Run With Me

Excerpt

The stranger slammed Val back against the wall and pinned him there with one meaty arm thrown across his chest. His hand roved down over Val’s T-shirt until he reached his jeans. Val fought hard against the hold, pleading, “Don’t do this, sir, please. You’ll regret it in the morning. You’re drunk.”

His words fell on deaf ears. The man grunted. “This what you want, ain’t it, boy? You gay and all. I know you like this kind of thing, don’t you, you pussy?”

Val bit off a sob when the man’s thick fingers closed over his cock and stroked it through his pants. When that got no reaction from Val, he reached out and took Val’s wrist in a punishing grip, forcing his hand over the man’s crotch. His shaft twitched under Val’s touch, and Val turned his head away. Bile rose in his throat. “I don’t want this. Please, stop.”

The dark alley, stunk of urine, but Val had thought nothing of stepping out here to take out the trash as his boss instructed. He couldn’t have known that he would be accosted by the same customer that frequented the bar where he worked, the man who found it an almost nightly pleasure to toss about innuendos regarding Val’s sexual preference. Not that Val even claimed to be gay or was even a closet homosexual. He’d not had the chance to feel anything in his life other than fear.

“I knew it from the moment I laid eyes on you,” the man grunted, as if he’d been in Val’s mind knowing his thoughts. “Pretty as you are, that pale hair, that slender body.” He released Val’s wrist and ran his hand again over Val’s form, lifting his T-shirt to explore his abs. “I am surprised at how muscular you are under the clothes, though.”

The man sounded disappointed, like he’d expected Val to be more of a woman under his clothes, but Val had always been thin, and having little fat on his body allowed his muscles to be more defined naturally. Of course, he had grown stronger with the laborious positions he’d held in the last few years. None of that mattered since his attacker had him by a good hundred pounds or more. “You said you hate gay people,” he reasoned. “Why would you want me to touch you?”

“I have to teach you a lesson,” was the response.

Val didn’t get it. The lessons his father had been trying to teach him since his mother died when he was fifteen was that he needed to learn how to be a man and stop being weak. Those lessons included beating Val and getting his men to do the same—all to toughen him up. None of it had worked. Val had run away more times than he could remember, but they always found him. Since it had been six months this time around, he thought he could live a peaceful, comfortable life, but now this. Sometimes he wondered if he was cursed to live a life of misery.

He began to shake from head to toe when the sound of a zipper lowering reached him. “You’re going to get what you’ve been after a long time, boy,” the man said. He applied pressure to Val’s shoulder, pushing him downward. Val’s muscles ached in his attempt to resist, but still his knees gave, and he sank to the ground.

Val shrank back from the man’s searching hand as he reached into his pants. This couldn’t be happening. He wasn’t this worthless a person to be forced into this situation. Fingers tangled in his hair and jerked upward, bringing tears to his eyes. Val blinked them away. He’d learned the hard way not to cry.

“You’re not going to bite me, or I’ll rip your hair from your head and break that pretty nose of yours, get it?”

What choice did he have? Just get through it, and soon it would be over. Val cast his mind away to the memory of his mother, the only person in the world who had loved him. That love had been snatched away when she was killed in a car accident. His father had been behind the wheel. Thinking of her would help, but before anything could happen, Val found himself released and the man yanked away from him.

A crack of a fist smashing into flesh, and bone crunching beneath it, exploded throughout the alley. In front of Val, his attacker crumbled unconscious on the ground. A second set of feet stood inches from him. His heart thundered in his chest. Was this a rescue or another person come to hurt him? He was too scared to move, too shocked to look up. A large open palm appeared inches from his face. He hesitated, but again had no choice. Val took it, and the man hoisted him to his feet.

They faced each other in silence, neither saying a word and Val’s gaze aimed toward the ground. His throat dry, he tried to gather moisture and swallow. When the other man still didn’t say a word, Val began to hope this was a rescue. The least he should do was thank the man. “Uh…thank you,” he whispered, his voice raspy. The man grunted in response, and Val forced himself to look up. When he did, all hope faded. “Tomas.”

The flash of pleasure in the man’s eyes at hearing Val say his name or that he recognized him was gone in an instant. This was no happy reunion. Tomas was one of his father’s men. He’d taken months to send someone, and Val had hoped his father had finally lost interest in his youngest son, but that was too much to hope for. He’d sent Tomas, one of his henchmen, those that did his father’s dirty work.

“You have a place?” Tomas asked—or demanded. Anything the six foot five inch bear of a man said to Val had always sounded like an order, as if he was perpetually angry for something Val did. They all hated him, and most enjoyed the beatings they’d inflicted on him over the years. Tomas had never laid a finger on him, but that was just because he hadn’t gotten his chance yet. This, he guessed, was his opportunity.

At the thought of those huge hands enforced by massive hard muscle coming down hard on his body, Val’s shoulders slumped. He nodded.

“Let’s go,” Tomas said, and turned in the direction of the end of the alley. There would be no question of telling his boss he was leaving. What would be the point? He wouldn’t be back.

* * * *

Tomas walked alongside Val, giving him sidelong glances as they went. He stuffed his hands into his pockets to hide how they shook with his rage. When Mr. Duveau had decided to send him, Tomas hadn’t said a word about his plan. Hell, Tomas didn’t know himself that he had a plan until it formed in his mind as he prepared to leave. Because Tomas worked more often as Mr. Duveau’s driver aside from running a few errands, he’d never been sent after Val when he ran away. He was never asked to punish his boss’s son like the others, and it was a good thing he wasn’t asked. Tomas could never have laid a finger on Val to hurt him, and disobeying an order from one of the cruelest of crime bosses meant death, pure and simple.

Looking back, Tomas should have known that what he did do on Val’s behalf would lead him to this point—to helping Val escape his father. Of course, once Val knew the truth of what Tomas had done, there was no telling what Val’s reaction would be. He might not want Tomas’s help. Tomas might think he was different from the others who had hurt Val, but he’d seen the fear in the younger man’s eyes when he looked at him. All the speeches he had practiced coming here ebbed away. He could do nothing but stand there staring at Val.

They came to a narrow street that seemed to be no more than an alley, but the road was lined with the front doors of houses rather than sides of buildings. Tomas followed Val to one, and he waited for Val to unlock the door. Inside the vestibule were two doors, one to the right and one straight ahead. Val stepped to the one in front of him and unlocked it. Beyond were stairs leading up. They ended on the second floor in a tiny apartment. Old, scuffed furniture cramped the limited space, including a lumpy couch and a coffee table that had books as the legs of one side.

Val tossed his keys onto a card table that served as a kitchen table. “I’ll go and pack my things.”

“We’ll leave in the morning,” Tomas responded.

Val nodded and disappeared into the bedroom. Soon Tomas heard a shower running, and he sat down. He ran his hands over his legs wondering how he would get any rest on the tiny couch. His legs would hang over the ends almost to his knees, and his body was easily broader than its width. He sighed. They had a long road ahead of them, and he needed as much shut-eye as he could get.

The scent of some type of body wash reached his nose from Val’s bathroom. Tomas’s cock stirred. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. Like any of Mr. Duveau’s men, he’d kept a woman to satisfy his sexual needs, not so close that she’d be spouting words of love and expecting something from him he was not willing to give, but at least regular so he wouldn’t have to go looking around when he needed one. Not once had he considered being gay, and he couldn’t remember being attracted to another man. But Val was different. Something about him had drawn Tomas from the first day he’d laid eyes on him.