by Jessie G.
“What?” That perfect unison of petulant voices only made their friends laugh harder. Saul wasn’t laughing though, not when he looked at those two smiling faces and wanted things he couldn’t have. Wanted things he didn’t deserve. Wanted so badly to have a lifetime filled with those smiling faces.
“I think maybe we’re oversharing, Javi.” Kyle’s stage whisper did nothing to quell the laughter around the table.
Javier waved that off. “It’s Bull and Red. I told you they fuck like rabbits.”
“You know, I Googled that shit. We are way ahead of those damn bunnies.” Red caught his breath enough to say, and when Bull groaned, Saul felt immensely better.
Chapter 20
Saul
The car was quiet as Saul drove them to Bull’s. Other than the episode on Saturday, Javier had been fine all weekend. They’d stayed at the bar until after eleven and Kyle seemed to enjoy himself with their friends. More importantly, their friends seemed to like Kyle. He was smart, personable and funny, and was able to flip easily between his conversation with Bull and Javier’s conversation with Red. After some ridiculously mind altering sex, Javier cuddled into Kyle’s arms while Saul checked all the doors and windows. When he returned, wrapping Kyle up tight against his body, the gorgeous fucker melted and sighed. While Javier slept they talked long into the night. It had been really nice, the closest to normal he’d had in a long time, and yet one more thing for him to miss.
On Sunday Javier was up with the sun, nudging them out of bed, eager to enjoy the day. While Javier packed a lunch, Kyle helped Saul load up the jet skis on the trailer and they hit the beach for the day. By the time the sun went down Kyle’s hair had paled even more, a shocking contrast to his deep golden tan. They ended the day in a little outdoor café and Saul had to remind himself that this was only temporary.
This morning, however, Javier hadn’t spoken a word since the alarm went off at six. He went through the motions of his daily routine refusing any attempt Kyle made to speak to him. Finally Kyle gave up, got dressed and repacked the bag he’d been living out of. By seven the truck was packed and they were on their way. When he pulled up to the curb, Bull and Red were waiting as Javier jumped out and Kyle followed. Once again Javier ignored Kyle’s attempts to talk to him and darted past Bull into the apartment.
Surprisingly it was Red who stepped forward to reassure Kyle. “He’ll be fine. I’ll make breakfast and we’ll get in a video game. It’ll be all good.”
Kyle took one last longing look at the door Javier rushed through. Knowing it was best for Javier to forget Kyle, Saul was prepared to stop him if he tried to follow, but Kyle already knew that. Not bothering to conjure up his Kip Veil smile, Kyle said his goodbyes to Red and Bull before climbing back in the truck.
“I’m afraid to open this,” Kyle whispered, clutching the rolled up paper Red pushed into his hands. Saul waited, letting him decide for himself. He didn’t have to look to know it would be one of Red’s amazing drawings and Saul wished he had thought to ask him not to do one. Red drew from inspiration and nothing he saw was going to help Kyle move on. Sudden frantic fingers unrolled the paper and the soft gasp was more sob than surprise. Red had captured the three of them laughing, their heads bent together. It was the moment just before Kyle leaned up and kissed them both. Not passionately or romantically, but a playful peck on their cheeks that matched his playful grin. That led to them both attacking his neck which led to Bull asking for the check. “He did this totally from memory?”
“Yes, I told you he’s brilliant.” It had been a perfect moment without a dark cloud in sight and Red saw it. That moment wasn’t an illusion—it was real and fraught with possibilities and it was all because of those twinkling blue eyes that looked at them like they were his. “Are you going to keep it?”
“Of course I’m going to keep it.” Kyle rushed to stick it in his backpack. “So I know the airport is the other way. Where are we going?”
“Someplace we can talk.” Fifteen minutes and a stop for coffee later, Saul pulled into a spot near the beach and cut the engine. “Do you want to walk?”
“No, I’m good here.” Without warning Kyle leaned across the front seat and curved one hand around the back of his neck, urging him down. Gently he pressed their lips together, stroking and teasing, without deepening it. The gentleness of it so distracted him that Saul didn’t realize Kyle had freed three buttons on his shirt until he ducked his head and raked one exposed nipple with sharp teeth.
