CHAPTER ONE
The Bad Boys Club
TREY Hayworth had a choice. He could jack off to his dog-eared Victoria’s Secret catalogue or rely on his stash of torn out underwear stud ads. The Victoria’s Secret women were soft and curvy, the Calvin Klein men as ripped as gym rats in their groin-hugging briefs.
Both made Trey’s eighteen-year-old cock swell up and harden.
He could have used both to masturbate to of course, but he preferred to save that treat for his last climax. Privacy was precious. He liked to make a full meal of it.
Trey’s father was a pharmaceuticals rep for a drug company. Twice a month he traveled out of town on sales trips. When he was home, he kept too close an eye on his son for Trey to risk breaking his anti-sex edicts. When he was gone, Trey had more leeway. His sort-of pal Kevin Dexter had shown him how to feed fake footage into his dad’s spycams, which gave him multiple days and nights to revel in freedom.
He could pretend he was normal then. Crawl the mall. Crash a party if he knew of one. He wasn’t popular enough to be invited. The other seniors at Franklin High smelled the freak on him—his indeterminate sexual preference, his home situation, the whole “his mother killed herself last year” thing. Whether they were jocks or nerds, people steered clear of making friends. Trey didn’t fit their boxes. They didn’t know what to make of him. His saving grace was that he was decent looking and owned a car. Waiting tables sixteen hours a week meant he could buy non-lame clothes and keep his rusty Mustang running.
His father believed allowances ruined kids.
But that was fine. Trey was happier not relying on him. Safer too, probably. Trying to please her spouse had led to his mother giving up on everything.
He pushed that thought away. Remembering how his mother had checked out made him feel like he was choking. Determined not to waste his time alone, he scooted beneath the box spring to retrieve his inspiration from its well-concealed hiding place. His cock woke up as he did, twitching like Pavlov’s dog from the familiar feel of his back sliding over the cool floorboards.
The sound of a raised male voice froze him there with the dust bunnies.
Zane Alexander’s father was on a tear tonight.
In some ways, Trey’s next-door neighbor was the opposite of himself. Zane was a golden boy. Captain of the football team. A zillion friends. A Porsche. A girl for each arm and leg if he wanted them. In one important way, however, he and Trey had too much in common.
Trey squirmed out from under his bed and crawled to the windowsill to peek out. His pitch-black hair was long—too long, according to his father. Thus far, he’d avoided his father’s scissors. As a result, he had to shovel it out of his eyes to see. A strip of grass separated the two ramblers, maybe fifteen feet in all. The night was dark and the shades were pulled. The light from a single lamp silhouetted Zane and his father in their living room. Divorced for a couple years from his beauty queen of a wife, Zane’s father had been Franklin’s hometown hero once, a football prodigy like his son. An injury sidelined his career, leaving him to simultaneously hate and need to live through his son—who he liked to pimp out at the sporting goods store he owned. Mr. Alexander was big and beefy but not as tall as Zane. As if he didn’t want to remind his dad of that, Zane’s shoulders were hunched in.
“You forgot?” Mr. Alexander’s drunken voice shouted. “You forgot? You want to tell me how you could be such a stupid shit you couldn’t remember one simple thing!”
Zane’s answer was inaudible. Truthfully, it didn’t matter what he said, no more than it mattered what he’d forgotten. What happened next was inevitable.
His father’s arm uncoiled, his meaty fist smacking Zane in the temple. Trey flinched and gripped the window tighter. Zane didn’t let out a sound. Again came the fist, and again Zane took the blow. If reflex made him jerk away slightly from the swing, experience kept him from blocking it.
Defending himself would be the opposite of helpful.
He’d made the right choice. Mr. Alexander was finished then, his anger a storm that had blown over.
“No sniveling,” he instructed before he left the room. “You take your medicine like a man.”
His son stood there by himself, his chest going up and down, his fists opening and closing with some struggle. Shit, Trey thought, not sure what was happening but concerned. Zane’s body language said he was about to explode. Trey sucked in a breath, wondering if he should call out. Zane and he weren’t friends by any stretch, but maybe something he could say would help.
Before he could decide, Zane turned sharply and headed for the door.