Pent Up (7 page)

“I dunno. Maybe. Who cares?”

Ruben shrugged. “Great. I’m some dick-lick shopping on your dime.” He could feel Bauer’s body heat against his shins. He needed to hit a meeting, talk to Peach, take a step back.

“Dude, you don’t look like anyone pays for you. Relax.”

“Uh huh.” He
wanted
to step back, but he could sense the dais edge under his heels.

“Our cards work. She’s bored and we’re two loaded guys.”

Well, no.
“One.”

“Big deal. People see what they want. She just saw two rich jerks who fuck whoever, however we want. You totally sold it.” Bauer patted his bare calf. “This is gonna work.”

“What is?” The undercover just-buddies ruse. “Oh.”

Bauer held up a glossy oxblood shoe. “So?”

“Uh. No. Laces, if that’s okay.” Off Bauer’s look, he explained. “Safety. If I gotta move fast, I don’t wanna sprint up Park Avenue in my socks.” He didn’t look down, and prayed his borrowed socks had no holes.

Bauer fished in the tissue of another box on the floor. He guided one foot and then the other into buttery black wingtips and then tied them.

Like I’m a science project.

“Good team.” Bauer squeezed his foot through the shoe. “I’m a leaper, you’re a looker.”

Ruben scowled at the compliment. “I’m no looker.”

“Before you leap, I mean. You check things out. Gonna keep me outta trouble.”

Ruben hadn’t thought this excursion through. Being broke sucked, and he knew that the clothes would make a difference, but some part of him resented that hot shopgirl misreading the situation so completely.
Deal with the devil, deal with the devil.
Part of him wanted to go out there and flash a weapon or punch a paparazzo so she wouldn’t think—

Even with the shirt and briefs, somehow those glossy shoes made him feel even more exposed. The new soles were slippery as oily glass.

Bauer crouched closer. “Those’ll work.” His shark eyes glittered in the mirror as he stood straight up right in Ruben’s personal space, all of eight inches between them.

“No.” Ruben shifted back in the slick-soled wingtips and almost pitched off the back of the dais. “Whoa!”

Bauer grabbed and gripped his arm.

“Sorry.” Ruben looked down at the gleaming wingtips his boss wanted to buy him.

“Y’good?” Bauer let go and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Okay?”

Ruben stepped down onto the floor with a fake smile. “Fingers crossed.” But whether those twisted digits meant he was hopeful or lying, he couldn’t have said.

SOMEHOW IN
the course of that first day, Ruben got tricked into a sleepover.

After they got back from Barney’s, he spent the afternoon watching his new boss make phone calls and standing outside shut doors when Bauer ejected him. The cook made a mango shrimp salad for lunch, which he ate by himself.

Apex Securities didn’t seem like any business he’d seen. Phone calls, yes. A couple visitors in eight hundred dollar loafers. The stock market stream on the monitors. But nothing that looked like 9–to–5 grind.

At sundown, he could hear raised voices: Bauer speaking harshly and Hope countering, and silences from what he assumed were someone on the other end of the phone. Without thinking he drifted closer, eavesdropping by default.

Suddenly, his boss emerged from the office, flushed pink and tie askew. “There you are.” As if Ruben had been hiding. He took off his jacket.

Ruben started making exit noises. “It’s late….” He shifted his weight awkwardly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t go, man. You should just eat here. Crash if you want.” His voice sounded casual, but the way he said it, Ruben knew how planned it was. Bauer was angling for something.

But what and why?

“And I’m off.” Hope walked out of the office in a trench, flipping her hair out of the collar. She held a small gunmetal attaché case. She looked between them. “You boys good here?”

Ruben nodded, unsure what she meant.

“Thanks, doll.” Bauer saluted her. “You’ll have a bite, then.”

The hell? Ruben waited two breaths before he looked up at his boss.

“I mean, it’s not like I don’t have space up here.”

Ruben nodded. Two guest rooms upstairs and one down the hall. The idea scared the shit out of him. He wanted to stay and needed to run.

Bauer pointed. “Stop panicking. I don’t believe in the wrong side of the tracks, Rube.”

Ruben shrugged. “I grew up in South Miami. Both sides of the tracks were wrong.”

His boss didn’t elaborate. His waist buzzed and then he was talking to the air again, holding up a wait-a-sec finger at Ruben and speaking loudly in French.

