“That’s an awful big want, pretty boy. I dunno if I can make that happen for you, not after you’ve been so bad.”
“Please,” he said again, as his stomach folded over itself. He felt like he needed to throw up, but his gut was empty. He closed his eyes, tears pushing at his lids. “I’ll be good.”
“Oh, you will?” she purred with mock-surprise. “And how will you be good? What will you do for me?”
There was only one answer she wanted, and he gave it: “I’ll dance.”
~*~
The light beamed down from the ceiling, a soft blue. Always blue, his color, with his blonde hair and pale skin. Blue shorts. Deep blue mascara defining his lashes, blue veins stark beneath the thin white skin of his wrists and ankles. He was fragile-looking, and the clients loved it, their shouts and catcalls swirling around him as he took the pole in one hand and dipped backward, bending at the waist until his spine was a tidy arch.
The two years away didn’t matter; his body remembered the routine, dipping and spinning, and bending in all the ways men wanted to see. The singles in the waistband of his shorts rustled against his skin, greasy from being held. The music pounded, something electronic and rhythmic. Cigarette smoke curled through the haze of the lights.
This new club was much smaller than the old one, and it gave off the impression of a converted family restaurant, with booths on the walls, and round tables arranged around the hastily-constructed stages.
Tango lifted again, swinging one long leg around the pole, hugging it close to the sound of wolf whistles.
A week ago he was a Lean Dog. Part of a traveling phalanx of mounted warriors feared and respected by the city.
Now he was a bitch on a pole.
~*~
“Mm. Shit.” The customer’s hands passed up the delicate shape of Tango’s ribcage, fondling and pinching, sliding forward to cover his chest, tease at his nipples. The man looked like a high school athlete gone soft, his stomach doughy through the opened halves of his shirt, his dress slacks unfastened, erection pushing at the zipper. His face was red with excitement, sweat beading at his temples, dampening his hair. “What’s your name, pretty thing?”
Tango closed his eyes and swallowed, and hoped it looked like he was overcome by the man’s touch, rather than fighting nausea. He’d only had a few bites of dinner; he would have more if he behaved.
“Loverboy,” he said. “You can call me Loverboy.”
~*~
It was so easy to slip back into his old pattern. To be Loverboy again. So easy that he questioned if his time on the outside had ever happened. Maybe it had all been a dream.
~*~
Ian’s clinginess and jealousy were the only things that proved he’d been gone for a time. Maybe Ian had always behaved that way, and Tango hadn’t noticed before. Either way, it was a shock when Ian sidled up to Tango in the dark back hall one night and said, “Come with me. I’ve got a surprise for you.” His breath was hot in Tango’s ear, his smile wild and frantic, a white slice in the dark.
“We’re working.”
“This is work. Come on.” He tugged at Tango’s hand. “Carla knows about it. She wants us to work this one together; the client asked.”
“Ian…” he started, but was dragged down the hall.
Ian took him to the last room on the left, the largest one, the one with the surreal pink filters over the lights so the whole room looked like cotton candy. It was always a shock, that bubblegum light, and that was why it took Tango a moment to realize what he was looking at.
A woman.
There was a woman in the club, sitting on the bed, waiting for them.
“What?” Tango asked, too shocked to put together a coherent sentence.
Ian slid an arm around his waist and squeezed, leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Mrs. Scott wants to play with us. And her husband wants to watch.”
That was when Tango noticed the man sitting in a chair in the corner, a little pale-faced (or maybe that was the light), handsome, well-dressed, eyes flicking back and forth between the two boys and the woman on the bed.
Mrs. Scott lifted a manicured hand and gave them a little wave, her smile coquettish and excited.
Tango swallowed. His heart thumped wildly, nerves crackling through his limbs like static. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. In the back rooms, the boys were the ones being penetrated, the ones face-down on the mattresses with the pink sheets. Now he would have to be the one performing.
And Ian, too.
