“But if I were, I’d insist that the exact nature of said punishments be spelled out. That contract you signed gives them the right to do pretty much anything to you without any legal recourse. They could put you in a cell, feed you nothing except bread and water, torture you.”
Peyton made a face at her. “They’re trying to help me, Bettina. The punishments are for not sticking with the program. Which, in case you’ve forgotten what we were discussing two minutes ago, is exactly what will happen if I don’t have a strong incentive.”
The guy on the dance floor had mentioned—yelled—something about punishments, and it was the idea of there being consequences for his lack of perseverance that had kept the idea of doing a stint at The Bars and Stars firmly in his mind until it almost seemed like he had no choice but to act on it. His trouble was that there neverhadbeen consequences. He’d never been thrown out of the nest and told to fly, had never had anything withheld from him that was worth working for.
Not to say he always got everything he wanted. There was that horrible Christmas when the big present under the tree turned out to be an XBox One rather than a PlayStation. But generally things were okay. Good enough. When he went to a club, men approached him. When he dropped the ball at work, someone else picked it up. When he disappointed his friends by not showing up to help them move, they shrugged and said, “Well, it’s Peyton. What did you expect?” and didn’t bother to ask him the next time.
If his parents had disapproved of his sexuality, that would have been worth fighting over. He’d psyched himself up to come out to them, telling himself this was something he was going to do whether it was easy or not. If they tried to say he didn’t know his own mind or that his sexuality was a phase, he would stand firm, for however long it took to convince them.
He’d practically made himself sick worrying about it, but the actual event had been anticlimactic. His mother had given him a hug, and his father had said, “Thanks for sharing that with us.” And that had been the end of The Most Dramatic Episode in a Young Gay Man’s Life. His big chance to take a stand had fizzled to nothing, and he’d been coasting ever since.
“You’d better call me,” Bettina said. “Every day. I want to know you’re not in a cage getting your feet whipped.”
“If only,” he said with a wink.
She rolled her eyes at him, knowing he was kidding. He never missed a leather night, but even when it came to kink, he was a halfway kind of guy. He didn’t mind a mid-fuck swat, but he didn’t ask to be choked. He was a bottom to his core, but fuck or suck, frot or stroke, it was all the same to him. As long as he got off.
Bettina rose to her feet, unearthing a slipper that had been buried beneath her and which ought to be in his suitcase. The charmingly rustic plank floors showcased in the brochure were undoubtedly cold and full of splinters. He unzipped his suitcase.
“Enough with the packing,” Bettina protested. “You’re bringing a ridiculous amount of shit for someone who’s only going away for two weeks and is supposed to be roughing it.”
“I never said I was roughing it.” He managed to squeeze the errant slipper in between his jock straps and his moisturizing kit. “The accommodations might be rustic, but it’s not camping. I’ll have a bed and a shower and three hot meals a day. I’ll be fine. And when I come back? All this is going to change, Bettina.” He pointed at the aqua wall, which would be the first thing to change. “Mark my words.”
He’d said that before, a hundred times, and Bettina knew it. She jangled her car keys, indicating without words that she was ready to leave for the airport whenever he was. He could have taken a Lyft and spared himself the sarcasm, but he’d asked her to drive him because he was afraid he would chicken out otherwise.
Bettina took charge, the way she always did when they had somewhere to go, getting his suitcases loaded into her trunk and calling up directions to the airport on her GPS, as if they could miss it. She double-checked his boarding pass to see which terminal they were headed for—not trusting him to have the correct information himself—and pulled up in front of the airport with ten minutes to spare before his designated check-in time.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said as they sat in the passenger loading and unloading zone with Peyton looking through his window at the terminal as if someone might come over and fetch him if he waited long enough. “If you want to take charge of your life, I can help you draw up a plan.”
Peyton shook his head. His drawers were littered with plans Bettina had drawn up for him—exercise programs, shopping lists, daily affirmations, sketches of ideas he’d had for product improvements. He never followed through on any of them, so nothing ever changed, not even his friendship with Bettina. The next time he started whining about his life meaning nothing and going nowhere, she would draw up another plan, but he would still be right here, looking at life instead of doing it.
“I’m going,” he announced with faked firmness. He put his hand on the door handle.
“All right, have fun. Give me a call when you’re ready to come home, and I’ll pick you.”
“My return flight is on the itinerary I emailed you.”
“I know, just… even if it’s before then.”
Bettina didn’t believe he would really get on the plane. And if hedidget on the plane, she didn’t believe he would last the whole two weeks. Bettina wasn’t usually wrong, but this time he was going to make her be wrong. This time, he would do it.
Chapter 2
Somebody met him at the airport—somebody in a cowboy hat who looked at his suitcases like he was out of his mind before throwing them with absolutely no regard for the fact that one of them was genuine Gucci into the back of a Range Rover.
The cowboy didn’t say a lot, but he was clearly in charge, which kept Peyton from making a U-turn for the departing flights terminal after taking a single breath of the hundred-degree air. He climbed into the cab of the Range Rover and was relieved to discover it had air conditioning. For a moment he’d been worried these people took the ranching part of their ranch too seriously.
“I’m Peyton,” he said as he aimed one of the vents at his face, but the driver, who already knew his name because it’d been printed on the sign he’d been holding, merely grunted.
They drove and drove and drove—away from the airport past a stretch of tall buildings then a stretch of shorter buildings and eventually a stretch with no buildings at all as the highway turned into a road and the road turned into dirt—all without speaking.
“It’s kind of a ways out there, huh?” He was completely at this guy’s mercy, with no idea whether they were heading for The Bars and Stars or a concrete bunker where he kept his victims.
“Almost there,” the driver said, like it was a concession.
Peyton got out his phone and sent Bettina a pin. Just in case.
“Did you give up halfway there?” she texted back. “According to their website, the ranch is another thirty miles from there.”
