by KD Ellis
But not, of course, until Teddy was safely inside.
* * * *
Later that night, Teddy slithered off the platform, a dozen hands caressing his ass under the guise of ‘helping.’ He had to pick his way through a larger-than-normal crowd of already-buzzed clubbers to make it to the bar.
He’d never seen this many customers on a weeknight and Teddy racked his brain to think of a reason as he hopped over the counter to the other side and snagged his apron off the hook. He tugged the skimpy blue fabric over his head and tied it, pausing only to wash his hands before he waded into the fray.
Impatient frat boys crowded around the bar, orange Longhorn shirts stretched tight across swollen chests.
Teddy, under the guise of grabbing a new bottle of Hennessy from under the counter, lowered his voice and whispered a question at the other bartender, Zach. “What’s with all the straights?”
Not that no gay men wore Longhorn shirts—plenty of them did, especially this close to the start of the season. But most of the college guys cringed away from any man who stood too close, chests puffing out and jaws clenched, like taking up more room would keep ‘the gays’ from approaching. Really, all it did was mean that they all had to stand even closer together. In the brief few minutes Teddy had stood behind the bar, he’d already seen half a dozen of them almost come to blows over an accidental brush of arm against chest.
Zach rolled his eyes and thumbed over his shoulder at Johnny. “Dumbass over there picked the theme.”
Teddy craned his neck to see the sign hand-written on a chalkboard near the front but couldn’t read it over the dozens of heads blocking his view.
Zach saved him the effort. “Masc Night. Half-off drinks for jocks.”
Teddy cringed, eyeing the crowd again. “Ian approved that?”
Zach shook his head, then shrugged. “Doubt it. Ian doesn’t seem like he’d put up with that shit.”
For a second, there was a vulnerability in Zach’s voice. Teddy caught the way the other man’s fingers skimmed over his pink lace shorts. Unlike Teddy’s boyshorts, Zach wore cheekies, leaving the lower half of his ass exposed. He suspected that Zach liked the uniform more than he’d ever admit. Outside the club, Zach wore gym shorts and tank tops religiously, but more than once Teddy had glimpsed lace beneath when his shorts rode too low.
“Hey, soy boy,” an asshole leaning on the bar hollered over toward Teddy and Zach. “You two done gossiping, or do I have to come around the bar and grab a beer myself?” Teddy didn’t need to know who it was directed at to be offended. Both of them were in pink, with glittery makeup and heels, so it could have been to either…or both.
Zach’s face closed down in a mask Teddy recognized well, because he saw it too often in the mirror. The other bartender’s shoulders tensed, arms crossing like they could protect him from the insults.
Teddy’s first instinct was to cave in, but instead he found himself angry. For once, why couldn’t Teddy say what he wanted, act how he wanted…be who he wanted, without judgement? Ian wouldn’t see him this time, but he imagined Ian would approve. Daddy would want his boy to stand up for himself.
Teddy squared his shoulders and strutted over to the asshole. The man might be taller than him, and his shoulders might be broader, but his eyes were blurry with drink.
Teddy lifted a knee onto the bar until he could climb onto the top, drawing the eyes of everyone nearby, knowing it would also get the attention of the bouncers. He lowered his eyes and sank demurely down, giving a coquettish flutter of his eyelashes. His teeth brushed over the fullness of his lower lip, drawing the man’s eyes for a moment. Teddy knew that despite his low dose of T, they were still feminine, especially with the gloss, and confusion warred with arousal on the larger man’s face.
Teddy lifted his hand and ran it down the asshole’s chest from collarbone to waist, “Trust me, baby. I eat all the meat.”
He couldn’t hold back his laugh as the larger man half fell in his attempt to scramble away from Teddy’s flirting fingers.
Would Ian spank him later for flirting? And more important, would Teddy like it? Would he enjoy the feel of his skin heating up, the sting of pain pulling pleasure from his flesh?
The asshole, however, looked horrified, before the terror of being touched by a man twisted to disgust and fury. He lunged forward, his mallet-like fists lifting. Teddy tensed, waiting for the blow he knew was coming.
