Games Boys Play (4 page)

“Yeah, I’ll talk to you later.” Brian set the phone on the kitchen counter and went back to the door to wrestle his keys out. As he tugged on them, his brain played out the idea of someone yanking his arms behind him and tying his wrists together, forcing him to his knees. To the floor. Holding him down with a boot. It didn’t make it any easier to get the keys free.

“Goddamn it.” He gripped the edge of the door and jiggled the keys again.

“Someone” had never really had a face—it was just hands, fists, gruff orders, hard knees that pinned him down. His brain tried to put Dylan’s face there, cigarette jutting from the corner of his mouth, one eye squinting against the smoke as he arranged and knotted rope.
How’s that? Too tight? I can loosen it if you want.

Brian put the sandwich in the fridge and grabbed the last of the beers, put a record on, and slouched down on his couch.

All right—how’s that? Can you wiggle out? No? So, what’s next? Do I just go sit and watch TV for a while?

He imagined Dylan with his arm stretched across the back of the couch, glancing over at him every few minutes.
Still doing okay? That’s not too tight, is it? Hey, this morning, I showed up at the job site. You remember Kai, right? Big guy with a knocked-out tooth?

Brian sank lower on the couch.

He couldn’t do this with Dylan. And then get up onstage with him? Show his face at the family Fourth of July party? Have a normal, casual conversation with him ever again. After that? With it always at the back of his mind? It was bad enough Dylan
knew
about it.

Night settled in. Brian didn’t bother turning on lights, didn’t bother trying to push the darkness back to the corners. The empty beer bottle sat on the coffee table by his knee.

He could
not
do this with Dylan.

The thought made him green around the gills.

The last song faded out. When it went quiet, the tone arm lifted and returned to its rest. The platter slowed to a stop.

The night seemed even deeper for the silence.

He could
not
fucking do this with Dylan.

Chapter Five

At first Brian was worried that the past week—being discovered, Dylan’s knowing what went on, Dylan’s offer—would make him too self-conscious to enjoy time with himself for…who knew how long. A year?
Years?
Maybe he’d dip his toe back in when he was thirty-two?

And in the meantime, what?

All the more reason to climb back onto the proverbial horse now, before it galloped out of reach.

It was a Friday, eleven in the morning. Dylan would be working a job for his dad. Brian jammed a chair under the knob of the apartment’s front door anyway, just to be safe. The last thing he needed was for Kelsey—Dylan’s half sister and the band’s social-media manager—to drop by unexpectedly, wanting to take a picture of a guitar or some shit for the band’s Instagram feed. At this point, he was no longer assuming someone with a key wouldn’t just let themselves in.

He hadn’t planned for this, so he didn’t have a block of ice ready. That was fine; it didn’t need to last for hours. He stuffed a few ice cubes in the sock, hung the key ring over it, and tied the sock to the ceiling fan in his bedroom. The spare keys he left, as usual, on the kitchen counter.

He gathered his rope, wrist cuffs, and handcuffs, then sat on the bedroom floor. Legs were always the easy part. He bent his right knee and pulled it as close to his body as he could, roping his ankle to his thigh. He tied it off and pushed the short ends that remained between his thigh and calf so they wouldn’t hang free.

Rolling backward, he was able to rope his left ankle to his left thigh in the same fashion, again tucking the ends of rope out of the way.

He felt around on the floor for the handcuffs, dragged them close, and forced one of the bracelets through the rope at each of his ankles. When he locked it, the clicks of the ratchet quickening his heartbeat, the cuff forced his ankles close together. He gave it a few tugs. It felt secure, and yanking on it didn’t cause the ropes around his legs to cinch tight. First step: done.

He maneuvered onto his knees so that he was sitting with his butt on his heels, and fastened the leather cuffs around his wrists. The locks rattled against the buckles as he reached for another length of rope.

Today he wanted his elbows pulled together behind him. He wanted to feel the ropes binding his arms as he struggled helplessly on the floor.