“Fuck!” Saul grabbed Kyle’s head and arched into it. Instead of shying away, Kyle soothed the bite with his tongue and suckled the tightened peak before licking a path to its twin. “Fucking bastard!”
“So easy,” Kyle teased before looking up again, his soft sad eyes breaking Saul’s heart. “Is this the part where you tell me not to come back?”
“It would be so much easier to tell you that I don’t want you, that we don’t want you, but I find myself incapable of lying to you.” With a resigned smile Kyle eased back into his own seat, giving them both some breathing room. It didn’t help as much as Saul hoped it would. “Before I go on, understand that I’m not telling you this so you can try to fix him. I see the part of you that tunes itself to others, analyzes and adjusts how you deal with them. You’ll make a good counselor one day. Javi is what he is for his own protection. Fixing what others might see as broken will only make him relive everything he’s better off forgetting. I won’t be able to save him if that box gets opened.”
“I understand that, Saul, and for the record I think broken is the wrong word for both of you. In any event, it’s not why I’m here. It’s not what attracted me in the café or the reason I accepted your invitation at the club. So, please continue.”
While he’d never intended to gloss over the details, Kyle was a little too calm for his purpose, so he went for shock value. “Javi lost his parents in a car accident when he was fourteen and he, along with his sister Lily, was sent to live with his uncle. The uncle had a big gambling problem and was backed by a small time drug dealer, doing favors in exchange for having his debts covered. Javi was eighteen when his uncle lost a lot of money in a poker tournament. Instead of asking for a favor to cover his debt, this drug dealer demanded Javier. The uncle gave him up and, from what little I could piece together, there was some bullshit deal made where Javi was going to work as a servant and the uncle would have three years to pay to get him back. He never looked back. In those three years the drug dealer had become a big player in the Miami drug trade. He was funding his enterprise with human trafficking and forced prostitution. At the end of three years, when the uncle didn’t pay up, Javi was given to another man for training. After six months he was returned, trained.”
Unlike Javier, Saul didn’t have the luxury of forgetting what he knew of that training or the horrors that followed. Even now he could easily picture Javier prostrated at his feet, his abused body barely able to function. The anger and hate had only grown every day since. The recriminations, too. No matter if Javier blamed him or not, he could only blame himself for what happened next.
“Did you know him then?” Kyle asked softly, drawing him into the present again.
“No, not until his return.” Looking at Kyle hurt more than he expected. Like Javier, his gaze was soft and sad, not judgmental and accusatory. That would change. He had to make it change so Kyle would run and never look back. “My brother Miguel and I were in our teens when we joined up with a local street gang, pushing drugs on street corners. Miguel and I look a lot alike and we got noticed by this same up and coming drug dealer. He invited us to join his militia and sent us to Colombia to train. We earned more money in those few years than our parents had made combined in their lifetime. We convinced ourselves that it was worth it, got the parents a nice house, covered mounting medical bills, and they were both able to retire. Back then I’d find any reason to justify it. Now I know all those reasons were just the lies I told my parents so they’d accept my blood
money. When we came back to Miami, Miguel and I were nothing more than killers.”
When he paused again, Kyle whispered, “I’m okay, please go on.”
He didn’t need Kyle’s encouragement, not when those eyes were awash with tears instead of hate. Saul wouldn’t stop until he saw the hate. “I’d been back a year, going through the motions. If there was work to do I did it, and if there wasn’t I’d find other outlets for myself. Sex clubs, leather clubs, I had a solid reputation as a sadist. I kept it strictly to safe environments like Velvet Ropes with willing, consensual masochists. That way if I couldn’t contain it, someone would step in.”
“I find it hard to believe anyone had to stop you. You have too much control.”
Why the hell couldn’t Kyle react like a normal person? With horror and revulsion, and well deserved, never-want-to-see-your-disgusting-face-again hate! “Your confidence in me is unrealistic, Kyle. But no, no one had to stop me. In the end it was a game and it was really more to push my scene partner’s threshold than mine. I was already a killer—a little flick of the whip wasn’t feeding the monster in me. For me it was about the uninhibited passion of a partner well over the edge, the control.”
