Duke Dolce
The emptiness around me is immense, the space I cleared in the packed crowd at the Slaughterpen standing out starkly, the bubble of silence inside the rowdy atmosphere painful. I wait for them to turn and stare, to condemn me. The harsh glare of the lights overhead casts my shadow long and dark against the empty floor, marked only by the pool of blood on the cement.
I think that’s the worst thing until the next fighter steps into the pit, and the circle closes in, their voices rising to fill the silence, their feet tramping over her bloodstain like it’s not a sacrilege. Like her spilled blood is of no more consequence than the blood of the fighters spilling onto the dirt floor below. I turn and shove through the crowd, forcing my way outside, where I choke on thick gulps of the motionless May night.
I look around the lot, my heart sinking.
Baron’s gone.
Royal’s gone.
I’m stuck in this hell, at the scene of the crime.
Two hours later, Colt comes swaggering up, a bag over his shoulder.
“You got a new truck,” I say, swinging my legs below the tailgate where I’m sitting.
“Graduation present.”
“A forty-year-old truck is what you got for graduation?” I ask. “Damn, your family really is hurting for money, huh?”
He lets out a snort of breath. “Not a car person, huh?”
“Just saying, it’s a shitty present.”
It’s not a shitty present. It’s sick as fuck, fully restored and sleek as new.
“What do you want, Duke?”
“I need a favor.”
“I’ve paid all my debts, baby boy,” Colt says, tossing his bag into the bed. “Now get off my truck.”
“I’m not calling in a debt,” I say. “I need to owe you.”
He pauses, his gaze dragging down my body. “Yeah?” he asks, wetting his lips. “What do you need to owe me?”
I glare at him. “You know what.”
“And you know I like to hear you say it.”
I grit my teeth and force the words out, not dropping my gaze. “A blow job.”
He sighs and nods toward the front of the truck. “Come on.”
I’m reaching for the door handle when he grabs me and spins me around, slamming my back against the side of the cab. “What the fuck?” I ask, trying to shove him off.
“Here.”
“Fuck no.”
“Right. Here,” he grits out. “Or nowhere.”
“What, you want the whole world to know how bad little gay boy Colt wants my dick?”
I let my gaze sweep over the lot as I speak. It’s late, the crowd having filtered out and left already. Only two cars remain, probably fighters or the crew members who clean up inside after the fights.
“I want you to obey,” he says without flinching.
“Fine, homo,” I say, reaching for his belt.
He blocks me with a firm grip, his other hand fisting in the hair on the crown of my head. He pulls my head back against the window, his smoky blue gaze boring into mine. “Don’t touch me.”
I wait for him to shove me onto my knees like he did in the grass that night. His gaze locks on mine, holding it steady while he jerks open my belt.
“What are you doing?” I demand.
He shoves his hand inside, wrapping his strong fingers around my cock. “Giving you what you need,” he says, stepping closer, his mouth inches from mine, a dare. His lower lip juts out as he squeezes, running his hand up my length, thumbing over the tip. His eyes never leave mine. He works his hand up and down until I’m straining inside his tight grip, so hard I can’t help but shove my hips forward, needing more. A groan rumbles through me, and my eyes fall closed, my head sinking against the window.
Colt’s fingers tighten, and he jerks my head up. “Eyes on me,” he growls. “Look at me while I make you cum in my hand.”
I grit my teeth, glaring at him as he starts jerking hard, so hard it hurts. I moan, my hips thrusting forward unbidden, craving the contact, the pain, the shame. His rough, calloused hand chafes, and I know I’ll be raw tomorrow, but that only makes me harder. A car rolls by on the road beside the parking lot, slow and quiet, and I try to twist away, but Colt jostles me back against the car.
“You want it, you take it any way you can get it,” he growls, his palm working over my shaft, circling my glans, tugging my skin down with the tightness of his grip. The thought of someone seeing us like this turns my guts liquid, but my cock throbs hard in Colt’s hand, precum oozing into his palm on his next pass.
