by Willa Okati
Zach hesitated. Josef was expecting him to be here, but he’d emphasized that Zach was free to go when his employers requested his presence. Caught between the two warring desires, to go immerse himself in the life and zest of a “fuckin’ crazy” night or to wait, head bowed, for Josef to come home, he couldn’t make up his mind. The collar distracted him; if he took it off, he’d probably be able to concentrate.
Josef had shown him how the clasp worked. Not looking, he reached behind his head to release the catch and let the chain slide off. Except it didn’t. He sensed a faint vibration along his skin rather than heard the tumblers grinding together.
“Hurry it up, would you?” Ernie demanded. “You comin’? I got other guys I could call, so I’m doing you a favor, you hear me?”
“I hear you.” Zach twisted the collar around to try and get a look at the broken lock. His hands were clammy cold and his stomach lurching. He couldn’t get it off. It was too tight. Choking him. “Give me a second, Ernie.”
“What the fuck for?” Ernie’s laugh sounded like the bray of a donkey, mocking him. “Gotta ask your stuck-up boyfriend if you can come out and play? Bah. A man’s gotta stand on his own two feet.”
Zach barely heard him. He’d wedged the phone between his cheek and shoulder, fumbling with the chain, his fingers slipping on the smooth metal. The only damage he’d done was scratching a gouge in the soft skin of his neck, small drops of blood welling to the surface. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
“Pathetic,” Ernie said, his mind made up and his scorn clear. “You’re not a man. You’re a fuckin’ pet.” He hung up.
The phone skidded off its precarious perch and dropped noiselessly to the thick plush carpet under Zach’s bare feet. His stomach lurched, metallic bile a foul taste in his mouth. He knew he was panicking, but no way could he stay there and let that collar strangle him. Had to go, had to get out of there, now, now, now --
So he’d left. And he hadn’t come back. He’d kept on going, state after state, tapping the one credit card on him in his name. It ran out the day before he’d landed at the I Heart That City to find they had a place open among the bar staff.
* * * * *
The last of the lights snapping off, save for the softly glowing lamps over the bar, brought Zach out of the memory that still woke him up at night in a cold sweat. He rubbed his throat, still able to feel the weight of the chain links that wouldn’t come off until he’d found someone to cut them away. As he did, he encountered the mark Josef had left on him. Sore, hot to the touch, already swollen.
He might as well have stamped “PROPERTY OF” on Zach’s forehead. And then, by leaving so fast, he’d drawn a line through that statement of ownership. It wasn’t at all like the Josef he remembered. What kind of game was he playing?
Might only be one way to find out.
Chapter Four
Zach’s knock on the door was as muffled as the trod of his work shoes on the deep plush carpet, dark as the heart of an aged merlot and so thick he wanted to see what it was like to walk across barefoot. Not that he would in a hotel as swanky as the one Josef had chosen. Marble, leather, gold accents, white linen, and bellboys who probably made more gratuities in one hour than he did in a week tending bar.
Places like this used to make his skin itch. With Josef, he’d gotten used to them. Now he stood on the divide between his world and the circle of affluence Josef lived in, uncomfortably straddling the chasm.
He knocked again, knuckles protesting the abuse, knowing Josef would be there. Josef never deviated from a plan.
Except tonight, he had. He’d changed his tune from “come with me” to “don’t follow me,” and there were another two worlds Zach found himself torn between. Enough of this. Courtesy be damned, Zach switched from polite knocking to hammering on the elegant hotel door with the blunt side of his fist.
What if he wasn’t there after all? What if he’d packed up and skipped town? Turnabout was fair play. Zach knew he should have relished the thought of topping the top, of maintaining his independence without another fight, but he couldn’t for the numbing, irrational chill keeping him on edge.
He’d raised his fist for another volley of knocks when the door swung silently open on discreet, expensively oiled hinges, and he nearly punched Josef in the nose. He recoiled as if he’d come too close to an electric fence and covered his fist with the flat of his other palm. “I almost hit you.”
“So I noticed.” Josef wore a frameless pair of reading glasses and had changed out of his tailored dark suit, switching to stonewashed, boot-cut jeans and a collarless sweater of a blue two shades closer to gray than his eyes. His feet were bare.