Without waiting for a reply, Bauer walked back toward the office. The door shut behind him.

Ruben knew he didn’t need to stay. Better that he go home and try to get some rest. He already felt off-kilter, and a vague thirsty pressure rose in him that he recognized. Insidious and powerful, the itch for one drink to take the edge off.
What could it hurt?
The idiot urge to medicate his anxiety was a golden oldie by this point.

Stop right there, kiddo.
Peach in his head.

Ruben drifted into the dining room, where the flame teak table was set for two with sterling utensils and minimalist bone china, $750 a place setting, easy. Three glasses at each chair, for water, white, and red respectively, and each light as a tulip.

He spun the glass like a blossom in his blunt fingers.

“All the way from Prague.” Bauer spoke right behind him. His breath smelled like orange peel.

Caught.
How does he materialize like that? Ruben tried not to tense and put a couple feet between them. “Nice.”

“Handblown, but Czech crystal is the best.” Bauer considered him with those relentless blue-gray eyes. “You can stay for dinner.” Not asking anymore.

Ruben dodged. “I bet these cost a hundred-fifty, two hundred bucks apiece, right?”

“I dunno.” Bauer scratched his head absently, and a muscle ticked at the angle of his oversquare jaw. “I had brandy out of a snifter at the Boscolo in Old Town.” He picked up a glass with his long, loose fingers. “I’d never felt anything so right in my hand. Y’know?”

“Bauer, I wasn’t giving you grief. It’s a nice glass.”

“I used to be an asshole to my parents for buying expensive shit, and my mom said you have to pay for art or else artists starve. And this is art.” The glass glittered in his grip.

“True.”

“The man who made that probably lived for six months off what I spent at his little shop. He didn’t grow up in Scarsdale with a triple trust fund, but I did, so I feel like I can throw a bone. Even the shit I do for fun makes money.” He swept a hand at his bear skull and the silk rug and the zillion-dollar view of Manhattan laid out like a willing sinner. “Plus for an added bonus, it drove my stepfather
crazy
.” A manic smile.

Ruben nodded like the family drama meant anything to him.

“Not like I don’t know how lucky I am, Ruben. I know I won that lottery.” He sounded lonely.

“I know. It’s cool. I know you do.” Why did his new employer feel the need to make a case? Ruben drifted back toward him.

“Anybody can rip people off. If you make serious money you have to leave the world better. Charity. Art. Anything.”

Ruben snorted. The belly of the glass filled his palm perfectly. “See what you mean. And you can afford it.”

Bauer grinned. The shark had vanished and the ragdoll returned. “I mix business with pleasure whenever I can.”

“No shit.” Ruben shook his head in disbelief.

“So… dinner. Food’s already prepped if you want to grab a chair. Chef’s gone. It’s just us, so we’re gonna rough it.”

“I bet.” And just like that, Bauer made the decision, which pleased and terrified him.
He’s keeping me here.

Whistling, he returned with a pork thing with parsnips that smelled good and tasted better. For whatever reason, once Ruben sat down here, the price of everything stopped bothering him. This was the first time he’d spent in this penthouse without money on his mind. Instead of boss and hire or bodyguard and principal, they turned into two guys who needed to eat and sleep.

Bauer acted more relaxed than he’d ever been. They ate hungrily and though his boss had wine, Ruben felt no temptation.
Huh.

Peach always said alcoholics reach for a drink when they’re Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired.
HALT, the acronym was.
Whenever the urge emerged, he’d tell himself to “Halt” and it usually worked. Except, in this penthouse, Ruben didn’t feel any of those things. Anything but. More like the opposite of “halt.”
Full steam ahead.

After food and coffee, Bauer seemed intent on entertaining him, and they both wound down. Just as at Barney’s, the stream of flattery and charm gave Ruben the hypnotic feeling of being in absolute control. Something seductive about his wishes holding sway and Bauer’s eagerness to please him. Made no sense, but made Ruben drunk with luxe and borrowed power.

He likes having you on the premises
, Ruben’s brain offered, but he ignored the thought.

Courtesy of ESPN, the projection TV spewed a baseball game across the whited-out windows. Bauer had a lot to say about the scoring and stats that went right over his head. Ruben didn’t particularly like baseball, he preferred the pace of soccer or basketball, but a game was a game.

