The King

“Sure. What?”

“Why are you here?”

He shrugged, as if the question were obvious.

“You know. Tits. Asses. Naked girls.”

“You weren’t looking at the girls. Not even the one who took your drink order. Which I found interesting, as she was mostly naked.”

Kingsley took another sip of his bourbon straight from the bottle. It burned his throat all the way to his stomach. The woody aftertaste stained the inside of his mouth.

“Sir, I don’t know what your problem is with me being here, but I can—”

“Do your parents know?”

“Know what? That I’m here?”

“That you’re gay.”

The blond tried to stand up again, but Kingsley kicked his leg under the table, and the boy landed hard back in his chair.

“You can go when I say you can go,” Kingsley said. “Now, any other man in here would argue with me if I said he was gay. But you try to leave. I can only assume you won’t argue with me because it’s true.”

The blond sat in silence and didn’t meet Kingsley’s eyes. A beautiful boy, Kingsley would have noticed him even if he weren’t blond. A strong jaw, strong nose, angular face, high enough cheekbones to give him an air of sophistication and yet, he had wary eyes, watching eyes, eyes that never rested for long, as if he were forever looking over his shoulder. His hair was the pale variety of blond, the Nordic variety. Kingsley’s favorite. He wore clothes designed to blend in with a crowd—faded jeans, white shirt, black jacket. But he’d failed in his attempt. Kingsley had noticed him at once.

“No, they don’t know,” the boy said. “I’m in town with my dad on a business trip. He’s out with clients tonight. I’m... I walked around Greenwich Village last night. I met this guy outside a club. He told me some rumors about this place.”

“Believe them,” Kingsley said.

“You don’t know what rumors I heard.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Kingsley took another sip of the bourbon. “All of them are true.”

“So the guy who owns this place—”

“What about him?”

“They say he’s in with the mafia?”

“It’s a strip club.” Kingsley rolled his eyes. “Every club in town cleans money for the mob whether they want to or not. It’s all cash here. It’s part of the deal. What else have you heard?”

“That the owner of the club—”

“Yes?”

“He used to kill people for a living.”

“Also true. But if it makes you feel any better, I did it for the government. Never recreationally.”

The boy’s eyes widened hugely.

“You own this place?”

“Haven’t you ever gotten bored and bought a strip club?”

“No...”

“In my defense,” Kingsley said, “it was on sale.”

The boy narrowed his eyes at Kingsley. “You really own this place?”

“I do. Why don’t you believe me?”

“You have to be rich to own a club. No offense, but you don’t look rich.”

Kingsley glanced down at his clothes. He, too, had dressed to blend in tonight—black pants, black shoes, gray shirt and black leather jacket. Nothing out of the ordinary. No one dressed up to go hunting.

“Rich people don’t look rich. When you have enough money, you don’t have to impress anyone.”

“And you seem kind of young.”

“I’m twenty-eight. I should seem ancient to you. Twenty-eight was ancient to me when I was nineteen.”

“I’m twenty-one, remember,” the blond said. “And you aren’t ancient.”

“What am I?” Kingsley raised his chin and gazed down at the boy.

“You’re the most... I mean, you’re...”

“Spit it out. Use your words.”

“Gorgeous.”

Kingsley raised an eyebrow. He didn’t mind the flattery or the adulation, but he’d wanted the boy the second he’d walked into the club. Time to move things along.

“What else have you heard?”

The boy glanced around. He dropped his voice.

“I heard that there’s another room—”

“It’s more than one room.”

The boy sat back. He ran a nervous hand through his hair. Kingsley envied his fingers.

“So it’s true? You all do kink here? And...other stuff?”

“You know why this club is called the Möbius?” Kingsley asked.

“No. Weird name.”

“A Möbius strip is an optical illusion. It looks like it has two sides, but it has only one.”

Kingsley picked the napkin off the table. Embossed on the white paper was a small ribbon, oval-shaped. His patrons likely thought it was an elegant rendition of a vagina. The image conveniently worked on two levels.

“I don’t understand,” the blond said.

“Do you want to understand?”

“It’s why I’m here.”

“Then follow me. I’ll be your tour guide through hell.”

