Page 14 of Dark Passion

“When he checked in with his father, I noticed he looked like my Charlie, and I told him so, and that’s when he admitted he was a look-a-like. I didn’t believe him, but since you’ve confirmed that it’s not him, then maybe he’d talk to me now that he’s not that rich gorgeous heartthrob, but a regular guy with Charlie’s good looks. When you find him, will you tell him that the girl at the front desk is available, and I don’t have a boyfriend if he doesn’t have a girl and is looking to party.”

I didn’t want to break her young heart by revealing to her he was gay and was looking for the same thing she was—a cock, and he had a death wish, and not to go planning the wedding anytime soon.

And speaking of a death wish, if I didn’t call Cole soon my relationship would soon be doomed. I needed Max to talk to Cole, because after all, it was his fault that this shit had even happened. I had been happy when Cole came back to me, and then Cole’s boss complicated our life, and it was only right that he do something to get it back to where it was—no complications, and no Charlie St. John.

“Max, I don’t know what time it is on the west coast, but it’s 6 a.m. on the east coast—”

“I’m in bed with my wife and it’s 3 a.m. Why the fuck didn’t you check first before you made this call.”

Well, he’s not a happy camper. So fucking what? Neither am I.

I didn’t like Max’s tone of voice, especially since I’d been drugged, stumbled out of a bed that wasn’t mine early in the morning, and I hadn’t had a satisfying fuck in days.

Although Max was in bed, and I’d give him that excuse for his surly attitude, but I was having a fucking bad day myself, and his little inconvenience couldn’t compare to me waking up nude next to a man I never wanted to be found dead with.

“Well, Max, sometimes you can’t check when your life is being destroyed. I’ve been trying to deal with that Charlie St. John inconvenience since you dropped him on Cole and me. I have been doing a job that’s not in my pay grade, and speaking of pay, it has cost me time, and a trip to Atlantic City and a hotel room I can’t afford, scratch that, two hotel rooms that are out of my reach, all because I’m trying to find Charlie before if he does something to himself that everyone involved with him will regret—”

Max interrupted me, “Whatever it costs, send me the bill, but find him and get him back to Manhattan—”

I interrupted him, “You have to talk to Cole and tell him what I’ve been doing. I’ve been going from one bar to the next, bondage clubs, and now I’m in Atlantic City looking for his ass. Can you do that for me? You’re getting ready to lose a young man, namely Cole, because he doesn’t appreciate you handing him that out-of-control guy to watch. No one can watch him. He needs to stay in the jungle until he grows up. Are you going to call Cole?”

“Whether you know it or not, I gave Charlie over to Cole because I’d heard about you. I know I should have told you or called myself, but I knew you wouldn’t agree to this, especially since I was the one who kept you two apart.” Finally he was telling the truth. That was a first to have a lawyer who came clean about something like this. I wouldn’t have admitted it, but I felt better that he had, and I respected it.

“Look, Max, I don’t know Charlie well, but I think he’s someone worth saving, and I’ll try, but I need your help with Cole.”

“I’ll do whatever you ask me to. And don’t worry about the cost, I’ll pay whatever it takes. I’ll just bill Charlie, because he has more money than he knows what to do with. It’s the money and being young that has him all fucked up. We can’t do anything about him being young, but he doesn’t need to use that money to kill himself, if that’s what he’s looking to do. I have a responsibility to him, and I thought you and Cole could help him.”

“I’m not a therapist. Instead of sending him on remote shoots, you need to get him into a place where they can help him immediately, because I don’t have enough life experience or patience to deal with this kind of behavior.”

When I thought I’d spent enough time talking to Max and he’d agreed to call Cole, I told him goodnight, and I showered, dressed, and headed out the door to look for Charlie. Now where would I go if I were his age again? No, I couldn’t think like that. I wasn’t hanging in Caesars or any of the casinos. I haunted the clubs looking for excitement. I was looking to dance, meet beautiful and bold men, men who could satisfy my insatiable sexual urges.

That’s where I found Julian, in a bondage club filled with men who wanted to give pain as well as receive it.

However pain is relative, and it all depends on how you want it, or who you want to give it to you. The wrong person can fuck you up for years,I thought.

Not in a casino. No way I’d trot around a casino looking over someone’s shoulder, and neither would Charlie. Men who liked to gamble couldn’t spend their precious time in a pain room. They’d get their fix not from pain, but the excitement of placing a bet. I suspected their racing heartbeats would come from losing lots of money, or winning more than they’d lost, and in that way that could be considered as the pain they’d desired and craved. Therefore it would be my first place to look, especially since he was traveling with an older man. Older meaning forty or fifty not much more, I estimated. But then as young as Charlie was, and what the bodyguard at that underground club thought as old was relative also. Old for Charlie could be someone twenty-five, and the bodyguard, considering he was in his twenties, could think someone my age was old.

A man in his thirties now could be past his prime these days and was referred to as old by the younger crowd. I had to be on the look out for someone between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five.

Once on the casino floor, I stood in one place looking around. My eyes wandered around trying to spot someone I thought Charlie would be willing to travel two and a half hours with. I sauntered around to the blackjack tables to get a better look at the men, because you couldn’t tell anything about them if you saw them from behind, especially if they weren’t standing.

Charlie looked like the kind of guy with money to burn, and if the matured dude needed money, Charlie was just the trusting type to accommodate him, especially if he thought he was buying experience, and his payoff would be getting that orgasm he’d dreamed of.

As I stood listening to the sound of slots, people milling about and some rushing around me, sometimes bumping into me to get to the slots, I put my mind into Charlie’s, and realized he wanted to get the fuck out of this place, especially since the Atlantic Ocean was a few steps out the doors.

I glanced to my left and then my right, and I bet this guy who Charlie checked in here with, would play at a one-hundred-dollar blackjack table, or a hundred-dollar slot machine.

When my eyes roamed from table to table, there Charlie stood anxiously behind the guy, leaning in and whispering in his ear. The dude had wavy salt and pepper hair, and a soft white short beard. Handsome, but so good-looking, where a man as young as Charlie would find him attractive, even if he was middle-aged. Thirty-five or forty was what I thought had to be his age. He was dressed in an expensive light-blue linen shirt and grey pants.

When the elegant dressed, handsome man in his forties turned and winked at Charlie, and smiled with amazing white teeth, then kissed Charlie on his cheek, his eyes never left the money, his fingers stacking and counting the chips in front of him. You could tell his mind wasn’t on Charlie. Before Charlie walked away, he handed him a fistful of chips in different denominations. Then he turned and headed for the door to the outside into the fresh air and beach. I didn’t think Charlie wanted to just walk on the beach alone. I thought he didn’t want to be alone, nor in a casino gambling.

It was then I rushed behind him, to the doors stopping to let a woman enter, but I was too late, and Charlie had disappeared. I stood on the Boardwalk, wondering where Charlie had gone to that quickly.

---