Black Collar Beginnings: Cuba (Black Collar Syndicate) (6 page)

He finds life in his arms at that thought, and she's well within his lanky reach. So he wraps a hand around her inner thigh to draw her closer, and slips a deft hand into her bikini bottom. He's not at all surprised to find her shaved, smooth and completely wet in way that has nothing to do with the rain. He unceremoniously plunges two fingers into her as far as they will go. She has to relinquish her mouthful to let her full fledged moan escape from her lungs.

He pushes her head back down with his free hand, exacting a fast, hard rhythm with his other. The grace she displayed earlier melts into loud, muffled sounds of pleasure, as he holds her there with his cock buried in her throat, and her nails still digging into his sharp hips. Rain drops slide over his skin as the storm rages, and she comes on his hand several times in a row.

Finally, he relents, lets her go so that she gasps for breath in between the animalistic sounds of her chain of orgasms. He pulls her face back to his by her hair, drinks the kiss she gives to him. He pulls loose the string of her bottoms as he does, and flings the fabric aside. She's already climbing onto his lap, and she wastes no time in sliding him into her. She cries out, those delicious lips parted in glory and ecstasy. For a moment, she and he just stay like that, both of them vying for a moment of government. But he can't stop his grip from roughly finding her hips, and he can't quite stop his own hips from bucking into her.

She answers his urgency, rides him like he's a stud at a rodeo, and all his royal graces fail him. It is she who will fuck him until the wood bites into his back, until he can do nothing but grunt and growl through the assault of her hips and Latina magic. He does manage to tear away the bikini top, and the rain slicks her breasts and he takes them in his hands. Her cries escalate when he squeezes those big tits so hard he knows they'll bruise.

She cries out a string of fast Spanish profanities, and she clamps around him so that he nearly comes. The curses turn to a primeval scream as she comes all over him. He does his damnedest to hold on, to draw it on as long as he can, but she's so tight, and so wet. He barks a few curses of his own, and pulls her off of him just as lights explode behind his eyes, and he comes, surely harder than he ever has before.

She collapses beside him, both of them heaving to catch their breath, and the rain continues in earnest. A rack of lightning splits the sky, and moments later, the thunder rolls on forever. His vision refuses to steady, and he refuses to move just yet. He just lets the downpour wash away the remnants of his sins. At length, she rolls her body so that it's pressed against his side. Her touch ghosts across his chest, and she feathers a kiss on his cheek.

She says against his ear, “Miguel is right, you have become one of us. And all the rumors are right, you fuck like we fuck. But mostly, I was right. You are just like the storm.”

Havana's Villa, August 8
^th
, 2012

By the third night, the party has become a subdued haze shrouded in the kind of camaraderie that develops after partying with the same people for sixty or so hours. An event that began with the passion of a steamroller has changed gears, something low and slow, with small sips rather than shots. The mood has leveled to a sultry dance of pheromones, driven high by a myriad of drugs both natural and synthetic. The moon is high, the sky is clear, and Seth is as he has been since his first morning here; shirtless, in linen pants, riding the wave cap of intoxication.

Perhaps once in the past few nights, he stopped to wonder what happened to his shoes. As he stands with his feet buried in sand, as he watches the sky, brash thoughts assault him. Maybe he'll never wear shoes again. Maybe he can stay here forever, and never put on another tailored suit or fucking tie again. Memories now, of Caleb teaching Seth to tie a Windsor knot, just as their dad had taught Caleb. Seth hated it the very first time, and that fire still burns hot. He hasn't worn a tie since the day he left New York. Yet, that's the life from which he comes. He may hate the tie, but the knot is second nature to him, and it's always perfect.

The sound of a throat being cleared behind him makes him whirl around. It takes a moment for his vision to steady. When it does, he sees an older man standing respectably distant, bearing a docile expression. “Excuse me, señor, your presence has been requested.”

The words roll around in his head for a few long moments, then a groan nearly escapes him. He chokes it back, and says, “I can't drink anymore right now, can you tell them I respectively decline?”

The old man's eyes widen, and he shakes his head in fierce sideways motion. “Oh no,” he says, “you cannot say no to Mr. Havana.”

It's Seth's turn for wide eyes, and all the grace he has collected in this moment of quiet snaps into the pit of chaos. Though he no longer fears that he will die, he wonders what other tests might be administered to him. A flash of panic paralyzes him. Was this party a test? Will he be expected to now conduct some sort of important assignment under the influence of God knows what, and with barely any sleep?

“
Fuck
,” he spits at the sand, all his frustration gathering in his muscles. “I mean, yes, of course. Lead the way.”

He glances back up to the stars once more before following. He knows he will have to say goodbye to them eventually. Soon he will give up everything to get back what he already gave up; his other everything. His nerves sing through his body as he follows the man, not back into the villa, but around to a backyard area that's framed by tropical plants. Of course, a V.I.P. area, of sorts. Something with which he is quite familiar. A handful of men in airy button ups litter a wooden patio, Havana and Miguel among them. Two naked women serve drinks, and torches are stuck in the sand around the patio. This is an honor, Seth knows, but why does something still feel off?

He slows his steps without realizing it, instinct clicking into motion in his brain, and he scans the scene as he would if making a run. He may have come to Cuba as an inexperienced kid, but his intuition has always been good. Havana breaks his conversation with Miguel when he sees Seth, lingering just off the edge of the wood. The kingpin troubles himself to step into the sand, and wrap an arm around Seth's shoulders. Seth nearly flinches. There is something altogether more sinister in Havana's demeanor now, compared to the first meeting in the bar. Sharks, the lot of them. They have to be in this life, and he has striven to become one of them, but this – what is this steel beneath Havana's surface? And why now?