Zach couldn’t not stare.
“Have I suddenly grown a third eye?” Josef felt at his forehead and slid his glasses up to rest on the top of his head. “Do I have food on my face?”
“You?” Zach laughed, expecting to taste bitterness. He didn’t. “I’ve never seen you this casual, that’s all.”
“Ah.” Josef regarded him silently, the intensity of his presence saturating the air with the power of an oncoming storm. “I thought I told you not to come tonight.”
“You did. But here I am.” Zach wanted to back away, but he held his ground. “Now that I’m here, are you gonna kick me out? Mess with my head some more?”
“No. That was never my intention.”
“Then let me in.”
Josef crossed his arms and studied Zach. “What do you hope to accomplish by challenging me?” He didn’t seem angry, but curious instead.
Zach couldn’t think of an answer. “Let me in or not. Makes no difference to me,” he lied.
Josef drummed his fingertips on his opposite forearm. Finally, he shrugged, doing nothing to dispel the tension, and stood to one side.
Why Zach did what he did next, he didn’t know. There was no connection between thought and action, and he didn’t know he was moving before he’d already kicked the door shut behind him and dragged Josef to him. Before he kissed Josef, jagging their mouths together and pouring a moan down Josef’s throat.
Josef jostled him away, taking a step back. His lips were a darker shade of pink now and his hair more rumpled than it had been. He didn’t look like a master, but like an ordinary man who Zach could touch, taste, stand on equal footing with, and Zach lost his head a second time. He closed the distance between them and crowded Josef back, feverishly touching every part of Josef he could reach and demanding to be kissed back.
“Zach, stop this,” Josef said quite calmly. “That’s enough.”
“Why?” Zach laughed, and it sounded crazy even to him. “Didn’t stop you earlier tonight, and where I work, no less.”
“And that was my mistake. I’ve told you so.”
“Saying sorry never fixes anything.” Zach made to grab Josef by the shoulder, intending to dig in his fingers and leave five bruises to pay Josef back for the one he’d dealt out earlier. “You lit the fire. You put it out.”
“I said no.” Josef moved, too quickly for Zach to see --
The next thing Zach knew, he landed on his ass. The thick carpet padded his landing and absorbed some of the shock, though not all, and the physical jarring was nothing compared to the wave of absolute disbelief when he looked up at Josef, who looked down at him with only three-quarters of his usual implacable calmness.
“Whether you hate me for making this decision or not is up to you,” Josef said. “When I look at you, I see that on the surface you think you despise me as much as you want me. That’s not conceit. A man who kisses as you did me doesn’t feel only loathing.”
Zach dragged the back of his hand over his mouth and said nothing.
Josef aborted an abrupt move, as if he had intended to crouch before Zach and then thought better of it. “I told you not to come. Now, I’m asking you to leave.”
“You son of a bitch,” Zach said, feeling strangled. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to ride into town on your high horse and ge
t me off in the men’s room -- to lay claim to me and tangle up my head -- and then kick me out.” He climbed to his feet and faced Josef, fists knotted.
Josef glanced at them but otherwise didn’t react to the threat of violence. A dark, secret thrill licked at Zach as would a small tongue of fire. “If I had known better, and if I had missed you less, I would have taken a different approach. For that, I’m sorry.”
The apology flew over Zach’s head, but tapped him on the shoulder as it passed. He reacted three beats too late. “Wait. You’re what?”
Josef didn’t repeat himself. “It’s time for you to leave.” He clasped Zach by the upper arms and walked him backward. At the very threshold, Josef hesitated, then pressed a light, chaste kiss to the top of Zach’s head.
Zach was lost. Couldn’t make sense of it. Anger melted under confusion and a sense of rejection that angered him all over again, all the emotions twisting and turning and tangling in his head, upsetting his balance.
Josef’s hold on him prevented Zach from falling. “I’ll call the concierge and have him summon a taxi for you. I have to think.”
