Games Boys Play (7 page)

I can’t.

Hard leather fingers grasped his jaw and dragged his head around.

I can’t get out.

The intruder pressed both hands against Brian’s face, making a V, a pair of wings, joined where the thumbs touched in the middle of Brian’s lips. Then he dragged his thumbs, hard, away from each other, smoothing the layers of tape firmly against Brian’s face.

I can’t get away.

I can’t
. The magic litany.
I can’t get out of this.

I’m helpless.

With a not so gentle pat to his cheek, the intruder said, “How’s that?”

He forced out a muffled “Fuck you,” the tape tugging at his skin as his jaw moved.

The intruder’s eyes glinted in response. Then he leaned down—“The new safe word”—and put one hand behind Brian’s head while the other stretched across Brian’s face—“is if something’s wrong”—and tipped Brian’s head slowly until the back of his crown met the wall—“you bang the wall. Got it?”

Brian blinked.

“Let me do my least favorite thing in the world and repeat myself. I
said
, ‘Got it?’”

Brian narrowed his eyes, clenched his jaw muscles, and put a
fuck you
into his stare.

“Last chance: Do you understand, or do I have to demonstrate? If I have to demonstrate—” The intruder’s knee pushed between Brian’s, stopping so close to his crotch that he imagined he could feel the air being compressed between the two of them. He used his toes to push his crotch as far back as it would go. “—you’re not gonna like it.”

Brian shook his face free of the intruder’s grip and glared up again.

“So. Do you understand the new safe word?”

Slowly, Brian nodded, then bumped the back of his head against the wall to demonstrate, his stare hard.
I fucking got it.

The intruder pulled off him and dropped to a knee beside the chair, letting the tape roll slip free of his wrist again. Forcing Brian’s ankle up, he secured it, jeans, boot, and all, to the cross rail between the chair’s front and back legs. Without tearing the strip free, he brought the tape up and across Brian’s lap, then down the other side to secure the other ankle to the chair.

He rose to his feet and took a few steps back to look over his work.

The toes of Brian’s boots just touched the floor. Brian wriggled his ankles, trying to get more play, more leverage. The tape held tight.

He twisted his shoulders, struggling to break free.

“I think that’ll do it.” The intruder put a hand on the top of his head and stood there a second before turning and dropping the duct tape into the backpack. He picked up the gun—“Now we wait.”—and headed for the couch.

Wait?

Wait for what?

He watched the intruder round the couch, passing through the nimbus of the table lamp, and sink down until all Brian could see was his head, its shape unfamiliar and discomforting in the hoodie.

The intruder leaned forward, then sat back again.

After a second, a light opened up, glowing toward the intruder’s mask.

Shit.

The MacBook.

His
MacBook.

The one that saved his passwords and automatically logged him into things like his e-mail account. There was nothing incriminating there as far as he could recall, but still, the thought of Dylan poking through his messages while he sat here helpless, going through his archived mail, reading conversations he’d had with anyone and everyone—mutual friends, former girlfriends, acquaintances. The browser’s history would be accessible too, where again there was nothing scintillating to be found—anytime he looked at stuff he wouldn’t want his mother seeing (not that she looked), he cleared the history. None of the hardcore stuff he looked at, the crazy stuff that put him over the edge, none of that would be there.

He was pretty sure.

Or, at least…he hoped.

It was possible the intruder wasn’t treading over his privacy at all. Dylan could have opened a fresh browser window to check his own e-mail, catch up on his newsfeed, watch porn, whatever.

One thing he didn’t do while Brian stared at the back of his head was look over his shoulder.

Brian rested his head against the wall. The duct tape tugged at his face when he swallowed. The adhesive itched. He breathed in slowly through his nostrils, then even more slowly back out.

A minute ticked by, then another.

“Now we wait.”

For what?

He closed his eyes.

Time to pass?

How much time?

