Chapter Sixteen
I’m watching him scoop himself up off the floor.
Beautiful… Truly a masterpiece of physicality, this one.
His body is like something you dream up, only it’s real—I would know. I spent the last two hours and forty-some-odd minutes exploring it in pretty much every way imaginable.
Black hair all mussed up, tear-stained cheeks beneath those piercing blue eyes, lidded from all the orgasms.
He must be tired. I know I am.
He still has the fishnets on, though they’re basically torn to shreds, hickeys and bite marks everywhere.
Standing by the bar, I’m sipping scotch, eyeing him over the rim of my glass while he shifts on his feet across the room. I’m not sure what he’s waiting for. Is he expecting a goodbye kiss or something?
He’s knows how this works.
He was just a body. They all are. It’s their purpose.
To destress me. To get me, and them, off, because I’m not a selfish bastard—at least, not when it comes to sex. They exist simply as objects, toys for me to play with when I’m bored.
To fill the void.
I’m feeling much more vacant than I should, despite how toe-curling tonight’s session was. Better than any of the others over the last two weeks, that’s for sure. Because tonight, I let some more of my incessant desires out of their cages. It was necessary.
The body is lingering, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. Maybe tonight felt different for him, too. Maybe it sparked something… Lit a match, who knows.
For me, it was more about being unable to quiet the noise in my head. The memory of the last stunning bright-eyed angel I had in this room with me…
My jaw tightens at how frustrated I still am. And now I’m frustrated at being frustrated, because I just came four times, which means I should not be fucking frustrated. But I am.
My skin is sticky, and my muscles are sore, and I just want him to go so I can take this stupid fucking mask off.
Setting down my glass with a thunk, I reach for my cigar case, taking one out and sticking it between my teeth. I flick the wheel of my Zippo, the sound apparently catching his attention. He peers at me while I light my cigar, staring, almost hypnotized. But when I snap it shut, he blinks.
And then he pads, barefoot, out of the room without a word.
Putana es loca.
Wandering naked up to the floor-length window, looking out at the city, I smoke, and breathe, and wonder.
Where are you, pajarito?
Will you ever return to finish what you started?
For two weeks since my little bird came to seek his revenge, and wound up trembling in my arms like a sweet, unexpected gift I’d accepted in a very brief moment of uncharacteristic weakness, I’ve been living life as if it never happened. Because dwelling on things accomplishes nothing.
Taking out my aggressions on the occasional employee doesn’t count.
The interaction with Angel was bizarre. Start to finish, none of it made any sense. Aside from him coming for me, that is.
Coming after me…
Showing up, goddammit.
The point is, I knew that would happen, eventually. But the rest of it was just the definition of unprecedented, and that is both my excuse and my explanation for my errant behavior.
The moment I saw him, swallowing that pendejo’s cock like the thirsty little puta he is, I knew he was there to kill me.
Regardless of what led him to suck off a bartender, he’d obviously come to Club Edge for me.
So when I had Dom bring him up to my suite, part of me foolishly expected him to just whip out that cute baby blade and attack.
When he didn’t do that, the rest of it fell into place… Sweet Angelito has been hard at work for the fifteen years since I left him in that closet.
The kid is cunning, patient, and observant. But he’s still just a kid. I have two whole decades on him. That’s two decades spent honing my ruthless malevolence. Hardening my heart and purging myself of emotional responses.
You can train all you want, but you have to be able to follow through even when it’s hard. Especially then.
And it got hard, alright. Big time.
Okay, enough sex jokes.
I’m man enough to admit that the kid got to me.
Fine, maybe he got to me before we even messed around.
But that’s only because he is, quite literally, the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever had the pleasure of looking at.
And no, I didn’t want him to kill me, but I also didn’t want him to run off, all angry and defeated.
I’m proud of the kid. He didn’t beat the game, but he made it to the final boss, and that’s gotta count for something.
Maybe I could have voiced that to him… if he hadn’t rammed his knee into my cojones and fled, like a stubborn brat.
And now I’m left wondering where he scampered off to… If he’s ever going to show his face again.
I shouldn’t want it, I know that, since he does want to kill me.
But if I turned my nose up at everyone who wants to kill me, I’d never speak to anybody.
