Breakout

“Has Luca been in yet tonight?”

I had had to build up the courage, with my second drink, on the stool at the Mono Bar, a gay nightclub on Via Lecco within the old city of Milan, before I could ask the barman that. I didn’t want to sound pathetic. It was a gay bar. It wasn’t just that I was asking for one of the male prostitutes who frequently picked up men in this bar that I was hesitant. It was because Luca, who, at eighteen, was less than half my age and was one of the street urchins of Milan who maintained his existence by selling his body at that early age. He had led me around by the nose while we sat at this bar before—and in front of this same barman. There was nothing illegal about an eighteen-year-old agreeing to having sex in Italy any more than where I came from the States. The age of consent here was fourteen, so my fetish was well beyond that. Legal prostitution was licensed here, though, and there were efforts not to use it to prey on the young homeless.

The issue was the barman had seen Luca being contemptuous with me, knowing I was desperate to fuck him. But, in the end, Luca had gone with me, and here I was, meekly looking for him again. The barman had every reason to think I was pathetic. I felt even more pathetic caring what the barman thought about anything.

I wasn’t interested in eighteen-year-old men like Luca because they were down on their luck and turning to prostitution to survive, but because I preferred the young-bodied men who were still impressionable, supple, and willing to be trained. I also must admit I was aroused by being toyed with as Luca had done. I liked a high-spirited young man. When alone with a young prostitute, I could be aroused by having to crawl on the floor to him and beg for it.

The Mono Bar tolerated young men Luca’s age operating from here, but no more than reluctant tolerance by the barman on duty tonight went to men who sought out men of the street like Luca hooking up here. The clientele was preferred to be wealthier and less needy. I had come here to pick up young men off the street before. I had connected with Luca here before. I had let Luca make me almost beg for it at this bar before, in front of this barman. When we were alone, I had crawled to him begging for it.

“He was around earlier,” the barman said tersely, as he took away my second empty and replaced it with a third scotch and water, heavy on the scotch. “I doubt he’ll be back in, though. It’s late.”

It indeed was late, a bit after midnight. The Mono Bar didn’t close until 4:00 a.m., though.

“It should be past Luca’s bedtime,” the barman couldn’t resist saying. His look said that, at eighteen, Luca was merely a child to my nearly forty. The look was as contemptuous of me as it could get under the circumstances.

“No, of course not,” I mumbled. “Did he leave alone?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

“No, he was with a man.” He added, “A man not much older than he is,” just to make me feel more pathetic. That, of course, was why the barman could speculate Luca wouldn’t be back. He’d already found his john for the evening. The remark was accompanied by something close to a sneer, as the barman turned and moved up the boards to talk with two men, one young and being surreptitiously fondled, and the other older—older even than me, in his fifties, I would think—who was intimately touching the younger man, trying to interest him in being picked up. The difference between them and what I had been looking for, though, was that the younger man was well dressed. I liked my young man more vulnerable, down on their luck, making it clear they had to do this to survive. Then I wanted them to treat me like dirt, below them. The difference between the persona Luca projected and that of the young man down the bar didn’t make him any less the hooker than Lucas was, though, in my mind.

I gave him a good look. We’d shared gazes in passing before. Would I take him to bed? Maybe if he were younger. If he were eighteen—and if he showed me some contempt.

The younger man was looking past the man touching him. He was looking at me. I suppose that, at thirty-eight, and fit and Bohemian looking, I was more attractive and interesting to him than the dumpy-looking older businessman was. I was a better prospect. He would go to bed with me if I signaled to him now.

“Ah,” I said, downing my drink and pushing off from the bar—not too steadily, as three stiff drinks were two more than my usual limit these days. I just had needed Luca to be here tonight. I wasn’t just lonely. I’d sold one of my paintings to an Amsterdam alternative museum, somewhat of a breakthrough for me, and I’d wanted to share that with Luca. I was in Milan studying violin. I wanted to be a first-class musician. It was somewhat maddening to me that I was having much more success with the painting that paid my way than the music, where I wanted to make a name for myself.

Needing Luca just now was more than a sexual need. After we fucked, he changed. He listened to me. And he posed for me. The painting I’d sold was of him. It was for a very special museum; it wouldn’t be covered in the press. But I wanted to share news of this sale with Luca.

And Lucas was eighteen—my fetish.

I paused out on Via Lecco, just outside the entrance to the bar, and lit up a cigarette. I didn’t smoke much anymore—just as I didn’t often go over my limit of one scotch and water—but I was at loose ends tonight.

As I was standing there, the young man who had been looking past the older man who was trying for a hookup at the bar came out and paused when he saw me. Indeed, with the windows by the door, he could have seen me just outside, smoking, from the bar. He paused on the other side of the door and lit up a cigarette as well.

“È un peccato che non ci lascino più fumare nei bar,” the young man said.

