“You do?” He raises an eyebrow. “What for?”
“For being so good to me. For taking me in and feeding me.”
“You’re going to pay me back anyway, so I was just paying it forward for you. Like an advance on your salary.”
She takes the little box out of her purse.
“It’s not much,” she says, embarrassed at the size of her gift compared to his, “but I saw it somewhere in TriBeCa and I thought of you.”
He seems touched as he opens the little box. He takes out a little bracelet made out of cowrie shells.
“Like I said, it’s really not much.” Her embarrassment is sinking deeper and deeper. She feels like sliding down her chair to hide under the table.
“No, I like it. It’s great. I don’t get many presents.” His face is tinged with pleasure as he puts it around his left wrist. “I’m going to wear this.”
She watches him as he fumbles with the clasp. “Let me do that for you.”
He holds out his wrist while she fastens the clasp on its underside.
“There. It looks nice on you,” she pronounces.
He smiles. In the soft yellow lamplight, his chestnut hair is lighted into a rich gold and his green eyes take on a shimmering cerulean hue. He has never looked more beautiful.
They finish dinner and he reaches for the bill. She stops him.
“I have a little cash.”
“You don’t have any money other than what I’ve given you.”
“That’s what I mean. Let me get this.”
He sits back, amused, as she spends almost all the money she has in her new wallet on the dinner they ate tonight.
They trudge back into the subway, and then it’s a ride back to his apartment. As soon as they are inside, she turns to him.
“Devon, I know what you’re doing to sustain yourself, and I think you are so much better than that. You have so much more self-worth than you think.”
“What exactly do you mean?” His face grows hard.
“I’m talking about what you do for a living.”
“I’m an artist.”
“Yes, you are, but it doesn’t pay the bills. At least, not yet. I’m talking about what you do when you go out by yourself at night.”
The atmosphere is suddenly charged. Her heartbeat starts to quicken, but she knows she has to confront him with this someday.
“What do you think I do when I go out at night?” he demands.
“I think you’re a hustler.” She is sure of it now. She doubts he has any emotional involvement with the two women she saw him with. “Am I right?”
She searches his face carefully.
He is silent for a long time.
Then:
“Yes, I am.” He doesn’t meet her eyes. “Do you think less of me for it?”
“No. You are who you are.”
“Yeah,” he says bitterly, “and I’m the choices I make. You’re probably thinking . . . why do I do it? The world’s oldest profession. Well, it isn’t exactly something as noble as survival. It isn’t as if ‘I have to eat, so I live off the streets’. It isn’t even that loan sharks are after my family or someone I love is toting up medical bills and so I have to pay for her cancer treatment.
“In truth, I can probably make a living off doing other things. I can paint, for one. But I wouldn’t get to live in this nice apartment. I wouldn’t even get to have my own studio like I do now. So I took the easy route out. I became a whore. Happy?”
She doesn’t say anything.
He takes off his leather jacket and throws it onto the back of the couch. His arm muscles flex and tense, and his skin is golden in the light. Sighing, he throws himself on the couch.
He says, “It’s funny how it becomes so easy once you get started. The first time you do it is always the hardest, of course. You have a lot of issues you can’t quite let go of, not least the perceived sleaziness of the profession.”
She slowly moves to sit beside him on the couch. He continues to speak, not meeting her eyes.
“I was doing a portrait commission for someone. She wanted to pose nude for me.”
His eyes glaze over at the memory.
SALE
Devon was finishing a touch-up of Claire’s arm when she said, “You are a very handsome young man.”
His pulse quickened.
“Thank you.”
A flush nourished the back of his neck. No matter how many times he heard this, he would never get used to it. He was quiet and shy by nature, and he didn’t go out of his way to make waves.
Claire was lounging naked on a glass table. He didn’t know why she wanted herself painted on such an uncomfortable surface, but he was just the hired help, so he didn’t question her. She was a pretty woman. Mid-thirties, he reckoned. They talked while he was painting her, but he didn’t venture into such private things as her age or her husband’s bank account.
Neither did she venture to talk about her husband. Devon knew she had one though. When he came into the house, there were photographs of them all over the lounge and on the piano. No kids.
“You really are,” she said, flexing a leg. “Very, very handsome indeed. You must get that very often.”
“Not really.”
He didn’t dare look up from his canvas. Painting someone nude was a very intimate endeavor, especially when they were the only two people in the apartment. She had mentioned that her husband was away. He could always tell when someone was coming on to him, and it was doubly discomfiting when it was a client.
“Do you find me beautiful, Devon?”
His throat went ever so slightly dry. “Yes.”
“Do you want to sleep with me?”
She angled her foot and twirled it suggestively.
“You are a happily married woman, Mrs. Barker.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
He pulled in a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Barker, but I’m just trying to earn a living here. I don’t want to come between you and your husband and I don’t want any trouble.”
“You don’t find me attractive.” She pouted.
“I do. I mean . . . you are very attractive.”
“So this is just a job to you.”
