I saw through my options. The Taser was too far away for me to make a grab for it. I didn’t think I could take him in a fight, either. I had no weapon, no al y, and nowhere to go. I was naked, total y vulnerable, and at his mercy.
I had nothing. Here I was facing my death and what had I accomplished? I spent the last five years of my life making men’s sexual fantasies come true.
What fucking good could that do me in a situation like this?
Hmmmm, I thought. I looked at Michael in his careful y assembled leather daddy drag. Wasn’t he just another trick playing dress up? He wanted to be the big man? The master?
Lucky for me, I had a lot of experience knowing how to exploit a man’s desires.
You think you’re in charge, Michael? Wel, you’re about to learn that there are al kinds of control, motherfucker.
I was scared. I was hurt. But I could do this.
Focus, Kevin, focus.
“Please sir,” I said, fal ing to my knees again.
“Please, before you give me that needle, just one thing.”
Michael regarded me from where he stood by the stairs.
“Just let me service you,” I said. “Just once. As I am. Let me remember this.
“Look at you,” I said. “Look at those muscles.
Those arms. That chest. Do you know how much I’ve wanted to be here, like this? On my knees before you?
“Give me the shot sir,” I said. “Make me your slave. I want to be yours. Why do you think I went to see you at The Center? Why do you think I met with Paul that night?”
Michael took a step forward. His mouth was slightly open and his breathing grew ragged.
“When Paul told me about what you had done to him, it made me so hot, Sir. I wished it could have been me you were control ing. So I could touch you.
Please you. Serve you.”
I started to crawl towards him, keeping my head turned up so he could see my pleading face.
“You’re so fucking hot, sir. So big. So strong. So much in control.”
Michael wasn’t gay, or even truly bisexual, but this wasn’t about sex. What had his brother told me? It was about power.
Michael was used to using al kinds of tricks to get that power, but had he ever been in a situation where he didn’t have to? Here I was crawling towards him.
Submissive, vulnerable, naked, wil ing. How would he handle that?
Michael’s pants began to fil out.
Got you, fucker.
“Break me to your wil, sir. Hurt me. Use me. I want it.”
I was at his feet. I looked up at his bulging crotch.
“Please let me taste you, Sir. Just once. Take it out.
Please.” I started licking the smooth surface of his boots.
That did it. With a groan, Michael frantical y started unlacing his pants. His big fingers fumbled with the strings. He was shaking.
An eager slave. I could see how badly this was turning him on.
He final y got his pants open. He pul ed out his cock and bal s. Both were oversized, in direct proportion to the rest of his massive body.
Some guys have al the luck, I thought rueful y.
But not for long.
I looked up from his boots.
“You’re so big, Sir. So strong.”
I met his eyes and saw his naked lust.
“Thank you Sir,” I said, remembering that time at the gym when Randy Bostinick straddled me on the bench and I accidental y sat up too fast. The force of that blow almost neutered him.
That’s the bitch about history. It tends to repeat itself.
I pushed up off my hands with al my might, bringing the ful weight of my head right up to where it would do Michael the least good. The impact sent his bal s up somewhere into the vicinity of his lower colon.
“Fuck!” Michael cried, doubling over.
“You fucker!” I screamed, bringing my knee into his crotch. This time, his hands blocked some of the blow, but he stil staggered backwards.
Bent over, his head was just about level with my arm. I pivoted back onto my left foot and brought my fist back for a right hook. The trick to a hook is not to hit with your hand, but to put your whole body into it. I twisted my hip and extended my arm.
“Ai-yee!” I cried.
This time, Michael was ready for me. As much pain as he was in, he managed to catch my arm in his left fist. Fol owing through, he brought his right fist around and caught me on the chin.
Even though he was off balance, Michael’s tremendous strength was enough to knock me to the floor.
In a flash, he was on top of me, sitting on my crotch. We were both panting with exertion.
“You real y hurt me, boy,” he snarled. “But you know what? I kind of like being hurt.” He leaned over and licked my face, humping his stil — exposed genitals over my stomach. He got hard again.
What had he said? Every top wants to be a bottom?
“Good,” I said, “then you’l like it when I fuck your brains out.”
Michael laughed; a deep throaty rumbled that scared me more than anything else yet.
“Oh, I don’t like to be hurt by little boys like you, whore,” he snarled. “No, I have something else in mind for you.”
He brought his mouth to my neck and licked there, too. Then a playful nip. Then he sunk his teeth in and clamped down.
This time, screaming wasn’t a pleasure I could deny him. “Aaah!” I cried.
He pul ed back. I felt blood dripping down my neck. I thought I would vomit from the pain.
I could stil get out of this. I just had to play along again until he let me up.
“Yes,” I said, “hurt me, let me…”
Michael put his finger to his lips. “No more games.
