Broken Pieces 03 - Losing Control, page 1
part #3 of Broken Pieces Series
LOSING CONTROL
Broken Pieces Book Three
BY
RILEY HART
Dedication:
To Jessica De Ruiter. Thank you for all you do!
PROLOGUE
Tristan,
You just called and I didn’t answer. That’s on me and I realize it. I’m being a child. I’m being weak. I’m being a coward. I’m doing what you tried for years to do with me—keep your distance. Only our reasons are very different. You pushed me away because you didn’t need me close. I’m pushing you away because I do.
The truth is, my head is in a crazy place right now. I’m not sure what’s made me hit this downward spiral so quickly, but I have. When I speak with you, it fucks with my head. Again, my issue, not yours. The problem is that I’ve become so accustomed to picking up the phone when I need or want to speak with you—most of the time pretending it was for your benefit rather than mine—that I still need it. I need that connection which fucks with my head even more.
There’s so much I’ve never told you. Things I probably never will tell you even if I write them down. You see, you won’t get this letter. If I write more, you won’t get those, either. I just need to talk to you. That’s nothing new though, is it? I’ve always been the one who needed you, which in some ways is ironic.
I’ve never needed anyone other than you.
I thought, eventually, you would need me the same way.
In reality, you never needed anyone until them.
We’ve covered that. I don’t know why I mentioned it again. Maybe if I say it enough, I’ll get it through my thick fucking skull and it’ll stop me from being weak for you. That’s what you do to me. It’s not your fault, but you make me weak.
I thought I got over that, being weak. I was weak my whole childhood. I never wanted to be that again.
I don’t want to think about what that says about me.
So, I won’t.
I’ll go to the club, find someone to fuck and forget the weak man I’ve again become.
Ben
CHAPTER ONE
Ben had nothing to do with his time other than fuck.
He stopped working not long after Javier’s murder. People understood. He’d been through so much, they said; kidnapped, beaten, forced to murder. They didn’t know that wasn’t true. He hadn’t killed but he wished he had. Ben saw the man’s face almost every time he closed his eyes. Smelled Javier’s rank breath as he told Ben what he would do to him—what he would do to Tristan, Josiah and Mateo.
It hadn’t mattered what Javier threatened to do to Ben.
It made him an asshole, but it hadn’t mattered much what he promised to do to Josiah or Mateo, either.
What mattered was Tristan. It had always been Tristan and that knowledge continued to screw with him. After all this time, he should be over the man. Should have been a long time ago. The weakness ate away at his insides but he still couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t stop letting Tristan wreck him.
It wasn’t his ex’s fault. Tristan never made him promises.
Yet Ben had wanted to be the one to kill for him. He would have been okay had Javier’s blood been on his hands—which was a big fucking deal for him. Ben didn’t do blood, not after Bonnie. But he’d never been able to do anything for Tristan except give him release. Let Tristan fuck him and use him and be Tristan’s toy, even though it wasn’t something he did for anyone else.
No one else fucked him.
No one else used him.
Yet letting Tristan do it had set him free.
Ben had hoped that giving Tristan his men by ensuring Mateo’s freedom would help.
It didn’t.
After pouring another glass of top-shelf bourbon, Ben downed it in three quick swallows.
The heat of it felt good, one of the only things that felt good anymore. Drinking and fucking, only the fucking wasn’t curing him the way he wanted it to.
Screwing was his fall back when shit went bad. It had been since he started at fifteen—and soon after when he began sneaking into clubs. The rush of it got him hard. The thrill of fucking men he didn’t know. The threat of getting caught. Back then it had been the temptation, the desire to show his father who he was and ruin his career—like playing with fire and hoping to get burned. That if he did, he would pull down the whole Worthington family with him.
He hadn’t been strong enough to do it, though, so he just fucked.
Then, in college, he met Tristan. From the start he’d known Tristan was different. Ben inserted himself into Tristan’s life and then became Tristan’s toy, and he found something he needed.
Something better than the clubs and something real, unlike the sex he’d always had before.
But it had only been real to Ben, not to Tristan, and now here he was back to his old ways.
Ben stood, went to his closet and got a change of clothes. Night approached and with it the call of sin. The smell of sex, and the sound of leather against skin. Cries that would attempt to block out the noise in his head.
It never worked. Not fully, but he would continue to try.
CHAPTER TWO
Ben let the whip fly through the air, flinched at the sound of its slap against eager skin. The man cried out, screamed, begged for more and Ben gave it to him.
He swung his arm again, watched the thin strip of leather smack against the dark-haired man’s ass. Watched a new red welt swell his skin. More begging. More crying. More screaming.
“More! Please. Give me more. Let me come!”
Ben let it fly again, and again, waiting, wondering why his own cock still remained flaccid in his pants. There was sex all around him—soft sex, hard sex, painful sex. Men who all wanted the same thing he did. Sex.
The man waiting for Ben to hit him again was gorgeous—tight ass, taut skin. Muscles twisted and flexed under the pale white flesh yet his dick didn’t stir. Didn’t move.
