Games Boys Play (26 page)

His eye dropped closed when the clown let go.

A few seconds passed. A tickle rose at the back of his throat.

Something hard pressed against his chest, maybe knuckles. Whatever it was, it dug in hard.

Snapping his eyes open, he grasped Dylan’s wrist. “Ow! Fuck!”

Dylan stopped dragging his knuckles along Brian’s sternum.

Something Brian couldn’t read flashed in the eyes in the mask. The clown jerked his wrist from Brian’s fingers, splaying his hand open as it swung upward. It arced back down, connecting hard with the side of Brian’s face before he could get out of the way. He finished rolling to the side, his palm laid against his stinging cheek, the clown kneeling over him, arm across his chest, fingers still splayed.

“Fuck,” Brian breathed, rubbing the sting out of his skin. His sternum still burned from Dylan’s knuckles. He pressed his hand against it and struggled to sit up.

The clown’s hand came flying back, knuckles cracking against Brian’s cheekbone, the force of it jerking his head aside. His shoulder banged into the wall. He growled low through gritted teeth as he swiped at the wetness torn from the corner of his eye by the sting of Dylan’s knuckles.

The clown—Dylan—was already on his feet, walking away.

Fuck
. He hoped he hadn’t fucked everything up. In retrospect, scaring the crap out of Dylan probably hadn’t been his smartest idea ever.

He heard one of the van doors jerk open, then slam shut a few seconds later.
Please don’t drive away.

The sound of boots crunching back over gravel was a relief. They scuffed the concrete, stopped, and the storage unit door started coming down.

“Let’s hope that didn’t get caught on a fucking security camera,” the clown muttered.

Something dropped against the floor. He turned his eyes upward.

“Get down on your stomach.”

He squinted against the ceiling’s lights, lifting a hand above his eyes so he could see better.

What he saw was the clown pulling his foot back, and again he didn’t have time to get out of the way. He was turning to get on his knees, the ankle chain tripping him up, when the toe of the boot caught him in the thigh, not hard, but hard enough against muscle to make him cry out in indignation. Clutching what was going to turn into a bruise, he let himself carefully down onto his side.

The clown’s foot shoved his hip hard. He rolled backward, his shoulder lodging against the metal wall.

You know what? Fuck this
. He rolled forward again, quickly, his arm stretching out. Closing his fingers around the clown’s ankle, he pulled as hard as his position let him. The clown teetered and caught himself, transferring his weight to his rear foot. He kicked his ankle free of Brian’s grip. Brian grasped for it again, but the clown stepped out of reach.

“Fucker,” Brian said. “Come back here, why don’t you?” He rocked on his hands and knees. “Come on, you fucking pussy.”

The thing that had landed on the floor was a roll of duct tape. Brian picked it up and chucked it at the clown, who had only to lean aside for it to fly by and bang against the metal door.

“Fucking kicking me,” Brian muttered. “You want to take me out of here, you’re gonna have to fight me for it.”

He knew it wasn’t possible, but it seemed like the clown’s oversize grin widened.

“Who the fuck are you, anyway?” Brian said. “Huh? Afraid to show me your face?” He scooped up his water bottle from between the mattress and the wall and hurled it at the clown. It thumped off his shoulder.

“You want to know who I am?” The clown undid his belt buckle, yanking it free of its loops with one sharp pull. “You want to know who
I
am?”

Brian’s gaze slid toward the jug of piss. He’d have to scramble to get to it, on his stomach, and it could go badly. He was just as likely to get it dumped on himself as he was to manage to lob it at the clown.

The clown crossed the distance between them, the belt doubled over in his hand. As Brian pitched forward, the clown dropped to a knee, right in his way. Brian’s shoulder slammed into his hip, hardly rocking the clown’s body as his arm clamped around Brian’s neck, holding him.

“Fuck.” Grasping the hard forearm that crossed his upper chest, he struggled to get free.

He couldn’t see, but he could feel the shift of the clown’s body and hear the belt as it swept through the air. He gasped as it laid its sting across his ass with a sharp sound that echoed in the narrow stall. “
Fuck
.” The clown’s bicep was a rock against the side of his neck, trapping his head against Dylan’s ribs. He tried to pull backward but only succeeded in making his ear burn against the hoodie.

