Games Boys Play (6 page)

He was playing in near darkness—noodling around with songs he’d listened to in the nineties—when the knock came at his door.

His scalp pulled tight, tingling. He flattened a hand over the strings to silence them.

As he got to his feet, the world felt unreal, like he could reach a hand right through it into nothingness. He hadn’t realized how dark it had gotten. He set the guitar against the couch and switched on the lamp before making his way to the door.

As he stood in front of it, one hand ready to turn the bolt, the other just about to clasp the doorknob, a wave of queasiness rolled through his guts.

Dylan was out there, waiting.

He made his hand close around the knob. He made his other hand pull back the deadbolt. After a fraction of a second, he sucked in his breath and opened the door.

Chapter Eleven

It came open faster than it should have, the knob jerking out of his grip.

He backpedaled out of its way.

A blur, things moving too fast—something longer than an arm shot upward toward his face. He reeled another step back, bringing his hands up. The whites of a pair of eyes looked out from within the void of a black hoodie drawn up over a dark ski mask. He saw, at the end of the intruder’s arm, the dull silver barrel of a gun.

He raised his hands higher, staring into the black hole at the end of the barrel.

The intruder knocked the door closed with the heel of his boot and flicked the deadbolt without taking the gun or his eyes off Brian.

“Against the wall.” The order came gruff and low. The gun barrel jerked once in the direction he wanted Brian to go before aiming at his chest again. “
Move
.”

Brian kept staring into the small dark hole at the end of the barrel.

The intruder was a shadow, springing toward him, all in black. A blur. Brian’s T-shirt jerked, the collar catching him against his neck. He looked into the intruder’s face. Widened whites of eyes, less than an arm’s length away, stared back. It wasn’t just the mask that was dark: the skin around his eyes had been blackened with makeup. The only thing to see in that face was those eyes.

“When I say fucking move—”

Brian tried to talk, but his voice had gone. His words—“
What do you want
?”—were a whisper.

The intruder wrenched him toward the wall by the front of his shirt. He stumbled into it, his toes hitting the baseboard. He braced his palms on the wall to either side of his shoulders. A final shove between his shoulder blades put his chest and ear flat against the wall too.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“When I say move—” The intruder jammed his gun against the back of Brian’s neck. “You fucking
move
. Got it?”

Brian tried to look over his shoulder.

“I
said
, ‘Got it?’” The gun dug harder. A shower of sparks skittered across the base of Brian’s skull. He had to pee—after all his trips to the bathroom, he had to pee. “Got it,” he said in a dry whisper, and before he even finished, the intruder was covering the side of Brian’s face with his hand, pushing it harder against the wall.

Brian’s nostrils twitched at the scents of leather and stale cigarette smoke. Bike exhaust. Motor oil. He blinked, his eyelashes skimming the edge of a leather-clad finger.

He winced at the sharp pain as the intruder ground his ear against the wall.

“I’m getting tired of repeating myself.” The intruder’s voice was close and calm. “And we’re only just beginning.”

The words sent blood rushing from his head, like the tide going out. Like the ground being eroded from underneath him. When the intruder pulled his hand off Brian’s face, he could breathe again, long pulls of air that went straight to his head, making him dizzy. He leaned his forehead against the wall, giving his throbbing ear a break.

Strong fingers clamped his wrist, twisting it down and back.

The edge of a breath broke loose from the back of his throat as the intruder held his wrist at his lower spine.

Brian pressed the fingertips of his other hand against the wall.

The knit fabric of the intruder’s mask ghosted his ear, making the sensitive skin behind it pull tight. He held his breath to keep from making a sound.

“Do you remember the safe word?”

The words were so close it was like hearing Dylan speak through the left channel of a pair of studio cans, the syllables tickling Brian’s ear canal. He swallowed, his eyes pressed shut. The zipper of the intruder’s hoodie rasped across the fingers behind his back as the intruder shifted his weight.

“I asked you a question.”

The safe word. Did he remember it? He closed his fingers into a fist and nodded slightly.

“Say it.”

He swallowed again. The gun pressed harder, sending fresh shivers up from his neck, making his scalp tingle.

