14. Your Boy Toy

H e was there. Kellen saw him immediately: standing behind the bar, lit up like neon by the lights at his back. He was counting money from the cash register, the bills flashing between his fingers as he wordlessly numbered them.

Is he really blind? The question darted through Kellen’s mind yet again. If he was, couldn’t they find anyone else to count register cash? If he was blind, how could someone so physically helpless be so powerful?

And why discard all that power for relocation and a new identity?

Kellen made his way through the crowd and strobing lights to a less populated table toward the left side of the building. He would watch for a little while, he told himself as he took a chair.

Not thirty seconds after Kellen sat down, someone took the seat beside him.

A stranger, Kellen’s half-second glance told him.

“I could’ve sworn I saw you here the other night,” the stranger called over the noise.

Kellen double-took him.

“Yeah,” the old man confirmed. “You insisted you don’t work here.” He lifted his elbows on the table and pressed his hands together. Slowly, he rubbed them back and forth. “You look like you work here.”

“Fuck off,” Kellen murmured before pushing back his chair.

Faster than Kellen could’ve predicted of the old man, the stranger’s hand shot out and gripped his arm. Tight. As if with the intention of forcibility.

There was an electrified succession of seconds in which Kellen had to fully focus on resisting the urge to fire a punch.

“You should know you’re turning down a sweet deal,” the old man said soberly. “I’ll buy you out, you know. You won’t have to be a part of this place, anymore.”

It felt like one singular heartbeat at a time, the drawn process of the pounding in Kellen’s chest gradually slowing. One second. Two. Five. He sat down again.

“Smart decision,” the old man praised. His hand loosened a little on Kellen’s arm, but did not remove itself.

Kellen’s lips pressed. His throat seemed to be struggling to allow a normal breath. “How much do you know about this place?” he said finally, voice managed.

“How much do I know?” The man chuckled. “Not sure there’s anything I don’t know. I’ve been coming here for longer than I care to admit.”

“What do you know about Eros?” The next question came out far more easily.

“Eros?” A long silence followed. “He used to dance here, before they put him in charge.”

Kellen swept his free hand past his nose and down the side of his face. “Tell me more.”

“He fucks well.” A small silence. “At least, so I’ve heard. Of course, I’ve never had the pleasure.”

“Where did he come from?”

“Aren’t you curious.” Another chuckle. The hand on Kellen’s arm slid up a few inches. “Where do any of them come from.”

“Do you know when he started here?”

“Yes, I remember when he started.” A small pause. “Five, maybe six, years ago was the first time I saw him on a pole. Why so curious about Eros?”

“Is he really blind?”

“Blind as a bat and always has been.” The old man chuckled. “Don’t let how easily he gets around fool you. Why do you ask?”

“Thank you,” Kellen muttered. He stood up, jerking his arm free, and started for the bar.

The bartender took one look at Kellen. “Eros, your boy toy is here.”

“Jay?” Alexei’s fingers froze on the bills he was counting, his face blindly lifting.

“Or whatever his name is,” the bartender responded without looking up.

The song changed. “Shit, I forgot my count,” Kellen heard Alexei murmur in the brief quiet. He watched the bills in Alexei’s hands reset, then begin shifting again. He finished, then easily snapped the stack back into a register compartment and shut the drawer.

Then he was looking up at the surrounding bar. “Jay?”

Kellen’s arm shifted across the bar surface a few inches. “I’m here,” he responded.

A smile cracked across Alexei’s lips as he approached. Widened as he stopped in front of Kellen.

Paralysis. Sheer paralysis gripped Kellen’s limbs as he stared across at that expression on that boy. What was it. What was so different about him? Was it shreds of a dream? Was it the way a smile looked on him? Fake. It had to be fake. No part of that boy could possibly be looking forward to fulfilling his side of a deal with law enforcement. And yet—

Alexei opened the counter hatch to the side of where Kellen was standing and walked up to him. “Jay?” he asked again.

Again, it was involuntary—the flinch at Alexei’s touch as Alexei took his arm. The following feeling of something alive running up the fibers of his nerves.

“I’ll take you upstairs this time,” Alexei said softly, starting across the floor.

Wings, not win. “Of his wings,” was the last part of Alexei’s spine tattoo. Just enough of the letter “S” was visible above Alexei’s waistband to make it out. But whatever was written above it was covered by the crop top.

Blind. But incredibly apt in his navigation. Alexei maneuvered around chairs, tables, and people—with nothing more than a hand partially extended into the air in front of him. He was graceful and inconsequential every time he ran into something.

And people knew him. They got out of the way for him. Greeted him as he passed. Announced themselves in his proximity.

This boy had power.

