Bliss

by Lisa Henry

  Rory drew a deep breath. “When you get back, can I see you in private?”

  Lowell looked concerned. “Anything urgent? I’ll cancel lunch.”

  “No.” Tate was safe for now, and so was Aaron. Safe from their own unwitting captors. “It can wait.” He needed to figure out how to broach the subject, anyway. How did you say to a man, “Hey, just a heads-up, but I think we may be raping our rezzies.”

  “All right,” Lowell said. “We’ll talk then.”

  He left.

  Rory watched Alexandra as she took a seat at her desk—Aaron’s old desk—and began to work on something. “They’re always happy.”

  “I think that . . .” he began, and she looked up as though surprised to find he was talking to her in the first place. Rory swallowed down his fear and his guilt. “Do you know something about the chips, Alexandra? The ones they put in rezzies?”

  Her eyes widened. Her warm brown skin seemed to turn ashen. “Of course. They’re to prevent violent tendencies.” She drummed her pen against the desk rapidly.

  Rory fought the crazy urge to laugh. She might have been the top of her class, but she would make a terrible lawyer if she couldn’t lie. “That’s not all, is it? That’s not all they do.”

  “Why are you asking me this?”

  “Because you know,” Rory said, keeping his voice low. “What were you looking for in Lowell’s office yesterday?”

  “Nothing,” she said and jutted out her chin. “A report.”

  “What report?” Rory asked and then guessed before she even answered. “Aaron’s arrest report. Was it there?”

  She shook her head.

  “What do you know about the chip?”

  “Nothing!” she hissed, looking toward the door anxiously. “Nobody does. And even if I did, why would I tell you? You’re a sponsor.”

  It was the first time Rory had heard the word used as an insult. His stomach twisted. “Alexandra, please, I need to know if there’s anyone who can take it out, or turn it off, or something.”

  “But he’s happy,” she said, her eyes flashing. “A happy little slave. They’re always happy. Why would you ever want to change him back? I’ll bet your rezzy does all your housework and cooks your meals and—and plays with Aaron too.” Her voice cracked. “Isn’t that what Mr. Lowell meant? About getting the boys together?”

  “Yes.” Bile rose in Rory’s throat. “I didn’t know. Not until this morning. I didn’t realize.”

  Alexandra lifted her glasses to wipe at her eyes. “There was this guy, in our first year. His sister got mixed up in some stuff and stole a car. She became a rezzy. And she was different. She was wrong. There’s this group . . .” She stopped and shook her head.

  “What group? Do they help the rezzies?”

  “Fuck,” Alexandra said. Rory had never heard her swear before. “It’s illegal. I don’t even know how to contact them anyway. Nobody knows who they are. It’s too dangerous.”

  Too many denials and refusals, too fast. She was a terrible liar.

  “They’d never help you anyway,” Alexandra told him. “Or Aaron. You’re too high profile. If your rezzy or Aaron go missing, people would notice.”

  “What about Mr. Lowell?” Rory asked. “Can’t he help?”

  “I don’t know,” Alexandra said. She frowned. “With what happened to Aaron . . . It’s suspicious, is all I’m saying. He’s suspicious. Aaron said it was getting a bit weird. Like Mr. Lowell was coming on to him all the time. And suddenly he’s Mr. Lowell’s rezzy? I’m supposed to believe he stole the man’s credit card?”

  Rory’s heart raced.

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” Aaron had said. “And I didn’t need money, either. I-I took Mr. Lowell’s card because I wanted to come here. I wanted to live here. And be with him.”

  But if that were true, then why would Aaron complain to Alexandra about Lowell’s flirting?

  Because it wasn’t true. Aaron hadn’t taken the card. Not for money and not to be with Lowell, either. That whole story . . . that hadn’t been Aaron talking at all. That had been the chip.

  Rory hadn’t known he was a rapist, but Lowell had. And worst of all, he wasn’t just an opportunist raping a criminal. He’d framed an innocent man with the express purpose of raping him.

