Chapter 6 - Two Or Three Probable Lies.

“Get your fucking ass into the office right fucking now, Theodore,” Brian screamed into the phone the minute he walked through the doors at Kinnetik. “I don’t give a fuck that it’s Saturday morning. I need you here yesterday. We have a major problem.”

Brian hung up before Ted could manufacture any objections to being pulled into the office before noon on a weekend and spent the twenty minutes it took for his CFO to arrive pacing restlessly around his office. 

Ted blew through the door, panting from having sprinted all the way from his car, and skidded to a stop in front of his boss. “I’m here. What the hell is so dick-on-fire bad that I had to run through three traffic lights to get here?” Ted asked. 

“I’m pretty sure my mail order bride is a fucking conman,” Brian answered. 

Ted made an ‘you might be right’ grimace and nodded his head. “What, exactly, clued you in,” he asked, taking a seat on the comfortable leather couch in Brian’s office seating area. 

“Why don’t you don’t sound surprised?” Brian questioned.  

“You first, since I could have easily waited until Monday for this lovely conversation. Some of us are lucky enough to have someone cute at home to fuck in the morning, you know, and being interrupted, just to come listen to a queening out boss, is not part of my job description,” Ted prompted, resignedly leaning back against the couch cushions, prepared to hear his Boss’ tale of woe. 

Shaking his head at the blatant insubordination, Brian commented that, “being a smart ass isn’t in your job description either and yet here we are.” 

“Touché,” Ted grinned up at him insouciantly. “Continue, please.”

So Brian launched into the explanation of what he’d overheard that morning while standing outside his guest room door, complete with dramatic cursing to punctuate all the myriad indignities of the situation. “Basically, that little shit has been lying to us this whole time, Theodore. He’s not even Croatian. He’s American,” he repeated, unable to get beyond that part of the deception. 

“But you said he mentioned something about not wanting YOU to get hurt, right?” Ted ignored the indignant ranting and steered his boss around to the critical issue. “I think the most salient concern here is, who is he trying to protect you from and how much danger are we talking about?”

“I don’t know!” Brian roared with frustration. “I only heard the last part of the conversation. That was enough to totally freak me out, though. The woman he was talking to mentioned kidnapping and human trafficking, Ted. I mean, what the fuck?”

Ted didn’t respond for several minutes. Brian was still pacing frantically around the room, his hands rifling through his hair at random intervals, depending on how upset he was. Ted, on the other hand, was so deep in thought that he looked like a marble statue, not moving at all and barely seeming to breathe. Finally, when Brian had worked himself up so much he felt like he was about to jump out of his skin, Ted took a deep breath, shook his head, and looked up at his confused friend. 

“It doesn’t make any sense. If he really is trying to con you, why the fuck would he say he wants to protect you?”

“You’re just grasping that conundrum, Theodore?” Brian scoffed.

“No. I mean, yes. But, what you overheard doesn’t jibe with what Aleksi’s assistant told me last night.”

“You got through to someone in Split?” Brian seemed to think that feat would have solved all their problems, but Ted was decidedly less enthusiastic. 

“Yeah, I got a hold of Kacmar’s assistant, Lucija, last night. That’s part of the reason why Blake and I were late getting to Babylon. She returned my calls from earlier in the day as soon as she got to the office, which wasn’t until, like, one our time,” Ted explained. “Although I’m not sure what she said explains anything.”

“Well, what the fuck did she have to say?” Brian pressed.

“Lucija was thrilled that your ‘bride’ had arrived. By the way, have I ever mentioned how weird women get when they start talking about weddings? It’s like their brains short circuit or something. Anyway, I pressed her, repeatedly, about who it was they thought they’d sent and she specifically said the word ‘bride’ over and over again - and you know that Lucija speaks fairly decent English, even though her accent is heavy - so I’m pretty sure she meant that the person they intended to send on that plane was supposed to be a woman. And, as far as I could tell based on the substantial package that kid is sporting, I’m almost entirely sure that Justin isn’t a woman no matter how pretty he is.” 

