Unraveling Malcolm (Rebels and Nerds Book 2) Read online

  Unraveling Malcom

  A Rebels and Nerds novel

  R. Cayden

  Copyright © 2019 by R. Cayden

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Content note

  About Rebels and Nerds

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Also by R. Cayden

  Content note

  This novel contains scenes of explicit sexuality, including gay ménage, light discipline, power play, and extra dirty talk. It is intended only for mature readers.

  In addition, there is a brief fistfight and discussions of family rejection, violent crime, and drug use.

  About Rebels and Nerds

  Anchored in the Northstar comic book shop and the Steel Rose dive bar, the Rebels and Nerds series tells the stories of geeky guys and the kinky bad boys who love them. Focusing on MMM romances, these novels feature erotic exploration and lots of heat on the way to some very special HEAs.

  Enjoy!

  Prologue

  Maddox

  I stood on the porch, a storm crashing through the forest. In the mountains outside Seattle, there wasn’t a person around. Just the thunder and the lightning.

  And two young strangers, undressing each other in my house.

  Rain splattered against the giant windows, and one of the guys threw the other to the couch. A couple empty bottles of beer were sideways on the table, and the guy wearing glasses was leaning up on his elbows, stroking the other guy’s tattoo.

  Flowers. And barbed wire.

  Cute shit.

  Kids in their twenties, breaking into my house—fucking punks. That was the kind of thing I moved to the mountains to avoid.

  But now I had returned home. I had rain falling on my leather jacket and the smell of my motorcycle in my hair, and I had these two, stroking each other’s erections, acting like they owned the damn place.

  The one in the glasses trembled and arched his back.

  Blood pumped through my body. I tucked my helmet under my arm and headed to the back door.

  Guess who’s home…

  Chapter One

  Maddox

  One week earlier

  After two months crisscrossing the country on my motorcycle, I felt like I had seen just about everything. From rowdy biker bars in Louisiana to the sleek mountain roads of Colorado, I had chased every cheap thrill I could think of and stumbled into a few more I couldn’t have imagined.

  Of all the things this country had to offer, though, I saved the scariest for last.

  That was my ex-boyfriend, Declan. Posted up at his new home on the outskirts of Las Vegas, he had managed to make a life for himself that was just as sketchy as the life we used to share back in Seattle. And now, steering my motorcycle up the dusty road that led to his house, I was about to get a good look at what he had made of himself.

  I killed the engine and hopped off my bike, taking a moment to remove my helmet and leather jacket. I spit out a wad of saliva, thick with grit and dust, and squinted through my shades into the sun. The front door of the old ranch banged open, and Declan stepped out onto the porch, a mutt of a dog circling his feet.

  “About damn time,” he hollered. “Get your ass over here and say hello.”

  I chuckled as I crossed the yard, joining him on the porch with a quick embrace and a pat on the back. It had been well over a decade since Declan and I broke up, after some destructive years running around together in our twenties. Declan had a way of bringing out my worst instincts, and I knew he felt the same about me. But no matter how much fun it might have been causing havoc together, a time came when we knew we were likely to end up dead or in jail if we didn’t call it quits.

  There was no need to drag shitty memories back to the surface then. Declan was standing right in front of me for the first time in years, and goddamn if it didn’t feel good to see him.

  “You look like shit,” he chuckled. “Come inside and have a beer with me.”

  “I’m forty years old, and I’ve been riding a motorcycle for two months. Sorry I didn’t have enough time to pretty up for you, buddy.”

  “You go prettying up for me, next thing we know, I’ll be trying to rob a bank to impress you again.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d ever stopped,” I joked back.

  Declan’s place was about how I would have expected it to be. It was messy, but not exactly trashed. The air conditioner was pumping, and all the windows were closed, and he had put on some metal music I didn’t recognize over the hum of the machine. I tried not to pay attention to the half-smoked joints that littered the tables or the gun he had sitting on the kitchen counter.

  I might have given up the life, but Declan never did. He’d started new hustles and new games after moving to Vegas. Rather than ask the details of his Nevada business, I preferred to let sleeping dogs lie. Declan and I were never able to rein each other in anyway, so there would be no use in trying now.

  He grabbed a couple of bottles from the fridge, using his lighter to flick the tops off. Sitting up at the counter together, I got a good look at his face. He had lines in the corners of his eyes, just like I did, and the fat scar on his neck still looked pink and raw. With his bushy eyebrows and a mouth full of gold teeth, there was no mistaking it was Declan standing in front of me, sexy as fuck and hard-edged as they come.

