I didn’t need people like that in my
life when Jack was still alive, and I certainly didn’t need that
type of person in my life now. No, I had a plan. I had a goal, and
nothing was going to stop me from meeting that goal. Nothing. It
was how I got Jack, how I was so successful in every single one of
my previous goals and why I knew my goal for tonight was going to
go off without a hitch.
I smiled slightly at the
doorman who watched me closely. David Rush had never liked me. He’d
spent a fair amount of time telling me I didn’t deserve Jack, and I
was really just a gold digger. The glares and condescending
attitude were getting quite old, and though I’d deny the charge if
it were ever stated, even under threat of torture, it was all
starting to hurt some small part of my heart, probably the only
part that still existed; and it was making me angry and feeling as
if I wanted to cry. Like failing, crying was also
not
an
option.
“
And how are you this
evening Mr. Simpston?” David asked, not expecting a response from
me, though he knew I would give him one anyway, as he sent one of
the valets to get my car, my keys waiting inside the valet booth as
it always was. I should have stopped him, but that would have
required me speaking to David. David may hate me, but I hated him
just as much.
I just nodded in answer, noticing the
sneer that came to David’s face moments before he responded
again.
“
It’s such a horrible thing
that happened to Mr. Binzington, isn’t it? Have you decided yet if
you’re going to stay here or move, Mr. Simpston?” the doorman said
in a low voice. Seeing my taxicab was pulling around the corner,
the cab I’d called for, I squared my shoulders and hid my trembling
hands in my pants pockets. David would see my shaking hands as a
sign of guilt, shame, and fear. He would only be a third correct. I
was scared but not for the reason he was thinking. I was only
fearful because of the unknown factors of the evening. It was
something I would overcome. Eventually.
I fiddled with the money in my pocket.
It was going to be $26.13 for me to take the cab to the home where
the party was being held if I decided to give up pretenses and not
drive the car given to me by Jack. The car that was close to being
sold by me—if I decided to sell it. Giving a tip wasn’t necessary,
and in my case, it wasn’t my best option, nor even worthy of
consideration, so I wouldn’t be giving one. If I decided to take a
cab.
I had to drive. Taking a cab was for
the desperate. I wasn’t desperate. Yet.
Stepping toward my awaiting car driven
by one of the building’s valets, I gave David a politely false
smile and said, “I’m not going anywhere, David. I cared for Mr.
Binzington, but I won’t have you trying to run me off because of
it.” With those words stated in a huff, I climbed into my red
Ferrari and headed off toward the party.
Toward my date with
destiny.
Toward the night that would change my
life forever.
Chapter Two
I stepped into the home of the party’s
hostess, looking at the well-dressed people who had decided to
attend and breathing a sigh of relief. This was what I was used to.
The opulence, the finery, the complete and utter snide,
hypocritical snobbery—they were all the foundational stones I had
built my life on. Granted, I didn’t grow up this way, but no one
should grow up the way I did; no one should have to endure the
things I’d been forced to survive. But I wasn’t there to think
about the horrors of my childhood in the trailer parks and the
low-income apartment complexes of Mobile, Alabama where I lived
with my mother and “stepfather” after my father died. No. I was on
a mission. One I was completely focused on, and one I couldn’t
afford to fail.
Squaring my shoulders, I lifted my
head, barely restraining the urge to run my fingers through my
blond hair as I faced off against those staring at me, as if they
were boring holes into my skin, either because of lust or loathing.
I’m attractive, something I could never even attempt to deny, so I
knew most of the people who were trying to look straight through my
clothes were doing so because they wanted to get into my pants. The
men wanted to fuck me, gay or straight, while the women wanted me
to fuck them. It wasn’t something I asked for, and I wasn’t mean
about it, but I was very aware, and had been from the time I was
fourteen, that my looks were worth a lot to people. My pink lips
could make the captain of the UC Berkeley football team beg to kiss
them even if he had to “come out.” My thin frame, which bore the
illusion of being fragile but was actually slim and muscled, could
have the sheriff of the San Diego Police Department begging to
touch it. While my ass… my ass was round, with a slight cup to the
bottom, giving me the distinct “ghetto booty” so many women
struggled to achieve. My ass made men weep. Literally. Jack had
wept. Jack had begged and pleaded, tears streaming down his pale
round cheeks as he groveled and implored me to let him touch my
ass, to let him kiss it, bite it, lick it, and then fuck it. He had
promised me he would pay anything—give anything—for the opportunity
to fuck me for one night.
It was something he said to me every
night and every morning before he’d leave money on the nightstand
or a check on the dresser. I shoved away thoughts of Jack again as
I stared across the room. I was here on a mission, and I wouldn’t
accept failure or thoughts of my dead lover to deter me from that.
I cataloged everyone there, their gaze on me, as I looked to see
who would be the right person to fill Jack’s shoes. It would be a
hard task for them but an easy one for me. Though Jack loved me, I
only held a fondness for him. Jack was not my Prince Charming; he
knew it, and I knew it. I wasn’t looking for Prince Charming, some
man to sweep me off my feet and make me fall in love with him. Love
was for fools and dreamers, making them weak and stupid. I couldn’t
afford to be weak and stupid.
I kept my guard handy, the walls
firmly up where I’d placed them around my heart and emotions over a
decade before. My gaze drifted over the men who wanted me to fall
in love with them, the ones who were already half in love with me.
While love would make them much easier to use for my purpose, more
free and giving with the wealth that they all took for granted,
love made them volatile, jealous and unpredictable. I couldn’t deal
with unpredictable. Unpredictability could wind up with me dead,
lying in a pool of my own blood on my white carpets, at the hands
of my benefactor who killed me in a jealous rage. No, love would
never do. I needed someone who knew the score. Someone who knew
going in what our relationship would be. Give and take. My body for
their money.