“Enough with the humorous commentary, Lenny Bruce. Get on with the story,” Brian interrupted. 

“Getting on, Boss.” Ted sycophantically agreed. “So, when I asked her why in the world Aleksi would have wanted to send you a ‘bride’, that’s when she went all wedding-brain on me, and just took off on a tangent about how much her boss had liked you, and how nice you’d been to him and Petra, but that Aleksi had been sorry for you because you didn’t have someone in your life who would make you happy the way Petra had made Aleksi happy, and on and on. To be honest, I kinda tuned her out about halfway through the conversation because I was getting grossed out by it all. But suffice it to say that the goal was to get you set up, ready for happily wedded bliss, and then have Aleksi fly back to attend your ‘fancy, big, American wedding’.” Ted made air quotes as he related the conversation. Brian made a gagging noise in response and Ted looked sympathetically disgusted. “Like I said, I’m almost a hundred percent sure they THOUGHT they were sending you a wife, not a husband.”

“So how the fuck does the little con artist who’s holed up in my guest room come into the picture?” Brian asked again. 

“No idea. Unfortunately, we didn’t get that far,” Ted continued. “Lucija was just getting to the part where she was explaining how Aleksi already had a vacation house picked out for you and your new bride in Miami, which he was apparently planning to give you as a wedding present, when I stopped her.” Ted paused and looked up guiltily at his employer. “Please don’t kill me, Boss, but I just . . . She was getting so carried away, you know, practically picking out the wedding theme and flower selection already, and I had been trying to get a word in edgewise for so long without her letting me stop her and . . . Well, when she finally took a breath, I sorta blurted out how you didn’t want a ‘bride’ because you were gay.”

Brian sputtered and waved off Ted’s concerns. “It would have come out eventually, one way or another. Me showing up to my own wedding with a trick in tow probably would have given it away.” 

That got Ted laughing. “You might be right, Bri. But, after I spilled the beans, Lucija got kinda quiet. I think I might have shocked her. She seemed to think I was the one who was mistaken. I had to reassure her a couple of times that, no, Brian Kinney didn’t want anything at all to do with any women, let alone need a bride.” Ted chuckled again, remembering the woman’s scandalized voice. “She even tried to use the old ‘once he settles down with the right woman, he will change’ line.”

“Yeah, no. That is NOT fucking happening, Theodore. Not even for Aleksi’s multimillion dollar account.”

“Which is what I told her, in slightly more politically correct terms, Bri,” Ted agreed wholeheartedly. “She still tried to argue with me, though. At least until I told her it was all a moot point since the ‘bride’ they’d tried to send hadn’t made it anyway. Which really flipped her switch.” Ted stopped for a moment and thought about the phone call again. “She actually sounded really upset about my news that the woman they’d tried to send you never showed. She broke off into Croatian for a bit - swearing like a sailor, judging by the tone - and then immediately started promising that she’d find out what happened and make sure ‘Laura’ was on the next plane.”

“Even after you told her I’m gay, she was still trying to get this bimbo here to marry me? What the fuck?” Brian was too annoyed for words.

“Yep. But when I mentioned to her that there was a young man who’d arrived in the woman’s place, she got even more flustered. She said she needed to check with Aleksi and would get back to us and then she hung up.” Ted concluded. “I didn’t even get a chance to ask her who the kid was or what they wanted us to do with him.”

“That’s probably a good thing, Ted,” Brian cautioned. “We still don’t know what the fuck is really going on here or why the hell our guest thinks someone is coming after him. And maybe after me too. Until we have a better idea of the type of shit sandwich we’re in the middle of, it’s probably a good idea not to give out too much information. The kid sounded relieved that nobody knew he was staying at my place, and I think we should keep it that way. At least for now.”

“Probably a good idea, Boss,” Ted agreed, getting to his feet. “Something seems off about this whole situation. I think we need to do some more research before we get in any deeper. I, for one, want some answers.”

“Yeah, me too,” Brian readily agreed. “Starting with who the fuck the guy staying in my guest room really is and who’s trying to kill him.” 

