“Hmm,” he said, finally pulling something off the rack – a pair of pants – and holding them up to Kev, one eye closed. “Yes.” He nodded. “These will do.” He reached and caught Kev’s hand in his own. His fingers were long, smooth, and warm. “This way, love.”
There were a half dozen clothes racks, and behind them, a large three-way mirror, flanked by lamps that cast warm, buttery puddles of light across the floor. Two waifish boys stood studying their reflections, primping and pouting at themselves, reaching to adjust an eyelash, a smudge of clear lip gloss.
The scene hit Kev somewhere low in his belly. A place that made him warm and short of breath. How strange it should have seemed, to see boys not much older than him at the mirror this way, like ladies. But there was an undeniable masculine grace to their movements; there was no mistaking their gender. Only a forbidden, subtle eroticism about the tableau.
“Give us a minute?” Ian asked, and the boys withdrew.
One of them gave Kev a long look as they passed, but said nothing.
“Alright, my little love,” Ian said when they were alone, urging Kev up to the mirror with a hand on his shoulder. “Take everything off, and get into these.”
He’d long since stopped being modest about undressing in front of others; there was no privacy amongst the boys in the basement. He shimmied out of his threadbare clothes and left them folded neatly over against the wall. The pants Ian had picked out were some fake approximation of leather, tight, and hard to slide his legs inside. He wriggled, and struggled, and finally got them in place and fastened. They were cut much lower than his jeans, sitting just beneath his hip bones.
What the hell was going on?
When he lifted his head to search for Ian, Kev saw that he’d carried over a stool and a little tray loaded with colored wells, brushes, and pencils. Like an art kit, but the smell told him it was makeup; he thought of the scent of powder on Miss Carla’s cheek when she tapped her face and told him to give her a kiss, and he had to swallow sudden nausea.
Ian looked at him with gentle eyes, and patted the stool. “Come here, baby. I promise it won’t hurt.”
Once upon a time, Kev might have dug in his heels and refused. But he was a good little loverboy these days, and he always did as he was told.
He settled on the stool and Ian crept in close, kneeling between his open legs, close enough for Kev to see the vivid striations of his irises, to smell the light, almost floral scent he’d dabbed onto his skin.
Ian took Kev’s chin in one hand, fingertips light against his jaw, and eased his head first to one side, then the other, examining his features. “A light touch, I think. Bring out your eyes. They’re beautiful.” He gave Kev a fleeting smile, then let go of him and reached for a brush on the tray. “Close your eyes.”
He did. The brush touched his eyelid, a faint kiss of pressure, fleeting, like butterfly wings. And in that moment, with his eyes shut, with the warmth of Ian so close to him, he allowed the reality of the moment to fall away. He let himself pretend that this small show of kindness was but one of many, that he was loved, that there was someone in his life who would look out for him, and treat him tenderly. Tenderness – some nights, staring at the ceiling rafters above him, he thought he might kill for a little tenderness.
“All done,” Ian said, and his voice was so close, Kev swore he could feel it against his face.
He opened his eyes, and yes, there was Ian, close enough to…
To what? What was it he wanted to do?
Ian touched his thumb to the corner of Kev’s mouth, and he smiled, soft and slow. “Perfect.”
Kev took a breath that shivered in his lungs. “Ian,” he said, quietly, just a whisper, “what am I supposed to do?”
“Oh, love.” Ian’s expression grew heavy; he stroked Kev’s hair. “In just a few minutes, Carla will come for you, and she’ll walk with you out into the club, and she’s going to introduce you to some gentlemen.” His hand slid down Kev’s neck, out to his shoulder. “They’re going to exclaim over you, and they’re going to want you to sit in their laps, and sip their drinks.” His face spasmed, almost crumpled, then smoothed again, that mask of tender sadness. His hand slid down Kev’s arm, cupped the inward curve of his waist. “And then one of them, or maybe even two,” he continued, “will take you into one of the back rooms. And there will be a bed without pillows, and soft pink lights along the walls. And they’re going to touch you.”
