On The Edge (The Brazen Boys) Read online

  I glance at the front door. “Oh no,” I murmur to no one at all, playing the role I’ve written for myself. “I’m trapped and anyone can walk in at any moment. Oh.” My right hand grips my cock and I start moving, moving, moving it. “I hope no one comes in.” Fuck, this feels so good.

  Returning to the screen, my eyes drink in Edge’s pic, those punk eyes digging into me. What do you think you’re looking at, punk? “You’re such a punk,” I tell the man in the screen, pulling on my left hand to remind myself how stuck it is, then giving my left and right foot a tug. Everything’s tied down except my right hand, which works a certain sorcery of man and muscle on my throbbing cock. My unsent message still stares at me like a jittery squirrel on a tree limb, all my stupid horny words, and I just keep jerking and jerking and jerking, turned on by everything. “You’re such a punk for tying me down like this. Let me go, man. Please.”

  I imagine what he might say back to me. The little muted cam-square on the screen where his shirted chest is the only thing I can see, I just pretend he tells me he won’t let me go until I cum for him. “Please, please don’t make me cum.” I keep stroking my cock, harder, faster, while periodically tugging on my restricted appendages—ignoring the fact that my left ankle is kinda already falling asleep—and building my breath up to the biggest orgasm I’m sure I’ll ever have. “Please, Edge … Please don’t make me cum.”

  It’s so funny, when you beg for someone to not do exactly what you want them to do.

  The pic of him in the tight white shirt, it has a better view of his fuck-you eyes. That’s what I want to watch when I finally reach my happy moment. With my only free limb, I move the mouse, scrolling the screen to get a better zoom on Edge’s face.

  The mouse slips. Click.

  I stare at the screen for six and a half seconds. My right hand frozen to the mouse, my mouth frozen half-open, I stare at the button I just accidentally clicked.

  The send button.

  I swallow. My restrained ankles are forgotten. My left hand going numb too, that’s forgotten. Even my swollen cock bobbing in the air between my naked thighs, that’s forgotten as I stare at the message I’d just sent to the punk guy. With the send button clicked, the message has vanished. I can’t even reread what I’d written.

  Oh god. What did I just do?

  That message had my home address. That message had my name. Half of it was a joke. I was … I was joking, wasn’t I?

  “FUCK!” I cry out.

  What had I written in that message? The words are already slipping away. The room won’t stop spinning. What did I just confess to this dude?

  What have I done?

  “Calm down, calm down, calm down,” I whisper to myself. I’m a cautious person. I’m a careful person. “Calm down, Derek.” Even my tiny whispers fill the whole house. My tiny whispers brush against my ears like giant moths. “Calm down, Derek.” Calm down, calm down, calm down. I’m experiencing a moment of denial, I think. “You can fix this.”

  I didn’t mean to press send. Dinner’s in the oven and I didn’t mean to press send.

  My cock is still hard as fuckity-fuck.

  I’m staring at the screen of my laptop, beaming at me like a mouth trapped mid-laugh. Even the pic of Edge’s face that I’d wanted to cum to is staring me down as if mocking me. The corner of the screen reads 6:45 PM. Hey. In five minutes, I’ll be exactly thirty-three years old. I was born ten-to-seven, I’ve been told. Or so according to random facts about me that no one gives four freaky fucks about.

  There’s movement in the live feed. His chest flinches, hands coming up to the keyboard. He isn’t moving. He seems … concentrated.

  He’s not reading my message, is he? I’ll leave the door unlocked. He’s typing. I see him typing. His powerful forearms twitch and flex with his every letter typed. I’ll be naked. Do what you want with me.

  And then a response appears in the window: “LOL”

  LOL? I’ve made him laugh?

  “Calm down, calm down, calm down,” I tell myself again. I’ll bet you work out seven days a week.

  You know, he likely gets a hundred messages of worship a day. This is just another one of those messages. It was so crazed and stupid, really, what I wrote to him. He’ll know it was a joke. He wouldn’t just show up at some stranger’s house. That’s a surefire way to die, isn’t it? I’m panicked for nothing.

