed at the sudden pressure. “I need to close this.”

“You close that. I’m going to open these,” August said, his hands deftly working Lucas’s button and zipper open, pushing his jeans out of the way so he could run his mouth along the bulge in Lucas’s underwear.

Lucas’s head fell back, eyes rolling as August’s lips teased at his cock. “I can’t focus when you do that.”

“I’ll be fine,” August promised, mouthing a wet spot over the head of Lucas’s cock.

Lucas needed to get the wound closed. It could get infected. He threaded his fingers through August’s hair, yanking hard enough to make him snarl. “You are going to let me finish closing this up,” he said, making his voice as stern as he could with a raging hard-on. “And when I’m done, then you can fuck me. Got it?”

August’s pupils blew wide as he gazed up at Lucas. “Got it,” he said, voice raw.

Lucas smacked a kiss on August’s lips. “Good.”

He sat on the edge of the tub, using the steri-strips he found to pinch the wound closed and tape it shut. It took the entire pack. Once finished, he bandaged it up before standing. “There. All bett—”

The rest of his sentence disappeared as August tugged him between his thighs, dragged his underwear out of the way and swallowed him down.

“Jesus. Fuck,” Lucas managed, hands tangling in August’s hair as his knees threatened to buckle. “Not here.”

August pulled off, his fist replacing his mouth, working him slowly. “Did you mean it? Can I fuck you?” He bit down on Lucas’s hip. “You can fuck me if you want. I like it both ways.”

Lucas was having trouble focusing. He liked it both ways, too, but he wanted August inside him. “Bedroom, now.”