At this, his hand moved to Kev’s thigh, and then shifted inward, and he palmed the soft shape of Kev’s cock through the leather pants.
Kev huffed out a startled breath.
“They’ll touch you here, and…other places. They’ll tell you to do things, and they’ll expect you to mind them.”
Kev’s eyes pricked with tears, even as he felt a not-uncomfortable tightness in his pants. A sharp, tingling, acute awareness of his sex he hadn’t felt before.
Ian continued to touch him, massaging him with the heel of his hand. “Listen to them, do what they say, and they won’t hurt you.”
Kev blinked hard.
“Kev, Kevin, listen to me.” Ian leaned close, hand cupped almost protectively over his cock. “You must listen to them. You have to be a good boy, okay? When Carla takes you out, I want you to look at the stage. I’ll be up there – look at me. I want you to look at me. I’ve been where you are, and I got through it, okay? Just like you’re going to get through it. Just remember, no matter how terrible it is, it only lasts a little while.”
~*~
The club was called The Cuckoo’s Nest, and Kev could have never conceived of such a place, in his world of the basement and Miss Carla’s dusty bedroom. It was a marvel: black walls and carpet, and low, multi-colored lights that cast all the chairs and couches in an otherworldly glow. The room seemed cavernous, the bar glittering and jewel-toned against one long wall, the stages lit from beneath in bright flares of pale blue and pink. Men lounged on the furniture, the smell of cigarette and cigar smoke heavy on the air.
The boys from backstage, in pants like Kev’s, some of them in shorts, one of them with a sequined tank top, danced on two of the three circular stages, limbs fluid, hips gyrating in a way that Kev had never imagined, and couldn’t seem to look away from.
His eyes were snatched, though, almost against their will, by a thin beam of bright blue light that sprouted up from the Lucite floor of the very center stage, right in front of him, a solid bar of light that went all the way up to the ceiling, hugging the silver pole mounted there, so the metal seemed pure energy.
Anticipation moved through the crowd; conversations skittered and broke off. The music cut out, and then started again, something sinuous and exotic, the low baseline a thump through the floor that tickled at the base of Kev’s throat.
A figure materialized from the shadows, in the center of the main stage. A spot of bone-white skin, striking through the blue. A foot, an ankle, a long slender leg. Slender hips and a narrow ribcage, etched with deep shadows. Shoulders, lean arms. And a face carved from glass, long sleek auburn hair.
Ian wore nothing but a pair of boxer-briefs made from some unknown shimmery fabric, and a white feather boa draped across his shoulders. In the blue light, his makeup lent his face an ethereal glow, his eyes huge and luminous, lips dark, as though bloodied.
He gripped the pole with one hand, hooked his lower leg around it, and began a slow, artistic sweep across the stage, pivoting around the pole, seeming to float, his thin body flashing lean planes of muscle, and the hard curves of bone. At once delicate, beautiful, and powerful, the contrast of the masculine and the feminine working in breathtaking harmony.
Kev couldn’t look away.
And then the man on whose lap he was sitting breathed in his ear. “Gets ya all hot and bothered, don’t it?” he asked with a wheezing, smoke-flavored laugh. His fat hand dropped down into Kev’s lap. “Let’s find us a quiet spot, sweetheart.”
~*~
He couldn’t
stop shivering. Kev cupped his pointed elbows in his hands and hugged himself hard, trying to ease the tremors that wracked him. But it was no use – the chill had nothing to do with the temperature; it was rooted somewhere inside him, somewhere small, broken, and screaming, that smelled like fear sweat and the fluid the fat man had left to leak from his small, violated body.
He staggered into the changing area, legs weak, stomach churning, teeth chattering. What did he do now? Where did he go? Was Carla pleased?
He wished he was dead. He wanted to lie down on the floor, close his eyes, and cease to exist.