  “Vegas treating you well?”

  He shrugged, pulling from his beer. “I can’t complain. There’s plenty of business in this town, and I manage to get my hands on a decent chunk of it. The heat is a bitch, and I’ll never have quite as much fun as we used to have raising hell in Seattle, but Vegas is as good a place to land as any.” He gestured toward his back yard with a thumb. “Hell, I got a pool.”

  I glanced out at the pool, an inflatable raft shaped like a giant cheeseburger bobbing in the water. “Fuck, man, even I don’t have a pool.”

  “That’s what you get for being the black sheep of the family. Once your folks cut you off, you lose the free pool.”

  “Worth it,” I grumbled. “Anyway, I can’t complain. I got the family vacation home in my name before they disowned me.”

  Declan started laughing to himself. “You remember how pissed off your dad was when he caught you selling weed in high school?”

  “How could I forget?” I said, chuckling along. “He came busting into my room when you and I were supposed to be studying, screaming so hard his face was purple.”

  “And
he just kept throwing twenty-dollar bills at you!”

  I dropped my voice to imitate the old man. “You want money? Here’s your fucking money, punk!”

  Declan wiped a tear away from the corner of his eye. “Thank god he didn’t come in five minutes earlier. If he had figured out what we were really getting up to behind that door, he would have blown a gasket.”

  It was true. For how upset I made my father, I couldn’t imagine how pissed he would have been if he had figured out I was gay while I was still living under his roof. Instead, he just got mad at me for stealing, selling drugs, getting into fights, and every other hotheaded thing I had done over the years.

  Not that he hadn’t given me plenty of reasons to act out. Considering the family I grew up in, it was no wonder where my destructive impulses came from.

  “What about you, man?” Declan asked. “Am I going to get you to stick around here for a few days? Maybe get into a little trouble for old time’s sake? You know that a city like Vegas has plenty of men, plenty of booze, and plenty of sin waiting for you.”

  I held up my beer, taking a drink before tapping it back on the counter. “The booze? I’m trying to take it easy these days. At least easier than before. The sin I’ve already had enough of. And damn if the men don’t just lead to more trouble.”

  “Now that I don’t believe. You telling me you just spent the past two months touring the country, and you weren’t spending your evenings buried inside some hot stranger?”

  I scoffed, thinking back to the long months on the road. Sure, I had thought about hooking up, maybe making my way to a gay bar or downloading one of those apps. But that wasn’t what the trip was about. The trip was about clearing my head, getting some distance from my past, and figuring out what the hell I was trying to do with my life.

  “I swear to god,” I said. “I didn’t so much as get a handjob at a rest stop.”

  “Then I guess I’m not going to tempt you to stay with stories of hot Vegas men and mysterious international gamblers.”

  I chuckled. “I might take you up on a few games of poker tonight, but I’m going to start heading back in the morning. I’ve been gone from home long enough, and I’m still trying to keep my head down.”

  Declan frowned when I said it, rubbing his thumb across his jawline.

  “What?” I asked. “You look frustrated.”

  He shook his head. “I just don’t love hearing you say that about keeping your head down. Don’t get me wrong, Maddox. I’m glad you were able to get out of the game, and I think you’re smart for taking care of yourself. But I have to admit, I was hoping to get your help with something.”

  Immediately, my mind flashed back to the last job I’d done with Declan, which was also the last job I’d done, period. It was years ago, when we were still fucking like rabbits. The job was pretty straightforward, just intercepting some dirty money in an empty office, dodging some guards, and making out like bandits on the other side. We had pulled it off without a hitch, too, thanks to my connections and insider knowledge. But still, it had taken Declan months to convince me to go ahead with the plan.

  After all, even when your family disowned you, it could still feel pretty screwed up to rob them.

  “The job we ran on my family was the last job I’m running,” I said, matter of fact. “Ever.”

  “That’s what you told me then,” Declan answered, his voice rumbling low. “But that was a different life, Maddox. It doesn’t have to be the same answer now.”

  I wondered for a minute if that was the reason he insisted I come visit Vegas in the first place. When Declan had a plan in mind, he could rarely think about anything else. And from the way he was rubbing his jaw and staring me up and down, I knew his wheels were spinning with a doozy of a job.

  That’s how I always got myself in trouble, though. The second some sexy man with a bad idea came knocking on my door, I couldn’t help but at least hear what he had to say.

  “I’m going to say no,” I told him. “But fuck it. Give me the details anyway.”

  Declan grinned. “Just hear me out, Maddox,” he said. “It’s going to sound like a lot at first.”

