Down a Notch

by Zoe X Rider

  Cars honked as he strode toward the other hotel in the orange afternoon light. His teeth grit together every time the damned thing jogged in his shorts. He’d been looking into the wrong damned band, apparently. That or he had a wealthy fan.

  Some fucking “fan.”

  At the new hotel, the elevator took him to the top floor. The hallway was funeral-home silent. His sneakers made soft shhish sounds over the lush carpet. A set of double doors stood cracked open at the far end. A note taped to one asked him to wait in the living room. He jerked it free and crumpled it in his fist.

  In the suite, Nicky peered into vases and tilted statuettes up, hoping for and not finding either the key or the identity of the practical joker. Time ticked on. He adjusted the metal cuff and wandered to the floor to ceiling windows. Brushing the vertical blinds aside, he looked down at their latest city. He wasn’t even sure which city this was.

  In another minute, he heard the tread of bare feet across the carpet. He resisted the urge to turn around and see who’d been toying with him. This was a delicate situation; he had to maintain some semblance of control. Before he punched their lights out.

  Whoever it was walked up behind him, close enough to raise the little hairs on the back of Nicky’s neck. If it weren’t for Daylight Savings Time, he’d have been able to see the asshole reflected in the window.

  A hand slid around his waist and over the fly of his jeans, coming to rest cupped lightly over his crotch.

  Nicky’s fingers twitched against the blinds, but he refused to look down. The sense he had of the body just behind his was “tall.” Probably as tall as him. That knocked Comelian’s 5'6" lead guitarist out of the running.

  The hand tightened, lifting a little. If it was possible to feel the corners of someone’s mouth draw up in a smirk, that’s exactly what he felt.

  Asshole.

  Nicky closed his fingers over the wrist. No doubt there—definitely a guy. So which guy was the only question left.

  He turned.

  The presence of Cris Warren flooded him, pulling his scalp tight, making the contact of his fingers with the man’s wrist itch. He stepped backward, banging his shoulders into the window.

  Comelian’s lead singer smiled.

  It treaded a fine line between friendly and wolflike.

  “What the fuck?” Nicky said.

  “Wine?” Cris moved—almost floated—to the bar, where he pulled the cork on a bottle of Beaujolais.

  “What the fuck?” Nicky said again. He had now officially said more to Cris Warren in the past sixty seconds than he had the whole four weeks of the tour. The man’s presence tended to make his throat close up, his mind go blank. It wasn’t like he was star struck—he could give a fuck about Comelian. Posers he’d called them. All glitz and glamor.

  Chick bait.

  Cris poured blood-red wine into two glasses. With his head bent, his hair obscured his sharp cheekbones and his “I’ve seen your soul and eaten it for breakfast” eyes. He straightened and offered one of the glasses.

  Nick’s hand reflexively lifted toward it. He twitched his fingers back. “What’d you lace it with?”

  “You watched me pull out the cork and pour both glasses.”

  “So you coated the glass with something.”

  Cris held out both glasses. “Take whichever you want.”

  “Drink from both of them.”

  A gleam flashed through his eyes as he took a healthy swallow from the first glass, then the second. He held both forward again, giving Nicky his choice.

  Nicky chose the bottle and drank straight from its mouth. “All right,” he said, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. “I’m here. Take the fucking thing off.”

  Cris downed the wine in one of the glasses before setting both on the bar. “Take off your shirt.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “You want it off, you have to do what I say.”

  The back of Nicky’s neck prickled. He crossed the room in two strides, the metal cuff digging into him and wine sloshing against the sides of the bottle with each step. He grabbed a fistful of Cris’s white silk shirt. Pulling their faces close, he said, “Fuck what you say. I say let’s make a deal. You give me the key, and I won’t beat you to the edge of death with it when I get it off.”

  Gathering some of his shirt into his own hand, Cris eased it out of Nicky’s fingers. “It’s non-negotiable.” He slipped the bottle from Nicky.

  “Just give me the fucking key,” Nicky said. The sound in his voice made him cringe. It was almost pleading.

  “I don’t have the key.”

