Double Blind (21 page)

“Ride?” Ethan echoed.

Randy nodded and jerked his head toward the garage. “On my bike. I’ll take you to see the Las Vegas sign.”

Ethan had been running a hand absently through his hair, but he stopped and frowned at Randy. “You don’t have to pay me to get me to take a ride with you.”

God, he looked so good when he was tousled.
How the hell did I end up with a guy who makes H&M look a little bit shabby?
Randy covered the vulnerable moment with a leer. “How about I pay you forty to feel me up while we ride?”

Ethan didn’t miss a beat. “You don’t have to pay me for that, either.”

Oh, sweet Jesus, he should just go fuck him right now. But he wanted a ride first. He reached over and took back the twenties.

“All right, then. But just so you know, you’re developing a habit of throwing money away over me.” He didn’t watch to see how Ethan reacted to that, and didn’t let him answer, either, just grabbed his belt loop and tugged him toward the door to the garage. “Come on, Slick. You need some wind in your hair.”

Randy
had always thought there wasn’t anything he loved more than driving too fast on his motorcycle down the streets of Las Vegas in the middle of the night. But now he knew that even better than driving too fast on his motorcycle down the streets of Las Vegas in the middle night was doing it with Slick’s long, lean body pressed up against his back, his half-aroused cock nestled tight against Randy’s backside through thin, expensive trousers, his strong fingers gripping Randy’s waist as the bike purred beneath them both.

He took Ethan down the 592 over to I-515 before turning down toward Sunset Road, and from there he took them all the way over to Las Vegas Boulevard. They went north until they got to the 5100 block, and from there Randy drove right up underneath the “Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. He slowed the bike and pulled over to the curb so Slick could get a better look.

“It’s still here?” Ethan’s voice had a note of wonder in it that got to Randy, and he took his own helmet off and turned around so he could get a better look at him. As his tone had promised, Ethan’s face was lit up, not just by the electric neon of the sign but by his own sense of wonder.

Randy turned reluctantly back to the sign. “They’ve moved it around a lot, and there was one time it went dark completely for a while, but yeah, it’s still here. It’s on the register of historic places now, I think, so it ought to be here to stay. Well, if not here, then it will stay in some form or another.” He glanced back at Ethan. “Didn’t peg you for one who would go soft at the Vegas sign, Slick.”

Ethan’s smile, to Randy’s delight, stayed soft and sweet. “Me, either.”

If Ethan had taken his helmet off, or if Randy thought he could manipulate his way inside the visor without bungling the moment, he’d have kissed Slick then. But the helmet stayed on, and there was time enough for that later. He reached over and slapped Ethan’s thigh instead. “Want to head up the Strip, baby?”

“Sure,” Ethan said, still looking up at the sign, and Randy smiled to himself as he turned around, put on his helmet, and aimed the bike back toward the street.

“Hold on,” he called over his shoulder. He took a moment to enjoy the feel of Ethan’s hands closing around his middle again, then took off.

They slowed way down as soon as they hit the Strip, of course, because it was just past 1:00 a.m. on a Friday night, and the place was still going strong. Randy didn’t mind, because it gave him the chance to point out bits of trivia to Ethan about the casinos, the Strip throughout history, and Las Vegas in general.

Plus, with the slow speed, Ethan’s hands had fallen down to rest more on Randy’s thighs than his waist, and sometimes his fingers teased—he was pretty sure deliberately—at Randy’s crotch.

“Vegas is what it is now because of Hoover Dam,” Randy told Ethan as they cruised past the MGM Grand. “The workers needed somewhere to spend their money, and Nevada had legal gambling and prostitution. Las Vegas was thirty miles away. Match made in heaven. Then the mob came in and put some organization to it all and turned the town into a machine.”

“Is that the mob Crabtree is a part of?” Ethan asked.

Randy cursed the need for helmets—if safety didn’t demand them, Ethan would have whispered that against his ear instead of shouting it at plastic. Of course, if the helmets weren’t there, he could be looking at their splattered brains across pavement as he drifted off to the afterlife if they had even the most minor of accidents.

“The mob isn’t really here anymore,” he said, turning his head a little as he spoke so Ethan could hear him. “It is, but not like that. Crabtree’s more of an artifact than anything. The mob was biggest in the fifties and sixties. It carried into the seventies and eighties, and it will always be around, but ever since the regulation laws and the Black Book—the official blacklist of people who can’t legally so much as set foot in a casino, and I mean that literally—mostly the mob is just a shadow. In the fifties and early sixties they were caretakers: people say Vegas was the safest damn place you could live back then, so long as you didn’t cheat the mob. They liked to keep their place clean, so there were no crimes in town outside of the skim in the casinos. They didn’t kill here, either; they did that out of town. But then Howard Hughes bought them out, and then they got old and the Chicago Outfit took over instead, and things changed. But mostly now there are just ghosts. And guys like Crabtree.”

“But you said he’s killed people.”

“Oh yeah.” Randy waved a hand to take in the Strip. “You ever watch
Casino
? Or
The Cooler
? He was part of the old way of taking care of people who cheated the casinos. There’s still some of that around, in its own way.”

Ethan’s body shifted closer, and Randy felt a clunk as their helmets met awkwardly. Fucking safety.

“Randy?” Ethan called. There was a husky quality to his voice that Randy really liked.

“Yeah?” he called back, a little husky too.