  “Get on with it.”

  “Ten years ago, we made more money holding up your family than either of us ever pulled in before. And the wildest thing was—it worked like a charm.”

  “I remember,” I said, drinking from my beer and not liking where he was going.

  “The other day, I went and took a look at the Seattle news. It’s something I do every now and then, just to think about old times. And staring right back at me is an article about how big your family’s empire has grown in that city. They got their fingers in everything from real estate developments to municipal garbage.”

  “Like a real bunch of crooks,” I agreed.

  “And then I thought to myself, what’s to stop us from running that same game on them one more time?”

  “Are you talking about robbing my Uncle Elmar again?” I let out a puff of air. “Buddy, you weren’t kidding when you said it was a hard sell. I’m not sticking my head out and risking jail time, but even more than that, I’m not so much as going in the same room as my family.” I whistled to myself. “No fucking way,” I repeated.

  “Think about it, though,” he said, pushing back from the counter. “You said a million times—they never change up the way they run things, so the old plan should still work. Considering how dirty their money is, they couldn’t report it stolen anyway, and they have way more cash for the taking now than they used to. Plus, everyone knows you quit the game and I moved away. No one would suspect us, not even for a second.”

  I hated it, but the idea sounded good. It sent a little thrill crawling up my spine, and my cock twitched awake just sitting there. I wanted to say yes to Declan. I wanted to jump back on my bike and head straight to Seattle to chase that high one more time, and I wanted stacks of money to prove that I still had it in me.

  I wanted to feel alive.

  But I wouldn’t do that to myself. I’d learned my lessons, and I wasn’t going to forget them. I was finally happy, and I wouldn’t trade that happiness for anything. Not the high of the chase and not a fat payday, either.

  “Declan,” I said, “how many times are you going to make me disappoint you?”

  “Shit,” he answered. “That quick? You aren’t even going to think it over?”

  I reached out, grabbing his shoulder and squeezing. “Sorry, buddy,” I said. “My time has passed, and nothing’s going to change that.”

  He shook his head. “I knew you’d say that. I didn’t admit it to myself, but I knew.” He finished off his beer, turning to toss it into a plastic trashcan by the fridge with a flick of his wrist. “Now come on,” he said, rising to his feet.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Even if you really are driving back to Seattle in the morning, there’s still a hell of a lot of mischief we can get up to in Vegas tonight.”

  Chapter Two

  Malcolm

  It’s just my luck that the first time I met the hottest guy in the city of Seattle, I was on the edge of tears.

  Him? He was staring me up and down with this look in his eyes. He was grinning to himself like a cat who just found an injured mouse. He was cracking his knuckles, one at a time, and he was grinning so damn cocky, my knees started to wobble.

  He was trouble with a sexy smirk.

  “What’s got a prince like you looking so sad?” Trouble asked.

  A prince? I didn’t know if that was a good thing. I guess most people would have wanted to be royalty, but I wasn’t so sure he was calling me rich or powerful. It sounded closer to the way I used to get teased and bullied. Goody-two-shoes. Eagle Scout. Teacher’s pet. Prince. Like I was so uptight, so prim and proper, this hot guy in a black leather jacket could tell it just by glancing at me.

  And Trouble kept glancing. Standing on the corner of that shady street, he was looking at me with eyes as bright as the autumn leaves i
n the trees. With his sharp cheekbones and a gaze so intense I was already blushing, he stared at me, long and hard.

  It scared me, the way Trouble looked at me.

  “Rough day,” I manage to mutter, my voice coming out shaky. I pushed my glasses back to wipe away the tears in the corner of my eyes, then cleared my throat. “Just looking for an apartment. I’m fine,” I added weakly.

  And it’s true. I was fine.

  Kind of.

  I just needed to find a new place to live. Having to find a new apartment was a totally normal thing that people did every day, not some major life disaster and definitely not a reason to stand on the corner crying. The problem was, my last apartment had been my home ever since I graduated college a couple years earlier. It was my sanctuary in the city, in a great location with manageable rent, and not far from the library where I worked. But then the landlords had hitched up the price considerably, and this godawful construction had started on the building, and the heat and air conditioning had stopped working, and the maintenance requests had all gone unanswered…

  After a few months of calling the realty management company and getting nowhere, I hit the streets, looking at one overpriced option after another. This latest rental had seemed like it might be the answer to my problems, but then I had shown up and seen it was located directly above a skeezy bar. Even in the middle of the day, there were a few motorcycles parked outside of the Steel Rose and grating music blasting from inside.