Michael tried at first to fight it, but in the end he took Geoff’s advice. He couldn’t actually go to the man’s own beach house—that would have been pushing it. He did go back to Uncle Niall’s, and abused Ethan for about two days, much to Niall’s amusement and titillation. “When you live this way,” he said to Michael one night down by the beach, “you sometimes forget to get, well, elaborate with the boys. It’s good to see Ethan get a workout like that. Geoff must be teaching you right, boyo!”
But Michael remained in a hard, gloomy funk for both days. Finally, on Sunday afternoon, he took Ethan up to the guest room and had him suck his toes, a guaranteed way to get him off. It was something he had never even thought to teach Karen to do—it was firmly associated with men, and Ethan had been the first one to do it to him. It took him a long time to get fully erect, and a long time to shoot, but he kept himself on the edge of orgasm for as long as possible, wanting that temporary agony, that stretch of timeless thoughtlessness. Finally, he shot off, adorning Ethan’s hairless chest with his ejaculate, and collapsed back on a pile of pillows. Ethan was never allowed on the bed. He squirmed on the floor like a good boy, his cock hard and his body tense. His hands were tied behind his back.
Maybe I should have taught her this, Michael thought. The moment of orgasm had not even taken Karen off the forefront of his mind. He sighed, and when his breathing was back to normal, sat up. He pressed his foot over Ethan’s cock and balls, and listened to the answering groan.
“How did you find out about the Marketplace, Eth’?”
“Sir—ah!” It was fun to torture a slave while they had to answer questions. Michael twisted his foot a little and smiled when Ethan’s face scrunched up in pain. Then he stopped, and rested his heel on Ethan’s thigh. He wanted some real answers here—it was no time for fun and games.
“Thank you, sir,” Ethan gasped. “I heard about it from my spotter, Claudio. He told me after about four months of testing me.”
Four months! Michael had worked on Karen for five! But then, he had only seen her on weekends, and not every weekend at that. But—maybe it wasn’t a matter of timing. Maybe it was the way he broke it her? “What did you think when he told you? Did you believe him? Did you think he was nuts?”
“Oh, no sir!” Ethan raised his head, his eyes wide at the thought. “I thought he was bringing me the word of God, sir! You wouldn’t believe how happy I was. I was ready to leave that minute.”
“You were?” Michael jabbed Ethan’s balls with his toe, making the slave wince. “Come on, tell the truth. You had to be skeptical at first.”
“Sir—I would have been, I guess. But Claudio—he prepared me for it. It was like I always knew he had this secret, that he was somehow different than the guys I usually hung with, you know?” Ethan bit his lip and closed his eyes in humiliation. “Please sir, forgive me for speaking without thinking, I’ll try to control my words—”
“No, no, get up, I want to hear this.” Michael kicked Ethan’s thigh and pushed himself back on the bed, pulling one leg up. He watched Ethan roll onto his side and up onto his knees—it was sometimes a hard move to do gracefully. But there were more important things than criticizing the boy on his movements. “Tell me in your own words what happened. I’ll forgive lapses in formality.”
“Thank you, sir.” Ethan shook his head to get some wisps of hair out of his eyes. “Claudio picked me up in a gay bar in San Antonio,” he began. “I was at the University there, and just coming out into leather. But I always had the fantasy, you know? Even back in Oklahoma, I always used to dream about the man who would one day come and take me away to be his slave. I left home because I realized that he wasn’t ever coming to Mill Creek. I’d done some leather stuff, played around with some SM—wore a black hanky in my back pocket, looked for Daddies and truck drivers—it was okay. But never more than okay. It just seemed that everything was just sex—not that it was bad! Just—limited. Then, I met Claudio.”
His eyes shone with the memory, and Michael fought back a scowl.