He doubled the rope over and fed the ends through the bight so he had a sliding loop with two long ends coming out of it. Behind his back, he slipped his wrists through the loop and worked it up above his elbows, the ends of the rope hanging between his arms. These he pulled to tighten the loop. Holding the ends in one fist to keep the loops from slipping loose, he flexed his arms against the ropes. Oh yeah—this was good.

He separated the ends and, leaning forward and back to pass the ends back and forth, wrapped the rope around his arms and chest until he had just short ends left in front of him. He tied them at his sternum. Step two: done.

He picked up the other end of the handcuffs.

His cock strained in his jeans. In a minute, there’d be nothing he could do about that.

He hooked the D ring on his left cuff onto the handcuff bracelet, then slipped the right cuff’s D ring onto it as well.

He sat there, breathing slowly, one finger covering the slot in the cuff’s shackle to keep it from swinging shut.

His cock throbbed. The slightest shift of his muscles pushed it tighter against his jeans, sending little ripples of pleasure through the center of him.

With his eyes closed, he went over everything: Was anything too tight? Was anything going to cut off his circulation? He felt with his thumb to make sure the handcuff’s keyhole was facing toward his body; otherwise it would be a royal bitch to get the key in later. He looked up at the ice hanging above his head, making sure he hadn’t done something stupid like tie the keys to the sock.

Everything was good.

All he had to do was move his finger off the slot and push the end of the handcuff bracelet down into it, and he’d be stuck for an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Back in the saddle. Putting the whole Dylan debacle behind him.

He drew in a deep breath while, behind his back, just about as far down as his wrists could reach, he pushed the end of the bracelet into the slot.

Click.

Click-click-click.

Click.

He let out his breath. Step three:
done.

He relaxed his shoulders and let his hands hang free. He was stuck now. Helpless. Nothing he could do about it until time and gravity dropped the keys to the floor.

He relaxed a little more.

And the rope above his elbows slacked.

Drooped a little.

Brushed, loose, against his elbows.

God
damn
it.

He shifted his arms, and the rope dropped a few inches more.

God-
fucking
-damn it.

He wriggled. If he could get loose, he could redo everything and start again before the ice had too much of a chance to melt.

With his elbows given more play by the loosened rope coils, he had more leeway, but the handcuffs connecting his wrists to his ankles presented a problem. Still, if he could get to the knots on his legs, he could stand up and get the spare keys from the kitchen. Get himself free. Start all over again. He leaned his weight to the side to topple his body onto the rug, wincing as his shoulder hit a little harder than he’d planned.

Arching his back, he tried stretching his fingers past his ass to the insides of his thighs, but he came up four or five inches shy of the ropes. Trying to reach around the outside of an ankle put him at an even greater disadvantage.

God
damn
it!

He lay on his side with the loose ropes from his elbows pooled around his wrists. His breath rasped against the rug as he stared at a dust bunny under his bed.

It was stupid. The fact the he couldn’t get free should be a
good
thing, but the loose arm ropes… The loose fucking arm ropes. He rubbed his forehead against the rug.
The goddamned loose arm ropes.

He’d have to wait out the ice and
then
start all over again.

He fought with the loose ropes. The ends tied around his chest were still in place, the knot still against his sternum. Pulling, tugging, and coaxing at what ropes his fingers could reach did little to change that. All he could do was try not to think about it for the next however long he was stuck lying on his side on the fucking floor.

He hated when shit went wrong.

Chapter Six

By the time the keys dropped, his mood was too sour to bother going through the whole thing again. He stashed everything back in the closet, then stalked off to the shower to get the sweat off. Afterward, he went out to the living room to try to get something productive done. People writing to him about guitar and bass lessons needed answering. Distribution problems needed to be addressed. A bad batch of T-shirts in the latest restock order was becoming a headache. His sour mood carried through all of it.

He ate a tasteless dinner, then sat on the couch until three in the morning, staring at movies he didn’t give a shit about. Finally he forced himself to go to bed—where he lay in the darkness with the one thought he’d been trying to keep out of his head bubbling to the surface like air escaping hot water.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Don’t.