There was another door on the left side of the building. Alexei opened it and held it for Kellen. The music of the club immediately dropped to a muted beat when the door closed behind them. Stairs. A lobby lay at the top of the stairway—one that looked like a miniature version of a luxury hotel’s foyer. Kellen glanced across expensive furniture and someone’s abandoned cocktail glass before following Alexei down a carpeted hallway.

This was an attached hotel, Kellen concluded moments later. Alexei stopped in front of a door with a number on it, put his hand to the painted wood, then wordlessly pushed it open.

A push door. No lock. That was odd for a hotel.

Already beginning to feel on-edge, Kellen stepped into a dimly lit room with a king-sized bed and a single window peering down at the street below. There was a glowing button on the wall with no label or explanation.

“People hook up in here?” Kellen gathered. And for reasons he couldn’t decipher, his heart was suddenly racing.

“They do,” Alexei responded, a small smile on his face as he let the door swing shut behind him. Six seconds of quiet passed, nothing but the throbbing of the music below them taking up the stillness.

Alexei melted away from the door and approached the bed. He sat down on its edge, leaned back, and dropped his hands easily to the bedspread. “There’s video recording in this room,” he said, his voice lowering. “But the audio broke yesterday, and they haven’t gotten it fixed yet. Keep your voice down so it won’t get picked up on one of the mics outside.”

Kellen’s arms contracted across his chest. “You were here yesterday?”

“I’m here every day.”

I thought you were in that fucking box truck, the thought fleeted through Kellen’s mind. Maybe he should’ve known. Alexei knew well in advance that the raid would end in a shootout. “Don’t shoot the containers,” had been one of the very few things he said about it.

“Who were those people, and where were they being taken?” Kellen asked finally.

Alexei’s lips parted. Pierced. That pierced lower lip, the jewelry glittering in the yellow glow from the nightstand. “I can show you where.”

“Just tell me.”

“You haven’t taken my word for things in the past,” Alexei responded. A small smile.

Kellen said nothing. His jaw locked, something that almost felt like anger rising up his back. Heat. It felt hot, unstable.

“Can you sit down over here?” Alexei asked suddenly. He patted the bed beside him. “Like I said, the video still works.”

Skin prickling, Kellen paced slowly over to the bed and sat down on it—a few inches outside the specific area Alexei indicated. “When you said Exotix is owned by an XI member, you were referring to yourself.”

“Referring to myself?” There was a movement across his forehead, like his eyebrows had just shot up—covered by the blindfold. “I don’t own Exotix.”

“Then you run it for the person who does.”

The tip of Alexei’s tongue appeared between parted lips and toyed lightly with his lip jewelry. “Yes.”

“How do you have that kind of power?”

Five seconds of hesitation. Alexei’s lips parted again. “Ask me a different question.”

“Really?” A tight scoff escaped Kellen’s throat. He glanced stiffly at the button on the wall. “All this BS about needing to trust each other. You asked my fucking name the first time we were face-to-face. Then what? Bug my fucking phone when I don’t give it to you?”

“Your friends should’ve told you not to bring devices with you,” Alexei replied readily. “I can’t help that they hacked the device you chose to bring.”

“So it was a hack?” Kellen stood up, arms drawing across his chest again. “Exactly how much of my information can I expect to be compromised?”

“Information? It’s a tracking bug. It doesn’t listen in on your phone calls.”

“So it only accessed my location?”

A small shrug lifted Alexei’s shoulders. “That’s all it’s programmed to do. It’s a safety measure.”

“Why the hell would―” Kellen stopped. One second, two. “Then how the hell did you know my name?”

“I don’t know your―” Alexei fell abruptly silent. His lips met in a thin line. Then, his voice hushed lower than a whisper, “Eastland?”

“How?” Kellen demanded.

Hesitance. More hesitance. “Jay―” He shifted. Took a small breath. “I—I don’t know, I just…”

“What the hell do you mean, you don’t know?” Kellen breathed.

Silence.

“That’s actually your name?” The sincerity in that question.

Kellen bit his lip.

“It was just a lucky guess, then,” Alexei whispered.

Impossible. Not a chance. Kellen stared at the boy seated on the bed until his eyes felt like they would bleed.

“Sit down. Please,” Alexei whispered. “The video recording…”

Kellen stiffly took his place again. More quiet. “The strippers that work here. Are they being forced to work?”

A faltering smile touched Alexei’s lips. His face lowered a little, that silver three-layer necklace he always wore, slipping. “They are not being forced to work.”

“Really? Some old man thought for some reason I work here, and he was offering to buy me out.”

“You’re handsome, that’s why he thought you work here.” A whisper. And a tangibly strange tone to it.

A quivering eruption of goosebumps ran up Kellen’s left arm to his shoulder. “You’re—blind.”