“He was a real topman, an old fashioned kind of guy—and a loner, too. I have to admit, I was scared of him at first. I heard he played heavy. But he never brought any of his boys to the bars. He wasn’t a member of any of the clubs. He would just come around, you know? Then one night, when I was looking for a new Daddy, he was sitting at the end of the bar and I decided to make the first move. I figured the worst that could happen was that I’d take a hell of a beating. But I could have been into it—sometimes, that was enough. But instead, he bought me a drink and let me talk to him. I mean—all night. I must have told him my whole life story that night.”
Like I got Karen to tell me hers, Michael thought.
“It was very slow, sir. He didn’t take me home and tie me up, not at first. But he would come and visit me, have a few beers, and we’d talk some more. Every once in a while, he would ask me for something—not tell me to do it, but ask me—to run a little errand, or to help him with some chore. And it just seemed natural to help—and then one day I realized that he’d stopped asking. He was just telling me to do things, and I was doing them just as naturally as if he was asking me politely, as a pal. One night, I asked him what he was doing. He told me he was seeing if I had what it took to be a slave.”
Michael began to feel warm, despite his nakedness. He nodded impatiently. “Yeah? And then what?”
“I told him that all my life I wanted to be a slave—and if he wanted to test me further, I would do my best to prove it to him.”
“And he wasn’t screwing you?”
“No sir, not yet. He made me earn it.”
“How? More errands and chores?”
Ethan shook his head. “No sir, not exactly. I was expected to serve him in those ways regardless of whether or not he was using me. That was my function. He would make me earn sex—and release—by taking beatings, or doing embarrassing things, like takin’ a piss outside instead of using the bathroom, or wearing skimpy little outfits.” Ethan actually blushed, and Michael wondered what those outfits must have been like; the boy was mostly naked here at Niall’s place.
“One month, he didn’t let me come at all,” Ethan continued. “It was horrible. I thought my nuts were going to explode. Then, for one week straight, he had me jerking off almost every hour. I’d have to stop what I was doing and wank my rod until I shot, or he’d whup me good. I don’t know what was worse.”
“But how did he know you were ready for the Marketplace? Did he ask you questions? I mean—what was it that made him stop at four months and tell you about it?” Michael’s questions tumbled out, and he was shocked at the bitterness in his voice. It was highly inappropriate to show such anxiety in front of a slave. But he needed to know—and there was no one else to ask.
“He gambled me away in a poker game, sir,” Ethan said with a little smile. “I think that was the final test.”
“How did that work?”
“He had a few friends who he played poker with on Monday nights—they usually watched football at the same time. I was at his place one Monday, cleaning the kitchen, and when he got home, he called me to the door. I ran over to see what he wanted, and he said for me to get some clothes on, he’d bet my services in a poker game and lost, and I belonged to a friend of his for a few days. And I better not fuck up.”
Michael snorted. “So what? People do that all the time. It’s no big deal, you go do the guy, it’s a change of pace. What—was the guy really ugly or something?”
“No, sir. The guy was a lady.”
“Oh.”
“I’d never been with a girl before, sir. I mean, I never even dated in high school or anything. I’ve known I was gay since I was a kid. I didn’t know what to do, for a second. And then I thought, Claudio wouldn’t have me do anything that wasn’t okay. And I promised Claudio I’d do what he told me if it would make me a good slave—and even if I personally didn’t like girls, I mean, women, it wasn’t anything that was against my morals
or anything. And it was his rep on the line, too—he’d done this, believing that I’d do what he said. I couldn’t let him down.”
“So you went.”
“Yes sir, I dressed and hopped in her pick-up, and she took me home and ran me ’til I near about fainted. Women,” Ethan said, a look of serious amazement crossing his face, “can come a lot of times.”
“Yeah, they can. Did you enjoy it?”
Ethan squirmed a little. “Well—I enjoyed being useful to Claudio. And I knew that she was enjoying me, and that made me happy. Sir, in truth, I like men, I love their bodies, and women just don’t do it for me. But I did the best I could, and I tried not to let her know how weird I felt. And about a week later, Claudio told me about the Marketplace.”
