WARNING: This book is for sale to ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. Contains erotic gay content, substantial sexually explicit scenes between men, gay love, gay anal, fetish, multiple partners, rough sex, and explicit language, which may be considered offensive by some readers.
All sexually active characters in this work are at least 18 years of age.
This book is copyright © habu 2011
Published by BarbarianSpy in 2011.
Cover design by S Bush © 2011
Cover Photo © Ben Goode | Dreamstime.com
All rights reserved.
Ebook ISBN 978-1-921879-13-5
Print ISBN 978-1-921879-14-2
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All characters in this book are the product of the author’s imagination and no resemblance to real people, or implication of events occurring in actual places, is intended.
Not all books listed below may currently be on release.
BOOKS BY HABU
Cairo Surrender
Fetish Galore!
Homeward Bound
Journey to Mirage
Choke Hold
Sporting Life
BOOKS BY SHABBU
Operation Black Jade
Cigars!
Angel in the Barn
Gayly Complicated
Despoiling David
The Tree of Idleness
Rough Road to Happiness
I Met a Man
The Interview
BOOKS BY SABB
The Legend of Holleystone Grange
Surprise Encounters
She is He
Wrong Man
Loyal to his King
Barbarian Tales - Book One - Traveler’s Tales
Barbarian Tales - Book Two - Journeys Begin
Barbarian Tales - Book Three - The Inheritance
Barbarian Tales - Book Four - Road to Persepolis
BOOKS BY DIRK HESSIAN
Beginning of Time
Prophecy of Noto
The King’s Men
Labyrinth
~
Journey to Mirage
habu
~
Chapter One: Troubleland
Tony had been fidgety all afternoon while Rick and the others were working on stripping down the Mercedes. Tony had said it had been totaled in a wreck and they were to break it down for parts, but it didn’t look to Rick like it was in that bad a shape. It was actually a honey of a car, and Rick cringed as he worked to strip the upholstery off the passenger seat—preserving as much of the leather in its original cut as he could.
Rick liked the feel of the leather. In fact, he liked every aspect of working in the auto shop. He thought maybe he’d finally found what he wanted to do in life. He’d known he’d never be a doctor or a lawyer or president of the United States—his family, scraping along in the smoldering inner residential area of Baltimore never had any thoughts of getting ahead that far. The most anyone had aspired to was to own a small pizza joint, like his Aunt Melda did.
His mom was probably as successful as any of them—working as a nurse’s aide over at the hospital. And she wanted Rick to go into landscaping.
“An honest, hands-on job out in the fresh air,” is the way she’d put it. That’s about the best thing Rick could think of that job, though—although it also would help keep him in shape.
But it was cars he liked working with. And he was grateful that Tony had given him this job. At least he was grateful after he’d gotten used to what else Tony gave him, what else Tony wanted from him. It had taken time for Rick to accommodate to that, but now it was something he wanted too. And increasingly Rick thought about it and about Tony being there to satisfy him when he got what Tony called “the itch.”
To get close to Tony and to the cars in the shop, Rick had had to close his eyes to some things. Tony obviously was running with some sort of neighborhood gang—in fact was leading it. But he hadn’t pressured Rick so far to join with that and some of the things they were doing. Rick didn’t know what he’d do if and when Tony came after him to be part of that. He supposed that if it was something Tony wanted him to do, though, that he’d do it. But he wouldn’t want to do some of the things the gang was into—at least he’d resist doing it as long as possible.
Today Tony was antsy, though. It had started when those two guys Rick had never seen before came into the auto shop. They looked out of place. They certainly weren’t from Rick’s mixed Italian and Hispanic neighborhood—the Hispanics pretty much moving in on the Italians, which was one reason there were gangs starting up. Tony was Italian, though, and Rick half Hispanic. This, Rick thought, was why Tony hadn’t been quick on trying to bring Rick into the Rumblers.
The two guys who appeared at the garage door were entirely too smooth in Rick’s view and were more interested in seeing all that was going on in the shop than was justified with any business they had with Tony.
Tony talked to them at the back of the shop, and from his stance, Rick could tell that Tony wasn’t happy about something. The three jawed for about ten minutes and then the two guys left.
That had been a half hour previously. Rick had seen Tony send Marco to the front of the shop, outside the garage doors, which he shut after walking through the door beside them. The shop was in an old warehouse in a compound down by the docks beyond Fells Point that was largely deserted now.
Rick was so busy working on carefully slitting the lacings of the seat leather along the lines it had been already cut, his head down into the passenger compartment of what was quickly becoming a shell of the Mercedes, that he didn’t initially notice all the guys around him—all members of the Rumblers and all Italian—putting their tools down and joining Tony at the back of the shop.
He certainly did notice, though, when he heard loud banging from the outside on the steel garage door nearest the door to the street and saw Marco race back into the door, crying out “Cops. Scatter.”
Marco was moving fast and Tony and the other Rumblers were close enough to the back to scramble up into the loft of the building and through the hole they’d cut into the neighboring warehouse. None of them tried to leave by the back entrance, which was smart of them, because in short order guys with guns and blue vests started pouring in through that door in addition to the one at the front.
Rick froze—too long to join Tony and the other guys. The best he could do was to crawl into the backseat of the Mercedes shell and try to make himself as invisible as possible.
It was a booming, to be obeyed, voice. “Hey, I see you, kid. Come on out of there—with your hands empty and showin’.”
