Games Boys Play (21 page)

So was the urge to open his mouth and let Dylan cram the Fudgsicle in.

But not on camera.

He forced his face away, Dylan’s hold on him snagging his hair, making him wince.

Dylan dropped his arm, the Fudgsicle probably dripping chocolate on the floor.

They stared at each other, Brian with his teeth clenched, Dylan’s eyes inscrutable in the dark mask.

He stepped back. “That’s all right. I can edit this.”

Brian opened his mouth and sucked in a lungful of air.

The intruder headed back to the kitchen. The Fudgsicle thumped against the side of the trash can. The cabinet door banged shut.

He squinted against the glare of the lamp and watched the intruder come back, grab his phone, and lean against the table while he tapped the screen. With one ankle crossed in front of the other, he put the phone to his face.

“Yeah, hey, we’re gonna need the feed. Make sure he’s looking at the camera.”

He tapped the screen some more as he came toward Brian. When he was at the chair, he crouched beside it, holding the phone so they could both see it.

“I thought you might need some incentive.”

Brian blinked, trying to bring what he was seeing into focus. It was Dylan—not the intruder, but actual Dylan, tied to a chair, ropes around his chest and ankles, his arms pulled behind him. His head was bent forward, his hair falling toward his lap, but he was still
Dylan
. His boots, his hair. The floor was light-colored linoleum. Two dark wires ran from where Dylan’s ankles were tied, disappearing at the edge of the phone screen.

A voice came through the phone’s speaker: “
Look the fuck up. Up at the camera
.”

Dylan on-screen moved a little but didn’t look up.

“
Look the fuck
up,
or you’ll get another whack with the billy club
.”

Slowly Dylan’s head rose. His mouth was cleave gagged with a bandanna, his hair sweat tipped and bedraggled. His left eye was smudged with darkness.

“
Look at the camera
,” said the voice.

Dylan’s gaze flitted nervously toward it, looking straight through the screen at Brian for a split second before he turned back to whatever the guy who was speaking was doing. Who
was
the guy who was speaking? Brian looked over at Dylan—at the intruder—but all he could see was the ski mask.

Dylan on-screen said something. It was hard to make out through the gag, but when he said it again, louder, it sounded like “
Don’t
.”

Then maybe “
Please, don’t
.”

A soft buzz sounded, an electrical noise, and Dylan’s body jerked and pulled taut, his eyes bulging, a noise coming from his throat that Brian hadn’t ever heard before. After a few seconds, the buzzing stopped and so did the noise. Dylan’s body sagged, his head hanging forward, just like when the feed had started.

The intruder stood up and walked away with the phone.

Brian, his heart hammering in his chest, cranked his neck around to watch.

“Yeah, that’s good for now,” the intruder said into the phone. “I’ll let you know if we need to push it.”

Brian sat stunned and disoriented. His rational brain knew it was an elaborate hoax. But it was a powerful elaborate hoax. Dylan’s body stiffening. The whine in his throat. The glisten of sweat on his skin. It ran through Brian’s head, stopped, ran through again.

The intruder was back, peeling the paper from a fresh Fudgsicle.

“Look at me.”

Brian dragged his eyes up to the holes in the mask.
Did you electrocute yourself for this? Or was it just a good act?

“I need footage. Your friend doesn’t need another shock to his delicate parts. You”—he pointed the frozen chocolate at Brian, its sides crusted with white crystals—“have the power to provide what I need and prevent what he doesn’t. And all you have to do is open your mouth and lick. The fucking. Popsicle. Can you do that now?”

Brian let the seconds pile up on top of each other—
Who was talking in the video? Who was working the electricity?
—before giving a single nod of his head.

“Good. Make it look good for the camera.” He swung the pop toward the laptop, then brought it back to Brian, whose throat tightened as it came nearer to his mouth. His eyes cut to the screen, watching himself open his mouth. The rounded tip of the chocolate bumped his teeth.

“Lick it.”

He pressed his tongue forward, and so did the Brian on-screen. The Fudgsicle was cold, the outer shell like thin ice.

“
Lick
it.” The pop bumped his teeth again. Taking a deep breath, holding it in, he stuck his tongue out and drew it along the pop.

“Open,” the intruder said, pushing it against his mouth again.

He let his chin drop farther. The chocolate pop was still cold enough to be dry. It stuck and tugged lightly at his lips. He turned his face aside, a cold trail drawing across the corner of his mouth.