It never landed. He cracked open eyes that he didn’t remember shutting to see the asshole hunched over, his arm twisted painfully behind his back by a familiar man.
Hugo held the asshole’s wrist in a vise grip, his other hand clenched around the back of his neck. A moment later, he moved, slamming the man’s face into the top of the bar so loud that Teddy thought he heard a crack, and he wondered what had broken—the bar or the man’s nose.
Teddy lifted his eyes to Hugo’s face and shuddered. The hulk of a man was an ice sculpture in the heart of a Midwest February. With his lips pulled tight, no bared teeth or flashing eyes to show his anger, Teddy had to read it in the curve of his jaw, and in the taut, straining tendons in his neck.
Hugo’s large hand pressed the frat boy harder into the bar. “Say you’re sorry.” Behind him, the crowd shuffled back, giving them room.
“Sorry,” the asshole whimpered, the word muffled.
“I didn’t hear you.”
“Sorry!” The asshole’s voice, though louder, was still muffled, but Hugo released him. Just in time, since Teddy saw a pair of bouncers pushing their way across the dance floor, headed their way.
The man fell to the floor and scrambled back, shooting daggers at Teddy until Hugo stepped threateningly toward him, his shadow swallowing the man’s face. If Hugo had been smaller—or the gun on his hip just a bit less on display—the man and his friends might have caused problems. Instead, with only minor grumbling, a pair of behemoths picked their friend off the ground and half-dragged him out of the club. The bouncers retreated back to their corners.
Johnny glared from the other end of the bar, only now bothering to realize there was an issue. “There went a shit ton of easy money.”
Teddy just lifted his middle finger and aimed it at the fucker. “It’s a good thing you like dick, because you’re a real pussy.”
Zak laughed.
Johnny didn’t.
Hugo cleared his throat. “Teddy.”
The high that Teddy had been riding crashed instantly, his heart plummeting to his feet as the Obviously Bad Thing hit him in the face.
Hugo didn’t visit him casually.
Hugo wasn’t his friend.
If Hugo was here, it was because… Fuck.
“Now?” Teddy asked, sliding off the bar to land in front of him, wringing his hands. “Can… Do I have time to change?”
Hugo shook his head slowly, his cold mask breaking just long enough for Teddy to read what might be sadness beneath it. “No. We have to go now.”
Teddy flexed his fingers, wiping his sweaty palms on his thighs. “Okay.” Before he could lose control of the panic fluttering to life in his chest, he grabbed a bottle of liquor—he didn’t care what it was or how it tasted, he just needed to feel the burn, to let the fire of the whiskey numb him—and drank straight from the mouth.
“Hey!” Johnny grabbed it from his hand and shot him a dirty glare. “The fuck, Teddy?”
“Let’s go,” Teddy ignored his ex and started for the back hallway, alcohol humming just loud enough in his veins to mute the fearful whispers in his mind. He walked quickly through the hallway and out into the alley, knowing that to the crowd in the club, he’d look eager. They’d wonder where he was going and why, and if he was blowing Hugo out back. But if he hesitated, the meager courage he’d scrounged up would wither and die.
Hugo ushered him to a black sedan, already running, and urged him into the passenger seat. “Don’t make me tie you up.”
Maybe it was meant to sound like a threat, but Teddy heard it as
the plea that it was.
“Are they going to kill me?” Teddy’s voice came out small as he voiced the fear that sat like curdled milk in his throat.
“No,” Hugo immediately denied, but his hands turned white on the steering wheel.
Teddy turned to stare blankly out of the window. He didn’t understand. Ian had told him the FBI was going to pay off the cartel. Why would they still be after him? Unless they hadn’t made the payment yet—but what would have stopped them? Was this about something else? His heart beat faster in his chest. Had they found out he was working with the bureau now?
He silently apologized to Ian. Whatever happened—if he died, if they just beat him up—Ian was going to blame himself. Teddy should have stayed out of the other man’s life. Should have just…loved him from afar, like he’d done for years without realizing it.
