Surely, it had to be over. Surely, he’d had enough.
One flipped on the bathroom light as King instructed me to set him on the tile floor.
“Two, tell Boss how it will work from here on out, and then I want you to begin.”
I looked at Two, who leaned into me and whispered, “We’re going to surround him and kick him. Not the head or the neck…or the balls and dick. Just keep on kicking him until he uses the safe word.”
“The hell?”
“If it’s too much for you, Boss, you may be excused,” King chimed in.
Jesus, I was fucking sweating over this, fighting back memories that tried to seize my attention. I’d spent the past few years chasing them back, and I could do the same in that moment.
Deep breaths. Deep fucking breaths.
But it was a struggle.
This was too much. Way too much. I should have left. I should have walked the fuck out and had no part of this. But it wasn’t the first time my body resisted against what I should have been doing.
“Or you can just watch,” King added.
I could do that much, couldn’t I? He was clearly fine. Clearly wanted it, I reminded myself.
But it wasn’t right. And it wasn’t safe.
“I’ll stay,” I said, “For now.”
“After he uses the safe word, we’ll come,” Two added. “Well, everyone but One. Then if you have any piss in you—”
“What?” I took a breath. It was some sort of Brutalizing King 101 session. We were enacting on him the sort of hazing I’d half expected against me that first night I’d come over.
I took another breath as we surrounded King.
“On my three,” Two said. “One…two…three.”
Hole kicked King right in the hip, as though eager to be the first to hurt him.
Fortunately, we were all barefoot, which surely wouldn’t make the wounds that bad, but still.
Two kicked him in his sore ass next, and then One got him in the thigh.
It was evident they were picking places where they could keep from causing any serious injury to King.
Maybe that’s why he’d chosen us, because he knew, as much pain as we’d give him, we wouldn’t try to hurt him beyond repair.
King faced away from me but glanced over his shoulder, his gaze meeting mine as he continued taking kicks from the guys. “Please, Boss,” he whispered, desperation in his tone.
How could I find it in me to do this to him? How could I help them hurt him so much? And yet, how could I deprive him of something he seemed to need so desperately?
I gently kicked his back. Then again.
“Come on. I want your anger and hate, Boss,” King urged as the guys continued kicking him. “Give it all to me.”
I offered a more severe kick…and was transported back to high school. In those woods, as the guys surrounded me, kicking me around on the damp ground.
I struggled to my feet and pulled away from their grips, sure I escaped, yet a few yards farther, they got me again, dragging me to the ground.
“Saw the way you were going at Stevie. You like playing with guys, don’t you?”
“Take his pants off.”
“Yeah, just like that.”
“Pretty little faggot.”
The flash of anger in their expressions, the fury of their hate, kept me company as they pinned me down. Struggling in vain and crying out for help that didn’t come as they hurt me…and kept on hurting me.
I was nothing to them.
Just a fucking joke for their pleasure.
I went for another kick, my fury carrying my foot as it slammed against King’s lower back.
“Yes!” King cried out, his approval meaning everything, helping me drown out my memory of the pants and moans of the guys who had taken everything from me that day.
I turned to Mike and Finley, who held my arms as Jeremy Brenner took my ass. Until his turn was up and it was Mike’s turn. Then Finley’s.
I couldn’t even scream anymore. Just kept crying…like a fucking baby…not even defending my fucking self.
And why was I so fucking hard?
Did I like it? Want it? What was wrong with me?
Why wouldn’t they just fucking stop?
I went at King again and again…and before I knew it, I was lost in my past and the rage that overtook me. Possessed me.
I kicked, not even in control of my senses, crying out in rage when I heard King call out, “Spade!”
My legs locked in place, as though I feared losing control of them any more than I already had. The rest of the knights stopped with me.
I struggled to still the beast King had unleashed.
Holy fucking shit.
The images I’d activated from memory, that had forced their way to the surface, screamed in the back of my mind…and they were my screams, the ones I couldn’t even force out anymore as the assault kept on, for what seemed like hours, but couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes.
I grabbed my head, wanting to tear the memories right from my brain, but I knew that wouldn’t happen.
“Pretty little faggot.”
By the time I regained my senses, the other guys were already jerking off on King. I grabbed my cock, some kind of rage boner, and went for it, using the moment to take back the power that had been taken from me so long ago.
King had been right about me all along. He’d known me better than I’d known myself, known I needed this for some fucked-up reason.
Oh, it felt like heaven as I creamed, shooting across him before any of the other guys, who each in turn shot across him.
Hole was the first to recover and take a leak. Then One and Two followed.
I didn’t think I could offer him that, but tried, and the piss shot right from me, on his goddamn face. King lapped it up.
Licked it, drank it.
He was mine.
No, that wasn’t right, but none of this was.
As my stream waned, King curled into a fetal position, his body convulsing so much worse than when we’d begun this fucked-up game.
And I just saw this poor, wounded boy lying before me.
I’d lain on the ground the same way, covered in mud and stuffed with my enemies’ cum, hating myself, despising my body for betraying me.