“Do I have to get the phone?”

“Just a sec.” He tipped his head up a little, closing his eyes, working his tongue against the roof of his mouth to get spit going before he lowered his chin and opened his mouth, pushing his tongue out. The Fudgsicle slid over it. His tongue drew back instinctively, blocking it from his throat. The intruder drew it slowly out, dragging it across Brian’s lower lip. Brian ran his tongue over the rounded top, moistening it. He closed his lips around it, working up more spit. The bottom of the pop was already starting to melt, fudge pooling under his tongue. It slipped smoothly across his lips, a trickle of drool or melted Fudgsicle creeping from a corner of his mouth as he sucked the pop, as he let the intruder fuck his mouth with it.

He moved his head forward to take more in, pulled back to open his mouth and let it run along his flattened tongue. The end bumped against the inside of his cheek. The intruder drew back, teasing, tapping it against Brian’s lips as Brian stuck his tongue out and tried to lick it. Melted chocolate spilled down his chin. He closed his mouth around it, and there was less of it to close his mouth around. As it slid back out again, Brian glanced down and saw a flash of the wooden stick in the chocolate. Then it was in his mouth, and Brian hugged it with his lips, sucking.

The Fudgsicle disappeared by degrees, his face becoming wetter and stickier in the process. His hips were trying to move in rhythm with his mouth, as much as the tape holding him to the chair would allow; he didn’t even realize it at first, and when he did, he reddened and wondered how long he’d been doing it. When the intruder pulled what was left on the wooden stick away from Brian’s mouth, he leaned his head back and licked chocolate from the corners of his lips.

Letting his eyes close, he tried to judge how he felt about this—his cock hard and crowded in his jeans, his mouth wanting more—but he didn’t think he was in any fair condition to come to a solid conclusion.

The cabinet door in the kitchen banged shut again. Through his closed lids he could see the shadow of his intruder passing by the lamp.

Slowly he brought his chin down and peeled his eyes open, blinking in the bright light.

The intruder was working the touchpad on the laptop, standing enough out of the way that Brian could see his own just-woke-up expression squinting back at him from the screen.

He disappeared from the screen.

The intruder closed the lid and slipped the computer into the backpack. He tossed in the tape. Pushed his phone back into his pocket.

He walked over to Brian and sat on Brian’s thighs, straddling him, his weight pressing down on Brian’s knees. He lifted Brian’s chin.

“So who’s gonna rescue you now? You know, with you tied up here and your friend tied up there…” He stood, taking the sign from around Brian’s neck. “Don’t go too far. I expect I’ll be back before long to pick you up and deliver you to your new owner.”

A chill ran down through the center of him, the thought of being transported. The possibilities of what came next. A thrilling, tantalizing chill, like the Fudgsicle itself.

The intruder hauled the backpack over his shoulder and headed for the door.

Brian didn’t bother tracking him. His ears pricked, though, at the pause…and then the door opened, closed, and latched shut.

He gave it a few seconds before he began to struggle.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Minutes ticked by incredibly slowly. He blinked sweat out of his eyelashes. The tape running across his bare arms felt deceptively looser; his sweat had formed a slick layer between his skin and the adhesive, but he still wasn’t managing to struggle out of its hold.

At least the sweat would keep it from hurting quite so much coming off.

How
was
he going to get free? While the rational part of his brain knew Dylan hadn’t left him to figure it out entirely on his own, the rational part of his brain was half shut down, leaving his reptile brain to run free, skittering and panicking.
Dylan
, it kept urgently telling him,
is tied to a chair on the other side of town and probably needs
your
help.

He dropped his head back.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck—deep breath—
fuck.

With renewed calm and patience, he began to work one sweaty hand back and forth against the tape, turning, squishing, tugging. He made a few millimeters of progress; it was encouraging. He bit his lip, lowered his shoulder, leaned his body back, and kept trying to work that hand up through the tape.

Another millimeter. Another two. The tape pressed against the widest part of his folded hand. Annnnnnd…nothing.

Don’t get discouraged.

He let every muscle relax for a few deep breaths, then slowly started to twist and pull that hand again, millimeter by millimeter, until suddenly the widest part crept up under the tape. And then edged toward the top of the tape.

And then he was pulling his fingers through and his hand was free.

“Fuck yes.”

