Screwed

by Van Barrett

  It felt nice—damned nice. No one had ever done anything like that for me.

  Liam had cleaned my whole body up—except, well, one last part …

  He stood on his toes and we shared a juicy kiss while he reached for that one last part. With a hand full of suds, he gently took my soft cock in his palm, and began to pull and knead at me.

  It was only a matter of time before I began to grow heavier and firmer.

  Liam rinsed my manhood off. And then, slowly, he dropped to his knees. He stuck out his tongue and ran it all up and down my growing cock.

  “Just close your eyes and relax,” Liam said.

  He sucked me slowly. He took so much time that, eventually, a thick, rolling fog of steam enshrouded us both, and I almost couldn't see him squatting between my legs.

  But it was damned nice.

  “I'm cumming!” I yelled a little while later.

  Streaks of my sticky cum shot out, painting long lines up and down his face and in his hair.

  We both laughed—and then it was my turn to clean him.

  ***

  8:40 AM.

  I woke up the next day to a ringing I didn't recognize.

  I thrashed around in bed and slapped at my alarm clock, but the ringing didn't stop.

  That's when I felt the body next to me.

  Oh, right, Liam slept over here last night.

  … Although there wasn't a whole lot of sleep to be had. After our hour-long shower, we climbed into bed. And yeah, we were both obviously tired—but we couldn't keep our hands off each other. And once you get a guy all hard and excited, he can always find just a little more gas in the tank to get where he wants to go.

  Anyway. The ringing was coming from his side of the bed. I poked and prodded him. “Hey, Liam.”

  “Mm?” he moaned as he woke from his slumber.

  “Your phone's blowing up, dude.”

  He grabbed his phone, peeked at it, and shut the volume off.

  “Shit,” he mumbled.

  “What?”

  “It's Angela. Er, she's my boss. And she's wondering where the hell I'm at. I already called out sick yesterday.”

  “Oh. Damn.”

  “Yeah.” Liam's hands went to his temples. “I dunno what to do, Paul. For the first time ever, I can't complete an assignment. Go figure it's the one that matters that I fuck up.”

  “On the other hand, now that I don't work at Scud's anymore? Nobody's going to stop you from getting screwed over if you went back. Trust me, Carl will walk right into that trap.”

  “Yeah, but once they see the camera footage of us, I'm fucked.”

  I shrugged. “Why don't I take a look? See if I can find the cameras. I'll take them out and smash 'em up, destroy the evidence.”

  Liam let out a breath of air while he thought it over. “That would save me a lot of embarrassment at the station. But without the cameras, I still don't have a story. And so I still probably get fired.”

  “Hmm. Tricky.” I thought it over myself. “Wait. I got an idea.”

  I jumped out of bed and hopped into a pair of jeans.

  “What is it?” Liam asked.

  “I want to find those cameras and see what we can do. Come on! Get dressed and come with me.”

  “Okay …”

  Chapter 19

  The Plan

  Liam

  “There's the first,” Paul said, and a metallic camera the size of a golf-ball came skittering out from beneath the Legend.

  “Yes!” I cheered. “There's just one more under there.”

  My phone buzzed relentlessly in my pocket, but I continued to ignore it while I watched Paul work. Angela was freaking out. I knew that without even listening to the voicemails she left on my phone at a rate of about four per hour.

  Paul still wouldn't tell me what his plan was. I knew he wanted to meet with me and Angela and explain it to her in person. That was definitely a gambit that could very much blow up in my face … but then again, at this point, everything else was already blowing up in my face. How much worse could things get?

  I just had to trust him and hope that his plan would work.

  From beneath the car, there was a loud racket as Paul yanked on something. It was followed by the metallic clunk of something breaking free.

  “There's the other one,” Paul said, and he rolled the other camera at my feet.

  “So this is it,” I said, grinning madly at the two cameras I held in my hands.

  Paul came out from underneath the car. “Well, that's two of seven. The others don't have any … lewd acts on them.” He leaned closer to me. “Right?”

  I acted offended. “Of course not.”

  He grinned. “Just asking.”

  “Unless you count the boner you popped on our first test drive. I'm sure that one's caught on tape, too.”

  Paul wiped his hands on a rag. “Hell, I don't care about that. It's not like we did anything.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “It might confuse the guys in the editing room, if they notice.”

  Paul chuckled. “Good.”

  “So … we ready, then?” I asked.

  “Yup.”

  I climbed into the Legend's driver seat. “Still not going to tell me what your plan is?”

  “I'll explain on the way over,” Paul assured me. “Just play along.”

  We hopped into the Legend, and I drove us over to Miami 8. My phone rang again, and this time I answered it.

  “Hey Ange,” I said, as if everything were normal in the world.

  “Where the hell are you today, Liam?”

  “Sorry, I slept in … but I'm bringing somebody in.”

  “Who?”

  “One of the mechanics. We kinda have a situation, and he wants to meet with you.”

  I heard her hand smack her face. “I don't like the sound of this, Liam.”

  “I can imagine. But we'll be there in a little while, alright?”

  She sighed. “Sure. Alright. Whatever.”

