The Paid Sample

1. Prologue

The mask clung where his breath wet it. Plastic, still new, tasting faintly of the bag it had come in, so that every inhale drew the smell of packing film over his tongue. The helmet strap sat in the hole punched for the reshoot, not the hole that had been comfortable, and the buckle worried the soft skin under his ear each time he swallowed. Below the cut hem the air of the room found him. Jacket ended at the ribs. Belt tab on bare stomach. Black pleats brushing the tops of the socks, three dark bands biting lightly into white cotton whenever he shifted his weight.

Eli held the pistol because the grip had been put back into his hand. Empty. He knew the chamber was empty. The painted muzzle angled at the ceiling the way the sheet had asked, and his fingers ached around it from not being allowed to let go. The crate under the camera ticked when the floor moved. Olive paint. A diamond sticker peeled down to a scrap of orange. Lamp heat on his collarbone, on the strip of skin the shears had decided was the length the fee had paid for.

Richard’s thumb rested in his navel. Not measuring. The pad of it dragged once, slow, through the faint damp there, and Eli’s stomach jumped under the touch as if the touch had been a question. It was not a question. The other hand gathered the pleats and folded them up, unhurried, the fabric cool for a second against his cock and then gone, so that he stood in the helmet and the mask and the open jacket with nothing between the lamp and the fact of him. He was already thick. The knowledge of it burned worse than the exposure. Richard looked, the way he looked at a finish, and the breath he let out was short, irritated, close to pleased.

“Hold it,” he said.

Eli stared at the white door. The shop fan hummed through the wall, a low uneven tick. Richard went to his knees on the rug. The wool scraped. Then his mouth closed over the head of Eli’s cock, wet and too hot, teeth catching once before he corrected himself and sank farther, the flat of his tongue working the underside in a stroke that had no grace in it and did not need any. Eli’s free hand found the edge of the crate. The pistol stayed up. Precome salted the roof of that mouth; Richard made a rough sound in his throat and took him deeper, nose against the cropped hem, fingers dug into the hinge of Eli’s hip as if steadying a load. The suction pulled a shameless pulse up Eli’s spine. His knees loosened. The strap creaked when his head tipped.

Richard pulled off with a wet sound that seemed too loud for the room. Spit strung from his lip to the shining head and broke. He stood. Turned Eli by the hip toward the crate. Bent him. The camera slid; the pistol knocked the lid and stayed in Eli’s fist only because Richard’s hand closed over his and pressed the fingers back into the grip.

“You hold what I give you.”

The voice was low, ordinary, the same voice that wrote mileage. Eli’s cheek met the olive paint. The sticker’s torn edge scratched his jaw beside the mask. Behind him Richard spat, worked the wet into him with two fingers, then a third, the stretch blunt and specific, scissoring until Eli’s hole fluttered and gave. Gun-oil sharpness under the spit. A knuckle dragged the place that made his cock drip onto the crate lid, a clear thread swinging and falling. Eli said wait into the plastic. The word fogged the mask against his mouth. Richard waited with the head of his cock just inside, thick, burning, one palm spread on the bare small of Eli’s back under the jacket, the other on the latch. The fan hummed. Eli’s thighs shook in the socks. He nodded. The helmet made the nod larger than he meant.

Richard sank in. The first full push drove the air out of Eli in a broken sound the mask muffled. Fullness, too much, the burn smoothing into a heavy ache as his body took the rest of the length. Richard held there, hips flush to the pleats bunched at Eli’s waist, and breathed through his teeth. Then he drew back and fucked him in short strokes that knocked the crate against the baseboard, each one wetter than the last, the sound of it obscene and rhythmic under the fan. Eli’s cock slapped his own stomach and the lid. He came without a hand on him, sudden, helpless, striping the olive paint while he clenched around the cock driving into him. Richard grunted, lost the short rhythm, and buried himself. Heat pulsed deep. When he eased out, come followed, slicking Eli’s hole, catching in the crease, dripping down to the sock.

The rag was already in Richard’s hand. He wiped the lid. He wiped the smear on Eli’s back with his thumb, checking it the way he checked a finish, and dropped the cloth where Eli could reach it.

Lamp heat still on the collarbone. Downstairs, the kitchen stayed as they had left it. Friday’s sheet did not care that the camera had never fired. Eli’s fingers would not open yet around the empty grip.

1. Chapter 1 — The Ended Job

The layoff paper had gone soft at the crease from being folded into a back pocket. Eli set it on the kitchen table beside a coil of twine and a chipped mug, then did not know what to do with his hands. Twenty-two. The warehouse had ...