  A vein in Nicky’s temple pulsed. “Where the fuck is it?”

  “In the hotel’s safe.”

  “I can work with that. I’ll pound on you until you’re ready to go down and get it.” He advanced again.

  Smoothly refilling his glass, Cris said, “They’ll call the police if I show up at the front desk with so much as a bruise.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Nicky narrowed his eyes.

  “Here’s the deal.” Cris nodded toward to the clock on the mantel. “It’s six o’clock now. At midnight, I’ll get the key and unlock you.”

  “And until then?”

  “And until then, you do what I say.”

  “Starting with taking off my shirt.”

  Cris nodded.

  “I’m not into guys,” Nicky said. “At all.”

  “I can’t say that I care.” He slid his gaze toward the clock, then back to Nicky. “Time’s ticking. The clock doesn’t start till you get your shirt off.”

  Growling, Nicky tugged his T-shirt over his head and threw it on the floor. “Next?”

  Cris smiled. “Wait here.” He went into the bedroom.

  So much for listening to opera and reading the classics. Nicky crossed his arms and cocked a hip. Listened to the seconds tick by.

  Damn him. Why couldn’t have picked Michael for this? Blake? Fucking Dirk?

  Cris re-emerged with a fistful of black leather belts, his hair bouncing with his long, easy strides. “Put your hands behind your back.”

  “Fuck that shit.” He tightened his arms against his chest. The one thing he didn’t like, aside from looking like an idiot, was giving up control. That’s why Outright Disaster’s logo was the one he’d drawn up seven years ago. It’s why the artists who did their covers always got sketches of what he wanted. It’s why the director for their last video had threatened to quit, and only a tense showdown with their lawyer could get him to agree to finish the fucking editing.

  Cris lifted the belts and tilted his head.

  Nicky clenched his jaw.

  “Fine.” Cris dropped the belts on the bar. “This is what we’ll do then.” He slid open a drawer. “I’ll stop the clock. When you decide to cooperate, I’ll start the clock again. It’s....” He glanced at the clock. “6:07 now.” He had stationery and a pen in his hand, and he wrote the time down. Then he dropped the pen and paper on the bar beside the belts.

  Nicky watched him drape himself over the couch, arms stretched across the back. The silver bangles on his wrist stuck straight in the air. He smiled at Nicky.

  Damn him.

  He looked from the clock to the belts.

  Cris said, “6:08. If you cooperate now, you can be free at a minute past midnight.”

  Nicky watched the clock tick to 6:09.

  “Bring me that, will you?” Cris lifted his hand toward the unfinished glass of wine on the bar.

  “Get it yourself.”

  Time ticked by.

  “12:15 if you give in now,” Cris said. The glass of wine still sat on the bar.

  The words “give in” rankled. He swiped the wine bottle off the coffee table and chugged a good deal of what was left of it down. I am not getting tied up.

  “I’m in no hurry,” Cris said. “I can unlock it tonight or a week from now. It doesn’t matter to me. You can do anything
with it on that you could do without it, really...well, just about anything. I guess the girls are going to be disappointed this week.” The corners of his mouth curved upward, feral. Infuriating. “12:18.”

  “What the fuck is this shit anyway?” Nicky said.

  Cris shrugged.

  “Fuck it. Take the fucking thing off whenever you want.” He set the bottle down hard, rattling the pen and belts. He bent and snatched his shirt from the floor. While he struggled into it, he strode across the room to the exit, the fucking hunk of metal jamming against his fly with every step.

  “Have it your way,” Cris said, gliding toward the bar.

  Nicky looked over his shoulder as he yanked open the door. Cris was sipping nonchalantly.

  He flipped him the bird and let himself out.

  He had to take a leak. Too much Jäger and wine, and he hadn’t been about to pull his pants down in Cris’s little insane asylum. He ducked into the lobby restroom and let himself into a stall.

  Sitting on the toilet—sitting!—and staring at the back of the stall door, he willed his bladder to empty and wondered how serious Cris had been. Would he make him wait a week?

  Heaviness settled along the floor of his stomach.

  What if he would?

