Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Greer still felt the burn of Penny’s lips on his own as he waved down a hack in Whitechapel to take him across the city to Tyburnia. He grinned as he thought about his wicked little red-headed friend and everything he’d witnessed the man do that night.
Percival “Penny” Frey. The young man had caught Greer’s attention more than a year ago, when he’d passed through Whitechapel to accept a housebreaking job for one of the more prominent gang leaders in the area.
He’d first spotted Penny’s red hair as he’d walked past the alley where the young man had been earning his daily bread.
It had been bright and disheveled as he’d bobbed on the customer who had his head thrown back in ecstasy.
The sight had made Greer jealous, which was not a sensation he was used to at all.
He’d stopped in his tracks to watch, arousal pulsing through him.
The red hair had reminded Greer of home.
The saucy look Penny had sent him, as if he would be next, as he sucked the gentleman off had reminded him that it’d been weeks since he’d been able to empty his balls with anyone other than his own hand.
He wanted Penny. He had from the start. But Greer had not reached the pinnacles of his underground world by giving in to his wants and desires. Quite the opposite. He prided himself on his discipline and his personal integrity.
That and the fact that throwing his lot in with another soul, no matter how appealing, had always ended in disaster for him.
Greer worked alone.
He didn’t need anyone. He was a master of his art in his own right. Relying on other people, even fetching young gingers, would only make him vulnerable.
And if there was one thing Greer would never be again, it was vulnerable.
The hack stopped outside of the plain brick facade of The Zagreus Den. It dipped and swayed as the driver hopped down, but Greer had already opened the door and stepped onto the street by the time the driver reached him.
“This is where you want to be?” the driver asked, eyeing the ostensibly dark and dozy front of The Zagreus Den dubiously.
“Yes,” Greer said, fishing in his pocket for payment. “Why would I want to be anywhere else?”
“Only, it looks abandoned,” the driver said.
Greer chuckled. Not so much because of what the driver had said but because the decoy vesta case he’d planted in his pocket for Penny to take was missing. Bloody brilliant. He hadn’t even felt Penny take it, although he’d known the man would.
Greer pulled a shilling from the hidden pocket within his external pocket and handed it over to the driver. “I would worry about yourself before worrying about me,” he said with a wink.
The driver seemed pleased with his payment and tipped the brim of his hat. “If you’d like, sir,” he said, then scrambled back up to his seat.
Greer waited for the driver to be on his way, walking down the length of the street as if the place he needed to be was around the corner. As soon as he was certain the driver didn’t care what happened to him, he turned around and walked back to the plain black door of The Zagreus Den.
Caius answered the door as soon as Greer knocked, proving that even though it was past midnight, the Den was busy.
“Good evening, Mr. O’Toole, the mild-mannered, middle-aged man greeted him with a smile, offering to take his hat. “It’s always a pleasure to see you.”
“And you, Caius,” Greer said, handing his hat and coat to the man. “And how is Sadler treating you these days?”
“Master is as good to me as I could ever hope for,” Caius answered with an adoring grin, folding Greer’s coat over his arm.
“I’ll be sure to tell him you’re fulfilling your duties beautifully when I see him,” Greer winked, walking on through the front hall as if he lived there.
In many ways, he did. The Zagreus Den was one of his favorite places in London.
He’d earned his membership a few years ago by helping Brutus and Titus acquire certain documentation that enabled them to blackmail a Mr. Westmoreland, who owned several workhouses around London.
Greer had broken into the man’s house and stolen correspondence and receipts that showed the man was pocketing far more than his fair share of the government funds provided to the workhouses.
In return for keeping that information quiet, Titus, who acquired most of the Den’s young sirens and was known on the streets as the Snatcher, had blanket permission to inspect the young men consigned to those workhouses and to take whichever of them he deemed fit for the Den without question or repercussions.
Greer spotted one of the Den’s newer acquisitions before he reached the banquet hall that made up one side of the house toward the back.
“Good evening, sir,” Erastos said, bowing low as Greer approached.
“Hello, Erastos,” Greer treated him to a grin, sweeping a look over the young man’s pretty form.
Like all the boys of the Den, Erastos was dressed in a Greek-style toga made of fine material.