Life might be less stressful, but it’d also be boring as shit.
And like most career felons and professional sociopaths, I prefer the threat of potential danger to monotony.
That said, I’d rather know where Angelito is so I can keep my eye on him.
I’ve enlisted my private investigators and a few other sources to track him down. So far, he seems to have vanished. But he has to resurface, eventually. I just have to be patient…
I hate that. I’m too rich and impulsive for things like patience.
In the meantime, though, I will continue to explore stress-relieving methods that revolve around bodies I can pretend are his. As if they’re filling in for him.
Sort of like a… proxy?
Yea, that sounds good. Let’s go with that.
I have an endless catalog of distraction-proxies available here at Edge. If it also happens to be the only place Angel knows me to visit regularly, well then, that’s just a happy coincidence.
Still, I should get back to the island. I’ve been in the city for a week straight, and while I’m fully confident in Officer Chevelle’s ability to hold down the fort while I’m gone, I need to get home. Make sure it hasn’t burned down or something while I was away.
Oddly enough, I miss it. You wouldn’t think it possible to miss such a secluded place where mind-numbing tedium is a way of life, but for me, it’s different.
Alabaster Isle is mine. It’s the only thing in this entire empire that fully belongs to me. The cartel, my territories, my businesses… They’re all tainted with the blood of the past. But the island, and the people on it, are my property.
I take a shower in the en suite, get redressed and call my driver to bring me to the penthouse suite I have on reserve at The Plaza.
My suite at Edge does actually have a bedroom, with a pretty comfortable bed.
But something doesn’t feel quite right about sleeping in the sex club where I’ve been freaky all week.
Back at the hotel, in bed, I lie awake for hours. My body is exhausted, but my mind just won’t quit. Reliving the hot sex with the blue-eyed boy, the passion I gave my pajarito through him, and the power I handed over. The aches in my body highlight how alive I feel…
But it’s still just a facade. Make-believe.
He was the understudy, when the star is out there somewhere, among the noisy city that never sleeps.
Sirens and fire engines blare into the night, while I stare up at the dark ceiling, hoping my little bird hasn’t flown too far away.
“Did you miss me?”
Kent’s eyes shift to mine, but he says nothing. Simply grabs my bag and stomps off, toward the door that leads inside from the rooftop helipad.
I chuckle to myself.
“Any progress on… finding an assistant?” He asks cautiously after setting my bag down in my bedroom.
“You know, I’m beginning to think you don’t enjoy spending time with me,” I jest, though in actuality, I’m probably only seventy percent kidding.
“Of course that’s not the case,” he grumbles, stern and emotionless, as usual.
In all the years I’ve known him—going on eighteen now—I don’t think I’ve heard him laugh once.
One time, I caught a twitch of something smile-adjacent, when Claude the orderly opened a door into Dr. Templeton and he spilled coffee all over himself.
It was pretty funny because Templeton is a douchebag, and Claude seems like the product of some serious inbreeding.
Still, that was the only time I can remember when I thought my Head of Private Security might actually be human, rather than the latest and greatest from Skynet.
Sighing, I pick up my phone. “I promise you, Kent, I’m working on it. I will find someone.”
“Very good, sir.” He turns to leave, but stops when I call.
“It’s better to be overworked than undervalued.”
He peeks at me and I wink.
“I’ll be back with your coffee, sir,” He deadpans. Though for him it’s like… regular panning?
I grin and huff, going about my business, taking a shower and getting redressed in something more dashing before I go check in on my prison.
I believe in dressing up. It’s what separates us from the animals, after all. Clothes, accessories… material objects. Consumerism is an important part of today’s society, and let’s be honest. Everyone feels better when they look pretty.
Deny it all you want, but it’s true. Buying something new and shiny is an automatic boost in serotonin.
But here’s the part only people who grew up poor will understand. When you spend a significant portion of your life on the outside of high-end shops looking in, it gives you a determination to one day make it inside.
It’s a known fact at this point that growing up poor builds character.
Hunger for food, hunger for more. I acknowledged at an early age that I was too big for my humble beginnings.
And even though we didn’t have much when I was growing up—okay, we barely had anything—my parents still always took pride in their appearance.