What have I done?
Red blotches from our assault speckled King’s body as he lay on the tile floor, covered in piss and cum.
I panted, recovering from my efforts at kicking him along with the other guys.
It was so fucking disturbing.
I shouldn’t have gone along with this, yet now I knew this was inside me…and it may have been the very thing King had seen that had drawn us together.
“Thank you,” King whispered softly. “My knights are dismissed.”
I started to lean down, but a hand rested on my shoulder, and I looked up at Two, who shook his head.
King wouldn’t approve of me checking in on him, I guessed.
“Just wanted to get him out of these zip ties,” I said.
One opened a drawer near him and passed me a pair of scissors. I knelt and cut his wrists free before doing the same with his ankles.
Two stooped down and wrapped his arm around me, helping me back to my feet.
King must not have liked the guys sticking around when he was like that, since we all headed out quickly, Two shutting the door behind us.
“He likes his privacy now,” Two whispered to me.
“Don’t we need to make sure he’s okay?”
“He’s fine,” Two said. “He’s tougher than he looks.”
The way he said it, I took that to mean it got even more violent than I’d just witnessed—no, fucking experienced.
Two and I offered to stay and clean up the room while Hole and One headed on their way.
I was glad it was down to me and Two, but I waited until we were outside before I said anything. “Two…”
“Hey, you hungry?”
&nbs
p; “Could use a little something right now.”
He encouraged me to follow his car, and we wound up at a nearby hole-in-the-wall diner, where we ordered coffees and some food. It was actually a good spot to chat since it wasn’t very busy. Perfect for talking about things that shouldn’t have been talked about in public.
“That was fucked up,” I finally forced myself to say. Before that moment, I’d remained silent. I was in shock.
“Are you okay with it?”
I quieted as I picked at the pancakes I’d ordered. I hadn’t eaten anything, wasn’t sure I could, but it looked good on the menu. “I think the fucked-up part was how much I enjoyed it.”
Two nodded. “Yeah, we all felt that way at first. It’s not wrong that it got you worked up and confused. No one handles it great that first time. Hard to accept that there’s this thing inside us that just wants to tear something apart…or that there’s something in King that wants to be torn apart.”
“Seems like…”
“Something we shouldn’t be doing? It feels that way to me too sometimes. But we all keep going back for more.”
And I knew why.
As disturbed as I’d been, when I’d gotten lost in the experience, when I’d let go and reveled in the moment, there was a rush unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.
Despite the memories it evoked, in hurting King, I had released so much anger that had lingered within me, the secrets that bound my soul. It was life-giving, exhilarating, empowering…and yet, it seemed something so destructive shouldn’t have felt so good.
Or so goddamn erotic.
“It gets easier to manage the more you do it,” Two assured me. “And he doesn’t need it like that most of the time. Just sometimes, when he’s having a hard time. It’s like his own version of therapy.”
“Something tells me therapy would be more helpful than that.”
“We’ll never know because—”
“Rule Four: Respect the King’s privacy,” I said.
Two nodded.
“A lot of fucking rules to be a part of this crew.”
“Just the five solid rules: Obey the King’s every command. Bow and kneel before the King at his request. Disavow any feelings for the King beyond physical attraction. Respect the King’s privacy. And—”
“Most importantly,” I said, just as King had told me when he’d gone through the list before I took my oath, “Rule Five: Never lie to the King.” I sighed. “Right down the rabbit hole, lost in Wonderland.”
And fearing how much I was loving it.
11
Two
A few guys chanted, “Chug, chug, chug,” filling some idiot up at the keg as I downed a Jell-O shot. I tossed out the plastic cup in a nearby trash bin, took a sip from my beer bottle, and continued through the house. Hole and One had King wedged between them in the living-room-turned-dance-floor. They were having plenty of fun on their own. I didn’t see Aiden—Boss—anywhere, so I went hunting for him. It wasn’t the first time he’d slipped away while we were at some party.
Since his official induction into the knights, he’d hung out with us at social events. He was one of us, especially now that I knew he could handle the sort of violence King expected from him.
It had been hard to watch him cave to that dark part of himself, and again when we’d had another similar session a month later.
Of course, there would be another soon enough, but for the most part, it was all just good fun and wild orgies. Boss had brought new life into our circle, and lately, he and Hole were able to go at it without giving any thought to that first instance when Hole had crossed the line.
I headed out the front door, onto the porch, which wrapped around the house. A few couples were making out on the sofas and tables. Figured I was looking in the wrong place for my fellow knight, when on the other side of the porch, I noticed the shirt Boss had worn out that night. He was sitting on a set of steps near the corner of the house.
Relief rushed through me, the way it usually did whenever I saw him these days.
“How’s it going, Boss?” I stepped up behind him, then planted my ass down beside him. “Missing a good party in there.”
“Not exactly my thing.”
“Yeah, mine neither. Here’s to that.” We clinked beer bottles. “King loves this kind of stuff. Always the social butterfly, always looking for some future knight.”