He swallowed, his chin pulling at the tape. He canted his hips back, trying to ease the pressure on his forearms. Stretching his fingers, he pushed them against the wall behind him, wondering if he could move the chair away from it—but if he could, it would only be an inch or so before his fingertips could only graze the wall, and he’d have no more leverage to work with.

He leaned his head against it instead.

“Now we wait.”

And wait. And wait, without even a piece of ice to glance up at for an estimate on how much time he had left.

Movement from the couch. He turned his eyes toward it. The intruder had gotten comfortable, his head a little lower now, half-obscured by the couch.

Brian raised one shoulder, then the other, testing to see which of his wrists had more play. Neither. Or just maybe…the right one. He folded his hand as small as it would go and tried to work it up. Adhesive pulled at the hairs on his arm. Letting out a soft noise against the tape over his mouth, he twisted his wrist back the other way, then back again. Another pull, ignoring the tape’s grip on his arm hairs.

No good.

He tipped his head back quietly. Listened to his breaths patter against the tape. His mantra played in his head, almost unconsciously:
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t
, each one causing a dull throb where he was sitting.

He couldn’t even close his legs, the bulge in his jeans on full display should Dylan happen to get up, come over, and look.

He swallowed. Impossible not to be aware of the tape when he had to swallow. He wondered if he could get it off his face if he worked at it. Glancing toward the couch again, he saw there’d been no change in that situation. Good.

He tilted his head to one side and began rubbing his jaw slowly against the rough cotton of his T-shirt. A little catch of a tape edge against the seam gave him hope. He worked that edge until an ache blossomed across the side of his neck. When he looked out of the corner of his eye, he could see faint progress had been made: a small line stood up where he’d managed to push some of the tape back against itself.

He dropped his head forward, giving his neck a rest.

Breathing.

Thinking.

Fidgeting just to feel the restraints that held him.

He swallowed thickly, unable to do anything about the insistent throb in his cock.

He started moving his mouth, side to side, pulling it open—and his upper lip slipped upward a little, closer to the top edge of the tape.
Yes
. He shifted his jaw left, right, then opened his mouth again. Again his upper lip moved a little closer toward freedom. It wouldn’t be a perfect solution: once his lip got free, he’d have no way, really, to get the tape off the rest of his mouth. But still. He ducked his head to the side and tried his shoulder again. Another eighth of an inch of tape caught and peeled back. Fresh air skated over the narrowest sliver of exposed skin. He set his jaw against his shoulder and pulled again. Again.

Movement to his left brought his head up quickly.

The intruder was rounding the couch.

Hitching air through his nostrils, he watched the intruder come toward him, watched him stop just in front of the chair, hands on his hips.

He didn’t say a word, just shook his head.

Fuck you
, Brian thought and tilted his head toward his shoulder again.
Fuck you for leaving a way for me to get free of any part of this.

While he rubbed his jaw across his shoulder, the intruder pulled the roll of tape back out of the bag.

Fuck you
. Brian lifted his face, moved it forward, set it against his shoulder again, and
pulled
, working that peeled-up edge of tape.

Fresh tape went
rrrripptt
a few feet in front of him as it came off the roll.

The intruder gripped Brian by the hair and yanked his head up.

The groan that came deep from his throat was a mixture of defeat and desire—
yes, more tape
—as fresh tape was slapped across his mouth and the roll wound behind his head and back around. When the intruder didn’t tear the tape free and smooth it down but instead began another wind around, Brian moaned again, eyes closing as the intruder forced his head forward to pull the tape across the back of his head. He slitted his eyes to watch the roll pass in front of his nose for a third time.

When the intruder came around to the front again, he shoved Brian’s head back by the forehead so he could pass the tape underneath his chin and back around his head.

He tore the roll free and smoothed the edge down in the back, then pushed Brian’s head up one last time, holding it against the wall with a hand splayed across Brian’s mouth. Brian’s breaths hit the side of his glove.

The intruder stared at him, his eyes unreadable.

Brian swallowed, the soft underside of his chin meeting resistance from the tape, letting him know how thoroughly the job had been done this time.

