“We leave at eight tomorrow morning,” James said, wrapping up the impromptu meet. “Don’t be late.”
When the group dispelled, Tango slid onto a bar stool and folded his arms over the bar. He didn’t want to drink. He didn’t really know what he wanted. He felt the old restless buzzing inside him that had become such a part of his life with Miss Carla. He hadn’t thought it would catch up to him here, not after he’d spent the last two years shaking off the horrors of the sex club, settling in with his aunt, prospecting and then joining this club, finding his own place within the brotherhood.
Maybe he’d been too busy to let this sensation catch up to him. Maybe now that he was finally stable, now that he had school, and work, and his bike, and more sex than any boy his age should have been exposed to…maybe the peace couldn’t last. He felt it slinking up behind him, its hot breath against his neck: the craving.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. He’d thought he’d outrun it. That it was something he could leave behind. But his addiction lived in the marrow of his bones. He craved the bite of the needle. And if he was honest…sometimes…sometimes he craved the rough touch of a man, someone impersonal and brutal.
“Dude,” Aidan said, startling him, sliding onto the neighboring stool. “Okay, for real now. What’s up?”
Tango shrugged and refused to make eye contact, afraid Aidan would see the craving in his gaze. “Just feeling kinda out of it lately, I guess.”
“You getting sick? Shit, you don’t think Misty…”
Tango had to crack a grin. “You always wear a rubber.”
“Yeah. Shit, I do.” Aidan sighed and scrubbed at the back of his neck. How easily his panic came and went, sliding over him in transient little waves that really never touched him. “Damn, don’t scare me like that,” he said with a laugh, bumping his shoulder into Tango’s.
Aidan stretched across the bar and plucked a bottle of Jack from the stash on the counter beyond, twirled it idly in his hands, like he was trying to decide if he wanted a slug of it. Yesterday, he’d taken a mighty sip and promptly coughed it all back out, dribbling it down his white t-shirt until their brothers were rolling with laughter, and the groupies were trying to hide little titters behind their hands.
He set the bottle back. “You wanna come to dinner tonight? Mags said she was frying chicken.” He waggled his eyebrows, and Tango wanted to smile, because the guy always looked like an idiot when he did that.
“Nah, I should get back. Anne’s expecting me,” he said of his aunt. He didn’t know if she really was. She’d mentioned something about going to the grocery store earlier. She always said she liked cooking for him, but she felt so needlessly guilty about what had happened to him she still had trouble not crying across the dinner table from him. He ate a lot of dinners with the Teagues, where he could get lost in Maggie’s happy conversation, Ava’s complaining about school, Aidan’s dumb jokes and Ghost’s stern but obvious affection for them all.
The craving didn’t much want fried chicken and happy family times tonight, though.
“You sure?” Aidan asked, doubtful.
“Yeah. Thanks though.”
“Sure. Always.”
The sun rode low above the tree line when he walked out to his bike. It was a ’91 Superglide that had seen much, much better days. But the engine thrummed happily when he cranked it, and he and Aidan had mapped out plans for new pipes, and paint, and maybe a little custom work on the tank – though Ghost had given them a withering look about that. Ghost liked black on black on black, without exception.
The craving eased as he pulled out of the Dartmoor lot and headed for home. The rumble of the engine beneath him, and the slap of the wind in his face, the drowning rush of passing traffic – he’d never imagined this. That he would go to school, have friends, have brothers, have sex that didn’t involve money, have his own bike, and his own cut, and a few tattoos that seemed to keep multiplying. He had earrings now, too, just one in each ear, but he was thinking of adding more.
Because he could do that now – he could think. Make decisions. He was his own man.
Why the hell would he let heroin and a strange sex drive jeopardize any of that? He was a coward, an idiot, or both.
Tango coasted up to a red light and heard another bike pull up alongside him, felt its rumble through his own bike. Mercy halted next to him, big, tattooed arms bare under his cut, looking like the scariest thing on two wheels.
“Hey,” he shouted, “you wanna grab a drink?”
