“No, thanks.”
“Pot?”
“I don’t play under the influence.”
“You mind if I smoke a cigarette?”
“I guess not. Byron—I just want to make sure, okay? We’re not going to be disturbed, are we? By your—roommates?”
Byron shakes his head. “They’re out of town. It’s just us.” It’s just me and some random guy I met online, Ben translates. And he’s angry, suddenly, that Byron is so seemingly careless about his own personal safety.
“You do this a lot? Hook up with sadists you meet online?”
“Sure,” Byron says, looking uncomfortable.
“How do you make sure you’re going to be safe?”
Byron shrugs. “I don’t know. Luck? Besides, maybe I’m a serial killer. You don’t know me, and you’re still doing it.”
“That’s different.” I know how to take care of myself.
The kid approaches him, holding the lit cigarette out before him like a beacon. “You wanna get started?”
Ben looks at him, confused, as Byron waits with his hand outstretched expectantly. Then he gets it. “Oh, hell no. I know you don’t think I’m putting that out on you.”
Byron frowns. “But why not?”
“Why would you even think—” He can see Byron getting defensive. “Is that what you usually ask for?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes, I guess.”
A horrible realization dawns on Ben. “Byron, don’t take this the wrong way, but have you ever actually done this before? Subbed, I mean.”
“Yes,” Byron snaps. “Of course!” Ben holds his gaze until the edifice crumbles. “Okay, maybe not so much. But I’ve read a lot.”
Ben takes a deep breath. “I’d just like to be sure here, I’m not criticizing you—you haven’t actually done this with anyone? Not yet, anyway?”
“No,” Byron says sullenly.
“Okay. Well, first thing you should know is, I don’t go around putting out cigarettes on people I’ve just met. And if someone is willing to do that to you right after they walk through the door, you should probably run like hell. I mean, I don’t even know you, right? And you don’t know me.”
I know who you are, the kid’s eyes say, but he just shrugs.
“You don’t know me,” Ben says firmly. “And all you do know about me is that sometimes I like kinky stuff. There’s no open-door policy for me to do whatever I like, though, just because you’re subbing.”
“I just thought—”
“I’m not saying we can never do it. I’m saying we need to build up a bit of trust between us before something like that. I mean—I don’t even know your last name.” And frankly, I don’t think I know your first name either, he wants to add, but there’s not point embarrassing the guy. If he wants to call himself Byron, Ben has no problem with it.
“My last name is—”
“No, you don’t need to tell me. It was just an example.” Because no way is Ben going to admit to his own full name, even though the kid clearly recognizes him. “But maybe we could talk a bit. I can tell you what I like, you can tell me the kinds of things you’d like to try, and we can negotiate something.”
Byron is brightening up. “Well, I—I like burning. Which is why I thought you could do the cigarette on me.”
“Okay.” Ben tries not to cringe.
He’s tried burning with Xander before. It seems like such a long time ago now. Xander had Ben standing in the middle of his LA lounge room with his legs spread and his hands behind his head. Xander dimmed the lights a little and lit a sparkler, making patterns and words and symbols in the air until Ben was laughing for no other reason than how pretty the lights were and how in love he felt.
“Beautiful, right?” Xander asked once the sparks stopped and the spent sparkler dulled slowly in his hand from orange-red to nothing. “Hold still.”
And he pressed the metal briefly into Ben’s skin, down his inner thighs, again and again. The pain was a scream, Ben remembers. He could see it, white and jagged, tearing through his body, overloading his nerves and leaving him trembling. It left marks on him for weeks, but they faded eventually.
Ben isn’t sure if he could actually do that to someone else. To himself, sure. But even knowing that Byron likes it, it seems cruel. Unnecessary. And he’s pretty sure that cigarette burns are going to be worse than sparkler burns. Not to mention ashy.
But the kid is opening up to him; Ben can’t shoot him down in flames. So to speak.
“Do you like it only with cigarettes? Because I don’t know if that’s very hygienic. I’d have to check it out. Google it.” Byron looks blank. “Whatever we do has to be as safe as possible,” Ben explains. “So that you don’t end up with injuries or with infected wounds.”