Ted hesitated a moment or two before voicing his next concern. “Yeah, maybe you should rethink letting the kid stay with you, Bri? I mean, you have no idea what the hell he’s involved in. It could be anything from just a scheme to rip you off to something more sinister like international gun smuggling. You really don’t know anything about him at all. Now that I think about it, maybe we should just go to the police with all of this and let them figure it out.”

“Gun smuggling? Seriously, Ted?” Brian snorted contemptuously and rolled his eyes. “We need to wean you off cable television, and soon, before you turn my twink house guest into the next Jason Bourne.”  

“Okay, well, you’re probably right about the gun smuggling. Youstin doesn’t look like the gun runner type,” Ted conceded with an embarrassed blush. “But still, the only thing we know about him is that he’s involved in something dangerous and probably criminal. It would probably be wise to get out of the way and let the police do their job here.”

Brian thought about the sweet little blond with the innocent smile and the soft warm lips. He thought about their make out session the night before and how nice the pliant body pressed against his own had felt. He thought about the comfortable silences they’d shared both the night before and that morning at breakfast and how he’d rarely experienced that level of ease with anyone else. He knew that Justin couldn’t talk to him out of fear of giving away his secret, which obviously accounted for his silence, but there had been something more to the quietness between them. Brian somehow thought that, even if Justin could have talked to him, they would still be able to share that same sense of wordless quietude. And, it wasn’t like Brian was the sentimental type, nor was he gullible enough to believe that veneer of innocence went more than skin deep, but for some reason he couldn’t pinpoint he simply knew that Justin was different. He wasn’t hiding anything sinister behind that innocuous exterior. He wasn’t inherently ‘bad’. No matter what the kid had gotten himself tangled up in, Brian didn’t think Justin would intentionally hurt him.

“Let’s hold off on that for now,” Brian advised, moving around to sit behind his desk now that all the adrenaline had been bled off via his pacing and worrying. “I want to know more before we take any kind of action. As it is, we don’t know for sure that anything illegal has happened, and I don’t want to get the kid in trouble with the cops for nothing. Besides, he isn’t hurting anything. Not yet, at least. He’s just hanging out in my guest room and drawing and hiding from whoever is looking for him. I don’t see the harm in any of that.”

“And if he’s really just casing the joint and waiting for his accomplices to come clear out all your electronics?” Ted suppositioned.

“That’s what insurance is for, right?”

“If you say so, Boss,” Ted got up off the couch, shaking his head, and stared down at Brian as if he thought the man was off his rocker. “But, in the meantime, I’m going to do some more checking and see if we can find out about this ‘Youstin’. Do you even know his full name?”

“Nope,” Brian responded, rubbing the back of his neck to relieve the tension building there. “Only that he introduced himself as ‘Youstin’, which I assume is the Croatian version of ‘Justin’, the name I heard the woman he was talking to use.”

“Maybe I can get more information if I call the airline,” Ted suggested with a crafty little smle. “It helps that Kinnetik does the advertising for Liberty Air and we have contacts there.”

“Good idea, Ted. And while you’re at it I think we should take another look at Aleksi Kacmar too.”

“Kacmar? But we already vetted him when we did the initial due diligence on his company, didn’t we?” 

“I know, but there’s something about a guy I hardly know sending me a ‘bride’ that doesn’t make sense. Even if I was straight, that would be weird, right? Who does that kinda shit?” Brian pressed his lips together into a flat line while he thought about how to express his nebulous suspicions. “From the sound of it, Kacmar and his assistant had practically planned my whole wedding, clear down to some honeymoon in Miami. That’s just plain . . . Wrong. It’s all way too fast and too intrusive. And what about that strange comment about giving me Florida real estate as a wedding present? Something stinks about this whole thing, Ted.”

“I agree, Brian. It does seem a little strange. It’s definitely more than just a mistake in translation.”