“But you --”
“Would it make you feel better, or worse, if I made that an order?” Under the once-again steely calm of Josef’s blue gaze, Zach stilled, torn between yes and no. Josef sighed, seeming somehow older than his chronological age. “I thought as much. Take the taxi and go home, Zach. We’ll meet again soon.”
Stung, Zach shrugged out of Josef’s grip. “Stay away from me.”
“I can’t do that any more than you can stay away from me. But I must.” Josef refused to let Zach look away, and, trapped, Zach could only look back, seeing himself reflected and weighted in the balance. “I need to understand you. I won’t be back until I’ve done that. And I won’t give up until you understand me.”
Zach staggered unsteadily backward. He could still taste Josef on his lips and the scent of cologne worth a king’s ransom clung more thickly to him than ever. “It’s the collar,” he blurted. “Isn’t it? You can’t stand looking at me without it.”
“Go home,” Josef said without answering. He closed the door. “I’ll see you again. Soon.”
“Tell me!” Zach lashed out, kicking the door. He felt alive, the way he only ever did otherwise when mixing a drink. “Tell me it’s the collar!”
Josef was silent. Maybe he’d moved away already, retreated into his ivory tower. In the silence, Zach heard only acknowledgment of the truth Without the collar Josef had given him once, the one that proved he was worth something, he was less than nothing to Josef.
* * * * *
Zach didn’t smoke, but sometimes he liked the smell. Ever since even the bars went smoke free, he missed the bitter-acrid odor that used to accompany him on all his jobs. When he closed his eyes and concentrated on the faint crackle of a burning ember and the strength of the smell, he could find steadiness somewhere besides behind a bar.
Tonight, more than any other since he’d come to I Heart That City, he needed that stability. Craved it like a smoker torn between lingering inside a warm, safe house or sneaking out into the elements to satisfy the demands of his addiction.
Hell, he’d even gone up to the roof of I Heart That City just to have a few minutes’ worth of peace and quiet to let a borrowed smoke burn down to the filter and to think. He hadn’t seen Josef in two days, three if you counted tonight, and the tension had grown until it was like waiting for a balloon to overfill and pop.
But what else was he supposed to do besides wait? Go back to that opulent hotel room, if Josef hadn’t already skipped town, and get his ass handed to him all over again? No, thanks.
If it weren’t for that stupid, stupid collar and what’d happened…who knew what might be different? Maybe he should have run the first night he got a hint of how this whole affair with Josef would turn out. Yeah, probably should have, but when Josef wanted a man, he had a way of making that man forget anything else even existed.
Eighteen Months Earlier
“This is the one thing I don’t care for about your work.” Josef pressed his nose to the sweet spot behind Zach’s arm and inhaled. “The smoke. It drowns out the rest of you. Blunts my senses.”
Zach laughed, giddy. “Hasn’t stopped you yet.”
“True.”
He arched his neck to give Josef better access to a favorite spot beneath his ear and hissed, gripping Josef’s arm in building excitement when Josef took advantage. “Not like there’s anything I can do about it,” he said. “Besides, I don’t smoke.”
“Mmm.” Josef kissed the corner of his mouth. “I’m glad of that. But the fact remains.” He had crowded Zach to the wall of his bedroom, spartan with art-deco glass and metal that was so cold compared to the heat of his body. Zach was more than happy to ignore his surroundings to focus on Josef instead.
“So what should I do about it?” Zach prodded Josef in the stomach, turned on more than ever by the hard ridges of muscle. A powerful man. Josef looked fit, sure, but no one knew how toned his body was without stripping him naked, and no one else got to do that but Zach.
Josef caught Zach’s wrist and lifted it, then kissed the back of his hand. “I think you should shower with me,” he said. A dark light, unfamiliar and somehow exotic and intriguing, kindled in his eyes. “Come.”
The last thing Zach went for was a bossy guy, one who liked to, and thought he could, order him around. With Josef, though, God, he couldn’t get enough. They’d hinted at this kind of game before, a small command here, a joking “as you wish” there. Josef telling him what to do ignited hidden fires within Zach and made him crazy.
Was he in the mood to play tonight? Zach hardened further, pressing his palm against his crotch to calm down. Josef noticed -- he noticed everything -- and smiled a fraction more wickedly, taking him from darkling creature to demonic.
