“Yes, ma’am.”
She stopped and turned to him, her eyes strained and too large over the rims of her glasses, mouth pinched up. “You like being Loverboy, don’t you? My good, pretty little boy, the one who all my customers want to treat special. Right?”
The stickiness in his pants itched in earnest. He tried not to squirm and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“You know how much I need you, right?”
He nodded, a strange swelling of emotion creeping up his throat. He wanted to cry. He wanted to throw up. He wanted her to stroke the top of his head and call him a good boy some more.
He did none of those things.
“Now, Kevin.” She leaned toward him, elbows on the desk, voice dropping to a conspiratorial level. “I need you to do something really important for me, my special Loverboy. Can you do that?”
He’d just been bounced back and forth between two men like an inflatable doll. He nodded again, because what could she ask that was worse than that?
A smile he hated tugged at one corner of her tight mouth. “Good boy. One of our best customers wants to take a boy home for the night tomorrow, and he picked you.”
The urge to vomit intensified. Thankfully, he hadn’t been fed yet tonight. His bread and peanut butter would come after his injection, later, when his appetite was dull. But now, hungry, right on the razor’s edge of panic, his empty stomach squeezed and his mouth fell open, breath heaving in and out of him as he fought to control his body’s visceral reaction to her words.
“Kevin,” she said, sharply. “Don’t barf on my desk.”
He closed his mouth and swallowed desperately, fighting the bile that wanted to rise.
“You be a good boy now,” Miss Carla snapped. “You behave. You do what I say or Max’ll take his belt to you.”
He swallowed again, shuddered, and managed to nod. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Now. You’re going to go home with this client, and he’ll bring you back the next afternoon when he’s done with you. This is important for all of us. You hear me? Be a good boy and do as you’re told.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now go shower. You smell.”
~*~
Ian’s hands curled into white-knuckled fists in his lap. “She can’t do that,” he hissed through his teeth, expression taut with fury. “She can’t!”
Kev shrugged and tried not to let his stomach fall out through his feet. “It’s not any different than what I always do.”
“Yes it is!” Ian turned away from him, spine bowed, its knobs straining the threadbare fabric of his t-shirt. “It is.”
Feeling cold and bereft, Kev snuggled up behind him, his shins pressing into Ian’s back. “Are you mad?”
Ian shook his head, and took a long time answering. “I’m scared, darling,” he whispered. “I’m afraid for you.”
Kev draped his skinny arms across Ian’s shoulders, leaned forward and plastered his chest to his back. Ian’s hair tickled at his face as he nosed against his ear. “It’ll be okay,” he said.
He didn’t believe it, but he had to say it, for both of them.
~*~
The man who purchased him for the night lived in a sprawling brick two-story house illuminated by soft flood lights placed at artistic angles in the garden. Kev glimpsed pruned trees, topiaries, and brick paths flanked by hedges. Steep roof angles, dormers, many-paned windows. A tall wrought-iron fence circled the property, a gate sliding into place once they passed through it.
Locked in.
Max hauled Kev from the backseat with one meaty hand on Kev’s upper arm. It didn’t seem to matter that Kev walked along willingly; Max marched him up to a side door, through it, and into a warm library with walls and walls of books, and a fire snapping beneath a heavy fieldstone mantle. Max let go of him, shoving him toward the man poised beside the fireplace, brandy snifter in hand.
“Behave,” Max ordered.
Kev nodded, swallowing his nerves.
The man by the fireplace was tall and thin, and auburn-haired. Like Ian, Kev thought, faintly. But as he drew closer, he saw that the comparison wasn’t a good one. This man’s hair was cut close to his head, and thinning, bits of shiny scalp showing through. His face, though thin and aristocratic, was haggard, weathered heavily, his skin rough. He wore an immaculate suit and shined shoes; his tie was sewn with thread so shiny it reflected the firelight.
Kev immediately disliked the gleam in his eyes.
“Well aren’t you just delicious?” he asked, reaching to cup Kev’s chin in his free hand. He smiled and it made Kev’s stomach clench unhappily. “We’re going to have some fun tonight.”