I turned and looked at him. He was probably in his mid-twenties. He was a handsome young man, and it looked like he had a good body under the trendy and expensive-looking tight trousers and T-shirt he was wearing, the T-shirt being tight enough to show that he had rings pierced in his nipples. There was a snug ring in one of his nostrils too, crying “submissive” to those of us who paid attention to signaling conventions in Milan. A tight bun of his sunny-blond hair sat at the back peak of his head, just waiting for someone to undo it and let the wavy hair cascade to his shoulders as a preliminary for him lying back and spreading his legs.

Being a painter, images were vivid in my mind—and my mind now went through the sequence of his hair cascading and him lying back, slowly raising and spreading his legs, and rolling his hips up to give me a good approach angle. His hole would already be dilated, begging for my attention. My cock gave a lurch at the thought of this undoing of the hair and covering him—to the extent of having the sensation of penetrating, sinking into him, and starting to rise and sink, rise and sink, as my hand ran into the cascading hair and massaged his scalp, but my image was of an older teen, not this man.

This wasn’t the first time I’d seen him in this bar. It wasn’t the first time he’d given me the eye of interest. All very tempting—if he weren’t in his mid-twenties.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I said. I understood perfectly. I’d been in Italy for nearly five years now. I was getting pretty good with the language. I just didn’t want to disappoint the young man by prolonging contact. I figured that not comprehending his language would cry him off without rancor.

“Oh, you’re English—or American?”

“American,” I said.

“I said it’s too bad they no longer let us smoke in the bar. We have to come out here for that. But, then, I guess it’s been that way for a long time in America, hasn’t it?” He wanted conversation. The batting of his eyelashes told me he wanted more than that. He moved into an “I am available” stance.

His English was impeccable. Curses to English having become the language of international business and the tongue of choice for anyone with ambition. It was clear this young man was ambitious—and available. I was flattered, of course, that he was interested in me. He just didn’t comprehend my fetish.

“Yes, it has,” I said. “We haven’t been able to smoke in bars in the United States for a long time.” Then I soldiered on; it had to be done; he just wasn’t right for the moment. “You are a very attractive young man, but I think you should go back to the businessman at the bar. You are too old for me, I’m afraid, and he probably is very rich. No hard feelings. I just have this fetish I can’t deny.”

“It isn’t all about money,” the young man said. “And it need not be about age.” He was nothing if not persistent—and resilient. “We are all much the same in the dark, provided we’ve kept our bodies—which you have and I think that I have as well. I find you very attractive. I think you must be an artist. I think you may be passionate—a man passionate about his art.”

“Yes, I am,” I said, wanting that to mean I was a violinist, but knowing that it referred to a different mode of art altogether. “But I am a man with a fetish. I would not do your needs justice, nor would you do mine.”

With that I stubbed my cigarette out in a receptacle provided for that at the door. I reached out and touched his forearm. “You really are a very nice young man,” I repeated. “Sorry.” Then I turned and headed out on Via Lecco, heading deeper into the old town, without looking back. I really didn’t want to waste the young man’s effort. I’m sure he had to complete a transaction that night to meet his rent. The fact that he’d let an old, ugly, and fat businessman fondle him at the bar told me that. The man no doubt was rich, though, would appreciate the attention, and would express that appreciation in lucrative terms that had necessitated the young man to come out on the street and sell his body. I could afford him; it just wouldn’t accord me maximum pleasure—not when eighteen-year-old boys were to be had in this city.

Whenever I was lonely or maudlin or even in a celebratory mood, I liked to guide my steps in this part of the city past the Fontana di Piazza San Babila—the San Babila square fountain. Milan had magnificent fountains and this was one of the best. I lived in an apartment on the Via Cerva, beyond the Piazza San Babila, from here, so it was convenient to go by the fountain when I was returning from the gay bars in the Indipendenza district.

On this night, it was momentous to have done so.

I was the only one in the square when I entered it—or thought I was. I wasn’t moving too steadily, as I’d drunk more than I should. But I’d walked this area frequently; I could have made it home on autopilot. I discovered as I approached the fountain, though, that there was someone else here in much worse condition than I was.

A water-soaked figure was stretched out on the lip of the fountain. It was a man—a young man. No, an older teen. He obviously was dead drunk or zoned out on drugs. He was snoring slightly, so he wasn’t dead. His clothes were well cut and expensive looking, but he was soaked to the bone. He evidently had fallen into the fountain pool in some sort of intoxicated state and had only managed to drag himself out and onto the lip of the pool before passing out.

He wasn’t dead, but he might be so if he remained out here much longer as the night cooled down. I bent over him and shook him gently, but he remained unconscious. I heard him mumble, “No, please, Giovanni, not again,” but his eyes didn’t open.

He was just a youth—a beautiful older teen—an angel. A shock of long, wavy black hair, his skin alabaster white. His body was perfectly formed. I felt myself going hard, but I fought it. I was concerned for his well-being, that was all. His eyes fluttered open then under long, curly eyelashes. His eyes were green. He was absolutely gorgeous. Oh, good lord.

“Vieni, figliolo. Potrai prendere la tua morte di freddo qui fuori. Dobbiamo portarti in un posto asciutto—Come, son,” I said. “You’ll catch your death of cold out here. We need to get you somewhere dry.”

