Now he had the team’s attention. They all stared at him expectantly. “Yes,” he said. “I did. I do. I wanted to say that I get what you guys are trying to do, shoving me out, and I want each and every one of you, right now, to give me a good reason why I shouldn’t be alternate captain. And if you can’t, I want you to cut the bullshit and let me play.” He looked around the room, staring down every single fucker there, daring them to interrupt or argue. “One catch. It’s gotta be a reason that doesn’t have anything to do with Drew getting kicked out.”
“What!” Ortega shouted, as usual, the first guy to jump to Drew’s defence. “Bullshit, man!”
Austin’s heart flipped, but he didn’t back down. He jabbed at the air with one finger. “No, I’ll tell you what’s bullshit, Ortega. It’s bullshit that you guys are all acting like Drew was some innocent victim here, like he hadn’t brought shit on himself by slacking on his training and his school shit and skipping practices and showing up to games hungover. It’s bullshit that now that he’s gone, you’re all pretending you didn’t spend all of last season wishing he was gone.” Nobody said a word. They stared at him, mouths hanging open, skates half-laced, absolutely fucking stunned. “And you know what? You should be fucking sucking my dick right now, because at the end of the day I was the only one who didn’t keep it a secret. Because I was the only fucking one on the team who had the balls to cut the dead weight. You wanna use Drew as an example of why I shouldn’t be alternate captain? Well, tough shit, because guess what? The fact that I was the only one to stand up to him is the exact reason why I should be alternate captain. Because I do what’s best for the team. I put the team before my friendships; I put the team before my own fucking self. You guys have been treating me like shit for weeks, and you know what, I put up with it. I put up with it, because if that was the price of getting this team into shape to fucking win? I’d happily pay it.” He took a deep breath. “So now, who’s gonna be the man to tell me why I don’t deserve to have the A on my jersey?”
It didn’t take long for the answer to reveal itself: nobody. Not one of them, not even Ortega, had any good reasons why Austin didn’t deserve to be alternate captain.
“That’s what I thought,” Austin said, feeling deservedly smug. “Now let’s get out there and make sure Ben still has better game in net than he does with chicks.”
Prove you want it.
Austin stared at the rental system screen, his anxious leg jiggling making the whole counter vibrate.
Liam William’s customer file was open in front of him. His rental history, but more importantly, his phone number. Right there, and the store phone was at Austin’s fingertips. All he had to do was pick it up.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple. Couldn’t be, not with Austin’s conscience gnawing at him. He was the type of guy who knew how to relentlessly pursue what he wanted, but he wasn’t the type of guy to get there any way but honestly.
Thing was, he couldn’t decide if it was . . . wrong to use the store’s database to proposition a customer. Probably, but what was the alternative? Wait for the guy to come in and hope he was working at the time?
Waiting around on a coincidence really didn’t seem like the actions of a guy proving he wanted it.
Going for it, chasing it, that was the way to go.
Which meant Austin needed to call the number on the screen.
Too bad there was such a big leap between deciding to do something and actually accomplishing it.
But then, he’d crossed that divide with his team, hadn’t he? He’d gone from apologetic pussy asshole sitting ignored on the sidelines to the tough bastard barking orders.
You wanted it, and you took it.
That was what Liam wanted from him, too. That Austin.
He picked up the phone and jabbed in Liam’s number.
Nearly puked as it rang.
“Liam Williams here.”
Austin’s heart jumped, his eyes flicking to the computer screen. “Oh, hi, Liam, this is, uh, Austin.”
“Austin?” Liam asked.
“Yeah, you know, from—”
“Rear Entrance Video, yeah, I know. I know who you are. But what I don’t know is why you’re calling me, seeing as I’ve still got this California roll sitting in my fridge that my roommate won’t eat.”
“Right, uh, well.” Apologize. Apologize for storming off. Do it. Man up and do it. “I was just calling because you have—” He squinted at the computer monitor. “—Bi Boys in Bondage out.”