He glanced over at his friend, his lover, and saw the mingling fear and wonder in the other boy’s eyes. Ian wanted this, he realized. Tango had been with women, and now Ian wanted a turn. He wanted Tango to help him, show him how.
And the Scotts were paying clients, after all.
There was nothing to do but slide into his work-head and let knowledge and numbness take over.
“Watch me,” he whispered to Ian. “Do what I do.” And he ducked away from his arm and headed toward the client.
Mrs. Scott wore a dark minidress with a plunging neckline; Tango had been around Dartmoor long enough to recognize an expensive pair of fake breasts when he saw them, in this case mounding up above the tight weave of the dress’s bodice. The woman wore her pale hair long and loose, expertly twisted with a curling iron; her eyelids flashed black and heavy with shadow every time she blinked. She was beautiful, a very expensive version of a club groupie, and when he drew close, Tango could smell her perfume.
A woman like this had no business paying two boys to service her, not when she could have had any man of her choice for free. But some people, Tango had learned in his short life, just had to try everything once.
When he was close enough, she reached out and hooked two fingers in the waistband of his shorts, drew him in close between her spread legs. He could see that she wasn’t wearing panties.
“Hello, beautiful,” she purred. “Are you as good as they say you are?”
“Better.” He leaned in and kissed her. It wasn’t encouraged, but that meant it was up to the dancer’s discretion. Normally, Tango couldn’t stomach the idea, but he had no idea how to initiate anything with a woman without a kiss. And also because…he didn’t feel threatened right now. Didn’t have that usual hard lump of dread in his belly. He breathed in her perfume and tasted her lipstick, and his cock twitched in response.
He was a good kisser; he knew that objectively. When he drew back, the woman was panting a little. She licked at her lips and her eyes stayed pinned on his mouth.
“What about your friend?” she asked, voice huskier than before.
Tango glanced back at Ian over his shoulder, and saw his lover watching him with an obvious mix of lust and jealousy. Ian’s erection tented his shorts, but he held back and waited.
The realization hit Tango suddenly, and hard. He was the one in control in this situation. He would be the one to set the pace and give the orders. He’d never been in that position, and the headrush was blinding.
Mrs. Scott’s nails teased down his bare sternum and he pulled in a deep breath, willed himself to calm down and focus. “Ian, come here sweetheart.”
He’d never been the one to use a pet name before, that had always been Ian’s thing, but Ian came now, obedient and wide-eyed, and knelt down on the floor beside Tango, Mrs. Scott’s legs opening wider to accommodate both of them.
Tango passed a soothing hand down the back of Ian’s head, fingers playing through his hair, rubbing all the way down his back. “Kiss her,” he instructed, gently. “It’s okay, I’m right here.”
Ian leaned forward, as fluid and graceful as always, lashes dark against his cheeks, pulling in one last nervous breath. Mrs. Scott leaned to meet him, and the kiss was soft, and slow, and beautiful to watch.
He would make this so good for him, Tango decided. He would be slow, and thorough, and hold Ian’s hand if he had to, but he would show him the pleasure to be found in a woman’s arms. He would show Ian all the sweetness
they’d never been allowed save with each other. This was a gift, this client, a chance to prove to his friend that sex didn’t have to hurt.
Mrs. Scott’s hand slid into Tango’s hair, and then she turned from Ian and kissed Tango again, slipped her tongue into his mouth, nibbled at the fullness of his lower lip. Then back to Ian, this kiss deeper, messier, until Ian was leaning into it, his hand on the woman’s thigh. She covered his hand with her own and urged it higher, up beneath the skirt of her dress, all the way up until Ian broke the kiss with a startled gasp.
Tango knew what his friend was feeling, knew what the surprise and awe on Ian’s face felt like on his own.
“Hey,” Tango said, smoothing his hand up the woman’s other thigh. “Take the top of your dress down, okay?”
She grinned like that sounded like a great idea. She used both hands to reach behind her; the zipper made a soft sound and the front of the dress loosened. She pushed the straps down, pulled her arms through them, and wedged the bodice of the dress down beneath her naked breasts.
