Fallen Angel (Club Burlesque) (18 page)

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Authors: Logan Belle

BOOK: Fallen Angel (Club Burlesque)
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Mallory walked Alec to the door. She wasn’t going to stop him from leaving, but she couldn’t help but cry when he stepped into the hall. He hugged her one more time, and then there was nothing left to do but watch him go.
16
B
illy Barton stepped out of the Lincoln Town Car on the corner of Eighteenth Street and Ninth Avenue. He held a cup of coffee in one hand and the prescription of Ativan he’d just refilled in the other. It was going to be that kind of day.
“Wait for me here or go around the block a few times if you have to. I should be back in less than an hour,” he told the driver.
He walked half a block west to the male grooming salon, Sugar, which was owned and operated by his first male lover, Harvey Hixenbaugh. Harvey was twenty years his senior. They’d met when Billy and some friends had ended up at the legendary restaurant Florent after a night of clubbing senior year in high school. Billy’s buddies liked Florent for the twenty-four-hour food and supermodel sightings; Billy loved it for the clientele of drag queens, burlesque dancers, writers, actors, and bon vivants who ruled Manhattan by night and slept all day. Even though Billy had months left to go at Riverdale Country School and a four-year stretch ahead of him at Penn, he knew already the life he wanted to live. If he had to jump through a few conventional hoops in order to get there, so be it. That first night, Harvey had surreptitiously slipped him his number. Billy had planned to wait until he was safely at college to act on his homosexuality, but he quickly revised his plan when Harvey appeared to be a perfect partner in exploring the side of himself he could share with nobody in his “real” life—not his billionaire, Wall Street father, not his socialite mother, not his older brother who was in Washington working for a Republican senator who had eyes on the White House.
It was a glorious six-month affair, a blur of drugs and sex and an endless loop of nightlife that introduced him to the artists and tastemakers who set the pace that the fashion, music, and film industries would follow. This crowd validated his desire to live a “big” life—showed him it was possible.
Now he owned
Gruff
, had his pick of the hot male—and occasionally female—models and hipsters who roamed the underbelly of Manhattan after dark. And Harvey was clean and sober, running a successful business, and married to a painter named Oliver. Life was good.
And now this mess with Violet.
When he’d met the Burberry model Tyler Rand at a photo shoot for
Gruff,
he’d referred him to Harvey. All the top male models, actors, porn stars, prostitutes, and successful, closeted “straight” guys came to Harvey for “sugaring”—it was like waxing, but used a warm sugar mix that worked in the direction of the hair growth, not opposite the growth like waxing. When it was done right, it could eventually lead to permanent hair removal. Some salons just added sugar to their waxing mix and called it sugaring, but getting the actual sugar-based paste exactly right was a skill, and Harvey charged an arm and a leg—no pun intended—for his expertise and services. Despite the cost, it was still impossible to get an appointment without a referral. And today at 11a.m. was Tyler’s standing appointment.
Billy knew he should maybe deal with this catastrophe in private, but he hoped that Harvey would be a solid, calm voice in the crisis. As far as he was concerned, Tyler’s appointment this morning was perfect timing.
“Hi, Billy,” the receptionist, Daniel, greeted him. Daniel was prettier than most of the female models Billy booked in
Gruff.
“Harvey’s in with a client.”
“Tyler, right? I’m sure it’s okay if I go in. Can you ring him for me?”
“Okay—let me check.”
Billy looked through the magazines fanned out on a side table and picked up an issue of
Gruff
from two months ago. He was excited about their upcoming March issue. Alec had done a good job with the Kendall James interview. Having her on the cover was a great way to start the New Year. He could feel the magazine gaining clout on the newsstands, with advertisers, and with the A-list celebrities he needed to fill the pages. He was getting better writers, photographers. . . . He could really see himself taking on Graydon Carter and
Vanity Fair
in a year or two. This was no time for a scandal.
