Meet me at the lakefront, at Belmont Harbor. Come now.
Evan texted back, wondering why the urgency and why meet at a public place, but there was no response. He waited five, ten minutes, and when no text came back, he returned to his seat at the bar, downed his drink, settled up with the bartender, and headed out into the night.
He didn’t want to keep Dan waiting.
All this seemed a little strange. But Evan was too overcome with gratitude and happiness at the prospect of seeing his man, so he ignored the warning alarms that were sounding somewhere inside his infatuated and alcohol-clouded brain.
Outside the air felt like a damp sponge. The onset of full night had brought no relief from the heat, and Evan hoped it would be cooler down by the water, where maybe the two of them could at least catch a breeze.
He hurried east on Belmont Avenue, beneath the shadows of the trees, his pulse rising with anticipation. It had been a week or so since he had seen Dan, and in that time he had been able to think of little else. It didn’t matter what he was doing—whether he was simply on his own at home or with a client, or any number of clients—all his mind could really focus on was Dan. His smile, his strong arms, his broad shoulders, his rough touch, his kiss, his penetrating gaze, his penetrating
him
, and most of all the fact that he had said he loved Evan.
Never mind that he had said they could never be more than client and service provider. Never mind that he said he would never leave his family. The fact that he loved him erased all of that. Evan shoved the drawbacks, the very reality, to some dark corner of his mind. Perhaps he would consider it one day, when he wasn’t buoyed up on feelings of love and intense desire for his man, but not now.
Not when Dan was waiting for him down by the lakefront.
Perhaps, Evan thought, quickening his pace as he saw the underpass that would take him into the harbor and lakefront park at the end of Belmont, Dan wanted to meet with him to tell him he had found a way to leave Martha and his two daughters so he could be with him.
Evan knew, in his heart of hearts, that Dan, once he had admitted his love, could never continue his charade of a marriage. Not with someone as hot and as in love with Dan as Evan was in the wings.
Even if he wasn’t standing by to let Evan know of some monumental decision, he was at least
there
, waiting for him. As Evan drew closer to the water and a cool breeze actually did buffet him, drying the sweat that had gathered on his brow and the back of his neck, he imagined Dan sitting on one of the concrete risers fronting the water. He pictured those dark blue eyes looking out at the white-tipped waves, thinking of Evan. In his mind’s eye, Dan wore a pair of cargo shorts, flip-flops, and a lightweight madras plaid short-sleeved shirt, the top buttons undone to reveal his hairy, muscled chest. He would be tapping his toe impatiently, casting anxious glances over his shoulder to see if Evan was in view yet.
Where would they go? What would they do?
None of it mattered, because they would be together.
Evan started across the grass, practically running. He didn’t see Dan among the people milling about in front of the water, but he knew he was there and that their thoughts were one—soon they would be together.
He gasped when he felt a hand land upon his shoulder. Evan stopped, thinking it odd how he hadn’t even heard anyone come up behind him.
He turned and looked into a face that seemed vaguely familiar.
“ARE YOU
ready for this?” Rufus asked.
Wren looked up at him, grinning. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.”
“Hey, it’s cool. At least your first time out won’t be on your own. I’ll be right there with you. Lucky it worked out that way, huh?”
Wren wanted to tell Rufus he didn’t know the half of it. There was more than one reason Wren was over the moon that his first assignment with À Louer was going to be a little sex show with him and Rufus as the stars. Sure, it would be great not having to go off by himself to have sex with some strange man, but he loved even more the chance to get close to Rufus.
Really
close. Payment was simply a bonus.
The call from Chillingsworth had come about an hour and a half ago, just when Wren had gotten comfortable with the idea of the two of them staying in, eating popcorn, and watching a marathon of
Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives
on the Food Network. He hated the show, really, and would usually disappear into his bedroom when his mom had it on, but tonight, lying next to Rufus on the bed…. Well, Wren couldn’t imagine a nicer way to spend the evening.
After hanging up his cell, Rufus smiled at him. “We got a date.”
“Yeah?” Wren remembered how his heart had started beating faster, how something small with sharp, pointy nails began moving restlessly in his gut. And then it hit home what Rufus had said: “We.”