Those pierced lips shifted. Wordless, sober. A small silence passed. “The dancers come from precarious situations. They come from worse places. They want to be here, and they must work to stay. So they work.”

“And that little girl you had hidden in that room?” Kellen’s throat tightened. “Does she ‘want’ to be here, too? Does she have to ‘work’ to stay?”

Uncharacteristic rigidness stole over Alexei’s motionless pose. He took a small breath. “She’s different.”

“Yeah? What the hell was she doing in a place like this?” A burning thread of whatever was hanging over Kellen’s back seemed to sink straight into his spine. His fingers tightened against the blanket. “Where is she now?”

“She’s…” He hesitated. “She’s my…”

“She’s your what? ”

“June was given to me, and I will protect her,” Alexei said suddenly. Sharp, fierce. Flickers of that side of him Kellen had witnessed shooting out a man’s wrists.

“She was given to you?” Images flashed through Kellen’s mind. A million possible interpretations, not excluding child marriage—and suddenly, it all died. Dead in the wake of the realization that froze everything else in his mind.

“She’s my sister now, and I won’t let anything happen to her,” Alexei whispered.

“‘June’?” Kellen’s lips barely moved on the word.

Alexei seemed paralyzed. When he finally moved, it was to lift a hand toward Kellen. His fingers contacted Kellen’s arm, then gripped it.

No warning. Alexei said absolutely nothing as he got up on his knees on the bed, then wordlessly straddled Kellen’s lap.

His weight, his warmth, his closeness—it all hit Kellen in the same petrified moment. His lips parted with a gasp, mind reeling for some kind of verbal reaction. Nothing came. Nothing. Alexei’s smell. Something between sweet spice and match smoke. The pierced lips. Bare shoulders. The intense warmth, heat, pressure, between his thighs, held locked around Kellen’s hips.

Alexei’s hands crept up Kellen’s neck. One slipped slowly into his hair. Two fingers of the other touched the underside of his jaw. The tip of his thumb pressed Kellen’s lower lip. Parted it downward.

The fraction-of-a-second sharpening dread in Kellen’s chest as Alexei leaned in.

And then gone. Wiped away in the feeling of that kiss. Heart-pounding. The warmth from that boy’s body pierced through Kellen’s skin. Left him unable to breathe.

Alexei broke contact to take a breath. That soft inhale, gentle movement of his body, before he leaned in again. Closer.

His lips contacted Kellen’s gentler this time. Parted softly.

And with memory of a movement something in Kellen automatically recalled, his lips gently closed on Alexei’s upper lip.

Alexei’s soft inhale in response. His hands lowered to Kellen’s waist. Smoothly, he slipped his fingers under Kellen’s shirt and pressed nearer.

The door behind them opened suddenly.

And only in the adrenaline following that sound did Kellen become aware of himself again. His racing heartbeat. The sweat forming everywhere across his skin. The helpless, periodic shuddering that seized his body again and again. Then, the sinking realization that whatever this was that was happening—his body was fully responding to it.

The door shut again. Paced footsteps continued down the hallway outside.

And only then did Alexei draw back. He dismounted Kellen’s lap and returned to the bed beside him. “There’s a guard,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want to sign out the room, so this room is showing empty. There’s a guard that checks all the empty rooms every now and then.”

Silence.

Kellen sat paralyzed on the bed, hands flat on the bedspread behind him, listening to the sounds of his own dry breathing. Something close to panic. Something very like that feeling he had the first time he heard Alexei’s voice. He had to get out.

Kellen pushed himself forward, legs preparing to rise.

“Are you completely celibate?”

Shivering paralysis seized the muscles in Kellen’s body. “What?”

Alexei smiled. One of those full smiles Kellen had only seen for the first time just minutes ago. “I’ve never had someone react to me the way you just did. Maybe because most of the people I’ve been with get laid all the time. But the way your body responded when I touched you…was different.”

Words. Denial, dismissal, disapproval of the topic—and nothing but the growing taste of bile actually welled up past Kellen’s vocal cords.

“Your job must keep you busy,” Alexei decided in the silence.

Kellen stood up. He started for the door.

“Wait.” Alexei was up on his feet before Kellen could turn around. That boy stood there for a moment, his small, slender frame outlined softly in the light behind him. He stretched out his arm and held his wrist out to Kellen.

The black sleeve was there, like always. And on top of it, one of the tracking devices.

Wordlessly, Kellen took out his phone. He unlocked the screen and opened the Tracks app. Kellen’s fingers lifted to Alexei’s wrist and gently took it. Soft, smooth fabric. Warmth. Kellen positioned Alexei’s wrist lower and touched his phone to the device on it.

A map loaded on the cracked screen.

Kellen’s forefinger tapped the power button, and he withdrew.

“Between 11 PM and 2 AM,” Alexei spoke. “Bring your friends.”