Boss glanced around, as though he had some troubling thought on his mind, before saying, “So fucked up. I keep thinking about that night when I first saw him at a party, just like this. The moment he saw me, just fucking saw me, it was as if he was looking right into my soul. As if somehow he picked up on all these things there was no way he could have picked up on.”
“I think about it a lot too. He did the same thing with me. Like he can sense these things, knows a person is just right for this. I obviously don’t think it’s psychic. But he must be getting some kind of read on us. Then he talks to you, and he has a way of controlling a conversation…maybe things he’s doing to gauge us from the get-go. As you’ve probably noticed, the King of Liars is fairly mysterious.”
“That isn’t how he actually sees it, though, right? That can’t be healthy if he thinks we’re all a bunch of liars.”
“Oh, Boss… You signed up to be a knight, and maybe you think that’s going to lead to some answers about this beautiful enigma that is King, but trust me, the longer you know him, the more curious you become, but you can’t do anything about it because—”
“Rule Four: Respect the King’s privacy.”
“Yup.” I took a sip from my beer.
Because Lord knew we were all so fucking curious about how a person like King came to be who he was. And I wouldn’t even share with Boss how obsessed I’d personally become on the topic—speculating, wishing I knew more…
So fucking desperately.
Boss gazed off into the yard as two guys made their way from the bushes, one vomiting as the other helped him to his feet.
As Boss cringed, I laughed at his reaction. “Hey, what do you say we beat it for a bit and head back to my place?”
“Yeah, that’d be cool.”
Typically, if the knights weren’t out at a party together, we were heading back to King’s to play around, but that night we’d messed around beforehand, so we’d be going our separate ways after.
We headed down the street, finishing our beers as we approached the apartment building where I was leasing.
“Funny,” Boss said as we headed through the hall, toward my one-bedroom unit.
“What’s funny?”
“All of King’s knights except me have plenty of money.”
“Well, One is the rich kid, and Hole is a stripper who’ll get an extra couple hundred for blowing a guy on the job. I was lucky enough to get a scholarship because of my impressive SAT scores, which means I can spend my money so that I don’t have to live with four other guys.”
“Hey, only three roomies, thank you very much. And they’re all cool. We stay out of each other’s hair.”
We reached the door, and I keyed in the code and ushered him into my place.
I flicked on the light, and he stopped abruptly. “Oh, wow.”
“What?” I asked, glancing around. I’d picked up before I left, so my place looked nice, I thought. Did he have a problem with the design?
“It’s definitely cleaner than I thought it’d be,” Boss said.
“What? You thought I was messy? Really? After going to town on my ass, you didn’t realize I was a fairly hygienic guy?” I winked, and he laughed.
“Okay, well, in that at least I knew you were hygienic, but I didn’t figure you’d have fucking artwork in your place.”
He was referring to a three-panel bull photograph that hung behind my sofa.
“And accessories and shit. Jesus, I have fucking posters. You are never seeing my place. Like ever.”
I laughed. “Even if I ask nicely?”
Boss spun around to me. “Okay, maybe if you ask really nicely.”
The smile plastered across his face…damn, it was one of the things about him that got me all riled up.
“Here, I’ll grab us some cold ones.” I took his bottle and discarded our beers in my recycling bin before heading to the fridge.
“Jesus, and he recycles. Who the hell is this Two?”
“You don’t have to call me that when it’s just us.” I grabbed the drinks, popping the lids off before passing one to him. “You can call me Ryan. No rules against that.”
“I like that name,” he said, which made me eye him peculiarly.
“What? I’ve heard some other guys who’ve approached you at parties call you that. I was kind of hoping I’d get to call you that at some point.” He winced, as though he’d just thought about what he’d said. “Sounds a little weird, doesn’t it?”
“Depends. Are you going to let me call you Aiden?”
“Yeah, totally.”
“Well, good, ’cause I’ve been dying to call you that too.”
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah, you surprised?”
“Kinda.”
We stood there, staring at each other.
Nothing awkward about it. If anything, he felt like an old friend, like we’d known each other long before that moment.
And yet, I wanted to know him so much better. “So, Aiden,” I said as I headed over to the sofa and planted my ass in my favorite spot. Aiden took a seat on the cushion opposite me. “You close with your parents?”
He did a double take. “Um…”
“Was that a weird question to start with? Sorry. Maybe I should have opened with saying I’m not. Well, not my dad, at least. Even when you commented about how nice my place looks, all I could think was that if he walked in, he’d find a speck of dust or something else to criticize.”
“Your dad’s some kind of massive asshole?” he asked.
“Yeah, probably more than you cared to know, but…”
“No, it’s fine. It was nice of you to share. I’m cool with my mom. My father wasn’t that interested in being a part of my life. I remember him some from when I was little, but then he moved to Los Angeles and started dating some actress. He’ll send a card with some money every once in a while—if only to soothe his guilt—but he paid child support, and I guess that’s all he thought he needed to give me.”
King of Liars Page 8