  “Oh God.” Everything that had happened last night flashed before Rory’s eyes. Aaron and Tate and Lowell’s smile. All that talk of whippings and plugs and pain. The sounds Aaron made when Lowell’s thick cock entered him. His vacant eyes and his bleeding nose.

  Lowell calling him a tease.

  He remembered Tate in the shower, the first night they’d fucked. Remembered him trying to talk. Remembered him begging for help just before he’d passed out.

  How many times had he pushed through the chip’s programming? How many times had he tried to tell Rory what was happening to him? And Rory had never noticed. He had gone on telling him to make dinner and fucking him. Raping him. He’d begged for help, and Rory had called in Lowell and sealed his fate.

  “Please help me,” Rory said. “Please help me help Tate.”

  “I can’t.” But her voice wavered, and her eyes softened.

  Another lie but it was enough. She’d help him, Rory knew. Eventually she would, even though it was dangerous and illegal. Because it was the right thing to do.

  For once, Rory didn’t feel like he was alone.

  There was Alexandra and there were others, as well. Somewhere out there, beyond the reach of the tainted law.

  They’d help him. They’d help Tate.

  Rory would make sure of it.

  There was nothing he could do to make up for what he’d done to Tate, but he could at least give him back his free will.

  And then take whatever consequences the newly freed Tate would deal him.

  Even if it meant Tate hated him.

  In the end, Rory had managed to bluff his way through his private chat with Lowell.

  “The press release?” Lowell had asked quizzically. “I thought you had something else on your mind. Maybe something about last night?”

  “Not at all.” Rory had hoped his face wasn’t burning. “Last night was fun. You’re right. We need to do it again soon.”

  Lowell’s smile had been a shade too knowing for Rory’s comfort. He’d babbled on a bit more about the press release and then had escaped Lowell’s presence as soon as he could.

  Now, sitting on the train again, he closed his eyes.

  He needed to get home, to make things right with Tate somehow. To find a way to live with the man until he could fix the damage Beulah had done to him. And then they’d leave. Rory didn’t care about his future here anymore—not when it had all been built on a lie.

  He needed to get back to the outside world where, for all its faults, at least Rory understood the rules. Where at least the idea of freedom meant something. Beulah may have looked perfect and safe and without crime from the outside, but if the price of perfection was the rape and slavery of people like Tate and Aaron, then Rory would rather live with imperfection and crime.

  He needed to go home. He needed to get Tate there too.

  he street was quiet. The dusk was softening slowly into darkness as Rory arrived home. He couldn’t help staring at the row of small, neat houses and wondering what horrors they hid behind their pretty façades. Like his did.

  Walking up the path to the front door, he was filled with dread. He could hardly reconcile this feeling with the way he’d felt on that first day, when Aaron had brought him here. He’d been almost overwhelmed with joy. And now . . . he could never be happy in this house again, not after the things he’d done here. Shit, he could probably never be happy in his own skin again.

  He turned his key in the door. He paused, remembering with a flash of sickening guilt the day that Tate had been waiting there, on his knees. Naked and wanton and wicked. All a lie. Rory had only seen what he’d wanted to see. Sighing, he pushed the door open.

  The house was dark
and quiet. No dinner cooking in the kitchen. No welcoming lights turned on. There was a mop leaning against the wall. Rory hadn’t even known he owned a mop. Usually Tate had everything cleaned up and put away before he got home.

  Like a good little housewife.

  Rory flipped on the lights.

  “Tate?” he called, dropping his bag on the floor. Silence. “Tate?”

  “In here!” a voice called cheerfully, and Rory’s blood ran cold.

  Lowell. Lowell was in his house. In his fucking house.

  He ran for the living room, not caring what he’d find, not fearing anything, only wanting to see Tate safe.

  What he saw instead was Tate on his knees, hands tied behind his back with the deep wine-colored silk of Lowell’s tie. Naked. With . . .

  With the neck of a heavy, half-full wine bottle shoved up his ass.

  And he was slurping, head bobbing, Lowell’s hand fisted in his black curls.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Lowell said, “I let myself in. Made myself at home. Sorry about your wine, but he said you didn’t have a proper plug—and you know how I like my boys plugged—so we had to improvise.”

