Mister Bodyguard

by Ivy Oliver

  So, when I pull the stripper off him, my motives are purely altruistic. I give her a big tip, and my brain is thankfully not sloshing around in enough booze just yet for me to make a quip about complimenting her surgeon on his good work with her enhancements. I am not that crass, so at least I have that going for me.

  Julian relaxes into his seat and knocks back more of this weird tasting booze he likes. It’s not bad, but I’m pretty sure these would be headache city. Better than vodka, at least. To me, the top shelf stuff just tastes like aluminum. Bottom shelf like cheaper aluminum.

  My gaze keeps wandering back to him. To his hands, his chest, his stomach when he breathes, the way the toes of his hiking boots cut little circles in the air. The booming beat of the club music jars my spine and catches my heartbeat, speeding it up in time with itself as my eyes rake him.

  Then when he looks my way I yank my eyes in the other direction, like a flirty teenager who doesn’t know how to sack up and make a move. I’ve felt this urge before, but it’s never been this strong. A dumb notion wiggles its way through my mind and I have to bite down on it to keep the laugh from escaping my lips—I wonder what that insecure douche brother of the groom and Karen’s cousin would say if I grabbed Julian and rammed my tongue down his throat.

  Either they’d sit there and take it or I’d kick all their asses. These little boys wouldn’t last five seconds with me.

  Julian taps my arm.

  “You okay?” he says, his words a little slurred and slow.

  “Just fine,” I say, raising my empty glass. “More!” I bark.

  The waitresses here are good. There’s another one coming before the empty glass is out of sight. They give one to Julian, too. Taking his cue, I slow down. If I have a drink in my hand at all times, it’ll appear more like I’m enjoying myself and not choking down every passing second waiting for this embarrassing night of unimpressive hijinks with tedious people is finally over. I’m sure after all this that idiot Trevor will have himself puffed up like he’s Hunter S. Thompson and this is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

  Give me a break.

  My desperation to get out of here rises with each lap dance I wave off. I sense the moment is near when the guys drunkenly get up and lurch to the balcony to watch the floor show. The club is packed now, the music has ramped up, and I stand behind Julian, as bored as he is as the stars of the evening’s entertainment rush out onto the stage. Posters on the way in said some porn star I’ve never heard of will be in the house tonight.

  Standing behind Julian, something begins to happen. My eyes settle on the back of his neck. He has that kind of pale skin that never tans, just burns, and he’s been hiding inside as much as he can manage. Pale skin peeks out above his collar. Tracing down the narrow, athletic lines of his back, my eyes fix on his ass. A perfect round bubble butt that turns me on more than any bethonged derriere in the house.

  So that’s how it starts. Blood starts to pump downwards, filling in between my legs. The tension rises with my dick, stiffening in my dark jeans. I’m glad I didn’t wear something less restrictive. With no one looking, I can shift easily and hide my—

  Julian takes a step back and bumps right into my dick. A shock, like someone touched an electrified prod to my skin, ripples from between my legs through my whole body. He looks over his shoulder and my mind conjures an image of him doing the same—slack, anxious expression and all—as my cock disappears into his ass, gliding between pale cheeks as ecstasy floods my body and he quivers all over, overwhelmed by my size and girth, a little moan escaping his lips as—

  Fuck me, get a grip, Colt.

  Julian’s eyes snap away and he looks down at the stage as if he actually cares about the half-naked gyrations taking place below us. His shoulders are quivering. Hell, his whole body is quivering. Is a similar image running through his mind? Is he wondering what it’d feel like to take me inside him? It’s good my hands are occupied. They want to loop around him and skim down his stomach and between his legs so I can grab his cock. I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to have one in my hand. In my mouth. Take control of him. Eat him all up.

  Christ, he’s Karen’s best friend and I’m old enough to be his…actually, not old enough to be his anything, we’re only six years apart, but it feels like decades. Twenty-four to thirty is still a big gap, especially after you’ve seen everything I have.

