by Daryl Banner
“Yes. All of it. This. I feel like …” Trevor giggles even more. “I feel like I’m caught in the middle of some government espionage action movie. Here we are, racing across the city on the way to stop some super villain’s evil plan!”
“Unfortunately, he’s not a super villain. Just a pervy teen.”
That only succeeds in making Trevor laugh harder.
At least one of us is having fun.
Until we reach my private airport and he realizes he’s getting on a plane. “W-Wait,” he stammers when a man greets us by the car. “We’re flying?”
“On wings of steel.” I shoot him a crooked smile. “Still up for the fieldtrip?”
He stares at me, his jaw half dropped. “Do I have a choice?”
“Nope,” I answer with a wink.
Trevor is glued to his seat on the plane, and my eyes are glued to him, amused, watching as he experiences his first flight—on my privately-owned jet, no less. After the initial terror of ascension, he relaxes surprisingly quickly, then can’t seem to stop talking. He tells me about this one time he almost flew, then his family decided to turn their vacation into a road trip when the plane tickets proved to be too pricey. “Had to save up for college,” he explains. Then he tells me how he was always afraid to fly for no reason at all, and is surprised by how much the take-off felt like a rollercoaster. “Is that what it’s like to land, too?” he asks eagerly. I just smirk his way and answer, “You’ll find out soon.”
And he does. The landing is soft and painless, like the flight.
In just ten minutes, we’re in a rental car on our way to the drop-off location. Jazz sent the address to my phone, which guides us via a soothing, unpanicked voice. Though the flight was just under two hours, we also hopped two time zones west, so it’s nearly the same time of night as when we left.
And now, in the car, Trevor starts to get cold feet. “Wait, wait. What’s my role in this? Is the boyfriend dangerous? Or the buyer? Should we be armed? Oh my God. What am I doing?”
“In half a mile, make a left,” my phone calmly directs us.
“I’m just here for moral support, right?” Trevor asks, wiping his forehead. “I sit in the car while you go meet with this guy?”
“And miss all the fun?”
When I park along the curb, I pull my phone from the dash and text Jazz, since she’s tracking where Lukas is somehow. I never question how exactly she’s able to do what she does; I’ve just learned to trust her over the years because she’s never let me down. It has to be nearly morning over there in Germany by now, but Jazz never seems to sleep. I have a legitimate concern that she may be a vampire.
“I should probably hide,” whispers Trevor, his eyes wide.
“I’m taking care of this,” I assure him. “I’m just here to teach this stupid kid a lesson, fulfill my client’s wishes, and then we’re going home. Simple as that.”
“Yeah, it’s all ‘simple’ until he turns out to be a black belt.”
“I’ve dealt with morons like this before, and worse.” I incline my head toward Trevor. “Much, much worse.”
“Like what?” he asks, eyebrows lifting.
I give him a onceover. “Like a particularly obstinate intern.”
Trevor narrows his eyes at me, not appreciating my little joke. “And what did this particularly obstinate intern do?”
“He asked too many questions,” I tease.
Trevor snorts, but still isn’t calmed in the least. He fidgets endlessly, muttering his worries out loud, but the only thing that has my attention now is how his crotch looks in those formfitting jeans he chose to wear tonight. The sinewy muscles in his smooth forearms flex and twitch as he picks at his fingers, still rambling.
“You’re sexy when you’re freaking out,” I tell him, cutting off whatever he was going on about.
Trevor faces me, pink lips parted and eyes hollowed with fear. “Wh-What?” he gasps, thinking I’d said something else, clearly.
I put a hand on his leg. “I said you’re sexy …” My hand slowly slides to his inner thigh, which tightens. “… when you’re freaking out.” My fingers move farther in, reaching his crotch.
Didn’t take long; he’s already hard and flexing his response. Maybe he was hard already. Maybe he’s a thrill-o-sexual, like me.
“Your dick likes the excitement,” I note in a whisper.
“My dick isn’t very smart,” he whispers back, “and obviously doesn’t know better. Are we in danger?”
“Maybe.” I give his crotch a squeeze.
Trevor groans as he gets harder, his eyes rocking back, and then he snaps them to me, his full lips parted. “B-Ben. Really. Are we in danger? Shouldn’t you have goons who do this for you?”