“Say it.”

He licked his lips. He knew it; he just felt like an idiot saying it. It came out as a rough whisper: “Banana split.”

The intruder pulled back. “Give me your other arm.”

“Listen—”

The gun dug hard against the base of his skull. He clenched his teeth, the fingers of his free hand clutching the wall.

“
You
listen. Give me your fucking arm before I break this one.” He twisted Brian’s trapped arm higher.

Choices…when there weren’t any. His jaw muscle jumped, and slowly he lowered his other hand.

The gun came away from his neck.

Something thumped to the floor by their feet.

He turned his head, his temple rounding the wall, to see what it was. A backpack, black like everything else.

The gun came back, poking him between his shoulder blades. “Give me your fucking hand.”

Right.

He brought the lowered arm all the way behind him, where the intruder’s thumb caught it by the wrist and squeezed it against the one that was already pinned.

It was just a hand holding him. He could break and run. He still had that chance.

He was afraid to flex his fingers, for fear that Dylan would take it as a signal he was trying to get away—and would actually let him go.

The intruder’s shoulder dug into his lower back. Rummaging sounds came from the backpack. Something brushed his calf, the pack shifting as the intruder withdrew his hand. Bracing a hip against Brian, he straightened.

Brian had lost track of the gun. It had nudged him in the back, and then he’d gotten distracted. He had no idea—

A sharp
rrrrippp
came from behind him, catching his breath. He flattened his cheek against the wall. “Are you sure you have the right guy?” He didn’t know what he was saying; he just had to be saying something. You didn’t just stand there and let someone tie you up without saying something. “Because I can’t think of what—”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Rrrr-rip!

A cold sweat sprang out across his forehead. He twisted his face again. His quick breaths bounced back at him. His stomach and hips were pressed against the wall. He was grateful for that wall. It hid the bulge in his jeans.

Rrip.

Oh my fucking God.

This was really happening.

The intruder’s grip tightened against his wrists as he lifted Brian’s arms away from his back.

Light-headedness threatened to buckle his knees as the first sticky length of duct tape touched the back of his wrist.

Please do not do something completely embarrassing like faint.

He pressed his forehead hard into the wall, its solidity reassuring.

The intruder brought the tape around, crossing the inside of his other wrist, coming back around to the first, until the length of tape he’d pulled free from the roll had been used up and the roll itself stopped against his arm. Gripping one of Brian’s hands, the intruder yanked at the roll of tape: pull, wrap, pull, wrap, Brian’s wrists becoming more securely held together—and his knees more jellylike—with each pass.

Dylan’s grip was strong and strange and strangely intimate.

Brian swallowed and braced his feet against the floor—anything to keep himself upright.

With a final squeeze of Brian’s wrists, the intruder pulled away.

He tried to twist his hands free.

Fingers clamped around the back of his neck. “Let’s go.” The intruder’s grip guided him around to face his dining table, one of those square, birch Ikea deals, with three chairs pulled up to it. He wished he’d worn a baggier shirt. He felt like he was all cock. It wasn’t as though he’d never had a hard-on when Dylan was in the same room before, but never in direct relation to something Dylan was doing. He just hoped Dylan didn’t take it personally.

Brian
had
warned him there was a thrill involved.

The intruder grabbed a dining chair one-handed, turning its back toward the nearest wall.

He wasn’t told to sit, just dragged around by the neck again and pushed into the chair. He leaned forward, half because of his bound wrists and half to cover the bulge trying to crawl down the thigh of his jeans.

The intruder turned and took two steps away, rolling his shoulders, sliding the roll of duct tape off his wrist.

Brian’s eyes were drawn to the gun jutting out of the back of his waistband, an old Western revolver with a yellowing plastic grip. He had to swallow a laugh as he realized, one, that it was a cap gun, and two, that he
knew
that cap gun. Just one of the many things, like the
Easyrider
books, he’d come across in Dylan’s basement bedroom when they were teenagers. Dylan must have dug it up when he was cleaning his stuff out of Patty’s basement last week.

