Games Boys Play (25 page)

“The handoff isn’t for a while yet, but the last thing I wanted was to be chasing you down at the last minute. So. Have a good time. I’ll be back.”

Brian laid his arm across his forehead, his other hand clutching the water bottle. He listened to Dylan’s footsteps, the sound of the door going up. He pushed onto an elbow to see what was out there, and all he could see in the security light was the back of the van, and beyond that, another row of storage units.

The clown set the brake on the road-case wheels, then waggled his fingers, his clown-face grin unnaturally wide as he tipped his head to one side, then the other—then yanked the door shut between them.

Instead of the thud of a van door, he heard a light metal scrape at the storage unit door, and his heart quickened as he realized a padlock had just been hung through the hasp and snapped shut.

Then
came the van door, the van engine, the van’s tires pulling away.

The lights were still on. That was something. He got to his feet and looked around from his vantage point, peering into corners, up at the beams, making sure there were no cameras watching him. He wasn’t going to be able to piss if he was being watched.

Then he grabbed the jug, opened his jeans, and—after half a minute of trying to relax enough—relieved his bladder.

Two bottles of water, a jug of piss, a thin mattress, and five or so pounds of chain. He leaned against the wall. The road case was still in the storage unit, over by the door. And his jacket was still hanging over the edge of it.

And his cell phone should still be in the pocket.

He got down on the floor, crawling as far as the chain would let him go, then flattened out on his stomach, arms stretched out, reaching for the road case. The knee he’d banged climbing over the wheel hump had a tender spot that sounded off as it ground against the concrete floor. He dug his toes—five of them protected by a sock and boot, the other five bare—against the floor and pushed to gain another half inch. His fingertips could just brush the nearest wheel. Shifting so he was reaching with only one arm bought him another inch or two. He could put his fingers on the wheel, but the case didn’t move. The wheel brake—set on another wheel out of reach—held it in place.

“Shit.”

He twisted to look up at the gaping pocket of his jacket, also well out of reach.

Not that he had any idea who he’d call if he could get his phone.
Dylan? I know you’re supposed to be having your nuts Tasered and all, but do you think you could slip free and come rescue me? I have no idea where I am, but no doubt you’d be able to find me
. He could call someone else—there were any number of friends who’d find it hilarious that Dylan had locked him in a storage unit. Except, unlike Dylan, they wouldn’t have any idea where to find him.

Of course…his phone did have GPS. He’d just have to have it tell him what storage facilities were near his location, and bingo!

Right. Bingo. He stretched his arm over his head, fingers reaching, and didn’t come anywhere close to touching the sleeve of his jacket hanging toward the floor. He did discover a spot on his shoulder blade that was probably going to be a bruise by morning.

Two bottles of water, a jug of piss…

He sat up and scooted his way back to the mattress.

When I figure out who to call, I’ll have to remember to tell them to bring bolt cutters.

Gathering both water bottles in his arms, he made his way back to the stretched-out-on-his-stomach position on the floor.

Of course, it was possible—or even likely—that Dylan was chilling in the van near the storage entrance and would see any of their friends drive in.

But the time for Brian to worry about that, really, was after he had his phone in his hand and was talking someone into getting out of bed and coming here. Clutching one of the bottles in his fist, he reached it as far as he could toward the jacket sleeve.

The bottle’s blue cap just brushed it.

That was something. That was progress. He shifted against the floor, trying to get as much length from his body as he could. The heavy chain dug sharply against his ankle.

He reached out again with the bottle and nudged the sleeve.

“Fuck.” He dropped his face against the floor. This wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

After a few deep breaths, his skin starting to chill against the concrete, he propped himself on his elbows. He could chuck the bottles at the jacket, hoping to knock it off the case. Chances were the bottles would bounce off the door and roll back his way, so it wasn’t like he’d only have two shots.

He wondered if Dylan was sitting out there, smoking, listening, keeping watch. He’d hear the bottles thunking. And maybe he’d get his ass in here, which wouldn’t be the worst thing either.