He nodded quickly. That was all it should be.
“What if . . . ” she paused to put a finger onto her lips. “No, don’t speak until you hear what I have to say. What if I paid you five hundred dollars?”
He did a double take.
“To do what?”
“To fuck me,” she said patiently. She was watching his face very carefully.
His stomach felt like a cage of fluttering birds. He did not – could not – reply. So he just went on painting the same spot over and over as his mind went into overdrive. Five hundred dollars was a lot of money for something as trivial as a fuck. It was his entire portrait commission, and he had to do that every day over ten days.
“You’re thinking about it,” she said slyly.
He flushed an even deeper shade of red.
He didn’t do anything that afternoon. He merely collected his paints and draped a white cloth over the unfinished portrait. She put on a robe and walked around with its sash undone.
“Think about it,” she said. Her eyes were warm and alluring. “Then tell me about your decision the next time we meet.”
He certainly thought about it.
He thought about it when he gazed at the walls of his cramped studio which he rented for four hundred bucks in a bad neighborhood where hubcaps regularly got stolen and the sound of police sirens predominated every hour. He thought about it when he took out his wallet and counted how much money he had to ration to buy dinner for tonight. He thought about it when he was showering, and the water suddenly went ice cold because the water heater gave out.
All he needed to do was to cross a threshold. Just a little barricade that he had created by himself in his mind. He just needed to break down this act to what it was: pure senseless fucking. For
such a good-looking guy who got hit upon all the time by women and quite a few men, he didn’t have all that much sex, even though he was no virgin. He was too preoccupied with his art.
Part of his reticence was due to the fact that he didn’t think he would be any good in bed, and it was a panicky feeling that sent him into paroxysms of needless anxiety.
What if he disappointed her? What if she laughed at his so-called ‘skills’? He was only nineteen years old, lacking in experience. She was probably polished and sophisticated and expecting a whole lot more than what he could give her.
The next time he appeared at Claire’s apartment, he was ready with the answer.
“I can’t do it.”
“Are you sure?” she said, coming closer.
“Yes.”
Perhaps he looked so desperate and woebegone, because the next thing he knew, she was kissing him and taking him in her arms. The sash of her robe came undone, but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen her naked before. He found himself responding fiercely. Soon, they were undressing each other, and he was pressing her against the wall and she was wrapping her arms and legs around him as they kissed and devoured each other’s mouths.
“Wait,” she said. Her purse was on the Welsh dresser next to where they stood. She reached for it, and he stared as she took out five hundred dollars and folded them into his palm.
A lump came to his throat. It was official. He had crossed the threshold.
“Take me,” she commanded.
He was already hard as hard could be, and so he closed his eyes and shoved her against the wall again. Just don’t think too much about it, he told himself. Just do it.
With urgency, he penetrated her with his cock, all the time crushing the five hundred dollars in his bunched fist. She seemed to like it that way – all gasps and sound and fury and might. She didn’t even mind his uneven but frenetic pounding.
He couldn’t be sure, but he thought she came several times before he did. It was only when he pulled his dripping penis out that he realized in horror that he hadn’t put on a condom. He hadn’t even brought one – he was so adamant that he would say no and she would accept his explanation.
She laughed at his consternation.
“No worries. I’ve had my tubes ligated long ago.”
“Why?”
“Tuberculosis.”
“I’m sorry.”
There were other layers to her that he hadn’t realized before. He only saw one aspect of her – the predatory, cheating, rich wife. But there were probably other things about her that he didn’t know. Melancholy things. Things that filled her out and made her a fully-fleshed person. Things like the real reason she couldn’t have children.
Letting her pay him to fuck her didn’t seem so bad at all.
“Aren’t you worried about catching something from me?” he asked.
“No. I trust you. I don’t think you have been around much.” She tiptoed to kiss the tip of his sweaty nose. “But next time, remember to bring some condoms.”
He was surprised that there would be a next time. He had thought that he wasn’t very good.
She led him into her bedroom.
“Sleep with me,” she said with feeling. “Cuddle me.”
He slept with her that night, holding her in his arms so that she would wake up next to him. And when they both woke up together in the early morning, before the sunlight can shaft through the windows, he made love to her again, this time more slowly and gently.
He found that he quite enjoyed the whole encounter, and it didn’t make him feel as dirty as he thought it would.
Claire had apparently a lot of spare cash, lavished on her by her guilty husband who was scarcely around. Maybe he was having an affair on the sly too. She in turn lavished his money on a whole lot of expensive clothes and Devon’s considerable charms.
Claire was also not averse to introducing Devon to her friends, who in turn introduced him to their friends. He was described, to his face, as a “young man who would like to earn a bit of money, and wouldn’t be averse to doing anything to earn it”, though they probably called him unkinder things behind his back. Still, he kept a steady stream of clientele that way, all who were connected to each other in a wide reference web.