Eventually Ruben caught himself staying awake out of politeness, hoping his boss wasn’t doing the same.
I like him too.

Gradually the commentary dwindled and Ruben turned to check. Bauer’s face was cuddled hard against the white cushions. His eyes were closed and his chest rose and fell smoothly. The cowlick in his hair had sprung loose.

His boss had fallen asleep on the couch with the news blaring, a vague smile on his lips, his breath steady. Not nervous for once.

’Cause I’m here.

Even weirder, Ruben could have dozed if he stopped fighting. Again he stole more than a glance. A narrow strip of abdomen revealed the line of springy fuzz pointing south from his navel. Even now, at the end of the day, Andy smelled fresh baked.

“Bed,” Ruben whispered to himself, and as he bent to wake the man, he thought better of disturbing him when he’d finally found some peace.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

Instead, Ruben tiptoed down the main hall to the guest room next to the office and stripped to his boxers.

As soon as the door shut, he questioned the decision to sleep over, even with Bauer forty feet away, even for a night. This room made him feel like an impostor, underlining everything he hadn’t figured out and all the things he needed to change still.

Not that his brother’s couch was so comfy, but without Bauer’s coaxing he knew he didn’t belong.

His brown toes sank into the sixteen thousand dollar Agra rug. His jeans hung like seaweed from the Philippe Starck valet. His stubble scraped the eight-hundred-dollar pillowcase. No part of him belonged in this place. He put a glass of water on the nightstand.

He shouldn’t have stayed.

Sleep steered clear.

If he’d had a book, he’d have read. Instead he opted to play Scrabble on his phone for an hour before he gave up and turned off the lights.

For the first time in his life, he lay awake staring at the ceiling with no cracks to count. Bauer’s ceilings looked as seamless as the rest of his life.

Around two thirty he heard someone moving in the library and then his door opened. He shut his eyes.

A whisper? “Rube?” His boss going to bed, checking on him. The door closed again.

He opened his eyes when he heard Bauer climbing the stairs and moving around directly overhead.

Something still bugged him here that kept him from settling. The unnatural stillness, maybe. Bauer’s climate control kept the air exactly ten degrees below body temperature. The mattress held him like a gentle hand. The triple-glazed windows overlooking the park kept the room goldfish quiet, but Ruben couldn’t keep his brain from scurrying on its wheel and his thick dick from slithering against the mattress.

Princess and the Peabrain.

Despite the spacious quarters, Ruben wrestled with the surge of claustrophobia and closed his eyes. If he’d been at home in Miami, he’d have bumped Marisa’s ass with his joint to wake her and get it wet. At his brother’s he’d take a cold shower. His cock wasn’t fully hard yet, but the sore tingle telegraphed how long it had been. Since coming to the city, he hadn’t gotten laid.
Weeks
, come to think of it.

As he hunched against the warm bedding, his juicy foreskin slipped smoothly back and forth a quarter inch inside his boxers. He imagined trying on the suits with Joysann. The wet pout of her mouth. The hypnotic rush of power that came from taking whatever he wanted, no price tag. The firm clutch and drag of those hands tugging and smoothing his body through the wool.

Andy’s hands.

He froze, horny and ashamed. His cock vibrated beneath his belly. Bauer’s hands. His
employer’s
hands had felt too good and he remembered them exactly.

“Halt,” he whispered to the dark room. It even smelled expensive.

He sat up to take the final swallow of the water, warm by now. Time for a refill. He tried not to think about the liquor in the library, living room, kitchen, and more. He was only thirsty for water.

Starved for contact is all.
And he could not afford a wet dream in this bed.

Self-conscious about his bare brown legs and his stiff boner, he pulled on his trousers over his straining boxers but didn’t bother with anything over his wife-beater. Barefoot on the wool rug, he padded out into the hall. The over-the-top security made the entire building feel like safe space.

At three thirty in the morning, the silent apartment held its breath. The wide plank floors didn’t even creak as he made his way back to the kitchen to refill the glass of water instead of using the bathroom sink. He opened the Sub-Zero refrigerator and stared at the shelves loaded with kumquats, lamb chops, and fresh cilantro bagged with its roots still attached for maximum organic whatever-the-hell.