Daddy's Boy (16 page)

I trembled, thinking of the white
powder that littered my sheets upstairs, waiting for me. My veins
thrummed, pulsing in anticipation for the injection and infusion of
drugs I would pump into my body. I had to get Dodger out of here.
He was a client. A customer. He must always see me as gorgeous,
desirable, and pure. He couldn’t know about the broken, jagged
pieces of me. The scarred portions of my soul that protruded from
my innermost being. It would cut him if I allowed him to get too
close, and the inky darkness filling me would seep out and
contaminate him.

“
N-nothing,” I lied. “I’m
fine. I just had a weird dream, and you called right after. That’s
all.” I tried to shake myself out of it, but I could tell it wasn’t
working. My voice still trembled; it was still too high. Sounding
like someone I thought long dead and buried. I wasn’t that person
anymore. I had remade myself. I was stronger now. I was Tyler
Simpston. I wasn’t…

I wouldn’t even think the name. It
would do me no good and would make matters worse. I stared at
Dodger and saw his eyes peering down into my face. They were filled
with an emotion I had not seen before. At least not one directed my
way. I had seen it given to Stella many times over the
years.

Care.

I stepped back quickly and grunted
when my back collided with the wall behind me. Dodger said nothing.
He just continued to stare at me—crossing his arms over his
chest—an unmovable tree in my entryway. I lifted my hands as if to
push him away, but waved them in the air, instead, before dropping
them down to my waist. I felt out of sorts and didn’t know what to
do next. Should I tell Dodger about the dream, or should I give him
what he really wanted, what all men always wanted?

I bit my lower lip and smirked
internally when Dodger’s eyes lowered to my mouth and darkened with
lust at the action. No matter how much “care” and “compassion” he
thought he had for me, Dodger was just like every other man out
there. He wanted to fuck me and everything else went out the window
in the face of that. I gasped in surprise when he pressed me
quickly against the wall, his thumb pulling my lip free from my
teeth. I expected him to kiss me, but he didn’t; instead, he leaned
down and lifted me up into his arms.

I wrapped my arms around
his neck instinctively and let him carry me toward the living room.
When he sat down, Dodger pressed a kiss to my forehead and sighed.
“Tyler, when are you going to understand that I am not like every
other man in your life? Or even every other man you have ever
known? I don’t want you just for your body. I want to get to know
you. I want to date you. Not as a client, but as a man dates
another man.” He squeezed me tighter, and my eyes burned with
unshed tears. I’d heard platitudes from clients before. Men who’d
slept with me once or spent a few days with me and thought they
were in love, but their words to me were different. They didn’t
tell me they wanted to date me; they told me they wanted to “keep”
me, or they wanted to “have” me
exclusively
. Had I been any other
man, I would have been insulted and told them I could not be
bought, but I could be. I was a piece of meat. A prime piece of
flesh, sold to the highest bidder, and everyone who knew me was
aware of that fact. And yet, Dodger didn’t want to purchase me like
cattle or like I was an object, he wanted to… what? Take care of
me? It was what Jack had done but so much more, because Dodger was
free to love me.

And for some reason, I didn’t see
Dodger as a father figure whom I had sex with. I saw him as someone
I desired, not for money, but for companionship.

“
Why?” I asked
softly.

“
When I first saw you, I
knew you were it for me,” Dodger told me.

“
Knew I was what for you?”
I questioned, quirking an eyebrow at him.

Dodger chuckled. “That you were the
one I wanted to spend my life with.”

I pushed away from him, shaking my
head. “Me? A hook—paid companion?” I’d stopped referring to myself
as a hooker and a prostitute years before. I wouldn’t start now
just because Dodger’s words were so fucking ridiculous and had
flipped my world on its axis.

Dodger nodded. “Yes, you. I don’t care
what you did before you met me. I only care what you do after we
get together.”

I shoved away from him and stood
quickly. “Do you know what you’re saying to me?” I started to pace.
“I mean it’s not unusual. Not completely. I have plenty of clients
who want the boyfriend fantasy, but that’s not what you’re asking
me for, is it?”

Dodger stretched his arms out along
the top of my couch and watched me silently, merely shaking his
head. I huffed in annoyance and crossed my arms as I continued to
march angrily back and forth in front of him. How dare he come into
my home and say something like that to me! He didn’t even know me,
and I certainly didn’t know him. Well, beyond what had been
reported in the papers and what my contacts had told me. The few
interactions we’d had alone hadn’t gleaned much information, not
enough to warrant such a statement from him.

“
Why me? You don’t even
know me!” I tossed my hands up in the air.

“
So tell me something about
you, and I’ll do the same. Unless you have a client today?” he
asked, his tone a mixture of hesitant disappointment and a growl of
possessiveness. It was an amazing feat, hearing him pull off such
an oxymoron of expressive emotions, and my body instantly reacted,
skin flushing hot and my groin tightening, but I ignored them both
and turned to glare at him. I knew one surefire way to get him to
cease his nonsense about wanting me to be his “forever,” and while
it would expose me and leave me vulnerable in a way I hadn’t been
in quite a while, I had to protect myself, and more than that, I
had to protect Stella. Because I was tempted to take what he was
offering—a chance to give up the life I’d been living for so long
and find comfort and care with someone else, maybe even more. But
if I did, I’d have to give up my job, my lifestyle, and that would
leave Stella at the mercy of KuJoe, and that was one thing I
absolutely could not do. She was mine to care for and protect. I’d
made a promise to her to do that on the day she was born, and it
was the one promise I wasn’t going to break.

“
You really want to get to
know me?” I asked, stopping in front of him, my voice dark and
dangerous. Anyone who knew me would back off, would understand they
were intruding, and the information they were about to receive was
something they weren’t going to like, but Dodger
didn’t
know me, and so
he nodded. Idiot.