The ropes that slacken, the knots that slip undone or turn out to be within easy reach, the things you can’t do because it’s not possible to do them on your own—the things you can’t do because it’s not safe to do them on your own…

Seriously. Don’t go there.

Dylan could tie the ropes and make sure they’re right. Fix them if they start to come loose.

No.

Dylan could stuff your mouth and tape it shut. He could put you in a hog-tie so restrictive you couldn’t roll onto your side—and he’d be there to get you out if anything went wrong.

Lying on his stomach, his cock pressed between his body and the mattress, he covered his head with his arms.

He’s offered, for Christ’s sake
, the voice in his brain said, disgusted with him.

That doesn’t make it a good fucking idea!

Chapter Seven

He made himself jack off—
not
thinking of Dylan, putting some faceless stranger there instead—and try to get some sleep, but the possibilities had a hold of him, the fact that he
could
, if he wanted, have someone help him out, have someone do it for real.

He had to jack off again as the sun was coming up, before he could snatch a few hours of sleep, certain that when he woke up, he’d be over it. That the light of day would shine on what a terrible, bad, fucked-up idea it was.

The last thing he saw before sleep took him was Dylan with his head bent, eyes closed, lips slightly parted.

Two fingers pressed to the circle tattooed on the inside of his wrist.

Chapter Eight

At a little after four in the afternoon, he opened the messaging app on his phone and sent fourteen words to Dylan:

Let me know if you still want to do that thing we talked about.

Chapter Nine

The feeling of having sent that text, Brian discovered, was a lot like the feeling immediately after clicking a lock shut: thrill and panic twisting tightly together, inescapable. In the apartment’s silence, he both wished Dylan would call right back—and wouldn’t. After the initial nausea passed, he took a piss and retrieved his sandwich from the fridge.

Back on the couch, he pulled up an old movie on Netflix, his MacBook sitting on one knee, and tried to keep his thoughts off what he’d just sort of agreed to. He could always change his mind anyway. Dylan wasn’t a prick. It wouldn’t be a major fight between them.

His phone chirped, the screen lighting up. His heart thudded, but it was a photo the drummer they’d used on the last tour had texted him. He thought possibly Lane was shitfaced—that or there was something hilarious about the photo that he just wasn’t seeing. He turned the screen off.

The sandwich wrapping sat crumpled on the coffee table next to what used to be a glass of ice water. He hadn’t tasted the tuna salad, and the water had only cured his dry throat while he was drinking it.

It was nearly one in the morning when the phone rang. In the black-and-white glow of another old movie, he patted the couch cushions for his cell. Pressed the button. Lifted it to his face. Time seemed to teeter on an apex.

“Hey,” he said into the phone.

“Busy?” Dylan asked.

“Nah, just watching an old movie.”

“Which one?”

“
Night of the Hunter
. Robert Mitchum?” He dragged his fingers through his hair. Some part of him that had stepped back from the situation was impressed he could sit there making small talk with his heart hammering so hard.

“Where he plays the preacher? That’s a good one.”

“Yeah.” Brian closed the laptop and slid it onto the coffee table.

Dylan said, “I just got your message. Sorry. I’m out of town—”

“How is it that all the traveling we do on tour is never enough for you?”

“I guess that’s the problem. I go out on tour, make new friends. Then they say, ‘Hey, we’re doing such and such this weekend. Wanna come?’”

“What kind of such and such are you doing this weekend?”

Brian could picture the shrug in response.

“This and that. So.” The deep inhale of a cigarette pull filled the pause. “You want to try this thing sometime?”

His face prickled. “Um. Yeah. I think. I mean, give it a try, at least. I guess. Maybe.” He closed his eyes and pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead.
Shit.

“All right. I’m up for it. We should go over some things, though.”

Just what he didn’t want to do. Couldn’t they just
do
it and not have to talk about it? Squeezing his eyes more tightly shut, he said, “Okay.”