Chapter Five

Late fall turns into a chilly, dark winter. Laur has no other coat besides the green one, but it gets puffier sometime in December. There's no Christmas gift exchange between us, but I buy some leashes and more restraints for him to play with, and he comes to the bar early one day without his laptop and has a conversation with me before he disappears for two weeks before the New Year. That's the most intimate we'd gotten after four months of once-a-week and fairly brutal fucking where I never see him naked.

"Jeremy, you're experiencing shame about something you're not sharing with me," Dr. Rooks, my psychiatrist, likes to pause and see if I'll rush in and fill in the gaps. She'd classify Laur as risky behavior simply because her idea of kinky sex was kissing without asking for permission.

"Have you asked anyone in your support network to help you navigate it?"

My support network is Jude, Paul, and my mother. And I realize with a muffled hum, I had not.

"And why not?"

Because you don't tell you mother about the kinds of things Laur does to a man. And you don't tell your boss that her best friend has made you his bitch, because if he wasn't telling her, I wasn't going to.

I'd kept it from Paul—I hadn't really. He'd just misunderstood. I'd wanted his advice on how to move things forward, but somehow he got the idea Laur was stalking me.

He'd reached under the bar for the pamphlets Jude kept there to give to people in an abusive situation. "Jesus Christ, man, every fucking freak in Galway City finds you and you don't do a damn thing to protect yourself."

"No, no. It's not like that." He'd been totally unfair. If anything, I was the one trying to stalk Laur, but no one could tell me anything about the guy. "I know the difference between Laur and those guys. I mean, he's intense, but—"

"Laur? You mean … the finger guy?" Paul imitated the way I had wiggled my fingers.

Remembering I'd started that gesture made me squeamish. "Yeah, him."

Paul blinked with confusion. "Really? He's the guy who comes in for cheesesteaks on Tuesday?"

"Yeah. His name is Laur."

"You're sleeping with him? Like regularly?" Paul couldn't wrap his head around the idea.

And I knew no one would understand. "The whole world is fucking crazy and I'm the one on medication."

"I'm just saying, a guy who looks like that … I mean, when you're … you know." He gestured to by body. "There's got to be a reason he's not crawling all over you, dude."

"Yeah, self-respect. All I bring to a relationship is … you know." I imitated him in gesturing to my body. "Absolutely fuck-all."

Paul's expression had softened but he couldn't refute. Your ex-boyfriend can't usually extol your romantic virtues.

Dr. Rooks asks, "Jeremy, are you with me?"

"Sorry, just trying to … what was the question?"

Her frown deepens. "Any thoughts of self-harm?"

"No." I've been too obsessed to ideate on suicide.

"Is it illegal? Or immoral?"

"Not illegal."

"But you feel like you're doing something wrong?"

There it is. I found the way to reassure her. "Doctor, I'm Jewish. Even when I'm doing everything right, it feels wrong."

The old woman smiles faintly, reminding me of my grandmother. This is the side she likes to see. The one who cracks jokes she isn't allowed to laugh at.

"It's just boy trouble. I'm sure I'll share more another session."

****

After leaving Dr. Rooks, I run on the beach and ruminate over Laur and our not-exactly-a-relationship. It's as much a part of my routine as getting eight hours of sleep and a gallon of water every day. But as my sneakers beat the salty snow and hard sand, hope is easy to find. There's no meaning in my meaninglessness between the endless water and the sky, and that's a fine thing.

When I hit the end of the boardwalk and turnaround, another group of runners passes me in the other direction. They move like a pack of sled dogs, all with precision in their movements and dark masculine shorts and tops. Not like my bright-blue joggers and the rainbow-colored water bottle bumping against my chest.

I don't cast them a glance until one of the pack calls, "Larry, where you going?"

The one peeling off is the shortest man in the group. The thick beard and baseball cap don't quite hide all the scars on his face. Or his sarcasm.

"Y'all can find your way back without me. It's the straight line."

Then Laur is running beside me. My heart hammers with the surprise intimacy. I can't remember the last time I ran beside someone. If I ever had.

He doesn't say anything. Am I supposed to say something?

Are we supposed to run in silence? How did I act with this man in the daylight?

After about half a mile, he spits an accusation, "You run here often?"

The tone catches me off guard. "Huh?"

"How did you find me?"

Shit. He's angry already? I haven't said anything.

"I know Jude didn't tell you I run here, so how did you—"

"My dude, I run here every Thursday and I have for at least seven years. Usually, I'm about … I don't know, thirty minutes later?"

He narrows his eyes. "How long?"

"I just said. Seven years."

"What month did you start? How long do you usually run? Why thirty minutes early today?"

The rapid-fire questions short my brain. "Uh, I think probably May? Sometime in spring. Depends on the weather and I—"

Who the fuck is this guy to make me fall over myself to answer. "Laur, is this an interrogation?"