“Ew!”
“Well, yeah.” Oh, God. Was this what I sounded like to Xander when we started? He asks patiently, “What kind of first aid supplies do you have? We should get them together before we do anything.”
By the time Ben has gathered together Band-Aids, bandages, Neosporin, and whatever else he can find, he’s ready to gag the kid. Question after question after question—You really like this stuff? What else do you like? Cutting? Seriously, you cut someone like that? What do you do after you cut them? What do you mean, drop? Really? It’s that bad sometimes? So why do you do it? What’s it like to—but Byron is so delighted and so excited that it would be mean not to answer, as best he can anyway.
Eventually, though, it has to stop. “Byron, please. If we’re doing something, we should do it, and maybe I can answer some more questions afterwards.”
“Okay. Sorry. What do we do now?”
Ben looks at him, all gangly limbs and just-past-teen-years enthusiasm. He feels a rush of tenderness, and he knows. He knows he can’t. “You know what? Maybe we should just talk.”
Byron’s face falls. “Oh. Am I not doing it right?”
“You’re doing fine. But you seem to want to talk more than do right now, and that’s okay, that’s perfectly fine. We can talk.”
The expressions crossing the kid’s face are clear enough that Ben feels like he’s reading his mind: I want to ask more questions; I want to try actually doing this for the first time; I don’t want to fuck it up; I really want to ask more questions. And his eyes drop to Ben’s crotch. He licks his lips. I want to fuck.
“Let’s talk,” Ben says quickly. “Ask away.”
It’s hours later when he gets away, and he knows he’s never going to see Byron again, but at least he’s done his good deed for the day. He’s made one person a little wiser, and possibly safer.
Would you be proud of me now, Xander? he wonders. But he erases his mind again as the pain hits his heart. No thinking about that, not anymore.
Chapter Sixteen
After Byron, Ben decides that maybe he’s just not cut out to be a Dom. He didn’t feel any real desire to make the kid hurt, after all. When Xander got the urge, Ben could see it in his face, in his eyes. The predator kept locked away inside, flitting into Xander’s expression and away again immediately. And the one time Ben wanted to hurt Xander was under special circumstances.
Christ, but he’d love to hurt Xander again now. There’s nothing Ben would rather see than that fucking infuriating face screwed up in agony. But he tries not to think about it too much; tries to put Xander out of his mind.
He’s totally over that asshole.
One morning, Ben drags himself to a diner a few blocks down, because he’s run out of food, and he can’t face shopping. He could get something delivered, but he figures some fresh air might be good for him, and shut Katy up at least. This way, he can honestly tell his sister that he’s been out of his apartment when she asks.
He’s staring into his coffee and waiting for his bacon and eggs when someone slides into the booth opposite him. Ben glances up.
If it were any other time in his life, he might feel something; right now, there’s only a sense of inevitability.
“What do you want, Adam?”
Adam smiles his sunny smile. He’s as tan and golden as ever, his blond hair so bright that Ben wishes he could put his sunglasses back on.
“Just saw you in here, figured I’d say hi. How’s our boy doing?”
It’s so calculated that Ben can only laugh. “Our boy, huh?”
Adam snuggles his cheek into his hand and leans on the tabletop. He gives a sleepy blink, his smile unmoving. He waits.
“Well, I wouldn’t know, now would I?” Ben asks.
“Oh, yeeeaaahh,” Adam drawls, nodding, as though he’s just remembered. “Yeah, I heard you called it quits. Came to your senses?”
Ben’s plate arrives and the waitress asks if Adam would like a coffee. “He’s not staying,” Ben tells the waitress. After she leaves, he stares straight at Adam. “Seriously, man, what the fuck do you want?”
Adam starts drawing circles in some spilled sugar with the hand not supporting his head. Ben starts to wonder if the guy is narcoleptic, or just always stoned. He looks like he’s two breaths away from sleep. “I wondered how you were doing, is all,” Adam says eventually. He flicks a look at Ben from underneath his eyelashes. “Wondered if you felt like talking.”