  With my free right hand, I begin to type yet another message to Edge, or whatever the fuck his real name is. I’m just kidding. You are very nice to look at. I’m wondering if maybe you’d be interested in just a show, maybe? I can pay you.

  But before I can press send, he disappears from the view of the camera, rising from his chair. Seconds later, the feed shuts off. His status changes to offline. No fucking way.

  I stare at the dark screen, my mouth hanging open. That’s all a coincidence, right? Please, someone tell me that’s a coincidence. My unsent second message remains, my I’m-gonna-fix-this message, my oops-just-fucking-kidding message … my right hand hovering over the enter key.

  Or maybe … maybe my message was the last straw for him. After having hundreds of slimy, nasty worshippers all over him, my message made him give up on making money tonight and he’s just shut off his cam.

  Yeah. That’s all this is.

  I look down at my buddy between my legs. “Sorry,” I tell him.

  Suddenly and decidedly not in the mood to jerk anymore, I figure I ought to free myself from the cuffs. I reach for the key. My fingers, instead, succeed in shoving the key over the counter.

  The world is spinning. Is it the wine? Or is it my unabashed stupidity and total disregard for my own wellbeing that has so spun the world into a cotton candy ball of terror?

  “FUCK!” I scream out. My own expletive echoes back at me from every corner of the house.

  Instantly crazy as a cat at 3 AM, I lash against the cuffs, yanking my ankles repeatedly upward, but the footrest bar of my kitchen counter does not relent. Indeed, it was built quite solidly. Neither does the cuff on my left hand give any, though it would do me little good to have my left hand back, as my feet would still be trapped.

  I can’t reach around the counter by any means, but the sheer panic in my system drives me to try. I stretch myself over the counter like a bridge, reaching with five psychotically wriggling fingers, then reaching around, then examining the bar for any give whatsoever. There is simply no way to reach the key; it’s fallen on the other side of the counter.

  For one humorless moment, I consider the steak knives in the wood block on the counter and how I might utilize them to free myself. Don’t judge. They did it in that one movie, didn’t they? I’ve been driven to do very stupid things before, even despite being such a so-called cautious, careful person. I was driven just a few minutes ago to do this stupid thing, so why stop there? Time to face the hard question: which appendage can I live without?

  I swallow once, then fight an uncharacteristic desire to cry.

  Even my glass of wine is empty. The bottle is way the fuck over there. Oh well. If I get really desperate to free myself from this decidedly humiliating position, I can always call a friend to come over and let me loose. But then I’d have to make some. The front door is unlocked; I can call one of my neighbors I never talk to and pretend I got robbed. Not that I prefer any of them seeing me naked; to be honest, I’m not much of an exhibitionist. Also, I’d have to go on to explain that, clearly, I had some very kinky robbers who undressed me. That’d go over well.

  The laptop sits in front of me, wide-open, Edge’s face still staring at me, and I’m pretty sure Facebook is opened up somewhere behind all those windows. I could message someone easily—someone I haven’t spoken to since high school, or a coworker, maybe … I just have to stomach up enough courage to, well, humiliate myself further. I simply have to pick which Facebook acquaintance, in front of, I wish to embarrass myself and forevermore mark upon both our minds a memory of massive mortification. It’s basically
humiliation roulette.

  Really, there’s not even anything on the counter nearby to cover myself up with, other than the laptop. Did I have to take off all my clothes? I never jerk off naked. What the hell’s wrong with me? I’ll bet you work out seven days a week.

  Is it weird that my cock’s still hard?

  I don’t like to wait. Derek.

  In about twenty minutes’ time, the whole excitement of the situation has long worn off, and I’m just scrolling, bored, browsing all the other bone-thin pretty-boy twinks on the cam site. My laptop’s on mute, so they all seem strangely desperate, each of them silently licking their lips or flexing their puffy biceps or winking and showing teeth in soundless sneers. I watch with a grimace while this other cam guy named Cody Bro leans back with his legs pulled up and apart in that frighteningly unnatural way you’d expect your baby sister to bend her Barbie dolls. It’s all so “Look what I can do!” He’s showing me his butthole the way a cat shows hers in the center of the living room when everyone’s around the TV enjoying this year’s rerun of Charlie Brown’s Christmas Special, her hind leg up to the sky and her face buried in her pooper. I have no idea who in the world finds that attractive, but Cody Bro is eager to serve that special loser.