  ***

  After we finally made our way through Miami's lunch-hour traffic, I got Paul a visitor badge from the front desk and took him up to our floor. I knocked on Angela's door and she called us in.

  She stood and greeted us.

  “This must be Paul,” she said with a smile that was half grimace.

  “Sure is,” I said.

  “Wow—she knows who I am?” he quietly remarked to me.

  “Yeah, um … yeah,” I said.

  They shook hands. Paul and I took our seats opposite Angela's. And she stared at me, expecting an answer.

  “Well? Why have you brought one of Scud's finest here?”

  “It was my idea,” Paul said, butting in. He set the two cameras on Angela's desk. They were mangled, smashed by a hammer. “I found these on the undercarriage of Liam's car.”

  She picked the cameras up and inspected them. The circuit boards fell out, busted and in pieces.

  “Looks … a little broken,” she remarked.

  Playing coy, Paul shook his head. “Yeah, I had the hardest time getting those things out. Didn't even know what they were until it was too late.”

  Angela shot me a glance that demanded answer. “How much does he know?”

  But Paul spoke up on my behalf. “I know that you sent Liam to record us.”

  Annoyed, Angela fluttered her eyes at him. “So what is it that brought you here? What are you hoping to get out of this?”

  “Same thing as you, really.”

  She let out a disbelieving guffaw. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

  “You want to make Scud's look bad and destroy their business, right?”

  Angela raised an eyebrow at him. “And, er, that's what you want too?”

  “Well, not exactly. But I do want Scud's to be a respectable shop again. And that can't happen until there's a change in management. Your plan will smear the shop's name, but you're not likely to catch them doing anything truly wrong. Best case scenario? You give Scud's so much bad p
ress, you manage to put them out of business. But what happens then? Carl will just move somewhere else, open under a new name, and continue to rip people off.”

  Angela swiveled her seat left and right, the same gesture she made any time she was seriously thinking something over. “Okay. I'm listening.”

  “It's simple. You go after the owner, not the shop itself.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  Paul looked at me. I nodded and encouraged him.

  “You're looking at the wrong business,” he said at last.

  “Explain.”

  “Carl doesn't work with wrenches; he works with fiberglass. He's an auto body repair guy. He's no mechanic—in fact, he doesn't even hold any ASE certifications. Technically, that means he can't even practice auto repair in Miami-Dade.”

  Angela's eyes squinted as she tried to follow Paul's logic. “Why are you telling me this, though …?”

  “My Dad used to own Scud's—but back then, it was called Parisi's, and we stood by our work. After Dad passed away, Carl ended up with the shop. He took his auto body business with him, too. So, you can think of Scud's as both a garage and an auto body shop. Two different business, under the same name.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “I did my best to keep the garage honest—and trust me, it wasn't easy, with Carl constantly pressuring me to cut corners and overcharge people. But the body shop,” Paul said, nodding, “that's Carl's operation, and that's where you can really hammer this guy. I've seen the way he works and, well, it's not exactly legit. In fact, I'm pretty sure what he's doing is illegal.”

  “Illegal how?” Angela asked.

  “Let's say you get into an accident, and you take your car to Scud's for work. Scud's goes to great lengths to make sure that your car ends up looking a lot more damaged than it really was … that way, they can turn around and over-bill the insurance company.”

  Angela's eyes widened. “We're talking about insurance fraud, then.”

  “You got it.”

  She swiveled in her chair again. “So what are you suggesting we do, then?”

  “We get Liam's Legend into a little fender bender, and then we take it to Scud's for body work. We'll take pictures of the damage before it's at Scud's, and compare it to the pictures they send the insurance company. We'll also catch them on camera beating on the car with hammers to make the damage appear worse. That footage will look way worse on TV, which means a bigger story for you.”

  Angela had no choice but to agree with a nod. “Well … alright. But Liam, you're running out of time. Your deadline is just one week away now.”

  “I know,” I said quietly. “Can we make it in time, Paul?”

  “If we start today, yeah.”

  We looked at Angela. She took a deep breath and then raised her hands. “One week. Go for it.”

  ***

  Back in the parking garage, the two of us stood outside the Legend.

  “I'm not sure how I know how to crash a car,” I admitted. “I mean, I don't know to crash a car in a safe way. I'm afraid I'll go over-board and kill us all, or something.”

  “I wanna do it,” Paul said quietly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yup,” he nodded. “This was Chance's old car, you know? As much as I hate to wreck it, it'll be kind of … healing for me. To crash his car, like he crashed that Mustang. And put all that bullshit behind me. Or something. I dunno. Maybe I'm just nuts.”

  “Hell, knock yourself out,” I said. I tossed him the keys and we climbed in. “Er. But please—don't actually knock yourself out.”

  Paul turned the key and we drove off.

  He took us to the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse.

  “You want to climb out for this?” he asked me. “Just to be safe?”

  “Naw.” I grabbed his hand. “If you're going to go, I wanna go with you.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You're so dramatic.”

  “Sure am. Now let's crash this baby.”

  Paul revved the engine up and dropped the car into gear. We sped towards a light pole and, before we hit it head on, Paul hit the brakes and veered to the right—smashing the rear-end of the car into the pole.

