Choice of Cages

by Parker Avrile

  “Honey, if I picked your pocket, it would stay picked.”

  He thumbed through the bills again and handed off a wad of hundreds to the runner. “Two thousand.” He pointed a red-spotted, flaking finger at my heart. “You don't say another word to me. Not one 'nother word.”

  I clamped my lips closed and looked around the table, the expression on my face saying it all. Isn't that cute, the way old people get these ideas?

  I hadn't taken a goddamn thing from that old creep. I'd left something though. An active RFID transmitter no bigger than a grain of rice. Lane hadn't told me exactly why the feds wanted the guy tracked. Maybe he wasn't allowed to tell me. Department of Justice need-to-know bullshit.

  Could have pushed away from the table the minute I planted the transmitter, but I didn't. Even if I was playing tighter than normal, I felt good. Good? I felt great. Being back in the game, getting away with something under all these lights and cameras, getting in and out of places where I wasn't supposed to be... sweet fuck, that was an intoxicating high.

  My bruised body felt all warm and glowy in the sore places. My blood sang. I was high even though I'd been told not to order a single drop of alcohol. I didn't need it.

  Fuck alcohol. This, this... this was my addiction.

  So I sparkled. I smiled. I let myself relax into the lift of a high that kept raising me up and up and up. After a few more minutes, I racked my chips and pushed happily away from the table.

  Bernard Justire snorted. “Everybody check your wrist and make sure you still got your watches.”

  “Like I got nothing better to do than lift your tacky-ass Rolex,” I said.

  Despite the cameras that track you everywhere in a casino, despite my status as a prisoner on temporary parole, I had an intoxicating sense of freedom. The bruises felt warm inside and out. Proof of something—my strength, maybe, or my ability to make somebody care that hard. I'd heard it called endorphins. Chemicals in the brain. They say that's why kinky sex gets so addictive.

  Whatever it was, I felt good. High. Floaty. And so I floated.

  Out of the poker room. Into the main casino. Lights, and laughing, and sparkly noises from the machines. I didn't much care about the machines.

  “Hard eight,” I said, tossing a green chip in the middle of the craps table.

  The dice clattered.

  “Four, four, hard eight. That eight came hard...”

  No waiting. It doesn't usually happen that way. I scooped up my chips and floated to the next table and then the next. It would be fun to splurge Lane's money but somehow I couldn't stop winning. When I walked up to the blackjack table, the dealer shuffled. Everybody had their eyes on me, but they couldn't prove anything. There was nothing to prove. I wasn't pulling anything cute. It was all Lady Luck's doing that night.

  I put down three black chips, and the dealer gave me blackjack. So much for her shuffle-up. Three hundred dollars was now four hundred and fifty. I was still carrying the tray of chips I'd brought from the poker room, and it was getting to be enough money where it would be a pain in the ass to cash out. They're only supposed to demand paperwork at around ten thousand dollars, but plenty of places did it at three thousand. Fine. I might as well find out how good Lane's fake identification really was.

  Besides, the pit boss was glaring and staring. The dealer shuffled again, and the other players at the table were starting to whine. My action was interfering with their losing.

  I headed for the cage, where there was much calling around on various phones. I tried to look serious rather than amused.

  After half an hour of runaround, a guy in a suit came out. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure, buddy,” I said. “I'd like a comp to the steak house if you don't mind.”

  “I'm not the fucking VIP host.” The way he kept staring not into my eyes but rather at the corner of my eyes told me he was trying to decide how old I really was. Or, really, how old I wasn't. Hmm. Seemed like he had some question about the ID.

  Well, it wasn't time to ramp down the attitude. “Sorry. My mistake. That Tom Ford knockoff you're wearing had me completely fooled.”

  His eyes narrowed. “This is Talokka tribal territory.”

  “Yeah, so. Is there a problem? Tribe don't like paying winners?” I was talking in good old boy simply to annoy him.

  He recognized I was doing some kind of act, and now he glanced around as if afraid of being overheard, although the cling-clang of the slot machines was an effective soundscreen. “Federal agents are not allowed to operate here without express permission from the tribe. That's part of our treaty with the Department of the Interior.”

  So my ID looked like undercover. And federal undercover at that. Interesting. “This is a need to know operation,” I said. “The tribe don't need to know.”

  “That what it is? Because to me, it looks suspiciously like a guy out on the town having a gambling spree with taxpayer funds.”

  “That's what it's supposed to look like. Play along.”

  We glared at each other.

  At last, he stuffed the cash they owed me in my front jacket pocket, and not because he was trying to be helpful. “Don't come back here, Mr. Larkin. If that's even your name.”

  “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  That was one tribal employee who'd studied the business in New Jersey. Well, he wouldn't be the last.

  There was a line of cabs waiting outside, and I stepped in the first.

  I could go anywhere.

  Cash money in my pocket. High-level false ID that made me look like law enforcement. My skills were still sharp. Better than ever.

  Nothing could scare me. Nothing could make me back down.

  “Sir,” said the cab driver.

  I realized we'd been going farther and farther out into country darkness since he'd pulled off the Talon Claw property.