  In another twenty minutes’ time, my chin’s resting on my right hand, my left one still stuck to the stool, my ankles aching from the constant pulling on the handcuffs …

  I want to stretch my legs so bad. My thighs are starting to cramp up and my ass fell asleep nine years ago.

  This might be the sexiest experience I’ve ever had. Hashtag sarcasm.

  I close the computer, defeated, exhausted, move it to the side and lay my head down on the counter, my right hand providing a merciful cushion for the hard surface. My toes are all I see for a while, the ankles hugged each by a mean and unrelenting claw of metal, its chain wrapped around the footrest upon which they sit. The world is nothing but my spread of toes.

  Am I planning to stay here all night?

  Could I die of starvation, just sitting here, if I choose not to ask a friend over to help me? What a cruel way to starve, with dinner virtually in an unhandcuffed-arm’s reach. I’m so glad I turned off the oven before committing to Dumb Birthday Boy’s Plan De Horniness A; that chicken is too good to let burn.

  The sun’s gone now. The only light in the whole house is a warm yellow one from the oven, spilling out into the den, into the front entryway, into the short hall that leads to my bathroom and bedroom. Peering up, I notice the lights in the backyard near the pool have turned on thanks to the timer, so I can also enjoy a nice view of the twenty-thousand dollar landscaping renovation I paid for last summer through the tall floor-to-ceiling windows. Not that I need the view, but it’s something to relieve me from the dark broodiness of my big empty house.

  I can’t believe I pressed send. I’m usually so careful. What’s gotten into me? A birthday’s always just been a birthday. Why’d I have to go and make this one so fucking special? Last year I almost forgot it. I lay my head back down.

  That’s when I hear the car door slam.

  I lift my head off the counter and stare at the door, instantly hypnotized by the noise. My pulse is in my ears and my mouth drops open. Please tell me that’s a neighbor’s car I’m hearing. Tell me it’s a car down the street, slammed shut by a careless hand.

  Then there’s three little knocks. Taps, even.

  My heart is in my throat and my legs start to shake so bad, I hear the cuffs rattling at my ankles like prisoners’ chains. Me, a prisoner in my own house, chained to a fucking kitchen counter, slave to my own stupid sexual misconducts. I’ll be naked. Do what you want with me. I typed those words. I really, actually typed those words.

  Another knock. Then activity at the door handle.

  I stare at the door stupidly, watching as the handle twists, twists, twists. For a wild second, I pray the person trying to get in doesn’t know how to operate a door handle.

  Then it opens. My mouth hanging limply, I spend exactly one tenth of a second from my view at the kitchen counter to confirm who the person entering my house is.

  In this one tenth of a second, I see a man’s face with a boy’s angst, and hair like a short black flame, burning in its darkness. I see a white shirt fitting a muscular form so tight it’s like a second skin. I see a colorful wash of ink running down an arm. I see jeans that hug two meaty thighs, down to a pair of fuck-you white sneakers with red stripes up the sides.

  I look away, trembling. My legs move, as if feebly trying to cover up myself. Oh. My. Fucking. Lord. This. Is. Not. Happening. Why couldn’t I have cuffed myself somewhere out of view?—not right here at the counter, plainly visible from nearly every angle of my entire house? Fuck this open floor plan.

  The door shuts. I’m still not looking.

  I hear the slow, soft thrum of footsteps, and then they stop. I can’t even hear his breath the house is so silent. I realize I’m holding my own. Is he still there? Did I imagine it? Maybe he’s just watching me, wondering if he’d, as well, made a mistake in coming. I can’t even bring myself to look again.

  Please say something. Please don’t say anything.

  Then there’s footsteps again. Unhurried, slow, sauntering steps across my entryway. I hear the change in sound from tile to wood as he reaches the den area, coming closer, closer, closer to the counter at which I’m fastened. I clench shut my eyes.

  “Derek?” he says, half a question, half an accusation.

  His voice. I’d expected it to be tough as a steel door, full of manly bass, gritty and guttural. Instead, it’s smooth as velvet, slippery as silk. It eases me and touches me instantly, like an aural kiss to the ears.