“Exactly!” Brian agreed immediately. “But, make sure you’re discreet about whatever additional research you do, Ted. I could be totally off base here. Maybe Kacmar really is just a crazy romantic fool who regularly goes around providing all his casual acquaintances with wives and real estate. We don’t want to alienate Aleksi if my suspicions don’t pan out; we can’t afford to lose the Princess Mia account while we’re chasing some conspiracy theory down a rabbit hole.” 

“Got it, Boss,” Ted confirmed, pulling out his phone so he could make notes for himself about the tasks he needed to accomplish, a habit of the always-organized CFO. “While I’m doing that, I suggest you try to get closer to your ‘bride’. Maybe you can get a little more info out of him that way.” 

“I suppose I could pump him for a little information,” Brian suggested with a lewd waggle of his brows. 

Ted chuckled. “Sounds like something that’s right up your alley, Bri.”

“We each bring our own special talents to a problem, Theodore,” Brian replied, flashing his trademark sexy smirk. “Remember, ‘teamwork makes the dream work’.”

“I suppose,” Ted huffed in amusement, “but for some reason this sounds suspiciously like that time the coach of the football team tried to convince me that my job as the towel boy was just as important as the quarterback. Unfortunately, the towel boy wasn’t the one getting laid that time either.”

“Say ‘hi’ to Blake for me,” Brian called out to Ted’s back as the accountant made his way out of Brian’s office and back down the hall to start his investigations from the privacy of his own office. “Now, where to begin with my ‘probing’ of the hot little blond . . .”

“THIS is the life,” Justin murmured to himself, stretching out on the lounge chair under the big umbrella that protected him from the afternoon sun. 

He’d come up onto the roof deck a couple of hours earlier and was thoroughly enjoying himself. He loved Brian’s amazing house. He had immediately taken advantage of the luxury, and the fact that he had it all to himself for the day, to pamper himself a little. It was a warm July day - albeit not nearly as hot as it had been in the southern Adriatic - and the view was hazy from the high humidity. Still, there was a slight breeze that cooled the rooftop area; he thought the idea of putting the deck up here was brilliant because that little breeze probably didn’t make it all the way down to the ground level. Without that occasional whiff of air, it would have definitely been too hot up here to hang out for long. As it was, though, Justin found the conditions perfect for lazing around in the sun, working on what little tan his pale ivory skin would allow him to get, and sipping at a cool glass of iced tea while he desultorily sketched variations on Brian Kinney.  

All the pleasant warmth and relaxation, however, were starting to make him sleepy. He yawned and stretched again, his arms reaching over his head until his hand bumped against the railing that ran all around the roof’s edge. He gripped the railing with both hands, using that leverage to flex his arm muscles, enjoying the feeling as his biceps, back, and spine lengthened and then contracted. He flexed his legs next, pointing and flexing his toes, then tightened his glutes so that his hips arched up slightly. He felt languorous and content, like a cat who’d found a sunny place to take a nap. 

“There you are, Youstin,” Brian Kinney’s baritone voice caused a frisson of liquid startlement to ripple through his already-warmed muscles. 

Justin looked up from where he was lounging and offered his host a smile. 

“I looked all over the house for you and was beginning to think you’d run out on me,” Brian said, coming closer, a sexy smirk decorating his sensual lips. Then, without any change to his expression, the brunet added, “but, since the tv was still there, I figured you must not have had time to make a clean getaway.”

Justin had no idea how he was supposed to hide his reaction to that accusation, said in such a way that, had Justin really been a foreigner, he wouldn’t have understood. It just added to the confusion he felt about Brian Kinney. Everything about the man was a contradiction, from the totally inappropriate things he said, to the kindness of his actions, to the gentle way he’d kissed Justin the night before. How the fuck was he supposed to respond to a man like that?

While his brain was still muddling through this quandary, Justin’s body had already come to a very immediate conclusion about the way it wanted to react. It reacted by sending all the blood that would have normally occupied his brain directly to his cock. His dick didn’t care what the brain thought, it was swelling so fast that Justin found himself uncomfortably hard in less than ninety seconds after Brian had appeared. The fact that he was wearing only the very tight, very skimpy, square-cut Colisha swim trunks that Gianni - his Italian fling from before he’d met Gunter - had bought for him in Corfu, and that his full cock was already starting to push its way past the loosely tied waistband, made his interest in Brian rather obvious. 