So he repeated the word that was setting off both alarms and wellsprings of joy inside his head. Could it be true? “We?” he asked.
“Yeah, this guy up in Edgewater. I’ve been with him before. So have many of the boys. He just likes to watch.”
“Okay.” Wren felt himself getting hard. This was all too good to be true. What was the catch? Could his first assignment really be just to have sex with Rufus? And no one else?
Someone watching, Wren had to admit to himself, was a bit creepy, but almost since he had met Rufus, dirty fantasies, triple-X pornos, had been playing in Wren’s mind, all featuring himself and the estimable Rufus.
“Yeah, the guy is ancient, probably like sixty, and he just wants to smoke cigarettes and watch us while we get it on.”
“Does he beat off?”
Rufus smirked. “What do you think? But the good thing is he just sits in a chair by the bed, doesn’t want to be touched, doesn’t want to touch us.” Rufus winked at Wren. “I’ve kind of been wanting to touch you.”
Wren giggled, the sound coming out way too girlish-sounding for his liking, and he rolled his eyes. “Me too. Why didn’t you make a move before?”
Rufus’s smile disappeared. “We’re not allowed. Dave frowns on us ‘fraternizing,’ if you know what I mean.”
“Really? I didn’t get that part of the orientation.”
Rufus nodded. “Oh yeah, no spitting where you eat.”
“Lovely.”
The two got ready quickly. Wren rinsed off in the shower, and Rufus showed him how to use the enema nozzle.
“This way you’ll be clean as a whistle—inside and out. Don’t want to leave skid marks on anyone’s sheets!”
The feeling of the water rushing too fast inside Wren was odd, but it did the job. Stepping from the shower and drying himself, he hoped only there weren’t any pockets of water hiding inside him that would gush out at an inopportune moment.
Even though they were in a bit of a hurry—Chillingsworth had said they were wanted pronto—Wren took care with his appearance, gelling his hair and crafting it into careless but artful spikes. He started to put deodorant on, but Rufus warned him away from that.
“No smells.”
Wren wished he had nicer clothes, but he supposed those would come once he had gone on a few calls. He kept it simple—a pair of faded jeans, white T-shirt, and a pair of laceless Cons.
“You look amazing,” Rufus commented when he emerged from the bathroom.
“Thanks. I wish I had something a little nicer, though. Like you.” Rufus looked jaw-droppingly handsome in a pair of linen pants and a tailored summer V-neck pullover that showed off his muscles. He wore a pair of linen and canvas shoes and no socks. “You look like you just flew in from Spain… or Argentina.”
“Appreciate it, babe. But the fact that you don’t even realize how good you look in just those simple threads makes you even hotter.”
Wren felt heat rise to his face at the compliment.
And the butterflies returned in full force to his gut when Rufus said, “Besides, the clothes are just going to be taken off within a few minutes anyway.” He winked. “We should get going.”
And so they set out to grab a cab to Edgewater.
IT TOOK
Wren all of ten minutes to forget the balding, bespectacled man sitting in a shadowy corner of his bedroom, chain-smoking Pall Malls. Except for the acrid smell of his cigarettes, he was easy to forget. After greeting them at the door, making sure they had bottled water, and leading them into the bedroom, he had not uttered another word. He had not taken off the khakis and button-down shirt he wore, and Wren hadn’t been interested enough to glance over to see if he had at least unzipped his fly.
Soft music played from an iPod dock on the dresser, muted woodwinds. Candles flickered on almost every available surface, helping to mask the smell of the Pall Malls but also aiding in setting the mood—and making it easy for Wren to imagine he was not here on business, providing carnal eye candy for a paying customer. Instead he could pretend he and Rufus were at the conclusion of their first date. He could go deep into his head and make himself believe that this bedroom, as large as some of the apartments he and Linda had shared, was his own. The room was decorated in antique style, with lots of heavy oak furniture—the bed had a velvet canopy, and its posts were massive and elegantly carved—Tiffany-style lamps, and velvet draperies which seemed to not only shut out the city light outside but the sound as well.
It was as if he and Rufus were cocooned in their own little world.