Liam’s normally easy voice was testy. “Yeah, so? It’s not overdue, is it?”
“No! No, no, of course not. But I was calling to remind you it’s due back this Friday.” A night I happen to be working and could have waited for instead of calling you like this, holy fuck I have fucked this up.
“Yep, I know that. It’s a seven-day rental and I rented it last Friday. So tell me, Austin, is this the usual Rear Entrance Video policy, to ring up people about rentals that aren’t due yet? Now, I’m no expert, but it seems like a waste of staff resources to me.”
Even over the phone, the guy had the power to make Austin squirm like a preteen kid getting the masturbation is sin lecture in Sunday school. “Yes. No. Fuck. Can I start over?”
Liam laughed, and the sound of it was warm and husky with no trace of his earlier annoyance. “Sure, kid. There’s nothing good on the telly right now anyway.”
“Um,” Austin said, and crossed his legs, because for some reason his dick was chubbing up in response to the abject misery of humiliation running through him. “Look. I’m sorry about the other day. About storming out on you.”
“And about trying to say me doing the right thing and looking out for your straight ass was ‘daddy play’?” Liam sounded offended, for a second there, but when he spoke again his tone was more incredulous than anything. “Which, uh, I know you work in a porn store ’n’ all, but do you even know what that is?”
Austin twisted his mouth. “Um, it’s where you play at being my dad.”
“Sexually,” Liam said.
“What?”
“It’s where I play at being your dad sexually. I discipline you like you’re my kid. You call me daddy when I’m fucking your ass. That kind of thing.”
“Oh.” Austin’s face went almost as hot as his dick suddenly was. “That’s, uh—”
“Yeah. See, that’s my point about you, straight kid. You don’t know what you’re doing. What you’re getting into. With porn . . . and with me.”
“You saying I can’t handle you?” Austin snapped.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. The things I want to—I mean, would do to you, as in theoretically, as in they’re never going to happen . . . those things? You have no idea what you’re getting into, is what I’m saying. You couldn’t handle it.”
A pause, during which Austin panted and groped at himself, rubbing uselessly with the heel of his palm against the huge boner trying to explode out of his jeans. He heard Liam breathing too. Heavily.
“Shit,” Liam grunted. “That sounded like a challenge. I didn’t mean it that way.”
Well, Austin wasn’t going to take it that way. He’d learned his lesson on that already. “You’re right. You’re right about me.”
“You— Yes.” Austin could practically hear Liam recoiling in stunned surprise. “Yes, I am right. That’s right.”
“I don’t know what I’m getting into. Maybe I couldn’t handle it. Maybe I’m not tough enough or kinky enough to really be a match for you, I don’t know. All I know is, I want it. Even if it turns out I can’t handle it. Even if I have no idea what I’m getting into, not really. I want it. I want you to . . . to give it to me. No matter how it turns out. I want you to take me there.”
For a second, all Austin could hear—all that existed for Austin, period—was the sound of Liam’s measured breathing. And just when Austin couldn’t stand it anymore, Liam finally spoke. “So what, exactly, is it that you want from me, Austin?”
I want you to dominate me. I want you to rip my ass open so I never even think about letting a man fuck me again. I want you to fix me. I want you to destroy me.
“I want you to hire me for your company. I want to do a Straight Sub Setup DVD.”
No pause. No hesitation. Not this time. “No,” Liam said, and hung up.
Prove how much you want it.
Like hell Austin was going to take no for an answer. Like hell he was going to let himself get hung up on like some pimply-faced teenager going through his first breakup. Oh no. Liam might be screening his calls, but that only made Austin more determined.
The way Liam had been breathing on that phone call. The thing’s he’d said—The things I want to do to you—all proved he wanted Austin, too. But Austin clearly hadn’t gone far enough to show he was willing to suffer for what he wanted, willing to give it all up, willing to trust, willing to hurt and be scared and confused, all for a greater purpose. So after Liam hung up on him, Austin accessed his customer file on the Rear Entrance Video system one more time. Got out a piece of paper and scribbled down the information he found there.