Her plastic surgeon was talented; her breasts thrust toward them, full and pale, defying gravity, her nipples already hard.
Tango snuck a glance at Ian and saw his friend goggle-eyed with surprise. He still had a tent pitched in the front of his shorts, though, so he definitely liked what he saw.
“Here.” Tango touched Ian’s arm to get his attention. “Like this.” With his other hand he cupped the woman’s right breast, testing its weight in his palm, passing his thumb across her pebbled nipple. The sensation of warm, smooth, feminine curves sent all his blood flooding south, engorging his already stiff cock.
Ian mirrored the touch on her other breast, and the woman hummed her approval, pushing her chest forward into their hands.
“Here,” Tango said again, and reached up beneath the woman’s skirt with his other hand, found her already-wet sex with his fingertips.
Ian followed suit and they spent long moments petting her together, Tango urging Ian’s fingers to the right places, until the woman was visibly squirming.
“You boys sure like to move slow,” Mrs. Scott said, finally, and Tango knew it was time to speed things along. She and her husband hadn’t paid for a little petting.
Tango stood, Ian again following his lead, and stepped out of his shorts, rolled on a condom. “I’ll go first,” he whispered to Ian. “You can watch and see what it’s like.”
Mrs. Scott stood, slithered out of her dress, and laid back across the mattress in nothing but her spike heels and a wicked, almost-taunting smile. (It wouldn’t be until Whitney that Tango learned not all women smiled like that in the bedroom.) She spread her legs and reached down to touch herself, biting her lip, eyes flicking to the corner to check and see if her husband was watching. “Mm. Hurry.”
Tango mounted her, reached down to align himself, and entered her with one sure thrust.
She tipped her head back, neck arching prettily. “Ahhh,” she murmured deep in her throat, hips rolling up to meet Tango’s. “That’s what I need.”
She was warm and tight around his cock, and beautiful beneath him, and Tango’s hips kicked without him having to tell them to. He could do this; he could fuck this woman for money. He wanted to, suddenly.
“You get up here too,” Mrs. Scott called to Ian, biting her lip again as Tango fell into a slow rhythm. “Shit, yeah, come here sweetie, come touch me until it’s your turn.”
Ian forgot a little of his usual grace as he scrambled up onto the bed, kneeling beside Mrs. Scott, eyes wide and rapturous as he watched the proceedings.
She took one of his hands and pressed it to her belly. “Touch me. Touch me everywhere.”
Tango never enjoyed his sessions with clients. He got hard sometimes, but he never came. He stayed painfully rooted in the moment and his own head; he never lost himself. But that’s exactly what happened, now that the tables were turned.
The sex pounded through him, an accelerating pulse of want and need and urgency. It had nothing to do with Mrs. Scott – it could have been anyone. But the idea of fucking a woman and enjoying it here, at the club, where it had always been torture…that was heady, heady stuff.
Ian played with the woman’s breasts, and eventually her clit, and Tango was barely aware of her shout of climax right before he came with a triumphant inner scream. He swallowed the sound, felt it burn bright in his veins. This wasn’t for her, or Ian, or the creepy husband in the corner. This was only for him. This was his private victory.
When he could get his legs under himself, he stood and walked to throw his condom in the wastebasket, switching places with Ian. And Ian, quick study that he was, didn’t need any instructions. In a matter of moments, he was sinking down into the woman’s slick sex and gasping at the feel of it.
Tango braced a knee on the edge of the mattress, steadying himself, and settled in to watch with a mechanical sort of disinterest.
He felt the warmth of a body behind him a second before a strong male arm curled around his waist, and he jerked.
It was Mr. Scott, his white shirt rolled up at the cuffs to reveal tan, lightly-furred forearms, his hands dark from the sun and beautiful as Tango’s own. Tango had no idea what was happening, but he kept very still, heart pounding as he felt Scott’s warm breath fan across his ear.