Brian rolled onto his side to free up his throwing arm, took careful aim, and lobbed the bottle at the jacket. And hit it! The jacket shifted a bit, the bottle dropped down, started rolling slowly at an angle, and stopped beneath the case.

“God
damn
it.” He had one bottle left, and he could either conserve his only source of drinking water or risk losing it in hopes of shifting the jacket another quarter inch away from him.

Did the fact that Dylan left him with two full bottles of water and a piss jug mean he wasn’t planning to pop in and effect a rescue as quickly as he usually did?

Should he keep hold of what water he had left?

Cold from deep in the concrete seeped into his bare side. He pushed up and made his way back to the mattress with his remaining bottle of water. That was another thing: why was he always stuck hauling around a water bottle?

He lay back.

He could always take off his jeans and try catching them on the jacket—except, how to get them off the goddamned chain?

Pneumonia my ass. You just didn’t want me to be able to use my shirt to try to get out of here
. That’s why he had no belt, why the towel hadn’t been left with him. There was always the mattress. He could drag that over to the road case.

Maybe in a few minutes, after he warmed up.

A few minutes passed, then another few. Lying on his side facing the metal wall, an arm under his cheek, he tapped out a distracted rhythm on the mattress. How long was he going to be here? Was Dylan going to rescue him, or was the clown going to come back and take him somewhere else, do the handover to “the buyer”? Or maybe the
buyer
would show up.

Maybe Dylan was the buyer.

Closing his eyes, he pictured it. The garage door coming up, and Dylan standing there—as Dylan—key to the lock dangling from his fingers, and Brian would know. He’d know Dylan had bought him, because how else would Dylan have the key? And at first he’d think Dylan had done it to get him free, but that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all.

Dylan had
bought
him.

He rolled onto his back, his jeans tightening across the front.

His brain went to total silence.

Okay, this shit he needed to put a stop to right here.

The most expedient thing to do would be to jerk off. Remove the horniness, and you remove the crazy horny thoughts, for a little while, at least. But then he’d be left with a mess and no way to clean it, unless he wanted to use his sock. Then what would he do with his sock? And Dylan wasn’t an idiot—he’d know at a glance why he had a sticky sock stuffed under the mattress.

He could try to keep the mess contained in his underwear, but who knew what else Dylan had planned? How horrifying would that be to have gummy, drying semen clotting his pubes and for
that
to be discovered?

But more importantly, he’d be jerking off thinking about Dylan, and that was not okay under the new rules, under
his
new rules. Maybe if it was more of a secret jerk-off—in the privacy of his bed, Dylan off on one of his trips God knew where, the two of them having absolutely nothing to do with each other at the time. But not lying here as Dylan’s personal prisoner.

Damn it.

It was bad enough he’d already fucked up and kissed him.

That fucking kiss. He covered his face with his hands. It had been a good fucking kiss. Maybe because he wasn’t supposed to be doing it. Maybe because he had some secret crush on Dylan. Maybe because if he’d given it any thought, he wouldn’t have expected Dylan to kiss back. He’d have expected Dylan to freak out. Maybe that’s what he’d been betting on when he’d done it.

Something hot, quick, and needy dislodged itself inside him at the memory of Dylan’s tongue brushing his. He rolled half onto his side, crooking his knee against the mattress, his hands still covering his face.

It had been a really good fucking kiss.

He’d been doing so good at not thinking about what had happened the other night, like it was something they could leave behind.
Whoops, took a wrong turn, sorry about that. We’ll turn around and proceed as normal.

Such
a good kiss. He dug his fingernails into the palm of his other hand, using the pain to interrupt the looping memory: the touch of lips, the soft breath, the shock of a tentative tongue. The
taste.

He needed to get laid. Once he got out of this mess, he’d find a girl and fuck till his dick fell off, and all would be right with the world again. That was the whole problem—he shouldn’t be doing all this stuff without having a way to release the buildup. A real way, not just his hand.