Ignoring the flush of embarrassment that washed over his skin, Justin reached down and rearranged himself in the trunks so that his problem wasn’t quite so blatant. Brian just stood there, leering down at him, apparently enjoying Justin’s predicament judging by the self-satisfied grin on his handsome face. Justin wished, not for the first time, that his complexion wasn’t so fair, because it always showed everything he was feeling. And right then he was practically on fire as a bloom of heat crept over his skin, causing him to blush clear down to his abs. He really needed to get a fucking grip on himself, he thought. He wasn’t some neophyte who got flustered simply because a good looking man smiled at him. He hadn’t been a blushing virgin for a long, long time. But, if this kept up, Brian was going to think he was a total noob.

“It seems like you’ve been keeping yourself busy. The tan looks nice. Maybe I should strip you out of those ridiculously tiny shorts and lick the sunscreen off you so I can taste that tan as well as look at it?” Brian commented, folding his lips in as if he were trying to hide his smile at Justin’s discomfort.

Justin was so flustered by Brian’s comments that he didn’t know what to do, or say, or even where to look. He was now blushing so hard that he was sure his face looked like a ripe tomato. He should be furious at this man for saying such inappropriate things to him, but he wasn’t. He had never in his life been so fucking turned on. But he shouldn’t be because he wasn’t supposed to even understand what Kinney was saying. Damn it! He needed to do something, soon, or his fucking traitorous body was going to give away his secret. 

His eyes slid sideways and thankfully fell on a distraction. Picking up the sketchbook that he’d been doodling in, he turned back a page to the drawing he’d just finished and held it up for Brian to see. “I make. Brian. Da?” he said in his pretend accent, the name ‘Brian’ sounding more like ‘bree-Onn’.”

Brian took the proffered drawing and nodded approvingly. “Not bad, Youstin. Not bad at all.” 

Justin was actually quite proud of that drawing himself. It was a sketch of the way the man had looked that morning at breakfast. It showed Brian Kinney in profile, his face in repose as he looked down at the newspaper he’d been reading, his longish hair straggling down over his brow and cheek. Justin needed to work on the forehead a little more, and maybe finish the background, but it was a pretty good likeness all the same.

“So you’re not only a pretty face, huh? You’ve got talent too. That’s a dangerous combination, Sunshine,” Brian surmised,     

Justin, who’d thought he had come up with a way to redirect the conversation, blushed all over again at Brian’s compliment. What the fuck was up with this guy? Why did everything Brian say come out sounding like a proposition? And why the hell couldn’t Justin control his reaction to his man. Considering the huge numbers of men he’d slept with over the past two years, Justin shouldn’t be this easily shaken up by one mere man. Even if he WAS a drop-dead gorgeous man who said the most irritatingly delicious things.

“Shit, it’s hot up here today,” Brian declared. 

Justin was so grateful for the interruption to his trainwreck of thoughts that he closed his eyes and sighed. Yes, talk about the weather. He could handle that. He opened his eyes and smiled at Brian.

Of course, then his host went and ruined the distraction by ostentatiously unbuttoning the casual blue denim shirt he’d been wearing, undoing the buttons one at a time, slowly revealing more and more of his golden-tan chest as Justin stood there salivating. 

Fuuuuck! That was just too much. Brian Kinney was ravishing when fully clothed, but with each inch of additional skin revealed, Justin became even more fascinated. And, when Brian finished with the last button and shrugged the unnecessary cloth off his shoulders, Justin thought he might spontaneously combust right there on the rooftop deck; not from the heat of the sun but from the heat of lust that almost swamped him just from looking at Brian’s well-toned pecs and those rock-hard abs. 

Brian wasn’t finished though. Oh, no. He was just getting started on his plan to seduce the truth out of his visitor. And he was going to use all the weapons in his arsenal; the most lethal of which, by far, was his own, spectacular body. 