Tango chuckled. The big monster’s perpetual good mood was infectious. “Dude, I’m underage!”
“Ah, shit! I forgot!” Mercy reached to tuck a stray lock of hair up beneath his helmet, adjusted his glasses. “I gotta get to Ghost’s anyway.”
Because Tango knew for a fact that a lot of his protection detail involved helping Ava with school art projects. There was something about the sight of the big Cajun bent over a table with a delighted eight-year-old that warmed even the coldest of hearts.
Tango nodded. The light changed. “See you tomorrow!”
“Yeah!”
Mercy turned left and Tango went straight. He wondered, not for the first time, what his brothers would think of him if they knew the truth of his past. Aidan and Ghost knew, and they hadn’t cared; they’d saved him. But the rest? Even someone as warm-hearted as Mercy? He didn’t want to test their acceptance, not anytime soon.
At the next light, he checked his phone and saw a text from Aunt Anne: grab some bread on your way home pls.
Ok. He’d already passed Leroy’s, so he pulled into the drug store up ahead and found a spot in the front for his bike, thankful he had his backpack and wouldn’t have to balance groceries in front of him on the tank – he could still remember the sight of all those cracked eggs on the pavement, and the shout of laughter from the convertible in the next lane. Assholes.
“Hi, how are you?” a disinterested teenage clerk called when he entered.
“Good,” Tango said, shyly, and headed for the small grocery section in the store, wending his way through displays of flip-flops, sunscreen, and big wire cages of beach balls. He grabbed a loaf of bread, then, on impulse, stretched up on his toes to reach for a box of chocolate mini doughnuts on the top shelf.
And froze.
In the big round mirror above him, he spotted three men in black t-shirts coming up behind him. Three large men. Not Mercy-size, but big enough.
Tango dropped and whirled, bread crushed to his chest. The man closest to him…was Max. Max, who’d cuffed him every time he took too long in the bathroom. Who’d put his cock in Tango’s mouth when he was still just Kev. And he had a knife in his hand.
“Don’t make a sound,” he said.
And Tango didn’t.
~*~
“Don’t call me that,” he seethed, straining against the duct tape that bound his hands together at the small of his back. As expected, it didn’t give an inch.
Behind the desk, Miss Carla made a show of looking surprised. She pressed a hand to her chest, where a diamond pendant hung above the scoop neckline of her dress. How many lap dances and backroom visits had she needed to pay for that diamond? “Well. You’re just full of piss and vinegar these days, ain’t ya? Alright, sweetness.” She gave him a wicked smile. “What do you want me to call you? What do your little biker friends call you, huh?”
He ground his teeth, realizing belatedly that he didn’t want her to know his club name. That was for him; something connected to his new life and his brothers, and she didn’t deserve to know it.
When he didn’t answer, she said, “Just plain ol’ Kev, then? Hmm. Not real sexy there, Loverboy.”
He grunted in annoyance.
“How about this? How about I call you whatever I damn well please? Sound good?”
He pressed his lips together and didn’t answer.
“Good,” Carla purred, turning back to her computer. “Let’s see here…hmm. You’ve been a busy boy since we talked to
each other last. A B student at Knoxville High. Known patched member of the Lean Dogs MC – that puts you on a list with the PD, you know. They’ve got a list of all members and known associates.” A quick, delighted smile. “You’ve got a nice little room with your aunt. And that family you stay with all the time. The Teagues. Lots of sleepovers there.”
“How do you know all that?”
Miss Carla raised her eyes somewhere above his head and nodded.
Max’s slap caught him in the back of the head, fast and hard.
“I hired a detective to find you,” Miss Carla said.
“Why?”
This time, the slap sent him sliding out of the chair to his knees, colored spots dancing in front of his eyes.
“Because you’re my favorite,” he heard her say, before he blacked out.
~*~
He had no idea where this new club was located; he’d worn a hood in the van on the way over, after Max had bound his hands and kicked him in the ribs so hard he’d thought he’d puke inside the hood. The office had looked much the same, with a desk, and chairs, and a computer. And when Tango came to, he found himself on a cot in a shadowy, cold room with exposed floor joists in the ceiling overhead.