“
This
is who I fucking am.”

The belt laid another strip across his ass, the loud
crack
making his body jerk as much as the hit itself did. “
Fuck
.” He dug into the clown’s arm where his shirtsleeve had hiked up. Bits of skin jammed deep under his fingernails, but if the pain was having any effect on the clown, it was only to make him squeeze Brian’s head tighter against his side.

“Don’t,” Brian said as the fingers of the arm he clung to tightened just below his armpit. It caused a sensation that was half tickle, half pain. His voice wasn’t cooperating with him, though—when he said “don’t” once more, it was just as weak as the first time, like the nightmare where you scream and only a whisper comes out.

The belt cracked against him again. His ass burned through the denim. He tried to turn away from both it and the fingers digging into his ribs, and the belt merely set a strip along the side of his thigh on fire instead.

“This is who I fucking am,” the clown said. “Do you get that?”

The belt whacked, and his body jerked. He clenched his teeth against a sob-like noise breaking free at the back of his throat.

“
This
is who I am.”

Brian opened his mouth and let himself cry out when the next one fell.

The clown shoved him away. His hip hit the metal wall, and he sank onto his side, an elbow holding him up as he breathed heavily and tried to recover. He stared at his fingers splayed on the mattress, then rubbed his fingertips against the coarse fabric, trying to get Dylan’s skin out from under his nails.
Shit
. With his mouth dry and his chest still heaving, he rolled forward, laying himself on his stomach, the links of chain clinking softly against concrete as he straightened his leg.

The clown, on his feet, loomed over him. “Make a fist.”

Breathing hard through his open mouth, Brian turned his eyes up in the clown’s direction.

He stepped forward, duct tape in hand, the toe of his boot nudging the side of Brian’s pinky finger. “Make. A. Fucking. Fist.”

Slowly he curled his fingers in.

Peeling tape up from the roll with a
shhrrripp-ripp-ripp
, the clown crouched and started wrapping Brian’s fist in duct tape. When he was finished, he yanked Brian’s other hand toward him, folded Brian’s fingers down, and began taping them in place too.

Brian moved his wrapped fist against the mattress, testing if it held his weight, if he could do anything with it. His hand looked surprisingly small all taped up.

The clown grabbed his fist out from under him, dropping him back to his chest. He pulled both arms behind Brian and started taping them together.

Brian pushed his hips against the mattress.
Fuck
. Fuck in a good way. Fuck in a really bad way too, his cock hungry, wanting release, wanting him to fuck against the mattress, right here and now. He struggled to move his fingers, but they were stuck tight. As the tape wound around his wrists, they too became stuck fast together. With his eyes closed, the ocean of reality in his head rushed out to sea, sweeping solid ground from under him, leaving him off balance. The clown tore the roll free. Brian cocked a knee and lifted his hips off the mattress, his eyelids twitching as sparks of intense pleasure skittered outward from the pressure of even his jeans against his cock.

“Pain in my fucking ass,” the clown muttered with a nudge of his foot against Brian’s hip. His footfalls echoed in the stall. Brian turned his face and tracked the clown’s movements through half-closed eyes, his hips rocking in tight little movements. With his back to Brian, the clown scooped up his belt and fed it back through his belt loops, the buckle jingling until he caught hold and fastened it.

Bending, he picked up the bottle of water Brian had thrown and then the piss jug.

Please don’t do anything I’ll regret with the piss jug.

Instead he jerked the door open high enough to duck under. Brian watched him walk a little ways away, the door cutting off the view of him at the waist.

He dumped out the jug on the ground, then tossed it near the van’s rear wheel.

Brian shifted, trying to see better. The shifting gifted him with another spike of pleasure, unleashing a shaky breath from his throat. Two points of blue hair dropped into view by one of the clown’s knees—the empty mask. He imagined Dylan turning up the water bottle in the light of the security lamp, his Adam’s apple rising and falling as he took long, thirsty swallows. He imagined sweat glistening on the planes of Dylan’s face, Dylan’s eyelids closed, his throat exposed.

It was the sexiest image of Dylan he’d ever imagined, the Dylan who did what he had to do, no matter how brutal it had to get.

The water bottle landed beside the jug. The rasp of a lighter followed.