  Y-Y-Yes, I try to say, but my mouth doesn’t seem to work.

  Footsteps again. He saunters ever-slowly from my right side, rounding behind me leisurely, and coming to a gentle stop at my left. I find my face turning away, still unable to bring myself to meet his eyes. I still don’t hear a thing, not even his breathing. This could still be in my imagination, I reason. At least I’ve stopped shaking; that shit got annoying fast.

  “You’re younger than I expected,” he says.

  Soundlessly, I let out one chuckle. It has a life no greater than the scuff of a foot against carpet. But suddenly my mouth is freed from paralysis by that tiny act. I try to say something. An actual word, perhaps.

  He speaks first. “You wanna look at me?”

  I really, really fucking do. The sight of my toes and my knees and my scared-as-hell-retreated-into-the-recesses-of-oblivion cock has grown old. Slowly, I lift my chin and bring my eyes onto the sight of him.

  This close, I find every trace of my breath stolen away simply by laying my eyes on the sight of him in the flesh. His skin is as smooth as a dream. His eyes are two scalding gems, anchoring his tanned, chiseled face. Mature yet boyish, his messy short spikes of black hair make all his features that much more accented. His lips, oh fuck, his lips, so full and inviting you already feel like you’re kissing them just by looking at them.

  Confirmed: the man who entered my house is, in fact, Edge.

  “You like what you see?”

  Caught off-guard, I stammer and attempt to say yes. “I’m naked,” I say instead.

  “I noticed.” His eyes survey my … situation. “I was expecting naked, but not handcuffs.”

  “They were an accident.” I give my numb left hand a feeble tug.

  “You want to get free?”

  “I …” My ankles ache. My thighs ache. My back aches. “Yes.”

  “You … want me to allow you to get free?”

  The way he changes his question, his tone turning all business, matter-of-fact, I find myself frustratingly turned-on.

  “The key dropped behind the counter,” I confess.

  He doesn’t move at first, just staring at me I presume. Figuring me out. He’s so fucking gorgeous. The way his eyes sit heavily on me, it makes me feel even more naked than I am somehow. As if he
also knows all my secrets, and my past, and my social security number and all my passwords. Then, quite suddenly, he walks around me and to the other side of the counter, bending down to retrieve the dumb little knob of metal that can grant my freedom.

  All of a sudden, he’s leaning against the counter right next to me, the key dangling in his hand. “This what you’re looking for?”

  I’m forced to consider his humungous bulge of a bicep and the way the sleeve of his plain white tee stretches to cover it. I’m forced to stare at the colorful dance of ink swirling down his arm in tribal marks and manly horn shapes and warrior stripes. I’m forced to feel his presence so close to me, I sense the heat of his body pulsing, pulsing …

  “Looks like it is,” he teases me. “Your cock says so.”

  I look down between my thighs. I’ve gone hard again, in front of him, with no way to cover it up. Are you kidding me? I shift my legs, looking the other way, feeling the red creep up my neck, filling my face with shame—but then suddenly a hand grips my chin and pulls my eyes right back to his. My head is spun so suddenly it’s like I never looked away.

  “You want me to unlock you?” he asks firmly.

  There’s something so sexy about the way he asks. Like, as if I have a choice. Like, I can actually choose to stay stuck here, and it’d be all up to him to free me. But somewhere between my numb hand and my tingling ass, the sexiness is lost on me, and I just squeak the words: “Yes, please.”

  He hesitates, as if double-guessing whether I’m playing with him or being sincere. I had meant for him to give me the key, but suddenly he’s knelt down to undo the cuffs at my ankles himself. What a gentleman. Feeling pretty self-conscious, I wait for the glorious music of the cuffs unlocking. Click. The relief is instantaneous. Then he’s behind me working the key into the cuff at my left wrist—just the play of his hands near mine sends electricity through me—and soon my hand is my own again.

  “Thanks,” I whisper, removing myself from the stool and, paying very little attention to him, I move to the sofa where I’d neatly folded and abandoned my clothes. Clothes have never been so wonderful before. Slipping on my underwear, what a luxury. Pulling up my grey pinstripe pants, what a gift.