The corner of his lips twist into a smirk. “Good boy,” he breathes, pressing up closer, crowding me against his truck as he works. His strong, tattooed arm frames my head, his fist still in my hair, his mouth a maddening tease in front of mine. His chest pins mine, solid muscle on solid muscle, rising and falling as rapidly as mine, his arm between us, flexing with each rough tug. He steps in even closer, like he can’t get close enough either. His thighs pin mine, and I can feel the soft, cool brush of skin on skin through a hole in his jeans. My head goes all dizzy and fucked up again, like after I hurt Olive, and I can’t find my breath.
“Fuck,” I groan, and the pressure that’s been building at the base of my spine releases suddenly, my groin tightening painfully for one second before sweet relief flows through my limbs, my veins, my cock. A choked sound escapes my throat, and Colt drags his hand slowly up my length, thumbing the sensitive nerves at the base of the tip before sliding up the seam to feel his triumph.
He fists the head of my cock as it throbs out another spurt of hot cum. A quiet, deep moan rumbles up through his chest, but he bites his lip to hold it in. But I heard it. I fucking heard it. The sight of him barely holding back does something to me, makes something like madness take hold. I slam my head back against the window, a roar erupting from my throat as another wave crashes into me, this one even harder than the first. It wrings me dry, leaves my limbs shaking and my throat so thick I think I’ll choke on whatever is swelling up inside me.
It can’t be what it feels like. I don’t do emotion—especially not with Colt.
“Such a good boy,” he murmurs, stepping back a few inches, giving me room to breathe. He slowly rotates his palm over the bulbous head of my cock, coating it with my release, then lifts his fist, cum dripping between his fingers. Without warning, he pushes two into my mouth, deep enough to make me gag on the thick, salty slime.
“What the fuck?” I bark, shoving his chest.
He sways into me again, slowly smearing his hand down my chest, painting my shirt with streaks of cum. And then his mouth is mine, or mine is his. He comes in open, his teeth clashing with mine, the kiss deep and rough and dominant, with no tenderness, no teasing, no working up to that level of passion. His tongue drives against mine, fucking my cum down my throat, sucking it down his.
It’s the first time he’s tasted me since that day in the basement, after we fucked up his sister but before the worst things we did to her; when my brothers and I put him on his knees and then stood there looking at each other, like “What now?” I don’t think any of us knew what to do then. We knew what needed to be done, but Royal and Baron weren’t going to do it, so I did. I did what needed to be done. I took my dick out, and I fucked Colt’s virgin mouth until I came, and he threw up on my feet.
That day, there was no question of who belonged to whom. That day, he was mine .
For three years, I’ve been trying to get there again, to feel the way I felt with Colt Darling kneeling at my feet, choking on my cock until tears poured out of his eyes as they burned with so much hatred it could incinerate the world, helpless to do anything but swallow my cum. I tried until I couldn’t tell if I was trying to get to Mabel through him or him through Mabel. I tortured him, made him scream to hurt her, made her scream to hurt him. I beat his face in trying to get it out of my head. I crawled at his feet trying to get him to beat it out of me. But no matter what I’ve done, I’ve never been able to return to that same high.
He pulls back slowly, the stroke of his tongue pushing the salty slickness back onto mine one more time before he draws away, a string of cum and saliva stretching between our mouths for a second, as if prolonging the kiss. Then his labored breathing breaks it, and it’s only his hand in my hair connecting us. We stare at each other, breath mingling, wet mouths close, the hard lines of his body achingly close but unreachable as he leans in, only a whisper separating us.
I can’t take it another second, and I sway my hips forward, grinding them into his. I can feel how hard he is, how much he wants it, and it’s all the vindication I need.
“Fucking queer,” I say, trying to twist free.
His fingers clench in my hair again, and he yanks my head back against the fractured pane. “And yet, you’re the one with his cum all over my hand.”
“Because you couldn’t stay off my dick,” I snap.
His shiny lips twist into a smirk again, and his gaze dips down the front of my shirt, where he wiped my release off his fingers. He speaks slowly, lazily, as if it’s all inconsequential. As if his breath doesn’t smell like cigarettes and beer and cum— my cum.
“I love how much you hate how much you love this.”
This.
At least he didn’t say, “me.”
“I hate you,” I growl, throwing my superior weight at him.
“I know,” he says, releasing me this time and stepping back. “That’s what makes it fun.”
I glower at him. “For you.”
“For you too,” he says with a shrug. “Hop in, I’ll give you a lift.”