~*~
Kev swallowed a mouthful of blood and felt around his molars with the tip of his tongue. One of the back ones was loose, but not overly so. If he left it alone, it would probably stay in.
Right now, he had to keep moving.
He couldn’t believe what he’d done.
Couldn’t believe.
He hadn’t meant to escape. Not at first. It had been an involuntary, instinctual reaction to the things the client had wanted to do to him. The mistake the client had made, though, was not taking into account the thinness of Kev’s wrists.
The cuffs had cut into his skin, blood trickling down his forearms in dark pearls, but then his slick wrists had slipped free. The man’s back had been turned as he slowly, methodically removed his cufflinks, his watch, his rings, telling Kev in a low voice what he meant to do once he was undressed.
Kev had panicked. It was one thing to service customers in the back rooms of The Nest, where there were time limits, and Big John’s people, and even Miss Carla, ready to praise him and tip him with the cash he’d earned. And then Ian. Riding home in the car snuggled up to Ian, going to bed with him, being made to feel like a human again. But here, trapped ‘til morning, the danger of his situation wrapped around his lungs in a vise grip.
He couldn’t stay. He just couldn’t.
He’d rolled off the high four-poster bed, hitting the carpet with a muffled thud, knees and elbows stinging from the impact. The man made an inquiring, confused sound, and Kev kept rolling, wedging himself beneath the bed. And then out the other side, bolting for the bedroom door.
“Hey!” the man shouted. “You little shit! Get back here! I paid for you!”
The door was shut, and it would take valuable seconds to open it. Long enough for the man to catch him, grab him, restrain him…punish him.
Kev tasted bile in the back of his throat, heard the kettledrum throb of his pulse in his ears.
“You fucking–” The man’s hand snagged a handful of Kev’s hair, gripping tight. His fingers were strong.
But Kev was fourteen. And he had a little strength of his own now too.
He threw his meager weight backward, against the hold on his hair, and the man grunted in surprise.
“Shit.”
The fingers slid out of his hair, and Kev whirled. He felt his heart pounding straight through his chest. Felt a desperation like he’d never known. And launched himself at the man who’d bought him for the night.
He’d never used his body as a weapon, and he was clumsy. They fell to the carpet in a tangle of limbs, Kev on top, the air rushing out of their lungs. Kev reached for the man’s face, hooking his fingers into claws.
The client heaved him off, rolled over on top of him, and punched him in the mouth. The blow snapped his head to the side; he felt the instant, cottony pressure of swelling as the pain whited out, too overwhelming to be felt in full yet. Then the client hit him in the jaw.
Kev heard the soft sound of his tooth knocking loose inside his skull.
His next thought, though the man was still on top of him, was that soon he’d be made to take this client’s cock into his throbbing, bloody mouth. He’d be choked and held down, and the pain was going to be…
No. No, he couldn’t. No way.
He stilled, pliant and limp beneath his customer. Waited. Wai
ted.
“Now,” the man said, leaning over him, breath ragged. He was straddling Kev’s hips, pinning him down. “Are you going to behave?”
“Yes, sir,” Kev said, and head-butted him.
Head-butting was, no surprise, a terrible way to attack someone. But he did manage to crack his forehead right into the man’s nose, and the guy then reeled back in surprise, shouting. Kev felt the hot wetness of blood against his face, and he pushed past the pain in his head – he was well-used to fighting past pain at this point in his life – and levered the client off of him.
The man scrambled to grab for him, but Kev was too quick, on his feet and aiming a sharp kick at his client’s head. He was barefoot, but it sent the man sprawling across the carpet, which gave Kev the window he needed. There was a robe thrown across the end of the bed, and he snagged it on his way out the door.
Because he’d been nothing but compliant on the way up, the client hadn’t tried to blindfold him. Kev knew exactly which direction to run down the hall, where to turn to go down the rear staircase, the one the hired help used to access the kitchen. He shrugged into the robe as he ran. The client pursued; he could hear his clumsy lurching and cursing, but Kev was much too quick.