It was draped in a way that left little to the imagination, and Greer knew from experience such togas could be removed or pushed aside so that men like him could easily access the forbidden fruit beneath the soft folds of linen.
Greer let himself indulge in looking for a moment.
Erastos had been thrown into the workhouse a year ago after being caught on the streets of Whitechapel.
From what Greer understood, the lad had been orphaned some time before that and did not fare well in the same world where Penny flourished.
He’d been nothing but skin and bones, all hope sucked out of him, when Titus had found him behind the workhouse walls.
Now, however, he was plump and glowing. He held his body easily, like someone thoroughly taken care of, and if Greer remembered correctly, he’d been studying mathematics at the Den’s school.
He would make a brilliant and talented possession for some scientifically minded man one day.
Penny would look delicious dressed in the togas of The Zagreus Den’s boys.
The thought slipped into Greer’s brain with as much saucy insistence as Penny would have invaded his pockets.
What Greer wouldn’t do to see his wily street thief scrubbed clean and flaunting skin while kneeling at his feet during one of the Den’s bacchanals.
The fantasy was so potent that it stirred his groin. He had to clear his throat to remind himself that Penny was unlikely to ever cross the Den’s doorstep. His red-headed friend had too much pride to be one of the Den’s boys at any rate.
“It sounds as though festivities are already underway,” he said to Erastos, a burr in his throat.
Erastos peeked up at him, cheeks flushed, as if he thought perhaps he had been the one to make Greer’s blood race. “Yes, sir,” he said, eyeing Greer hopefully. “There will be dancing tonight and entertainments after.”
Which meant the dancers would all end up bouncing on the balls of their audience before the music ended.
“My favorite sort of entertainment,” he said, cupping the side of Erastos’s face and swiping his thumb across the young man’s lips. “You’ll dance for me, won’t you?”
“I’ll do anything for you, sir,” Erastos answered, voice husky.
Greer chuckled and patted the young man’s face before moving on down the hall. “I look forward to it,” he said, winking for good measure.
Erastos was a sweet lad. All of the boys of The Zagreus Den were.
Titus was an expert in the art of finding biddable young men with a hunger for cock who were blissfully happy to give up their freedom in exchange for a lifetime of tender care.
Most of the young men they found only spent a year or two at the Den before entering private ownership or asking for their freedom, which they were given with only one requirement, that they never breathe a word about The Zagreus Den to anyone for the rest of their lives.
During the time the lads spent in the care of the Den, any and all members were encouraged to enjoy them to the fullest. It was considered good practice for them and great fun for everyone.
Again, Greer’s thoughts flew back to Penny as he entered the warm, bustling banquet hall, where the night’s feast was still underway.
Penny seemed to love teaching the younger boys of London’s streets his trade.
Greer couldn’t blame him. Crime was survival when you’d been born with nothing, not even a name in some cases.
He knew that more than most.
“Ah, Greer, you’re here,” Brutus greeted him, rising from the head table, where he’d been seated with a new boy that Greer had yet to meet on his lap.
That young man—everyone at the Den referred to them as boys, but they were all older than twenty, in most cases—looked overwhelmed and wary, which told Greer he’d been there for a very short time indeed.
He wore one of the Den’s togas, but it was draped much more modestly, and when Brutus stood to greet him, Greer noted with a laugh that the new boy still wore his drawers.
“You requested my presence tonight specifically,” Greer said as he shook Brutus’s hand. “How could I refuse an offer such as that?”
“No one can refuse a summons by The Zagreus Den,” one of the club’s newer members, a photographer by the name of Jonathan Moorgate said, somewhat sullenly, as he watched Greer and Brutus greet each other.
Greer knew Jonathan’s story. They were already well on their way to being friends.
Greer found Jonathan’s uncomfortable attitude toward the Den and its activities to be hilarious.
It was rich for a man who had made his living producing pornography to be squeamish about the Den’s purpose, but Jonathan still had old habits and beliefs to shed, though he was adapting more quickly than he cared to let on.
“Are you saying you aren’t happy here?” he teased Jonathan once he let go of Brutus’s hand and circled around the end of the table so he could shake Titus’s hand as well. “Charlie certainly looks happy.”