Toss my bag into the passenger seat.
Pull sunglasses over my eyes.
Turn the ignition, and then I’m gone.
Driving straight into the sunset, ready for another night on this endless highway.
CHAPTER 2
SEVEN
The first lieSilas ever told was that it tasted good. Sticky and sweet like the icing on a cinnamon bun. A hundred men later and I know that’s never true. I wipe my lips with the back of my hand as man number one-hundred-and-one buttons his jeans.
His beard is short and stubbly, with a few days’ growth. If only he applied the same effort to his lower parts. I pick a hair from my teeth and shake it onto the floor.
He stares ahead, out the fogged window. “What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere, anyway?”
“It’s great for business. An unlimited sea of lost souls just looking for release, and most happen to have wives back home.” I drop my gaze to the wedding ring on hispudgy finger. “You truckers aren’t looking for something real and don’t mind paying for it.”
“You really should be careful out here,” he says deadpan, all about business.Straightmen like him get so horny that they don’t care who’s sucking their dick until they come, and then they get weird.
“I’m not worried.”
“You should be. You have no idea who anybody is until it’s too late.” He rubs a thumb over my cheek. “I’d hate to see your beautiful face on the news.”
I laugh. “If you see this mug on the news, it won’t be because I was murdered.”
“I’m being serious.” He drops his touch to the side of my throat, lingering on a pause that feels like it could end with him choking me with his strong, muscular hand.
I pull away from him and hold out a hand. “And I’m impatient. Fifty dollars.”
He retrieves his wallet from his jeans and passes me a fifty-dollar bill. “Best fifty dollars I did ever spend, kid.”
I rip the money out of his hand. “Don’t fucking do that. Don’t call me a kid.”
“Well, you’re not a man.”
“And what are you?” It’s a rhetorical question I’m not interested in hearing his response to. I push open the truck door, jump down onto the pavement, and slam the door behind me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him watchingas I depart down a train of rigs pulled to the side of the roadway. There’s an eerie quietness in the air. All that can be heard are the faintest echo of truck radios humming and hacking coughs coming from inside one of the trucks.
There’s a chill too, but it beats the fucking heat of the day. There’s a calmness in the night that can’t be found in the brutal duress of daylight. Back home, it was always said that evil thrived in the night when the demons would come out and claim the souls of the innocent. The wicked move in the shadows, and the damned walk the earth, preying on the weak and unfortunate. We were never allowed to be weak, but what did that mean? The fuck if I know. Questions weren’t answered with answers. They were answered with more questions. A thirst for knowledge was the most dangerous thing the young could possess. A thirst for cock—well, that was even worse.
I’ve been thirsty since I was old enough to get an erection. From the very first time I laid eyes on my own hard cock, I was infatuated with the idea of putting my mouth on one. Every morning, I would wake up and practice my stretching in hopes that it would be the day I could finally bend enough to suck my own dick. That day never came, but Silas did.
Silas was brought onto the compound by a mother on the run from an abusive marriage. They integrated into the church with ease, but there was always something bubbling under the surface. Silas had a propensity for violence and a hunger for lust, and I was theonly one that could sate him. He could never get enough of my mouth. Said it was a cure for the rage that threatened to devour him.
His mother became a staunch believer, but the only thing Silas ever believed in was the comfort he found in me. First in my mouth and then in my ass. I was his in the same way the devotees of the Sinless Children were God’s. He found solace in me, and I found solace in swallowing his loads.
And then we were caught in the temple at midnight.
Everything changed.
I was the temptee, and he the tempted.
He sought absolution in the arms of Magnus and became what we both despised.
A match was lit that night that began a slow burn of depravity that erupted in a violent explosion of pent-up anger that forced me to flee the home I’ve always known.