Again his little contradiction reduced his attempts with logic. “I was standing right there with you Friday night when Clay and Tory were in the public room. I know it’s a kink that many enjoy together. Seeing Tory’s blissed out enjoyment of it made it all the hotter. I would never judge your kinks, Saul, never, but we’re veering away from the reason we’re here.”
“In the end it’s all part of the history. Once I was back, my boss had become hugely powerful, his connections even more so. To borrow a mob movie cliché, the only way out was death. I didn’t go into it blindly, made my own decisions, and I live with the choices that I made.” In the end he hadn’t regretted those decisions because it put him in the position to save Javier. Bull would say all things happen for a reason and Saul could only agree. He’d become a killer to save an angel. “Then I was promoted from executioner to protector. Javi was pulled before me by his leash and forced to kneel at my feet. It only took a few moments to bind us together, our lives for the lives of our loved ones. Javi has…had…a younger sister, Lily. He begged me to take the job. Protector, pimp, jailer...I took the job. If Javi killed himself, we’d all die. If I did the humane thing and killed him, we’d all die.”
It would be those memories that would give him the strength to kill Durango when the time came and he’d get through a whole army to do it. Neither soulful black eyes nor sorrowful blue ones would stop him from exacting his revenge so Javier could finally live in peace. If that meant dying in the process, it would be fitting justice for every man he killed and every day he forced Javier to use his body to keep them all alive.
“Javi was scared but he wasn’t suicidal, not at that point. As a prized whore, Javi was afforded better care than most. Once he became my charge I was to keep him with me around the clock. Each call chipped away at him and watching it…” For a moment he looked out over at the ocean and wondered what it was about Kyle that was making him rip open this vein. Why didn’t he just lie and save them both this torment? “I taught him how to find a safe place in his mind, someplace he could go while it was happening. Someplace strong that would hold the memory apart after it was over.”
When he paused again, Kyle boldly gripped his hand and dragged it across the space, holding onto it like a lifeline. “He was lucky you were chosen to protect him.”
Frustrated by that, Saul snarled, “Lucky! Death would have been a reprieve! Instead I kept him alive and for what? My parents? At that point they hated me and he didn’t even know them! Sometimes I’d find him in the corner of our room holding their pictures. He told me once that he’d pay for all their lives with his body every day if that would keep them alive. And I let him! I brought him to every call—I stood outside listening as they raped and beat him and I didn’t stop it. Not once! Are you listening to me? Are you fucking hearing me?”
“You kept him alive. Saul, you didn’t do it for your parents or his sister, you did it to keep him alive. You’re no monster.” Kyle held firm when he tried to jerk away, clutching that hand between his desperately. “When did you fall in love with him?”
How was he screwing this up? What else could he possibly say to convince Kyle that he was dangerous? “I don’t know that I can pinpoint the when. It just happened. Why is that your question? Ask me how many people I’ve killed! Ask me how many men I let fuck him! Ask me that, Kyle!”
But Kyle didn’t. Didn’t ask, didn’t even blink to acknowledge his outburst. Instead he asked, “When did he fall in love with you?”
“He didn’t. He isn’t. Aren’t you the one with the degree? It’s Stockholm syndrome. Because I was the one who treated him gently, the one who taught him how to safeguard his mind and the one who killed for him, he put me in a place of love in his mind. It’s not real.”
“You can seriously believe that!” Kyle scoffed.
“You can’t seriously believe otherwise! I know it just as I know someday he’ll realize it. He’ll hate me when he realizes I knew all along and still selfishly accepted every ounce of affection, every moment of passion.” Kyle didn’t look like he believed him, but he wouldn’t keep repeating it. “My parents both died of other causes and Javi’s sister was killed in a bus accident. The only one left to protect was Miguel and he’d fallen in love. He wouldn’t run with us but he helped us run. We met with the DA, gave up some low level thugs and made a deal to go to prison.” Kyle looked at him like he was crazy. The DA had given him pretty much the same look. “Durango had a healthy fear of the legal system and would forever wonder if we had turned, or were being used to spy on him. It was the only safe way out. They didn’t put us in the same prison—the DA was pissed that we wouldn’t roll on the top guy and wasn’t inclined to grant too many favors. We got out two years ago.”