Laur looks surprised, and then shame softens his face slightly. "Yeah. I guess it was. Sorry."

He says nothing else, and we jog in silence. I internally panic.

Eventually he says, "That's my VA group."

VA group. Is that like an AA group? Like with group counseling? I get the image of Laur beating someone with the sharing stick, and smile.

"What's that smirk?" Laur notices.

"Nothing! Just … for four years, we've been running by each other or just missing—"

"We've been just missing. I would have noticed you peacocking around."

As if I'm the freak missing fingers and shit.

It was a compliment. Because you're pretty and dye your hair bright blue, when it isn't fucking March, you run half- naked.

I glance over and down at him. I'm so rarely standing in his presence that I'd forgotten how much shorter he is. He blended neatly with that group, like camouflage to hide his scars.

His eyes are so blue, but also mismatched. His right eye, the one that droops, has a more uniform shade, and doesn't react to the sunlight.

"Shit, you only have one eye!"

Well done, Jeremy. There's the maturity and restraint you're known for.

Laur puts his hands on his cheeks in sarcastic shock. "Oh my God! Really?"

He wasn't wearing his gloves. I'd never actually seen the damage. His middle finger was missing the first and second knuckle but his pinkie was only missing the very tip, like the fingernail had been sawed off. There was an almost cartoonish squareness to each stump.

"You know, between the blindfold and the kneeling, you don't give me the chance to look that often."

His head whips around like he thinks his buddies are nearby to overhear. When I look again his cheeks are a little redder than before. Aw, he's cute when he blushes.

Before I say something calamitously dumb, I give him a warning. "You know, as long as I'm making a fool of myself—"

"Quit while you're ahead."

"My mama didn't raise no quitter." I grin at him. "How did it happen?"

I wait for him to answer. It seems like the right time. With the calming sound of the ocean, the rhythmic thud of our sneakers on the boardwalk, the naturally breathy breaks in conversation. He doesn't have to look at me.

But he remains silent.

Some families with very young children are flying kites, huddled together up ahead near the parking lot.

Laur clears his throat. I wait for him to say something, anything, but I get nothing.

So, instead, I appreciate the sand and the sun and the fact that I'm doing something with a guy that isn't entirely sexual. This is very nearly friendly. Maybe I could end the jog by asking for his personal cell phone.

"Which lot are you parked in? North or South?" he asks eventually.

"Oh, I take the trolley. I don't drive."

He looks confused. "Like at all?"

My license had been put on probation for unsafe driving when I was in my early twenties. Even after I got it back, so many of my invasive thoughts involved the winding cliffs of Galway City and simply not turning, that I'd opted to sell the car and settle for taxis, biking, and the shitty public transit system. "I mean, I have a license, but I don't drive."

"Keeps costs down, I guess." He hums. Then smirks. "Want a lift home?"

I cannot imagine he'd drive me all the way up to East Quay and not fuck my brains out. "Yes, please."

****

Giddy as a golden retriever, I follow him into the lot.

What kind of car does he drive? Jeep? Motorcycle? Got to be a pickup. Assholes drive pickups so it's perfect for Laur. When he beeps his keys, a silver Corolla blinks back.

I laugh. "What a demure little car."

"Better than no car."

The front passenger side carries a box overflowing with various loose papers and manila folders. Two briefcases and a laptop are precariously stacked on top of the papers.

"Get in the back."

It's a cramped backseat for a gorilla like me to squeeze in. He opens the door on the other side, letting the sea breeze blow through the toasty backseat. I suspect nothing until the slick black rope loops around my neck.

I know this leash. He's used it on me more than once. My back and arms are stronger than his broken fingers. Still, I go where he drags me and curl up across the backseat.

"Comfy?" He rewards my obedience by slamming the leash in the door to keep me down.

****

His car rattles as we climb the main road. I flex my legs to keep them from cramping, and try to follow our path by looking at the tops of buildings and the open blue sky. We stop at a red light.

East Quay is a left at that light. Is his house straight up the hill or to the right into the residential parks? "Hey, Laur, take me to your house. I want to play with your toys."

"My toys are only for big boys."

I know he wants me to beg, but before I can, his phone rings and the car announces mechanically, "M.O.H.A. house."

"Fuck." Laur mutters. "I got to take this. Don't say anything."

I nod and swallow hard, which makes my Adam's apple rub against the leash. The light changes and Laur turns to the right as he answers the call, speaking in a bright cheerful tone and in another language I don't recognize.

I expected a military supervisor, but instead it's a throng of children and whatever he's said disappoints them. A dozen little voices chatter all at once in various languages.

One girl takes over quickly. "Mr. Trockie, you say you like to talk to us?"

He answers gently. "Of course I like talking to you, Telenaz. But today, I have no time."

"But why?" All the children take up her chorus.

