Elliot’s gaze became soft and he slid his long arms around his man’s neck. “Absolutely.”
“Can I play?” Jake asked, drawing everyone’s attention. Vars couldn’t help feeling disappointed when Jake rose from his knees.
Knight shrugged, gathering all the cards and shuffled them quickly. “Sure. Anyone else?”
Vars stood up to bring his armchair closer to the coffee table. His gaze briefly met Jake’s, but the boy immediately shied away like a skittish deer afraid of the big bad wolf.
“How about upping the stakes?” Blackstar whispered, sliding her arms around Joker’s neck. “The winner gets a BJ from the loser.”
Knight and Joker leaned back at the same time.
“I’m out, right? I’m out,” Knight said to Elliot.
Elliot frowned and leaned in so much the empty plate fell off his lap. “You’re totally out.”
Blackstar groaned. “You’re no fun.”
Joker rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah? How come are you not playing then?”
“It’s been three years since I had my dick removed, so I can hardly get a BJ. I’m good.”
Jake licked his lips, glancing at Vars in challenge, as if this were a duel to the death.
Knight laughed. “Seriously? Battle of the prospects? I’m staying for this. Pass me the popcorn!”
Elliot slid off the sofa. “Sweet or salty?”
“Salty.”
Vars swallowed, glancing at Jake over the coffee table. The boy’s eyes immediately turned to the floor, but as seconds passed in the noise around them the flush on his face turned a shadow darker, and in the end he met Vars’s gaze head-on. A flash of heat pierced Vars’s stomach, and he stared right back into the sharp blades of Jake’s eyes, which promised him a fight to the last card, to the last drop of sweat.
Jake was challenging him. Despite the terrible news they’d just received from an unsuspecting Elliot—or maybe because of it—Jake wanted an excuse to fuck, an excuse to submit. Vars could give him that, a distraction from the terror that was surely burning its way through Jake’s brain. He briefly thought that he shouldn’t be thinking about sex in a moment such as this. Jake’s situation was appalling for one, but he also wasn’t sure whether he wanted to risk having to perform in front of others. He’d never had sex in public—bondage and discipline play, yes, only without penetration—but on the other hand, it seemed like such a normal thing here that it shouldn’t really matter. Maybe he could console Jake in the best way he knew?
What was the worst that could happen? If he ended up sucking off Jake, he was still winning.
Chapter 11 - Jake
Cold sweat had Jake’s T-shirt sticking to his back. He should have known not to challenge a man who had cards tattooed on his arm. Elliot and Knight distracting them with their popcorn weren’t of any help either.
Jake’s brain pulsed with heat when he eyed Vars’s hand, but his mind kept straying from the task at hand to the gruesome end of the man who’d previously hosted the monster inside his body. Was it Roger’s body that lay in the forgotten cell? Was this how Jake would end up as well? Dying alone somewhere where his abnormality wouldn’t be a threat to anyone.
He hovered his fingers over the cards, wondering which to exchange. They weren’t all that bad. Unless Vars got lucky, the hand could mean Jake’s victory but should he really settle on them? With his mind so muddled by worry, his thoughts weren’t even a blank slate. They were a page stained with blots of blood and tar that was already ripping through the paper and pouring onto Jake’s tender skin.
All eyes were on him now, unaware of his torment. The spectators were here to see one of the prospects humiliated by defeat, but as much as Jake longed to show them that he could flip the tables for once, a small, dirty part of him wanted to lose. That way, he’d get to have his cake and eat it. And by cake, he definitely meant Vars’s cock. The thick piece of flesh that kept him up at night whenever he thought back to the gloriously rough fuck they’d had in the garage.
He hadn’t had a chance to taste that beautiful chunk of meat yet, and drooled into his pillow just thinking about it. Fat and veiny, it called out to Jake until his dream self curled his entire body around the length and felt Vars’s sperm splatter all over his face. The news from Elliot’s diary was a constant presence in Jake’s mind, twisting up all the fears he’d lived with since the creature’s attack, but right now he didn’t want to think about the black goo eating him up, transforming him into the ugly thing the dead woman referred to in her writing. For at least a moment he didn’t want to think of anything at all.