  I’ve gone from hoping I can get through this night without vomiting on the groom to hoping I can get through this night without groping the bride’s best friend. My sister’s best friend. Very nice, Colton.

  Can we leave now?

  I motion for another drink. If I don’t have to drive, I might as well take advantage of it. Maybe if I down enough I’ll get struck by whiskey dick. Tonight, I may be the only man in the history of erections who’s tried to go limp. It’s not working. I can’t get that image out of my mind.

  What would it feel like?

  I’ll never know. I don’t dare find out. I certainly don’t dare smell his hair as we pile into the van.

  Oh, damn it. He smells a little perfumey, but it’s not heavy or overpowering. Could even just be flowering deodorant. He didn’t notice, and I don’t think anyone else did either. I crowd in next to him, squeezing him into the window, shielding him from the rest of them. I’m starting to act protective. Possessive. It’s going to get me into trouble. When has it ever not?

  “Where are we going now,” Julian grumbles, talking more to himself than to me.

  “Something else stupid,” I muse, and it draws a giggle out of him. “I wonder if Mom and Dad knew where we were headed when they went off to Cirque du Soleil.”

  “Probably,” Julian mutters. “They were young once, too, right?”

  “Have you met them?”

  Keep your mouth shut, Colton. You’re boozed up, don’t know what you might say. Julian laughs oddly, in a slightly forced way, and gives me a curious look. Has he heard stories? I’m sure he’s heard all about my parents from Karen; she’s never been shy of complaining about them to me, of course.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Only for about five minutes, though. Karen wanted to keep me away from them, I think.”

  I wince. I know Dad’s stance on…I don’t even want to think about the word he uses for gay men. Let’s just call him traditional and leave it at that. I need another drink.

  “He probably figured we’re in a club-club.”

  “Like dancing?”

  “Like leather chairs, cigars, and geopolitics,” I say.

  He dragged me to a few places like that before I started my naval career, to meet Important Men who talk about things they have no control over, feeling significant as they slug cognac and pretend to know anything about economics or social policy. I didn’t mind the cognac, but the conversation was interminable, and old. I think they fancied themselves some kind of explorer’s club from the nineteenth century but they just looked absurd trying to pull it off.

  Surely, they’d never think of their kids partaking in the sleaze that permeates this city. It’s just good old family fun. They have a way of seeing only what they want to see.

  Suddenly I’m maudlin. At least it killed my unwanted hard-on for my sister’s BFF. I have to remind myself, if he was a woman, I wouldn’t go for it either. It would be considered rude, and a little predatory.

  Predatory. Julian reminds me of some kind of exotic cat, both predator and prey animal, every movement languid and seductive in a casual, unknowing way, his sardonic smile unaware of how he captures my fantasies.

  Ugh, another week of this and I can go back to my life.

  Looks like the next stop on our journey is a casino crawl. The shuttle stops on the Strip and it begins—a slow-rolling tide of bros in popped collars flowing from casino floor to casino floor, starting with the Luxor near the airport, the one with the big pyramid.

  I follow them inside. Julian is clearly nervous. It’s Trevor, the little weasel, that notices first. He crowds t
he whole group around a craps table, edging in around an old man in a fishing hat who leans over the rail and ignores the world around him as he mechanically places bets and watches the dice roll. He doesn’t even react when the leaders of this drunken excursion proclaim the occasion and barrage Alex with back-slaps and applause from the dealers.

  Julian edges into the end of the table and doesn’t even bother pulling out his wallet. It hits me that he probably doesn’t have enough to play. It doesn’t matter, there’s so much activity that he can just watch, probably as bored as I am. I don’t bother with any chips, either.

  The dice work their way around. The table is having rotten luck but to hear the cheering from this group, you’d think every roll is a seven-come-eleven. The croupier offers Julian the dice, and when he waves them away, the whole crowd jeers him. The wall of boos hits like a wave and the fine hairs at the base of my neck rise as my back tenses. Fuckers are getting off on embarrassing him. Trevor and Jordan lead the catcalls, but Alex has joined in too, the prick.

