They walked a few blocks up Bourbon until Brad took a left, heading toward Rampart. Just before they got there, he stopped in front of a small bar. The doors were open and Derek could hear the sound of a band coming from inside. Instead of entering, however, Brad led the way around to the back. There was a small patio with a few tables, only one of which was occupied at the moment.
“Sit,” Brad said, picking the table farthest from the back door into the bar, which was also wide open. “I’ll get us something to drink.”
Derek cocked an eyebrow at the ‘order’ but took a seat. While Brad was inside, Derek listened to the music, tapping a toe in time to the beat. He got so immersed in it, he didn’t realize Brad had returned until he set his soda down in front of him.
“Good for dancing, huh?” Brad said.
Derek nodded, still engrossed in the music.
“Come here.” Brad held out his hand.
Derek looked at him in question.
“No time like the present to learn to dance. The music’s right. There’s no one around except them—” he nodded to the other occupied table “—and they’re into each other, not us.”
“I…all right.” Derek got up, taking Brad’s hand.
“Now here’s what you do for starters—feel the music, move your body to the beat.” Still holding Derek’s hand, Brad watched him. “There you go.”
Derek closed his eyes to concentrate better. He felt Brad take his other hand to pull him closer.
“Hands on my hips,” Brad told him, placing them there.
Derek felt the way Brad moved and tried to do the same. He must have succeeded because when he opened his eyes he saw Brad smiling like a proud parent.
“Next step,” Brad said, “put your arms around my waist or around my neck, whichever makes you more comfortable.”
Derek hesitated. With his hands where they were, there was still some distance between them. If he did as Brad said…
“I don’t bite,” Brad told him, his green eyes sparkling with amusement.
“I know.” Tentatively, Derek put his arms around Brad’s neck. Close, but not too close. He almost pulled away when Brad’s arms went around his waist.
“Now move with me,” Brad said softly, as he began a slow dance around their side of the patio.
Again Derek closed his eyes, feeling the beat of the music, feeling the way they were moving together, feeling…his eyes flew open when he felt the hardness straining against Brad’s jeans. He tried to back away.
Brad let him with a muttered, “Sorry. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I just wanted to teach you to dance.” He grimaced, looking away. “This was not the first step in a seduction, whether you believe it or not.”
“I do.” Derek smiled, stepping closer. “Although I guess the idea is flattering. I mean it would have been, if you were…trying to seduce me, that is.”
“And if I had been?”
“I…don’t know.”
“Truthful, at least. Do you want to try again? I promise to rein in my libido.”
“Mum-hum.” Derek put his hands on Brad’s hips.
“I think you might turn out to be a good dancer—at least with the slow stuff. We’ll hold out on the faster music for the time being till you get the hang of it.” Brad placed his hands on Derek’s hips, keeping his distance. “You know, you were so into what we were doing, you were barely limping.”
“I can do that sometimes, when I concentrate. Still—” Derek chuckled “—it does come in handy lots of times when I’m on a job. It makes them think I’m nothing to worry about.”
“And then, bam—one more bites the dust.”
Derek grinned, shaking his head. “You butchered that lyric.”
“Never was a huge Queen fan, so I guess I’ll have to believe you.”
“Philistine.”
Brad laughed, sliding his arms around Derek’s waist. Derek hesitated. What the hell? Why not? His arms went around Brad’s neck again as they swayed slowly to the music.
“See,” Brad said when the song ended and the band began something more up-tempo, “I can behave, if I put my mind to it.” He pulled away, caught one of Derek’s hands when he dropped them from around Brad’s neck, and led him back to their table.
They sat in silence for a few moments, drinking while they listened to the music.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Derek eventually said.
“So are you,” Brad countered.
“True.” Derek dropped his gaze, making circles on the tabletop with his sweating glass.
“So what’s going through that interesting mind of yours?”
“Interesting?” Derek smiled a bit. “Nothing spectacular, that’s for sure. I was just thinking about tonight.”
“Good or bad? Are you regretting it? Especially…the end.”
“Well, it hasn’t ended, yet. And so far…not at all.” Derek continued playing with his glass. “I was…trying to figure out something.”
“Want to talk about it? Maybe I can help.”
“Okay.” Derek paused then blurted out, “How did you know you liked men instead of women?”
“Easy enough, when it came down to it. I’d look at the girls at school and think, ‘She’d make a good friend’ or ‘What do all the guys see in her? She’s pretty/sexy/not so bad looking, but…’ Then I’d look at a couple of the guys and all I could think about was what would it be like to kiss them.” Brad chuckled. “Not that I’d have tried. I always seemed to get crushes on the biggest jocks in school.”
“So just like that, you knew.”
“Pretty much, for me. I’m sure it’s different for each one of us.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Have you ever had a crush on someone, male or female? Or wondered what it would be like if they liked you?”
Derek shook his head. “It never really came up. Or, I guess I should say, as far as I remember, it hasn’t. Who knows? Maybe before the accident I was involved with someone, as much as you can be in high school.”
