“I'm not sure I like how I got played here,” I said. “You asked me to help your son with his problem, and I agreed to help. I didn't agree to get involved with the cover-up of a counterfeiting case.”
“Wait. Go back.” Thorne put a hand on his father's arm. “You were a painter? You? My dad? I didn't know you could paint.”
I'd never seen Raynaud blush before, and I doubt Thorne had either. “It's no secret I'm a patron of the arts.”
“Yeah, but... holy crap, buying tickets for some stupid fund-raiser is a whole different level from being a real painter. And you were a good one? Good enough to make counterfeits?” Thorne had never sounded more in awe of his father.
I was a little bit impressed myself. Juvenile records were sealed, but I bet Judge Comptan could give me a peek at some interesting information from the archives if he wanted to.
“Do you really need to know this?” Raynaud sounded crispy.
“Father, I honestly think I do. I think it's important for me to understand...” Thorne gestured around the room. “You put me in an unusual situation, and then you tried to yank me back out. I think I need to understand you better.”
“What's to understand? I thought I was an artist. I thought I was something special and knew better than everybody else. Just like you, son. I didn't see anything good that could come from sharing that information with you. I wanted you to learn from my good examples, not my bad ones.”
“My father the artist.” Thorne couldn't seem to get past that point.
“I wasn't a real artist. I had a talent for copying. It was better for me to give it up.”
“Wow. Just wow.”
Father and son stared at each other, Thorne looking a little more delighted than he should, Raynaud looking angrier by the moment. I could guess what happened and why he was ashamed to talk about it.
A talent for copying. “Let me guess,” I said. “You're from a good family, and you're in a good school, and there was a fad for buying Hunters for investment. You heard rumors about fakes and figured out you could create a few fakes of your own.” He could've had all the pocket money he wanted from his own father, but it was a case of like father, like son. Raynaud wanted to prove he could make it on his own.
“I was sixteen,” he said. “Fuck it, Lane. We all do stupid stuff when we're sixteen. It was a challenge to myself to get one in a museum. Any museum.”
Thorne kept on shaking his head. “This is so cool. My dad in a museum, and it's been there all along, all this time, and nobody caught on?”
“Jesus.” Raynaud wiped his hand over his face. “I screwed up, all right? Over time, as more publicity came out about all the Hunter fakes out there, I think most people in the parish figured out it wasn't real, but they think it's a Toye, which has developed a sort of reality of its own.”
“This is fucking insane. My father, the boy genius counterfeiter.”
“It was a mistake. Fuck, it was a crime. Several times, I tried to buy the painting from the museum, even told them to name their price, but they wouldn't sell. Behind the scenes, I was told they had some doubts about the authenticity and they didn't want to put it on the market and stimulate a lot of discussion and doubt...”
“This is fucking amaze-balls is what it is.”
“Three decades of this. Of knowing my painting was on display under somebody else's name. It seemed like a good time to close the door.”
“You could have just asked me to take the painting. All these crazy games.”
“You didn't need to know that side of your father. You were getting too far off the path as it was.”
“Maybe I needed to know both sides of you.”
“Well. You know me better now.” Raynaud nodded to me, and then he was walking out the door.
Down the hall.
Gone.
His way of giving us his blessing.
“Holy fuck,” Thorne said. “My father the bad boy counterfeiter. I had no idea.”
“Let's just hope that painting stays missing.”
“Oh, yeah, it's going to stay missing.” Thorne sounded confident of that. “I guess you need to get back to punishing me for that whole detour to visit my mom. And, um, breaking out of my cell just now.”
“It's a challenge to punish a guy for visiting his mom.”
“Let's try it another way. You need to get back to punishing me for driving off somewhere unauthorized.”
“Oh, hell yes,” I said. “This might be a job for the cayenne-flavored lube.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
THORNE
And so here I hung chained to an X-shaped cross set up in the Spanish courtyard. A public place, open to the sky. Sure, fine, I understood about the screen of vegetation by now. The camouflage. It wasn't really a public place. My captive body wasn't really being recorded by the greedy eyes of Google satellite. But I couldn't look up and see the special near-invisible screen of mesh that made this place fade into forest.
Lane pulled on a long pair of yellow surgical gloves. I twisted my head over my shoulder, the better to see what he was doing.
Silent, a grim if not entirely realistic frown pasted across his face, he held up the tube of lube. I hadn't believed there was really a cayenne flavor, but evidently there was.
I clenched the cheeks of my ass, then looked up at the distant country stars. I could see waving branches, I could see Spanish moss, but I couldn't make out the screen of jammer mesh. Maybe the world could see. Maybe the eyes in the sky were recording.
I knew they weren't, of course they weren't, but the flash of fantasy gave me a thrill of vulnerability and, yes, of desire.
Lane began to squirt a worm of lube between the cheeks of my ass, and I clapped them together hard. A mistake. The cayenne burned in some interesting places, and I flexed my buttocks to clap them back open.
He warmed me with the flogger and a small plug that made me crazy. He followed up slowly, first with fingers, then with a thicker plug. It was longer but not long enough. My hips churned, bucking my ass again and again to slap urgently at his hands and thighs and groin.