Ethan’s hands slid into the junction of Randy’s thighs, into the crease of his pants, then over to find his cock, which was rapidly coming to attention at the thought of Ethan’s hands saying hello.

“Randy,” Ethan said, very husky now. “Randy, I think I’m a little drunk.” The hands massaged Randy deliberately. “Randy, I want to fuck you. Now.” Ethan’s fingers clutched at him. “And I don’t want Crabtree to fuck you ever again.” Randy hissed as the fingers grew a little dangerous. “I
don’t
want him to tie you up.”

The lights of the Strip pulsed around Randy, as did the noise of the traffic and the crowd, and his bike roared as he flexed his hand on the accelerator and they cooled their heels at the stoplight next to Circus Circus. Randy felt drunk too. Drunk on Slick. He turned his head so Ethan could hear him.

“Then who’s going to tie me up, baby?”

The helmet slammed into his again, but it didn’t matter. Randy could imagine what it would have felt like to have Ethan’s tongue inside his ear.

“Me,” Ethan declared, and tightened his hands again.

By sheer force of will alone was Randy able to keep from running the bike into the cab in front of him. Suddenly he hated the traffic. Suddenly he wanted to leap onto the sidewalk and run the pedestrians down, because the thought of putting off the sensual promise in Ethan’s words and hands another minute was too much to bear.

He drew a breath to steady himself.

“Hold on,” he called to Slick when the light changed, and he began to weave through cars, illegal as hell, and when he got onto the 589, he turned right and sped like a bullet toward home.

He put the bike in the garage only because he had to, but once they were off, he tossed his helmet into the corner, grabbed Ethan’s, gave it the same treatment, then hauled his lover into his arms.

They made out up against the bike, because it was there and because it was sexy-dangerous: The tailpipe was still burning hot, and the whole thing seemed ready to tip over any second. Ethan was so hot for Randy that he sent the button to Randy’s pants flying off into the darkness, and he practically tore the zipper off its threads as he yanked Randy’s waistband down and freed the cock he had been teasing for the past forty-five minutes. Straddling the bike, keeping it upright as Ethan pushed back against his shoulders, Randy watched, then gasped as Ethan took hold of his cock, stroked it, tightened his grip around it, then slid his hand up and down along it. When Randy was shaking, Ethan leaned forward, and, with his hand still on Randy’s dick, he kissed the divot above Randy’s collarbone, which was visible just above the top button of his shirt. Then he licked it. Then he opened his mouth, suckled the skin, and nipped, not hard, but enough to make Randy cry out in surprise.

“I want to fuck you, Randy,” Ethan declared again.

Please do,
Randy thought. He said, “Here on the bike?”

“In the house.” Ethan nipped again and tightened his grip. “In your bed.”

“Still going to tie me up?” Randy’s body, somehow, seemed to have lost most of its bones. He already knew all his blood was in his crotch.

Ethan’s laugh was wicked. “Oh, yes.”

And so they stumbled into the house, through the door, down the hall, and into the room—Randy threw the door closed, but it banged back open, and Ethan didn’t seem to give a damn about it.
Well, Sam and Mitch can just have a taste of their own back,
he thought, then cried out as Ethan’s mouth closed against his neck.

Slick was a biter. Who would have thought?

As his clothes were stripped away and Ethan bit, licked, and sucked his way across Randy’s shoulders, arms, chest, and thighs, Randy found himself hoping that maybe this was something special, this Ethan that Slick was giving him. That maybe this was all that pain and emptiness that had been scaring the shit out of Randy all day turned on its head, turned inside out, poured out in a ruthless game of poker, a ride down the Strip, and enough gin to float an oil tanker.

He hoped, at the very least, that the idiot Nick Snow had never had a taste of this Ethan. Because he didn’t fucking deserve him.

“Where?” Ethan rasped, sliding up Randy’s belly. “Where—I want—” His hands closed over Randy’s wrist, pinning it down.

“Box. Floor. Behind you.” Randy’s mind ran a swift inventory of the box’s contents, and his cock hummed in anticipation. He fell back onto the sheets, clutching at them. “Use whatever you want.”

Ethan moved away, and Randy lay still, quiet, waiting. He thought, briefly, that maybe Ethan would see what was in there and freak out, but he pushed the thought aside. No. That wasn’t going to happen, not tonight.

Now who’s betting on black?
a voice at the back of his head sneered.

Randy knew a moment of cold fear. Trembling, he pushed the thought aside. He wasn’t betting on black. He was betting on Slick. That was different. His hands, now sweaty, tightened on the sheets. He hoped it was different.

The pause went on just a little too long, and Randy began to get nervous. And then Ethan was looming over him, his eyes wild, but with lust, not disgust. He held up a pair of shackles and a harness in his hand.

“Show me how to use these on you,” he demanded.

Randy did.

There was some awkwardness but not much, and Ethan’s enthusiasm for binding and probing Randy more than made up for it. Whispering, nudging, encouraging, they moved through the dark, Randy explaining in exquisite, erotic detail how Ethan could best spread him open, pull him back, pin him down. And Ethan did. It didn’t take long for Ethan to have him kneeling over a bench, his ankles held wide apart by a metal spreader, his hands cuffed almost painfully behind his back and attached to the chest harness he’d explained to Ethan how to strap him into. Knees braced against the cushions and his forehead pressed to the bench, Randy trembled, open and waiting as Ethan decided what he wanted to do next.