In the rush of boys moving back and forth, trailing boas, jackets, and sharp-smelling cologne, one cut through the crush and knelt down in front of Kev.
Ian.
He reached to smooth his hair back, fine-featured face creased with worry. “Oh darling,” he murmured. “It was terrible, wasn’t it?”
Kev bit his lip, nodded, and couldn’t speak for fear of bursting into noisy, wet tears.
“I know, I know.” Ian looped his long, dancer’s arms around Kev and pulled him into a tender hug. “I’m so sorry, my love. The first night is always the worst.”
In that moment, the promise of more nights, of more fat men, and deeper violations was crowded into insignificance by the simple kindness of Ian’s arms, and the steady strong beating of his heart against Kev’s face.
~*~
Sitting on his sofa, chain-smoking, one of Ava’s peanut butter chocolate chip cookies untouched in his free hand, he recalled the exact terror of his first night at The Nest. And the smell of the scent dabbed along Ian’s throat. The way the unnatural light had hit his eyes. The weight and shape of his hands against his painfully innocent skin.
“I fell in love with him that first night,” he said, exhaling smoke. “I just didn’t know it then.”
Over on the couch, Mercy watched him with a strained expression, gaze heavy with sympathy, and something like doubt.
Tango rolled the hand with the cookie, so his wrist was exposed, the two white scars glimmering in the sun. “I would have done this a long time ago, if it wasn’t for Ian.”
Mercy took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “Kev. I want you to call that doctor Ghost told you about.”
The scars flared and dimmed as he rotated his arm, lighting strikes across his skin. “Yeah. I think maybe that’s a good idea.”
Twenty
She only had an hour for lunch, Whitney reminded herself, and took another bite of her sandwich. Peanut butter and raspberry preserves on whole wheat from the bakery below the apartment. Kev’s apartment. Her temporary apartment.
She couldn’t drag her thoughts away from the session he’d been scheduled to have that morning. She kept wondering if last night had been a help to him; if the simmering heat of post-coital peace had sustained him through their few stolen hours of sleep, the way it had for her. Even now she felt heavy-limbed, languid, unworried by the dirty look her supervisor had given her earlier.
She took another bite and checked her phone where it rested on the table at her elbow. No new messages. One-ten. Fifteen minutes left of her lunch break.
The childish simplicity of her PB&J and Coke comforted her in the way all things comforted in the wake of sex and good sleep.
Please let it have helped him, she thought, and then her phone rang.
She nearly dropped it in her haste to answer; the screen told her it was Kev, so she greeted him with a warm, somewhat-lovestruck, “Hi.”
The reciprocated warmth in his tone was unmistakable. “Hi, baby.”
A beat of silence passed, and it wasn’t awkward, and didn’t beg to be filled. A quiet acknowledgement that things had been forever changed between them, and that it had been a good change. She felt the goodness glowing with great certainty deep beneath her skin; imagined she saw it pulsing through the veins on the white inside of her wrist.
“How was your session?” she asked at last.
“It was good. Really good. That’s why I called you. There’s something I think I have to do.”
Her pulse quickened. “Okay.”
“I got us another invitation to dinner. Emmie said it’d be great if you could bring dessert.”
~*~
He’d heard it said before, but he hadn’t believed it until now: sometimes making a firm decision about what to do next was as emotionally beneficial as taking physical action. The answer had come to him in the living room, while he contemplated the scars of his self-loathing, and Mercy watched him with a fascinated sort of pity and terror over what he might do.
“I think you were right at first,” he’d said. “I do think I have to get all the poison out. But I think I need to do something more, too. I think I need to make things better.” For himself, for Whitney, and for Ian.
After Mercy left, he spent fifteen minutes scratching out feverish notes on scrap paper, listing the things he wanted to accomplish. This was it, he knew; this was the path to getting past it all.