Because he did realize it now. He’d thought the young, innocent love he’d held for Ian as a teenager had passed, thought he’d moved on. Seeing Ian again—living with him, growing to trust him—made him realize how wrong he’d been. His love hadn’t faded. It had just slept for a while, lain dormant, hibernated through the winter of their separation.
He almost missed the turn onto a familiar street, just two blocks over from the house he’d grown up in. Hugo drove up to a warehouse graffitied with curses and gang signs, then honked at a closed bay. The door opened with a loud, grinding rumble, and Hugo drove through. It shut slowly behind him with an ominous bang as it hit the asphalt.
Hugo idled the car for a long, silent second, then spun the key. The ignition died. “Get out,” Hugo ordered, his voice like gravel.
Teddy scrambled to open the door with shaking hands. The interior of the warehouse looked much as he remembered it, though the furniture was nicer. There were still women on their knees, still men roughhousing by the pool tables. Still the same faint odor of nicotine and piss.
Teddy didn’t have time to get more than a quick glance as he darted his eyes around. Hugo grabbed Teddy’s arm just below the shoulder and half-walked, half-dragged him forward.
It had been two years since Teddy had seen Julian face-to-face. The man looked older, his dark hair cropped close to his scalp, silver glinting where it threaded through an eyebrow. A scar stretched from the corner of the man’s mouth to his right ear, giving his face a lopsided grin, though his expression was sober.
Teddy barely met the man’s eyes before he was shoved down at Julian’s feet, pain blooming beneath his kneecaps when they struck the cement. His eyes watered but it didn’t stop him from seeing the others beside him.
There were four other people on their knees at Julian’s feet, three men of disparate ages and a woman perhaps a decade older than Teddy. The blonde woman was in an old-style diner dress, name tag reading Delia. One of the men was in a polo with the logo of a gym stamped on the arm and another wore a cheap, poorly fitting suit. A car dealership badge naming him Carlos dangled from the lapel.
“Tie him up,” Julian ordered.
Teddy liked to think Hugo hesitated. It was only a few seconds, though, before a rope was yanked around his wrists, binding him tightly. Teddy scanned the faces of the men surrounding Julian, hoping for a hint of what was to happen.
It was hard to tell. Some were laughing, some leered at Teddy’s exposed skin and Delia’s heaving cleavage, and some just looked solemn.
Julian himself looked bored. “You must be wondering why you’re here, no?” He paced the line, stopping at each one of them before moving to the next. He stopped again at the other end, in front of the man in the polo shirt. He was in his forties at the most, his steel hair smoothed over to hide a growing bald spot.
A dark stain spread from the crotch of his pants already, probably the source of the piss Teddy had smelled earlier. “You’ve failed me, Silas. You promised me your gym would be safe from the feds, that my money would be safe from the feds. But what do I find tonight?”
“I d-don’t know, sir. I didn’t tip off no one,” The man, Silas, said through chattering teeth, his eyes darting from left to right, like he’d see something that would save him—or someone, because he tried to scuttle forward, despite the bindings on his arms and ankles, nearly toppling at the feet of one of the men. “Tell him, Jose. Tell him I don’t know nothing.”
The man, Jose, cringed away from him, then kicked out, foot connecting with Silas’ side and sending him toppling to the pavement. “Get your dirty fucking hands off me.”
Silas shuddered, struggling back up onto his knees as he turned toward Julian instead, like his pitiful appearance would inspire mercy. “Please, DeAza. I didn’t do nothing, I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t me.”
Teddy had been trying to stay silent and unnoticed, but he couldn’t stop the small cry that escaped his lips when Julian pulled a gun off his hip and pressed the barrel tight against the kneeling man’s forehead. The flesh dimpled around the metal.
“You know, it’s a pity, because I actually believe you,” Julian said but pressed the gun even harder against the man’s skin. “A man like you— Well, you’re not even a man. You’re a rat. You don’t have the cajones. But somebody ratted, and now there are feds watching your gym. And you promised me… No feds at your gym. Didn’t you promise me that?”
Silas nodded frantically, tears spilling down his cheeks. Teddy didn’t want to watch but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Fear held him frozen in its grasp.
