by Thom Collins
Rory didn’t look quite as bright-eyed as he had before. He face, neck and chest were flushed and blotchy. He was out of breath.
“Still hanging in there?” Dale asked.
The boy raised his thumb and smiled.
“You did good,” Dale said, patting his shoulder as he got off the bed.
They spent the rest of the afternoon shooting close-up and insert shots. Dale’s hands around the cord as he throttled the boy. Rory’s legs thrashing about the bed. Dale’s eyes, narrowed with hatred, through the balaclava slits. Hard work, but not as grueling as playing the scene in its entirety.
Around five Dale was released for the day. His scenes were over. Rory was not so fortunate. Filming would continue until late, covering the aftermath of the murder. The discovery of his body by his girlfriend and the ensuing crime scene investigation. Standard cop show stuff. But, as the killer, Dale was no longer needed.
He walked gratefully back to his trailer. A rare early finish. It was just what he needed after a tough day. Early morning boot camp probably wasn’t the wisest way to kick things off when he had so many tough scenes to film, but he was glad he’d made the effort. Keeping fit was a mandatory part of the job for an actor like him and he hated every minute he spent at the gym. Boot camp was the perfect solution—get in early, train hard and get it over with. Job done.
Meeting hot men, like that guy Matt, was a bonus.
He was already looking forward to the next session and another encounter with the dreamy Matt. He was some looker all right. Tall, dark and handsome—the perfect English gentleman. The kind who only seemed to exist in movies—until now. Dale smiled. He was no romantic. Odd that Matt should arouse those kinds of feelings. With his strong, angular face, straight nose and wide mouth, he was better looking than any Hollywood pretty boy.
Wednesday, Dale resolved, he would make the effort to get to know him better. Find out who he was, what he did, whether he was straight, gay or bi.
Preferably one of the last two.
Not that any of it mattered. Dale had no time in his life right now for the complication of romance.
They were two weeks into a three-month shoot for Blood Falls on Stone. Serial killer Daryl Stone was the role of a lifetime, but playing him wasn’t easy. Dale had worked too hard to win the part to lose focus now. The casting process had dragged on for months as the British producers searched for a recognizable American face to star in their thriller. Of all the names rumored to be under consideration, his was the least known. Several TV stars and movie actors were in the running. There was also competition from talented British actors with an American profile. While Dale had a sizeable list of IMDb credits that could match any of those guys, most of what he’d done was shit. Lousy rom-coms, cheap horror movies and a string of uncommissioned pilots.
Being based here in the UK while the producers were casting was a big plus. He was also generating excellent reviews for a play in London when the director came to see him. Elton Weaver was impressed enough by his stage performance to arrange a screen test with Blood Falls on Stone’s leading lady, Roxanne Maxwell, a glamorous powerhouse of talent. Roxanne had made her name in her late twenties as a film actress. Now in her mid-forties, she had spent the last decade carving out a career on TV and stage. Pairing Roxanne with an award-winning director like Elton ensured Blood Falls on Stone would be a TV event.
Dale was determined to be part of that.
He smashed it in the screen test, giving everything he had.
The producers wanted a bigger name but Elton said they didn’t need it. They already had Roxanne Maxwell. Of all the actors he’d tested there was no one as good as Dale Zachary. He was the man they needed to play the sexy, charismatic and terrifying killer Daryl Stone.
He was cheaper than all the others too. A fact, Dale had no doubt, that went in his favor.
Dale entered his trailer. He might be cheap but at least they’d provided that.
He took off his costume and hung it up for the wardrobe assistant to collect later. Daryl Stone was a tough nut to play and took him to some disturbing places, especially on days like this when they were shooting a murder scene, but he was no method actor. The character came off with the costume. Daryl Stone did not go home with him.
As Dale stepped into his own jeans, there was a knock at the door. “It’s open,” he called, pulling on a black T-shirt.
Aaron Oxford was a production assistant on the series. He was thirty-two but looked younger. His brown hair was thick and lustrous, falling heavily across his brow, above friendly brown eyes. He wore a full beard, chocolate brown without a hint of gray.
Dale, known through his career for his fresh-faced, clean-cut good looks, had grown a beard at the request of Elton for the role. He was still getting used to being a man with a beard. His was shorter, more trimmed than Aaron’s, but the most shocking thing about it was just how much gray it contained. He was only thirty-four, less than two years older than Aaron, and yet his beard was so much more aging. As soon as the shoot was over, this thing was history.
“You were great today,” Aaron said, stepping into the trailer. He was tall, rangy and heavily tattooed. He smelled good too, wearing a fresh, citrus scent. It suited him. “You going straight home?”
“Yeah. It’s not often I get to leave early. Got to take advantage. I’m going to take a long hot soak, learn my pages for tomorrow, then an early night.”
Aaron closed the trailer door. “Lucky you. I’m stuck here till the end.” He took a purposeful step toward Dale.
They had known each other a couple of weeks. There was nothing in it, besides physical attraction. Two lonely people working together far from home.
“I thought you might like me to take care of something before you leave.” Aaron smiled, rubbing a hand across the front of Dale’s jeans.