After consulting with Harvey, Daniel gave Billy a flirtatious wink and showed him upstairs. He paused outside one of the service room doors, knocking gently.
Harvey opened it quickly, mid-sentence, shooing Daniel away and closing the door behind Billy when he entered the small room.
“You couldn’t stay away from him, eh? Oh, young love. I miss it,” Harvey said, washing his hands. “But if you were hoping for a show, you’re a few minutes too late. We’re all finished.”
“What are you doing here?” Tyler asked, smiling. But his gleeful anticipation faded when he noticed the expression on Billy’s face.
“I have a problem. Actually, we have a problem.”
“Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not. Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“Does this involve me? Good Lord, what could it be this time? I’m finally clean and sober, so I think I’d remember if I’d done something to merit a ‘Talk’,” Harvey said.
“No—it has nothing to do with you, but I’m thinking you might be the voice of reason. Because I have a serious decision to make.”
Harvey sighed, pressed an intercom button, and told Daniel to tell his next appointment he was running a half hour late.
“This way, kids.”
Billy and Tyler followed him to his office and took seats on his couch under a Jackson Pollock—a gift from one of Harvey’s clients. Harvey closed the door and sat behind his immaculate glass desk.
“What’s going on?”
“I told you that I spent some time at the Cellar. . . .”
“Sure. Didn’t Roger turn you on to that place?”
“Yeah. And I went for a while and got really hooked on this one dom who eventually slipped me her cell number and said she does house calls. I was getting paranoid about someone’s recognizing me there, so I started having her to my place. She’s incredible.”
At this point, Tyler was looking very nervous. Billy took his hand.
“I wanted to bring Tyler into it—he said he was game because it was important to me. So she came over last week and did a session with the two of us.”
“Sounds good to me.” Harvey smiled.
“It was good. Until she insisted on meeting up with me last night—and showed me this.”
Billy slid one of the photos across the desk to Harvey.
“What is it?” Tyler said.
Harvey looked at it for less than a beat and shook his head. “What does she want?”
“What is it?” Tyler repeated. Harvey handed him the photo. “Jesus, Billy! What the fuck is this? I can’t have this floating around. My agent just renewed the Burberry contract!”
“I know, I know,” Billy said, squeezing his hand. “I’m going to deal with this.” To Harvey, he explained. “She wants me to bankroll a club for her.”
“She wants cash?”
“No. She wants me to be a partner in a club with her—she wants my money to back it, but she also wants me involved to use my connections to get the right people to the club.”
“What kind of club? Like Tenjune?”
“No. A burlesque club. Like the Slit.”
The three men sat silently.
“That photo cannot get out,” Tyler said. “It will ruin my career. Not to mention my life—my parents . . . oh, my God.”
“First of all, it won’t ruin your career,” Harvey said. “Homosexuality doesn’t ruin models’ careers. It might jeopardize your relationship with Burberry, but your editorial work won’t dry up. You, on the other hand—“ He looked at Billy. “You are on the cusp of being a major player. Being gay is one thing, but this is not the most flattering expression of your sexuality.”
“I know.”
“I suggest you play ball. At least for a while. In a year or so, you might be able to risk shaking her off. Or maybe you’ll find something to twist her arm with. Either way, get the money together, hire someone to deal with the logistics, and buy some time until the day when Billy Barton is a media mogul too big to be pushed from the throne.”
“It’s not the money I care about—it’s being played like this. Who the fuck does she think she is? I want to kill her.”
“You need to be coolheaded about this.”
“I know. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I needed the voice of reason. Because my impulse is to tell her to fuck off and then find a way to squash her.”
Tyler pulled his hand away and looked at him beseechingly, his big, heavily lashed brown eyes turned into pools of anxiety. And Billy knew that there was nothing to do but give Violet what she wanted. He could risk having his reputation take a hit. But he couldn’t endure his relationship with Tyler taking one.
“There’s no other way, is there?” Billy said with resignation.
“Not right now.”