No more words.”
“I could make you feel so good,” I said, “if you’d just let me…”
Michael put both his hands around my neck.
“Maybe it would be better if you never said anything again.”
He leaned into his hands, cutting off my air. I felt myself panic as I struggled to breathe.
He took his hands away. “You like that, whore?”
I gulped in some air. “Are you going to kil me?
Like you did your father?”
“You little idiot,” Michael laughed again. “I didn’t kil my father.”
I coughed. “Made him kil himself, then.”
Michael leaned over and kissed me on the lips. I clenched my teeth. “You stupid little whore. Is that real y what you think? I haven’t spoken to my father since I was a child. I had nothing to do with his death.”
He laughed again. “Oh, maybe I convinced a couple of other guys that life wasn’t quite worth living.
Wel, not until they changed their wil s, of course.” He chuckled. This was al a game to him.
“But not my father. No, I think that old queen kil ed himself, you little idiot. But don’t worry-you’l get the chance to ask him soon enough.”
So, Michael hadn’t kil ed Al en either? I real y was the worst detective ever.
I bucked my hips wildly, but there was no way I was going to get him off me.
No one to help me either.
“Paul!” I screamed out one more time.
“No more of that,” Michael said. He brought his hands back to my neck. They tightened around me. I couldn’t breathe.
“Stryker,” I tried to scream, “help me!”
But with Michael’s huge hands on my throat I could barely be heard.
“Shhh,” Michael said. “Shhh.” He leaned in more.
“Tony!” I cried, but by now, only in my mind. “I love you!”
I felt a huge rush of heat as adrenaline surged through me, but there was nowhere for it to go.
The lights in the room flickered and dimmed until I realized it wasn’t the lights at al.
It was my life that was going out.
Michael’s face started to float away.
Blackness descended.
This was it.
Good-bye, world.
What a shitty way to go.
From a hundred miles away, I heard a sizzle and then a thud.
Michael’s arms relaxed and released.
I turned onto my side and gasped for breath.
Michael’s body rol ed off me and slumped to the floor. It was a minute before I could look up.
Paul Harrington stood there, naked, holding the Taser limply in his hands. Tears rol ed down his cheeks and his shoulders shook. “You bastard,” he said, looking at Michael’s unconscious body. “You bastard, you bastard, you bastard, you bastard…”
I pul ed myself up and put an arm around Paul. “It’s OK,” I told him. “It’s over. It’s over now.” He dropped the stun gun. He put his arms around me and sobbed into my shoulder. “It’s over.”
There was a loud bang and I felt Paul’s arms go limp as he slumped to the floor. A bright red bloom of blood spread across his chest. What? I turned to the door.
I saw who Michael referred to as “wifey.” Not his wife. His brother’s.
Paul’s wife, Alana Harrington, stood at the top of the stairs holding a smal pistol. She wore a black business suit, black pil box hat, and black leather boots.
Damn if she didn’t look a little like Darth Vader.
“You boys,” she said, descending the steps, “I can’t turn my back on my own husband for a minute without finding him making out with some guy in my own house.”
She shrugged. “Can you blame me for shooting him?”
I thought I had been in Michael’s house this whole time, but real y it was Paul’s. Somehow, though, I knew this sick little playroom wasn’t his. Looking at Alana, I understood who the real master around here was.
Or should I say “mistress?”
Alana walked over to Michael’s inert body and kicked him absently. “Useless piece of shit. Fun to play with, and not without his talents, but, stil, look at him.”
She went over to the cabinet and took out a long whip. She transferred her gun to her left hand and held the whip with her right. She flicked it with an expertise not seen since Michel e Pfeiffer played Catwoman in Batman Returns. The tip landed with exact precision on Michael’s exposed butt with enough snap to draw blood.
But not enough to rouse him.
“Useless!” Alana cried. She sneered at his backside. “Maybe if he could have kept it in his pants I wouldn’t have to clean up this mess.”
Michael had used almost the same words. Now that I had a chance to give his ass a good look, I saw that the lash mark Alana delivered today wasn’t the first one to scar him. “So,” I asked, “how long have you and Michael been having an affair?”
“Aren’t you the clever one?” she asked. “Paul had always been of little interest to me, but he was rich, and trying so desperately to be straight. I knew I wouldn’t have to put up with much sex from him so I figured ‘what the hel.’ We married, I had everything I ever wanted. Life was good.
“But, as you can imagine, things were a little boring. I had playmates, of course, men Paul knew nothing about. He was so busy with his own secrets he never suspected mine.
“When I met Michael, though, there was a chal enge. It didn’t take me long to figure out what was going on between him and Paul. When I confronted Michael, he thought I’d go to the police.
Imagine that!
