“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 Möbius, 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.

“Beat you and fuck you,” Kingsley said. “Do you have a problem with that? If so, I’d speak up now.”

The boy’s steps faltered. Kingsley grabbed him once more and pushed him back against the wall.

“Problem?” Kingsley asked. He kissed the boy’s neck, pulled down his collar and bit his chest.

“Will I like it?” The blond slid his hands under Kingsley’s shirt, seeking skin-to-skin contact.

“It’s not fun for me if you don’t like it, too,” Kingsley said, grabbing the boy’s wandering hands and pinning them behind his back. “I want you to look at your bruises in the mirror tomorrow and come all over yourself from the sight of them. I want you to see each welt and remember the moment I gave it to you. I want you to try to have normal sex with someone and lay there like a corpse because he’s not hurting you and you need pain to feel alive. I want to ruin you tonight so that every other night feels like a waste of your life. Is that what you want, too?”

The blond boy pushed his hips against Kingsley’s and rasped two words.

“Ruin me.”

3

KINGSLEY OPENED THE door to his room, took the boy by the collar of his jacket and pushed him inside.

The boy stood in the center of the bedroom. Bedroom, yes. Nothing but a room with a bed. Kingsley hadn’t even bothered with a chair. Why waste the floor space? The bed itself was black—black sheets, metal frame. Light from the barred and grated window cast squares of weak yellow squares across the sheets and the floor.

“Can I ask you a weird question?” the blond said as he turned to Kingsley.

“Ask.”

“I can’t figure your accent out. Where are you from?”

Kingsley smiled.

“Not Texas.”

He grabbed the boy by the throat and forced him to the floor. He slapped him once, hard. Hard enough that the blond gasped, not hard enough to leave a mark.

“Fight back if you want,” Kingsley said as he stripped the boy of his jacket and threw it aside. “You’ll lose. But you can try.”

The boy was already struggling against him as Kingsley pulled his shirt up, exposing the bare flesh of his back.

Kingsley grasped the bamboo cane he kept under the bed.

“I’m going to cane you.”

“Will it hurt?”

“Fuck, yes, it will.”

The boy shuddered, but he didn’t say no, so Kingsley took that as a yes.

Once, twice, five times he struck the boy’s back, harder each time. The blond didn’t cry out but only released soft grunts of pain. A passing car beamed a momentary spotlight into the room, and Kingsley could see the furious red welts already raised on the boy’s otherwise pale and spotless flesh.

“Beg for mercy if you want me to stop,” Kingsley said, digging his hand into the boy’s blond hair at the base of his skull and forcing his face against the bare wood floor.