Taunting the devil never ended well for anyone.
“Are you sure?” Sila asked then, in a rare show of caring. It was true he posed everything as though Bay had a choice, but they both knew the truth of the matter was it was merely an illusion. He manipulated people like pawns, giving them the impression they were making moves on their own volition even when they weren’t.
Bay knew this. He’d combed over dozens of research papers and reviewed countless cases about psychopaths. Sila ticked off all the boxes.
“I almost jumped off Sickle bridge,” Bay said softly. “Did you know about that? It was three months after my grandmother’s death and I’d just lost the case and been told I had to vacate the only home I’d ever known immediately or face imprisonment. Something like that would have affected my record and the university would have fired me before I’d even officially started.”
“At a job you’ve never wanted,” Sila filled in.
Bay dropped his head back against the top of his chair. “It felt so…pointless.”
“What stopped you?” Sila asked. “Why didn’t you jump?”
“Would you have cared if I did?”
“I wouldn’t have known you,” Sila replied without skipping a beat. “So it wouldn’t of mattered.”
“Would you care if I did it today?”
Tires squealed and Bay sat upright, momentarily worried that Sila had just gotten into an accident.
“Is this a threat?” All the easy playfulness that had been in his tone before was gone. “I don’t react well to those, Professor. Proceed with caution.”
“Answer the question.”
“No,” he stated.
“Is that your answer?”
“I’ve sent you an address,” Sila told him a second before Bay’s device dinged. “You have twenty minutes to meet me there. No stops on the way. If someone tries to talk to you in the hall when you leave, you shoot them down. If I find out you kept me waiting, there won’t be any sun cream the next time I tear through that ass of yours.”
Bay shivered, but the call ended before he could come up with anything to say to that. He shifted on his seat and glanced at the message Sila had sent him. The location was nineteen minutes from campus. The bastard had left him a single minute to collect himself.
His inner muscles clenched at the dark promise of being abused. Aside from the initial sting he’d experienced when he’d woken in his bed, the sun cream had done wonders and he’d been completely healed by this morning. He was good as new and, instead of thinking about how that meant he was ready to go another round, he should be trying to come up with a way out of this whole mess.
Only, Bay didn’t want out.
People like Sila didn’t make it a habit to stick around for the long-haul. Bay wasn’t delusional—a freak who liked being hurt during sex, sure, but delusional? No. He knew it was only a matter of time before Sila got what he wanted out of this and threw Bay aside like used garbage. Even though the younger man had been tender toward him after the fact, he needed to remind himself it’d all been part of the show.
Part of the game.
A charismatic person like Sila understood it was easier to catch flies with honey than it was with vinegar. So no matter what he said or how sweet the words sounded, Bay needed to keep in mind that it was all an act. That was the only way he was going to survive this detour with the devil.
But he wouldn’t deny himself the chance. Where else was he going to find someone like Sila, someone who wouldn’t be disgusted by his sexual preferences or threaten to out him to the world. If word got around that Professor Delmar liked the idea of being whipped and cut and brutally fucked no one would ever look at him the same way. He’d go right back to that low place where nothing had felt worth it.
That was why he’d always kept his preferences to himself, only getting pleasure from the videos he rented at the Seaside. His attention had shifted once he’d met Sila, of course, his fantasies acquiring a face to the body he’d always imagined ravaging him in the dark, but the basic concept of the scenes hadn’t.
In his mind, Sila had already fucked him and hurt him a dozen times over. The fact that none of those fantasies had even come close to the explosive sensations he’d experienced the other night was yet another reason Bay couldn’t give this up.
He’d agreed to keep playing in part because he believed Sila when he’d promised to help him get answers. His grandmother deserved justice.
But he’d be lying if he didn’t admit, if only in the deepest recesses of his rotten heart, that he’d also wanted to agree. That he’d almost been grateful at the opportunity of having Sila pin him down a second time.
That he was already praying there would be a third. And maybe even a fourth.
He wouldn’t get greedy and hope any further than that, but…
Bay wanted to be punished.