There was nothing to be helped. He had to be saved from himself. A teenager out here this time of night, intoxicated, whether from booze or drugs, would be taken to a prison if the police happened on him. He was too young to engage in either and there was a crackdown on this of late. He was much too beautiful to be in a prison with older men; they would share him around and the wardens wouldn’t give a toss if they did. I helped him up to his feet and virtually carried him out of the square. My apartment on the Via Cerva was only a few streets over.

* * * *

I was half drunk and exhausted and sleeping like a log. I’d given the young man a towel, a pair of briefs far too big for him, and a blanket; taken his wet clothes to the dryer; and left him to curl up on the sofa in the living room, while I went to my bedroom, stripped down, showered, and fell down, deep asleep, on my bed. I wasn’t as drunk as the young man, but I’d had more than my limit.

I hadn’t gotten anything coherent out of him, and he kept zonking out on me. I hoped it was just booze and not drugs that would kick in even harder. I couldn’t help myself from running my hands over his luscious body and through his lustrous black hair, cascading to his shoulders when I freed it from the band, while he was naked and I was drying him off. If he became lucid, I’d say I was looking for needle marks—and I was, but thank god I didn’t find any. He did push at me a couple of times, murmuring things like, “No, don’t,” but he had to get out of those wet clothes—and his refusal of my touch just aroused me and made me want him.

I dreamt of Luca and of Luca being here with me in my bed, as he had been in the past. I dreamt of him lying on his back before me after he had humbled me and condescended to letting me in, raising and spreading his legs, and rolling his hips up to give me a good angle of access. I dreamt of leaning over him, of him grimacing a bit as I penetrated and then sank inside him, of running my hand into his flowing hair, and of rising and sinking, rising and sinking inside the stretching tightness of him. And I dreamt of a transition to me running my hands up Luca’s slim, supple-skin back as I watched it rise and fall, his channel caressing my cock in a cowboy-position fuck.

When the angel who should have been in my living room on the sofa came into my bed and snuggled up to me, in my unconsciousness thinking it was Luca, I embraced him, kissed him on the cheek, and sank back into sleep. I sensed nothing unusual when his hands started roaming over my body, nor when it centered on my engorging cock, nor when he readjusted himself, moving down my body, and taking my shaft in his mouth.

In fact, I didn’t become fully aware that I wasn’t just in a wet dream with a conjured up Luca doing what Luca had done before until the young man from my living room lowered himself on my erection, facing my feet, palming my knees, and raised and lowered his channel on my throbbing shaft.

I had found him on the street, inebriated, possibly a homeless young man who had just been given some better-quality clothes by some generous man. The possibility arose now, since, after shunning me at first, he had initiated sex with me, that he was a street prostitute. He was riding my cock and showed every indication of knowing exactly how to do that, how to take a hung cock even as am older teenager. He was taking it without evidence of being overchallenged—he was opening and stretching for me, taking it all, deep. It wasn’t difficult to surmise that he was a prostitute and that this was not an unusual or emotionally charged position for him to put himself in. He was taking the initiative here.

Now fully awake, I sat up in bed, reaching for and pulling the young man’s legs to stream back along my hips. He docilely let me manipulate his beautiful body. I grabbed his wrists, letting him project his small, lithe chest out over my legs, and I pulled him back and forth as he dug his toes into the sheets behind me—and fucked himself on my shaft to my ejaculation. Turning him into my embrace, within my arms then, I held him close, fisted his cock, and stroked him off. He struggled a bit at my taking full control and moving relentlessly to milking him, but that subsided into docility and sighs as he set a closely controlled rhythm with his hips to stroke inside my fist.

After bringing him off, I maintained the close embrace, nuzzled my lips into his throat with a sigh, and sank once more into blissful sleep. Yes, I’d gone out to find one eighteen-year-old male prostitute and most likely was fortunate to come home with one who was even more sexy and yielding than Luca was.

I hadn’t meant this, I kept telling myself. But I just kept on keeping on with it.

* * * *

“This is a very nice flat. I couldn’t figure out how to work the coffeemaker, but I found cereal and milk. I hope you don’t mind. You don’t have much here to eat. You must live alone. Is that violin on the table in the living room yours? It’s a very nice one. Do you play the violin?”

So many bunched-up comments and questions and spoken like the boy who probably still lived inside him. This started my morning in remorse. I’d fucked an innocent.

Wrapped in a sheet from my bed, he was perched on a bar stool on the island separating my kitchen area from the sparsely and eclectically furnished room that served as combined living and dining room. I had come out of the bedroom located at the far end of that room from the kitchen nook. The bathroom was off the bedroom. What the young man thought was neat about the apartment, I’m sure, was what was beyond the kitchen. What the kitchen window overlooked and a door from the kitchen led into was a roof area of my apartment building, a four-story former townhouse made into apartments, that had once been a huge greenhouse—when compared to the size of my apartment—and that now served as my art studio.

