Warnings in Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Sam's heart raced as he neared the top of the long-graded hill he had been pushing up. He loved this road because, even though the shoulder was narrow, it was well-paved and there was rarely a car to be seen. Back when he had an iPod, he could blast the music and sing along, unafraid that he'd miss the sound of an approaching car and get smushed like a pancake. Now, even without the music, he still had the scenery and his thoughts. Thick pine trees and heavy brush bordered right along the shoulder, so when he was too lazy to try to mentally work through his relationship, he liked to peer into the forest to see if he could spot a deer or a squirrel chase.

Without the music, he could clearly hear a car engine in the distance. He slid over to the far right of the shoulder, making sure to give the car as much room to pass as possible. However, as the SUV neared, it slowed to a crawl to match his pace, gliding along beside him until he stopped and turned to face it. The windows were tinted. Sam took a few deep breaths through his nose to try to slow the erratic pace of his heart and lungs. He had been running much faster today than normal, trying to push the thoughts of Quinn out of his mind, and practice had already been long and exhausting. The SUV's passenger window rolled down, and Sam could see two men who appeared to be in their late 30s, tangled in a giant map. The passenger tried to beat and smooth the map to get a wrinkle-free picture of where they were.

"Hey!" the passenger called to Sam, "Would you mind helping us out? We're pretty lost." The passenger had dark hair, close-cropped like a soldier's, with matching dark, almost black eyes. A thick stubble covered his face, and he wore a short sleeve plaid button-down. His massive forearms were very hairy. He was an enormous man. With the exception of slightly longer hair, the driver looked almost identical in both appearance and stature. Sam figured the two were brothers. The passenger flashed Sam a sheepish grin and smoothed the map over his knees. "We're on our way to Dayton, but I think we missed a couple turns a-ways back because this doesn't look like any main highway to me," he said.

"Oh, yeah. If you're trying to get to Dayton, you need to be on the highway, on 75," Sam said, leaning into the passenger side window to point to a line on the map. "You're way on the other side of town, all the way over . . . here," he scanned his finger across to approximately where they were now, the back road being too small to actually appear on the interstate map. Sam was still looking at the map when the man's hand dipped down into the door compartment and flicked up quickly with . . .

A gun? Sam's brows knitted in confusion. He had only ever seen hunting rifles before, not the automatic weapon pointed at him, and he certainly never expected one to be inches from his face. It felt like a movie, or one of those Law & Order episodes where the bad guy stops the pretty girl to ask for directions . . . oh shit. So before the fear and panic set in, Sam was paralyzed by a moment of genuine disorientation and confusion. "My buddy's going to help you into the back," the passenger explained in a gruff, low voice as he released the safety on the weapon. The back door of the SUV opened and an older, bearded man who Sam hadn't even realized was there got out and stepped towards him. "If I were you, I would be a good boy and do what he says," the man with the gun threatened.

Terror clouded Sam's eyes, and the adrenaline coursed through his body, obscuring his ability to think rationally. Like the deer his father hunted, his eyes darted back and forth quickly before his lithe body reacted and bolted for the woods. The muscles in his legs pumped hard, and he sprinted with a desperation that could never be replicated by a pursuing defensive back. He was one long stride from the relative safety of the trees when a searing pain tore through his left hamstring, sending Sam crashing to his knees then to his hands on the warm asphalt. A yelp escaped from his lips as he felt his leg burning and throbbing, spasms gripping the muscles erratically. He couldn't think clearly and couldn't remember hearing a shot, all he could do was grip at the pebbles before him and desperately try to stumble to his feet.

Before he could stand, he felt a pair of strong arms wrap around his waist, pinning his arms to his sides. His legs thrashed wildly, trying to break free, but his left leg was in so much pain that it hurt to move. "What the fuck, man? Let me go!" Sam thrashed again, trying to kick backwards with his good leg and drive his heel into the attacker's groin. So far all he was getting was air. Kicking again, Sam caught the man square in the shin with his sneakered heel. "Goddamn it, you little fucker!" the bearded man cursed, wrapping one arm tightly around Sam's throat while keeping the other around his waist. "Ty, help me out with this little fuck!" The front door opened and the passenger strode up to Sam, still struggling. He thrust the gun into Sam's bare stomach, "You want me to shoot you again? I shoot you in those pretty abs of yours and it'll take you an hour to die, at least, and you'll suffer every minute of it."

Sam shook his head frantically. "Then be a good boy and stop fighting it." Sam stopped kicking, but his body went stiff and he tried to cement his feet to the ground. They were going to have to drag him and forcibly put him in that car. The man they called Ty, the one who had asked him for directions, opened up the tailgate, and together, the two men lifted Sam and tossed him into the back. Secured in the locked car, Sam really took notice of his leg for the first time. There was a small circular wound on the side of his thigh, and a slightly larger, matching one on his hamstring. His entire leg, including the left leg of his shorts, was covered in blood. He drew his left knee up to his chest, using both hands to apply pressure to the wounds. The pain jolted through his body and a strangled cry escaped through gritted teeth. The dizziness washed over him suddenly, drowning him. His struggling mind took him back to the time his family had gone to the ocean when he was little, when he drifted out into the water and tried to jump like his mom did but a too-big wave knocked him over. But then his mom had been there to pluck him out of the water and wrap him in her arms and brush the sand from his white-blond hair. No one was with him now.