He shook his arm out.

“
Fuck
yes.”

He was feeling for an edge to pick at on the tape at his chest when he heard the door click open. He turned his head.

“Shit! Dylan!”

“Bri! Are you okay?” Dylan crossed to the chair in a stride and a half, wearing the same clothes he’d had on in the video, his hair still in sweaty tangles.

“Jesus,” Brian said. “Your eye.” He reached his free hand toward it.

Turning his face away, Dylan said, “Don’t worry about it. Let’s get you out of this.” He started working at the tape around Brian’s other hand.

“You have a black eye.”

“It’s no big deal.”

He tried to turn in the chair and get another look. He tugged at the shoulder of Dylan’s shirt. “Seriously. What happened?”

Dylan looked up, his hair falling away from the bruise. Was it a bruise? It was reddened underneath the black. Was the black more of a smudge? “I’m fine. Are you gonna let me get you out of this chair already?”

As Brian reached toward Dylan’s face to touch it, Dylan took hold of his wrist gently and stood up, keeping hold while he leaned across Brian, picking at the tape behind the chair to get it unstuck. Brian rested his fingers on Dylan’s hip. Then he put his forehead against him, the images from the video playing in his head: Dylan’s body jerking taut, the gag in his mouth, the way his head had hung, defeated. Dylan took half a step back to pull the tape free of Brian’s front. Brian let his hand drop and hang at his side. The compression eased from around his rib cage. His other hand was still trapped.

“Have you out of here in a second,” Dylan said, so close that the stubble on his jaw rasped across the shell of Brian’s ear. He gave Brian’s shoulder a squeeze before crouching behind the chair, out of sight, to work Brian’s hand free.

Then Brian was watching his bent head as he knelt on the floor, ripping tape off his ankles. Brian couldn’t resist pushing his hair back, trying to get another look at that bruise. When Dylan tossed the last wadded-up ball aside, he got to his feet and offered Brian a hand. They clasped wrists. Dylan pulled. Brian grabbed hold of his other arm and leveraged himself up.

They bumped into each other, the hard bones of their hips knocking, the soft press of stomachs meeting.

He didn’t stop to think.

He followed the momentum of his body until his lips touched another warm pair of lips, and those lips responded almost immediately to his. Parting. Kissing back. The shock of the tip of Dylan’s tongue made his breath hitch. Dylan’s mouth opened wider, moving against his while keeping to the tease of brief, licking explorations forward. Brian still had Dylan’s arm in his grip. He clutched the back of Dylan’s neck with his other hand as he tasted tobacco on Dylan’s mouth, smelled the cold cream Dylan had scrubbed the makeup off with. He tasted Dylan under the tobacco. This was what
Dylan
tasted like. He dug his fingers into Dylan’s arm as he fought against himself.

Where was this coming from, this intense
want
, surfacing like a dark whale from the depths of the ocean?

Fuck.

He dragged his mouth away and pressed his forehead hard against Dylan’s, squeezing his eyes closed.

FUCK.

This was going to ruin everything.

“Banana split,” he forced out through the stranglehold of desire. “Banana split.” And pushed himself away. He turned his back, scrubbing his face. Mumbling, “Shit,” against his palms. Mumbling, “Damn it.”

“Fuck,” Dylan said. “I’m sorry.”

Brian pressed the back of his hand to his mouth.
Shit, shit, shit
. His pulse was racing. He could feel blood rushing in his wrists. Was that possible? He’d never felt his blood chugging through his veins before.
Shit, shit, shit
. His heart was going a mile a minute. He put his hands against the wall.
Shit, SHIT.

“This is my fault,” Dylan said. “I shouldn’t have—”

Brian laughed, the wall cool against his forehead. “
You
didn’t. I did.”

“No, it’s my— I shouldn’t have. Fuck.”

“Shit.” Brian curled his hands into fists. “I’m not in any shape to trust my judgment right now. I really want to, but—
Shit
. Fuck. It would be such a bad idea.” He covered the back of his head with his hands, afraid to turn away from the wall, afraid to turn back toward Dylan. It would be
such
a bad idea. A desperate laugh lurched from his throat. “God, we fucked
that
up, didn’t we?” He turned, finally, staying as far away from Dylan as he could get without tunneling through the wall. He’d just stay here, over here, seven feet away. “Well. So. There you go. I
do
use the safe word.”