  “Don’t,” Rory said over the sudden roar of blood in his skull. “Don’t do that to him.”

  “He likes it,” Lowell said. He pulled Tate’s head back and gave his hair a yank so that Rory could see his face in profile. “Tell your master that you like it.”

  “I like it, Master,” Tate moaned. The words were slurred, his lips swollen.

  Rory couldn’t look at him, not like this. He forced himself to stare into Lowell’s handsome monster’s face instead. “You know that’s not him. You know it’s the chip. You know it!”

  Lowell sighed, bringing Tate’s face back to his lap. The sucking and slurping sounds resumed, making Rory’s gut roil. “I’d hoped you’d fit in here, Rory. I suppose I couldn’t keep you in the dark forever. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried, eh? But isn’t it too late to rebel against our ways now? You’ve done all this with him. You’re as much a part of this as I am.”

  “I’m not. I’m fucking not.” Rory said it, but he didn’t believe it, not really. His heart hammered.

  “Oh, you don’t believe that. Didn’t you have him ride you the other night? Didn’t you watch him eat Aaron’s ass and swallow all that cum? Didn’t you like it when he called you master?” He tugged Tate’s hair. “Didn’t you like it when the pretty little straight boy begged for your cock?”

  “Because I thought he wanted it!”

  “He does,” Lowell said. “Listen to him.”

  Tate moaned with pleasure.

  “It’s not him,” Rory said again.

  Lowell snorted. “Who cares? He was just some worthless piece-of-shit criminal out of Tophet. At least this way he’s some use.”

  “He’s not worthless. You don’t know that he doesn’t have any use. You . . . you took everything about him and you replaced it with something else. You don’t know anything about him.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “I know he deserves better than this!”

  Lowell sighed and rolled his shoulders. “Listen, Rory, I’m going to make this very simple for you. I want you to fit in. I want you to do well here. You were supposed to be my protégé, and you have so much promise. I’m not going to let this little hiccup ruin all that. So you can accept that this is the way things are here, and you can stand by my side so I can give you a life of comfort and wealth and power and all the sucking this pretty straight mouth is capable of. Or you can reject this life, and you can take your place on your knees as a rezzy. With him, and that little tease Aaron.”

  “No,” Rory said. “Let me go home. I’ll take Tate and—”

  “Take Tate?” Lowell laughed. “Tate’s not going anywhere. Tate has his sentence to serve.”

  For a moment, Rory wondered if he should just run. Try to get out of Beulah on his own and leave Tate behind. Leave him to serve his seven years with Lowell and forget about him. But he couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t.

  “Do you know what I did after our little chat about the press release?” Lowell asked. His breath shuddered out of him, and he tugged Tate’s head back again. “Ease off a bit, boy.” He collected himself. “I had a quick look back over the office budgetary records, and it seems someone has been skimming from the accounts.”

  Rory took a step back. “I wouldn’t even know how!”

  “The records say otherwise.” Lowell stroked Tate’s cheek. “It’s very simple, Rory. You’re either with me or you’re against me. And if you’re against me, you don’t get to win. So be sensible. Come here and let Tate give you a nice suck, remind you of how good you have it here in Beulah.”

  Yes, the voice in Rory’s head told him. Do it, and bide your time until you can save Tate. Until you can get ahold of that resistance group Alexandra mentioned.

  And then, another voice, whispering, Yes, do it. Just give in and do it. He’s happy. You can be happy too. You can stay here and be happy.

  God. Why the hell had Tate punched him and started all this? He could have lived in blissful ignorance, except for that.

  “Yes,” he said, his chest aching. “Tate, come here.”

  Lowell smiled.

  Tate crawled across the floor, the bottle of wine falling loose from his body and soaking the floor in blood red. Rory couldn’t tell if the look on Tate’s face as he came to kneel at Rory’s feet was from pain or from bliss or from some strange mix of both.

  “Master,” he whispered. His tone was reverent. His eyes were . . . blank.

  Rory stared down at him and wondered who the hell he was. This naked man, kneeling on his floor, who would offer up any part of his body for his master’s amusement but whose mind was locked away somewhere. Unreachable.

