Loverboy (Dartmoor Book 5)

by Lauren Gilley

  In truth, Ian had intended to use Alec. Not to make Kev jealous, because Kev wasn’t a part of his daily circle, but to assuage the deep ache inside himself. That empty, clenching loneliness. He’d wanted to dull the sting of Whitney Howard. If Kev could find solace in a stranger, then so could he, by God. He’d liked the look of Alec – absolutely mouth-watering – and the easy access was a perk.

  But then he’d taken the boy to bed, and watched his pupils dilate, and melted into the soft sweetness of his kiss. Somewhere in the midst of his Egyptian cotton sheets, he’d found trust, and satisfaction, and the kind of affection he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

  “Baby.” He brushed Alec’s hair back and settled his hand on the back of his neck. “I promise you. I’m not just playing.”

  Not anymore.

  Alec gave him a small, uncertain smile, eyes still glimmering. “That’s good, ‘cause I’m sort of…um…a little bit hopeless at this point.”

  Ian pulled him close and kissed his forehead. “I’m glad you are.”

  And maybe soon, hopefully, he could return the sentiment.

  Twenty-Two

  Session 6

  “How’s Whitney?” Mercy asked over the rim of his coffee cup.

  “At work.” Tango kept his tone light, but he could feel his smile threatening to break through.

  Mercy’s dark eyes danced. “Uh huh.”

  “I’m trying to get her to submit some of her work to this art show they’re having over at the college.”

  “She’s an artist?”

  Tango rose to go fetch the canvas she’d left tucked alongside the TV last night, the horse in the green field.

  Mercy whistled. “Damn. Why is she working customer service?”

  “That’s one of my goals,” Tango said as he resumed his seat. “Get Whitney an art job.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. You’re in a good mood. Just…don’t want you biting off more than you can chew with these goals.”

  Tango scowled to himself. “It’s not like it’s a long list.”

  Mercy sipped his coffee, face sliding into neutral. He wasn’t going to push; either because he was a good friend, or because he didn’t know what he ought to say. Or maybe both.

  Tango really needed to make an appointment with the doctor Ghost had suggested.

  “Okay,” Mercy said. “More demons?”

  Tango took a deep breath and nodded. He knew what he needed to talk about. Amid the blanketing horror of his past, there were moments that stood out from the rest. That defined him.

  There were people, too. There was Ian.

  ~*~

  The Cuckoo’s Nest became Kev’s world. The basement, the car (windows and doors locked, armed guard in the front), and the club. He felt like a nocturnal creature. A subterranean one. When he dreamed, he dreamed in neon pinks and blues. And when he had nightmares, there were always customers.

  That was a nightmare consistent while both asleep and awake.

  He was thirteen, and he’d been “working” for a solid year now. Every week, Miss Carla presented him with a bundle of cash, his tips from the week, and then told him she’d hold it for him. Sometimes she bought new outfits for him, tight, sparkly, feminine things the clients would enjoy peeling off of him. She bought him floral-scented shampoos, and lotions, and body oils. Condoms and lube for keeping in the room where he “entertained.”

  Most mornings, he hoped he wouldn’t wake. He thought, again and again, how wonderful it would be if he’d never been born. Or if he could die now.

  He started fantasizing. If only the doors of the car weren’t locked, he could fling open the door on the highway and fall out, let himself splatter on the pavement. If only the cord of the hair dryer would stretch all the way to the bathroom sink. If only one of his customers would become overwrought and keep squeezing his throat until he stopped breathing.

  Whatever happened to Mama? Their old house? His friends from school? All questions that passed through his mind less and less, and then only in an ephemeral way that made them feel as if they’d never really happened, and that he’d dreamed his boyhood in a weak moment of wanting to escape.

  The only thing that made it at all bearable was Ian.

  The door of the private room shut, too loudly, yanked by the heavy touch of the overweight customer who’d just thrown Kev face-down on the bed and panted and huffed behind him for all of two minutes. The really disgusting ones never lasted very long, and then they seemed ashamed and fumbling afterward, getting out of the room with haste. Leaving Kev to clean himself up in relative peace, the music a low thump on the other side of the padded door.