The intruder stared until Brian dragged his gaze back up and forced out a muffled, “Fuck you.”

The intruder laid his hand softly against the side of Brian’s face, thumb rubbing lightly against the tape. Brian fought the urge to lean into it like a cat rubbing against its keeper’s legs. Instead he threw his body forward, the chair jumping an inch or two with him.

Calmly pointing one finger to the chair legs, the intruder lifted another to his ski mask as he straightened:
Shhh.

Brian gave another half-intelligible “Fuck you” as the intruder turned away.

A moment after Dylan had settled back on the couch, Brian began to struggle. He pulled his arms, trying to wrench one or the other free of the tape. He jerked his ankles against the tape holding them to the chair. He panted and sweated and threw himself against his bonds—fuck the noise the chair legs made.

A sound came up from his throat, the breaking sound of defeat. He sagged against his bonds, heart pounding, head thrumming. He really wasn’t getting out of this.

Shit.

He lifted his head—too quickly. His skull thunked the wall lightly.

Double fucking shit.

The intruder was already on his feet, rounding the couch in long strides, gun in hand.

Brian’s breaths came in shallow little hitches through his nose.
Please don’t let him stop it because I hit the wall by accident
. His heart knocked and fluttered like a panicked bird against the bars of its cage.

Then the intruder was in front of him, blocking the light, tipping Brian’s face upward, looking into his eyes. “Everything all right?”

“Fuck you,” he forced through the tape.

They stared at each other.

“Fuck you!” Breaths from his nostrils pattered loudly.

The intruder’s eyes crinkled. He mussed Brian’s hair.

He shook his head free, but the intruder was already walking away, strolling toward the bathroom. The light came on. Brian saw two masked men for a split second, the real and the reflected, and then both passed out of view.

His muscles relaxed.

His breaths still came closely together, but softer. He clenched his fists, tightening his wrist muscles against the tape, then let his fingers open and hang in the air, useless.

He rolled his head to one side, then the other, loosening his neck.

The toilet flushed.

His intruder moved back into view, stopping at the sink to wash his hands, dry them.

Something about seeing his hands naked… It was like seeing something secret, something Brian shouldn’t know about. Another noise broke loose from his throat, softly.

Their eyes met in the mirror as the intruder tugged his gloves back on. Something hot and heavy rolled in Brian’s groin, his mind dragging up the memory of those gloves cradling his face as Dylan had smoothed the tape across his mouth with his thumbs. He wanted to feel a glove on him again, couldn’t drag his eyes away as the intruder flicked the light off and came walking out, headed for the table with the backpack on it.

Brian watched, rapt. What else was in there? What else was Dylan going to do to him?

The intruder’s hand came out with a pack of cigarettes, a matchbook tucked in its plastic wrapper. His gaze swept over Brian, not meeting his eyes but making a cursory check of the situation before he headed through the living room to the balcony.

Brian turned his head, following.

The blinds clattered softly as the intruder swept them back and pulled up the bar that locked the door. He slid it open, then stepped into the darkness just beyond the doorway.

The intruder’s hand came up, feeling for the bottom edge of the ski mask. He folded it high enough to expose his chin and mouth. Another secret thing Brian shouldn’t see but couldn’t look away from, the shape of just that little bit of Dylan’s face both familiar and foreign at the same time. The intruder angled his body away then, so all Brian could make out was a patch of skin at the side of his neck, a stray curl of hair making a dark crescent against it.

The match flared, casting an orange glow over the gloves, and then the intruder was shaking its flame out.

Brian looked around the room, wondering how late it was, how long they’d been at this. Leading with his chin, he squinted toward the digital clock on the stove, tucked into the tiny galley of a kitchen straight across from where he sat. The display was just a green glow at first, before sharpening into a green glow that might be numbers. Which numbers they might be remained a mystery.

The side of his nose itched.

His elbows were sore from where they kept hitting the chair when he struggled or even when he just tried to adjust to a more comfortable position.