He sat up. His hard-on got trapped at an awkward, slightly painful angle in his jeans. He readjusted before putting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Tapping his fingers against his skull, he waited. Eventually, one Dylan or another would open the door.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

He had no way of telling time, but from his experiences of sitting around tied up waiting for a key to drop, it felt like he’d been in the storage unit for a couple of hours.

On the one hand, it was great. This was the thing—
one
of the things, at least—he’d always fantasized about: being locked up and left for hours if not days at a time, not knowing his fate. On the other hand, what if that hadn’t been the plan? What if there’d been a car accident? A heart attack—was twenty-nine too young for a heart attack? What if Dylan had been munching on snacks in the van and choked?

Eventually he was going to have to figure out how to get ahold of his jacket so he could call for help. But how long should “eventually” be?

And what if he couldn’t get to it?

He was on his stomach on the floor again, stretched as far as he could go, trying to discern, through the bottom corner of the storage unit’s door, if it was still dark out. Since the view didn’t look any different from the last time he’d checked, he had to assume it was.

He’ll be back, and the minute you hear him unlocking that door, you’re going to wish you’d spent more time enjoying your confinement.

The chill was seeping into his skin again. He pushed back and returned to the mattress, which was askew from where it had been at the start. Its canvas handle—it had one sturdily sewn to each end, so the mattress could be carried like a suitcase when folded into quarters—was attached by a locked bicycle cable to the same support beam his ankle was chained to, making it impossible to drag the mattress over near the road case and use it to try to get his jacket down.

He’d been surprised at how well the handle held against wrenching, jerking, and even trying to gnaw it off.

And people said they didn’t make things like they used to anymore.

Lying on his stomach, ignoring the pressure against his cock, he closed his eyes and tried to nap, though if he could reach the fucking light switch, it would be an easier thing to accomplish.

After a while, he curled onto his side, facing the wall again, an arm shielding his eyes from the light.

The distant sound of tires on gravel brought his eyes open. His gaze darted as he listened. The vehicle was getting closer. He jolted to sitting, staring at the back of the metal door.

And then an idea came to him.

Dylan wasn’t the only one who could play pretend.

The tires were outside the storage unit door, turning, pulling forward. He lay back down. How should he do this? He shouldn’t just lie there peacefully; that would be too obviously a scam. He turned so his legs slanted off the mattress and put his face against the wall, hidden in the shadow of the wall and his shoulder. One arm was behind him, palm up; the other he let lie along the wall, fingers loosely open.

The vehicle outside backed toward the unit’s door.

An itch danced on a patch of skin at his shoulder.

The vehicle’s engine cut off.

Damn it
. Quickly he scratched the itch, then dropped his arm back down.

He heard the crunch of gravel underfoot, the scrape of metal against metal. He shallowed his breathing to as close to
not
breathing as he could approximate.

The padlock popped open with a distant
click.

Lying there with his face to the wall, he wasn’t going to know which Dylan was coming through the door. Did it matter? Shutting his eyes, he nestled his face closer to the metal.

The door swept upward in its tracks.

There was silence.

It seemed to last for ages before it was interrupted with a quiet “Shit”—in reality it had probably been less than a few seconds. Boot soles thudded across the floor.

A hand—warm and weirdly dry—gripped his bare shoulder. “Hey.” It pulled at him, turning him over. There was no way he could keep the act up turned over, but he tried. His eyelids spasmed.
Damn it.

“Hey.” The same weirdly dry fingers clasped his chin. “If you’re fucking around, you’re gonna be sorry as hell.”

He tried to be still. He wished he knew how to not breathe, but trying to hold his breath only made him want to breathe more desperately.

A thumb that didn’t feel like skin dragged one of his eyelids up.

Blearily he saw, while trying not to focus, the clown mask looming over his face and, closer, the shape of a hand in a blue latex glove.

Oh good. It’s not over yet.