  Movements unsteady, he tugged on the robe hanging in the corner and belted it tight, the worn terry cloth warm against his chilled skin. He leaned against the wall, because it would hurt too much to sit down, and because his legs were about to give out.

  He needed another shot.

  A light knock sounded at the door, barely heard through the padding, and then it eased open, a few inches at a time, which told Kev exactly who was entering the room. Ian slipped in, soft-footed as a shadow, alabaster face, and hands, and feet the only things visible beneath his own robe. His hair looked sweaty, and messy, and he’d tied it back in a bun to keep it away from his face.

  “Hello, little darling.” His voice came out rough, and tired; he’d just come from a client appointment of his own. “What do you say we go clean up?”

  He offered a long, slender hand, and Kev took it, the skin-to-skin contact the motivation he had for moving away from the wall.

  The hallway, dim and pink-tinged, made hump-backed shadows of the spent customers who tumbled out of doors still righting their clothes, heads whipping back and forth as they tried to remember which way the exist was.

  “Hey, nice stems,” one called out to Ian.

  “Not on the clock, asshole,” Ian hissed back, grip tightening on Kev’s hand, towing him down the hall in a rush.

  There were several wolf whistles.

  “Listen to that smart mouth!” the first guy crowed. “Might have to put it to work soon. Miss Carla know you talk to customers that way?”

  Kev felt Ian shudder as he walked, the movement traveling through their joined hands.

  “I like the little one,” someone else said.

  “Had him last week,” another man chimed in. “Tightest little hole you ever–”

  Ian shoved through the door into the changing area, and Kev leapt in behind him. The voices cut off mid-sentence, and then they were blessedly separate from the men who paid to use their bodies.

  Ian pulled Kev around into a crushing hug, his thin arms surprisingly strong. His strength was a refined, self-contained thing, one that enabled him to dance like a dream, suspended upside-down by one hand from the pole at the center stage. And so it always came as a shock to feel it up close like this – but a good one.

  Kev tucked his face beneath the man’s chin and let out the deep, shivering breath he’d been holding since the fat man with the sticky hundred-dollar bills first grinned at him across the room. He started to shake, and knew part of it was stress, and fear, and disgust – but part of it was his need of another injection.

  “Are you okay?” Ian asked right against his ear, his lips soft against Kev’s skin. “Did he hurt you?”

  “N-no,” Kev managed through chattering teeth.

  “You beautiful little liar. I know he did. I…” His hands tightened in Kev’s robe, at the small of his back. “It isn’t supposed to hurt. I’m so sorry.”

  But Kev couldn’t imagine a way in which it didn’t hurt.

  “Come on.” Ian pulled back, hands lingering at Kev’s back. His blue-green eyes shimmered with moisture. “Let’s get clean.”

  There were showers in the dressing room, a bathroom with several toilet stalls and a communal shower with six showerheads poised at intervals down the white tiled length of the room. Usually, the space wa
s roiling with steam and bustling with dancing boys intent on washing off the tacky sin of the night. But Ian and Kev were a little early, and the bathroom was empty. The knowledge brought an immeasurable comfort Kev didn’t quite understand, but didn’t bother to question. It was quiet, and it was warm, and soon there would be hot water…and there was Ian. That was all that mattered.

  They left their robes on hooks and walked naked to one of the showerheads. Ian cranked it on and stepped back, testing the temperature with his fingertips, cringing against the initial coldness.

  Kev let his eyes wander over the older boy, enjoying the simple pleasure of looking at someone slim and beautiful. The wide shoulders, the narrow hips, the glowing pale skin – a few dark mouth-shaped bruises lingering along the stark lines of his clavicles. Nudity had become so commonplace in Kev’s life, he didn’t avert his gaze as he moved down Ian’s body, but instead followed the fine, tapering muscles of his belly down to the length of his soft cock. His slender, strong thighs, toned from dancing. All the way to his pale, narrow feet.