“Not to you,” Ben says at once. Fuck being polite.
“No, not to me,” Adam agrees. “But there are other people you can talk to.”
“Why the fuck does everyone want me to go into therapy?” Ben asks, incredulous. Even this dipshit?
Adam gives an unpleasant giggle at that, and sits up, pulling up one knee to sling an arm around. “I don’t mean talking to a therapist, either.”
Ben shrugs. “You lost me.”
Adam looks him over, his green eyes narrowed, that stupid smile still bumping up his lips. “He’s a big name now, our boy. Lots of interest in him. But they don’t know him like we know him. And there are people who would pay to hear our side of the story…” He trails off, and lifts an eyebrow in invitation.
Ben shoves his bacon and eggs to one side, appetite gone. “If you think I’m gonna fucking run my mouth to the tabloids, you must be the dumbest—” He takes a deep breath. The anger washing over him is familiar, but faint.
After all, why should he care what Adam says about Xander, to the press or anyone else?
Adam reaches forward and runs a finger over the back of Ben’s hand. Ben snatches it away, his stomach roiling. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
“Remember, man. You owe me.”
Ben stares, his mind working over. Last time he met Adam was at the going-away party just before Xander moved to New York. And Ben had spent a whole morning making hors d’oeuvres just to see Xander smile that night.
Do me a favor, he’d asked Adam. Don’t go anywhere near him tonight.
And Adam’s reply: You owe me one.
I’ll owe you, Ben had agreed.
Ben wonders what it must be like to live as Adam does. Is it that he can’t shake off whatever effect Xander had on him, or that he doesn’t want to?
Is this how Ben will end up?
He pulls out his phone and pretends to check a message. Adam, again, just waits.
“I hate him,” Ben admits at last. “God damn, I hate him. I want to hurt him so fucking much, you have no idea.”
“Oh, I’ve got some idea,” Adam lilts, tipping his head. His smile is wide enough to include teeth, now.
“I fucking hate him and I hope his whole life implodes, but Adam? I’m not gonna kiss and tell. If you want to, you go right ahead. I’m guessing you saw me as a chance to corroborate. But I won’t do that for you. Not because of any respect I have for that asshole,” Ben adds quickly, as Adam opens his mouth to speak. “But because I don’t want anything to do with him ever again. You go to the tabloids, you’re only tying yourself to him.”
Adam shakes his head. “Man, I don’t care about that. I just want the money. From the papers or from Romano himself. You know he’d pay to keep that shit quiet.”
Ben shrugs. “It’s got nothing to do with me.”
Adam gives him a speculative up-and-down look. “If you care so much about his pristine reputation, maybe you could spare some cash.”
“Are you asking me to pay you to keep your mouth shut about Xander Romano?”
Adam grins. “Well, you did say you’d owe me.”
Ben nods slowly. “Yeah. I did say that. So here’s what I’m gonna do for you. I’m gonna hold on to this recording I just took of you threatening to blackmail a famous actor, and I’m definitely not gonna show it to anyone who works in a legal capacity. Because I think they’d probably be interested in having a conversation with you if I did.”
For just a moment, Adam’s composure is shaken. He glares at the phone in Ben’s hand; Ben puts it back in his pocket just in case Adam tries to snatch it.
“I don’t believe you,” Adam says in a little sing-song voice.
“Believe whatever you want,” Ben says. He pulls his bacon and eggs back towards him, although his stomach is clamped down on itself. “Just fuck off and let me eat in peace.”
Adam slides out of the booth, but leans back over Ben as he goes by. “What I meant was, I don’t believe you hate him,” he murmurs. “But you should. He’s toxic.”
Ben ignores him, doesn’t even glance up as Adam walks by the window outside, heading across the street.
At home later, he plays back the recording. It’s muffled but it’s clear. He only did it to get Adam off his back, so really, he should just delete it, because fuck Xander.
He transfers it to his laptop and stores it away in a never-used sub-folder.