He hit the kitchen, whirled out a side door, and shut it silently behind him. He was in a small garden, herbs going by the scents sent spiraling into the air by his bare feet as he dashed through low clumps of greenery. It was dark, and he dodged the landscape lighting like a thief, robe fluttering around his legs.
He got away. Somehow, he reached the fence, scaled it in a few awkward, long-limbed movements, and was loose in the night. On his own and out in the open for the first time since he was shut into the backseat of his daddy’s Cadillac all those years ago.
He ran, not caring where he was going, gulping down cold night air and ignoring the way the ground cut into the tender soles of his feet.
That was how he’d ended up here in the indigo hours just before dawn, collapsed on a metal picnic table beside a large, flat-roofed brick building with a massive parking lot and not enough windows. Exhausted, bleeding, sore, and almost delirious with anger and the withdrawal that always accompanied delaying his injection, he laid his head down on the cool surface of the table and watched the sun bloom to life along the horizon.
He must have dozed, because a din of voices woke him. He pushed himself up on weak arms, unfocused eyes tracking across his surroundings. The parking lot was packed with cars, crowds of talking, laughing kids with jeans and backpacks pouring in through the main doors of the building.
A school. He was at a school. It had been so long since he’d attended one himself that he hadn’t even recognized one when he saw it.
Hot tears filled his eyes, and he wiped at them with shaky hands. What was his life? Why wouldn’t it just end?
“Hey,” a voice said behind him, and he whirled. Pulse pounding, vision swimming, mind already conjuring an image of the customer, bruised and furious and come to claim him for his punishment. But it was only a boy. Maybe his age. Shiny black hair in messy curls cropped close to his head, expression nothing like the veiled fear of the other dancers at The Nest. He was dressed in destroyed jeans, a black Metallica t-shirt, leather jacket, and heavy motorcycle boots. He had a belt studded with silver, and a wallet chain. A little on the skinny side, but tall, and trying to look tough. “What are you doing out here in your goddamn PJs?” he asked without any heat, nodding toward the striped robe.
“I…” Kev had to clear his throat and wet his lips. The shakes were getting worse, trembling in his throat, making it hard to hold his head up. “It’s…it’s not mine,” he said, stupidly. Because he hadn’t interacted with a single person who wasn’t a bodyguard, dancer, customer, or Miss Carla in God knew how long.
The boy snorted. “Good, ‘cause it’s damn ugly.” His eyes flicked down to Kev’s bare feet, and back up to his long, snarled hair. “You homeless or something?”
“No.”
“You go to school here?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you have any shoes on?”
“I…” His hands squirmed and he pressed them down on the tabletop, breath hitching. He felt sweat gathering beneath his hair, sliding down the back of his neck, slicking the skin behind his knees and between the sharp bumps of his backbone. “I can’t…I don’t…”
The boy stepped up and sat down on the bench beside Kev, his expression hardening into something older and world-weary, sharp with concern. “What are you on?”
Kev swallowed a knot of shame; he couldn’t bear to meet the boy’s gaze dead-on. He stared at his leather-clad shoulder. “I don’t know. It’s just…it’s a shot. I missed one. And I…” He held up his shaking hands to demonstrate. They leapt like they were on puppet strings.
The boy nodded, sighing through his nose. “Right. H’ll do that to you.” He frowned. “Wait, you were taking it and didn’t know what it was?”
“They…they give it to all of us,” he said, and bit his lip, knowing he shouldn’t have said anything.
The boy’s dark eyes flew wide. “They? Shit, did you…” He glanced back down at Kev’s feet. “Holy shit, do you…did you escape from somewhere?” He was breathing a little hard himself now.
Kev should have lied. Should have said he was fine and stood up on his newborn foal legs, tried to find his way back home. Only he had no idea where he was, or which direction home lay, and he was too weak to even move at this point.
He started to cry. “Y-yes.”
