Runaway Model (9 page)

"Bryce. Mate."

"Get your clothes on and get out now. My lawyer will deal with you from here on out."

"Your lawyer. You must be in love with that fucking dude. Fuck me, mate, can't I just stay the night? It's 3 AM, innit? Where will I go?"

"You could go home."

The expression on Kyle's face told him what he thought of that idea.

"Then you could meet your friends outside Tao. They're probably wondering why you're not there yet."

"I doubt it, mate. It's the first time I ever saw those people. We arranged online to meet so we could run down a rumor. A stupid rumor. They've already forgotten it. They've already forgotten me."

Kyle looked into Bryce's eyes again. Must have realized he wasn't reaching him.

"Mate, listen to me. Those people... they're fake fans anyway. I don't know where they are now and I don't care. I'm only in the Stoney Rockland fandom. I don't chase every celebrity who shows up in a VIP lounge."

The trouble was that Kyle's explanation was no explanation at all.

Bryce sat hard and buried his face in his own hands. "Focus. An admirable quality in a stalker."

"I'm not a stalker. I'm a fan. You're not listening, mate."

"I am listening. But all this fanboy crap I'm hearing has me convinced you can't be a day over sixteen. You lied to me. And it's not a tiny lie. It's the kind of lie that costs a man his freedom."

"Mate. Bryce. Hey. I would never, ever hurt you, mate." Kyle tried to wrap his arms around Bryce, who shoved him away. Undeterred, he slipped gracefully from the chair to the floor at Bryce's feet to hug his knees.

Bryce felt easier when he was looking down on a shock of dark hair instead of gazing directly into those lying eyes. Chocolate brown with gold flecks. The kind of eyes that could persuade a man to believe anything he wanted to believe.

"You're right. I'm not legal." Kyle's voice was very small where it was muffled against Bryce's legs.

Bryce wanted to vomit.

"But it isn't what you think. I'm eighteen. I am, mate. But I overstayed me visa. And everything in this town is for over twenty-one. You have to be fucking twenty-one to buy a fucking beer. It's fucking craziness, mate."

"You're saying you're an illegal immigrant."

"I understand the preferred term is 'undocumented worker.'"

"Except you have lots of documents. And I don't especially get the idea that you do work, unless stalking musicians is a paying proposition."

When Kyle shrugged, his shoulder blades lifted like wings. He didn't try to argue that he did, in fact, hold the kind of job that paid for crocodile shoes.

It might be rubbing salt in the wound, but Bryce had to know exactly how badly he'd been burned. "So what about those documents?"

Professional grade holograms. Entire fake passport complete with green card on the side. Didn't that argue for Kyle being mixed up in some kind of organized crime scam?

"Every hotel on the strip runs on illegal labor, innit? There's a man you pay in the driver's license office, and he puts your information in the computer, and Bob's your uncle. You're in the system."

It was a far cry from how it used to work in Lake Charles. Bryce drank underage for years just by borrowing the driver's license of an older cousin twice removed who looked a little like him.

What Bryce did was a little illegal. The same thing every teenager in Louisiana did.

What Kyle had just described was a federal offense—bribing a public official. It probably wasn't something he'd say if it wasn't true.

"OK. OK. I believe you. But you do understand that adults come to Vegas because it's an adult playground. Adults. You know? Grown-ups? I don't expect to find kids drinking pomegranate martinis in all the best bars."

"I am an adult. Eighteen's a legal adult in my country. And it should be in yours. I'm old enough to join the army, fight, and die in Iraq. Old enough to vote. Your laws are completely illogical, mate."

"If your country is so much more advanced, why don't you go back there?"

"You want me to go?" Now Kyle did look up. The ceiling light somehow set off tiny sparkles in his deep brown eyes.

No. Bryce didn't want him to go.

But how could he trust him?

How could he ask him to stay?

Kyle's tongue was moving up Bryce's knee. Bryce's cock responded with a fine show of enthusiasm for that agile digit.

Oh God.

How could he ask him to go?

Kyle's tongue. And then his lips. Bryce squirmed from the teasing flutter of the butterfly kisses on the insides of his thighs.

Kyle's right hand grasped the root of Bryce's cock. His left hand grasped the root of his own. How did he manage to put the maximum pressure right there on that crucial spot where head met shaft? Every. Single. Time.