“I'm on fire. I'm burning up. Please.”
Why did he like to hear me beg? Why did he get such a thrill out of breaking me down like that?
Why did I get such a thrill from being broken?
“I like watching you burn.” He corkscrewed the plug in barely enough to connect with my gland.
“Please,” I said. “I have a thousand ways to say please. Do you want to hear them all?”
“Yeah, I want to hear them all.” In and out. Deep and shallow. Suddenly, the plug popped free of me like a nasty finger.
An empty feeling. I clenched the long internal muscles, but all I grasped was emptiness. “Please stop torturing me. Please. I can't take it anymore. Fuck, please.”
There was a little breeze of someone walking past. I flicked my eyes sideways to see who it was. Some staffer who didn't stop and didn't even bother to glance in my direction. I was of no more importance than some statue in a night garden.
Then the staffer was gone as if he'd never existed.
Alone again. Me and Lane and nobody else.
The burn of the cayenne lube. The crackle of a foil package. Lane didn't normally need the rubber, but of course he wasn't some pain slut who needed the burn of cayenne on his dick.
“Please,” I said. “I'm going crazy here.”
At last, I felt the first probe of sticky hard flesh thrusting between my cheeks. I was still screaming, but I wasn't ashamed of my need, because I no longer remembered what shame was supposed to be. I didn't feel pain, either. Everything was sensation, and all sensation was pleasure. Oh, of course, I tried to hold still when Lane pressed the round head of his cock against my hole, but the clench of muscles at my entrance must have betrayed me.
I let go of the need to be strong. I let go of the need to be stoic. Who was I kidding? I'd let go of that shit hours ago. My butt clenched, and I pulled his cock in deeper. For a
moment, he lost control of the pace, and I was able to yank him deep and fast to where I wanted him.
Pound my prostate now, you fucker. Hit it hard and thick and bold.
He thrust and parried. Frictionless now, I slapped my ass back hard against his belly to meet every stroke. My backside was on fire, but the aftermath of the punishment was warmth and flame and oh-my-fuck-yes.
“You love it,” he whispered into my ear. “You welcome it.”
“Yes,” I said. “Dear fuck. Yes.”
“Come. That's a direct order now. Come.” He stroked forward to just the right place, applied just the right amount of pressure.
Even if I'd wanted to resist, it would have been impossible, and who would have wanted to?
In and out. Deep and out. Stroke, stroke, stroke.
I braced myself against the wooden cross. It was a friend, a support, not a prison. My entire body convulsed from the soles of my feet, but there was a special wobble in my knees, which would have bent almost to the floor if I hadn't been secured in place. My spew was that forceful, and so much of it splashed wetly from the wooden frame to soak my belly, legs, and crotch. Already, long ticklish rivers of goo were running down my legs.
Lane too was coming. Hot and wet and messy. His cock seemed to expand inside of me to sting every square millimeter of internal flesh with his burning spunk. It seemed to take a long time for him to empty.
At some point I slumped, knowing I was only held where he needed me by my shackles. It was a good feeling. A secure feeling.
We seemed to dangle there out of time for a while. If anybody came by to observe, some deputy, the other captive, the fucking mayor... I didn't know and didn't care. This wasn't about anybody else except me and Lane. His breath felt hot against my back, which seemed to glow from the post-punishment warmth.
My cock was already beginning to twitch upward again.
He fingered it. “Damn,” he said. “You've made me very proud.”
He'd made me very... something else.
“That was amazing,” I said. “Thank you for this opportunity.” My voice was torn and ragged. Broken. My words formal. It was a strange combination, but I knew he'd understand.
“I should thank you. You'll never know what it means that you trusted me like this.”
Did I trust him?
I did. Of course I did, even if I hadn't been able to admit it to myself. Everything he did was about me.
“It's more than trust,” I heard myself say. Words I couldn't say at any other time came easily in the afterglow. “It's a lot more than trust.”
He held me from behind, rocking into me. My arms high and trembling, chained out of the way. My body warm where it fit against his body.
“I know,” he said. “I think I've always known, somewhere down deep inside.”
I could say it. I knew I could say it.
His mouth was hot on my ear. “I love you, boy. I love your strength. I know it isn't easy for you to surrender. None of this is easy for you. I know that. I know what a gift you are.”
Yes, I could say it.
I stammered. I moaned. I stuttered.
“Easy,” he said. “It's OK.”
After a few minutes, he let me go and pulled on a pair of leather jeans. Shirtless and barefoot, he looked like a fetish model.
“I love you, and I have a gift for you,” he said. “You don't have to say anything.”
A gift? I didn't deserve a gift. Why did my feelings have to be flogged out of me? What was this final block? Why couldn't I say what I longed so much to say?
I avoided his eyes as he unclipped the chains that secured my wrist manacles above my head.
“Shake out your hands.”
I did.
“Come on.” He took my arm. I wore nothing but the cuffs on my wrists and ankles—nothing except a coating of sweat and my own spunk.
He led me into the dungeon room and then immediately out again, so that we were on the exterior of the building. It was a dark night and much darker out here than in the courtyard, but he moved swiftly, choosing a trail I'd never walked before.
