“Do you know what they do to you when you don’t play by the rules, Luca?” Remy asked softly, almost seductively as he skimmed his hand down my chest. I told myself to step back, but I couldn’t move. I knew how fucked up all this really was, but I just couldn’t move. My body was homed in on his touch, but my mind was focused on his voice and his words, and I knew whatever was coming would just make everything worse.
But fuck if I didn’t deserve worse.
So much worse.
My suffering was a drop in the bucket compared to his.
“They let the pimps have you because you’re too much trouble for the high-paying clients,” Remy said quietly. His fingers touched my dick through my dress pants, but my body was thankfully catching up to my mind and my flesh wasn’t responding. But unfortunately, my cock wasn’t deflating fast enough, so to Remy it probably looked like the whole thing was turning me on.
Which just made me more of a sick fuck in his eyes than I already was.
I let his words wrap around my mind as I accepted the truth of what he was telling me.
“I’m sor—”
The fingers of Remy’s left hand quickly closed over my mouth to silence me. His touch was gentle, but his eyes were full of bitter, brittle anger.
“You owe me this,” he whispered. I nodded because I understood what he was saying, and he was right.
The least I could do was listen to what my actions had done to him.
“They first took me when I was eleven. I lost track of how many guys fucked me, but I never forgot the one who didn’t,” Remy said softly. “Even after they sold me to a pimp who shot me up with heroin right before he ‘tested the merchandise’ for himself, I couldn’t stop thinking about the promise that help was coming… that someone was finally going to come for me. All I could think about was the gentle voice that had told me about the beach and dolphins and the promise that he’d take me to see them someday.”
Remy dropped his hand from my mouth. My heart was pounding against my chest and my throat felt so tight I was sure I wouldn’t be able to take even one more breath. I remembered all those things I’d said to him as if it’d been days ago, not years.
“I wish you really had fucked me in that room that day, Luca,” he said, his voice husky with unshed tears. “It would have been kinder.”
I nodded because I knew he was right. I dropped my gaze. When Remy reached for my hand and pulled it to him, I let him. His fingers nudged mine open. Then he was putting something in my palm before he covered my hand with his.
“It’s my turn to forget about you,” Remy bit out, his voice incredibly even. “Take this with you when you go.” He pulled his hand back slightly to reveal a plastic baggie sitting in the middle of my palm. The bag had a small, black rock in it.
But I knew it was no rock.
“You’re not worth losing two years of sobriety,” he whispered as he closed my hand so it was fisted around the baggie. Then he was walking past me and I heard a door snick closed from somewhere behind me.
His bedroom door, probably.
Or bathroom.
It didn’t matter.
It also didn’t matter that he was wrong about one thing.
I’d never forgotten him.
And I knew now, more than ever, I probably never would.
I deserved no less.
Chapter One
Remy
The whole thing was so ridiculous I just wanted to laugh.
Or cry.
Well, okay, maybe not the crying thing because I’d learned a long time ago that tears never got you anywhere. If anything, they just gave people more power over you. The really sick fucks knew how to use your tears against you. They were in it more for the mind fuck than the actual fucking. The regular sick fucks usually liked a little bit of fight… enough to get them more worked up and nothing more. But they didn’t really want to work for it, especially not having paid top dollar for what was supposed to be a sure thing. You had to walk a thin line with those guys because they tended to react to too much fight with their fists, and if there wasn’t someone around to stop them from beating on their valuable property, said property might not walk away from the encounter at all.
I’d learned that the hard way.
I’d learned a lot of things the hard way.
So crying was out.
Okay, yeah, laughing was out too because I only did that when I had to fool someone into believing I was the well-on-the-path-to-recovery Remy.
And the dick who was probably still standing in my living room didn’t really count as someone. He was nothing more than a ghost from my former life… he was one of those hard-learned lessons that’d left a deeper scar than the ones I carried over much of my body.