“I don’t need a fucking ride,” I snap. “I need…”
I don’t know what I need, and it’s slowly driving me insane. I need more. Even when I have it all, when there’s no more to get, to gain, to take, I crave it like a drug. Once you do it once, it’s not enough. The next time has to be further, faster, harder, higher, more intense. I thought that losing would reset the score to zero. That’s why I did this with him the first time. But it’s the same shit, different font. It didn’t make me humble. It didn’t make the smallest win feel like victory. It just made me need to lose harder the next time, to sink lower, lose more.
I always need fucking more.
Feeding the demon. That’s what Baron called it. The more I give it, the bigger it grows, and the bigger it grows, the hungrier it gets, and the more it needs to sustain life.
“Don’t be dumb,” Colt says, opening the passenger door. “It’s a long walk to your house.”
“I’m not going to my house,” I mutter, climbing in while he goes around and hops up behind the wheel. “Give me a ride to the hospital.”
“You’re going to see a little kid with cum all over your shirt?” he asks, cocking a brow. “That’s taking it too far, Duke. Even for you.”
“Fuck you,” I say, looking down at the shirt Olive made for me. I want to kill the asshole for defiling it that way. “I’m not a pedophile.”
He cranks the engine, which roars to life, then revs it a few times. The noise echoes across the empty lot, and I remember another morning we were here, a few hours later and six months ago. Every fucking thing was different then.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Your dad was a creep, and you know what they say. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“Yeah, well, your grampa’s a fucking child molester,” I snap. “Does that make you one?”
He scowls at me and guns the engine, turning out of the lot and onto the road. “What are you doing, man?” he asks, suddenly serious. “It’s one thing to fuck up my entire family, but she’s a kid.”
“So you’re admitting you deserved it?”
“It may have been excessive, but you don’t get to pick your own karma.”
“And what about your sister?” I ask, watching him from the corner of my eye.
He hates it when I talk about her. I like seeing his reaction.
“No one deserves that,” he says quietly, staring out the big windshield. Then he glances at me and away, reaching for his cigarettes. “But she wasn’t a saint, either.”
“Never thought I’d hear you admit that.”
“I mean it,” he says. “That kid… You know her family or something? Is she some kind of debt they owed your dad?”
“No,” I say, scowling at him and swiping his pack off his lap. “You think smoking fancy organic cigarettes is going to save you? We’re all fucked, Colt.”
“Smoke your own if you don’t like them.”
I take one of his because I’m not about to pull out mine and make him think I smoke the same kind because of him. He saw them once before, but he was fucked up, and hopefully he forgot it by now.
“Olive doesn’t have a family,” I say, rolling the cigarette between my fingers. It holds a hint of warmth from his body, and it makes my cock twitch again. “Harper took her in. She’s her problem, not mine.”
He gives me a skeptical look and rolls down his window before lighting up. “If you say so,” he says, not sounding at all convinced. “Y’all look pretty chummy every time I see you together.”
“What can I say, chicks dig me,” I say, shooting him a grin.
I may be clowning, but it pisses me off that people think I’m that despicable. Everyone thinks I’m dumb, that Baron’s the only one who notices shit, but I see the way Harper watches us, the excuses she finds to stick her head into my room when Olive’s in there, the reasons she comes up with to take Olive with her when she goes somewhere and I’m the only one at home.
Maybe she has a reason not to trust me, after what I did to her.
It’s worse when Royal does it. Am I really so depraved that my own brother finds it baffling that I could take an interest in something I don’t want to stick my dick in?
“She’s a kid,” Colt says after a minute. “Shouldn’t she at least have a chance in life? I mean, what could she possibly have done to deserve you fucking her up the way you will?”
*
“They’re saying we need to pick her up now,” Harper says, setting her phone down on the counter the next day. “She doesn’t have health insurance, and the bill is already insane. Can you believe this? For one night of observation? It’s not like she was in surgery for eight hours!”
“Stop worrying about it,” Royal grumbles. “I told you, I’ll cover it.”
“Yeah, but—”
He grabs her by the back of her neck and draws her up, so she’s barely touching the floor with her tiptoes. “How many times do I have to tell you, you never have to worry about money again?”
“Maybe just one more,” she says with a sassy little smile.