  “Sir. Sir. I need an address, sir.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  LANE

  A blue dot blinked on the screen of my smartphone. A tap, and the GPS location lit up. Seat four, table fifteen—the only five/ten no-limit table—in the Talon Claw poker room. Another tap zoomed out to provide an aerial view of the casino resort by night. Another tap, and I could see the countryside surrounding the casino.

  The seat didn't change, which meant Thorne had gotten lucky and been seated next to Bernard Justire right away. Otherwise, he would have had to request a seat change button to let him move around to a convenient spot.

  I zoomed back in on Justire's wallet. Where the wallet went, so went Justire. The only way I could have done better was if I'd been able to persuade his doctor to implant the chip in his actual body.

  There was, of course, a second RFID chip. One Thorne didn't know about. I pulled up that screen. The blinking, winking green dot should have been moving back to Beauville but, instead, it was going east.

  Not good. Around Lafayette, the green light changed to yellow. I poured myself a finger of whiskey. Sipped it slowly.

  Twenty minutes later, the dot was blinking red. Soon it would be out of range, although I could see it was on I-10 heading in the direction of Baton Rouge.

  Son of a bitch.

  I'd trusted him too soon, and now he was on the run. The money, the ID, the freedom of movement was a test, and it looked like Thorne was getting an F.

  I had to think about how or if I was going to get him back. There was a reasonable argument for letting him go. He didn't know it—his father had agreed he didn't need to know it—but the charges against him had been dropped, and the paperwork had disappeared from the parish computer. He was out of trouble for the moment, and maybe he'd already learned enough from this little experiment to give him some incentive to stay out of trouble.

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  I'd thought we were developing something. A bond. Maybe all that stuff was in my head. Maybe Thorne had played me, pretending to feel somet
hing he couldn't feel. Criminals play games and tell lies and pretend to go along to get along. Maybe that's all he was. A criminal. All that other stuff I saw inside of him... maybe that was my stuff. My stupid-ass fantasies. My imagination.

  I couldn't run him down like a lovesick puppy. Fuck, no. If he ran, I'd have to let him go.

  Fuck, fuckety fuck.

  I couldn't help him in New Orleans. If he got picked up for something out there, he was on his own. If the feds got him for something, he was doubly on his own. I might be a big frog in Angelina Parish, but I was nobody in D.C.

  I felt helpless. There was a part of me that wanted to scoop him up into my arms and protect him from all his own mistakes, but it was impossible. You can't protect anybody from their own mistakes.

  Maybe I'd made a mistake getting involved with Thorne. Hell, maybe I'd made a mistake getting involved with all of this.

  My phone rang. Not the smartphone but the handset on my desk. I picked it up. “Lacompte.”

  “We're getting signal.”

  I waited.

  “You had anything to do with that?”

  I didn't say anything.

  “We're not picking up good audio.”

  Not too surprising. The transmitter was the size of the head of a pin, and it was buried inside an RFID device buried in somebody's wallet. Ass and hundred dollar bills were probably a decent form of soundproofing.

  “Is that going to be a problem for you, Wendell?” I asked. “I would expect you guys to be able to run the audio through some enhancement algorithms.”

  “Sure, we're picking up something. Sure, we're running it through.”

  “Then I feel like my agent has done his job. The rest is up to you boys from Washington.”

  I didn't know why the feds were after Justire, although I could assume it was some white collar crime. Money laundering, maybe. Your eighty-something demographic doesn't tend to be big on violent crime, although it's always possible Wendell was working a cold case.

  Yeah. Money laundering, I thought. If the feds confiscated a big ole pile of cash, it would be nice if they remembered to throw some of it Angelina Parish's way, although I knew better than to hold my breath.

  What I told the federal cop was right, though. Thorne had done his part of the job. He didn't just grab my car and go. My trust wasn't entirely misplaced.

  So. Here were my choices—track him down, or wait and see.

  I'd given him a two thousand dollar eighteen-karat gold Cuban bracelet to wear into the casino. Guys who played high stakes poker wore bling, and he needed to fit in. But the gold could also give me a way to pick up his trail. If he tried to make two, three hundred dollars quick cash by selling it in a pawn shop, he'd have to show that federal ID. There was no legal buying or selling of gold in this state without identification.

  Of course, Thorne had illegal contacts who would buy stolen gold, but I had a backup plan. The plates on the car looked like the usual Louisiana six figure code—three letters and three numbers—but they were registered to the FBI. He wouldn't be getting any parking tickets, but he wouldn't be able to resell that sedan without setting off all kinds of alarms.

  Yeah, I'd be able to find him again if I needed to.

  Still, it bothered me that he'd left without a word. It bothered me a lot. As far as I could tell, he didn't spend one tiny minute agonizing. He just up and flew like a bird the first minute he got free.

  The merlin flying across a field.

  Thorne was too proud to use his safeword, but maybe he wasn't too proud to fly. Maybe he wasn't responding to his training the way I thought. Maybe I needed to just let him go.

  I put down the receiver. Picked up the smartphone.

  Bernard Justire had left the casino. The blue dot appeared to be moving west down the interstate in the direction of Port Arthur. His license had been confiscated several years ago after the combination of his age and a drunk driving conviction persuaded a judge he was a danger to the public roads. Some employee was driving him back to the ranch in east Texas.