“Come, Seth. Join us,” says Havana, and his grip tightens to a painful point. He urges Seth forward onto the patio with a force that Seth would be a fool to argue argue with. The expressions on the other men are not the same as the smiling, warm features of the party. No, they are sternly set in a way that reminds Seth of Morgan Enterprise's Board of Directors. If Seth feared his drunkenness would be a problem, he finds this setting suddenly very sobering. He's so tense it hurts. Surely, Havana will notice.

Seth doesn't speak, just locks onto Miguel's gaze as though he might find some clue there as to what's about to happen. Something is going down, of that Seth is sure. All he finds on Miguel's face is a startling mask, no emotion, no friendship; nothing. Then, he does stop his tracks, so that it jerks on Havana's grip, and brings the kingpin around to face him.

Havana's lips bear the faintest smirk, but his gaze is calculating. He says, “You are very astute, Morgan, my nephew is right about you yet again. There is but one last thing that must happen for you to transition into my ranks.”

Seth catches a glimpse of the smile that deepens on Havana's lips before he turns back toward the patio, and shoves Seth forward into the waiting men. They close in on him, and a panic trigger fires. He can't fight them.
Can't
. He'll die for it. So he lets his breath seethe as his vision spins. Miguel has ahold of his left wrist. Seth refuses to look at him, refuses to feel some sort of betrayal. His boss – his friend could have warned him that this would come.

They turn him to face Havana, who steps close, mere inches between them. Seth tries so hard to check the rage, but he knows it shows in his glare. It's always there, just beneath his surface, a reaction to rough hands holding him captive. Havana says, “You do not need to fear, for pain is temporary. But once you are my family, only death will separate you.”

Havana nods at the men. Once a thug, always a thug, Seth thinks with a sour taste. Pain is temporary? That's true enough, and he vows that whatever fate befalls him, he won't squeal like a bitch. His jaw and fists are clenched, but he doesn't speak a word. Then, he's swept backward off his feet, onto his back on the wood. Havana pulls a long piece of metal from a brazier, the end glowing red. That's when instinct takes complete control. Seth rips his right hand free, and takes a swing at Miguel. The struggles takes just a little too long, though, and Miguel ducks the hook. The other thug recaptures his arm, and pins him down with a curse. Miguel's eyes flash to the other Cuban, and he says and low tone, “Careful. He's fast.”

Seth can do nothing against the doubled hold they take on his arms and legs, but he at least gives them a work out. For a tense moment, Havana just stares down at him, a look so clouded and conflicted that Seth falls to stillness. Everything is like a bad dream, a heightened, emphasized nightmare: large hands bruising him, the warm wood against his spine, the stars beyond it all. 

Havana says, “This is the easy part, Seth.  All you have to do is own your pain, and wait for it to subside. Tomorrow you will wake up as one of us. And just as we do, you will take my mark.”

Seth's fury spikes. To be marked by another syndicate; an honor and shame at once. He never had to take his own family's mark, of course the royals don't. He never took it on his own, either, and now the choice of taking another name is out of his hands.

Havana's voice is like the stifling humidity when he says, “I do apologize, however.”

One of the thugs pull on the waistband of Seth's pants, revealing the full of his hip and the beginnings of darkly curling nether hair.  He squirms, choking back bitter tears.  He can already feel the heat radiating from the glowing metal. 

“This mark is not usually for your kind, and it is not for the eyes of your world.  Bite down on it, little Morgan.  Relish this pain, for it stands for everything you have earned.”

He puts one heavy hand on Seth's abdomen and carefully presses the brand to the delicate flesh of Seth's hip, so very near to his inviting darkness. The coke dulls the initial shriek of contact, but it does nothing past that. Seth's threshold crumbles. The brat prince breaks, cries expanding into the night to fill the whole island. This is a different kind of evil than taking a bullet. It takes seconds for the metal to scorch the skin enough, making a disconcerting sizzle, and if Seth weren't raging against all the forces in the universe, he would smell himself burn.

The hands hold him down for several long moments, even after he quits struggling and let his tears of shock run uninhibited down his cheeks. He's shaking, hoping that his teeth don't break, hoping his jaw doesn't seize from the excessive force with which it is clenched. Then there are hands above him, smearing a thick, cool substance on the burn.
Papa's
hands. At first, it soothes the scream, but quickly it escalates and pushes past what it had been, seducing from him a second wave of writhing and raging.

Havana dismisses the others, content to linger nearby in the silence, the aftermath of Seth's screeching agony. He says, “You can be angry at me now, I will not take offense.”

Havana's soft voice dances on the charged current around them. Even as Seth tries to hate the man, he doesn't. The bitterness coursing through him doesn't actually have anything to do with what just happened to him. The ringing pain does little to block out the hostility toward the life that exists always at the edges of his reach, his city, his family. They did this to him. They forced the prince into the shame of being marked, but then, the brand carries with it a great weight for his character. 

“But someday,” continues
Papa
, reclaiming Seth's thoughts, “someday you will thank me.”

The ocean whispers consolations, sending its misty tendrils over the beach-scape to ease Seth's trauma.  He stares up at the stars, still shining despite his momentary misery. Upon the desecration of his body, the stars' light have gone cold to him. They glare down now, shrewd and impersonal. His time in the Caribbean has changed him, killed off some part of him, and he understands why the men in his world back home seem so damn cold.