Runaway Model (11 page)

How did he always know exactly when?

Talk about getting lucky in Vegas. Bryce hit the jackpot when he connected with Kyle. There were lots of boys in Vegas who looked good enough to eat. But Kyle had an energy that couldn't be faked.

Bryce dared not glance forward at the front seat. If the driver guessed what was happening back there, Bryce preferred not to know. Anyway, it was Vegas, baby. It wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last that a thirsty couple got busy in the back seat of a limo.

The star sapphire in Kyle's pinky ring felt cold when he rubbed the back of his hand against Bryce's cock—cold and very, very hard. Yet in a twinkling Bryce's cock was harder than the stone.

He struggled not to grunt. The barrier kept the driver from hearing their conversation. Sure it did. Nonetheless, a glance at the back of the man's head was enough to encourage Bryce to keep the noise down. There's something taboo about getting frisky right behind a stranger's back.

"Please. Don't." He whispered directly into Kyle's ear. The woodsy top notes of his expensive cologne tickled Bryce's nostrils.

Bryce was money, but Kyle was the one who smelled like money.

"You want me to stop, do you, mate?" His fingers went still but they didn't let go. A crooked little smile played on his lips.

Kyle knew he was irresistible. Damn him.

"It's just the way the words come out. As you know very well." Bryce shifted where he sat. Their legs were pressed together thigh to thigh. The limo's AC couldn't quite overcome the body heat between them. "Please don't stop. Don't ever stop."

But Kyle pulled his hand away, leaving Bryce high and dry. When he leaned back, Bryce couldn't help staring at the huge bulge that puffed Kyle's jeans. The eighteen-year-old wanted it as badly as he did.

Bryce reached forward for Kyle's zipper. But Kyle playfully pushed his hand away. "I think I'll keep me trousers on, if it's all the same to you."

Bryce knew he should probably stuff his own cock back in his pants, but he wasn't all that sure it would fit. "You're a tease."

"I am that, love."

Then Kyle's head bobbed downward.

Fuck. Oh fuck. No mortal man could resist. Not that Bryce wanted to. They'd pulled up to an intersection. He was keenly aware of the traffic stopped all around them as Kyle worked his magic. Better to finish it before someone—the limo driver, that guy riding high in the SUV to the right—noticed what was happening.

Then Kyle was sitting up again, smiling like the proverbial cat who ate the canary. His large brown eyes glittered with the pleasure of giving pleasure. His own jeans still boasted a semi, although he'd come an uncounted number of times over the past twenty-four hours. Where did he get the energy?

I'm nowhere near finished with this boy
, Bryce told himself.

He should have kissed him and let his body do the talking. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. He heard the words come out of his mouth before he even knew what he was saying.

"Kyle, come work for me. I could give you a job. You could be my personal assistant."

There was a silence the length of a heartbeat. Kyle may have scooted a half-inch away. Or maybe he just shifted position in his seat.

"I don't actually have a real green card, mate. I told you already. And I'm not for sale. Told you that too."

Bryce wanted to curse himself. These days, whenever he had a situation, he always defaulted to offering money. When you have a new hammer, every problem is a nail.

Yet now he felt like he had no choice but to dig the hole deeper. "My lawyers could figure that out. You could be legal. You could stay in America as long as you wanted."

"Lawyers plural now. I've never gone with a man who talked so much about his lawyers."

That fast, it was an argument. Kyle was proud. Bryce knew that. But why should his pride stop him from letting Bryce help him?

"You know I'm rich." He gestured somewhat redundantly around the leather interior. "You know I can do what I say. You must have Googled me by now."

"Yes, I know you're rich, Bryce." There was a sadness in Kyle's voice. Most hookups caught on pretty fast that Bryce was a wealthy man. But he'd never heard one that sounded sad about it before.

"I don't know where I fit in your world, mate. You're not exactly flying the rainbow flag over your oil wells. A pirate flag, more like."

He'd struck a blow. If Bryce were honest with himself, he didn't know how coming out as gay would impact his ability to negotiate contracts. Petroleum was a conservative industry.