“Yes, it’s my violin,” I said. “I study at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi. I wish to become a violin virtuoso, but to exist until then I am a different sort of artist. I paint. You speak English. Very good English,” I added, suddenly aware that we weren’t speaking Italian. We had been “speaking” in a completely different sort of language in the night.

“Everyone must speak English these days. I’ve been to America. You’re an American, aren’t you?”

“What gave me away?”

“You talk in your sleep. Who is Luca? Is he young, like me?”

“He’s eighteen,” I said.

“I think he must be a good lay. I think you like laying young men.”

“Yes, I like laying young men,” I admitted. There didn’t seem to be any point in denying it. I’d laid him—or, rather, he’d ridden me—and it had been quite obvious that I had enjoyed it. I also enjoyed talking so blatantly about sex preferences with a handsome young man who was naked save for being wrapped in the sheet we’d fucked on the previous night.

“Eighteen-year-olds?”

“Yes.” He didn’t tell me he was eighteen at the point, but I already knew.

“Did I give you good fuck?”

You talk when unconscious yourself, I was thinking. You can ask me who Luca is and I can just as well ask you who Giovanni is. Yes, I liked laying young men like him. And, yes, he was a good fuck. he had been a divine fuck. I didn’t answer any of that, though. “I’m glad you like the apartment. You look good—very sexy—in that sheet, but your clothes should be dry now. You were wearing good-quality clothes. Either you or someone who cares for you has very good taste. How old are you?”

I needed him to tell me so it was clear between us that what we’d done—what I hoped we’d do again—was legal.

“I’m eighteen--just. Are you angry about last night? Am I too young for you? If so, I’m sorry. You know I can choose to give myself to a man at fourteen here in Italy.”

“Did you?” I asked.

“No. Just one more man—before you. After I became eighteen. I am Nick.”

“Hello, Nick. I am Frank. No, you aren’t too young for me. You are very experienced for having only one more man—and recently. I find that hard to believe. You were wearing expensive clothes; the material and cut are expensive. Are you a university student or are you a prostitute?”

“You want to know if I am from the streets or if I have run away from a rich lover?”

“I would like to know if someone is missing you, yes.”

“Do I fuck like a prostitute?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered. He seemed pleased with that answer.

“Yesterday was an important day for me.” I was to find that he enjoyed talking in circles and avoiding a point we were approaching.

“God, I hope it wasn’t your eighteenth birthday.”

“No that was months ago,” he said, with a laugh. “Well, a few months ago.”

“What does that mean?”

“I went with a man from the street yesterday. He told me his name was Mario. I was celebrating and I went to the street. And I went with Mario. It’s the first time I went with a stranger from the streets.”

“You said you’d only had one man before me—someone other than this Mario.”

“I mean someone regular.”

“And this someone regular taught you to fuck like a prostitute?”

“Yes. He wants it all the time. He can’t keep his hands off of me. And he is very experienced.”

“An older man?”

“Yes.”

“And I am the second stranger you have gone with.”

“Technically, I didn’t come here with you. Technically, you brought me here and I was unconscious. I wasn’t unconscious enough not to know you were feeling me up, though.”

“You were unconscious on booze, I think. I don’t think it was drugs. At least I hope not.” I wasn’t about to start talking about having felt him up. No doubt that’s what told him he could climb in bed with me.

“No, it was not drugs—at least I think not.” He gave me a sexy little smile. “Although Mario may had done things with me that I did not know about. Maybe more than you did to me while you thought I was out of it. And I admit that you brought me here but that I came into your bed by my choice. I liked being felt up by you. I may have sunk more into being out of it. Did you fuck me when you brought me here and I still was drunk? Mario fucked me after I was drunk, I think. But I let him fuck me before too. Mario fucked me more times than I can count. He was hard for me the whole time.”

“No, I didn’t molest you before you came to my bed.” That, technically, wasn’t true. I had known everything there was to know about him with my hands while I was taking the wet clothes off him—I had explored his body far more than had been necessary to get him undressed. I couldn’t help it. “You had never gone with a man from the street before?”

“No. I went with Mario because he said he wanted me—that he wanted to do things with me that I wanted to do yesterday—and with a man of my choosing. I went with him because he was a handsome man with muscles. I went with him because he would be rough and he would dominate me and I could pretend we were lovers. He said he was a soldier and I had dreamed of doing it with a soldier. And because he showed me his cock and I wanted a cock inside me—the cock of a stranger.”

“Choosing a stranger yesterday like you chose me last night?”

“Yes. He was a sexy man—like you are. You have a very big cock, by the way. I am impressed. Bigger than Mario had.”

“So, you never went with a stranger before Mario?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Ah, but you did say that.” How many men had Nick been with? It was becoming more evident that he was, in fact, a street prostitute.

“I meant for the first time, yesterday and last night, the men were of my own choosing.”

“When I found you, you were either drunk or on drugs. Did Mario give those to you?”

“Yes. He gave me vodka and he showed me drugs, but I don’t think I took them.”

“And then what did he do?”