He’d made a phone call to Walsh, and another to Emmie, and then he went to work. He threw himself back into the swing of the shop, smoking cigs when his hands shook, ribbing Carter back when the young member tried to crack a few hesitant jokes.
He texted the Briar Hall address to Whitney and headed off to meet her there at ten after five, night falling with relentless force, the sky dark and star-studded.
The farm driveway was illuminated by real gas lamps, flickering in the dusk; the barn windows glowed with warm light, the hulking building somehow cozy in its nest of landscaping shrubs and established trees. The sand of the arenas glowed like the surface of the moon.
He parked his bike up at the house, behind Emmie’s truck, and beside Whitney’s car. She was standing by her driver door, covered cake plate in her arms. She couldn’t wave, but she smiled at him; he caught a glimpse of it in his headlamp before he switched it off.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
An effervescence like champagne tumbled between them in the cold evening, and for the first time Tango didn’t hesitate to do what he wanted. He swung off the bike and dumped his helmet in one fluid motion; caught Whitney around the waist with one arm and drew her in for a fast, warm kiss. Even brief contact with her lips sent sparks darting along his nerve endings. The rabid, animal part of his brain urged him to crack her mouth open and dive inside with his tongue, put his hands under her clothes, push her back against her car and –
He pulled back and clamped his lips together so she wouldn’t hear the desperate sound climbing up the back of his throat.
Whitney’s eyes sparkled in the darkness, gathering stray flecks of light like bright magnets. “This place,” she breathed with a little laugh, “is incredible.”
Tango lifted his head and cast a glance across the shadowy driveway, the looming stone house, the view of the illuminated barn down the hill, and the sprawling tapestry of pastures beyond. He’d been stuck in his head for so long, he wasn’t sure he’d ever stood back and taken a proper look at the farm, really absorbed how stunning it was.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “it is.”
“So this is where Walsh lives.”
Tango wasn’t sure if they’d ever met, and he knew Emmie hadn’t been at dinner last night. “Yeah.” He didn’t say “you’ll like him,” because he had no idea if she would. It seemed like a good possibility, because Whitney was the sort of person who liked people. But Walsh was quiet, and serious, and women sometimes didn’t take to him straight off.
“Is he rich?” Whitney asked in a stage whisper.
“Not with money, no.” He put his arm around her waist and steered her up the front walk. “The club bought this place. And Emmie used to be the barn manager. Still is, I guess, she just lives in the big house now.”
Whitney chuckled. “Good for her.”
“Right?”
Shane answered the door when they rang the bell, in jeans and a UT sweatshirt.
“Feeling local?” T
ango asked him.
Shane shrugged. “It’s not so bad, your Tennessee.”
No. He guessed it wasn’t.
~*~
Five-twenty. Ian needed to make three phone calls: one to New York, one to LA, one to El Paso, Texas. Three delicate clients who wanted to speak to him personally, hear him smooth their feathers and assure them they were important to his business. Another endless day in the life of a mogul who dabbled in all things illegal.
Around him, his office loomed silent and beautiful, full of furniture and knick-knacks he’d paid too much for, but which held no emotional significance for him. He’d wanted to build an empire – and he had; a giant fuck-you to the world that had so royally fucked him.
He sat up and reached for the decanter on the corner of his desk. Poured himself a finger of Scotch.
An empire, and what did he have to show for it? Manipulating the world brought only an empty sort of satisfaction.
A soft knock sounded at the door and then it eased open. Alec poked his head through, hair perfectly styled, glasses sitting square on his nose, the picture of professionalism.
“Sir? I have New York on the line for you.”
“Tell them I’ll call them back tomorrow.”
Alec’s brows jumped above the rims of his glasses. He pushed the door a little wider and said, “Sir?”
“Go tell them. And then come back.”
Alec withdrew, wide-eyed and confused.
Ian swallowed the Scotch down, one long burn in his throat.
Loverboy (Dartmoor Book 5) Page 22