Panic seized his lungs and he lurched upright, head spinning, stomach grabbing, thinking he was back in the basement of Miss Carla’s ugly patchwork house.
It wasn’t the same basement, though. A different one. More cots like the one he was on marched across the concrete floor in an orderly line. But there were also a few couches and chairs, an open door through which he could see a large bathroom with several locker room-style showers and sinks. He didn’t spot any iron bars, only a stairwell leading upward, and he had no doubt the door at the top was triple-padlocked against escape.
“Fuck,” he muttered to himself. “Just fuck.”
Several thin, pretty boys sat cross-legged on the rug in the center of the room, playing some sort of card game. They all turned to look over their shoulders when they heard his voice, and Tango caught a flash of bright coppery hair.
Ian stood up slowly, as slender and straight-backed and beautiful as a fairytale creature, expression unreadable, blue-green eyes luminous in the dim basement light.
Oh, Ian. He was alive, and whole, and safe, and he hadn’t died in the fire Ghost had set to the old club.
Tango swallowed a sudden lump in his throat, unable to speak.
Ian’s façade slipped, a brief flicker of deep, complex emotion, but he schooled his features and came to sit on the end of Tango’s cot.
Tango wanted to say so many things, beginning with sorry, ending with some sort of declaration of love.
Ian leaned forward, a deliberate reach, and laid his hand on Tango’s knee, stared down at the place where they were connected. His eyelashes danced as he blinked. “They found you,” he said in a quiet, broken voice.
“Yeah. They did.”
~*~
“Where have you been? It’s been two years.”
One of the goons had brought down dinner, a bland meal had been consumed by all, evening ablutions were completed, and the lights were cut off. All the cots were full but two, because Ian and Tango lay stretched out together on the couch, arms and legs tangled together, Ian breathing unevenly against Tango’s throat.
Tango raked his fingers through Ian’s long, slick hair. “A boy found me, after I got away from the client. A nice boy. My friend.” He didn’t say best friend because he didn’t figure Ian was ready to hear something like that yet. “I stayed with them for a while, and then they helped me find my aunt. I’m living with her now.”
Or, well, he had been. But he had a sick feeling he was living in this basement from now on.
“Really?” Ian asked, incredulous. “They just…they let you go home with them? They took care of you?”
“They’re good people.”
Ian made a disagreeing sound.
“They are, I promise. They helped me buy clothes, got me enrolled at school. Ghost gave me a job, let me patch into the club.”
Ian pushed at his chest, propping up on an elbow and giving him a look mostly obscured by shadow. His voice came out mocking. “Ghost? Patch? Club? What the hell are you talking about?”
Tango sighed and traced his thumb down Ian’s smooth cheek. “It’s a biker club.”
“Are you serious?”
He ignored Ian’s mocking laugh and continued: “The Lean Dogs. Ghost is the vice president, and he’s also the one who took me in. He doesn’t…Ian, he doesn’t care what I used to do. He let me into the club anyway. They’re my brothers. They say so. They…” He trailed off as his chest tightened. It was still amazingly painful, the idea that such regular, masculine men called him brother.
“Oh, so that’s what you wanted.” Ian’s teeth flashed white as his lip skinned back off of them. “Brothers? What am I then?”
Taken aback, Tango pressed his head behind him into the couch cushion, trying to read Ian’s expression through the dark. “I thought…I thought you’d be happy for me.”
Ian snorted.
“Ian…I got to be real for a little bit.”
“Real?” Ian surged forward, their chests pressing together, their noses bumping. “What are we, then?” he hissed. “Pretend?”
“No. No, that’s not what I–”
“Do you let them fuck you? Your brothers?” He said the word like it tasted foul. “Did they shove your face into the mattress and enjoy you?”
“What? No!” Tango squirmed beneath Ian’s arm where it was clamped tight around his waist.