“Whatever he wanted. Everything. He was a soldier. He did what we did last night—you and me. He fucked me. He fucked me again and again. He was more forceful, though. You’re bigger than he was, but he hurt me more when he put it inside me. He didn’t care about me. He only cared about getting himself off.”

“And then?”

“Three hours and then he went to sleep. I left the hotel he took me to. Did you paint the works in that wonderful room out there that’s all windows—windows not just making walls but the roof too?”

So, I was right. It was the studio greenhouse he liked about the apartment. “Yes. It’s why I chose this apartment—for the natural light.”

“Are some of them of the Luca you talked about in your sleep?”

“Yes.”

“But there are paintings of others—of other young men my age.”

“Yes, there are,” I said. “Luca is your age.”

“Is that the age you like? You like to fuck eighteen-year-old boys?”

“Yes.” I’d said that already. “If you’ve had breakfast and are feeling OK—no bad effects from the drink and whatever else from last night—I’ll take your clothes out of the dryer, and I’ll help you get back to your home or your school or wherever. Do you live in the city with your family or do you live at a school?”

“I live at sort of a school. You don’t want to fuck me again first?”

“It isn’t about what I want. It’s about what we should do with you.”

“I want you to paint me, like you have the others in those paintings out there. And then I want you to fuck me again. I rode you last night. I want you on top of me, fucking me. I wanted to celebrate yesterday, but Mario just wanted to fuck. Don’t you have anything you want to celebrate too? You’re an artist. Don’t you want to paint? You can paint me. I don’t need to wear any clothes for the paintings you do.”

“No, you don’t have to wear any clothes,” I said.

He came off the stool, spinning out of the sheet, and leaving it in a puddle at the base of the stool as, naked, he scampered into the art studio.

I couldn’t help but smile. There was no question he was a teenager. But he was legal. I went by American rules. I’d already checked his billfold when I was putting his clothes in the washer. He was eighteen or he was carrying false ID.

Yes, I had something to celebrate. That was yesterday, but today was another day. And, yes, I wanted to paint Nick. He was a gorgeous boy. And he was eighteen. And, yes, I wanted to fuck him again. I wanted to control him, to have him under me, me inside him.

When I entered the studio, I found that he’d covered the studio couch with the blue velvet coverlet I’d used for most of my “eighteen-year-old boys” series. I painted other subjects, of course. This series, selling mostly to private collectors, brought in the most money. He’d also gathered some of the paintings from the series together. He was moving around in the nude. He was possibly the most beautiful angel I’d even seen. He obviously had left the bed long before I did and had already spent considerable time in the studio, exploring.

“Most of these are of the same subject. Is this your Luca?”

“Yes.”

“What about this one? Is he eighteen?”

“His name was Michael. He was eighteen when I painted that. He would be twenty-three now.”

“Michael? Was he an American? He doesn’t look Italian.”

“His father was a Jamaican. The father was one of my professors at art school in New York. The New York Academy of Art. That’s the unusual look. His mother was a violinist in the New York Philharmonic. I became close to the family because I shared both of those interests. Michael’s mother welcomed me into their house and helped teach me the violin. That’s where I met Michael. He had just started at Columbia University—in music. We shared that interest. No one else looks like Michael. He was a beautiful boy. He probably is a beautiful young man now.”

“Did you fuck him? Did his father know? How old were you when you fucked him?”

“If you want me to paint you, we should make a start.” Yes, I had fucked Michael. And, yes, his parents found out. That’s why I left New York—why I’d moved to Milan. Why I couldn’t go back to the States; I was thirty-three. Michael was in his twenties and on his own now. I could go back to New York and legally put Michael under me now, if he was willing. But I didn’t want Michael at twenty-three. I had wanted him at eighteen—and I’d had him then.

I’m sure Michael had outgrown me and wouldn’t want me now—that I would be too old for him now. I didn’t want to go back to New York and find that out, though.

Nick posed, naked, on the blue velvet material covering the studio couch. I let him pick the pose. He was achingly beautiful. It would be a magnificent painting.

After an hour, he said, “Is that enough for now? I don’t think I can stay in this position for much longer. Can we take a break?”

“Yes, that’s enough for now. I have the basic positioning fixed.” I’d actually gotten farther along than that. But I hadn’t been able to stop. He was just too beautiful and alluring. I could finish the painting blindfolded now, if necessary. His luscious body was engrained in my brain. But I wouldn’t tell him that. I wanted him to pose again. But I’d promised to take him to wherever he belonged after we’d finished with this.

“It’s coming onto noon. Do you want me to fix you something to eat now?”

“No, I want you to fuck me now,” Nick said, opening his arms in welcome to me.

So, I fucked him—on the studio couch, where I fucked the other young men who posed for me there. I was in erection. I had been for some time. Five long strides and I was upon him. He was on his back, legs spread, arms open, and I just came down on my knees between his thighs, running an arm under his waist, tilting his pelvis up. My other hand went to loosing his hair and letting it cascade down, cupping his head and bringing our lips together in a deep kiss. I entered him strongly and deep. He looked shocked and grimaced, but he held and I felt him stretching, opening to me. I couldn’t help thinking he had taken a big cock regularly before. We’d both been in a haze in the night. Now we were fully conscious, both of us fully tuned to the fuck.