He slams his mouth down on hers, bending to grab her under the ass and lift her off her feet. She clamps her legs around his hips, and he backs her onto the counter, his hand wrapping around her throat.
I pick up my bagel and stalk out to the sounds of them working up to one of their epic fuck-fests. They’d probably just fuck in front of me if I stayed. I’m not even sure they noticed I was there. If anything, my presence is an annoyance, and imposition. They’d be happier if I wasn’t here.
Baron’s right. It’s time to go.
But I have a few things left to do. I pull the H2 out onto the road into town, finishing my bagel on the way. When I get to the hospital, they tell me only family is allowed to see Olive.
“I am her family,” I growl.
“I’m sorry,” says the receptionist. “You’ll still have to wait for visiting hours.”
I go back to my car and throw myself into the seat, too frustrated to muster up a flirtation and try to talk my way past the desk. I haven’t seen Olive since I hurt her, and it’s killing me. Last night, she was in the ER, and no one could see her. Eventually, I drank enough to black out, but apparently Royal took me home to get some sleep. Now I reach under the seat and find a fifth of whiskey and a couple bottles of beer. I open the heavy bottle and tip it back, letting the sweet burn of liquor slide down my throat and warm my belly. Then I lean back in my seat to wait.
A half hour later, I start to rethink my presence. After what I did last night, Olive might not want to see me. Colt is right. She’d be better off without me. This town would be better off. Hell, the whole fucking world would be better off without Duke Dolce in it. Unlike Royal, our family business doesn’t need me. And Baron, he’s a genius. He might think up some crazy invention that saves the world over breakfast one day. I’ve never done shit. All I do is screw up and hurt people, even when I’m trying to be good, like I have been since Baron left last winter.
A man can only go against his nature for so long, and anyone who’s ever known my family knows that evil runs in our blood. Even when I tried, I’ve never done anything good. At least not for anyone who deserved it.
I sit up in my seat and thumb on my screen, then hit call. When it goes to voicemail, I hang up and try again. He answers on the third call.
“It’s Saturday morning, Duke.”
“I know,” I say. “But you work for our family, and I need something now.”
He sighs. “What do you need?”
“I want to transfer my shares of Dolce Sweets.”
Mr. Delacroix is quiet a long minute. “Transfer them?”
“Yeah,” I say, taking a swig of whiskey. “There’s a kid who needs them.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s not that simple,” he says. “Besides the fact that she’d have to be eighteen to own shares in the company.”
“I don’t care. Make it happen,” I say, remembering Royal’s words in the kitchen. “I don’t want her to ever have to worry.”
“I can set up a trust in her name,” he says after another pause.
“Yes, do that,” I say. “Send me whatever you need me to sign.”
“You can put whatever you want into it and set the conditions for her to access it, but again, she won’t be able to access it until she’s eighteen.”
“Fine. Do your job,” I say, then hang up and finish off the whiskey.
As I screw the cap back on, I realize what a fucked up thing I’m doing. If Harper told the doctors what happened, they might guess I’m the one responsible. That I’m the fuck-up who didn’t listen, and now there’s a poor little kid with no health insurance who probably has permanent brain damage or scars and no money to fix them. Even if no one else knows, Olive knows. How could I show my face after what I did? What could I say to her? No words can fix her.
I grab one of the beers and climb out of the car. I stumble to the hospital doors on leaden legs. When I reach for the handle, I realize I’m still holding the beer. I shove it into my pocket and lurch through. That’s when I see the gift shop and realize, fuck-up that I am, I didn’t even bring her anything.
I sway my way up and down the aisles inside over and over until the guy behind the counter asks if I need help.
“Do you have any koalas?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so, man. I think there’s one in a coloring book somewhere around here…”
He goes to look, and I spot a jar of pens on the counter, each one with a tiny animal clipped onto it. I search through it, finding a half dozen sloths and monkeys. And then, just as I’m about to give up, I see a little grey animal clinging onto one of them. I turn it slowly, drunken desperation welling inside me. I have to blink a few times before I can believe it’s really here. The guy comes back, and I put it on the counter along with a Magic Eye book that looks like it’s been on the shelf for decades instead of a coloring book.