It wasn’t working. Why wasn’t it working any more?
Ben dropped the whip, strode over to tonight’s toy, pleading for his erection to swell the whole time.
Fucking was all he had left.
Ben wrapped his arms around the man’s body from behind. He rubbed his jean-clad crotch against the man’s bare ass. It had to hurt; the wounds were fresh but the man only pleaded for more.
He gripped his partner’s throbbing erection, squeezed hard and stroked while he continued to rub against his ass.
Pain had never really been Ben’s thing. He and Tristan had played around—ropes and bondage mostly. Domination when Tristan had been in the mood but that was as far as it had gone.
Now things were different. If someone wanted to be whipped, he would whip them. And he’d gotten hard from it plenty of times before, so why the fuck couldn’t he tonight?
“Hurt me....please...” the man begged.
Ben almost pulled back at that. There was a heavy rock in his gut, a constant ache and weight that never went away. It plagued him all the time now.
“Quiet.” He didn’t let himself retreat. Instead he squeezed harder, jerked harder, rubbed harder. With his other hand he tugged the man’s balls. “You may come,” Ben whispered in his ear.
The ass against him thrust backward, the body tensed. Hot, sticky come shot from the dick in his hands, running between his fingers.
Still nothing but the heavy weight. His prick didn’t move. Didn’t fill with blood. Nothing.
Walk away. Leave. It’s not working anymore. Yet he knew he couldn’t do that. It wasn’t right, so Ben pulled the man into his arms, and walked away with him. He cleaned him up, his wounds and semen because that’s what a good Dom did. He took care of the men who submitted to him. He should like this part of it as well, but he didn’t.
Ben bit back the urge to vomit. His hands shook. Why in the fuck were his hands shaking?
“Thank you.” The man’s voice was soft, gone, blissed out in a way that Ben longed for.
“Don’t thank me.” The man rubbed against him, needing the care he deserved after their play, and Ben did it. He ran his fingers through the dark hair that was the wrong texture. Ben didn’t give him eye contact though, instead looking out through the dark club at all the play around him.
His body tensed when he saw a man watching him. He didn’t look away so Ben didn’t either. This stranger wasn’t playing with anyone, just leaning against a wall with his arms crossed and his eyes on Ben.
Short, dark hair. The length was closer to what he liked than the guy in his arms right now. He had a goatee. Not a full one, just a short patch of hair on his chin, also dark, and even from the distance, Ben knew his eyes had to be black as well. The man wore black jeans and a dark T-shirt. His skin a creamy light brown. Not African American—Hispanic or Italian, maybe.
The moment played like a bad, clichéd movie, a man watching him from across a club. Was this someone who wanted him? Someone his father had sent to watch him? It shouldn’t but that thought made his heart speed up in excitement. What would it do to Benjamin Worthington Senior if his only child, his son, was caught in a sex club with another man? A man he’d whipped and bruised and jerked off in front of hundreds of people?
Would it hurt him the way his father had hurt their family? The way he’d let Bonnie get hurt?
He shifted slightly. When he did the man shook his head, in frustration maybe, then turned and walked out.
CHAPTER THREE
Ben had a thing for being in the wrong place at th
That’s all it took for the mob to move from waiting outside the building (was his father inside? Or someone else) and make their way to Ben.
He should have stayed in his apartment. Kept his schedule of being up all night and trying to sleep during the day. For some reason it was easier for him to sleep then, not that he got much of it. He didn’t see as much blood in his dreams—Javier’s or Bonnie’s. He didn’t see bodies on the ground or hear painful whispers of voices from the past, as loudly during the day.
“How have you been doing? Since the kidnapping? Understandably, your father has been relatively quiet on the subject,” a woman asked.
Except when it suits him, Ben wanted to add. His father used him the same way he’d used Bonnie. It looked good in public, gave him sympathy points even when he didn’t care about it in private.
Reporters surrounded him. A few people took pictures with phones even though they probably had no idea who he was. All they saw were cameras so they reacted when really Ben was no one. He wasn’t even one of the state’s top defenders anymore. Not since the kidnapping.
“And what has Congressman Worthington had to say on the topic?” Ben asked, crossing his arms. He still wore a suit, though he wasn’t sure why he did. The habit was hard to break.
The first reporter to spot him cocked her head slightly, as though confused by the question. “That you’re a hero, of course,” she finally said and Ben bit his tongue to keep from laughing.
His father would never see a hero when he looked at Ben. Ben didn’t want to be that kind of hero, either. It had taken him almost all his life to finally realize it. To finally cut the ties, but he had. Not long before Javier took him as he walked home from work, Ben had told his father who he was. A gay man who hated him. The club knowledge didn’t come until after Javier.
“Oh, am I? Why did he say that?”
“Because you survived. You fought back. You could have given in but you didn’t and now Los Deminos is unraveling. Not many men could have done what you did.”
He doubted his father said that. Hell, it wasn’t true, either. He hadn’t fought back. Mateo, Tristan’s Mateo, had saved him. That didn’t make Ben a hero.
