The King (The Original Sinners: White Years, #2)(6)

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 f*ck back here. They f*cked.

“Jesus,” the boy whispered as they passed a man bent over a chair, another man behind him, inside him, f*cking 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 M?bius, 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.