Kingsley grabbed the bottle off the table, and the boy followed him to a quiet corner of the club. To the right of the bar was a door bearing an employees only sign. Kingsley pushed through. The blond hesitated, but Kingsley grasped him by the wrist and pulled him.

“I told you I own this place. Do you think you’re going to get into trouble?” Kingsley asked.

“Yeah,” the blond said.

“If you’re with me, you’re already in trouble.”

They walked down a short hall to another door. Kingsley paused to pull out his keys.

“I should go,” the blond said. “I—”

Without even looking at him, Kingsley shoved the boy back against the wall and held him there with one hand.

He found the key but didn’t put it in the lock. Instead, he dangled it in front of the boy’s face. In the brighter light of the hallway Kingsley could see the blond had light brown eyes. Not the steel-gray color he’d hoped for, but still he would do.

“This key opens a door to a hidden part of this club,” Kingsley said. “The part of the club you came to see. Doors are symbols, you know. Thresholds to cross, choices to be made. It’s not often that a real door stands between you and a different life. Don’t waste this chance. You go back that way, and you stay in your old world. You open that door, and you enter a new one.”

The boy eyed the silver key dangling from Kingsley’s middle finger.

“If you were me...” the blond said.

“I was you,” Kingsley said.

“What did you choose?”

Kingsley didn’t answer at first. There had been no door for him, no key.

“I ran through the door. And I never looked back.”

Sweat beaded on the boy’s smooth young forehead. Kingsley held him still and hard against the wall and under his hand he could feel the boy’s heart battering against his chest.

The boy reached up and grabbed the key. With fumbling fingers, he shoved it in the lock, turned the knob and pushed through the door. This time, Kingsley followed him.

Behind the door, the world changed color. Out front, the lights were black. Here they were blue. Out in the club, a pantomime of sex played out on and around the stage. Girls gave lap dances, feigned interest and faked smiles. Here, behind the door, men groped in the dark, coupled frantically, secretly. Nothing was feigned. No one pretended to fuck back here. They fucked.

“Jesus,” the boy whispered as they passed a man bent over a chair, another man behind him, inside him, fucking him without shame or restraint.

“If you’re looking for Jesus, you won’t find him down here,” Kingsley said, stepping in front of the blond to guide him through the hall.

“Is this a bathhouse?” the boy asked.

“You see anyone taking a bath?”

The boy laughed. “No.”

“It’s not a brothel, either. No one’s paying for sex here. I’m not a pimp.”

“What is it then?”

“Sanctuary,” Kingsley said. “Most of these men are married. Children. Jobs. They come to the club because no one cares if a man goes to a strip club full of naked women. They walk in the front door first. But it’s the back door they’re here for.”

Kingsley laughed, but the boy didn’t. The other blond would have gotten his joke.

“Are you married?” the boy asked.

“Do I look married to you?”

“Do you have kids?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then why—”

Kingsley grabbed the boy and shoved him against the wall again.

“You talk too much,” Kingsley said.

The blond swallowed visibly. He licked his lips, and Kingsley’s groin tightened.

“Then shut me up,” the blond whispered.

The boy wanted to be kissed, and Kingsley wanted to kiss him. The boy’s lips trembled, his whole body trembled. But kissing him would make it all personal. Tonight he wanted anonymity.

“Why are you scared?” Kingsley asked.

“I don’t... We just met.”

“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Nothing but this.”

Without warning the boy, Kingsley turned him and pushed him, chest first, against the wall. Kingsley pressed his chest into the boy’s back, slid his hand down his stomach and opened his pants.

“We’re in the hall,” the blond whispered, and there it was—the fear in his voice. Fear, intoxicating, erotic fear.

“I own the hall. I’ll do whatever I want in it.”

Kingsley wrapped his fingers around the boy’s erection and stroked him.

“You like that?” Kingsley asked, stroking again. “You’re hard, so you must like it.”

“Yeah,” he breathed. His voice sounded pained. “I like it.”

“What do you like? Say it?”

“Your hand on me, on my cock.”

“What do you want? Tell me what you want.”

“I want it all,” the boy said. “I leave tomorrow. This is my only chance.”

“Only chance? You’re a beautiful child, young, new...” Kingsley kissed the back of the boy’s neck. The kiss turned to a bite. “You’ll have other chances.”

The blond shook his head. “You don’t know what it’s like where I live.”