He looked at Tyler, reached for his hand again, and winked.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Tyler seemed to exhale for the first time since he’d seen the picture.
“Well, then—my work here is done. I have to get back to business. The client I have waiting is a nasty bitch, and I’m sure I have hell to pay already. Feel free to stay here as long as you like and talk strategy. Don’t fret, boys. Everyone playing in the big leagues takes a hit every once in a while.”
Harvey closed the door. Billy looked at Tyler, who was staring at the floor.
“Hey,” he said, putting his hand under Tyler’s chin so he had to face him. “It’s going to be fine.”
Clearly, Tyler didn’t agree. Billy felt terrible as he realized he was experiencing perhaps his first taste of failure in life. He was astute enough to realize that Tyler was attracted to him for the same reasons he, as a teenager, had been attracted to Harvey: Tyler saw him as someone to look up to, as a guide to the inner workings of the upper echelon of New York nightlife. And now, instead of being the buoy that Tyler needed and wanted, Billy threatened to be an anchor around his neck.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he said, dropping to his knees on the floor. “I’m going to suck your cock so good you’ll forget all about this.” He unzipped Tyler’s jeans, reaching into his underwear to find his erection. He knew how much Tyler loved the way Billy fucked him—he was just his second male lover—and usually a little verbal foreplay was enough to get him hard as a rock. But, to his dismay, Billy found that Tyler was unresponsive to him.
Not one to be easily deterred, Billy pulled down Tyler’s pants and underwear. He pressed his face to Tyler’s balls, inhaling their slightly sweet smell and licking them softly. He stroked Tyler’s flaccid cock until it swelled in his hand. Tyler shifted in his seat, and Billy cupped both hands under his ass, taking his increasingly engorged cock fully in his mouth. He massaged the outside of Tyler’s anus with his index finger, rubbing in small, firm circles until he elicited a moan. Then he used his free hand to once again work Tyler’s shaft, up and down in tandem with his lips and tongue. Tyler had told him he gave the best blow jobs he’d ever had—better than all the girls in his high school and better than the one boyfriend he’d had his first six months in New York. This was interesting to Billy, because what Tyler didn’t know was that he was the first man Billy had ever sucked off. Since his first encounter with Harvey all those years ago, Billy had only received oral and anal sex, never given it. But Tyler’s beauty moved him to do things he’d never wanted to do before. Billy took great pride in the new sexual dimensions he had discovered with his young lover, and every time Tyler shot a load in his mouth it was sweet validation.
He pressed his finger inside Tyler’s ass, just enough to tease him toward coming. Tyler moaned, and Billy probed deeper.
No matter how stressed out and angry Tyler was about the Violet problem, Billy was determined to get him off. He needed Tyler to know he could take care of him—in the bedroom and out. Finally, Billy felt all the muscles in Tyler’s upper thighs and pelvis tighten, and he quickened the strokes of his hand and tongue accordingly. Tyler shouted and bucked against Billy’s mouth, coming in warm spurts that Billy greedily swallowed.
When Tyler was still, Billy climbed back next to him on the couch.
“Do you trust me to take care of things?” Billy said. His cock was so hard in his pants, he knew he wouldn’t be able to leave the room before getting off himself.
“Yes,” Tyler said.
“Good,” said Billy. “Now take care of me.”
He unzippered his pants.
 
Mallory could barely sit still at her desk. She’d slept only a few hours all night, her mind running an endless loop of kissing Gavin and the breakup with Alec. Now she was jacked up on three cups of coffee, her emotional pendulum swinging from the excitement of new attraction to the pain of letting go of her four-year relationship.
Gavin had popped his head into her office first thing in the morning. Mindful of the legal secretaries right outside her door, he was all business, talking about a motion he needed to file for one of his clients. But his eyes locked with hers in a way that was anything but professional. Her heart pounded as she listened to him, and although she nodded, in truth she barely heard a word he said. She kept looking at his mouth, wanting to feel it on her skin.

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