Chapter Two: Baltimore
“I’m off to the grocery store, Ricky. Anything special you want?”
“Hey, give me a couple of minutes to get out of this file and I’ll go with you, Mom.”
“No, that’s OK. You need to finish your homework. I’m gonna stop and get my hair cut too, and there’d be nothing for you to do but kick around the mall. And you know they’re cracking down on teenage loiters over there. I don’t want you to get into any more trouble—and I want you to stay away from that Rumblers gang, you hear?”
“Yes, Mom, I haven’t been near any of those guys since that night. And I’m not a teenager anymore—or at least won’t be in another year.”
“You know what the judge said,” Maxine said, moving to the open doorway to Rick’s bedroom so that she could see him and he could see her. Her voice had taken on a sudden note of caution and concern. “He said he was reluctant to let you take auto mechanics at the trade school—that running with those guys from the Rumblers came out of your interest in auto mechanics.”
“Geez, Mom. I didn’t know they was runnin’ a chop shop. They knew their way around cars. I was learnin’ a lot.”
“Anyway, it’s not going to be just the auto mechanics. The judge made that clear. It’s good to include the landscaping class—you can help Pete in his business then. That’s what the judge thought would be the best for you to do—and Pete is happy with the idea and needs the help—and I think it’s quite generous he’s willing to pay you as you learn. Don’t you think that’s good of Pete?”
Rick mumbled something, looking hard into his computer screen while he did so.
“I said, isn’t that quite generous of Pete?” Maxine repeated, this time a little louder, and with a touch of irritation in her voice.
“Yeah, Mom, that’s great. Pete’s a real brick.”
“I don’t know why you act that way about Pete,” Maxine shot back, her voice almost a whisper now. “He’s been nothing but good to us. And he’s gone out of his way to be nice and friendly to you.”
“Yeah, Mom, right.”
“You don’t know how it is, Ricky. And you aren’t the only one around here, young man, with needs and wanting to have a life. I work hard—and so does Pete—you’re just lucky the judge let you off from doing any time as long as you had a home to go to. And Pete’s offered to let you work with him on the landscaping . . . you know as long as you’re on probation, it would be difficult for you to—”
“I said yes, Mom. That it’s good of Pete—good of both of you to let me stay here rather than the center. And for Pete to let me work with him.”
“So, you’ll work to do well in the landscaping class? You won’t give all your attention and energy to the auto mechanics? If you’d graduated from high school with your class we wouldn’t even be going through this now.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“And the photography class. That’s a possible good hobby for you?”
“Yeah, it’s OK, Mom. The instructor’s a bit creepy. But the class is OK.”
“So, is there anything you need at the grocery store then?”
“Yeah, but it has to be a particular brand. It would be better if I went with you.”
“I told you it would take you away from your studies too long, Ricky—and I don’t want you wandering around in the mall.”
“But—”
“You heard your mother, Rick,” a gruff voice piped up as a large-framed, big-muscled black guy in tight, weathered jeans and an athletic T loomed into view next to Maxine in the door. Pete instinctively encircled Maxine with an arm and palmed a hand possessively on her belly, and Maxine equally instinctively moved into the contours of his body and laid a hand on top of his. Although Pete’s voice was gruff, he was smiling—and Maxine smiled too, her free hand going to wisps of bottle blonde hair around her ears, primping for him as if by habit.
Rick looked at the two of them but then had to look away, burying his eyes once more in the computer screen. Pete was half way between Rick’s and Maxine’s ages, and Rick could barely stomach how she had worked to make herself seem younger, prettier, sexier even, since Pete had come into her life. Before that she’d been Mom and had acted like one. Now, she was trying so hard to be a sexy lover that in made Rick sick. He wanted a mother, not some slut lusting after a black hunk a good ten years younger than her. Rick knew she’d had it rough since his dad died, but this was pretty ridiculous.
And couldn’t she see that was where it had started with him—when his grades had started going downhill so he almost didn’t graduate high school and what started him staying out late at night and hooking up with the Rumblers? How could he have stayed at home at night? Her bed—their bed—was just on the other side of the thin wall from his. The sounds, the thumping of the head board against his wall, knowing what Pete was doing to her, and listening to the sounds she made as he did it.
And knowing what else there was. The hell of that. That was the worst of all. No, the worst was that now Rick wanted it—hated himself for wanting it, but wanted it anyway.
“You heard her,” Pete repeated. “It isn’t convenient for you to go with her. She’s going to be gone for a long time—and you have other things to do. We’ve got a lawn to do tomorrow. I’ll drive you by the grocery store then and you can get what you want.”
Rick didn’t say anything; he just kept on staring into his computer.
“There, isn’t that nice of Pete, Ricky? He’ll take the time and effort to stop by the grocery store for you tomorrow.”
“When you get back, I could—”
“You’ve got class tonight, and it’ll be close to dark and supper time when I get back. And you know the judge said you couldn’t drive after dark—without one of us going with you.”
Rick said nothing.
“Ricky. I said that’s really nice of Pete to offer to do. Tell him thank you, please.”
“Thank you, Pete,” Rick said, but the voice was low, begrudging, and he didn’t look up.
He could hear them kiss. It was quite noisy and sloppy—and, to him, stomach churning.
He didn’t look up until he heard the motor start up on his mother’s Camaro. And then when he did look up, he was sorry he had. Pete was still in the doorway, filling up the frame with his muscleman body. And he was smiling. And he was unbuckling his belt and pulling down the zipper of his jeans.