“I loved it! His control over Paul was amazing! Oh, together, the things we’d have poor Paul do! I’d be dripping with excitement. In the beginning, being with Michael was thril ing. Thril ing!”
She planted her stiletto heel in the smal of his back and pressed down hard. No response.
“But after a while I understood what he real y wanted. Isn’t it what al men want?” She kneeled next to him and stroked his hair. “He wanted to be told what to do. He wanted to be punished,”
She stood up and cracked the whip over his head.
“He wanted Mommy.”
Every top wants to be a bottom.
Alana narrowed her eyes. “What do you want, Kevin?”
On her lips, my name sounded like a curse.
“Wel,” I said, “now that you ask, I would real y, real y like to leave.” I walked towards my clothing.
“And don’t worry-your secrets are safe with me.
You guys just keep on doing… whatever it is you’re doing and I’l be on my way.” I reached for my pants.
“Freeze, faggot,” Alana thundered, pointing her pistol at me. I froze.
“Jesus!” she cried. “My husband, my lover, their father, you-I’m surrounded by faggots!
“Here’s how I see this going down,” she continued. “I shoot you now. When the big dummy wakes up,” she gestured towards Michael, “we’l figure out some way to make it look like you and Paul kil ed each other in a lover’s quarrel. I’l be the grieving widow and no one wil ever be the wiser.
“A year or two from now, I’l marry Michael. With al the money he’s been making at the Center, especial y after I gave him some particularly bril iant suggestions on how to increase his revenue, I think I’l be pretty comfortable, don’t you?”
Now, I was sure who was in charge. It wasn’t Paul.
It wasn’t Michael. It was Alana who held the whip.
Literal y, as it turns out.
“It was your idea to have him make those men kil themselves?” I asked her.
Her grin was pure evil. “Guilty as charged!” she said cheerily. “But those weren’t men,” she added.
“They were faggots, like you.” She looked at Paul.
His face was white as snow, but I could see his chest stil rise and fal. He wasn’t dead. At least not yet.
“Like him. Trust me, they won’t be missed.”
Her hatred of gay men, her twisted relationships with the Harrington men… it was Alana who murdered my friend, wasn’t it? I final y figured it out.
“You kil ed Al en, you psychotic little bitch!” I shouted at her. “And I miss him! And Paul misses him too!”
Alana looked at me quizzical y. “Al en? Michael’s father? I didn’t kil Al en. Why would I kil Al en?”
Damn. Was I never going to get this right? Who did kil Al en?
She pointed the gun at me.
“You, however, should not have cal ed me a bitch.”
I had run of out tricks.
There was nothing left me to do, nowhere for me to go.
I wouldn’t beg, though. Fuck her.
She pul ed the trigger. A shot rang out. Blood exploded across my face and chest.
It didn’t hurt, though.
That was weird.
Then I realized the blood wasn’t mine.
Alana fel to the floor.
Twenty feet behind her, at the top of the stairs, Tony Rinaldi stood with his service revolver in both hands. “Police-freeze!” he shouted. Then, to me,
“are you hurt?”
I’ve been happy to see that son of a bitch before in my life, but never with such good reason. If I wasn’t already in love with him, I’m pretty sure I would have fal en right then and there.
“I’m fine,” I answered.
He raced down the stairs, keeping an eye on Michael and Paul.
“I think they’re out,” I said.
Tony stood awkwardly in front of me.
“What the hel happened here?”
I pointed at Michael. “Bad guy.” I pointed at Paul.
“Good guy.”
I pointed down at Alana, who laid moaning and cursing on the floor, holding her hand over her shoulder where Tony had shot her. “Total fucking bitch. Can you shoot her again?”
Tony laughed. He put an arm on my shoulder. “My little tough guy. Are you OK?”
As shaken as I was, I couldn’t help but notice that Tony had cal ed me “his” little guy.
I had held it together for a long time, but now that Tony was here, I didn’t have to be strong anymore.
My lips quivered. “Paul real y is innocent in al this.
He needs an ambulance.”
Tony put his arms around me, keeping an eye on Michael at al times. “I’ve already cal ed one,” he said. “And backup, too.”
I started to shake in his arms. I real y didn’t want to cry in front of him again, but I wasn’t sure I could hold it in anymore.
“I’m so sorry,” Tony said gently.
“Sorry?” I sniffled. “You just saved my life.”
“No, for everything else,” he said, kissing me on the top of the head. “I love you, Kevvy.”
There was no holding back now. The tears came hot and fast as I sobbed in his arms. He kept kissing me, tel ing me shush, shush, it was al over, everything was going to be fine.
I final y was able to catch my breath for long enough to say what I’d been longing to say for seven years.
“I love you, too, Tony.”
He kissed me on the lips. Angels sang.
Alana muttered, “Everywhere I go, even the cops — fucking faggots!”