“Sei così grande,” he murmured.

“Yes, I’m big,” I whispered. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Fuck me.”

He writhed under me for a few seconds, surprised by the immediate penetration and the shock of the intensity. But within seconds, he was folding himself to me, latching onto my shoulder blades with his fingernails and moving his hips in consort with the rhythm of my thrusts.

“You’ve taken it big before,” I murmured as we set into a rhythm.

“Yes. Giovanni.” He didn’t elaborate. Not Mario. Another man had entered the list.

We fucked and we fucked.

Nick showered afterward and, at last, regrettably, found the washer and dryer in my bathroom and retrieved his clothes and dressed. While I fixed a lunch, he roamed around the living and dining area. At some point I heard the, at first vigorous and then haunting, strains of the opening to the “Summer” Violin Concerto No. 2 from Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, being played by a virtuoso violinist, floating in from the living room. I smiled at the young man’s curious exploration. He’d found my radio. Not only that, but he’d found a piece I had been struggling with for months and had little hope of mastering.

But as I walked around the kitchen island and into the room to announce lunch, he had quickly turned the radio—and the song—off. I was surprised that in some ways the teenager could be skittish about being here with me and doing what he’d think I’d want rather than what he wanted. It was fine with me if he wanted to listen to the radio. I told him so, but he just gave me a funny look and bellied up to the kitchen island and the food I’d set out.

After lunch, we fit in another hour-long painting session, followed by a fuck, doggie this time, with Nick willingly on all fours and me mounted high on his sweet little ass and fucking him in a steady rhythm. We fit like a finely motion-coordinated machine now—like long-time lovers. I took from him, but I also gave back, making sure that his pleasure was maximized, as mine was.

Exhausted, then—both of us—we napped on the bed, naked, and in each other’s arms. The celebration I’d wanted to have the previous day had come one day late, but it had come in manifold pleasure. I only regretted that I’d have to return Nick somewhere sometime before morning. Someone must be looking for him. Street urchins didn’t wear expensive-cut clothes and speak good English as he did. I had decided that he was a university student who was having some sort of mild emotional breakdown and had had to break out of his mold.

I didn’t want to take advantage of whatever crisis he was having. Of course, I already had.

My interest in Nick, now that I was stepping up to adult responsibility—now that I had known him several times carnally—was that he not be playing truant or innocently giving himself to me because he was having some sort of emotional breakdown. I needed not to take any more advantage of him than I had already. He had been a fully willing participant, but he was just a teenager and I was a mature man. The greater responsibility was mine. At least after today I’d have a painting to remember him by. I had no intention of ever selling this one—just as I would never sell the one of Michael. I did sell ones of Luca. I had paid Luca for everything I’d gotten from him. Luca was a street prostitute.

That evening I walked him back to the Piazza San Babila. We walked around the fountain and then I took him to a café on the square and fed him a gourmet meal.

“Where do I take you now?” I asked. “Someone must be looking for you—unless you are just a street urchin and need somewhere to stay. If so—”

“I’m not a street urchin. I have someplace to go if I want to. I just don’t want to go there yet. I don’t want to go back to Giovanni yet.”

“Giovanni? You mentioned that name before. Who’s Giovanni?”

“I picked Mario—and I chose you,” the boy said. It was maddening how he could tease me by talking in circles. “I didn’t pick Giovanni,” Nick continued circling. “He picked me. He gave me no choice. He made me OK with it—made me want it. He’s big—big like you—when he has it inside me, I can’t think. All I can do is feel, to feel owned and fulfilled. Like with you. But it’s all about him and what he wants. With you, it’s like it is us, together. One. It’s just different. Better.”

“Giovanni is the older man, the experienced man, the man who taught you to fuck like a prostitute?”

“Yes. I don’t want to go back yet. I want to go home with you. I want to sleep in your bed again tonight. I want you holding me, being inside me. Giovanni fucks. Mario fucked. You make love.”

And so that’s what we did. But I wasn’t the romantic he made me out to be. I fucked him.

* * * *

I woke with a groan. It had been a hard ride with Nick—he wanted increasingly more—until, exhausted, I drifted off to sleep, still inside him. The young man hadn’t been able to get enough of the cock. That was the downsize of fucking an eighteen-year-old. They still had energy when you were quite done in. Last night it was like he was trying to pack a week’s worth of experience into one session. He must have realized this wouldn’t last—that he had to go back—to somewhere.

With a groan, I put a hand out to feel for him before opening my eyes. Touching nothing but rumpled sheets, though, I raised my lids and looked down the length of my body. I’d been having a wet dream and I saw that I was gripping my erection with one hand. Beyond that, though, and beyond the brass footboard of the bed, sitting in a chair against the opposite wall, naked, and with his cock in his hand, sat Luca—the street prostitute I’d gone looking for, without success, what? Two nights ago?

“Where’s Nick?” I croaked.