He supposed he couldn’t have been that bad in the sack, because many of them kept coming back. Maybe he wasn’t really that good, but many of them saw the vulnerability in his eyes and his magnetic man-boy ‘help me’ quality that proved so irresistible to women. Maybe they read his conflict about what he was doing versus the actual deed itself, especially since he threw himself with enthusiasm and wild abandon into their lovemaking while ruing the fact he was a whore.
Ruth was the easiest commission he had to earn.
She didn’t want sex from him, merely companionship. She was in her fifties, and she liked having a handsome young man hanging off her arm to accompany her to museums and soirees.
“I like the attention I get from the other society marms, darling,” she declared to him.
In that aspect, he was every bit her escort, even if people whispered about their age differences when they were out and about.
“Are you sure you don’t want any sex?” he asked her.
She laughed. “Darling, I never liked sex. I merely tolerated it when Old Man Whitby was around and kicking. Now that he’s dead, I will never need to have sex again. No . . . but I thrive on the scornful but envious stares of people who pretend to be my friends.”
He liked Ruth. He liked being with her. She made him laugh and feel at ease, even if she was old enough to be his mother.
Yvonne was huge, muscular, a former steroid junkie at the gym. She was an ex-short putt thrower who made the Olympic squad but never won anything. She had a slight mustache. She wanted the comfort of regular sex from him, but she couldn’t afford him as much as the others.
“All my life, people thought I was a lesbian,” she remarked.
Sizing her up, Devon could see why, though he was too polite to say so. She was surprisingly passive in bed, and she was a screamer who liked him to take her from behind.
Sharon had a rare disorder called Tourette’s Syndrome, which caused her to mouth off profanities when she was in conversation.
This made her extremely withdrawn from society. She had no boyfriends and she was lonely. She lived with her aged mother in an apartment. The latter never batted an eyelid when Devon came to call on her daughter, merely retiring into her room for the night.
Sharon clung to Devon whenever they had sex. It was as if she never wanted to let him go. Devon suspected that she was in love with him. Along the year, her mother died, and Sharon went to pieces. Devon helped her arrange for the funeral, her subsequent shrink appointments, and the long emotional rehabilitation she had to go through in the ensuing months.
With Sharon, he felt more like a counselor and a sex therapist than he did as a whore.
He didn’t regret his year as a male prostitute. Not even when he was hurting and aching from Rachel’s beatings. She was the only one who liked to tie him up and spank him in her room of pain. The others were thankfully vanilla, even though they had plenty of emotional issues. They talked and he listened and never judged them.
He made lots of money, which he used to upgrade himself slowly to a new apartment. He wasn’t a spendthrift. He banked the rest of the money, slowly building up a nest egg for rainy days later. He didn’t have a girlfriend, preferring to invest his energy and time into his craft instead – to learn how to be a better artist in his own way.
The rest was just gravy.
BURN
In the present, Devon raises his eyes to Abby’s thoughtful ones.
“Do you hate me?”
She is surprised. “Why would I hate you?”
He shrugs. “For not being what you expected.”
She shakes her head. “I can never hate you, Devon. You’re so good to me. I can never judge you.” Especially not with what she herself has
been through.
He lowers his eyelids. He has the most beautiful eyelashes, she thinks. They are so long that they brush against the soft skin of his upper cheeks when he closes them. She can well understand what it is that all these women see in him. His obvious physical beauty alone would have sealed the deal, but it is his nascent vulnerability and depth that awake the raging passions within them. It is as if they are only rippling the surface of a deep pond with pebbles, and they are curious to find out more about what makes him tick.
As she is.
“Devon . . . ” Her entire being is responding to his potent combination of beauty and vulnerability now.
Before she can process it, they have fallen over one another and they are kissing each other open-mouthed with a hunger that gnaws through her entire being, right down to the marrow of her bones. A thrill rushes through her body – a delicious, shuddery sensation that lifts her loins and soul above her prison of flesh.
Oh, how she wants him! And apparently, his overpowering need for her body is just as wanton and flagrant.
Hands roam all over clothed flesh. He is shucking off her dress, groping for the concealed zipper on the side, brushing against her soft mound of her breast. She does the same for him, ripping off his leather jacket and his shirt with its clasps that makes him look so sexy.
Then they are in their underclothes. She in her white brassiere and white cotton panties, and he in his briefs. He wore briefs for their date, and she is half-pleased because it means that he considers her different from the rest of his women. He pushes her down on the couch, and swiftly removes the rest of their clothing with ease.
They are both naked now. She has seen him naked before, but never full frontal. And never with his cock swollen and pointing at her like a ripe, plump finger.
His lips swarm over her chin, her neck and throat as his hands grope her breasts. She never did have very big breasts. They are small but prominent, and part of her fevered brain wonders if he compares her to the large-boned and big-titted Rachel. But she forces it out of her mind as his tongue slips out and skillfully begins to lick the slim curvatures of her throat.
He kisses her and licks her – all the way down to her clavicles and the slope of her breasts. At the same time, he kneads her breasts and nipples.
The Alpha's Touch Boxed Set (14 Book Bundle) Page 126