The boy said, “Fuck. Shit. Okay. Okay, okay, just hold on a sec.” He dug a cellphone from his pocket, pressed and held one, and put it to his ear. “Mags?” he said into the phone. “Hey, yeah, I’m fine, no. But look. I need you to come to the school. There’s this kid…”
Kev let his head fall back to the table, listening to the dire, sad description of himself the boy gave into the phone.
He must have dozed again. He jerked awake, and it was lighter, the sun all the way up, and it was quiet, all the kids inside the school now, class in session.
“What…” he said, trying to push up onto his elbows. It took him three tries, the shaking so terrible.
The boy was still there beside him, and across from him, one hand covering Kev’s on top of the table, was a pretty blonde woman in a leather jacket of her own, hair windswept, expression soft and careful.
“Hey there,” she said, and he liked her voice. Smooth and gentle. “Not feeling so good, huh?”
“No,” he croaked. In fact, he felt too awful to care if these strangers were safe to be around. He just wanted to stop feeling like shit. He wanted to die, more than a little bit.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sincerely. “Let’s see if we can do something about that. I’m Maggie. This is Aidan.” She gestured to the boy. “We’re taking you home with us.”
~*~
He knew he shouldn’t, that he would be in so much trouble, but Kev was too weak to keep from sliding into Maggie Teague’s Cadillac and flopping his head back onto the leather seat.
He existed in a buzzing pocket of pain and unsteadiness; the voices from the front seat seemed miles away.
“I left Ava next door with Mrs. Schneider,” Maggie said as she pulled out of the parking lot.
“Okay,” Aidan said. “What are we going to do with him?”
“Get some food in him. Clean him up. Call the police.”
Aidan snorted. “Dad won’t like that.”
“Dad won’t like the idea of some poor strung-out barefoot kid being alone and defenseless in the world.”
Said world flashed past the window, a blur of brown winter grass and blue sky. He shut his eyes when the nausea started to encroach. Sweat misted his face, slicked his skin beneath the robe. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to lie down flat. He itched, and fidgeted, and wanted to sleep, but couldn’t. Maggie and Aidan’s voices turned to white noise in the background.
He wondered, dimly, how furious Mi
ss Carla was. If she was searching for him now. If Ian was worried.
Shit. Of course Ian was worried. And Kev had no way to contact him and let him know he was alright. I’m fine, Ian, he thought. I’m better than fine. I’m gone…
Twenty-Three
The bleak truth? Ian Byron was a selfish asshole. Because Kev escaped from a client’s home when he was fourteen, went totally off the grid, and Ian wanted him to come back.
Miss Carla dragged him into her office at the club and slapped him across the face. “Where did he go?” She was livid.
He refused to cower in front of her; some clients were twice his size and folded him in half – literally and figuratively – and he had no choice. But he’d be damned if he gave this bitch the satisfaction.
He gave her an insolent shrug. “No idea.”
She cracked him across the other cheek. “Don’t fuck around with me, you little shit! Did you two plan this? Did you talk him into it?” Before he could answer, she advanced on him, leaning up into his face with stale coffee breath and blazing, red-rimmed eyes. “He was sweet as sugar before I let you put your queer fucking hands on him. What the hell was I thinking? Letting you two fraternize like this. I’m fucking stupid.”
“You are, but not for that reason.”
This time, the blow came from behind, a cane across the backs of his knees courtesy of one of Big John’s thugs.
“Where did he go?” Miss Carla hissed.
Ian tasted blood on his tongue; he’d bitten the inside of his cheek. “I don’t know.”
The cane landed again, and his knees buckled. He crashed to the floor.
~*~
The thing was, Ian had never gone a night without dreaming of London – of his bland-faced, English gentrified family, the beautiful townhouse in Mayfair, his dancing lessons, and the chafing wool of his school uniform jumper – not until Kev. Every night he closed his eyes and went home, clawing desperately away from the lumpy futon in this locked and guarded apartment full of too many boys. And then every night, just as he was walking across the library to greet his unsmiling mother, the word shifted beneath his feet and he was back on the ship plowing across the Atlantic, headed for America, and slavery.
Loverboy (Dartmoor Book 5) Page 27