I wasn’t ashamed of who I
was, though there were many out there who thought I should be. I
didn’t consider myself a prostitute or a whore. I was a companion,
a very high-priced one. I was the one husbands came to when the
soft, delicate frames of their trophy wives just didn’t do it for
them. I was the ear they vented to when their businesses were
failing, their children hated them, or when their true identities
were unacceptable. I was the man they lusted after, panted
for,
craved
when
their closets got too lonely, and they wanted to come out of them
for a few hours, a few days, or a couple of weekends a
year.
Jack was one of them. He’d
been a multibillionaire. Married, with children. Businesses all
over the world, homes around the globe, friends with politicians,
diplomats, and national leaders. Jack was a force to be reckoned
with. Jack had also been gay. Flaming and flamboyantly gay, but
being gay and being a multibillionaire, a child of old,
conservative, Deep South, Christian money was very unacceptable.
Jack knew it, I knew it, and his wife knew it. Just like she knew
about me. The monthly check Jack made out to me for
“
counseling and services
rendered
” was not fooling anyone. I was no
one’s therapist, and I had never worked a day in my life. I didn’t
have to. Unless you called lying on my back, my side, my front,
opening my mouth, my legs, or the cheeks of my ass
work
. Which, to my
knowledge, some people did.
Jack’s wife and I had met at the
symphony once. Her hand had been holding onto the crook of Jack’s
elbow. I had been with my best girlfriends Gina Sawyer, Michelle
Lockings, and Lady Violet Washburn—all three of them wealthy in
their own right, single or widowed, all of them beautiful, and
unbeknownst to anyone, all three of them in a lesbian triad and in
love with each other. While it would have been a little more
accepted if the three of them had been gay, and in relationships
with other women—everyone knew about the abuse they’d all suffered
at the hands of their fathers or ex-husbands—they still refused to
be open with the truth of their sexuality or their relationship.
Ellen Degeneres and Portia might be a happily married lesbian
couple, but people were still idiots. So while I was with three
gorgeous, “straight” women, no one would have mistaken me for being
straight myself. I didn’t hide the fact I was gay. I wore pink,
used eyeliner, got manicures and pedicures, slung my long hair
every chance I got, and called my friends everything from “bitch”
to “girlfriend.” I was unashamedly gay and proud.
****
As I walked through the
lobby of the concert hall where the symphony was being held, I
looked up and found myself making eye contact with Lori, Jack’s
wife. I had been in the game long enough to know I shouldn’t look
in Jack’s direction at all. I smiled at Lori and watched as she
peered at her husband before looking back at me. I knew she was
trying to detect something, a twitch, a facial tremor to show that
her husband knew who I was or to see if I would embarrass her and
greet her husband, but none of that happened. Jack wasn’t new to
the whole having-a-mistress/mister-on-the-side thing either. He
looked right through me and continued walking, and I never faltered
in my conversation with my friends.
“
Wow, that was tense. I
don’t know how you do that,” Gina breathed out when Jack and Lori
passed us and were far enough away to not hear anything.
“
Do what?” I asked,
feigning ignorance. Everyone knew who or rather what I was, just as
everyone knew Jack was my current “benefactor,” but the land in
which I moved, the circles I inhabited, and the people I came in
contact with were too sophisticated, too wealthy, and too posh to
mention it. It was a huge positive in my favor, because while
everyone knew who I was and what I did, and while they might all
look down on me for it, no one ever talked about it, which worked
out beautifully for me.
****
Jerking my mind once again away from
the past, I assessed and discarded most of the men there. Kyle
Jerkins, too old. Kyle was nearing his sixties which meant he would
be trying out all of the depraved and perverse fantasies he’d
always been too restricted to try out before. I was still too young
to be a willing participant in any sort of BDSM, knife-play, scat
or watersports. I would be no one’s puppy to be led around on a
leash, and I absolutely refused to change a man’s diaper or to
dress up as a baby.
Not again.
I’d role-played and been the teenaged
son of one of my “investors” before and allowed him to act out the
incestuous desires of his heart while staying out of jail; at the
same time I’d taken on the role of the naughty student for another
investor who had been a teacher at one point in his life,
hopelessly in love with one of his high school students. I was safe
for them because I wouldn’t talk. They wouldn’t go to jail for
sleeping with me. No one would arrest them for sucking my cock or
fucking my ass. I would moan and pretend to like it, whether I did
or not. They would cum furiously in the condom all the while
moaning out the names of the boys they really wanted. Those were
the times I enjoyed most because in those moments I didn’t have to
be myself. Those were the times when I could remove my own heart
and mind and float above the bed or couch or shower and watch what
was happening, shaking my head at the sickness that flowed through
the minds of people.
Those were the times when I would
remember my childhood, and memories of my stepfather, the asshole,
Lloyd, would pop into my mind, and I would drink heavily when the
men finally left. I wouldn’t drink the expensive stuff at those
times; I would reach into the back of my fridge and pull out the
cheap vodka and drink it straight from the bottle. I was once again
the young teenager, trembling and crying in bed as Lloyd walked
away from me, money left on the nightstand as he told me what a
“good kid” I was.
And no, the irony of my current
situation in conjunction with my past is not at all lost on me, but
once again I digress. As my gaze moved past Kyle’s face, I saw
another man, one who made my stomach drop and my heart pound in my
chest. A completely new sensation for me. He stood at about six
foot four, with broad shoulders, and black hair cut into a
distinguished business cut. He looked at everyone in the room as if
he found them all completely boring and tedious, something I could
completely understand and agree with. He glanced over at me and
paused for a moment, the blue gaze trapping me where I stood,
moving up and down my body before moving on.