Games Boys Play (5 page)

“I need to know what’s off-limits.”

“Yeah…uh.” Nothing came. Nada. Zip, zero, zilch. He forced out a short, hollow laugh. “You know, I never have to think about this when it’s just, um, me.” He covered his eyes with his hand.
Shit.

“Well, like, you don’t gag yourself.” The word
gag
said out loud made Brian wince, and the
yourself
right after it was even worse. “Is that still off-limits with someone else?”

“No.” He croaked the word out. If his face got any hotter, the glass on his phone was going to start to melt. “I don’t think so.” And, Jesus, now his dick was getting hard.

“All right, so what else?”

What other rules did he have for himself? Which ones would he keep, even with someone else around? “Um. Don’t put anything around my throat, ever.” He wasn’t David Carradine when he was alone, and he wasn’t going to be David Carradine with anyone else around either. He rubbed his neck.

“Okay,” Dylan said.

“No handcuffs on my wrists. The risk of nerve damage is too high. It’s okay to use them to lock other things together.”

“Yeah, I saw that.”

Silence grew roots between their phones. He couldn’t think of anything else. He listened to Dylan take another drag off his cigarette. Wondered where he was, actually, but knew if he asked, he’d just get the name of a city,
maybe
. Maybe just a state. If he asked what Dylan was doing, he’d get another variation of “this and that” and “such and such.” He’d always suspected it was flings with girls Dylan met on tour. Dylan was weird about girls, relationships. Brian had forced Dylan into a blind double date once, a long time ago. That had been awkward.

“Hey, Dyl?”

“Yeah?”

“Just…try not to kill or maim me, okay?”

“Yeah, right. I can see trying to explain that to the police. Or your mother. Or
my
mother, for Christ’s sake.”

Brian smiled at the thought of Aunt Patty’s reaction to Dylan accidentally killing him.
You did what? What made you think that would be a good idea? What was it, a bet or something? For cryin’ out loud, did your brain fall out your ears when you were taking a shower this morning?

“Anything else?” Dylan asked.

“No. Not that I can think of.” His brain was completely unable to think at the moment.

“All right. Just one more thing, then,” Dylan said.

Oh God, what now?
Brian spread his hand over his eyes again. “Yeah?”

“We need a safe word. I don’t care what, just something easy to remember and obvious.”

He struggled between thinking it was pointless because he wasn’t going to use it anyway…and worrying that with someone else in control, he’d actually freak out and need it. God, what if he freaked out five minutes into it, blubbering the safe word and having to live with that awkwardness forever?

“So?” Dylan said.

Shit
. Brian rubbed his eyes.
Shit shit.

“Do you want me to come up with it?”

“Fuck. Banana split, okay?” It was the first thing to pop into his head. Not least because he’d been thinking about banana splits when Dylan called. Banana splits and other comforting dessert foods he shouldn’t be eating.

“Works for me. So. What’d you say—ice cream Tuesday evening?”

Three days away. How many times would he change his mind between now and then? He managed to get out, “I’ll be here,” his voice as thin as tissue paper.

There was no answer. Maybe that was it, then? He was lowering the phone from his ear when Dylan said, “One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna start as soon as I get there, okay? Just, you know, be prepared for that.” A short pause, then, “Is that okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll be here.” He hung up before he could change his mind.

With the edge of the phone pressed against his forehead, he took slow, deep breaths to stave off the light-headedness trying to overtake him.

Chapter Ten

He opened his eyes to a ceiling veiled with shadows despite it being somewhere around late morning, early afternoon.

On Tuesday.

Another lock snapping shut. He swallowed against tightening throat muscles. Lying on his back, his palms turned upward like offerings to the ceiling, he tried not to think. The sheet lay puddled at his waist. A crease of fabric skimmed his thigh with each breath he took.

It wasn’t too late. One phone call. One
text
. He could call it off.

Call it off, get out his bag of rope, and do it himself.