“Where do you live?”

“Texas.”

Kingsley laughed softly but felt the first stirrings of sympathy. He crushed it under his heel like a bug.

“You want it all?” Kingsley asked.

“Yes.” The blond laid his hand on top of Kingsley’s, as if he needed contact with the man who touched him so intimately. “Give me something to take home with me. I can live on the memories.”

“I’ll give you more than memories.”

Kingsley bit hard into the boy’s neck. He cried out in pain even as his hard cock twitched in Kingsley’s hand.

He didn’t give the boy a chance to straighten his clothes before Kingsley grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him down the hallway. When he’d bought the Möbius, he’d also bought the suite of unused offices behind it. Easy enough to convert them into bedrooms. Dozens of trysts happened each day in this hallway. Kingsley charged nothing but rent and the cost of the key. And a generous tip for the poor woman who washed the sheets every day.

The uninitiated might have trouble finding their way around the back halls. The only illumination came from the lamps in the rooms that spilled pale blue light from under the doors and onto the dull gray carpet. Soft and pained sounds escaped the rooms they passed. The men within had trained themselves to keep their desires quiet, and even when giving rein to them, nothing more than a few desperate grunts and the squeak of bedsprings could be heard in the hallway.

“Where are we going?”

“Hell. Or my room. Same thing.”

Kingsley led him down a second hall toward his private room.

“What are you going to do to me?” the boy asked as they neared the final door.

“Beat you and fuck you,” Kingsley said. “Do you have a problem with that? If so, I’d speak up now.”

The boy’s steps faltered. Kingsley grabbed him once more and pushed him back against the wall.

“Problem?” Kingsley asked. He kissed the boy’s neck, pulled down his collar and bit his chest.

“Will I like it?” The blond slid his hands under Kingsley’s shirt, seeking skin-to-skin contact.

“It’s not fun for me if you don’t like it, too,” Kingsley said, grabbing the boy’s wandering hands and pinning them behind his back. “I want you to look at your bruises in the mirror tomorrow and come all over yourself from the sight of them. I want you to see each welt and remember the moment I gave it to you. I want you to try to have normal sex with someone and lay there like a corpse because he’s not hurting you and you need pain to feel alive. I want to ruin you tonight so that every other night feels like a waste of your life. Is that what you want, too?”

The blond boy pushed his hips against Kingsley’s and rasped two words.

“Ruin me.”

3

KINGSLEY OPENED THE door to his room, took the boy by the collar of his jacket and pushed him inside.

The boy stood in the center of the bedroom. Bedroom, yes. Nothing but a room with a bed. Kingsley hadn’t even bothered with a chair. Why waste the floor space? The bed itself was black—black sheets, metal frame. Light from the barred and grated window cast squares of weak yellow squares across the sheets and the floor.

“Can I ask you a weird question?” the blond said as he turned to Kingsley.

“Ask.”

“I can’t figure your accent out. Where are you from?”

Kingsley smiled.

“Not Texas.”

He grabbed the boy by the throat and forced him to the floor. He slapped him once, hard. Hard enough that the blond gasped, not hard enough to leave a mark.

“Fight back if you want,” Kingsley said as he stripped the boy of his jacket and threw it aside. “You’ll lose. But you can try.”

The boy was already struggling against him as Kingsley pulled his shirt up, exposing the bare flesh of his back.

Kingsley grasped the bamboo cane he kept under the bed.

“I’m going to cane you.”

“Will it hurt?”

“Fuck, yes, it will.”

The boy shuddered, but he didn’t say no, so Kingsley took that as a yes.

Once, twice, five times he struck the boy’s back, harder each time. The blond didn’t cry out but only released soft grunts of pain. A passing car beamed a momentary spotlight into the room, and Kingsley could see the furious red welts already raised on the boy’s otherwise pale and spotless flesh.

“Beg for mercy if you want me to stop,” Kingsley said, digging his hand into the boy’s blond hair at the base of his skull and forcing his face against the bare wood floor.

“Don’t stop.” The blond boy’s voice was flush with desire and desperation.

Kingsley stripped him completely naked before striking him again with the cane—across the front of his thighs, across the back, all over him from his shoulders to his knees and back up again. Meanwhile the boy made no protest, begged no mercy and never once asked him to stop. The boy lay in the fetal position on the floor. Kingsley stood up, put a shod foot on his shoulder and pushed him on to his ravaged back. He flinched and arched as his brutalized skin met the floor.