Dylan—the
intruder
, Brian corrected himself—slid the gun from his waistband. With a
clunk
, it landed on the table. Ripping fresh tape from the roll, the intruder walked up to the chair.

From his bent-forward position, Brian had to tilt his head to look at Dylan. His voice creaked out a word: “Please.” A word Dylan could take however he wanted.

Black jeans and the lower half of the hoodie filled most of his field of view: abdomen, hips, one hip cocked as the intruder stood there holding the tape, sticky side facing Brian. Waiting.

Brian turned his face to the side.

The intruder closed the last of the space between them and pushed Brian up straight, one hand shoving him against the seat back. Holding him, he began taping Brian’s torso and upper arms to the chair.

Brian pulled in one measured breath after another, his chest pressing against the tape as the tape secured him more and more tightly. His face was hot, burning. His mouth didn’t have a lick of spit left. He clenched his teeth and tried to struggle.

The intruder tore the roll free and smoothed the edge of the tape with the side of his thumb. Brian pushed against the seat, but he was stuck. He jerked in his bonds.

“Look at me,” the intruder said.

Fuck that. He leaned forward as much as the tape allowed and tried to work his arms free.

The intruder put a hand to Brian’s forehead, the leather glove bringing with it the smell of the road, and pushed his head up.

Fuck
that.

The intruder grasped his chin, tilting it higher yet, and bent down toward him.

They stared at each other for two seconds, three, Brian glaring, the intruder searching, until he got whatever information he was looking for and let go, turning away.

Filling his chest with a long pull of air, feeling the tape restrict even that, Brian watched the intruder’s boots walk across the floor to where the pack still sat, a dark lump near the wall. Scooping it up, he turned and headed back, the toes of his boots pointing toward Brian.

Brian held his breath, forcing the tape taut across his chest. As the boots neared, one came up and propped itself against the seat of the chair, between his thighs, close enough to see the black stitching on the boot’s welt, even in the poor light the table lamp by the couch gave off.

Slowly the intruder straightened his leg. The chair slid over the smooth laminate floor, six inches, a foot, until its seat back came to a stop against the wall behind it.

Brian’s chest collapsed in as he let his breath out.

The intruder leaned forward, his foot still planted against the chair, his toe tilting toward Brian’s crotch. He gripped Brian’s jaw, squeezing his cheeks in. The whites of the intruder’s eyes were all Brian could see in the blackness in front of his face.

He tried to fold his hands small, tried to jimmy one free of the tape that bound them together while the intruder said, “New safe word.”

Brian stopped. What was this? Who changed a safe word during a scene? He looked up.

The intruder pulled away and started a fresh strip of tape—
rrr-rip
. He tore it free and held it out, sticky side facing Brian once again.

Swallowing hard, Brian watched it come toward him. He started to shake his head, but the intruder’s glove grabbed his chin again, twisting his face forward.

“No,” he said just before the tape touched his lips. The intruder’s hand pressed down on top of it, holding it, holding Brian’s head from the back at the same time, sealing the tape over his mouth.

“
Shh
.”

Brian swallowed thick breaths of leather, thick breaths of cigarettes and motor exhaust and adhesive, through his nostrils. His hips strained forward, his cock throbbing like a heartbeat. If Dylan put his foot back on the chair and leaned his boot against Brian’s crotch, he’d come. He’d fucking come. A small, choked noise worked itself free of his throat.

The intruder dragged the edge of his hand across the tape, from the middle of Brian’s mouth outward, smoothing it, sticking it fast to Brian’s cheeks. The outside edges reached all the way to the corners of his jaw. The breath spilling from his nostrils was amplified against the back of it.

Four words chased themselves inside his head:
oh my fucking God.

A mixture of panic and freedom rose in his chest. The freedom to not be in charge anymore. He couldn’t even
speak
for himself anymore.

The panic of being seen like this.

Another strip
rrppt
off the roll and went across his mouth, overlapping the first, the intruder ignoring his groan of dissent. A third strip went higher, its upper edge skimming just below his nose. The intruder forced his chin up to take a good look at his work. Brian jerked free, twisting his head away. Behind his back, he tried to work his wrists out of the tape.