Chapter 1
Ablastoficyair hit Sam full in the face as he opened the back door. He winced from the discomfort and hurried to the dumpster. Throwing in the rubbish bags, he turned to rush back inside to the warmth and the light.
He heard soft footsteps approaching, and suddenly someone jumped into his arms, their slender legs wrapping around his waist and their arms around his neck. The stranger buried their head into Sam’s shoulder.
Sam staggered backwards a step from surprise, but the stranger was as light as a feather. He could carry them easily. Reflexively, his arms had surrounded them.
“Um… Hi?” tried Sam, completely taken aback.
He tried to figure out if he knew this person in his arms. They certainly seemed to think they knew him. It was a side effect of owning a bar and being a bartender. Many people felt like they knew you well. Sam prided himself on remembering and getting to know his customers. But it was a challenge to recognize someone from the feel of them.
But he tried anyway. He was pretty certain they were male. He ran a gay bar, so it wasn’t a huge leap of deduction. They were very light and slender, so Sam guessed young, as most men bulked out one way or another as they got older.
The young man held him tightly and showed absolutely no signs of letting go. The heat from his body was starting to seep into Sam. The feel of this man in his arms was nice. It tickled something familiar in the back of Sam’s mind. He felt like he should know him.
Sam found himself relaxing into the strange embrace. Tension he didn’t know he was carrying drained away. He felt at peace, happy. A peculiar feeling he could only describe as home, filled him.
It was the best hug he had ever had.
But he was certain this young man was not a regular at the bar.
He stood there in the alley at the back of his bar for a few moments longer. The man wasn’t letting go and wasn’t showing any signs of even thinking of doing so.
“I guess you are coming inside with me.” Sam said eventually.
He couldn’t smell any alcohol on the man, so he wasn’t drunk, but he could be high on drugs. It would explain his strange behavior. Sam wasn’t worried. The stranger was a scrap of a thing, and Sam prided himself on being a big, strong man who knew how to handle himself. This young man wasn’t a threat. And hugging strangers tightly hardly screamed danger.
So he carried him inside and turned to shut and lock the back door. The warmth and light of the empty bar covered him like a blanket. It was five a.m and closing time was three a.m. He had just finished clearing up and had been putting the trash out before going to bed.
But now he had a visitor, it seemed.
Sam walked over to the bar and placed his guest’s ass on it before prying himself back a little so he could look at the stranger.
The young man clung onto him tightly, seemingly not wanting him to move even a few inches, but eventually he surrendered and Sam could finally see his face.
Sam found himself staring into deep blue eyes. They were the color of twilight, when the sky can’t decide whether it’s day or night. But it was the soul that shone within them that was captivating. They were sad eyes, solemn. Haunted and hunted. The eyes of someone who had seen too much, done too much and knew how cruel the world could be.
Yet these eyes still sparkled with passion and life. They burned with a fierce intelligence and a thousand regrets.
Sam realized he had been standing there staring into the stranger’s eyes for a long time. Completely lost in their depths. He pulled his gaze away to take in the rest of him.
His hair flopped nearly into his eyes and framed his face with gentle curls. It was a bright, striking pink. Sam thought it was lovely.
The man had a cute nose and a dusting of freckles. He was young, somewhere in his twenties. There was nothing particularly striking about his face, but Sam thought it was beautiful, mesmerizing. He was quite simply the most stunning person Sam had ever laid eyes on.
“Hi.” Sam tried again.
The young man just stared back at him with that soulful gaze. He didn’t smile.
Sam put his hands on the young man’s wrists that were still around his shoulders and pulled them gently off to place them in the man’s lap. The man winced. A flash of pain in his beautiful eyes.
Alarmed, Sam looked down at his wrist and pulled the stranger’s sleeve back. The skin of his wrist had been torn off, leaving a red bloody band like a macabre bracelet. Sam quickly checked the other wrist to find the same.
“Shit!” Sam said with passion.
Someone had tied the poor kid up, and not in a kinky way. He’d probably torn the skin off by twisting to get free to escape. No wonder he was clinging onto Sam like his life depended on it and wasn’t able to talk. The poor man was traumatized.
Had he just escaped and Sam was the first person he had come across? Were his captors after him? Sam checked his mental images of walking back into the bar, relieved when he recalled he had definitely locked the door.