It had helped reinforce that fantasy, too, that the man had given them only one instruction when they entered the bedroom and began to undress.
“Don’t talk. I don’t want to hear anything except for the occasional sigh or moan.”
Now Wren’s eyes were closed as Rufus licked and kissed his neck, then moved downward, circling Wren’s nipples with his tongue, at last biting down on each one hard enough to make Wren gasp. With his other arm, Rufus held Wren to the bed, and Wren was grateful for the immobility. Otherwise he thought the things Rufus was doing to him with lips and tongue would be enough to make him writhe or buck right off the bed.
He worried a bit about control. He was completely turned on by Rufus. The tactile stimulation the man was bestowing upon him was driving him very close to the edge. Yet Rufus would always pull back at just the right moment, before Wren would explode all over his own stomach, as if the two of them were telepathically attuned.
Rufus continued downward, tenderly kissing almost every inch of Wren’s flesh. It was no wonder Wren forgot the geezer in the corner—he was so wrapped up in the sensations Rufus was causing to erupt within him that there was little room for anything else. When he felt Rufus pulling his legs apart and situating his head between Wren’s thighs, Wren was only too willing to spread his legs farther, drawing his knees up toward his chest.
Anything could happen.
Rufus started by bumping his nose against and licking Wren’s perineum, the small patch of skin between his asshole and balls that seemed, at the moment, packed with millions of nerve endings. Wren whimpered at the attention, feeling his toes curl as the electricity coursed through him.
Slowly, almost agonizingly so, Rufus moved up to lave Wren’s balls, finally taking first one and then the other into his mouth gently, sucking, all the while lightly fingering Wren’s dick, so it almost felt as though someone were brushing a feather across the sensitive skin of his sex.
Wren’s mind left him, replaced by an aching wall of need and physical sensation. He honestly couldn’t imagine what he wanted Rufus to do next, the man was playing him so expertly.
Rufus moved down to his ass and pried the cheeks apart with his fingers, then laid a slow trail of saliva all the way down the crack, stopping to nudge his sphincter with the tip of his tongue.
“Oh God,” Wren said and then forced himself to shut up. He did have a conscious thought at the moment too. He was glad for the thorough cleaning earlier as he wriggled his ass helplessly closer to Rufus’s face.
Rufus spent a long time on his asshole, opening it, loosening it, first with his tongue, then a finger, then tongue, then two fingers—and on and on until Wren wanted to scream for him to just put it in already—ram it home. He had no other need than wanting to be filled by this handsome stud who, Wren believed, especially now in the heat of the moment, he was falling in love with.
But Rufus had his own plan. Wren almost whimpered when he moved away from his ass, painting his perineum and sac with a glossy coat of saliva. Finally Rufus moved that expert tongue up the shaft of Wren’s cock, which felt so hard he could easily imagine it exploding, stopping at the head of it to run his tongue around and around it, flicking at the tiny shelf just beneath the head and scooping out Wren’s precome with the tip of his tongue. Rufus started sucking him, alternating deep strokes with short ones, taking him all the way down to the root, then back up to the head, swirling his tongue around shaft and crown.
God, this was too much. Simply too much.
Wren completely lost himself. The walls around him, the man in the corner, the soft ambient music, the glow of the candles—all of it vanished, usurped by the wondrous sensations of pleasure coursing through him, crowding out all other stimuli.
It was a surprise, then, when Rufus pulled abruptly away, then rose up only to come down on top of Wren, stretching his body out above him so there was nowhere their skin didn’t meet. The all-over sensation of skin against skin made Wren shudder, gripping Rufus’s broad back. He reached up and bit down hard on Rufus’s neck, and Rufus took one hand to turn Wren’s face away from his neck and bring Wren’s mouth up to his own.
The kiss wasn’t something Wren had allowed himself to imagine. Even in the midst of the most feverish of his sensations, there was still a tiny part of him that never let go of the idea that this, at its very basest, was commerce, a performance for money. Kissing just didn’t seem to figure into that equation, no matter how hot Wren was for the feel of Rufus’s lips upon his own, the taste of his tongue inside his mouth.