Jenna Black: Resistance

“I didn’t hire a new valet,” Nate admitted. He sat up slowly, wincing from the lingering effects of the beating he’d taken a few days ago. A beating that Kurt had ordered, though he’d paradoxically done it in an attempt to protect Nate. “What are you doing here? And how did you get in? Please tell me nobody saw you.”

The deal Nadia had negotiated with the Chairman had included complete amnesty for Kurt, but Nate didn’t trust it. When Kurt had been accused of murdering the original Nate Hayes, Nate—who, though he was a Replica, had all the knowledge and memories and feelings of his original—had made it dangerously clear to his father how much Kurt meant to him. If the Chairman could find a way to hurt Nate through Kurt, he’d do it in a heartbeat. The old man was a vindictive son of a bitch, and he wouldn’t forgive Nate and Nadia for having won their battle of wills.

“How did I get in?” Kurt asked with an exasperated expression Nate could make out even in the darkness. “Do you really have to ask me that?”

Before he’d become Nate’s valet, Kurt had been a Basement-dweller. Basement-dwellers learned thievery, breaking and entering, and drug dealing when respectable citizens were learning reading and arithmetic. Breaking and entering when he already had a key to Nate’s apartment and knew exactly where guards and security cameras were located probably hadn’t been much of a challenge. Not to mention that the two of them had made a habit of sneaking in and out together for forbidden jaunts to the Basement.

“All right, skip that. Tell me why you’re here.”

Enough light from the rising sun filtered through the curtains that Nate could now see Kurt’s face more clearly, could see the little smile that curved his lips.

“Well, first of all, for this,” Kurt said, then put his hand behind Nate’s neck and pulled him in for a kiss.

Nate made a little sound of protest. His mouth had to taste disgusting right now, and he and Kurt had about a thousand unresolved issues between them. But Kurt didn’t seem to mind the taste of his mouth, nor did he seem to care much about the issues. With anyone but Kurt, Nate was too much of a take-charge kind of guy to give in on even the most trivial matter, at least not without a fight. But giving in to Kurt had always been frighteningly easy, and he did so now, abandoning his commonsense objections and losing himself in the moment. Kurt was the best kisser Nate had ever known, though there were other things he was equally good at.

The kiss ended way too soon, and the possibility of progressing to “other things” faded away. Kurt kept his hand on Nate’s neck, kneading the tight muscles there as he stayed intimately close.

“You gotta know that you came first,” Kurt said, looking intensely into Nate’s eyes. “I was already with you when the resistance asked me to take advantage of it.”

So much for ignoring the issues that lay between them. Nate’s chest hurt, and he dropped Kurt’s gaze, hardly able to swallow the truth that he had learned: Kurt—his valet, his friend, and his lover—had spied on him for some shadowy resistance movement Nate hadn’t even known existed.

“How can you expect me to believe that?” Nate asked, his hands clenching into fists in his lap. “You’ve obviously lied before.”

“You think I could have guessed where things would lead when I hooked up with you at Angel’s? I thought you were just some uptight Exec kid looking for a good time. No way I expected us to hit it off and that you’d actually hire me.”

Nate was glad for the semidarkness, which might help hide the redness of his cheeks. Theirs had not been what you’d call a storybook romance, and he wasn’t exactly proud of how it had begun. There was a time not that long ago when he’d treated the Basement—or Debasement, as its residents called it—as his own personal playground, taking advantage of the unfortunates who lived and worked there without really thinking about what their lives must be like. He’d never been cruel or unfair to any of them—at least, not that he knew of—but his well-meaning ignorance was a source of shame anyway. How could Kurt possibly have loved the privileged, self-centered bastard he had been before the rude awakening of his death?

“So you weren’t a member of the resistance when we met?”

Kurt looked away briefly before answering, and Nate braced himself for a lie. But Kurt was a master of not doing what was expected.

“I was,” he admitted. “But I wasn’t active. What’s a teenage whore going to do to help bring down a government?”

Nate flinched. “Don’t call yourself that!” He had no illusions as to what Kurt’s former profession had been, had known it from the moment he’d first laid eyes on him prowling the club, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“What? A teenager?” Kurt grinned at him. “I suppose I could be as much as twenty, but I’m pretty sure it’s more like eighteen.”

Just another indication of how different life in the Basement was from the life Nate had always known. He couldn’t imagine not knowing how old he was. “You know what I mean,” Nate said with a tired sigh.

Kurt patted his thigh. “Yeah. But I’m not ashamed of it, like you are.”

“Kurt—”

Kurt silenced him with a brief kiss. “It’s all right, Nate. I get it. Really, I do. But I stopped being a whore the day you hired me. And I came to your bed because I wanted to, not because it was part of a job. I love you, you idiot.”

Even in the midst of his turmoil, Nate couldn’t help laughing. “You’re such a charmer.”

“You want charm, marry Nadia. Oh, wait. You will. My bad.”

His words drained every drop of humor from Nate’s body. The fact that Kurt might have been using him all along had certainly bothered Nate, but it was a sin he was prepared to forgive, knowing that however things might have started, Kurt’s affection for him in the end had to be at least somewhat genuine. Other things he had done were far harder to forgive.

“Dante put a tracker on Nadia, and you knew, ” Nate said, shaking his head in disbelief. “You set her up so your resistance buddies could kill her.” He wanted Kurt to deny having known, wanted it all to have been Dante’s idea, but he knew in his heart that wasn’t the case.

Kurt reached for him, and Nate slapped his hand away. He might never be able to love Nadia the way she deserved, but she’d been his friend long before Kurt had come into his life, and the idea that Kurt had been willing to sacrifice her like that …

Kurt didn’t even have the grace to look particularly guilty. “From what I understand, having that tracker on her probably saved her life.”

“That doesn’t make it right! But then, you knew that, or you wouldn’t have gone behind my back.”

Kurt’s gray eyes narrowed, and his voice took on a sharp edge. “Uh-huh, couldn’t possibly be ’cause you would have pitched a fit if you knew. You’d never do a thing like that, right?”

Kurt’s words hurt more than the fading bruises. Both Kurt and Nadia had kept secrets from him. Big ones. And both for the same reason: they didn’t trust him. They thought of him as some impulsive, out-of-control child who’d fly off the handle and act without thinking. And the worst part about it, the part that hurt most, was that they’d been right.

“We couldn’t let her be interrogated,” Kurt said a little more gently. “She knew enough to bring down the entire resistance if she talked, and Mosely has … had … a way of making people talk. Besides, we thought that if she got caught, she was going to die anyway. We all thought that, even you.”

Nate closed his eyes, as if that could block out the memory. He had tried everything he could think of to stop Nadia from putting herself in danger. Respecting her decision had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, and when he’d gotten the frantic call from Dante, telling him she’d been arrested …