“Okay, Ethan get up, you can go now.” Michael untied the slave’s hands and nodded when Ethan bowed himself out of the room. He laid himself back on the bed and sighed. He had done everything wrong! Not that this Claudio had the only way to spot and pre-train a slave, but it sounded much better than what Michael had done. Maybe I should have read up on it more, he thought miserably.
Oh well. There was nothing to be done now. He would have to find some new way to gain the attention of the trainer in New York. Nothing had changed his goal—but it looked like he needed to head in another direction to get there.
He was glad that he hadn’t told anyone about what he was really doing with Karen. With her gone from his life, he could just start again. Next time, he’d be better at this. It was clear that he had just chosen the wrong first candidate, and she just magnified the perfectly understandable minor mistakes that he had made himself. When he got back to Geoff’s place, he’d do some more research on spotting and entry-level training. There had to be some videos somewhere.
So, somewhat sheepishly, he returned to Santa Cruz, and Geoff hugged him warmly and sent the newest client to his room for the night. The shame of his failure vanished in an evening of acrobatic sexual romps that made Michael feel much, much better.
Chapter Seventeen
The phone rang at one o’clock in the afternoon, just as Vicente had finished laying out a luncheon salad and a stack of roast beef sandwiches. Lorens, in white shorts and a tank top, was carrying plates from the kitchen, and Joan, looking very round and dark next to him, was directing the action as part of her training in management techniques. Anderson, watching from the dining room door, raised one finger to stop Joan from picking up the call and got it herself. Michael kept watching the workers as they neatly laid the table and vanished. It was hard not to knock into each other in the small space of the formal dining room, but somehow, they managed it.
“Yes, he’s here. Hold for a moment, please.” Anderson laid the receiver down and tapped Michael on the shoulder. “Would you go get Chris? This is for him.”
“Sure, Trainer.” He jogged upstairs and down the hall, to where Chris’s room was, and knocked on the door. “Chris! Phone call.”
Chris came to the door with a frown on his face. Michael could see a laptop computer open and running on the desk by the window—sometimes Chris worked for hours on whatever he was writing. “Do you know who it is?” he asked.
“No. Anderson picked it up.”
“Thank you.” Chris followed him back downstairs immediately, and Michael knew that it was in reaction to that magical name. At the slightest hint that Anderson wanted something or had decided or judged something, Chris moved. If Anderson called him to the phone, it had to be important. Chris looked more tightly wound than usual that day—something that happened every once in a while—but still, he stopped his work and went to take care of business.
Slaves should be so automatically trusting. Michael sighed and walked past Chris to get to lunch. Anderson was already seated, feeding a kneeling Lorens a cherry tomato. She did things with him that she hadn’t done with either of the female clients, with more touches and more personal attention. It was always interesting to see what she had planned. She really did alter her methods and style for each individual slave.
They could hear Chris quite clearly from the front room.
“Excuse me, Mr. Parese?... That’s impossible... Mr. Parese, you must be mistaken!”
At the sound of Chris’s rare higher pitch, the tone he used only when he was genuinely angry, Michael put his sandwich down on the plate. Joan, pouring a glass of soda for him, seemed under control but he could tell she was listening too. Anderson clucked her tongue and Joan quickly finished and fled back to the kitchen.
“You did what?... No, don’t do a damn thing, Mr. Parese. I’ll be out tomorrow, to straighten this out... Mr. Parese, you listen to me. If Robin is not conscious and available to me, I will certainly make sure you’re investigated. I will be there tomorrow to pick her up.” The phone made a loud ringing noise as it was slammed into the cradle.
“Joan! Get out here!”
Michael hadn’t even taken a bite. His mouth was open in amazement at the abusive sound of Chris’s sharp command. Joan looked composed, however, as she ran out of the kitchen, neatly avoiding the backs of chairs, to the front room.
“Here—call a travel agent, and get me on a flight to Los Angeles tomorrow, as early as possible. Find me a hotel to the north of the city, and book me a suite, two bedrooms. And find out who’s the medical contact for that area, call them, and tell them I will probably need a visit tomorrow, oh, hell—late afternoon, I suppose. And a car—I need a car. Go, take care of this now.”