A few minutes later, I turn the knob to a room on the second floor. Pushing it open, I see the shape under the white spread, so small it’s hard to believe it’s a whole person. She’s not moving, and as I stagger toward the bed, an awful, sinking sensation starts to drag me toward the floor. If she’s not breathing when I get there, if I’m too late…
Her head is wrapped in bandages, and her chest rises and falls. There’s an IV drip attached to her hand, and monitors beep steadily beside the bed. That settles me, since I’ve been in hospitals enough to know that means she’s alive and stable. Her eyes are closed, her mouth hanging open. Asshole that I am, I want to take a picture, to show it to her later and tease her that she looks goofy as hell. But I won’t be laughing with her. I’d be laughing at her. She’s not going to want to laugh with me again after I slammed her head into a cement block.
I should be in fucking jail right now.
I’ve done enough, like Harper said last night. I have no right to be here. I’m not her family. I’m not even her friend. If she never sees me again, she’ll be better off.
So I don’t wake her, even though I want to say goodbye. That I’m sorry. That she’s the only thing that kept me from following Baron for all those months, the reason I went home every night instead of dropping out of school and taking off. I’m better because of her, but she’s still better off without me. It’s not her job to fucking fix me.
So I set the booklet and the pen down beside her bed, and then I look around for something to write a note on. That’s when I notice the flowers and balloons that Harper must have ordered so she’d wake up and know she was loved. I didn’t think to bring anything but a pen that was so obviously an afterthought that even an eight-year-old will realize it. It’s such a lame gift there’s no reason to leave a note. It would be embarrassing to put my name on it, like I’m proud that I gave her a fucking pen. I scribble a quick note on the first page anyway, then pause. It’s not enough. But it’s all I can do.
I search my pockets for something else, some money so she can buy herself something better, but I don’t even have any cash on me. All I have is a beer. I stare at it a second, battling my own will, because right now all I want in the world is to open it and dump it down my throat. Instead, I set it on top of the book of illusions. I stare down at Olive, thinking I should kiss her head or something, but then I remember Colt saying I was a pedo.
Maybe he’s right, and that’s why I like her so much. It’s probably weird for a grown man to make friends with a little girl.
I leave the room without the forehead kiss, without a goodbye. If Harper came back and found me alone with her, she’d probably be pissed.
I jab at the elevator button five or six times, but it’s too slow, and every second that passes, it gets harder not to turn around and go back. I want that beer. I want to see her eyes open, to know she’s okay. I want to see her smile again, to crow that I must have finally agreed that koalas are the cutest animal and that’s why I got her one.
I turn and hurry to the stairwell, throwing my shoulder against the door, and rush down the steps so fast I nearly lose my footing and tumble down. I plunge through the doors into the outside world, charge through the lot to my car, and jump inside, slamming the door before the demons can catch up. Fumbling the keys into the ignition, I blink away the fog and gas it, roaring out of the lot.
Maybe she’ll like the book, even if the pen was lame. When we were kids, my uncle gave us a bunch of those Magic Eye books. Baron was always best at them, of course. He’d see the shape emerge from the pattern before anyone else. That’s how his mind works. But after a while, I got the hang of it too. That’s how life works, just like those books. If you look close enough, if you search long enough, you can find something beautiful in the chaos.
I wish I’d written that down for Olive instead of running out like a coward without even signing my name. But as usual, I fucked it up. I never see what’s important until it’s too late. I never see the value of what’s in front of me until I’ve crushed it, like I did Olive. Just like I didn’t see that Mabel was the prize until Baron had already claimed her. I didn’t see that the demon inside me was destroying her until she was too far gone to save. I didn’t see that it was doing the same to her brother until there was no way back, no way to earn his forgiveness.
Maybe there’s still time to make it right, though. Maybe it’s not too late with her, and we can find her and make it better. Maybe she can forgive me, even if he refuses. She was always better, the best of all of us. We can fix her, even if no one else can, because we know where she’s broken. We’re the ones who broke her, after all. We can put her back together even more perfect than she was before.
She needs us.
But we can’t help her from here. This town is going to be the death of us if we stay. We need to get out of here, before it sucks us down and never lets us go, like it does everyone else. It’s time to get out, and this time, it won’t be too late. This time, I won’t fuck up. This time, I won’t let the demon win.