Bryce shouldn't have been able to come again that fast.

How did Kyle manage to hit his trigger again and yet again?

***

A
bolt of late afternoon sun shot through the bedroom's blackout curtains, throwing an almost painful shaft of light across Bryce's face.

A silhouette stood at the floor-to-ceiling window.

Kyle must have heard the change in Bryce's breathing, because he dropped the curtains and took a couple of steps back toward the bed. As Bryce's eyes adjusted to the shadows, he could see Kyle was naked except for the silk briefs.

"Your phone was going crazy with notifications," Kyle said. "I turned it off. I thought you might need to sleep."

Just great. But there were any number of hotel phones scattered around the bedroom. Relics of the days when multiple landline phones in a suite were evidence of luxury. And none of them was blinking. Perhaps the various associates of Bryce Yourself Petroleum weren't panicking just yet.

Kyle saw where Bryce's eyes went. "I pulled the plug on that. Just a precaution. Nothing quite jangles the nerves like being jolted awake by an old-fashioned ringing telephone."

"My business partners might have wanted to check in on me." It was an automatic complaint with no real force behind it. Bryce was perfectly content to lounge around in the king-sized bed and consider the long well-developed muscles of Kyle's bare thighs.

He felt a stab of shame about the moment of insecurity the night before. But Kyle didn't seem to hold a grudge.

"What about the wife?" he was asking. Was it was a question? Or a dare?

"There's no wife," Bryce said. "Come here."

Kyle took another step forward and then stopped again. Sometimes it was hard to tell if he was really that uncertain or deliberately teasing. If Bryce had to bet on it, he'd go with "deliberately teasing."

"Are you out?"

It was an awkward question. No, Bryce wasn't out. Not really. Not in his business. He bought mineral rights. He'd started in southwest Louisiana, of course, but he'd soon moved north to take advantage of the Bakken Formation petroleum boom. It wasn't like he was a cake decorator, for fuck's sake.

Kyle read the long silence as expertly as any poker player. "That's what I thought. So I figured you might not want to be interrupted whilst you had an eighteen-year-old boy in your room."

He sat down on the edge of the king-sized mattress, still an arm's length out of reach. Bryce rolled over and caught him, pulling him backwards so they were cuddling spoon-fashion. Kyle wiggle-waggled his ass to rotate flirtatiously against Bryce's semi. Did he say semi? Not for long...

Just then Kyle's phone went off, a bit of a pop tune Bryce almost recognized. "You didn't unplug your phone."

Kyle sat up fast, the butt-to-boner contact abruptly broken. "Sorry, but this is important. Stoney's going to be at this club in Santa Monica tomorrow night... well, I guess it's tonight now. He might join the local band on stage."

That's what was important? Bryce remembered why he'd stopped dating eighteen-year-olds.

"The butler already set me up with a limo drop-off. It's cool having a butler. I think I like you, Bryce. You're a real rock star, innit?"

"Limo drop-off?"

"Yeah, at McCarran. Oh, and I hope you don't mind but I charged the flight to one of your credit cards. It's bad if you show up and pay cash at the airport for a first class ticket leaving the same day."

Even the highest-end escort would have been cheaper than Kyle. Wasn't that always the way? But if you liked playing the game, you had to pay the price.

"Let me guess." Bryce tried to swallow the hint of dry amusement in his voice. He didn't want Kyle to think he was laughing at him. "You'll pay me back."

"Um, probably not." Kyle didn't even bother to look apologetic. "I haven't paid anybody back yet, mate. But if I ever win Megabucks, you'll be the first on me list."

Bryce supposed he should be angry. Instead he felt indulgent. One nice thing about 500 million dollars—you didn't have to waste your time getting excited about the pennies. "You could get in trouble that way, helping yourself to other people's lines of credit."

"I can tell when a man has a big heart." Kyle put down the phone and began to snuggle up against Bryce again, this time face-to-face.

"It isn't my heart that's so big."

"Mmmm." Kyle darted head-first under the covers to flutter his tongue at Bryce's wake-up erection. Bryce shoved back the sheets, the better to watch those uptilted lips work on his swollen knob.

"Don't make me come this time," he said. "I want to save something..."