  Ian tugged the elastic from his hair, slipped it onto his wrist, and reached for Kev, expression tender. “The water’s hot now.”

  It was only much later, when he was an adult, and a Lean Dog, and part of a somewhat more normal society, that Kev would learn that showering sweat and semen off his body in the company of a seventeen-year-old was the sort of thing that would horrify the middle class of Knoxville. In the eyes of the gentle public, some lines should never be crossed, no matter the circumstances.

  But to a thirteen-year-old sex worker – sex slave, he would finally acknowledge, when he was a man – the highlight of his night, his week, his month, maybe even his life was stepping beneath the fall of hot water with Ian Byron.

  The soap was industrial, chemical-smelling stuff, strong enough to strip the night off their skin. Ian took it into his hands, worked up a good lather, and then smoothed the suds gently across Kev’s back, and chest, and down his arms. He curled one arm around him, murmuring endearments, and washed him intimately. His hand came away pink with blood, and he cupped it beneath the water, washing the evidence of violence away.

  Where the customer had been impatient and rough, Ian was slow and careful. He bathed him, and nothing else, no errant touches, no invasions.

  Kev tipped his head back to stare up at him, the water droplets caught in his auburn lashes, the flush in his cheeks, his hair dark and slicked back off his face, and he thought of angels, and prayers answered, and every faceless beautiful thing that hovered at the edges of his imagination.

  Ian brought his hand up to cup the side of Kev’s face, thumb sweeping slowly along the ridge of his cheekbone. He dampened his already-wet lips, a slow flick of his tongue that mesmerized Kev.

  “I want to show you,” he whispered, and then he kissed Kev.

  Kev had been kissed by clients, and he hadn’t understood why it was something they wanted to do. Slapping their lips against his had tickled the back of his throat, made him want to throw up. But this. This was as gentle and sweet as all of Ian’s attention.

  He flattened his hands against Ian’s shower-slick chest, and he leaned deep into the warmth of his body, neck feeling weak as the kiss continued…and continued. Slow, drugging sweeps of lips and tongues, until his mouth was open and he was gasping, his heart leaping against his ribs.

  “See,” Ian whispered against his lips. “It’s supposed to feel good.”

  ~*~

  The shots came at the end of the night, all the boys damp and fresh from the shower, lined up along the bench in the dressing room, sleeves rolled up past their elbows.

  Kev leaned into Ian’s side, the warmth and comfort of the shower – of kissing Ian – fading in the face of the growing chills and shivers that racked his small body. When Big John appeared with his black bag full of syringes and tourniquets, Kev wanted to sob with relief.

  Ian’s hand found his, and their fingers slotted together, thin against thin, pale against pale, the pulses in their wrists thumping against one another.

  “Him first,” Ian insisted when Big John got to them. “He’s shaking.”

  Conditioning. He would learn that word later. The way the tightness of the tourniquet, the plumping of his arm, brought an instant relief; there was a joy in the pressure. And then came the prick of the needle. Then the warmth. The acute, mind-wiping pleasure.

  He squeezed Ian’s hand, and he drifted, and he was happy.

  ~*~

  “There were two things I cared about,” Tango said from the kitchen counter as he topped off his coffee. “Ian, and the heroin.”

  “That’s how they kept you from running off when you got older,” Mercy said. “Got you all hooked, so you couldn’t stray from home.”

  “Or defy them. They’d let you start to detox if you did, and it was…” He shuddered. “I only ever did that once.”

  He returned to the chair and tried not to feel too guilty about the disgust writ large on Mercy’s face. Mercy himself had said he could handle whatever horrors Tango’s brain needed to dish out.

  Silence reigned for a bit, then, looking down into his mug, Mercy said, “Look. I’m not saying I like the guy. I think he’s weird and he wants to be a Bond villain or something.” His dark eyes flicked up over the mug. “But I get why Ian’s important to you. Why you…love him.”

  Tango smiled, wryly. “You don’t have to be comfortable with it.”

