Free Tokyo Ink (Gay SF Erotica) by Ann Vremont

talking to you. Magnus Valnyk, my father, doesn’t want me talking to you. Doesn’t want me making a full confession of my sins -- and his.”
    The guard paled, dropped Gabe’s jacket and reached for him. He came up instead with a handful of Gabe’s shirt. Tetsu had already stressed the seams that morning, loosened the threads according to Gabe’s instruction, and the back of the shirt came away with a sharp rip. Gabe spun, looked at the guard while he exposed his back with the dragon and shinto priest. More shocked murmurs rippled through the crowd and Tetsu wondered if it was from Gabe’s theatrics or seeing someone outside the criminal class covered in tattoos. The cameras kept rolling, reporters held their mobiles up to send quick screen caps back to their news rooms.
    Mindful that Magnus would watch a replay before the night was up, Tetsu began to jostle the reporters, half-heartedly making his way forward as he nervously called for “Dillon” to stop. He let the reporters push him back but gave one of the bigger males a hard shove for good measure. Maneuvering his way to the side, he lost sight of Gabe for a few seconds, only the sound of his voice and the dreadful truths falling from his lips reassuring Tetsu that the guard hadn’t managed to cart him away.
    Clearing the side, he saw Gabe, completely shirtless now, grappling with the guard. Gabe got his arm around the guard’s waist and Tetsu could see that he had pulled something from the guard’s security belt. Had it been anyone other than the CEO’s son, Tetsu was sure the guard would have laid him out cold on the sidewalk.
    “Knife!” Tamu kicked a rival camera operator next to her, throwing the man off balance so that she could pull her own crew member closer to the fighting.
    “Fuck!” Tetsu started pulling at bodies in earnest.
    Seeking reinforcements, the guard jerked at the glass door, pounded on it when it wouldn’t open.
    “Stay back!” Gabe screamed -- to the guard, the reporters, most importantly to Tetsu. “You don’t know how it is!” He pulled the knife across his chest, just below his nipple and through the first anchor symbol Tetsu had drawn that morning.
    “Getting pimped out by your own father so he can blackmail your lover.” Another slash and a bright red line divided the second anchor. “Sucking Iyashii cock for a few corporate secrets.”
    “Do you know anything about the death of Shugoro Jun?” Tamu yelled, thrusting her microphone through the press of bodies. “Were you there when he was murdered?”
    Boots, heavy, near lock-step. Tetsu looked over his shoulder, saw half a dozen security guards streaming out a side door. Tamu heard them, too, yelling her question again as she fought to stay at the front of the crowd.
    “Do you know anything about Jun-san’s death?”
    “No. All I know about Jun-san is that he has -- had -- a small cock.” With that, Gabe looked at the rush of guards, dropped the knife and stretched out his bloody hand toward Tetsu.
    Tetsu pushed forward, shouldering the closest security guard out of the way and enfolding Gabe in his arms. Gabe went limp, barely standing on his own. Tetsu’s body shook as he shielded Gabe and rode the press of the security team into the building at last. He needed to be alone with Gabe, to talk to him and make sure that he had merely been playing the mad prince. It had all been too convincing.
    Certainly the blood was real.

Chapter Eight
    Magnus provided Tetsu with a clean shirt and jacket from his own closet and Tetsu had washed Gabe’s blood from him. In a façade of normality, they were both clean and pressed. A physician had arrived within an hour of Gabe’s show to attend to the shallow cuts he had inflicted and administer a heavy dose of sedatives. Gabe had fallen asleep on the couch in Magnus’s office, his head on a pillow and Tetsu next to him working on a laptop.
    He was ass deep in ValCo’s internal network, ostensibly preparing the attack on