“I’m pretty beat,” he protested weakly.
“Don’t worry. I don’t have much time.”
Deftly, Aaron undid Dale’s belt and fly and shoved his jeans and underpants to mid-thigh. His cock thrust forward, ascending rapidly to full hardness. Despite good intentions, a man’s dick will always betray him. Aaron dropped to his knees and took Dale’s cock into his mouth.
****
Dale Zachary, the middle of three brothers, had been born in Pennsylvania, popular with girls from a young age. All of the Zachary boys had been, inheriting their blond, blue-eyed good looks from their Danish mother. As his body had developed through puberty, muscles growing and balls dropping, the girls had really started to notice him. The Zachary brothers, each a year apart, had been a handsome bunch, but Dale, who had the least interest in girls, always had seemed to be the favorite.
He had been more interested in sport than chasing girls. Happier on the track than hanging around the arcades and cinema. Running, jumping and wrestling, he’d excelled at them all. It hadn’t been just natural talent that’d brought him success, but hard work—lots of it. From an early age, he hadn’t been a slacker.
Dale’s first crush had been Danny Segal, captain of the school wrestling team, but it was Danny’s cousin Susie who’dd claimed his virginity. With her soft blonde hair and overly developed boobs, fifteen-year-old Dale had known what he should fancy, rather than the hot jock in the wrestling singlet.
“Don’t worry,” Susie had said. “I know what I’m doing.”
They had been in the spare bedroom of Danny’s house during a party for his sister’s eighteenth birthday. Susie had been two years older than Dale and he had no reason to doubt her claim. She’d said she knew what she was doing and he’d believed her. It had been exciting—and frightening—as she had led him away from the party and wedged a chair against the unlocked bedroom door. Susie’s tits had been the talk of the locker room. The guys on the team would have all settled for a glimpse of those unfettered breasts, but she had been there on top of him, pushi
ng those massive boobs right in his face. Dale had wanted to laugh but doubted Susie would see the funny side. With steely determination, he had followed her lead.
Susie’s polished fingers had guided his hard manhood between her legs and Dale had been enveloped by her warm, sticky pussy. It hadn’t felt too bad. Hell, it actually had felt pretty good. Normal even.
He had read that crushes on members of the same sex were a common part of growing up. It was something most guys went through. Susie’s welcoming, voluptuous body had convinced him that his feelings for her cousin had been nothing more than that—a phase. He’d grow out of it soon enough and, when he did, he’d be as normal as any other guy.
He’d had a lot of girlfriends after Susie. Through high school, as he had excelled on the wrestling team and in the drama group, he had become one of the more popular boys. His easygoing nature and wholesome good looks had put him at the top of many girls’ fantasy lists.
It had been another girlfriend, Sherilyn, who had persuaded him to enter a modeling competition while he’d been at college in New York.
“You’re crazy.” He’d laughed. “I’m no model. Who wants to stand around looking dumb all the time? All I know about fashion are jeans and T-shirts. I’d suck.”
Undeterred, Sherilyn submitted his photo to the competition. She had known he had the look. Dale had won first place and a contract with a New York agency. What started as a laugh and a way to earn extra cash had quickly led to high-profile campaigns for jeans, underwear and aftershave. He had the face and the body to go far and he quickly had, traveling all over the world to promote the brands he had been attached to.
Despite the fame, the money and the traveling, he had soon realized that his early opinion of modeling was correct. It wasn’t for him.
Through it all, he had been dismayed to find that the phase he had gone through of fancying other guys had been slow to pass. It hadn’t gone anywhere. Though he had still slept with women, he hadn’t been able to stop looking at other men. Traveling had afforded him the opportunity to experiment. Discreetly, away from home, where nobody had known who he was. It seemed reasonable, that if he scratched that itch, maybe it would go away.
Sex with women had come to be something he had enjoyed, even if he’d often found himself thinking of other men during the act, but sex with a man had been something else—something out of this world. Oh God, it was wrong. So, so wrong. Why had it felt so good—so right to him?
But it couldn’t be. He wasn’t that kind of man. Dale had suppressed that aspect of his sexuality. If he kept it under wraps and satiated it rarely, away from home, with strangers who didn’t know him and who he’d never see again, he could lead a normal life. Be a normal man. Have a family someday.
His high-profile modeling had led to him being cast as the love interest in a teen TV show. Like modeling, the role hadn’t required him to do much except stand around and look decorative, but it had been a foot in the door to the career he really wanted. He’d always been a passionate performer in the school drama group and had kept up acting classes during his poster boy years with a view to someday moving on.
From the TV series, he had progressed to his first film role—Chuck, the all-American football hero boyfriend of the second lead in a schmaltzy teen romance. The movie had been awful but a decent success at the summer box office. It had been his next role that really changed things.