  I throw down a sheaf of hundreds in front of Julian and direct the dealer to slide the chips to him.

  “I’ll stake you,” I say. “Don’t lose too much.”

  “I have no idea how this game works,” he says, his voice almost pleading, nearly drowned by the cheering.

  “Just do as I say and roll the dice when I tell you too,” I murmur in his ear.

  He goes erect—I mean, he stands up straight—and nods. I tell him where to put his first bet. Mollified, the stickman taps the table, indicating for him to throw. He grabs the dice and tosses them.

  Briefly: Setting the many side bets aside for now, the game of craps is simple. Roll the dice. If they come up seven or eleven, you win your side bet. If you roll any number but two, three, or twelve, the objective then becomes to roll that number again, without rolling a seven first.

  Julian’s first roll is a seven. Winners all around, except for the sour old man in the fishing hat who bet the wrong way, meaning he placed a bet for Julian to roll a craps number.

  His second is a seven, too. The pit boss—the guy who sits in the middle of the table—side-eyes him, but it’s for show, not his money. Julian’s third roll is a six- four and two.

  I lean over and whisper—shout—in his ear.

  “You have to roll a six again before a seven. Listen. Grab four green chips,” I don’t tell him that’s $200, “toss it to the stickman, and yell ‘hard six.’”

  He does as ordered.

  For the first time tonight, I smile.

  After all the bets are down, the stickman sends the dice back. Julian picks them up and throws them. I lean over his shoulder, watching. For one pulse-pounding second, I think he did it—one of the dice turns over with three pips, but the other, five. An eight. I breathe a sigh of relief. If it’d come up four, making for seven, he’d lose all the money he bet.

  The dice come back. He throws them.

  Eleven. Cheers as the one-roll betters collect their winnings; betting eleven pays fifteen-to-one odds.

  He rolls another eleven, and the cheers get louder. Craps has its own esoteric language; somebody yells, “Hey yo, back to back.” “Yo” is the name for eleven.

  Another roll. Twelve this time. A few Come betters—there’s a spot on the table called the “Come Line,” and, of course, the “Don’t Come Line,” and it gets complicated—grumble at their loss.

  Again. Three.

  Again. Five.

  Again. Eight.

  My nerves begin creeping up. The more he rolls, the more chances he has to roll a seven and lose, seven being the easiest number to roll. Six and eight are the second easiest, though, with equal chances.

  Julian, shaking, must realize this, too. There’s a building tension around the table.

  His next roll bounces right out of the table.

  “Say same dice,” I bark in his ear.

  He jumps and bumps into my side and repeats the command. After another member of the bachelor party finds it on the floor, the dealers inspect the die and they come back to him.

  My eyes linger on his delicate features. His prominent Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. He glances at me, feeling the pressure. There’s a small fortune on the table and it’s all riding on his next roll.

  Swaying a little, he picks up the dice and tosses them, just hard enough to bounce against the far end of the table and roll back.

  God damn it, the one die turns over on three pips. The other fucking stands up on its corner and spins in a circle before it falls. For a heart-clenching moment I expect that four to come up.

  It’s another three pips. Hard six. Winner.

  The stickman taps his pole in front of Julian and announces his winnings, to be paid by the dealer next to him.

  “Eighteen hundred,” he says.

  Julian almost collapses as he picks up over two thousand dollars off the table from his hard six and the winnings and odds on his line bet. It’s still his turn until he “sevens” out.

  His next roll isn’t as fortuitous as the first. He rolls a five, then an eight, then a seven, to disappointed sighs.

  “Hand the dealer all your chips and say, ‘Color.’”

  He blinks. “What? Why?”

  “They’ll change your chips for bigger denominations and we can go cash them in.”

  After his winnings have been color checked, I count out what I originally gave him and hand him back the rest.

  He holds the chips, confused. “Aren’t these yours?”

  “You rolled,” I say. “Cashier’s over here.”