And the next day after class and practice, he took a shower and, piece of paper in hand, headed to Liam’s home address.
A condo a couple blocks away from Davie Street, it turned out. Eighth floor. An older building with shady willows in the front and a retro-cool name printed in bold letters on an aging sign. Unit 816. Austin buzzed up to it.
A woman answered the buzzer. “Hello?” she purred, her Indian accent screaming prim and proper and holy shit familiar.
Austin gawked at the buzz box. “Mistress Titania?”
“Who is this?” she replied sharply, and now her prim voice sounded like it came from the kind of nun who could take three layers of skin off your palms. “No. Don’t answer that. I don’t care. This is completely inappropriate. Absolutely beyond the pale. I cannot believe the gall of you.”
Austin tried to speak up, tried to say he was a friend of Liam’s and not some deranged fan here to go through her garbage or make a doll out of her (beautiful) hair, but she wouldn’t let him get a word in edgewise. With every passing sentence her voice got higher and more urgent and more fucking terrifying.
“I don’t know how you got this address, and I don’t want to know. But I want you to turn around right now and walk away, and never come back here again. If you do that now, I’ll assume this is an honest mistake by a socially stunted young man and refrain from calling the police on you and having you arrested as a sexual predator. In the meantime, I’m calling building security the moment I hang up here, so I suggest you get moving if you want a head start.”
Click.
Austin ran. So much for ambushing the guy at home. He definitely wouldn’t be able to show his face at Liam’s condo again, not if there was the remotest chance that he’d wind up with Mistress Titania on the other end of the buzzer again.
It was only when he reached Davie Street again that he realized it: the roommate Liam had mentioned yesterday. The one who wasn’t eating Austin’s untouched sushi. Was Mistress Titania.
Mistress Titania and Liam were not only costars in porn, they were roommates.
Austin wasn’t giving up. He couldn’t. Too much was riding on this, and he’d gone too far now to go back.
Sadly, calling Liam (from store phone or cellular) or showing up at his house were no longer options. And he had to assume any email he sent would be deleted unread. He’d exhausted all the information available to him through Liam’s customer information, and it seemed like all that was left for him was to hope Liam would show up to return his DVD during Austin’s Friday shift.
Which still left the problem that sitting around passively for the next two days and waiting for the guy to come in did absolutely nothing to prove how much Austin wanted him. It. Fuck.
Not that he could make any more grand gestures so long as both Beverly and Sandra were in the store, like they were right now, holed up in the so-called “office,” either talking business or scissoring or maybe both.
Beverly!
It hit him. The customer file wasn’t the only contact information Austin had on Liam. There was also his business card, the one Austin had given to Beverly so they could arrange his appearance at the store. Beverly probably still had the card on file in the office somewhere. All Austin had to do was . . . ask for it? Excuse me, Miss Beverly, I was wondering if I could borrow Liam Williams’s business card from you so I can continue stalking him now that his apartment is no-go and he’s screening my calls?
Yeah, that would sure as hell go over well.
He needed a convincing excuse, or he needed to wait for the pair of them to leave and then sneak into the office after they’d gone. That was, if they didn’t lock the office door.
Shit. He needed a convincing excuse.
Folding his hands behind his head, he leaned back in the chair, spinning it in little semicircles on its wheels as he pondered. And then caught sight of the signed poster on the wall behind the counter, the one with Liam’s huge, curved dick. He hopped to his feet and found himself at the office door before the excuse had fully formed in his mind. He held himself back from knocking at the last minute, and good thing too, because he could hear Sandra’s heated voice through the door, and no way was he getting in front of her when she was on the warpath, hell no.