Pressing his hands tighter into his thigh to stop the bleeding, Sam let the pain and the blood loss and the dizziness carry him away.

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Tyler sighed when the kid dashed. He wasn't planning to have to shoot the kid; the fear of the gun was usually enough to get their boy silently into the back of the Suburban. But, not everyone reacted the same way, some weren't able to overcome their fight or flight response with rational thinking. This wasn't the first time it had happened, and Tyler was confident he could inflict a painful muscle wound without seriously jeopardizing their prize. Oh, and the silencer helped. Stupidly, the kid kept trying to fight, and he had to get out of his seat to help Don and offer the kid a little more persuasion. He liked his spunk, though, it would come across great on film. "The viewers will love the fight in him," Tyler thought as he and Don tossed the blond into the back. Fortunately, they had installed a small camera on the rear view mirror to capture any particularly good scenes, like this one. Often if the footage came out great, they would edit it to lead into the real material—proof of its authenticity.

Judging by the silence coming from the back, Tyler assumed the kid had passed out. "All that fighting comes at a cost," he thought. "If he had just paced himself, he could probably still be screaming and annoying the fuck out of me right now. Ha." He opened the glove compartment and pulled out the supplies they kept there for occasions like this one: cotton, large bandages, medical tape, rubbing alcohol, and gauze. He collected the items and turned in the seat, "You want to get him cleaned up, Jared?"

Jared sat in the back seat behind Tyler. At 28, he was the youngest member of the group by almost 10 years, and he knew he was the odd man out. He was different than the other three. Don was in this for the money. Tyler and Johnny, for the money and the fucking. Jared was in it for the boys, he loved these boys. Jared knew he was different almost as soon as he understood what sexuality was. His best friends in middle school and junior high were other boys, but he enjoyed the time they spent together in ways he couldn't explain. He felt funny when they touched, even just a hand on the shoulder or a pat on the back. As he got older, he realized he was lusting after them, and that's when he knew he was gay. He never told everyone, but everyone in high school already knew. They picked on him and teased him, shoving him into lockers, calling him disgusting names, and sometimes even threatening him. He had been scared, but more than anything he was desperate. Like any other teenage boy, he wanted sex, and it was impossible for him to get it.

There were a few other gay boys in school, and sometimes Jared would hang out with them and kiss them and sometimes play with them. But what he really wanted was what he couldn't have. He watched the football players changing in the locker room after gym class. Their hard bodies, sculpted so differently than his own, made him fidget with discomfort. He would avert his eyes and try to hide the rising embarrassment in his shorts. But there was nowhere to escape the constant torment. Even in the halls he couldn't help but examine how their asses looked in their jeans, their varsity letter jackets covering broad shoulders, well-fitting t-shirts taut against defined chests. And it wasn't just the way they looked, it was their confidence, their smiles. They were everything he wasn't, and he longed for them, no matter how much they ridiculed him.

When Jared met cousins Tyler and Johnny four years ago, their business was failing. They were running a small time, web-based porn studio out of their apartment that filmed exclusively gay, nonconsensual fantasy. They hired actors, usually in their mid to late 20s, who pretended to be 18, and made them read lines about going to doctor's appointments, or after school meetings with a teacher, or being a coach's pet. The actors would fake reluctance and say "no" a few times before moaning and begging for more, turned to the dark side by the wiles of their older partners. No one would pay for this, because apparently this material was all over the internet for free, and Tyler and Johnny were about to pack it up. Then one day, Tyler caught Jared staring longingly at a high school soccer team practicing on a field across the street from Tyler's apartment. His eyes were trained on one boy in particular, a lean kid with light brown hair and a big smile. Frustrated with his failing business, Tyler turned to Jared, "You like him? We'll get him for you."

That night was the first time they conducted business as they do now. They filmed everything and sold it at an astronomical price to only their very best, most loyal customers under heavy technological security. Knowing they had struck far too close to home, they picked up the very next day and moved out of state. Now, Jared was getting everything he wanted. He wished, so very much, that the boys didn't have to suffer through so much pain at the hands of the others, but he loved them, and this was the only way to get them. He was older now, tall, lean, and quietly strong; they were young and vulnerable, and he could finally have the boys he always dreamed of.

Jared collected the supplies from Tyler and climbed into the back with their new acquisition. He was absolutely beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful Jared had ever seen, with the exception of maybe his beloved first. The boy had light blond hair falling into his eyes, and though they were closed now, Jared knew they were a bluish green. His lips were wide and very full, and his skin was soft and milky white. And his body was perfect—strong, sculpted, and perfect. Jared did his best to clean the wounds on the boy's leg with rubbing alcohol and cotton pads, which sent his baby's eyelids fluttering, then he pressed a thick pad onto each wound, taped them down, and wrapped gauze tightly around. The bleeding had mostly stopped. From the front seat, Tyler called to him, "Clean the blood off of him, Jared. It's fine for him to look roughed up, but we don't want it to look like we're screwing a corpse."

Achingly, Jared ran the cotton pads, dipped in alcohol, over the boy's muscular thigh, down the inside of his knee, to his calf. He pushed up the leg of his shorts to clean underneath them, and his fingers slid further and further up under the mesh until he could feel the strap of blondie's jock. "Not now, Jared, not now," he thought. But he couldn't help but to slide a finger into the waistband of the boy's shorts and jock and gently peel them back, peeking. "Hmm, a natural blond."