A smirk of amusement twists my face. “Goons?”
“Y-Yeah. Big muscly bald dudes with shades who—” I squeeze again, interrupting the poor guy. He grunts, bites his bottom lip, then resumes with a strained voice. “—who look like Shrek and do the shakedowns for you?”
“Trevor, Trevor, Trevor.” I lean across the seat, bringing my mouth right up to his ear. “I am the shakedown.”
He squirms under those words. “Ben …”
“I want to taste you again.”
He turns to me, his face right in front of mine. “What?”
“I can’t get enough of you. I want your hard cock in my mouth right now. Every inch of it.” I still have Trevor cupped in my palm as he swells bigger by the second. His cock keeps flexing and throbbing against my grip, like it’s trapped and wrestling to get free. “It’s obvious you want it, too.”
“I also want to survive tonight, thank you,” he breathes after a nervous glance out the car window.
With a twist of my fingers, his pant button opens. Then his zipper comes down. I descend over his lap, intent to swallow him whole.
“Ben …” he warns me.
His cock slips right out of his sexy black briefs. We meet again, I think to myself with heart-thrumming joy as my eyes feast on the sight of his perfect cock—not too big, not too small, and throbbing desperately for my warm, wet tongue.
“Someone’s approaching,” he hisses.
I lift up so fast, my head hits the rearview mirror. Nursing the back of my head with a soothing rub, I wince and peer out in front of us. Sure enough, I see a teenager in a backwards red cap, black polo with the collar popped, and khaki shorts cut off above the knee. He stands under a nearby streetlamp, fidgety and stiff.
He came alone? He seriously came totally alone to a trade-off of cash—presumably lots of cash? I almost feel sorry for the kid.
Almost. “Show time,” I murmur.
“W-Wait. My pants are—are—” He zips himself up at once, out of breath. “Do I come, too? What do I say? Can I stay here?”
I give a nod at the teen under the light. “You think that little sixteen-something shrimp can take me? Sorry, have we met?”
Trevor frowns at me. “Don’t get cocky.”
My phone buzzes. I glance down at it to see a message from Jazz telling me “the friend” has arrived. A bit late, my kinky cohort.
I slip out of the car, then let the door shut softly behind me. I have the teen’s attention in an instant, his eyes so wide, I see the whites of them from ten feet away. I approach calmly, but keep a casual air about myself, walking the way I’d advance on a half-spooked cat. I don’t want Lukas to find me threatening; not yet.
Closer up, Lukas is quite modelesque, his features chiseled and his cheekbones high. A small tuft of bleached blond hair sneaks out the front of his backwards red cap, almost eclipsing the two chips of sapphires he has for eyes. Fake. Contacts, likely. Though his popped collar and general appearance give him the look of some arrogant spoiled Beverly Hills brat, his face registers nothing but wariness at the moment.
I stand before him, just a hair above eyelevel. He’s a tall fucker, this teen. “Lukas.”
He studies me for a second before responding. “Charlie.”
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Might have helped to know the original buyer’s name ahead of time. I give him a short nod. “That’s me. You have the phone?”
Lukas sizes me up for a minute too long for my liking. Then, his face tightens. “Do you … Do you have the money?”
“Hand me the phone, and you’ll get what you’re owed.”
“It’s in my car.”
“Where’s your car?”
His lips purse. The discomfort is evident in the way his back stiffens. After a single second of deliberation, he gives his head a curt shake. “No. I’m not down for this.”
I quirk an eyebrow. “Sorry?”
“The deal’s off,” he states, then turns around.
“I wouldn’t turn away if I were you,” I warn him, my voice gaining depth. “When you make a deal, you honor it.”
He stops and faces me again, his face twisting with smugness. “Is that so, Charlie?”
Charlie. Why’d Lukas emphasize the name?
Then it hits me: it was a test. The real buyer’s name must’ve been something else. I gave myself away. Fuck.
“Dude, seriously,” I say, my tone turning soft, like I’m just one of his disappointed bros. “What were you thinking, meeting a guy out here you don’t even know, totally alone, to sell some videos of your ex? That’s just poor thinking.”