  But what was the alternative? He pulled up his jeans and flushed.

  Then he pressed his head against the stall door. His skin prickled and his mouth went dry as he imagined Cris’s hand pressing his wrists together, the loops of a leather belt pulling tight around them. He swallowed back the sour taste of unease. Which would it be: six hours of Cris and who-the-fuck-knows-what, or seven days of...?

  His cupped the obstinate bulge of metal in the crotch of his jeans and thumped his forehead against the door. Six hours or...carry the two...one hundred and sixty-eight hours. The latter would drive him slowly insane; the former was likely a fast track to the same destination. For one hundred and sixty-eight hours he would be uncomfortable, irritable, and probably—on several occasions—mortified, but at least there’d be nothing unexpected, nothing he couldn’t handle. Reducing his sentence to a mere six hours meant turning himself over to Cris, who turned out to be the kind of person who’d snap a cage on your dick while you’re passed out cold and then use it to blackmail you into some warped bondage fantasy.

  Would there really be nothing unexpected, nothing he couldn’t handle if he chose to wait the week?

  Or would Cris apply psychological torture all week long? The knowing smile from across the green room. The “How’s it hanging?” whispered in his ear in passing. Maybe a brief grope and a “When you’re ready to lose that thing, all you’ve gotta do is come see me.”

  Or worse, he could become the butt of a joke—everyone knowing. Everyone smirking at him as he walked past.

  He could go to a locksmith. It’d be an awkward fifteen minutes or so, standing there with his pants around his knees, but then it’d be done.

  Wouldn’t that be great to read about on the Internet?

  Fuck.

  He gripped the top of the stall door, wanting to pull it off its hinges. Instead, he swore, flipped the lock, and kneed it open.

  As he headed toward the elevator bank, he could see the glass doors that led back to the street, to freedom, to his own fucking hotel. When he got to the alcove, he hit the “up” button with the side of his fist.

  “The shirt,” Cris said as he walked away from the door he’d just opened for him.

  Nicky grimaced but pulled it over his head and let it drop to the floor. Again.

  Cris smiled and picked up the belts from the coffee table.

  “The clock,” Nicky said.

  Nodding, Cris jotted down the time. Then he straightened and approached Nicky.

  A flash of panic hit his chest when Cris moved behind him. His thigh muscles twitched, ready to take him across the room. His throat hitched with the words “Fuck this shit.”

  He flinched at Cris’s touch on his bare skin. Cris guided his arms behind him. He started to cross his wrists, panicked little snorts of air hitting his upper lip, but Cris pushed his forearms up so they went straight across his back, one against the other.

  He stared hard at the clock while Cris grasped his arms and pushed the tongue of the belt behind them. He brought the leather strap back up and around, catching Nicky’s wrist and a forearm together in a loop.

  Nicky clenched his fist, and Cris said, “Shh. Relax,” as he looped the belt around a second time before snugging the loops against his skin.

  That wasn’t the worst. The worst was feeling the little tugs as Cris pushed the tongue through the buckle, then the pin through the hole. He clenched and unclenched his fist, feeling his muscles working against the leather. He had to take a leak again, already. Closing his eyes, he tried to think himself someplace else.

  When Cris reached for a second belt, Nicky moved his arms a little, twisting the wrist that was caught in the first belt. The setup actually felt kind of flimsy. That was a relief. He adjusted his feet, widening his stance as Cris pressed his other wrist against his other arm and wrapped leather around that side too.

  That uncomfortable sensation prickled over his scalp again at the little tugs that came when Cris buckled him in.

  His palms felt clammy; the nerve endings in the soles of his feet crawled and itched.

  As soon as Cris’s hands came off him, he wriggled his arms, pulled at his wrists.

  “Not yet,” Cris said, bending for a third belt.

  Nicky assumed this one would go right in the middle, and that would be all right. If Cris had tied his wrists together instead of to his forearms, he’d be in a lot deeper shit, but Cris hadn’t considered that forearms had a meaty side that could be compressed to create slack in the belts. He’d be able to work his hands free of the loops, given half a minute’s effort. He straightened a little, pushing his chest out. This wouldn’t be so bad. He could even sit around like this till the time was up, knowing he could slip free if shit started getting weird.