I didn't know where it led, but he did, and that's what mattered.
Perhaps a quarter-mile down, we arrived at a small clearing with a campfire ring, the fire already burning, although there was no one visible in attendance. I didn't see the rope hanging from the nearby oak until Lane had already pulled it. A basket came down.
“Take it,” he said.
I reached in and felt cheap, dirty cotton.
No, I thought. No.
“It's OK. Take it.”
I pulled it out and held it up in the light of the fire. Son of a fucking bitch. My jail jumpsuit. He couldn't. He wouldn't.
“I'm not going back, I can't go back.” My voice sounded too young. “I want to be here with you.”
“I know that, Thorne.”
Thorne. I had my name back.
“I want you to burn it. You've earned that.”
Then I did say it, the words gushing out of me before I even knew what I was saying. “Oh, fuck, I do love you, Lane. I do love you so much.”
“I know. I love you too.” He took me in his arms, the embrace strong enough to crush the jumpsuit between us. “That's why I want you to burn it. Your old life is gone. We're together now.”
“Yes, fuck yes. I love you, love you, love you.” See, it wasn't so hard after all. Once I said it, I couldn't stop saying it.
He laughed, and we turned together toward the fire. Burning cotton, even cotton all dirty and greasy from a night in jail, wasn't as easy as you might think. I had to rip it in pieces, bit by bit, to feed it to the fire. Lane helped me, tugging and yanking and laughing even louder.
“The fabric was so old and rotten I didn't think of bringing scissors,” he said.
“It's better this way,” I said. “I'd rather do it the hard way. It means more.”
“That right there is why I love you.”
“That right there is why I love you too.”
Epilogue
THORNE
We paddled a two-man flatboat through a dark bayou. The full moon was almost directly overhead, which put the time around midnight. There was the sound of something moving in the cypress trees. A raccoon, maybe. A great horned owl hooted in the distance, and the something went silent.
Around a bend, we found a place where fireflies danced under a grandfather cypress. If you squinted, you could see colors in their little lights—pale green and red and gold.
A coolish night, maybe around seventy degrees. It would be sticky-hot by nine in the morning.
“Here,” Lane said.
A single hurricane lamp sat on a weathered wooden dock. We didn't need to talk to settle on the best way to secure the flatboat with several lengths of nautical rope.
What is this place?
A natural question, but I knew I could trust Lane to tell me when I needed to know.
“Take the lamp,” he said.
I did.
Moonlight and lamplight on a little cypress mulch path. Well-maintained. The cottage at the end of the path was dark, but people came here on a regular basis. The silvered boards were tourist silver, if you get my meaning. Not boards with old paint weathered off but boards never painted to begin with to create the appearance of age.
Galvanized zinc flower boxes beside the front door. Scented white flowers of some variety that stays open all night.
An old-fashioned combination lock on a hasp.
Lane took the lamp out of my hands and held it high enough to illuminate the lock. He didn't need words to ask. I examined it for a moment, more with my ears and my sense of touch than with my eyes. I felt a telltale click here and there when I spun it around.
I nodded.
It wasn't a cheap lock. It would take me a few minutes. But I could get it open.
Lane, patient, held the light. He also held his breath.
Listening. Feeling. Another click, and then another.
> The lock fell open, and I pulled it out of its hasp and slipped it into my pocket. Lane glanced at my feet, and I understood that too. We were bonded now. Practically mind-readers. I took the lamp from his hand and put it firmly but silently on the doorstep. Still kneeling, I quickly untied and toed off my running shoes. Then I untied and pulled off Lane's.
On impulse, I kissed the top of his right foot, and then I needed to kiss the top of his left foot to make them equal.
He sighed, but it was a silent sigh. Something in the way his chest moved. Something in his smile.
I liked having my face at this level. I bumped my head into his crotch. A promise for later.
Back on my feet, I carefully applied sewing machine oil drop by drop to the door hinges. They wouldn't be rusty—this place was clearly too frequently visited for that—but I wouldn't risk even the slightest creak. We were probably alone here, but “probably” wasn't the same as “certainly.”
Finally, I was ready to push the door open.
Inch by inch by inch.
It gave the impression of being larger on the inside, probably because it was a single room. I held the lamp higher, but I couldn't illuminate the corners.
No furniture except for a single stand.
A flash of orange caught the light.
I froze.
Displayed on the stand was a faceted stone the size of my fist. Three thousand carats. Deep orange, the color deeper than the flesh of a blood orange, never mind a satsuma.
If sunset was a liquid, it would be the color of this stone.
The Manderson Satsuma Garnet.
I looked a question at Lane, and he looked another question back at me.
How is this here?
Did you know this would be here?
How?
Why?
“My contact in the FBI gave me this GPS location,” Lane said. “He said it was in return for my assistance with the Bernard Justire bust.”
The eighty-something money launderer wouldn't be doing any time, but he wouldn't be retiring to any fancy manor house in the British Virgin Islands either. According to CNN, both the Justire ranch and his string of vacation homes had been seized by our federal friends. Civil forfeiture, they called it.
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