  “Oof,” I groaned with the impact.

  “You good?” Paul asked.

  “Yeah.”

  The car limped forward, and we jumped out to survey the damage.

  “Not bad,” Paul said with a grin. “Time for you to head back to Scud's. I can't go with you, obviously.”

  ***

  “Doogie!” Carl shouted when I walked into the shop, clutching my cell phone in hand.

  Carl stepped around the counter to greet me. He looked so relieved to see me that, for a second, I was afraid he might actually try to give me a hug.

  “Uh, yeah, hello again,” I mumbled.

  “Oh man, am I glad to see you again. Listen, I just wanted to say, I'm so sorry about the bad experience you had with our mechanic Paul.”

  “Right …”

  “Just for your information, he's been let go. Fired. Because of the unprofessional way he treated you, Doogie.” He poked his finger into my sternum. “You know, we always want our customers' concerns to be taken seriously—we don't want your concerns to be brushed aside, as if you're imagining things!”

  “Uh huh,” I grumbled. Nervously, I peeked at the cell phone in my hand. I could just imagine how seething mad Paul was as he listened in on the other end of this call.

  “So what brings you back in? Lemme guess; that sound is still driving you nuts, right?”

  “No, actually, I need some body work done. I was driving through an intersection when somebody ran a light and rammed my driver side.”

  “Whoa, Doogie! I'm so glad you're okay!”

  Blech, I thought. This guy is so phony it hurts.

  “Let's go take a look at the damage, shall we?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I agreed.

  Carl saw the damage to the Legend and rubbed his hands together greedily. “Yeah, yeah, we can fix this up no problem.”

  He extended his open hand to me. “Just gimme those keys, and everything will be taken care of.”

  You know, I'll admit it, I almost felt a touch guilty as I handed the set of keys over. But the way Carl snatched the keys right out of my grasp left me feeling dirty and taken advantage of all over again.

  Paul was right. Carl was the type of guy who was emboldened with every scheme he managed to pull off. Guys like him, who let greed rule their lives, set themselves on a path where they were destined to get caught.

  I turned and left Scud's. Without Paul there to do the right thing, I was certain that this time, I'd get the footage I needed.

  Chapter 20

  Persistent

  Liam

  One week later.

  Outside, through Walt's dusty office blinds, the hazy amber glow of downtown Miami lit the night sky.

  Inside, I stared into the computer monitor for the 12th straight hour, my eyes straining with fatigue as I read over Angela's copy for the 100th time today.

  The rush to finish a project on deadline can be like a drug. Not a pleasant drug, but a drug that has you so obsessively focused on the task at hand, you can't see anything else.

  Including the errors I'm supposed to be spotting.

  Our report was set to air tomorrow on the evening news. Which meant we weren't leaving tonight until everything was done.

  I picked up the freshly-repaired Legend from Scud's yesterday afternoon. I promptly handed the keys over to the station, so the AV team could extract the video footage. Which was a prospect so panic inducing for me, I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide until everything had passed. I hoped that Paul had found and removed all the video cameras under the car—any of the cameras that would have caught our, ahem, scene. But I had this tiny voice that chattered non-stop doubts in the back of my head: but what if he missed a camera?

  When I vented my fears to Paul, he just laughed and waved his hand at me. “I go
t them all, dude. I know you're nervous about it, but you gotta relax. Trust me.”

  … I wished I could be as confident as he was!

  Once the car was out of my hands, my involvement in the report was reduced to a support role. Angela handled the rest: the copy writing, the narration, the production. Anything she needed, I gave her.

  Around 9:30 PM, the office phone on my desk rang. I knew it was Angela.

  “Hello?”

  “Liam. I just got through the camera footage. You wanna come over to the AV room and take a look at the highlights?”

  “Sure,” I croaked.

  I hurried over to the AV room. Angela sat behind the massive control board with an open seat next to her. Her eyes were tired—the same way mine felt—but she wore the kind of satisfied smile that can only be earned after a 12-hour work day.

  Five monitors were in front of us, and each monitor showed a different perspective. (And I let out a huge sigh: there was no view from the bottom of the car. Paul had been right.)

  “Check it out. These are all sync'ed up,” Angela said. She clicked a mouse button and each monitor began to fast-forward simultaneously. “There's hours and hours of tape.”

  I gulped as my recent past flashed by in a hurry: me climbing into the car for the very first time; driving to Scud's but zooming past the entrance again and again; the view from under the hood as Paul fixed the idle, with me standing by his side; the two of us going for a drive.

  I winced as the moment of Paul's erection was caught on the cabin camera. Thankfully, in fast-forward, only an eagle-eyed viewer with intimate knowledge of what had gone on between Paul and I could possibly hope to catch that awkward little moment.

  Besides, this wasn't the footage that interested Angela.

  “You guys sure spent some time together, huh?” she said with a glint in her eye.

  I pursed my lips. “Um …”

  She skipped further ahead.

  “I was skeptical at first, Liam, but it looks like you might have been right about Paul.”

  “Yeah …”

  She moved the mouse cursor towards the end. “Here's where it gets good.”