“Touch yourself,” Kingsley ordered. “I want to watch.”

The blond took his erection in his hand and stroked upward.

“Keep going.” Kingsley watched as the blond rubbed himself with his right hand. He knew it was agony, every movement he made would scrape the raw wounds on his back. And yet for all the agony, the blond was hard. Fluid dripped from the tip on to his lower stomach. Kingsley longed to lick it off. “It hurts, doesn’t it? Your whole body?”

“It hurts,” he breathed.

“Good.” Kingsley walked to the bed and pulled a tube of lubricant out from under the pillow. Better to do this on the hard, unforgiving floor than the bed. He slept in a bed, was at his most vulnerable in a bed. He didn’t want to be vulnerable tonight.

Kingsley knelt between the boy’s legs, nudging his thighs wider. He pushed his fingers into the welts on the boy’s legs. When the boy’s groans reached a crescendo, Kingsley brought his mouth down on to his cock and sucked him deep. Pleasure and pain, pleasure and pain. He would couple them together tonight for this boy, and never again would he feel one without the other, desire one without the other. The boy would either hate him or thank him for this later—Kingsley didn’t care which. But he knew one thing for certain; this beautiful blond teenager would never forget him.

As he sucked him, Kingsley wet his fingertips with the lubricant and pushed them into the blond’s anus. The blond grunted but said nothing more. Kingsley poked and probed inside him, until the boy’s grunts of discomfort turned to gasps of pleasure. Kingsley opened him up while licking and massaging every inch of him.

“I’m coming,” the boy said between heavy breaths.

“Come, then.” Kingsley put his mouth down deep over him and tasted the salt on his tongue. He wanted to swallow but didn’t want to give the boy any ideas that this encounter meant more that it did. He spat it on the floor, pushed the boy on to his stomach, stroked himself to his full hardness and, without mercy, entered the boy.

The boy cried out, his hands scratching against the hardwood floor.

“Take it,” Kingsley said. “Take it all. Don’t fight it.”

“I won’t.” The boy shook his head. “I want it.”

Kingsley pushed in again. The boy was tight as a fist around him, and it took all of his hard-won self-control to keep from spilling into him right now. He’d only been with women lately. He’d almost forgotten how good it felt to fuck a young man, especially one so rare and lovely as this long-limbed youth with the perfect pale blond hair and the heart both afraid and fearless.

Closing his eyes, Kingsley rose up and bore down. The boy gasped beneath him.

“Please,” he said.

“Please what?” Kingsley asked.

“Please, let me touch you.”

Kingsley unbuttoned his shirt while still deep inside the boy. He pulled out, let the boy roll on to his back. He grabbed the boy’s hands, pressing them to his chest.

“You have scars,” he said, running his hands over Kingsley’s bare torso.

“I am nothing but scars.”

The blond pushed his palms against Kingsley’s stomach and traced the muscles there.

“Your body’s amazing,” the boy said as he pushed Kingsley’s shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. “I can’t stop...”

His hands roamed all over Kingsley’s exposed skin—his shoulders, his biceps, his scarred chest and taut stomach. But when the blond tried to touch his hair, Kingsley seized both wrists and slammed them into the floor.

Kingsley thrust deep and kept thrusting. Enough niceties. He should never have let the boy touch him like that. But it had been so long since he’d fucked someone without tying them up first, he’d forgotten what it felt like to be touched during sex.

Pressure built inside Kingsley’s stomach and hips. He pushed repeatedly into the boy who raised his knees to his chest to take even more of him. Fucking turned into mindless rutting as Kingsley slammed into him with quick hard thrusts. No matter how much he gave, the boy only begged for more. When Kingsley couldn’t hold off a second longer, he pulled out, shoved the boy on to his stomach and came all over his red-welted back.

Finally the room was still, and Kingsley was still and the blond boy on the floor was still. Kingsley wiped the semen off the blond’s abraded skin.

Underneath him the boy shivered and shuddered. The salt into the wounds must have hurt more than anything else had.

“You did well,” Kingsley said, and heard another voice saying those same words to him once.