“Do they know what you taste like? Did you share with them?”
“No, dude,” he said, and definitely saw Ian’s brows jump over his use of the moniker. “It isn’t like that. We fuck around with women.” He wanted to take it back the moment he said it.
Ian’s hand landed at the base of his throat. Not squeezing, just resting there. “You’ve been with a woman?”
Tango swallowed, hard, Adam’s apple jumping against Ian’s palm. “Yeah. A few.”
Ian’s grip slid down his chest, pressed over his heart, some of the anger bleeding out of his voice. “What was it like?”
~*~
Ian wasn’t okay. Tango knew on the couch, when the guy fell asleep with his face pressed to Tango’s chest, that Ian was upset, overcome with emotion after their sudden reunion. But he hadn’t realized then – only now – that Ian was viciously jealous, seconds away from an emotional eruption at all times. He could see it in the dark flash of Ian’s eyes every morning, in the way his hand trembled as he brushed his hair back. And Tango had no idea how to handle it.
They didn’t let him dance, not at first. He was confined to the basement, left behind when the heavy-shouldered security thugs came to round them up each evening. Tango didn’t spot Big John, and hoped the man had died in the fire Ghost and the Dogs had set in the old club.
Then they started denying him food. For three days, he wasn’t brought a meal. The security guard who brought breakfast and dinner – already sparse offerings of boiled chicken, canned tuna, and a few wilted veggies – told Tango that, “She says you can eat when you learn how to behave.” Tango knew what that meant, but he’d be damned before he grew as submissive and weak as he’d been before.
Ian snuck him a handful of shredded chicken one night, and they both earned a thrashing with a guard’s belt for it. Sitting on his raw backside, Tango sucked the inside of his cheek and let the hunger gnaw at him. He sipped bottled water and imagined it filling his gut, pretended it could nourish him.
He passed out on the fourth day.
He came to in Miss Carla’s office, one of the goons holding him upright in the chair across from her desk, the scent of cooked meat sharp in his nose.
“Ah, there he is,” Miss Carla’s voice floated to him through the haze. “You awake, Loverboy?”
He mumbled something that didn’t sound like words, blurry eyes latching onto the plate of grilled ch
icken and vegetables in front of him.
“Hungry?” she asked innocently. “Dennis, help Kev with his plate, please.”
The goon leaned forward and picked up the steaming, fragrant plate, held it just beneath Tango’s nose. A fork and knife were balanced on the edge of the plate; someone had already draped a napkin in his lap.
“Go ahead, sweet pea,” Miss Carla said. “Eat up.”
His hands shook and he almost dropped the silverware when he picked it up. But he managed to stab the chicken breast and saw off a chunk. Bring it, quavering, to his lips.
Dennis hit him in the back of his head. The silverware flew from his grip. The plate jerked in Dennis’s other hand, veggies tumbling down to the floor. His already dizzy head throbbed from the blow, his vision doubling and swimming.
“Hm, hm, hm,” Miss Carla tsked. “What’ve you done to deserve dinner, hm? Why do you deserve to eat?”
A hard shudder moved through him, and then another. The hunger shakes, almost as violent as the detox tremors that had wracked him two years ago, when he was coming down off the heroin. “I…” What could he say?
He’d spent two years finding the strong voice that dwelled in his chest, so silent for so long, honing it and nurturing it. Until he could almost pass for human, almost pass for a man.
But that voice couldn’t help him here. That voice hadn’t been able to break the locks on the door, or overpower his guards, or even earn him a goddamn meal. Miss Carla held all the cards, the way she always had, and he was too hungry to fight her now.
“Please,” he said, and felt the traitorous burn of tears in his eyes.
She flashed a smug smile. “Please what?”
“Please.” He had to swallow down a choking a lump in his throat, breath stalling out in his lungs. He hated this. Hated her. And even as he thought that, the weakness overcame him and he slid down deeper into his chair, whimpering. “Please, I wanna eat.”
Loverboy (Dartmoor Book 5) Page 30