  Weirder.

  Behind him, Cris grasped the middle of his forearms, lifting them away from his back, and Nicky became even more certain this was going to be a cakewalk. Nothing to worry about.

  Except the third belt did not loop around his forearms. Cris caught his upper arms in it, just above the elbows, pulling them tightly behind him as he drew the tongue through the buckle. Nicky started to pull his arms apart, fighting against it, squirming his wrists to get the earlier loops over the heels of his hands.

  Cris said, “Do I need to stop the clock?”

  Shit.

  Shit god damn it.

  The second hand ticked.

  Cris stood behind him, holding the third belt. Waiting.

  And the hunk of metal in his jeans felt like it weighed two pounds now. Two pounds and counting. The skin at the base of his cock was raw from the little teeth leaning against it. His groin was chafed. He fisted his hands, his whole body tense.

  Fuck.

  He pushed his wrists back into the loops.

  Cris buckled the belt, making sure it was tight. Making sure he couldn’t pull his arms apart enough to work his wrists free.

  Nicky tipped his head back and exhaled a short, impatient breath.

  “I think that’ll work,” Cris said.

  Nicky bent his head and closed his eyes. His scalp prickled. His cock twitched, sending a deep, dull pain down to his balls. He felt like he was on the edge of hyperventilating, and then Cris gave a last tug on the fastened buckle before giving him a shove that made Nicky’s stumble forward a step.

  As Cris came around to see his work from the front, Nicky lifted his chin, eyeing him. He felt like a trapped animal. “So what now?” His hands clenched tight. It was a good thing they weren’t free; he might be tempted to use one of them to grab the collar of that expensive shirt and wheel the fucker up against those floor-to-ceiling windows. The other fist he wouldn’t be doing anything nice with either. An image of bloody knuckles flas
hed through his head, and his nostrils flared as though he could smell it.

  Cris said, “I did have a lot of time to sit and think while I waited for you to find your way here.”

  “And?”

  “I’ll be back.” He sauntered to the bedroom. Nicky turned where he stood to watch until he was out of sight. Then he flexed his wrists, twisted his arms, and bent his torso. The belts held him as solidly as the contraption on his dick. His face was still hot, but a cold, clammy sweat washed over it. He looked up to see Cris coming through the door, and a whole new feeling of entrapment flooded him.

  No words came to mind.

  “What’s the matter?” Cris asked.

  The black dildo he’d strapped over his trousers nodded in his direction.

  Cris had another belt in his hand, but suddenly belts weren’t Nicky’s biggest fear. Cris gestured toward the floor. “Get on your knees.”

  “Fuck. No.”

  Shrugging, Cris headed right on past him, the dildo wagging ahead of him.

  If not for its implication, it would have been ridiculous.

  “Clock stopped at 7:26.” He made a quick note on the hotel stationery.

  Nicky swallowed. His saliva glands had shifted into overdrive. He swallowed again. He felt like he was going to be sick. He pulled and twisted his arms against the restraints.

  “Wine?” Cris asked, lifting a glass.

  Nicky nodded. He was going to need something to get through this.

  Fuck.

  Six hours of one, a week of the other. When Cris gestured to a chair, Nicky walked over and sat down, leaning forward to make room for his arms. He closed his eyes as Cris put the glass against his lower lip. Alcohol into his mouth. Too soon, the glass disappeared, and only half finished. A trickle of wine slipped down his chin. He rubbed it off against his shoulder.

  “When you walked in here,” Cris said, “you were going free at 1:08. If we start the clock again right now, it’ll be...” Nicky’s lips moved as he calculated time spent on the clock and off. “1:12.”

  “What—” Nicky cleared his throat. “What happens if morning comes and I’ve still got time left on the clock?”

  “I’ll take the belts off, leave the cock lock on, and we’ll reconvene whenever you’re ready to finish. Although, tomorrow’s pretty hectic. I don’t think I’ll have time again until Baltimore, which is, what, Tuesday?”