“Which could be a lot, if it was a girl. Probably not so much so, at least publicly, if it was a guy. Let me ask you something, since you brought it up. You didn’t seem the least bit interested in any of the young ladies at the last bar we were at. Was that just because you weren’t really looking, or didn’t they do anything for you?”
“Both, I guess. I’m not looking, that’s for sure. I don’t think there’d be any future in that, considering what I do. But, honestly, I couldn’t see myself with any of them, even just…well, you know.”
“For some down and dirty sex then moving on.”
“Yeah. That’s what that guy wanted with you, wasn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“And if I hadn’t been there, you would have taken him up on it?”
“Hell no. That’s not my thing. In the first place, it’s too risky. In the second place, I prefer getting to know someone before we hit the sheets.”
“That makes sense, male or female.”
“Definitely. But you can’t, or you haven’t, decided which way you swing?”
“No. Well…” Derek glanced at Brad then away quickly. “I have the feeling women aren’t my thing. I’m just not sure men could be.”
“Give it time. You’re just a kid still.”
Derek snorted. “Says the old man.”
“I’m five years older than you. That gives me some cachet in the experience department.”
“A lot, since I don’t have any,” Derek said a bit sadly.
“Don’t put yourself down, D-Boy. You have a lot of experience. Maybe not the usual kind, all things considered, but you know a hell of a lot more about life than most kids your age.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good thing, all things considered.”
Brad reached for Derek’s hand, holding it gently but firmly. “It’s not a bad thing. You know what’s what, what’s safe, what isn’t, and you know how to handle yourself when things go bad. You’re a sur
vivor and that’s not a bad thing. Not at all.”
“Like you?”
“Yeah, like me. Like any of us who work for the Company. If we weren’t, we’d be dead, or out of it and doing something…normal.”
“That would be boring,” Derek said with a small laugh.
“Would, wouldn’t it?”
Derek bounced to his feet suddenly. “Dance with me, one more time?”
“Sure. And then I’ll take you home, to your place. I suspect you should get some sleep. It’s been a long day and a pretty long evening.”
“And Samson probably has something lined up for us.”
“Knowing him, you can bet on it.” Brad stood, pulling Derek against his chest and they wrapped their arms around each other, dancing to the beat of a slow song from the band.
“Next time, you teach me the fast stuff,” Derek said.
“You’ve got a deal.”
Derek gave a small sigh of happiness. He wasn’t certain about anything that happened tonight, except for one thing. He knew he liked Brad more now than he ever had in all the time they’d worked together.
Which doesn’t mean I ‘like’ him, just that I like him as a friend not just as a partner on a job. But there’s nothing wrong with that.
Chapter 7
“It’s…different,” Derek said, unsure if that was good or bad.
“True, but I think you can handle it,” Samson replied. “This gang has to be stopped. No one knows you up there, so you won’t have to do much of anything in the way of disguising yourself.”
Brad chuckled. “No more blond hair. It’s definitely not a good look on you.”
“I only did it once.”
“Once was twice too many.”
“Gentlemen, can we get back to the discussion at hand? This gang travels between five cities up north, picking up teens who are so far down they’d do anything just to get a meal and a place to sleep. Next thing they know, they’re in a house in another of the cities with no recourse but to do as their told or suffer the consequences. And we’re not talking being killed. They should be so lucky. Unfortunately, at this point we don’t know where these houses are, just the cities they’re in.”
“How did you find out what the situation is then?” Derek asked.
“One of our people was doing a drug sting and happened to connect with one of the people running the gang, a guy named Mario. Our man didn’t get a last name for him. Meeting him at all was pure luck, but then that’s how it happens sometimes. This Mario bragged about how he had something going on that made selling drugs look like chump change. Our man passed on what info he got out of Mario and we’ve been trying to get our foot in the door ever since.”
“They force the kids into prostitution?”
“Prostitution, theft, shoplifting—you name it, they have to do it.”
“Isn’t Derek a bit old for this?” Brad asked.
“To be targeted by the gang? Probably. To get in with Mario? No. The gang members are, from what he told our man, all eighteen to twenty-three-year-olds, except for the men at the top.”
“What happens once I get in with him, if I do?” Derek asked.
“Apparently there’s some sort of initiation test. Our man couldn’t find out any more than that other than that it involves showing the gang you will do whatever you’re ordered to—steal a car, sell yourself—anything to get close to the kind of kids they go after. If you pass, they assign you to one of the houses to keep the kids in line.”
“Why didn’t our man try to get on the inside?”
“As I said, the gang members are young. He was close to thirty.”
Brad frowned. “How the hell am I supposed to ‘ghost’ him?”
“We’ll have a tracker on him. Once he lands somewhere, you’ll know. After that, you get to figure out how to stay close enough to help if he needs it. But—” Samson gave Brad a hard look “—only if the situation becomes desperate. We need all the info we can get on them, and we need to know where the houses are and who runs each one.”
“How many houses?”
“At the moment, five, according to the information our man got. Also, while it is a gang, each house is autonomous as far as who runs it, but connected in that, in case of emergency, like a possible bust, they can move the kids quickly out of the city to one of the other houses.”
