A Dangerous Game

by Rick R. Reed

  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.

  Chapter Ten

  “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.

  So when Rufus tenderly and very deeply began kissing him, it was a surprise, a delightful, perfect surprise. Wren kissed back ardently, wrapping his arms and legs around Rufus’s thrusting body, all hard and growing slippery from their sweat.

  Wren stopped kissing Rufus long enough to bring his mouth up to his ear, to lick it, bite the lobe, and finally whisper, “I need you to fuck me. Right now. I don’t think I can stand another minute without you inside me.”

  Rufus pulled away and looked down at him, their gaze coupling, locking the other in a psychological embrace.

  Wren nodded.

  Without taking his eyes away from Wren’s, Rufus wriggled his hips, positioned his legs just so, until at last Wren felt the head of his cock pushing against his ready asshole.

  Wren had never, not in his most drunken moments, fucked raw before. Oh sure, he had been tempted, and there had been more guys than he could count who attempted to slide their bare dicks inside him, but Wren always had enough presence of mind to make sure that latex barrier was in place.

  Now, as he felt Rufus’s cock slipping between the tender cheeks of his ass, he didn’t know if he could stop him. He didn’t know, really, if he could stop himself from simply wriggling down on his pole, gobbling it up as though he was using his mouth.

  There was a small voice inside him, distant, cautioning. You might be falling for this dude, but think about what you’re doing. This guy is an escort, a prostitute, a whore, really. Are you going to take this risk, knowing where he’s been? Cute as he is. Charming as he is. Nothing changes the fact that he could be infected.

  But that voice was small.

  The bigger voice was the hungry one, the one that urged him to push up against the cock, open up to it, draw it deep inside where it would fuck and fuck and fuck until Wren would look up to see Rufus’s beautiful face contorted in pleasure as he shot his seed deep inside him.

  That would be heaven.

  That would be worth the risk.

  He wanted it so bad it almost made him cry.

  And the only thing that stopped him, them, was having the decision wrested from their hands.

  There was a cough from the shadowy corner of the room, and Wren could hear the squeak of a drawer sliding open. He felt something very light hit the mattress near his head, then another. He looked over and saw two shiny foil squares.

  Without a word, Rufus pulled back, grabbed one of the condoms, and ripped it open with his teeth. He grinned down at Wren and winked, which almost made Wren shoot.

  Rufus quickly unrolled the rubber over his dick and returned to his position.

  This time he didn’t hesitate, and he buried himself to the hilt inside Wren. Wren grunted. He gasped.

  But all he felt was pleasure. He bit his lips to keep from crying out for Rufus to fuck him hard, instead grinding himself up against Rufus’s pelvis to draw him in deeper, reaching down with hands that had a mind of their own to roughly grab Rufus’s ass to again draw the man as deeply inside Wren as was physically possible.

  They began to fuck, and this time Wren vanished, lost on a cloud of pleasure so intense and deep he didn’t even know he had come until Rufus pulled away and Wren looked down to see his stomach and chest shiny with his own semen.

  Rufus, on his knees, pulled off the condom and upended it above Wren’s chest, shaking the come out of it so it rained down on Wren’s chest, mixing with his own seed.

  Wren knew.

  He was in love.

  The man in the corner got up suddenly. “Your payment is on the dresser. Feel free to use the en suite shower.”

  Chapter Eleven

  THEY HADN’T said a word to each other on the cab ride home from Edgewater. Wren was keeping his own counsel, because he was afraid if he said anything to Rufus he would break the spell—the magic that had been conjured up in the darkened apartment where, it seemed to Wren, they had been paid handsomely for simply falling in love.

  Although Wren’s asshole throbbed and he felt completely drained of seed, all he could think right now was that he was in love with Rufus. The tall, lanky guy sitting next to him in the cab, staring out at the high-rises lining the western side of Lake Shore Drive had, within even less than a mere twenty-four hours, become the man of his dreams, his Mr. Right, his knight in shining armor. Dare he say it? Rufus could very well be his soul mate.

  The one.

  A cynical voice, which sounded very much like his mother’s, reminded him that what he was feeling could quite possibly be the result of what had been a highly superior fuck. Wren grinned into the darkened taxi, remembering how perfect their physical union had been, how completely satisfying, how unbelievably hot.

  But, his mother’s voice reminded him, he didn’t really know Rufus. He didn’t know, for example, what he liked to eat, what he did when he had a few spare hours to kill, what his dreams and aspirations were beyond working as an escort for À Louer. He had no idea what his family was like, what kind of movies he enjoyed, what happened when he got mad.

  But oh, that face, that body. That dick. Wren shook his head. He knew it was all physical, but he also respected, even at his young age, the fact that we sometimes “know” people and come to like or dislike them before we have any logical basis for doing so.

  He had felt close to Ru
fus almost right from the start. And now he couldn’t imagine wanting to be with anyone else.

  “Little man, we’re here.” Rufus’s voice roused him.

  Wren had been so caught up in his reverie he hadn’t even noticed the taxi slowing, turning into the wide circular drive fronting their high-rise, or stopping. He gave Rufus what he knew was a sheepish grin, watching as Rufus tossed a few bills over the seat to their driver.

  “Keep the change, bud.”

  They exited the taxi, and Wren suddenly had a moment where all this felt like a dream. The cab speeding away behind him, the elegant marble-tiled lobby before him with its potted palm trees, scattered Oriental rugs, and uniformed doorman, all seemed surreal suddenly, as if Wren had stepped into someone else’s life. Part of him thought he should be turning around and heading for the ”L” to take him home to Rogers Park and a modest two-bedroom apartment.

  Except that home no longer existed—not for him, not anymore.

  He had grown up seeing these glimmering towers along the lakefront and had always admired them, sometimes wondering about the people who lived in them, what life must be like up there, near the clouds, with expansive views.

  But Wren had never imagined himself actually living in one. That dream seemed always firmly out of reach, like college, something for other people, people who had the kind of money Wren knew he would never have. So he had never allowed himself to dream that he would one day be living in one of these places himself.

  You don’t really, dude, his more rational self chimed in. This is just a loaner. Don’t get too used to this. Wren wanted to tell the voice to have the courage to dream. Yes, this was a loan from Chillingsworth, but if he worked hard, he could someday maybe afford something like this himself. Hadn’t Dave promised him just that?

  Would Rufus still want to live with him?

  He looked over then, taking in Rufus’s tall frame, and noticed he was staring at Wren. The night was warm, too warm, but there was a little tepid breeze blowing over them. At the moment there were no other vehicles in the high-rise drive and they were alone.