“The cute little black-haired piece I found in your bed? He left when I arrived . . . and wouldn’t leave. I offered to share. He wasn’t interested. I wasn’t really interested either, but he looked like stiff competition. I told him you were my sugar daddy and had promised not to fuck anyone but me. I told him it would get a little sticky when you woke up and both he and I were here.”

“How did you get into the apartment?”

“You left the door unlocked. I heard you were looking for me. I came when I could. You had said I should come today to pose for you for another painting. You came looking for me earlier, though. You couldn’t resist me?”

I hadn’t left the door to the apartment unlocked. I never did. I’d have to remember to change the lock—and to engage the deadbolt. That’s what I didn’t always remember to do. I’d learned how to quickly change locks from earlier pickups. Eighteen-year-old boys can be so impetuous. They don’t know how to respect space. You fuck them and they think they own you.

“I sold one of the paintings I did of you. I wanted to celebrate. I wanted you to celebrate with me.”

“And when you couldn’t find me, you decided to celebrate with another guy—a cute little trick the same age as me?”

“Yes.”

“So, you owe me a celebration.”

“Yes.”

“You think that putting your cock in me will be me celebrating?”

“When it comes with money in your pocket, yes. You open our legs for money. I haven’t heard you complain it’s me paying you money for a fuck. Come here. Suck me. Lay down for me or off with you. I have work to do today.”

“That’s not the way it works with us. You know that. You’ve had a night of satisfying fucking already,” he said.

“Yes, and I’ve had a night of quite satisfying fucking already. And, yes, the other hookup was both an angel and a devil. He didn’t give me a rough time about taking my cock.”

“Come here,” he said. “Suck me off before we fuck. No, on your knees. Crawl to me.”

I rolled off the bed onto the floor on all fours and crawled over to him. I knelt between his thighs and took his cock in my mouth. At his command, we changed positions, me sitting in the chair and him sitting on my shaft, facing away from me, his buttocks nestled in my lap. I embraced him from behind, worrying his nipples between my thumbs and index fingers, kissing him in the nape of his neck, and moving my hips. My shaft stroked him deep, slowly at first and then faster and faster as he moaned and writhed within my grasp, ejaculated into my stroking fist, and I creamed him deep in his soft core.

“Shit, you do it good,” he moaned.

“So, you’ll let me do you for free?”

“That wouldn’t be ethical,” he shot back.

“Yeah, didn’t think so.”

“Am I better than that little piece who was just here?”

“I didn’t pay him. And I don’t crawl for him either.” And that closed that conversation.

As I was fixing our breakfast, Luca flipped on the TV in the corner recess of the kitchen cabinet. I didn’t like that blaring while I was fixing a meal and I growled for him to turn it off, which he did, but not before an image of Nick popped up on the screen.

“. . . eighteen-year-old music prodigy, Conte Nicolo della Mirandola, has been missing for two days and is feared . . .” The screen went dead.

“Hey, that’s him. The guy I kicked out of your apartment this morning.”

“You think so, Luca?” I said. I wanted him to say “no,” but I too knew that was my Nick who had just flashed across the monitor. “Turn it back on. What’s a ‘conte’?”

“That’s a nobility title here—an old one,” Luca said. “I think it’s ‘count’ in English.”

“Terrific.”

“So, your little piece for last night is a count.” Luca laughed.

“Not that I knew,” I said.

The photo had changed to a reporter holding a microphone in front of a tall, thin, effete-looking gentleman. “. . . Milan Symphony Orchestra conductor, Maestro Giovanni Lagosa, says young Nicolo, an orphaned nobleman who has been made a ward of the symphony organization and named just two days ago—the day he disappeared—as the lead violin soloist for the symphony’s next performance, wasn’t missed until dinnertime two nights ago, on Monday.”

“I’m sure he just wanted to share the good news with someone,” Lagosa was saying on the TV. “We believe he has distant relatives living in Venice, and we are trying to contact them now. He’ll be playing solo violin in concert at the Teatro alla Scala on Saturday two weeks hence in Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. I’m sure he’ll . . .”

“Turn it off,” I said, and Luca did.

“So, is that him?”

“Yes, I guess it is,” I answered.

“And he’s been here those two days? In your bed? Your cock inside him?”

“Yes.”

“So, you have to tell someone? You have to tell them what?—that you’ve had him here for two days, in your bed, fucking him? He’s eighteen? He’s a count?”

“He was here willingly. He wanted it all as much as I did. He initiated most of it. Eighteen is legal. You’re eighteen, and I fuck you.”

“I let you fuck me—for money. I’m a male whore and you’re a john. You crawl to me to get it inside me,” Luca said. He wasn’t helping.

“Let me think. We might as well do the painting session this afternoon. Let me think what to tell them. Maybe it will all work out before we’re done. He left here. Maybe he’s going back and he’ll have his own story to tell them.”

“And maybe, as you Americans say, pigs fly,” Luca said, and laughed. “Maybe after being fucked by you, he’ll want to give his kingdom and fame up and come live in your bed with you.” He laughed again.

But I could have thought of worse choices Nick could make.