“That info’s not going to be sitting out in plain view,” Derek pointed out. “It’s probably in an office, under lock and key, and for damned sure, as low man on the totem pole, I won’t be getting my hands on it.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”
“Thanks, I think,” Derek muttered sourly. “So when do you want me to leave, and where am I going?”
“Cleveland, and the day after tomorrow. That’ll give you and Brad time to figure out who you are and how you’re going to handle everything.”
* * * *
“You’re sure you’re all right with this?” Brad asked a few hours later, as he and Derek sat in a back booth of a local diner in the Marigny neighborhood, not far from Derek’s apartment. “You can always tell him no.”
Derek smiled wryly. “If I connect with this Mario and he’s interested in recruiting me to join, and if they test me by making me shoplift or steal a car or what have you, yeah.”
“And if they expect you to show you’re willing to prostitute yourself or act like a john in order to get your hands on a kid, which is equally as likely?”
“That could be a problem.” Derek ran his hands through his hair. “A big one.”
“You do know the mechanics of it, I hope.”
Derek actually managed a bit of a smile. “Technically, yes.”
“Well, that’s a start.”
“Not much of a one. There’s a big difference between knowing and doing. It’s like…like the first time I held a gun. I knew what it was and what it did, but I could no more have used it effectively than I could have…okay, I don’t think that simile works.”
Brad laughed. “In a way it does.” He leaned back, looking thoughtfully at Derek.
“Oh no.” Derek shook his head forcefully.
“Why not? I taught you to dance. Consider this like a dance lesson but more intimately done.”
“You’re not a female,” Derek protested.
“No shit. Tell you what, though, if they test you by putting you on the street, it’ll be to deal with johns, so that the kids you’d be going after will trust you. Women don’t, as a norm, try to pick up a street hustler.”
“But I don’t even know if I’m…” He gulped.
“Exactly why you need to learn,” Brad replied, obviously ignoring what Derek really meant. “Think of it as getting a new skill set for the job, just like you learned about drugs before you started working to stop the dealers.”
“I don’t really think it’s the same thing.”
“D-Boy, if you’re going to do this right, you have to know what you’re doing. You know as well as I do, lots of kids on the streets are desperate enough they’ll sell themselves to make a few bucks. If you connect with this Mario and he does recruit you, they’re not going to believe you’re a virgin.”
Derek buried his face in his hands. He’s right, but…He sighed deeply. Still, better that it’s him teaching me, than my ending up as a dead body in a dumpster, or worse, because they figure out I’m not what I seem. He raised his head to look at Brad. “When?”
“Good lord, you sound like you’re asking when you’re going to face a firing squad.” Brad took his hand. “The sooner the better, I suspect, before you decide to make a run for it.”
Derek smiled weakly. “I’m still debating that.”
“I know.” Brad flagged down their waitress, asking for the bill. She handed it to him and after paying it, he stood, looking at Derek. When Derek stayed where he was, Brad grinned. “We can’t do it here. I think it’s against the law.”
Derek got up, feeling a bit shell-shocked that he was actua
lly going through with the plan, and followed Brad out of the diner.
* * * *
“The first step is getting undressed,” Brad said.
They were in Derek’s bedroom, having decided he’d feel more comfortable there than at Brad’s place. He wasn’t all that sure he was as he muttered, “No shit. You first.”
Brad stripped slowly, but not provocatively. Derek was certain it was to give him more time to get used to the idea. When he was naked, Brad stood casually, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and smiled at Derek. “Now you.”
Derek nodded, unable to take his gaze off of Brad’s well-muscled body. “I’m nothing like you.”
“I know, and it doesn’t matter.”
Quickly, because he was afraid if he didn’t move fast, he wouldn’t move at all, Derek pulled off his shirt, kicked off his shoes, and almost frantically took off his jeans and boxers, letting them drop where he stood and stepping out of them.
“Not bad at all,” Brad said softly.
“Yeah, right. I’m skinny and scarred and…and so scared I can’t stop shaking.”
“You’re not skinny. You’re lean and quite honestly, damned sexy.”
“Don’t patronize me,” Derek spat out.
“I’m not. It’s the truth.” Brad closed the distance between them, putting his hands on Derek’s shoulders. “You are shaking,” he said, sounding surprised. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. We’ll take it slow. I promise.”
“It’s going to hurt. I know it is. I read it somewhere.”
“If we go that far, and if you bottom, yeah, it will at first. I won’t lie to you. But let’s start with the basics.” Dropping one hand from Derek’s shoulder, Brad rolled Derek’s balls carefully between his fingers then brought his hand up to stroke his cock when it started to harden. Derek let out a sound halfway between a gasp and a moan.
“See,” Brad said, “it’s not so bad, is it?”
“No. Can I…? That was a stupid question, wasn’t it? I feel like a…an idiot. I’m nineteen. I shouldn’t be so…so…”
“You may be nineteen as far as age goes, and a hell of a lot older as far as what you’ve been through, but right now you’re having a totally new experience about which, through no fault of your own, you know nothing.” Brad stroked him again then took Derek’s hand, placing it on his own quite hard shaft.
D-Boy Page 8