Kyle twisted the ring on his finger and looked down at the plush carpet on the floor of the suddenly all-too-roomy vehicle. The silence this time cost two heartbeats.

"I'd have to be your dirty little secret, innit? Your silly little assistant that people in the know giggle about. When you go to dinner at the White House, you'd have a woman on your arm."

So Kyle had seen that photo.

"Kyle, I—" Bryce stopped, stammering.
I'd what? Come out?
He was a private person. He didn't want the media all over him slobbering about his alleged courage for being openly gay in the oil industry.

He couldn't go through that for somebody he just met.

Bryce would never remember how long the silence lasted. But it was long enough. Kyle had tired of waiting and was now speaking very, very fast, his accent thickening as he went.

"Any road, I've got the best Stoney Rockland blog on the internet. I can't let down the fans in the middle of his big North American tour."

The ridiculously oversized pink sapphire flashed. The six-legged star caught the light, eye-catching evidence of its quality.

Did Stoney really give Kyle that silly gem?

Was Bryce really in competition with a pop singer?

Don't be ridiculous. The odds are this Stoney doesn't know Kyle even exists. The ring is stolen, and Kyle's just another fanboy with stars in his eyes.

"Stoney is a fantasy. I'm real."

"No, Bryce. You're the fantasy. You're out of me league. A runaway boy can follow a band. He can't be your plus-one for lunch with the president."

"You make it sound like I dine with the Obamas every night. American politicians aren't as anxious to be photographed with a fracking speculator as you seem to imagine."

"I don't belong in your world. I would just drag you down."

"Why don't you let me decide that?"

"I'm me own man, mate. I make me own decisions."

How did it blow up just like that? One minute, Bryce was certain that Kyle had agreed to stay with him in Vegas.

The next minute, the limo had pulled up at airport departures and Kyle was jumping out of the vehicle with his ostrich-skin messenger bag slung crosswise over his tall, slender frame.

"Kyle—" Bryce said. "Please. Don't go."

But he was too conscious of the limo driver, and perhaps he didn't call loud enough. Or perhaps he just screamed the words inside his soul and didn't voice them at all.

In any event, Kyle was already gone through the glass doors without a glance backward. Bryce stood flat-footed for a moment, until a tactful throat-clearing from the driver reminded him that cars couldn't remain parked at departures.

"Back to the hotel, sir?"

Bryce wanted to run screaming through the airport and snatch Kyle back before he passed through security. But maybe it was too late already. Flying on a first class ticket, Kyle wouldn't have to wait in the endless lines that snaked through McCarran on a Monday afternoon. He could flash his boarding pass and glide directly to the front.

And anyway Bryce had better things to do than chase after a teenage hustler from England. He told himself he was well rid of the boy. Kyle had a point. A runaway eighteen-year-old wasn't an asset in his business.

"No, take me to Sands Convention Center."

Bryce had a tie in his bag—navy blue with tiny pintail ducks flying across it. His lucky bird from his days growing up in Lake Charles.

He put it on, adjusting it in the nearest mirror.

There. In Vegas they said it was bad luck to be superstitious, but Bryce would rather be wearing it than not during his meeting with the Norwegians. They had serious money—over a billion dollars—that they were prepared to invest in American oil leases.

It was time to act his age.

Kyle had been a mistake. A beautiful mistake but a mistake all the same.

He'd seemed so carefree in the hotel bar where Bryce picked him up. But evidently the boy came with just as much baggage as the rest.

Bryce didn't need that. He had enough insecurities of his own, thank you very much.

Traffic was worse going away from the airport. Bryce pulled out his phone and decided he'd return a few calls. Get some work in during the drive.

There was a small bar in the back of the limo. Perhaps he shouldn't have poured that airline-sized bottle of bourbon over crushed ice, but he did it anyway. Glass in one hand, phone in the other, he considered his next move.

The phone was a throwaway, of course. A trusted assistant could use it to get in touch with him if necessary, but the device was free of confidential company information. It was the kind of phone you could leave unlocked and use in a hurry. The kind you used when you were meeting hookups from Grindr.

Or picking up strangers in Vegas.