  “I—” Rory choked on whatever command he’d been going to give.

  “Oh, Rory,” Lowell said, his voice full of glee. “What a terrible, terrible master you make. Tate, go call the police.”

  Tate whipped his head around quickly. “Master?”

  Lowell’s smile vanished. “Go and call the police and tell them Justice Lowell needs to report a fraud.”

  Just like with Aaron.

  Rory sank down onto the sofa. What was the point of running? Tate had tried that, hadn’t he? He wondered if Aaron had bothered.

  “Rory,” Tate whispered, his eyes large. “I don’t . . . I don’t want to.” He winced and lifted his hands to his head.

  Lowell’s nostrils flared. “I don’t really care if you want to, boy. I am a free citizen of Beulah, and I am telling you to go call the police.”

  Rory closed his eyes, setting his jaw even as his lip trembled. “Do what he says, Tate. Don’t risk yourself on my behalf. I’m not worth it. It’s over.” Lowell’s hand clasped his shoulder, massaging it, and even that once-innocent touch felt so sexual Rory had to fight off a shudder. “At least . . . at least this way I can atone for what I did to you. It’s only seven years, right?”

  “Seven years of happiness,” Lowell said. He smiled. “Here’s an interesting point of law. Do I inherit the rezzy of the man who becomes my rezzy?”

  Rory’s skin crawled.

  Tate didn’t like this at all and couldn’t understand why.

  Lowell was a good master. Lowell forced him to prove himself and praised him for it.

  And Rory . . . Rory was too full of contradictions to make Tate truly happy.

  He lingered anxiously in the kitchen when the police arrived, and then they took Rory away.

  No, he didn’t like that at all. Rory hadn’t done anything wrong. Rory didn’t need to learn to become a better person because he already was one. Tate had never been a good person.

  He’d tried, a little bit, when he was a kid. Then he’d started hanging out with one of the neighborhood gangs when he was a teenager, and it hadn’t seemed important anymore. He’d stolen stuff. He’d vandalized stuff. He had gotten into drugs—not as much as Paula had thou
gh. Paula was a mess back then. Too much of a mess even for Tate to handle. He’d been going to dump her, until—

  “I’m pregnant, you asshole! I’m fucking pregnant!”

  Even then, Tate hadn’t cared much. He’d yelled at her to stop using but hadn’t really been bothered when she didn’t. Because it didn’t feel real. It hadn’t felt real until the day Emmy was born, all strange and red and wrinkled, and she curled her tiny hand around Tate’s finger and it had suddenly hit him: there was a person here, existing where none had existed before. A tiny, miraculous person.

  From that moment on, he’d tried to be good. Tried to be better.

  He’d failed, but he’d tried.

  Tate’s eyes stung when the police took Rory away, and his head pounded.

  No tears, the doctor at the induction center had told him, but Tate could feel them sliding down his cheeks.

  “There now,” Lowell said, coming up to slip his arms around Tate’s waist. “Won’t it be nice to be with a master who knows what you need?”

  “Yes, Master,” he said but couldn’t stop staring in the direction of the front door. Couldn’t stop seeing Rory’s pale, frightened face.

  Because he didn’t do anything wrong.

  And if Rory hadn’t deserved his punishment . . . did Tate? Sure, Tate had actually committed a crime, unlike Rory, but that didn’t mean the punishment was fair.

  His head ached.

  His punishment made him happy. Didn’t it? Wasn’t this happiness?

  It was getting so hard to tell.

  Lowell released him. “Go get dressed, Tate. I can hardly have you walking home naked, can I? You might frighten the neighbors.”

  Home.

  Wasn’t this his home?

  It had felt like it, for a little while. This was where he belonged, serving his master. But not all his happiness had come from that. Not all of it. Curled up with Rory watching movies, he’d been happy in a different way.

  It hurt to think about it.

  Tate headed into his tiny bedroom and dressed quickly. When he came back outside, Lowell was waiting by the front door.

  “Come on, Tate,” he smiled.

  Warmth spread through Tate at that smile, but it couldn’t prevent the shiver that ran down his spine. “Yes, Master.”