It would have been a million times easier if, on that day Dylan had let himself into Brian’s apartment, he’d just dragged a chair into the bathroom, sat down, and smoked half a pack of cigarettes while the ice water dripped slowly from the bottom of the sock. Flicking his ashes on the floor. Reading a paper. Ignoring Brian’s requests to please not smoke in the apartment, to get him the spare key from the counter, or to just leave and pretend he never saw this. Dylan could have turned a page in the paper, flicked a column of ash off the end of his cigarette, and said, “Nope.”

Brian shifted his leg. The crease in the sheet skimmed more than his thigh as he pictured his wrists locked to the bottom of the closet door, imagined shaking drips of water out of his hair, banging his shoulders against the door in an attempt to jostle the key ring loose. While Dylan flipped another page and flicked another column of ash onto the tiles.

“
Fuck
,” Brian whispered in his bedroom.

He needed to take care of this.

He didn’t know how all of this was going to go down tonight, but he knew he didn’t want to humiliate himself with a raging hard-on. Or worse.

He gripped the ridge of his cock through the sheet.

He wanted to be tied up. Powerless. Helpless. He wanted to find out, finally, what it was like to have someone else calling the shots. Not the playing he’d done with a girlfriend here and there, the ropes that took just a turn of the wrist to slip out of, the big, half-loose knots he could reach with his teeth. The feeling that the two of them were enacting a watered-down scene from a watered-down erotica story that neither of them belonged in. Or maybe she might have fit in there, but he knew he didn’t.

He wanted to be tied up.

Helpless.

Trapped.

Worry me a little
. His eyes slipped closed as his thumb drew teasing circles over the dampness that had leaked into the sheet.
Take my fucking breath away with panic for a minute.

Dylan, he knew, would be matter-of-fact. Methodical.
Conscientious
. The way he was with any job he took on, whether it was working on that Cutlass or working out how their gear would fit into a trailer, a van, a bus cargo hold.

He imagined being packed into a bus cargo hold: his wrists bound behind him, being forced to step into a road case, forced to his knees in the case. A hand pushing him forward till the top of his skull pressed against the wall of the case, and then the lid coming down, darkness rushing in to fill all the empty space around him, the lid pressing hard against the top of his back.

He pushed the sheets lower and grasped his cock, running his thumb through the slick of precum. Listening to the latches being fastened in his imagination.

Keeping his grip, he rolled over, stretching his other arm off the side of the mattress to hook a container of Vaseline between two fingers and draw it up from under the bed.

On his back again, he closed his eyes and replayed the sound of the latches snapping shut as he slid two Vaseline-slick fingers from the bass of his shaft all the way up to the head. It would be warm in the road case, the air close and heavy with the humidity of his breath. He’d push his shoulder blades against the underside of the lid, but the latches and hinges wouldn’t even strain.

He’d feel the case start to move as they prepared to load it into the belly of the bus.

In his mind, he tried to move in the case, exploring the available space, but there wasn’t much. His elbows were pinned between two of the walls, the crown of his head and the balls of his feet against the other two, the lid pushing down on his upper arms even when he hunched over as much as he could.

His thighs shifted apart as his fist worked his cock. He slid his other hand lower to capture his balls and pull them against his body.

The case tilted as it went up, his weight slumping toward the bottom end, taking a little pressure off the top of his skull. As it slid onto the floor of the cargo hold, it leveled again. He had to shift and squirm to even his weight back out across the case’s length. His skull met the wall, but at least it took some of the pressure off his feet.

The bare heel of one foot dug into the mattress.

At the imagined sound of the cargo doors being slid closed and locked shut, his muscles twitched. He dragged his lip under his teeth.

The bus’s engine started up, a different sound from inside a case in the cargo hold than it was from the passenger area of the bus. The road case’s walls and floor vibrated. He wondered if the case would slide around when the bus started moving, but while he felt the imagined pull of gravity against his body, the case stayed firmly in place. It must have been packed in tightly with all the other equipment.

The bus changed gears, picking up speed while he imagined himself hidden deep within, trying to find a comfortable position in the confines of the dark case, sweat rolling down his skin, soaking through the clothes he was wearing.