Kyle considered him thoughtfully and Saul could only hope he was turning over every word, seeing it for the harsh reality it was, and make the right decision for himself. “When did you start a sexual relationship?”
“Thursday.” Kyle blinked a few times, for the first time showing anything other than that calm exterior. “What you saw in the café? That was our first kiss. He watched Bull and Red fall in love, and wants it for himself.”
“So…Thursday?” Saul just nodded. The questions were pointless and had no bearing on the reason they were having this conversation. “Why a third? He said it was because there were things you couldn’t do for each other. You’ve twisted yourself all up to be what he needs. What is he missing?”
Why was Kyle forcing him to spell it out when it was so obvious? “I told you his love isn’t real, but he’s too scared to leave. His solution of a third gives him the opportunity to fall in love for real without giving up his safety net.”
Kyle looked away finally. “So, you got out and this drug dealer wants revenge?”
“Probably, but that’s not the reason Javi said he wanted us dead. It’s complicated, but there are other people that need and have asked for our help. I’ve been waiting a long time to see Durango dead and I’m damn sure not going to let someone else beat me to it.” Saul had no qualms about using his secrets to convince Kyle, but he wouldn’t drag Ric and Davin into this conversation.
“When the time comes, what happens to Javi? He can’t possibly think you’d let him fight with you. So what’s that plan?”
“Before we went to prison, Javi agreed to a guardianship. He knew he was just barely hanging on mentally. If something happens to me, guardianship will pass to Bull. He’ll take Javi in and all the money I have left from before is in trust for him. All the money I’ve made since is in a joint account with him. It will be more than enough to sustain his life.”
“So that’s it? You’re ready to die?”
“If I die in the process, I’ll know I did everything I could to give Javi the safety he needs to go on. He�
�ll put all memories of me in that box with all the other bad people and forget me very easily. He’ll adjust, allow himself to be absorbed into the Connor family and move on as if I never existed.” He could see Kyle trying to process everything, trying to make excuses and rationales, and couldn’t let him. “Javi will be taken care of and I’ll get what I deserve.”
He allowed himself one brief moment, gently reaching out to brush a stray tear from the corner of Kyle’s eye. “Don’t come back, Pup. Go, live a long and amazing life, find someone sane to love, and never look back. Don’t feel pity or empathy or anything else that will make you waver. If you do, just remember that I am a killer. I let other men hurt the man I love. See me for who I am. Don’t romanticize it.”
“Saul…”
Enough. He’d laid it all out on the line and now there was only one argument left to give. “If you come back, I will take you over. You’ll lose who you are under mine and Javi’s needs. If you come back, I’ll make you fall in love with me and then I’ll make you bury me. Look at me, Kyle, hear me. Don’t come back.”
Chapter 21
Kyle – 1 Month Later
“So where ya headed?” Ryder was helping him sort boxes in the storage unit in exchange for any clothes and costumes he wouldn’t need. By the time they were done, Ryder had loaded up his car with the majority of the boxes. It was almost appalling how many of his clothes ripped away and Kyle would be happy to see them drive off forever. He could just imagine Ryder and Max rifling through his extensive collection of colorful thongs wondering just how many a person really needed. Once he’d made an offhand joke in an interview about a man never having too many and fans started mailing them by the boxful to the studio. Tex hadn’t talked to him for two weeks, even after he offered to donate them to the studio as props.
“I haven’t decided.” As amusing as it would be to see the look of shock on Ryder’s face, Kyle had no intention of telling anyone from this life that he was going back to Miami, at least not yet. For the last month everyone who had been with him at Velvet Ropes grilled him every chance they got about the two smokin’ hot Latin studs he disappeared with. It didn’t seem to matter how many times he told them to mind their business, or when that got old, how many times he ignored them, the questions kept coming.