  Thorne was in motion too. There was something different about the blinking dot. The red had gone to yellow. As I watched, it turned back to green.

  He was coming back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THORNE

  “You disobeyed a direct order.” Lane stood big and thundering, his shoulders thrown back, his arms folded over that wide chest.

  “I know, sir. I'm sorry, sir. I know I have to be punished, sir.” There's role-play and then there's role-play. If I'm honest with myself, I probably didn't sound all that freakin' sorry.

  “Did you deliberately stray from the path to earn a punishment?”

  Fuck him for nailing it in one question. I was getting addicted to these sensations. Fucking Lane Lacompte. That was his plan all along. Get me addicted to his strong hand. Get me eager to please.

  “I'm nobody's puppy.”

  “Did I say you were?”

  I didn't say anything.

  “Answer the question. Did I say you were anybody's puppy?”

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You know, boy, this attitude of yours is getting real fucking old.”

  “Your attitude isn't exactly springtime fresh. Sir.”

  “OK, that's it. You know what's coming. Strip.”

  I wanted to rip off my clothes like they were burning, but I made a point of moving as slowly as I dared. Twenty seconds to unbutton a single button.

  Lane tapped his toe.

  Thirty seconds to unbutton the next.

  He couldn't have lost much speed since his football days, because he was on top of me before I knew it. Somehow, I was underneath him, the weight of his big body grinding into mine. His cock was hard and unapologetic where it jabbed into my belly. His hands ripped and tore.

  My expensive shirt came apart in his hands like rotten thrift-shop vintage. My jeans were tangled around my ankles, a fabric shackle. I was on my back on the harsh concrete floor, which didn't feel as harsh as I'd expected. Excitement was a kind of cushion that made comfort irrelevant.

  “If you won't learn to control yourself, you'll be controlled by others,” he said.

  I fought back but not very hard. I liked the weight of him on top of me. I liked the way he knelt with a knee on either side of my hips, his big hands clutching my wrists together to yank them over my head.

  “I'm going to hang you from that wall.”

  “No. You don't dare.”

  He laughed. There was nothing he didn't dare.

  A minute later, I was dangling, my wrists trapped in long fur-lined leather manacles attached to short chains that locked onto the O-rings set high on the masonry wall. I was facing in, and I flexed the muscles in my bare ass, the better to demand his attention. My ankles were still bound together by my tangled jeans. He'd shortened the manacle chains to just the right length so I could put some of my weight on the very tips of my toes.

  He put a big hand on each of my bare thighs, and the weight of him pulled my body down, adding strain to my shoulders. “Tell me why you're here.”

  “Because you want to fuck me.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Because you're a horny perv.”

  He dropped my thighs, and I felt as if I were lifting higher on my toes. I craned my head over my shoulder to watch him select a riding crop from the display spread out on the wooden bench along the wall.

  “Is this really necessary?” I was goading him, and we both knew it. Why was I goading him? That's the question, isn't it? Why was I this way? Why was I so excited that I had to wriggle my hips to keep my cockhead from jabbing into the wall?

  He struck three times with the crop. Shoulders, ass, upper thighs.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Three more blows.

  “Why are you here?”

  “You want... I want...”

  Whack. Whack. Whack.<
br />
  “Why? Say it.”

  “Punish me. Bad boy.”

  “Say it.”

  “I put myself here.”

  “Say it.”

  On and on. I lost track of where the riding crop hit me. Every stripe blazed up bright-hot for a minute and then began to glow.

  Impossible to explain why I was so excited.

  “Please. Please. Please.” I was weeping.

  “Say it.”

  “I want it. I don't know why. I want it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Please. I need it. Need it so bad.”

  “You want to be here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nowhere else but here.”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes!”

  The whip was gone, and he was rubbing full-length against my burning body. I felt the heat of him, felt the hardness of him. Yet he was still fully dressed. How could he stand it? How could I be the only one who was weak and needy?

  He laughed.

  “You crave this. A strong hand.”

  “Don't make me admit it.”

  “You already have.”

  He grasped my thighs again, this time from underneath, and somehow I'd kicked the jeans off one foot so I could spread my legs wider.

  “Say it,” he said.

  “Yes.” I didn't even want to say it, but I had to. “Yes. Take me.”

  He lifted my legs higher, and now my punished ass was grinding roughly into the hot ridges of his granite abs. His shaft was rubbing longways between my globes, creating a hot friction that was making me absolutely crazy.

  “Fuck me. Fuck me deep. This teasing, this torture...” I made a point of alternately dilating and then clenching my hole, all the better to make him feel how badly I needed it.

  “I enjoy torturing you. I like knowing that you're aching for me.”

  I clamped my globes more tightly around his shaft, which was still oriented the wrong way to stroke deep inside of me. Fucking hot dog in a fucking bun. It felt good, it felt hot, but I needed something deeper.

  “You're torturing yourself just as much,” I said. “Please. Please.”

  A ping sounded from a hidden speaker. The dim lights set in the wall niches began to flash red. Some sort of alarm. The fuck?