  Away from the table, the inside of the casino is cooler. Julian sways on his feet as we wait for the cage. I don’t know if it’s from booze or the heady rush of winning at a game of chance. Once he’s changed the chips, he stares at the cash like it’s not real before he hastily stuffs it in his wallet. I, more casually, tuck mine back into my money clip.

  “Bleh,” he mutters, heading for the table.

  I grab his arm and flinch. The booze and the casino atmosphere are getting to me. I shouldn’t have touched him like that.

  He turns around and looks at me.

  “Let’s have a seat for a minute, huh?”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  I guide him to an empty roulette table and we take a pair of chairs, watching the bachelor party piss away their gambling budgets in a storm of cheers and calls for booze. Watching the casino employees and judging their reactions leaves me pretty sure that the party is cheering everything, even if they’re losing. Someone yells “winner winner chicken dinner” and everyone who’s paid to be there rolls their eyes in annoyance.

  That phrase is probably drilled into their fucking skulls by now.

  Julian yawns and clutches his head.

  “You alright?”

  “Fine,” he mutters. “Little bit of a headache.”

  “If you’d drink real man’s liquor you might not have that problem. I’d hate to be you in the morning.”

  He gives me a weary look. I flag a passing cocktail waitress. She has a small supply of bottled water, little half-pints, and hands him one. He drinks it like a thirsty man who’s just crawled from hot sands onto the soft grasses of an oasis and sits back.

  “I’ve already gotten a cotton mouth,” he mumbles.

  My gaze travels to his lips, caressing them with phantom fingers. Soft lips. The haze of stubble on his chin only makes him more intriguing, somehow. Leaning back, I almost rest an arm on his chair. My hand wants to sink into his hair, feel silky softness curling about my fingers. He stretches, arms back over his head, and I wonder how his skin tastes. Is there hair on his chest? Is it shaved? Naturally smooth?

  Then comes the heady, disoriented feeling I get whenever I look too closely at another man, thinking about his body. His dick. He’s got more of a bulge than I thought at first, or maybe he’s at half-mast, too.

  The two of us sit in silence and watch the idiots cheer and jump up and down over losing their money.
Fishing Hat Man glances from side to side as if he’s questioning his life choices but keeps playing with the smirk of a man who’s betting the wrong way and the craps keep coming. Judging by his stack of chips, the others are losing money hand over fist.

  Eventually they get tired of it. Craps is the only game that accommodates a big crowd. Some of them head off to the blackjack tables, others to roulette. I lead Julian around and explain the games to him.

  This is Vegas. Most casinos elsewhere no longer play baccarat, but they have it here. I start humming the James Bond theme and lead Julian to the table.

  “What’s this?”

  I explain the rules of Baccarat—which basically amount to a coin toss against the house but using a point system on cards instead of a coin. When you really think hard about the game, it’s kind of dumb. The older version from when Ian Fleming was writing his secret agent stories involved some actual skill, like a poker game against the house, but it’s changed since then. The odds were too good. It’s still the best game in the house.

  I sit down, cash in, and Julian stands behind me, leaning on my chair. Leaning over my head to watch, he rises on his toes and crosses his legs while standing. Glancing over my shoulder, I wish I was behind him so I could get a look at his ass, nice and flexed while he does that.

  This has been going on all night and it’s only getting worse. I want him. I need a drink. Thankfully, the cocktail waitresses abide. Fitting the occasion, I order a Vesper, and then a vodka martini when the waitress doesn’t know what a Vesper is. Philistines.

  Julian gets closer. I can feel him behind my head. I tilt back just a bit, and suddenly I’m touching his chin. He doesn’t move for a moment, but then blinks and pulls away. I can see him in the mirror behind the table.

  I play a few hands, win some, lose some, and gradually my focus fades. I’m tired, I’m buzzed, and Julian’s presence is like tingling fingers dancing over my skin. When I stand up, the dealer stares straight at my crotch. I’m erect.

  Julian follows as I head for the cashier to exchange my chips. He keeps looking at me.

  Gradually it dawns on me that we’ve lost the others. Fuck.