“How are you dealing with the aftermath of such a horrible event?” someone asked.
“When will you go back to work?” this question from another reporter.
“Is Congressman Worthington helping you deal with everything that’s happened?”
And then, “Who are you dating? You’re one of the city’s most eligible bachelors, the popular congressman’s son, who’s not only a powerful defense attorney but who also fought back against one of our most notorious gang leaders.”
At that, Ben couldn’t help but laugh. You’d think his dad would have used Ben’s homosexuality for his benefit as well. He could earn points from the liberal population by accepting his gay son, but that hadn’t been the case. He was far too red for that.
“Why don’t you ask my father who I’m dating? He knows.” Ben couldn’t help taunting. The looks the reporters tossed back and forth to each other said they weren’t sure how to deal with his answer. “If you’ll excuse me.” Without another word, Ben turned and walked the other direction.
Hell, he couldn’t even remember why he’d left his apartment anymore, so after only an hour or so of being out, he jumped on the subway and made his way back to Manhattan.
Halfway through Ben’s surprise arrival on the six o’clock news, his phone rang.
Right on time, Mr. Congressman.
“What the fuck was that, Benjamin? Why would you answer a question that way?”
Ben took a drink of his bourbon. “Do you ever think of her, Congressman? Of Bonnie?”
His dad cursed. “Of course I do. What kind of monster do you think I am?”
Maybe the same kind Ben would turn into.
“But she’s gone. It’s over. There was nothing we could do. She couldn’t deal. Nothing could change that except Bonnie herself,” his father added.
Anger pierced every important internal organ Ben had. He felt like his whole body would explode. Like he had with the whip last night, Ben swung his arm through the air. His glass shattered against the wall of his apartment, dark liquid pooling on the floor.
“Don’t you ever blame her! You did nothing to save her. Nothing to try. Your reputation was more important, just like it’s more important to you than I am.”
Red swam in front of Ben’s eyes. Blood. He was so fucking tired of seeing blood. He squeezed his lids shut, trying to see black instead. “No one tried to save her.” Not even Ben himself.
“Why are we discussing something that happened over twenty years ago? I called to discuss your behavior today. What is it going to take, Benjamin? How do I guarantee you’re not going to make things difficult for your family?”
For his family. Did he even have one of those? Had he ever? His dad spoke often of family values but he didn’t live that way.
“Do politicians do this often? Try to pay off their children? I’ll give you a hint, Congressman. I’m already rich.”
“Jesus Christ. Listen to you. You think you’re so much better than I am. You’re disgusting. You live your life in secret, fucking men because you know how wrong it is. I’ve looked into the things that occur at the places you frequent. It’s deviant. You won’t out yourself anymore than I want you to because you know you’re sick. And what did you do to save Bonnie? You gave her what she needed to do it. You were both sick, only in different ways.”
With that his father hung up the phone. Ben didn’t move. Not right away. He replayed those words, let them sink in, engrave themselves into his head because he knew his father was right. He had always been sick. No matter what had happened, he’d wanted his father’s love. He’d lied and pretended whatever he had to just to get it.
The same way he would have done anything for Tristan’s love—a different kind of love, yes, but love all the same.
And he hadn’t done anything to save Bonnie. He’d let her down. Let her die.
Ben stood, filled a new glass of bourbon. Drank. And then got ready to go out for the night.
CHAPTER FOUR
His dick still wasn’t getting hard.
Granted, he wasn’t currently playing with anyone but that was part of the problem as well. Ben couldn’t find anyone he wanted. No one gave him the urge to fuck and it pissed him off. It was all he had and he wanted it back. What the hell was wrong with him?
Ben’s eyes travelled around the room. They landed on a bench where he saw the stranger from last night, tying his toy with the toy’s arms in the air. He wrapped him beautifully, took time with each knot, to get him strung up and on display just the way he wanted him.
Ben’s skin began to tingle.
Maybe that’s what he needed—to tie a man’s body in all those beautiful knots before he fucked him.
The top had his shirt off, flaunting more of that taut, dark skin but this time he could see tattoos covering his back. He couldn’t make them out from here—tribal maybe, thick lines, curves, swirls and dips. There was another on his biceps, again, Ben couldn’t tell what it was from this distance. Tattoos weren’t usually Ben’s thing but on this man, they were sexy. Beautiful, even.
Ben watched him study his work. Watched him tug on the ropes that tied his partner to the two benches—on his back, legs spread and in the air, tied at the ankles on a beam above. When he seemed satisfied with his work, he grabbed a blindfold and wrapped it around his partner’s eyes.
They made a gorgeous fucking picture—two hard-bodied men, eager sweat making their skin glisten.
The Dom bent over and whispered something in the sub’s ear. Ben saw him shudder from across the room.
He waited for it—for blood to rush to his groin. For his cock to ache and hunger to slam into his waiting body, but still, it didn’t happen.
But he felt the heat he hadn’t experienced the last few times he’d been here.
