“Spit it out. Use your words.”

“Gorgeous.”

Kingsley raised an eyebrow. He didn’t mind the flattery or the adulation, but he’d wanted the boy the second he’d walked into the club. Time to move things along.

“What else have you heard?”

The boy glanced around. He dropped his voice.

“I heard that there’s another room—”

“It’s more than one room.”

The boy sat back. He ran a nervous hand through his hair. Kingsley envied his fingers.

“So it’s true? You all do kink here? And...other stuff?”

“You know why this club is called the Möbius?” Kingsley asked.

“No. Weird name.”

“A Möbius strip is an optical illusion. It looks like it has two sides, but it has only one.”

Kingsley picked the napkin off the table. Embossed on the white paper was a small ribbon, oval-shaped. His patrons likely thought it was an elegant rendition of a vagina. The image conveniently worked on two levels.

“I don’t understand,” the blond said.

“Do you want to understand?”

“It’s why I’m here.”

“Then follow me. I’ll be your tour guide through hell.”

Kingsley grabbed the bottle off the table, and the boy followed him to a quiet corner of the club. To the right of the bar was a door bearing an employees only sign. Kingsley pushed through. The blond hesitated, but Kingsley grasped him by the wrist and pulled him.

“I told you I own this place. Do you think you’re going to get into trouble?” Kingsley asked.

“Yeah,” the blond said.

“If you’re with me, you’re already in trouble.”

They walked down a short hall to another door. Kingsley paused to pull out his keys.

“I should go,” the blond said. “I—”

Without even looking at him, Kingsley shoved the boy back against the wall and held him there with one hand.

He found the key but didn’t put it in the lock. Instead, he dangled it in front of the boy’s face. In the brighter light of the hallway Kingsley could see the blond had light brown eyes. Not the steel-gray color he’d hoped for, but still he would do.

“This key opens a door to a hidden part of this club,” Kingsley said. “The part of the club you came to see. Doors are symbols, you know. Thresholds to cross, choices to be made. It’s not often that a real door stands between you and a different life. Don’t waste this chance. You go back that way, and you stay in your old world. You open that door, and you enter a new one.”

The boy eyed the silver key dangling from Kingsley’s middle finger.

“If you were me...” the blond said.

“I was you,” Kingsley said.

“What did you choose?”

Kingsley didn’t answer at first. There had been no door for him, no key.

“I ran through the door. And I never looked back.”

Sweat beaded on the boy’s smooth young forehead. Kingsley held him still and hard against the wall and under his hand he could feel the boy’s heart battering against his chest.

The boy reached up and grabbed the key. With fumbling fingers, he shoved it in the lock, turned the knob and pushed through the door. This time, Kingsley followed him.

Behind the door, the world changed color. Out front, the lights were black. Here they were blue. Out in the club, a pantomime of sex played out on and around the stage. Girls gave lap dances, feigned interest and faked smiles. Here, behind the door, men groped in the dark, coupled frantically, secretly. Nothing was feigned. No one pretended to fuck back here. They fucked.

“Jesus,” the boy whispered as they passed a man bent over a chair, another man behind him, inside him, fucking him without shame or restraint.

“If you’re looking for Jesus, you won’t find him down here,” Kingsley said, stepping in front of the blond to guide him through the hall.

“Is this a bathhouse?” the boy asked.

“You see anyone taking a bath?”

The boy laughed. “No.”

“It’s not a brothel, either. No one’s paying for sex here. I’m not a pimp.”

“What is it then?”

“Sanctuary,” Kingsley said. “Most of these men are married. Children. Jobs. They come to the club because no one cares if a man goes to a strip club full of naked women. They walk in the front door first. But it’s the back door they’re here for.”

Kingsley laughed, but the boy didn’t. The other blond would have gotten his joke.

“Are you married?” the boy asked.

“Do I look married to you?”

“Do you have kids?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then why—”

Kingsley grabbed the boy and shoved him against the wall again.

“You talk too much,” Kingsley said.

The blond swallowed visibly. He licked his lips, and Kingsley’s groin tightened.

“Then shut me up,” the blond whispered.

The boy wanted to be kissed, and Kingsley wanted to kiss him. The boy’s lips trembled, his whole body trembled. But kissing him would make it all personal. Tonight he wanted anonymity.

“Why are you scared?” Kingsley asked.

“I don’t... We just met.”

“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Nothing but this.”

Without warning the boy, Kingsley turned him and pushed him, chest first, against the wall. Kingsley pressed his chest into the boy’s back, slid his hand down his stomach and opened his pants.