“Did you like it?” the man asked. The words were no less than expected. The typical sick bravado of all the customers. But the tone – the hesitancy, the note of fear, the vulnerable little quiver – sent a shiver down Tango’s spine.
“Yes,” he said, honestly.
On the bed, Ian sat up so he was kneeling on the mattress, never losing contact with Mrs. Scott, bringing her with him so she was straddling his lap. The woman shouted with delight, hands landing on Ian’s shoulders as she worked herself down on his cock.
Her husband flattened his hand against Tango’s stomach, down low, teasing at the thin trail of hair. “I can’t keep her happy,” he whispered in Tango’s ear. “She doesn’t want me.”
He was sixteen, and he wasn’t made of plastic, and the visual display paired with the touch on his belly was starting to excite him all over again. He was still in that drowsy post-coital state, and all of it felt like a soft dream.
“I…I don’t…” Scott’s hand slid lower, and found Tango’s cock. A gentle, almost reverent touch, but sure in its grip.
Tango sucked in a breath.
“God,” Mrs. Scott murmured. “Oh God, yes.”
Tango closed his eyes. He didn’t need to watch anymore; the hand around his cock was perfect.
Never had a client touched him this way, breathed against the back of his neck so sweetly, been all muscle and sinew, hot-skinned and beautiful through his expensive business clothes.
The world turned sparkly, and Tango thought he and Mrs. Scott came at the same time.
~*~
The Scotts came back every week for a while. The second time, Mrs. Scott pulled Ian into one room, and Mr. Scott towed Tango into another. Tango was good with that arrangement.
Mr. Scott’s name was Daniel, and upon close inspection, he was beautiful. He had a sharp-featured, refined face, tan like the rest of him, his dark hair styled carefully away from his face, his throat and shoulders strong, his stomach hard and lean.
“It might as well have been an arranged marriage,” Daniel said, sitting opposite Tango on the mattress of their private room, both of them cross-legged, elbows braced on their thighs, leaning toward one another. “My dad walked her into the room and said, ‘Daniel, this is Rebecca. You’re going to marry her.’”
It didn’t seem possible, given his own situation, but Tango felt sympathy for the man. “You don’t love her?”
“No. I’d never met her before, not until two weeks before the wedding.”
“Damn.”
Daniel ducked his head, his smile charming and embarrassed. “I was…I made the mistake of telling my father I was questioning my sexuality.”
Tango
wasn’t surprised. A man didn’t just touch another man like that without having thought about it first.
“There was…there was someone,” Daniel said, staring at his hands. “He worked for my father. I think Dad found out, and, well.” He shrugged, and glanced up at Tango through his lashes. “Dad fired him. And then there was Rebecca.”
Tango nodded along, though he couldn’t conceive of such an arrangement. A father with that kind of influence? That kind of wealth? Unimaginable.
Daniel leaned forward, cupped Tango’s cheek in his hand, his expression earnest and full of longing. “You look like him. You’re beautiful, you know?”
Tango did know, so he kissed him.
~*~
Rebecca Scott stopped coming. One night Daniel materialized at the edge of the stage, looking up at Tango with nothing short of adoration stamped across his handsome face. For the first time in his history with the club, Tango smiled, and meant it.
~*~
“What are you doing?” Ian hissed.
It was three a.m. and the club was closed. Only Ian and Tango remained in the communal showers in the basement. The water was edging toward cold, the steam dissipating, and when Tango met his friend’s gaze, he saw an angry snarl on Ian’s face.
“What?”
“What are you doing with that fucking rich boy?” Ian leaned in close, until their noses almost touched. “Are you falling for him?”
“What? No!” Tango scrubbed the shampoo out of his hair, titling his head back beneath the spray. “Besides, you’re banging the wife.”
“That was work.” Ian sounded a little too defensive. It was no coincidence this anger was coming out after Mrs. Scott’s absence from the club.
“So’s what I’m doing with Daniel.”
Loverboy (Dartmoor Book 5) Page 31