He squints at me, annoyed. “Who the hell are you, really?”
“You don’t think something’s going to happen when you mess with a celebrity’s daughter? A celebrity with deep enough pockets to afford a maniac like me to protect her?” Lukas sputters for a second, unable to produce a response. “Think about it,” I push on. “The real buyer could’ve forced his way to your car, made you get the phone, stolen it right out of your privileged little hands, beaten you into orange juice pulp, and sent you home with tears streaming down your plastic little face.”
“It’s not p-plastic!” he spits back.
“Don’t be an idiot, Lukas. At the very least, bring a friend with you for backup. Like … a goon,” I say, lovingly borrowing Trevor’s little word.
“A what?” he asks with an impatient huff, but then his eyes fix themselves somewhere past my shoulder, and fear surges through him like a cold front.
Unsettled by his expression, I glance quickly behind me.
Trevor stands there with his arms folded tight and high over his chest, his feet planted shoulder-width apart, and his chin inclined down, glaring at Lukas through the top of his head like some challenged superhero to the rescue. His dark blond spikes cast a menacing shadow down his otherwise adorably scowling face. He looks poised to cast laser beams from his eyes.
I bite my lip to keep from laughing. This is Trevor playing the role of beastly bodyguard, if I had to guess.
Regardless, it does the job. “Who the fuck is he?” Lukas calls out, unnerved. “Y-Your goon?”
I’m about to pull a bunny of a response out of my butt when Trevor answers. “I’m your worst fuckin’ nightmare, kid.”
Lukas squints his eyes challengingly, lifts his chin, but then seems to think twice about it. “I-Is that so?” he retorts boastfully, feigning confidence.
Trevor doesn’t budge an inch. “Tell me. Were you having trouble accessing your bank accounts, kid? Your online payment methods? Is that why you had to resort to selling those videos to someone in person for cash?”
Lukas doesn’t respond, nor does he move a muscle or even seem to breathe.
“You have me to thank for that,” Trevor goes on, playing his part. “I froze your money. And I can freeze your whole sad life if I want to—just like that.” He snaps for emphasis. Lukas flinches at the sound. “Because I happen to be the world’s greatest hacker. I’m so great, with just the press of a button, I can send a whole fleet of cops to your house right now. And trust me, you won’t like what they’ll find.”
“I don’t keep any weed at my h-house,” Lukas stammers. “You think I’m an idiot?”
“Oh. You think I’m talking about the weed?” Trevor emits his version of a slow, evil laugh. I stare at him, wide-eyed. Really, this whole act isn’t necessary at all, since I had the situation totally under control, but I’m much too amused to stop him now. “No, no, no, you poor, sad, spoiled little moron. This isn’t a matter of a bag of grass. This is a matter of the stash of underage porn they’ll find at your house.”
At that, all the blood drains from Lukas’s face. “I … I-I don’t have a-any—”
“You don’t have any …? Is that what you’re about to claim?” Trevor takes two steps forward. “What do you think you have in your car? On that phone of yours you were about to sell?”
Lukas’s jaw tightens. His terror has quickly become anger.
I suck my tongue for a second, then put a hand on Trevor’s shoulder. No need to escalate things further. “That’s enough,” I murmur to him. “You’ve made your point, Cyber God Slayer 99.”
“I wonder,” Trevor goes on, apparently loving this hacker character he’s invented too much to know when to stop, “what your parents would think about that. Or your friends. Or your entire school. With just one little slip of my finger, everyone would know. Would they be interested in hearing about your … extracurricular interests?” Trevor smirks superiorly. “That’s right. My name is Cyber God Crusher—”
“—Slayer—”
“—Slayer 99,” Trevor declares, corrected, “and if you don’t hand over that phone right now, we’re going to have ourselves a problem. Or, more accurately, you are.”
For a second, I think Lukas is about to kick his heel into the pavement and run away. Instead, he lets out a furious war cry, then charges toward Trevor with red rage in his little eyes.
23
Trevor might have gone too far.
Oh, shit.
Just before the teeny-bopper in a popped collar reaches me, Ben intercepts him like a beast. Grabbing two fistfuls of Lukas’s black polo, he slams him into the wrought iron fence at our side.
