1. One

One

Cole

A h.

Fucking hell. The sight of him. Someone had chosen to summon the fucking gods when they put him in a damned angel costume for Halloween.

Up on that stage, his delicate hands circling the pole as his body moved and all that white taffeta shit fluttered around his hips, hinting at the jock strap he wore underneath? Someone needed to pay for that.

Avery.

The man of my obsession since I first laid eyes on him over four years ago. After the shit show that occurred with his best friend Zelda and my asshole father, he'd never liked me. Actively despised me, if anything. And I pushed him. The image of him all irritated and flustered drove me wild, and even when I saw I was taking it too far, stopping was an impossibility.

Him, in all his brightness, threw my gray life into color.

And I didn't understand why. I detested him for it. Then loved him. Craved him. Anger crawled up my painted throat as I watched other men and women ache for him, too. This man, this beautiful being, shaking his round ass to the world, biting his delicious lip as he twisted to the beat of the music and soaked in every whoop and cheer… he belonged to no one else. That concept was inconceivable to me.

I was going to kill Zelda for allowing this.

She'd told me about the special holiday night the club was running, the place she owned and ran with my father, a Halloween auction, selling off their workers for a no-touching private spooky lap dance and a fucking chase in a maze. I'd laughed, thinking it sounded stupid as shit, but when I heard Avery was going to be one of the auctioned bodies, every bit of humor left me. I would claw off my face before I let anyone else hunt him down through a goddamn maze and have their way with him.

He gave lap dances to paying clients, I knew that, he stripped off almost nightly for perverts and assholes to jerk off over. Yeah, that I was aware of and didn't like. But accepted it was his way of making money, of surviving. But letting someone else win him, when it could be me?

Fuck. That.

So, with a skip in my damn step, I snuck into the back of the club using the key I'd stolen from my dad's house last night during our weekly family dinners. Family. Me and my twin, dad and his girlfriend Zelda, the same age as us, their young son and her best friends, Avery and Seren. What a fucking family. A twisted up mess, but the food was good, and my kid brother was incredible, a mix of all those who'd raised him. Even Avery, who gave him a playfulness that endlessly annoyed his parents. I loved that kid something fierce. So I went to family dinners. Gritted my teeth so I didn't steal Avery from the table and fuck him into whichever wall we reached first. So I didn't lose my temper at my father for doing a better job with his new family, his girlfriend half the age of his ex-wife. Jesse, my twin, didn't care, so why should I?

Zelda and Dad had banned me from this club. I caused too much mischief, apparently. But Halloween lets you get away with a lot.

My kid brother's face paints, a little creativity, and I was a fucking ghost skull, or a skeleton, or whatever. It was enough. I didn't recognize myself in the mirror, so with added shadow and alcohol, I had the freedom to roam. To win.

And my hand flew up to claim Avery, bidding with money that should still be tucked in a safe in Dad's office. I wasn't stealing. I was giving it straight back. It would do a nice circle right into the fucker's pocket where it belonged.

I'd stolen it only an hour ago, striding down the back hall until I reached his office. Not the main one where he dealt with clients and customers, but the one kept hidden away in the farthest corner of the vast building he'd purpose built. Where he stored his valuables and fucked his woman. I'd riffled through his drawers, because of course I had, and found too many things that should scar a regular son. But he'd made sure to scar me deep enough already, so I just laughed and slammed the drawers shut before grabbing the cash.

None of my business why they needed lube and extravagant sex toys at work. Didn't want to discover who those nipple clamps were for.

And their penchant for masked events meant I was free to come in and fuck about as much as I liked, or at least I could have, until Avery got me banned with all that talk of causing mischief. Something about doing it under daddy's nose made it worth the sneaking around though, and I was relishing the anonymity .

Five more minutes of bidding. With Avery egging everyone on, twirling across that wide stage, using every inch of it to his advantage as he strutted and grinned, showing off his body in that lacy white lingerie and fluffy wings protruding from his shoulder blades.

He was mine. Whoops and cheers sounded when he celebrated being won, even if he didn't know by who yet, by climbing the pole and twisting himself back down, holding me captive with the way his thigh muscles bunched and moved, at how the grin spread his thick lips wide across his face, glossy and pink.

The place was packed, full of costumes, a mix of creepy and sexy, well-crafted and lazy, creating a delicious chaos, the kind that my father reigned over with glee. Zelda lived for the mayhem of it, and she'd nailed it tonight. The crush of bodies built as the MC spoke again about what I'd won, everyone growing rowdier and seemingly drunker. The run through the maze, the dance—it set something off in people.

Anticipation boiling in my gut, I stepped back further into the shadows to deal with the mundane part. I saw Avery looking out over the crowd, trying to spot who'd earned his company for the night. He scrunched up that gorgeous nose of his, his hand over his eyes to squint and gaze through the mass of bodies. But he'd never see me. He didn't want me. He made it abundantly clear that he hated me. But. I. Just. Couldn't. Stop.

I wasn't allowed here anymore because Avery had complained to Zelda, his bestie, that I was harassing him. She has instructed me to quit it one too many times, until eventually the bouncers knew to watch for my face. And when we were at family dinners, because Zelda was my kind of step mother and Avery was her best friend and had helped raise my baby brother for the first few years, he refused to look at me. Or be alone with me. Zelda told me once I freaked him out, that I was too intense with him. I just couldn't tear myself away.

A worker, one I didn't care to recognize, shoved a contract under my nose and watched me sign it, and I handed over the stolen cash with a smirk. Even if I had to pay for Avery's company now, I would take it. Touching him was a necessity at this point. The thought of making him shiver and whimper, feeling those lips on me, watching what they did when he came.

The worker scoffed, not looking at the contract or the fake name, and scribbled a time for the maze on my hand. I looked down at it as she wondered away, thirty minutes until I would chase him. Catch him.

The need to make him mine overtook everything else.

Thirty minutes.