Luca didn’t know all I had to consider. From what Nick had said while he was talking in circles, he left because some big-dicked guy named Giovanni was fucking him—and not exactly by the teenager’s choice. The symphony conductor interviewed on TV was named Giovanni. That probably wasn’t a coincidence. “Maybe I should try finding him myself after you’ve posed for the painting. And maybe it will have resolved itself by then.”

There wasn’t just the posing for the painting, of course. There also was the fuck afterward, with Luca on his back on the blue velvet coverlet, his legs spread and raised, his fingernails digging into my shoulder blades, and his head arched over the end of the studio couch, his eyes flashing and his mouth blowing bubbles in a perpetual yawn, while I covered him, mounted him, penetrated him, and fucked him deep and hard.

I’d been right, though, and pigs were flying that day. When we were done and back in the kitchen, turning on the TV, there was video of a smiling eighteen-year-old Conte Nicolo della Mirandola, back on the front steps of the La Scala Theater, home of the Milan Symphony on Scala Square, nestled into the embrace of Maestro Giovanni Lagosa. He was explaining how he had started out to visit his distant relatives in Venice but had been lost for two days. And, yes, being chosen as the violin soloist for the symphony was a great honor, he said, and he was looking forward to the concert of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in two weeks’ time.

And that, I assumed, was that. Just a pleasant little fling for both of us, although I have to admit that he was spacey most of the time he was with me. I did feel a twinge of guilt that maybe I had been taken advantage of him in a crisis.

I took Luca to my bed that night and banged the hell out of him. Luca was a fickle young man, though. One day of me was enough for him, money or no money. He was off to do his own free-spirit self-pimping and we knew we wouldn’t couple again until I wanted to do another painting of him or he needed money. One day of Luca was usually enough for me as well. He was a cocky little son of a gun.

* * * *

I was fooling myself on the thought that it had just been a fling with Nick—well, with who I now knew was the Conte Nicolo della Mirandola, the last of a long hereditary line of nobles from the time of the Italian prince states. I looked him up. The rest of his family was gone and, though there was money and a villa or two with miles and miles of vineyards still there, he was a ward of the Italian state until he gained his inheritance rights, which had been set by his family as twenty-one. Because of his musical talent, the state had turned him over to the organization managing the Milan Symphony Orchestra. He was in residence with the symphony’s conductor, Lagosa, and had begun his musical studies at the University of Milan, although the Net references to him said he was a child prodigy in violin and would be teaching students at the university as well as studying there. So, he had thus been turned over to Giovanni Lagosa, who apparently had trained the young conte to serve under men—or Giovanni, at least—as well as play the violin. There was no hint that any distant relatives still lived—in Venice or anywhere else.

I had found other divine aspects to him. I wasn’t the least bit surprised he was a prodigy; he had shown himself to be quite precocious in matters of the flesh and adult in experience. Over the next week Nick’s sweetness and special talents kept popping up in my mind and kicking me in the ass. I’d let him ago. I’d let Luca and Giovanni snatch him from me.

And then a week after Nick left my apartment, I let him go again. I was painting in the studio when I heard the door to my apartment rattle on the lock and then knocking. After a few minutes the knocking came again, a little louder. But then it stopped. I wasn’t in the mood for Luca, so I didn’t answer the door. I did, though, go into the living room and over to a window that overlooked the entrance of the building four flights down. I got there in time to see Nick’s departing figure.

What I’d once thought was over but had since realized wasn’t over for me maybe . . . just maybe . . . wasn’t over for Nick either. I was painting in the nude, so there was no hope of catching him before he was around one of the corners. Nevertheless, I threw on trousers, a T-shirt, and a pair of loafers and went out. I went the only place I thought he might go for me to find him—to the Piazza San Babila fountain.

But he wasn’t there.

The Saturday after that, I paid for an expensive seat in the orchestra ring for the Milan Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at the Scala Theater. When Nicolo della Mirandola stepped forward and started to play the “Summer” Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor on the violin, I was as transported and mesmerized as everyone else was. I was the only one in the section, however, who stood up from my seat when he was finishing. There were gasps all around me and hands pulling at me to bring me back into my seat. The symphony wasn’t over. But I didn’t let them pull me down until I was sure that Nick had seen me standing there, rising above the audience, giving him a plaintive, worshipful gaze.

After the performance, while everyone else was leaving the hall, I remained in my seat. That’s where Nick found me.

“Quick, we need to go out of the front of the theater while we can move with the crowd,” he said, standing by me and tugging on my sleeve.

“But you’ll be going home with the conductor, won’t you? He’ll had a car waiting for you by the stage door, won’t he?” I asked.

“Yes, he will,” he said. “That’s why we have to go out the front. I think it’s time for me to visit some nonexistent relatives in Venice for a couple of days over near the Piazza San Babila Fountain. I have Giovanni primed to cover for me now—if he doesn’t want a scandal. We have an understanding now. I came to see you the other day, but you didn’t answer your door.”

“I’ll give you a key.” Which was more than I intended to do for Luca. Maybe my days of begging and paying for the sex were over.