“Chris?” Anderson said, leaning back to look into the front room. “What’s up?”
He came in, flushed and scowling. “Those damn idiots—Robin’s owners have decided that she’s stolen some earrings or something from a guest! They found them in her room—decided that she was guilty, just like that!” He snapped his fingers dramatically. “After all, why bother to investigate? She’s a girl, girls wear earrings, so naturally it had to have been her!”
“Chris?” Anderson pointed to a chair.
Amazingly, he ignored her. Michael closed his mouth and took a long drink from his glass. This was better than a movie.
“They beat the shit out of her, Anderson! He said she was unconscious! What kind of barbaric, misogynist assholes—”
“Parker!” Anderson slapped one hand on the table top. “Control yourself.”
Chris looked at her and then blinked, as though he was as surprised as she by his behavior. He dropped down into the previously indicated seat and ran one hand through his hair, pushing it back. “Yes, yes. Please—forgive my outburst. That was ill-mannered.”
“Forgiven. Now why on earth are you going out there? Just call the local investigative representative and have the girl removed. She can be cared for and sent back here, and the whole thing can be taken care of properly. There’s no need for you to charge off like John Wayne.”
Michael smothered a snicker, and concentrated on spreading mayonnaise on his sandwich.
“I—I have to go. I’m her trainer. She needs me.”
Oh boy! Disagreeing with the Trainer, too! This was turning out to be a real historic occasion, Michael thought viciously.
“I agree. She needs you to advocate for her. But she doesn’t need your personal attention on-site. If you did that for all your clients, you’d always be on the road. Now call Joan back, and handle this the proper way.”
There was silence. Anderson had turned to her plate, but then slowly looked back at Chris, who was sitting very still, and definitely not calling Joan.
“Parker?” she said gently.
“Are you ordering me not to go?” he asked.
Michael thought he could die right then. Mr. Perfect, questioning an order from the Goddess of Trainers. Now you’re on the hot seat buster, he thought. How does it feel to squirm for a change? And I get to see it all.
Anderson picked up another tomato and fed it to the blushing Lorens. “No,” she said finally. “I am advising you, as your senior trainer, not to go.”
“Thank
you for your advice. I regret that I can’t take it at this time. Please excuse me, I have to go into the city before I leave.” He stood, and actually waited for Anderson’s slow nod of permission to be excused! Oh, it was too much! Michael couldn’t hold it in any more.
“So, one of the perfect slaves has sticky fingers, huh Chris? Wonder what went wrong there?”
Chris had already turned. Michael saw his shoulders stiffen, and his hands curl up into fists. Anderson started to rise, and Michael just caught the look of alarm on her face, but Chris’s tightly controlled voice cut through the tension. “I’ll thank you, Mr. LaGuardia, to keep your ignorant mouth shut.”
“Oh, and I’ll thank you—” Michael began, but Anderson, now on her feet, shut him up.
“That will be enough, Michael! Chris, I believe you have some work to do.”
He left without looking back. Anderson turned to Michael and said sharply, “That was entirely uncalled for!”
“Trainer, I’m just giving back some of what he shovels at me every day! If he can’t take it, he shouldn’t do it.” Michael was stung, but feeling brave. It was worth a lecture just to have made Chris that angry!
“Try not to revert to style, Mike, it makes me wonder what drugs I was on the day I chose your file. I seem to have lost my appetite. Lorens, clear this away, and come upstairs. I need a back rub.”
“Yes, Trainer!” He bowed his head almost to the floor when she left, throwing her napkin onto the table. And within minutes, Michael was alone with his salad, sandwich, and an empty glass of soda. He went to the kitchen to fill it and hid a chuckle from Vicente, who had a very serious look on his face.
Oh yes. Altogether a very amusing luncheon.
Chapter Eighteen
The Trainer Page 22