“—never going to get me to say I’m happy carrying it,” Sandra was saying, and whatever Beverly replied with was too soft to make out through the door. “Just because they sign the contract and the director cuts them a cheque doesn’t magically make the industry exploitation free. Giving consent doesn’t magically make it all ethical. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the company can prove they’ve consented, but who knows what’s going on in their lives? Would they consent if they didn’t have crippling medical debt? Would they consent if they hadn’t lost their house in the real estate crash? Would they consent if they didn’t have a history of being victims of sexual abuse and now they have low self-esteem and are searching for approval and validation in all the long places?”
A pause while Beverly talked, her voice nothing but a musical murmur to Austin’s ears. Sandra, for all her stubbornness, never interrupted. Didn’t cut Beverly off. And when she spoke again, she didn’t raise her voice.
“People do sex work for all sorts of reasons. I get it. I believe it. But that doesn’t mean some reasons aren’t healthier than others. What if she consented, but for all the wrong reasons, and once she’s in a better place she feels differently about it? Porn is forever. You can’t take it back. I can’t be a part of that, and I don’t like that you’re a part of it either.”
Austin’s heart fell into his stomach. Wrong reasons. Porn is forever. Holy shit, he was making a colossal mistake.
The door opened from the inside, and suddenly Beverly’s voice came to him loud and clear. “Well, like it or not, you’re going to have to learn to live with it if you want this to work between us, because this is a part of my life and you knew it was a part of my life from the start, and yes, I’m willing to compromise, but only if you meet me partway.”
Austin should really back away from the door, but if they noticed him running off or skulking away, they’d know he’d been eavesdropping. Better to just stand here. Also, he was kind of . . . compelled to stay and listen. Like a soap opera.
“That’s the last word on it, then?” Sandra asked, her voice vibrating with some emotion.
“That’s the last word,” Beverly replied, in a tone that said she meant it. “Final answer. Take it or leave it.”
A pause. “Take it. I’ll take it, Beverly.” Sandra sounded like she was on the verge of tears now. “I’ll take it, I’ll take it, I’ll take it. For the rest of my life.”
“S-Sandy!” Beverly exclaimed. “Is that—”
“Yes. It’s a pink sapphire. Certified ethical, of course.”
“I didn’t mean the stone, Sandy. I meant is that—” Sh
e lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “—an engagement ring?”
Sandra must have nodded, because one second Beverly was quiet, and the next, she was screaming, like a teenage girl at a concert for insert-boy-band-here.
That was also the exact moment she backed through the office door and right into Austin, and before he could stop himself, it popped out: “Can I get Liam’s business card from you? I need his production studio address to pick up some postcards he said he’d sign for us.”
Beverly was still overcome with emotion, staring at the big rock on her hand with wet eyes. She flapped a hand dismissively—and distractedly—in Austin’s direction. “Of course, of course, go ahead, there. It’s on the bulletin board.”
Dumbfounded, almost in a trance, Austin wandered into the office and reached for the card while everything that had just happened, everything, everything Sandra and Beverly had said between them, every word, spun through his head in a dizzying blur.
He tugged the card right out from under the thumbtack. Liam’s business address was in his hands. In his hands, and yet Austin had no idea what he was going to do with it.
“You can go do that now, actually,” Beverly said. “Sandra and I can watch the store for a couple hours. Actually, we can stay here for the rest of the night, let you duck out early, and you can bring those postcards by whenever.”
Austin’s stomach twisted and flipped. He looked to Sandra, and she smiled.
Was doing porn in order to have gay sex without it making you gay one of Sandra’s “wrong reasons” to do porn? Austin wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like the woman had listed the reasons for doing porn that she considered “right,” if there even were any in her eyes. If she wasn’t so fucking terrifying, maybe he could have asked her, but as it was, he couldn’t imagine any scenario where he could sit her down and spill his guts without her stringing him up by them. God, he wished there was someone he could talk to about this. He was sick of trying to figure out this shit on his own. He was pretty sure that by now he was on a one-way train to stomach ulcers and happy pills. He was a hockey player, damn it. He wasn’t fucking built to do this much thinking. Split-second decisions, that was what Austin was good at.
Straight Shooter (Rear Entrance Video, #3) Page 11