An Axe in the Dark had been a bandwagon-chasing addition to the torture porn genre, which was currently in vogue. Dale had a sizeable role, the obligatory hunky boyfriend of the leading lady, but it was the elaborately staged murder of his character that had become the film’s major talking point. In just a pair of tattered shorts, he had been hanged ingloriously on a meat hook while the ax-wielding killer had hacked him in half. The unsettling, but timeless juxtaposition of beauty and violence, combined with some of the most realistic gore effects ever seen in a movie, meant the film and that scene had been a huge hit—two weeks at number one in the American box office.
Dale had gone from support player to top billing in his next run of movies. The films themselves had been interchangeable, a roster of romantic comedies and gory horror films, but the parts improved. In the years that had followed, he had become a familiar face in TV shows and direct to video movies. Sadly, his biggest film, an earthquake movie with an enormous budget and an all-star cast, had been a huge flop. He had been far from the worst thing in it, but the movie’s failure had put an early end to his hopes of being an A-list leading man.
But he was still working steadily. That’s all any decent actor could hope for.
“Got another horror picture for you,” his agent had announced.
“Another one?” An Axe in the Dark might have given him a career but it had sure as hell typecast him too.
“It’s a good one this time. Two months in Europe. Expenses. Top billing. Decent money. They want you. They’re not looking at anyone else.”
With no jobs pending, Dale had boarded a plane for Prague with little idea how this low budget indie film was about to change his life forever. It’s in the House was identical to any of the other found footage ghost stories cluttering up the multiplexes. He hadn’t even looked at the script until he was on the plane.
He had been glad to get out of town. He’d been secretly involved with a married businessman for almost a year when the guy’s wife had found out. She never had discovered the identity of her husband’s lover but came pretty damn close. He’d hoped to land the lead in an NBC pilot later that year. A whiff of scandal now would ruin that opportunity for good.
The hokey thrills of It’s in the House came at just the right time.
Laura Kinnear had been originally from London. Working as a makeup artist in New York and Los Angeles, she eventually had found herself on the set of a low-budget horror film in Europe with Dale Zachary. She had been just a year younger, with a tomboyish attitude and filthy sense of humor. Dale had never met a woman quite like her. Always cheerful, and even in the makeup chair at seven in the morning, she could make him laugh harder than any comedian he’d seen.
Most mornings he hadn’t been able to wait to get on the set to see her. Finally, a woman he really clicked with. A woman who had been able to banish all those foolish notions he’d had about other guys. By the end of the second week they had started sleeping together and when the movie had wrapped, Laura had returned to Los Angeles with Dale.
He had scored the lead in the NBC pilot but the network failed to take the show to series. It didn’t matter. By autumn, Laura had become pregnant.
“I’m gonna take care of you, babe,” he’d said, delighted with the news. He was going to be a dad.
They’d married before their son was born. At last he had become a real man with a wife, a child and a half decent career. Life couldn’t get much better. When not working, Dale had spent all the time he could with his new family. He was a hands-on dad, just like his old man had been with him. It was important for a kid to have a father figure. To lead by example.
Those old forbidden feelings refused to die but by keeping busy with work and family he had kept them at bay. For a while at least. His sex life with Laura had ended almost as soon as their son Jack had been born. It had been a relief not to have to go through the motions and he’d believed Laura when she’d told him that she was too tired to do it after a long day with the baby.
****
For several years, Laura had even convinced herself that was true. Dale had been discreet most of the time, deleting his Internet history, but she’d found out accidentally, while searching their computer for an old contact, the kind of porn he got off to. The shock hadn’t lasted long. She’d suspected for a while that he had more than a passing interest in other men. She’d heard the rumors about him from before they had been married. She had chosen to dismiss them back then. All sexy young actors were tarred with the gay brush
at some point in their career.
Only with Dale, she had known those rumors were more than jealousy or bitchy gossip. Her husband was gay. Laura Zachary had come to terms with that fact before he did.
At the start of 2011 and after eight years of marriage, Laura had filed for divorce and moved back to the UK, taking Jack with her.
****
Dale hadn’t been bitter about the divorce. He’d been deceiving his wife. She deserved a man who could love her in the ways he couldn’t. But he couldn’t live without his son. If Laura wanted to bring the boy up in England that was fine, but he hadn’t wanted to let her do it without him.
Most of his work had been shown on TV or DVD in England. Finding an English agent to represent him hadn’t been difficult. He had done another run of Euro horror films and landed a couple of high-profile theater roles, but basically he had been starting his career all over again. Building a reputation, putting his name out there.
When he had finally tested for Blood Falls on Stone, Dale Zachary had been ready for that breakthrough.
Dale was renting a house for the duration of the shoot rather than living out of a hotel. Most of his adult life had been spent in hotels, apart from the eight years he’d been married. Even then, he’d spent a lot of time working away. He was sick of suitcases. Besides, Jack was living with his mother in Kent and he wanted somewhere nice for the boy to stay when he came to visit.
The house was one of only five properties developed on the site of an old farm. The original farmhouse, barns and outbuildings had been converted into luxury country accommodation. Dale was renting the smallest of the new dwellings. Formerly a single-story cattle shed, the original stone building had been gutted and redeveloped into a modern, two-story, high-spec cottage. Situated on a steep bank with outstanding views of the countryside and Durham City in the distance, the house and the location were perfect.