  Mercy shrugged. “I’m not comfortable with the fact that after he came back into your life, you tried to kill yourself. But I get the love part.”

  The old scars on his wrist gave a little throb of remembrance, calling softly to the razors he no longer had. He had a fancy electric shaver now, a gift and a safety precaution from Mags.

  “Ian’s the only reason I can even think about sex without going insane,” he said. “The only reason.”

  ~*~

  All the boys in the basement kept track of their birthdays. It seemed a strange habit, because marking the passage of time could only cause depression. Later in life, when the ones who’d made it out alive attended therapy, their therapists would ask if it made their “confinement” more difficult. When at the time, all they’d known was that they had to know when they were older. They had to think that time passed, and life marched on beyond the walls of their basement, and their club.

  On Kev’s fourteenth birthday, he received no presents. There was no cake, no streamers. He had only the vaguest memory of a cake with candles and a bouquet of helium balloons from his life before, with Mama, but he had no expectations of delight. He was a year older; he’d survived that long.

  The day was a normal one. Ballet. His meager lunch. More ballet. Then it was the car, and the bustling dressing room.

  Familiar, long-fingered hands caught at his waist and spun him away from his dressing table mirror. He was already grinning before he caught sight of Ian’s beloved, smiling face.

  Ian stepped in close, and stole a kiss, a fast but warm press of lips. “Happy Birthday,” he said when he pulled back.

  “You remembered?”

  “Of course, darling.” He kissed him again. “And I have a surprise for later.”

  “Kevin!” The brief flicker of happiness was dispelled by Miss Carla, as she sailed into the room in a purple velvet dress, her hair teased to an impossible volume, lipstick a shocking orange slice across her face. “Kevin, come here, little boy, I have special news for you.”

  Said special treat ended up being a new pair of sequined blue shorts and the news that he was going to dance tonight.

  Cold dread coiled in his stomach, but he said, “Yes, ma’am,” and went to change.

  How different could it be? he reasoned. He would still be out in the main part of the club, would still be expected to go back to a private room with the clients.

  When Miss Carla was gone, Ian slipped an arm around Kev’s waist and kissed his temple. “I’ll be with you the whole time,” he said, and it he
lped. A little.

  ~*~

  It never occurred to him then, sheltered inside his dark cocoon, that the city was studded with legal strip clubs, where women with kids, and day jobs, and bills to pay danced for paychecks and went home at the end of their shifts. He would later learn the stigma attached to them, and he would speak to a few in his Lean Dogs career who expressed an intense displeasure in their craft, even shame. Still others enjoyed what they did. He would listen to the old ladies mutter about them under his breath, and all he would think was: but they had a choice. Even if that choice was between dancing and groceries, it was still a conscious decision they made themselves.

  On his fourteenth birthday, all he knew was that he was expected to dance, and if he didn’t, he’d be whipped to within an inch of his life and denied food for two days.

  ~*~

  “Slowly,” Ian told him. “You want to move slowly.”

  Under the lights, he couldn’t see the crowd waiting below him in the dark. He couldn’t hear the music above the thunder of his heartbeat. He couldn’t tell where the baby oil ended and his sweat began.

  But then Ian kissed him, on the stage, to a chorus of whistles, and catcalls, and cheers. And then he remembered all his ballet training, and he remembered slowly. And they danced.

  ~*~

  Dancing, Kev decided, beat wandering around the club floor looking for customers by a mile. He couldn’t see anyone, and between the music and his pulse, he couldn’t hear them. He faded into a world that was his and Ian’s alone, and for a little while, the horror faded to a low roar at the back of his conscious.

  But then, after…

  The clients were two brothers, athletic, suit-wearing, business sector types. They weren’t unattractive, but the feral gleam in their eyes frightened Kev. Later, Ian would explain guys like these to him: “straight” men with wives, girlfriends, a truckload of prejudices about masculinity, and jobs that paid them well enough to enable their secret fantasies. “They’ll never admit what they are,” Ian would say, “and they hurt us to justify their own shame, to cover up the dark empty places in their hearts.”