But Julian pulled the gun away and straightened, passing the weapon to the man in the leather jacket. Teddy’s shoulders sagged in relief, thinking the man was safe, that Julian was just teaching him a lesson through fear and empty threats.
He should have known better.
Julian gestured to one of his men. “Jo, what do we do to rats who can’t keep their mouth shut?”
Jo reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out what looked like a fishhook, complete with black fishing line. “We close it for them.”
Teddy retched at the sight of the hook piercing the flesh above the kneeling man’s lip. He slammed his eyes closed, but not before he saw the hand clamp down on Silas’ jaw, forcing his mouth closed when it opened on a scream. He couldn’t block out the sounds, the wet sucking sound of the line being tugged through flesh, the muffled screams, the laughter of the gang members.
Whatever Hugo had promised, Teddy doubted he was walking from the warehouse in one piece.
The sound of cries grew quieter. Teddy forced his eyes open, not knowing what was happening somehow worse than the ghoulish sight that greeted him. The older man was a sickly gray, which made the black thread sewn across his mouth even more ghastly, and crimson streaked across his chin and neck. Tears streaked down his cheeks but the sound was wrong, sobs caught behind a mouth that no longer opened. It was like something out of a horror movie that Teddy never wanted to watch.
Jo let the man fall to a bleeding heap on the cement.
Julian waved a hand, and two of his men started dragging the softy sobbing man away. “I’m impressed. I didn’t think you’d go through with it.”
Julian moved down the line, to the man in the cheap suit.
Teddy tried not to listen and harder not to watch, but he couldn’t help seeing the hammer fall on the third man’s hands, over and over. Bile burned his throat at the sound of bones breaking.
It was a sound he’d never be able to get out of his head, a wet pop, a snapping crack that didn’t seem loud enough but, at the same time, was too loud to unhear. It was somehow worse than the man’s choked screams.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Teddy couldn’t help it.
He leaned to the side and vomited, acid coating his tongue and spilling out his nose, coating his face and shirt before landing in a puddle on the floor. The smell of sick made Teddy’s stomach heave again. It also drew Julian’s attention to him.
A boot collided with Teddy’s side. “And you,” Julian snarled, kicking him again until he toppled into the puddle of
sick. It stuck to his skin and Teddy gagged again, the sound hollow, empty.
“I lend you money to pay for your little surgery. I even offer you a way to pay me back.” Teddy shuddered when a pair of knees entered into his vision as Julian crouched, then the man tangled his fist in Teddy’s hair, dragging him closer across the pavement. “I had high hopes for you. You looked so pretty sucking Hugo’s dick that you could have paid your debt off twice over. You’re just lucky that little video you made is doing so well or I’d have pulled you in months ago.”
Teddy stared up at him in horror—not that he had a choice, since Julian was still tugging him up, forcing him to meet his eyes.
He’d thought the video was safely locked away. How many people had seen it? How many people had paid to see it? If he hadn’t already thrown up, he would now.
Julian must have seen his horror and he widened his smirk before he tugged a bandana out of his pocket and roughly wiped the vomit off Teddy’s face. It somehow left Teddy feeling even dirtier.
“You’re the hottest thing in porn right now. You should hear what they’re saying.” Julian straightened, the hand he had clasped in Teddy’s hair forcing him back up onto his knees.
“Mikey,” Julian snapped with his other hand at a red-headed man nearby. “Read me what they’re saying.”
The large redhead laughed. “You got it, boss.” He pulled out his phone and a second later, started reading. The words were stilted and lumbering but no less horrific for that. “Teddy’s mouth looks so pretty wrapped around that big dick. How much for him to suck mine?”
Julian clamped his free hand across Teddy’s mouth and squeezed, the pain growing until Teddy was forced to open it, unable to bear the pressure. With his other hand, Julian forced Teddy’s face closer, until his mouth was pressed tight to his jeans. They tasted of sweat.
“He does have a pretty mouth, doesn’t he, boys?” Julian said as he dragged Teddy’s face across his crotch. Teddy cried out as the zipper stabbed into his skin, rubbing it raw. A chorus of rough agreements sounded, but they were drowned out by the sound of Teddy’s racing pulse in his ears.