“Stop, or I swear I won’t last,” he said, laugh broken as his chest hitched.
“And that would be a shame.” Josef stroked the thin skin of Zach’s wrist with one finger. “Do I need to tell you again what I want?”
Zach tried to moisten his lips. “No, sir.”
“Good.”
Josef pulled Zach firmly in the direction of the adjoining bathroom, equally as stark and white, but with porcelain and chrome and the promise of nakedness and water so hot it turned his skin deep pink. Though his feet tangled briefly beneath him, too drunk on the excitement to walk straight, Zach followed willingly.
With the touch of a switch, Josef wakened soft amber lights Zach hadn’t expected, their glow as warm as candles, transforming the cold room to something else entirely.
Josef left the door open. He dropped Zach’s wrist and stood the short distance away that the limited space would allow, and looked at Zach in the intense way he had that made Zach feel as if Josef could see into his soul. “Undress yourself,” he said. “And then me.”
Zach shuddered, his already-rigid cock straining against the barricade of jockeys and jeans. He unbuttoned his shirt with his head bowed, playing along, riding the rush that came with a sense of the exotic. “Want me to warm up the shower too?” he murmured.
He sensed the growing shift in Josef’s perception of him. Something Josef hadn’t thought was in Zach, despite their play, now spotted and recognized and narrowed in on. In that second, Josef’s approach to him changed. “Yes,” he said, silky soft but with an air of expectation that didn’t fit with a plain response.
“Yes, sir,” Zach repeated. He was on fire inside and could barely see straight, much less think straight, but wanting this with the entirety of his body. He nodded, giving in and soaring on the strange, forbidden excitement. “Yes, sir.”
Josef’s approval dizzied him as would a blast of unexpected heat from a furnace. “Good boy,” he said. “You are beautiful. Did you know that? Don’t touch yourself, your cock, until you’re naked beneath the water. No, wait.” He stopped Zach from skinning off his shirt with one hasty pull. “Slowly. Bu
t first, undress me.”
“Yes, sir,” Zach said in a whisper. Too much stimulation. He had to close his eyes to keep from falling over…
* * * * *
The cigarette Zach had lit had burned down to a column of ash, the fragile gray powder clinging to its shape despite the wind on the roof. It dangled loosely between his fingers, the heat from the ember stinging him out of his reverie.
He’d never forgotten that night. Even without trying to recall them, every detail was as sharp and clear as the crystal of the shower’s controls and the whiteness of the marble floor beneath his bare feet. Images crowded his head, each one shoving for dominance -- ha. Dominance.
Josef standing beneath the steaming spray flowing strongly from the showerhead. His hair plastered to his forehead and cheeks in a way that reminded Zach of Roman emperors, the wet curls emphasizing the strong bones that shaped him. A sponge in Zach’s hands, saturated with soap that’s smell reminded him of aged brandy drunk in dark room, which he used to wash the man from chest to toes.
Josef watching Zach use the same sponge and soap to clean himself, and almost glowed darkly when Zach tested him by saying, “thank you, sir.”
Josef ordering him to keep his hands together, positioned above his head and braced on the tiled wall, while firm, clever fingers made him ready. While Josef teased him to the point of madness by sliding his cock through the slipperiness of lube and soap, brushing past and bumping over his entrance until he begged.
Sliding home and fucking him with deep, powerful strokes. Not letting him drop his hands to work his cock, but getting closer every second nonetheless, his toes curling tight and his breathing staccato, begging in a voice he barely recognized as his own, and nearly deafening him with the echoes of their pleasure. He hadn’t been a man; he’d been a thing made up only of need and eagerness to please.
He’d come without a hand on his cock, and come harder than ever before in his life. Josef had caught him before his knees gave out and he slipped, one hand keeping his pinned high and one arm around his waist to hold him steady while he fucked him back to hardness and made him come a second time. His body wrenched inside out with the shudders and, oh, it hurt, but he would have gone three times if Josef hadn’t crushed him with the flexing of his arm, powerful muscles rippling beneath his skin, and come himself, driving Zach forward with each sharp thrust of his hips.