After his interlude with Byron, Ben felt better about being able to help someone, but the run-in with Adam makes his mood spiral into blackness again. Katy is coming around too often, throwing phrases like flat affect and depressive state at him, but he can’t bring himself to care. He’s tired of everything. The insomnia is gone, and he sleeps twelve, thirteen hours a night now. The only meal he has the energy to make is cereal. Showering takes up so much effort that he actually considers moving a plastic chair into the stall.
The only thing he can think of that stirs a spark of interest is finding someone to hurt him, because at least that way he’d feel something.
So the next person he picks for his experiment is a male dominant who found Ben’s entry on Craigslist, and who says in his email that he likes to make little twinks my biches. “Biches?” Ben wonders, and is just about to Google to see if it’s an exotic French term he hasn’t come across when he realizes it’s a typo. “Ohhh. Bitches.”
Ben isn’t sure if he himself is what people would consider a twink. Elijah and Dean, for example, didn’t seem to think he was. But he’s lost a lot of weight since the break-up, so maybe that counts for something. He figures, what the hell, and emails back, sets up a meeting at the guy’s house. He knows it’s stupid, and that he should vet things more carefully, and he thinks about Byron. If Ben knew Byron was doing something so dumb, he’d get mad and try to talk him out of it. But getting mad at his own actions seems like a lot of effort, and besides, Ben can take care of himself.
He arrives there on the appointed afternoon; it’s a small house in the suburbs. He knocks firmly on the front door. He’s worked out a game plan—he’s going to list everything up front, so the guy will have it all clear. It seems like the smart thing to do.
The door opens, and Ben smiles his full-wattage smile, although he knows it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Hi, I’m Ben.”
“Ben, huh?” The guy sneers, and Ben is left wondering what’s so offensive about his own name. “You can call me Master.” He’s big, much taller than Ben, a stocky wall of muscle and leather. He’s not bad looking, but he’s not Ben’s type either.
“I’d…rather not, if you don’t mind.”
“You one of those traditional types or something? You want me to break you before you call me Master?”
“No, thank you,” Ben says politely. “I just don’t want to call you my Master when you’re not. Or Sir, either,” he adds preemptively, as the guy opens his mouth again. “I’m sorry, but I’m not into that.”
He grunts. “Whatever. I’m Jake.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Jake looks at him, closer, and Ben thinks he’s about to recognize him, and braces for the mention of a name he’s trying to forget. But it’s not that, he realizes—Jake is just checking him out. Seeing if he’s worth the time.
“You coming in, or what?”
Ben hesitates a moment before he crosses the threshold. There’s something not quite right here. What he’s trying to figure out is whether he cares. The hallway is dark, but clean enough, although Ben doesn’t know whether serial killers are any more or less likely to be neat than the general population. Probably more, he thinks. Orderly, so they can get away with it for longer.
“Are you waiting for a fucking parade?” Jake calls from down the hallway. Ben shuts the front door and follows the sound.
Jake is in the bedroom. It’s not well-lit, and it takes a moment for Ben’s eyes to adjust. There’s a bed, unmade, and a wall full of toys. Ben stares at it. It looks like a hardware store. Everything is hung up on hooks and—and everything is outlined, so that Jake can keep it in order.
It’s creepy.
But Ben can take care of himself.
“So I don’t do scat, watersports, anything degrading or humiliating,” he says. Certainly not with you, anyway, he thinks privately, and wonders again idly whether he should walk away. But he’s here now. “I don’t mind pain, as long as you respect my safe words.”
“Painslut, huh?” the guy leers.
“No collar, no leash, no blood play, no barebacking,” Ben recites. “And no asphyxiation.” The man just stares back at him, so Ben adds, “Breath control play.”
“If that’s what you mean, why the fuck don’t you just say that instead of using fancy words?”
Ben, who does not consider ‘asphyxiation’ to be particularly fancy, blinks. But he’s not here to make someone else feel stupid, and he couldn’t care less anyway, so he shrugs. “Sorry.”
Break the Rules (Rough Love Book 7) Page 12