“I’ll make this really easy for you, kid,” says Ben in a voice so level and calm, it’s twice as unsettling. “You take us to your car, hand over the phone, and Cyber Punk Slayer—”
“Cyber God Slayer 99,” I whisper gently to him.
“—will restore access to your little play money mommy and daddy give you.”
“Fuck you,” hisses the teenager, struggling to no avail against Ben’s hold. “You ain’t got nothin’ on me. You two are full of shit.”
Ben lets go of Lukas’s shirt and sweeps a hand between the boy’s unsuspecting legs, grabbing hold of something else. Lukas lets out one tiny squeak, his eyes bulging.
Ben presses him to the fence, the teen’s balls gripped tightly through his thin khaki shorts. “Correction: I have your nuts. Both physically and metaphorically. The phone is now mine. The videos are now mine. And you are now mine.” Ben glances over his shoulder at me. “Hey, Cyber. You want to pull out your phone and get ready to send that incriminating message out to the police, and to every single contact our little friend Lukas here knows?”
“W-W-Wait,” stammers the teenager.
My eyes flash just for a second before I shove a hand into my pocket and, fumbling slightly, produce my phone. I straighten my posture, once again assuming the cocky role of super hacker, then hold the phone up demonstratively, like I have any idea what the hell I’m really doing. “Cyber God P-Punk is ready.”
“In ten seconds,” Ben states, “if this dipshit doesn’t hand over the phone, I want you to send out that message.”
“W-W-We could both sell the vids,” Lukas suggests quickly. His words come so fast, spittle comes out with them, his lips as wet as his desperate eyes. “Share the profits. Half, half.”
Ben starts to count. “Ten. Nine. Eight.”
“Thirds, then! Third for you, third for C-Cyber, third for me!”
“Seven. Six. Five. Four.”
“Just ten percent for me! Greedy punks!”
“Three. Two. One.”
“I’LL GIVE YOU THE FUCKING PHONE!” the teenager screams, nearly thrashing against Ben’s hold. “Don’t press that button!!”
Ben, his grip still firm on the boy’s balls, leans into him. “So we have a deal, then?”
“Deal,” blurts Lukas, his bottom lip trembling. “D-D-Deal.”
Ben lets go of him, takes a step back. “Take us to your car.”
With just a quick walk around the corner, Lukas’s ritzy, sleek white, unblemished BMW—literally the least inconspicuous car one might imagine showing up to such an exchange driving in—comes into view. Lukas opens the passenger door, pops the glove box, then pulls out a phone with trembling, sweaty hands.
“Prove it’s the real phone,” commands Ben.
Lukas’s face tightens with anger, but he complies, unlocking the phone with a code, then pulling up the video in question. I’m right at Ben’s side when Lukas shows us the screen: it’s a big thumbnail of a video showing a teenage girl looking into the camera with a finger at her mouth, and she’s wearing just a tiny red slip. There’s no chocolate in the thumbnail, but I imagine that comes later in the video, and neither Ben nor I care to watch it.
Ben pockets the phone, then leans into Lukas so close, Lukas backs against his BMW in fear. “I want you to know, you are very lucky tonight that I’m such good buddies with Cyber here,” Ben tells him, his voice low. “He’s going to honor his promise of unfreezing your accounts … but he’ll still be watching you, Lukas. He’ll keep an eye on your every move. If you fart, he’ll know.”
“Okay, okay, okay, okay,” Lukas squeals, his hands in the air.
I cross my arms again. “Not sure about farting,” I interject, “but he’s definitely shitting himself right now.”
“Now go home and try to do something more productive with your time,” states Ben. “Maybe you can try something that doesn’t involve exploiting your ex-girlfriends’ sexuality, or making dumb deals with total strangers on the internet, or perpetuating every damned Beverly Hills brat stereotype that exists.”
Lukas’s lips quiver when he grumbles, “F-Fuck you. Fuck you both,” then slams shut the passenger door, whips around to the driver’s side, slips inside, then cranks the car into drive. Ben and I step back as he tears off, his obnoxious engine rumbling like the throat of a great white dragon until the darkness of the street swallows him up.