As he tried uselessly to open his hands, Brian’s eyes tracked the clown’s boots as they paced the gravel. He wondered what Dylan was thinking. Was he revising his plans? Was he pissed off that Brian kept being a pain in the ass?

Dylan was the one who’d started playing rough in the van.

After a few minutes, the boots made a more purposeful line toward the door. The cigarette butt dropped and was ground out. Brian let his eyes drift closed as he listened to the clown get his mask back on, duck back inside, drag the door back down.

Footsteps came up to the edge of the mattress.

A toe nudged him in the side. “Still alive?”

“Yes,” Brian whispered.

“It’s time to get you in the box.”

“No.” It was out before he could think. His heart sped, hammering against his chest. The clown grabbed him by the arm and pulled his torso up—but he wasn’t going in the fucking box. He twisted free. The clown grabbed his ankle and dragged it out from under him.

“I’m not going in the box.” He jerked his ankle away and shoved backward, up against the metal wall.

The clown fished a key out of his pocket and reached for the chained ankle.

He kicked the clown’s hand with the bottom of his booted foot.

They fought over it for a few moments, Brian’s boot connecting with the clown’s knuckles, his fingers, the inside of his wrist where the tattooed circle was. The clown’s shirtsleeve rucked up to reveal the angry half-moons Brian’s fingers had dug into his flesh.

The clown grabbed his booted foot and twisted it sharply until Brian yelled out, and as soon as he let it go, Brian, with his taped fists planted behind him against the mattress, lashed forward, kicking at him again.

The clown blocked the next kick with his forearm and shifted away, moving to the padlock at the other end of the chain, but Brian just scooted forward and drove his heel hard against the clown’s elbow. The key clinked on the concrete.

“You’re trying my fucking patience,” the clown growled.

He didn’t give a shit; he wasn’t going in the fucking box.

The clown stood, stepped onto the mattress, one hand grabbing Brian’s free leg. He turned and sat with his shin jammed down across the top of Brian’s, hard bone against hard bone. His back blocked Brian’s view. Brian would have reached out and thrown an arm around the clown’s neck if his hands weren’t taped. He jammed his fists against the floor and tried to pull his leg free while the clown retrieved the key, grabbed the chain on Brian’s ankle, and pressed down, holding it still so he could force the key in.

The shinbone jamming against his hurt like fuck—
and
he wasn’t going in the fucking box. He threw his upper body forward, leading with his teeth, and bit the first thing he could get them closed around: the muscle at the right side of the clown’s back, near his armpit.

With a sharp yelp, the clown twisted around and shoved Brian. The metal wall shook with the force of his back banging against it.

“Fuck your box,” Brian spit.

The clown straddled him, up on spread knees, his crotch not more than a foot from Brian’s face. Violently, he ripped a fresh strip from the tape roll. Brian, seeing where this was going, turned and tried to scoot on his hip out of the way, knowing there weren’t a lot of places for him to go. The clown simply climbed behind him, spooning him, a leg thrown over his hip, foot hooking around his thigh to hold him. The strip of tape he’d torn got folded and stuck to itself. The clown just grabbed Brian’s neck in the crook of his arm, making it impossible for him to go anywhere, and started a fresh strip of tape from the roll.

“Fuck you,” Brian snarled, his lips wet with spittle, his Adam’s apple grinding against the clown’s forearm. “Fuck your
fucking
box.” Tape caught at his hair, smarting as it pulled free. Then it was across his mouth. He kept cursing—“Fuck your fucking box”—as the clown wound the tape around his head and back across his mouth, and again and again, until his lips couldn’t pull themselves free of the fucking tape anymore, and still the clown kept going, his hips moving against Brian with each wind, a hard ridge in his jeans jamming against Brian’s taped fists. Brian, still swearing against the tape over his mouth, his head growing light from not taking a minute to breathe, was moving his hips too. He struggled to move his arms, rubbing the side of a taped fist across the hard ridge behind him, wanting to be able to open his hand, to push his palm against what was there, to squeeze it in his hand and hear Dylan gasp. That Dylan was as hard as he was only got him going more.

The clown swung off him and all but jumped to his feet, backing away.

Panting through his nostrils, Brian set his temple against the concrete floor. He felt like a creep. Like a pervert who couldn’t keep his hands to himself.