His good eye flicks to the rearview mirror and I give him a little wave.

He switches back to the language I don't know.

"In American, Mr. Trockie!" a very young boy chastises.

"Okay, okay." Laur chuckles. "How about this? One at a time, youngest to oldest, you give me a single sentence to describe your week."

The car angles uphill as the children take turns rambling mostly about food and school in English, in French, and that other language I haven't identified. Laur encourages them, replying in their language of choice.

We keep driving uphill. Does Laur live on The Ridge? Big fancy beach houses overlooking the ocean. Houses with private stairs down to private beaches where I've done private stripteases.

Eventually, after a multilingual chorus of pleading and goodbyes, Laur hangs up.

The softness in him vanishes immediately. "The hell are you smirking about?"

"Who are your little friends? The children of cultural attachés? Future spies you're grooming for world domination?"

Laur snorts. "Orphaned refugees."

"Oh."

"We try to acclimate them to life in the West. Sometimes we reunite the kids with the soldiers that liberated them."

"Did you—"

"No." Laur doesn't let me finish. "That wasn't my department."

The car dips and picks up speed. A highway and a twisting road. He lives near the cliffs. I don't love that for me.

Laur gracefully changes the subject. "So, what do you want to talk about for the next thirty or so minutes, that will convince me to take you to my house?"

"Well, I'm horny as hell so why—"

"Try again." He shifts his grip on the wheel to stroke his cock.

"It's damn cruel to tie a guy up like this and not fuck his brains out."

"Getting closer."

The sudden blood rushing to my cock does nothing to ease the cramps in the rest of my body. "Because my tight ass is only for you and you got hard the second you saw me on the boardwalk."

"You're very spoiled."

"Yeah? So punish me."

"By giving you what you want?"

"That logic is totally sound to me, but I'm a crazy slut."

"You're also a lucky slut." He slows, turns, and a shadow falls over the car. "I don't live thirty or so minutes away."

****

When he opens the door, I see an oily concrete floor for an instant before his cock is in my mouth. I swallow greedily, and try to adjust in the backseat.

"Stop squirming and suck," Laur commands.

I obey, and after a few minutes at my mercy, he's the one squirming.

"When do you go to work again?" He pulls his cock out of my mouth.

I smile up at him sweetly. "Gym. Tomorrow at four. Then East Quay Cuties. I get busy on the weekends."

"I bet you do." Laur offers his cock again. When I don't take enough, he forces the rest in. "So, this ass is mine for the rest of the day?"

I moan, too excited by the prospect to stop sucking his cock and tease.

Laur doesn't bother to hold back. With my eager mouth and his frantic thrusting, it isn't much longer before he takes a step back.

I wait while he strokes his cock with both hands. He explodes on my face and into my open mouth, then rubs the dribbles into my skin. I only shudder and moan accepting his gift.

The rest of the day.

Laur grins wickedly and lifts my chin to admire his work. "You're gonna go through Hell before I let you come."

He's not wrong.

As soon as he marches me into the back corner of his basement, past the tidy laundry and behind a heavy curtain, I recognize the homemade dungeon.

"You know, I swiped left on this profile once."

"Good thing. I would have reported your profile as fake. Where do you want to start?"

"How about with a kiss?"

He pushes me instead toward demonic monkey bars.

Half his toys are designed for pleasure and the other half for pain. For the rest of the afternoon, he takes me on a personal tour of his dungeon. Binding me hand to ankle on the soft mats of the floor and teasing me with an incredibly wet stroker. Restraining me on the metal cage and whipping me until my ankles and biceps are somehow both made of fire and water, then dropping to his knees and sucking my cock. Without letting me come, of course. He still wants to fuck me over the padded bench first, then on the demon monkey bars, and finally against the wall held up by a collar and very mean-looking but very light chains.

When my ass drips lube and his cum and I'm too weak to stand on my own, he finally gropes my cock. I moan in exquisite agony and know, I'll finally get some relief … as long as he doesn't take his hand away

"If you don't let me … I think I might cry."

He takes his hand away, but only slightly. "I might wanna see that."

"You're such a bastard," I whimper and hump my cock against his open palm.

"Yeah." He firmly grips my cock and I give an unfamiliar high-pitched whine. "But you love it."

I can't disagree, mostly because I'm coming. The blinding pleasure I've come to crave. The purest rush of sex and explosion. My whole body shakes and drenches his hand and leaves me choking against the wall, because I don't have enough strength in my legs to stand.

He unbuttons the collar and I slump against the soft padding of the wall and drop like a stone. My wrists stay in the plastic chains over my head. I could sleep until morning. Except that Laur joins me on his knees and dangles his cock in front of my mouth.

I raise my eyes to him. He gives me an innocent little shrug and offers his cock hopefully.

"Who's spoiled now?" I say, then start sucking and begin my torture again.