[This story is completed and will post in six chapters before the end of May 2016]
*****
The dancer on the pole looked too young. That's why Hardesty zeroed in on him. Hardesty was looking for them young. The others were working the crowd. Leering back, throwing dirty words into the crowd in response to what was being called out to them and making suggestive motions with their bodies on the poles. But this one, the small, lithe guy, not more than five foot five, Hardesty estimated, with the blond Mohawk and the fluttering eyelashes, was dancing the pole to the slow music in a shyer, more introspective way. That didn't mean that he didn't have guys zeroing in on him like Hardesty was—but for different reasons, Hardesty told himself.
It's just that he was an enigma.
What was he doing here at all, Hardesty wondered. He kept going back to the guy looking too young, too innocent—wholesome under an attempt to play the part—but sexy at the same time. Really, really sexy. His body was boyishly perfect. The Mohawk wasn't extreme—he didn't look punk. He was a dyed blond. The hair was auburn at the roots, but it looked like he'd let it go that way on purpose, like the hair was just frosted. He had hardware—a small ring in his eyebrow and one in his navel—and a tattoo of a gecko or some lizard or something disappearing down under the waistband of the gold G-string he was wearing. All you could see of the tattoo were a tail and some hind legs in green. He wasn't heavily muscled, but there wasn't any fat on him either. His stomach was flat and his hips thin, but his buttocks flared out into perfect bubbles.
The face was boyish too, almost pretty. His eyes were hazel or blue, Hardesty couldn't really tell which in this light. But he didn't care that much about the eyes—more that he looked young, too young, and that he was dancing within himself. Very sexy, but as if he was too innocent to be in here. Too vulnerable.
Patrons were coming close to the stage and stuffing fives and tens and even a few twenties in the waistbands of the G-strings of the other two dancers, and the dancers, in turn, were blowing kisses and making lurid movements to fit the mood. But none of that was happening with this one dancer. There was some sort of barrier around him that the boisterous men couldn't penetrate. He had more than his share of admirers, but they were worshipping him from a distance, most of them sitting there, lost in watching him, no doubt spinning in their minds what they'd like to do with the small, lithe, vulnerable body. Occasionally they'd come up and put their bills on the surface of the stage below where he was dancing. So he was getting his share of the tips. They just weren't touching him. It was like they were afraid he was too young to touch, not legal. They fully appreciated what he was doing, but they sensed a danger in treating him like the other two dancers.
This is what caught Hardesty's attention more than anything else. He took out his wallet and extracted a fifty-dollar bill and laid it down on the table in front of him. He made sure the young dancer saw him do it, which he did, and then Hardesty pushed the bill a nudge, just a nudge, toward the dancer on the tabletop and gave the dancer a meaningful look.
Putting a ten in a dancer's G-string waistband was showing one form of appreciation in a bar like this. Showing a fifty on top of the table told the dancer something entirely different. And all of the dancers here were on call for those fifties. Hardesty knew it was part of the contract.
Fifteen minutes after the end of the set, the dancer was walking through the beaded curtain at the back of the room and slowly making his way to Hardesty's table. He was managing to perpetuate the enigma. He was wearing low-rise faded jeans—the hind legs and tail of the gecko were still disappearing down into his pants at the crease where the sculpted edge of the under curve of his belly joined the lop of his right leg—but he was wearing an open green plaid flannel shirt and a yellow-gold baseball cap with the word "Lions" embossed in green above its bill. Some sort of high school team cap was Hardesty's first thought. The kid looked that young; the baseball cap certainly didn't make him look older. It was like there was a basic innocent, boy-next-door aura about the individual pieces of clothing he was wearing. The thing was, though, that the plaid shirt was open in front, showing his perfectly formed, honey-colored torso, and he was wearing thin-strip sandals and no socks. He looked both innocent rural hick and sex on wheels all at the same time. Hardesty wondered what was real and what wasn't with this guy. He'd have to push the envelope to find out.
They were hazel. His eyes were hazel. He was only half smiling when he sat down at the table, across from Hardesty, and he looked half embarrassed too, like this was all new to him. He placed a couple of fingers on the fifty-dollar note and cast his eyes down, on the bill, as if he couldn't say what he did to Hardesty face-to-face.
"You want to come into the back?"
"I have a room—at a motel," Hardesty said with a low growl. "There will be more than the fifty. Quite a bit more. That cool with you?"
"Yeah, that's cool," the young man answered, although even in this he managed to send confusing signals. He said it like he wasn't completely sure—like he hadn't really been through this routine before and didn't know if leaving the premises was permitted. Like he didn't know whether he should pin down what "quite a bit more" totaled out to.
Hardesty just wasn't sure. He had to be sure. He could have made the young man say the words here and taken care of it all right here. But he just wasn't sure. And there was something about this young, vulnerable-acting guy that spoke to Hardesty. That aroused him. He didn't want to think about the consequences of that, thought.
Perhaps he should have.
* * * *
Hardesty showered first at the motel room. He'd wanted to take off his suit coat a long time before now. The young man—especially when he was sitting so close to Hardesty in the car—had heated Hardesty up. Once they got in the motel room, he couldn't wait to get into the bathroom and take that coat off.
He could have taken care of it all in the car—just like he probably could have right there in the bar. He could have let the young man offer to suck him off there. It seemed that the kid was going to do that. But he hesitated in making the offer—that innocence and uncertainly forcing its way through the studied sexy exterior again—and Hardesty had overridden the start of an offer with questions about the young man, most of which were diverted or answered in the least-revealing way the kid could manage.
"Twenty-one," the guy had said. He'd been smoking a cigarette and rolled down the car window and flicked the butt out when he'd said that. He face was turned away from Hardesty, who was trying to keep his eyes on the road and on Todd at the same time. The guy had already said his name was Todd. Hardesty gave him his own real name.
"Just Hardesty. Everyone calls me just that. No first name needed."
Turning away from him like that when giving an age told Hardesty it was a lie. But just how much of a lie? That was the crux of the matter. That's what mattered with Hardesty. He was looking for them young, real young.
"Gotta piss, so I'll go first," Hardesty said as soon as they got in the door of the room at the seedy nearby motel that he'd already rented that afternoon. No issues with checking in, even if this was the type of motel that gave a shit how many and of what variety occupied its rooms—more likely by the hour than the night. He'd used this motel before.
For a split second Hardesty was afraid that Todd was going to ask to go first—or, more likely—for them to shower together. But Hardesty had business to do that he didn't want the kid to see.
Once in the bathroom, he stripped his coat off, and pulled the gun holster out from his arm pit and over his shoulder. He looked around. If nothing else, he could wrap it up in the folded clothes when he came out of the bathroom. But he wanted it well out of the way. He saw the gap between the wall and the back of the toilet tank, and the gun fit in there, out of sight, just like it was built for this need.