Kyle wasn't the first pickup who had fiddled with his notifications or taken a tour of his contact list. Speaking of which, Bryce checked. Ah, yes. There it was. The boy had added himself at some point while Bryce was sleeping. He was listed as Kyle. No address, no last name.

Marchane, Bryce remembered. Kyle Marchane.
Did he think I'd conveniently forget?

Oh, and there was a tiny thumbnail of Kyle smiling that half-smile that crooked up the corners of his sexy mouth. The kind of mouth you want to circle slowly with ice cream cone licks before you dive right in...

Bryce hit a button.

Delete.

Delete contact. This contact will be deleted.

OK.

Kyle would be his last eighteen-year-old. It was time to get back to the real world.

"W
hat is it with you?" If she'd been a man, Catherine would probably be a demi-billionaire herself. Twice Bryce's age, blonde hair blown out big like it was still 1984, she'd seen thirty years of boom and bust and back again in the Louisiana oilpatch. "I feel like your mind isn't on your work these days."

It was June 2014. He was back in North Dakota. Some of the wobbles in the price of petroleum were starting to concern them. "You're not my fucking mother," Bryce said. He didn't think twice about speaking to her man-to-man. She had the chops.

But women were last hired and first fired in the petroleum industry. Unless they came from one of the old families, they weren't likely to be taken seriously. Catherine had spent a brief period earlier in the century trying to buy oil leases, but she couldn't close a sale. That's how she ended up at Bryce Yourself Petroleum. She might not be able to do it on her own, but she knew how to pick a winning team.

"Nope. Not your fucking mother. Or I'd tell you to put a nickel in the swear jar."

"That fucking swear jar."

Catherine and Bryce's mother had actually met once back in the day. Oil and water.

His mother lived for the party. Too much party. She was gone now. Cirrhosis of the liver.

His father, who partied just as hard, was gone too. Heart disease.

There was a lot of that in the years after Hurricane Katrina and Rita slammed the Louisiana coastline in a devastating one-two punch.

But Catherine refused to go down with the ship. She was a survivor—all about the bottom line. And so here she was, still going strong, plotting how to maximize the next twenty years.

"Look, Bryce. Seriously. The Saudis are going to crash the price. I'm morally convinced of it."

Yeah, Catherine was tough. But people pushing sixty worried. They always had an eye on their retirement plans.

"It hurts them too if the price drops. Their whole economy turns on the price of oil."

"Their whole economy turns on their concept of manhood. You don't see it, Bryce. But I do." A lifted shoulder. A near-invisible shake of the head. Those little crypto-subliminal gestures were calculated to persuade without his quite seeing them.

But, like many another child of alcoholics, Bryce was keenly aware of the tiniest cues.

"In a couple of years, the United States will once again be the number one petroleum producer in the world." They both knew that. Catherine was speechifying now. "If the Bakken keeps producing. If the price stays high enough to keep fracking profitable."

"You're saying the Saudis would tank the entire petroleum industry for a point of pride." He kept his voice neutral. It was more important to hear out good people than to express your skepticism too soon.

But the truth was he'd already made up his mind. They probably both knew that too.

"They'll do what they must to remain number one. That's what I'm saying."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"We can negotiate a little on the offer from the Norwegians, maybe push the price up to 750 million by throwing in a few more marginal holdings. You would personally get away with 350 million free and clear."

Bryce liked thinking of himself as half a billionaire. Playing it safe wasn't how he got there.

And playing it safe was no way to be a by-God-for-real actual billionaire before he turned thirty.

"I lose 150 million dollars of my net worth overnight. Because you're nervous about the Saudis. Are you fucking kidding me?"

"A company is worth what someone will pay for it. And a lot of people are nervous about the Saudis. In theory, you could sell it off in pieces and end up with 500 million in your pocket. In reality?" Catherine shook her head. There was nothing subliminal about the gesture this time. "You're only a demi-billionaire on Celebrity Net Worth. And not even there, since you're not a celebrity."

Was he obsessed? A simple thing like the word "celebrity" was enough to remind him of Kyle. Nobody got into fracking because they needed a fan club. But Bryce couldn't help but feel a sudden pang of envy for Stoney.