With that in mind, Brian hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his perfectly distressed, Scotch & Soda, Ralston jeans, and then slowly slid both hands forward until they came together right over his fly. Justin’s eyes were riveted on that spot and Brian almost laughed when he saw the boy biting at his bottom lip and panting like he couldn’t get enough oxygen. Enjoying the power he had over the young blond, Brian made a show out of popping the buttons of his fly very deliberately, one by one, until the material was flapping loosely and his audience could clearly see that there wasn’t anything under the jeans. Finally, with intentional nonchalance, he gave a little shove and the pants slid down his slim hips into a puddle of fabric on the ground. 

Justin whimpered. 

With the smugest of smug smiles, Brian stepped out of the remains of his clothing and sauntered unhurriedly across the deck to the hot tub. With his back to the transfixed boy who was watching his every move, he lifted off the cover, switched on the jets, and then slowly lowered himself into the bubbling water. It was almost too hot of a day to be sitting in a hot tub in the sun, but the warmth flowing through Brian’s muscles felt good too. It would bake away all the tension and stress. He let himself float over to the submerged shelf that extended along one side of the square tub, lying down so that the well-placed jets would massage down the length of his back. It did not escape his attention that Justin followed him until the young man was standing at the side of the spa, watching with avid interest as Brian’s cock floated just under the surface of the water, peeking up every now and then through the bubbles when his body would float higher.

“You’re welcome to join me, Youstin,” he purred, his low, gravelly voice just loud enough to be heard over the hum of the jets. With one crooked finger he summoned the boy even closer, allowing him to grab the hem of Justin’s swim trunks, before adding, “but this is a clothing-free spa, I’m afraid, so these,” he tugged the fabric down just far enough that the pretty pink cock underneath poked its head up from behind the waistband, “need to come off.”

Justin froze. He’d kinda forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to understand what Brian was saying. His brain had been mostly offline since the moment when Brian’s pants had hit the decking. After that he was just operating on pure lust. So, when the gorgeous naked man in the hot tub had demanded that he take off his trunks and join him in the frothy water, he did exactly what he’d been told. Ten seconds later the trunks were lying forgotten on the ground and he was vaulting into the tub, all decorum abandoned, along with his clothing. 

Brian was almost as captivated by his first sight of the naked boy as Justin had been by him. Only his ego kept him from drooling over the scrumptious, slender, youthful body, its curves and hard planes in all the right places, with that better-than-average-sized prick pointing proudly out of a nest of glorious dark-blond curls. Fuck, this kid was absolutely mouthwatering. Brian wasn’t usually into chicken - or even near-chicken, like Justin was - but for this boy he’d gladly break out of type. If only there wasn’t the uncertainty of possible criminal involvement hanging over them, he wouldn’t have held back at all. He’d have had that soft, golden, twinky body bent over the closest deck chair with his cock buried as deeply as it could go before you could say ‘fuck me!’. As it was, though, Brian didn’t quite trust himself that far. He’d have to settle for just looking - and maybe a little touching, because who could resist THAT - at least for now. 

Curling the toes of one long leg around the boy’s thigh, Brian jerked the slim body forward until Justin was close enough for him to wrap a hand around the pretty pink prick that was bobbing just above the water level. Using that handhold, Brian gently tugged the younger man closer and then, without letting up for even a second, he quickly and efficiently jerked the kid off. It took hardly any time at all; Justin was so aroused he probably could have got the kid off with just a few words. 

As soon as he was done, his mission accomplished, Brian got up, leaned in to deposit one soft-lipped kiss against the panting, popsicle-pink mouth, and then left. Justin continued to stand there, in the middle of the hot tub, for several more minutes, until his brain finally rebooted and he was capable once again of rational thought. 

“Fuck me,” Justin mewled, slumping down onto the underwater spa bench and letting the bubbling water slosh up around him. “Being Brian Kinney’s house guest might just fucking kill me before the Croatian guy even finds me.”