Kingsley stood up, cleaned himself off and straightened his clothes. As if every movement caused him agony, the boy slowly sat up. He looked down at his body, at his welts, before looking up at Kingsley again. His lips were parted, his eyes wide. He crossed his arms over his stomach and pulled his legs to his chest.

“There’s a shower through that door.” Kingsley picked up the boy’s shirt and gave it to him. “You can get cleaned up. You can stay here tonight if you want. Those welts will turn into bruises. Keep your clothes on until they’re gone.”

“Are you leaving?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t you stay? For a little while? We don’t... We can talk.”

“I don’t want to talk,” Kingsley said.

The boy scrambled to his feet and pulled his jeans on. He sat on the bed and spent longer than necessary buttoning his shirt. Kingsley finished pulling himself together. He’d shower back at the town house. Nothing worth bothering with right now. All he wanted to do was drink himself into a stupor and sleep until he woke up dead. As usual.

“You’re young,” Kingsley said. “You’ll heal fast.” He wasn’t speaking about the welts.

He gave the boy one more smile before turning his back and heading to the door.

“My name’s Justin,” the blond called out after him.

Kingsley turned around and looked at him. A square of light from the window lay across the boy’s face like a white mask.

“I’ve only been with a guy once. It wasn’t like this. I didn’t even come. If my parents knew I was gay, they’d kick me out. I just... I wanted you to know those three things.”

“Anything else?” Kingsley asked, keeping his face composed, his voice devoid of emotion.

“You’re beautiful,” Justin said. “I feel stupid for saying that to another guy, but I can’t find another word. And what you did to me was everything I’ve always wanted. So...thank you.”

“You’re thanking me?”

“They teach us manners in Texas.”

Kingsley could taste the boy on his lips. Walk away. He knew he should walk away.

He pulled out his wallet and, from it, took a slim silver card with black ink.

“My name is Kingsley Edge. Not entirely, but it’s what I answer to. I’m French. That’s the accent you hear. And if your family kicks you out—and you’re right, they might—come back to this city and find me. I can help you. I’m not saying I will help you. But I can if I’m in the mood.”

Justin took the card and held it in his fist.

“Why did you pick me tonight? Only gay guy in the club?”

“There were three if I counted correctly.”

“Then why me?”

“You’re blond,” Kingsley answered truthfully. Justin gave a little laugh.

“You must really love blonds, then.”

“No.” Kingsley smiled tiredly. “I hate them.”

Without another word or a kiss goodbye, Kingsley left the room, left the hall, left the club and walked into the rainy streets of Manhattan. He should have called for his driver to come for him and take him home. But after so much sadism, a little masochism would do him good. The rain had turned the night near freezing, and Kingsley dug his hands deep into his jacket pockets burrowing for warmth. He walked fast, lengthening his strides as the late-winter rain soaked him to the skin. After two miles he arrived home to his town house. He paused outside and looked up. After six months living here, he still couldn’t believe he owned a Manhattan palace. Three stories—four if one counted the pool in the basement—black-and-white facade, wrought-iron balconies, a glass conservatory on the roof and luxurious bedroom after bedroom after bedroom...

Any one of his bedrooms would do him right now. He wanted to be warm and naked and drunk this very second. He ran up the stairs, opened the door and shut it behind him. He didn’t lock it. He never locked the door. Someone was always in the house, always coming or going. And people only locked their doors to keep the barbarians at the gate. He was the barbarian. Why would he keep himself out?

As soon as he entered the house, he pulled off his jacket and tossed it on the floor. Someone would take care of it. Someone always did. He heard music coming from within the house. Blaise, he guessed. She’d taken to staying here most nights, even the nights he didn’t fuck her. She seemed the sort to like piano music—or at least to pretend she liked it.

He trudged up the steps but paused before he reached the first landing. The music...it didn’t sound as if it came from a stereo or a radio. No, it sounded close, and live. Alive.

“Fuck.” Kingsley stormed back down the stairs. He had one rule in his house and one rule only. No one touches the grand piano in the music room. No one. It was to be looked at and never touched, never played, never even acknowledged. Whoever dared touch his piano would be thrown into the street and forbidden from ever crossing the threshold of his house again. The person who defied Kingsley’s one law would curse the day he’d ever learned to play the fucking piano.