Without opening his eyes, he rolled onto his side on the bed, pumping his shaft in a tight grip. The head of his cock slicked the bottom sheet as he thrust against it. He rewound the story in his head, back to the beginning, back to his arms being wrenched behind him by one of a group of men who wanted the bus but didn’t want anyone to know they had it, so they were forcing them all into cases and putting them under the bus, where they wouldn’t be able to alert anyone.

He imagined the first winds of rope being passed around his wrists and pulled tight as he watched Dylan get knocked to the ground, because Dylan was trying to fight what they were doing to all of them.

He imagined the knot being jerked tight at his wrists, making it too late now for him to do anything to stop this—imagined watching blood smear Dylan’s chin as they forced him onto his stomach on the ground.

“Fuck.” His voice was thick against the mattress, his lips catching the sheet, his breath making a hot circle in the fabric. His fingers, the ones that weren’t bringing him off, clenched the pillow by his head.
The first winds of rope passing around his wrists, pulling tight, the tug of a knot being fixed, that moment when it was too late to escape because you’d just let yourself get into a fucked situation, and they could do anything they wanted with you, and Dylan was on the ground, and someone was kicking him, hard, the toe of a boot to his side, his body jumping, his fingers scraping for purchase on the pavement…

A wordless sound pulled itself from his chest.

His hips jerked.

Spunk surged from deep in his balls, like a rocket, a payload, a release, splattering the sheet, a secondary spasm spilling hot seed over his knuckles. He kept his fist going until the aftershocks started to become more uncomfortable than pleasant. Then he just stopped and lay there, his cock shrinking in the shallow curve of his palm. His lower lip tugging at the sheet beneath his face.

He blinked slowly at the bedroom wall.

It was like pulling up out of molasses, the effort required to bring his consciousness back into the here and now of an early Tuesday afternoon.

At least, he thought as he freed his arm from underneath his hip, he might stand a chance of not completely fucking embarrassing himself that evening.

Maybe.

The first thing he did when he got out of bed was draw open the curtains and blinds and let the sun in.

Up, showered, and dressed a half hour later, he ran errands, whether they needed running or not: oil change at one of those quick-lube places, a few groceries, a six-pack of beer. Fresh socks and a pack of pens because he seemed to have lost half his socks and all his pens at some point. He checked the band’s PO box, then spent an hour wandering a bookstore, tilting paperbacks out from their shelves, pushing them back into place, nothing really tempting him.

He had little appetite for lunch and none for dinner. He drank only enough water to quench his thirst and found himself standing in front of the toilet more often than usual, the consequence of nerves and the fear of having a full bladder when Dylan showed up.

When Dylan showed up.

The thought sent him back to the kitchen for another panicked sip of water to wet his dry mouth.

The sky grew orange.

They’d set no specific time, just evening, which for them could fall anywhere between rush hour and three in the morning. Would there still be daylight at the edge of the sky, or would most of the apartment complex be in bed by the time Dylan’s knock came?

Standing at the doors to the balcony with his hands pushed into the back pockets of his jeans, Brian bristled at the creep of time: one long, drawn-out second per second. He needed to be doing whatever it was he’d otherwise have been doing. He headed for the couch and pulled his MacBook into his lap. Stared at the screen.

Nothing. He had
nothing
. Tipping his head back, he scrubbed his face with both hands, leaving them pressed against his eyes.

“What am I even doing?”

What was
Dylan
doing?
Right now, what was he doing? Thinking? Planning? Was he nervous? Or was he engrossed in some song he was writing, some guitar pedal he was fixing, some conversation he was having with someone else while at the back of his mind the knowledge that he was going to come out here later and tie Brian up tugged at his thoughts. What was it like, to think like that?

Brian sat up and confronted the MacBook again. E-mail: check. News: check. He pulled up an article he’d been meaning to read, but found he didn’t have the attention span to follow a headline, never mind a whole piece about a con man and an elaborate heist. He closed the computer, slid it off the coffee table, and leaned across the sofa to pull his acoustic guitar into his lap.