“
Of course I
do.”

“
IwasfourteenthefirsttimeIwaspaidforsex.” I made this
statement quickly, my words pushed together, my cheeks burning with
embarrassment. An amazing feat for me. I didn’t blush for any
reason. I’d been selling my body for the last fourteen years, been
in every position any gay man could possibly be in. I had serviced
men on the side of the road, under their desks while they worked,
even in public restrooms. Why the widened blue eyes of this
gorgeous billionaire had the power to make me so ashamed, make me
feel so dirty and worthless, I would never truly know, nor fully
understand. I only knew it pissed me the fuck off. My hands itched
to slap him on his throat, my knuckles throbbing with the longing
to crush against the soft flesh of his eye or… let him fuck me
until I died from the greatest, most blissful orgasm of my
life.

The bastard.

“
Granted, I didn’t realize
that was going to happen, especially seeing as how the man in
question was my stepfather. Especially seeing as how I hadn’t
actually
wanted
to have sex with him. He’d spent the four years before that
molesting me, touching me in ways I didn’t want, or raping me, and
I guess that year he figured that his birthday present to me would
be to fuck me, and leave five hundred dollars on the nightstand for
me to find in the morning,” I continued.

Prick.

Dodger sat forward, and I could tell
he was going to reach for me, but I stepped back. I didn’t need him
to touch me or to offer me comfort. This story was a part of my
life. My truth and a touch of comfort right now would shatter me,
break me, or destroy me, and I couldn’t handle that. I needed to
stay strong or else I would be no good for anyone, least of all
Stella or myself.

“
Wasn’t your mother around
to stop him? To help you?” Dodger asked.

I let out a laugh, but there was no
real amusement in it. “My mother? You mean the junkie whore who
sold me to her friends and to my stepfather for the first time when
I was ten? Yeah, right.” I shook my head. “No. The day it happened,
my birthday, my original one, anyway, she was passed out in bed.
She’d become deaf to my cries long before that anyway.” I shrugged.
“My stepfather told me the money was from him and her, though I’m
thinking the rape was his special present.”

“
Jesus Christ,” Dodger
said, his voice low, his gaze soft as he stared at me.

I waved my hand. “Don’t
feel sorry for me. I used it to my advantage. I realized he wanted
to have sex with me, and he would
always
want to have sex with me. I
was on drugs just like my mother was; he had given me my first hit,
after all, when I was just a kid, but I wasn’t old and used up like
she was. I still looked like a person.”

“
And you were a little boy,
and that was probably what he was more attracted to anyway, right?”
Dodger asked, his eyebrows raised, a knowing look in his
eyes.

That look made me stop, as if he knew
something. As if he knew my secret. I swallowed and glanced away
for a moment, nodding. “Yeah. Sure. Maybe, though I don’t think it
was so much the little boy thing, just the kid thing.”

Dodger grunted and sat back.
“Pedophiles are usually gender specific. They typically go for one
particular sex, boy or girl. It’s rare to find one who would rape
both, so if he was obsessed with you, especially as you grew older,
then it was either young boys or… just you.”

“
Well—yay for me,” I said
with a sardonic smile. “What are you, an expert with the special
crimes unit or something?”

Dodger shrugged his massive shoulders
and smiled sheepishly. “Or something. I spent a few years working
with ICE back in Texas before my uncle died. I think it’s another
reason why he left everything to me.”

“
Because you’re such a good
person?” I asked sarcastically.

Dodger nodded. “That and because I
like to help people. My cousins aren’t really built that way. They
help people only when it will make them look good or when it will
end up helping them in the long run.”

“
So why do you do it?” My
feet were carrying me back over to him, and I wanted to be pissed
off, but before I had time to process it, I was sitting next to him
again.

“
Because of my younger
sister. She was kidnapped by this man in the neighborhood who was a
part of a sex trafficking organization. We never saw her again.
She’s either dead or still out there somewhere, living in hell,
forced to sell her body.” Dodger turned to look at me, his eyes wet
with unshed tears. “And for people like you. Strong people, with
rough, jagged, broken edges, shattered in some places, but not
destroyed. You inspire me to want to help and make the world
better.”

And though he didn’t say
it, I whispered the reason I was grateful to him in my mind:
For Stella
. Dodger may
not still be a part of ICE, but he had contacts, no doubt, and he
had money, and maybe, just maybe, he could help me out of the
clusterfuck I was in.

If only I could trust him with
it.

That was a lot easier said than
done.

****

We didn’t hang around my place for too
much longer, I got dressed, and Dodger told me he wanted to take me
out. In the middle of the day. Where people would see
us.

Together.

I told him that none of my clients had
ever done anything like that with me before, and he told me, once
again, that he wasn’t a client, or at least he didn’t see himself
as one. He was applying for the position of boyfriend.
Partner.

I stopped just outside the passenger
side door of his silver 2015 Audi A3 and looked up at
him.

“
You’re serious about this,
aren’t you?” I asked, not for the first time.

Dodger smiled at me and nodded. “As a
heart attack.”

“
But, why? And don’t give
me that bullshit line about you seeing me and knowing I was it for
you.” I shook my head. “All of that love at first sight and soul
mate nonsense is crap, and you know it.”

Dodger chuckled and turned to look out
over the landscape. He sighed before returning his gaze to me.
“Okay, I won’t give you the patented, romantic answer because,
obviously, it won’t work on you.”

“
No, it will not.” I
crossed my arms.

He braced his arms on either side of
me, resting them on the car as he stared down into my face. “When I
see you or think about you, I don’t think about what you do for a
living or how many men you’ve slept with.”