"Mmmm." Kyle hummed tenderly into his shaft, just enough to make Bryce's toes curl. Somehow, though, he managed to hold back.

Kyle's phone sang again. He darted over and inspected the screen for a moment. "The airline. I'm ticketed now. Seat 2C."

"Don't go," Bryce said. "I hate to think of you flying on a fake passport on a US airline. Seems like you'd be taking quite a chance."

Kyle turned off the phone. "It'll be OK." He stood angled away from the bed, giving Bryce a nice view of his ass dancing out of the silk briefs. The highly arched curves of his bubble-butt were delightfully distracting.

But Bryce was determined not to let the little head do his thinking for him this morning. "Seriously, Kyle. It seems like an unnecessary risk."

"There's no risk." He crawled back into bed and began to hump his entire body playfully against Bryce. "Relax and don't worry so much. I use the real thing at the airport. They're not looking for visa overstays on a jaunt from Vegas to El Fucking A."

"So you do have a real passport."

"Of course, mate. I had to fly out of Manchester to come to America, innit?"

"Why didn't you say so before? Let me see."

Kyle froze. "I'd rather you didn't. If I wanted you to see it, I would have showed it to you the first time you asked. Saved a lot of time and fuss."

"Kyle—"

"Trust me on this, Bryce. Please. Can't you trust me that much?" He touched a finger to the side of Bryce's mouth. An eyelash couldn't have brushed him more lightly—or more seductively.

Oh God. Bryce did want to trust him. He did trust him. He did.

But he knew what his advisers would say.
Trust but verify. Always fucking verify.

Bryce pushed himself out of the bed with both hands. Despite the size of the place, he was in the great room in a few long strides. Kyle followed him, hovering behind at a little distance, but he made no attempt to stop Bryce from digging into the messenger bag.

Kyle wasn't lying. He wasn't hiding anything. But he was clearly a little distressed about being so open to Bryce. The way he kept putting his long hands over his own face said that much.

The contents of the bag told a story Bryce probably already knew somewhere deep in his heart.

A change of shirt, socks, and briefs. The slim Tyvek® wallet he'd seen last night with the fake driver's license and the fake green card in it. The fake British passport.

He dug deeper. There was the usual scatter of electronics—a tablet, some thumb drives, wireless headphones.

A dopp kit that included the basics as well as a small bottle of 1872 for Men. Only part of the reason Kyle smelled so marvelous. The rest was pure Kyle.

A silk jewelry roll that Bryce unrolled. He wasn't sure why. The passport wouldn't be in there.

An eighteen-karat gold chain made of heavy Cuban links. A matching eighteen-karat bracelet. A pair of eighteen-karat gold French cuff links set with lavender jade.

Gifts from other men?

Bryce rolled the jewelry back up, ashamed of what he was doing but unable to stop doing it.

Near the bottom of the bag, he found a bundle of hundred-dollar bills with a Caesar's Palace five-thousand-dollar strap around it. Judging from the thickness, it might actually contain five thousand dollars.

"Don't," Kyle was saying. "This is incredibly invasive, mate." It was a token protest. No force behind the words.

Maybe Kyle wanted someone to know who he was.

Maybe he wanted that someone to be Bryce.

"Are you homeless, honey?" Bryce cursed himself for letting that "honey" slip out. "Why are you carrying so much cash? Did you steal it?"

Idiotic question. Of course Kyle was homeless. Or, if not technically homeless, he had to be some kind of drifter. Bryce must have known it all along. There was a part of him that wanted to wrap his arms around and around this beautiful boy to keep him safe.

But right now he needed to think about keeping himself safe.

"Bryce, please... stop asking questions."

There was a hidden compartment at the bottom of the bag. Bryce almost missed it. He felt a flap of fabric with a zipper tag under it.

Yes. Here.

"Bryce."

"I'm sorry, Kyle. I am. But it's my right to know the truth."

He could tell by touch it was a passport even before he pulled it out of the bag. Bryce took a deep breath and flipped it open to the relevant page.

Kyle was all but wringing his hands in despair. "They took it before I were ready, mate. And now I've got to have that shite picture for ten years."

It was indeed an unfortunate photo. The date of issue revealed it had been taken weeks after Kyle turned sixteen—which was in fact two years ago. He was long and lean now. Back then he was just skinny.