Cover Stud Obsession

“Weld will do The Handyman, Nick, but not with your name attached. They have an affiliated imprint, Flescher, that handles that sort of book. It’s a good book. Just not one to be put out in your name, or by Weld.”

“I’m not ashamed of it, Parker. You of all book editors should be open to it.” Parker Parnell was my editor at the Weld publishing house. I pressed my forehead to the windowpane and looked down into the front yard of my house on a quiet street in Shepherdstown, Maryland, a small university town on the Potomac River a long way upstream from the hustle and bustle of the nation’s capital. I was watching hunky, black Ev Jones mowing my lawn shirtless. The vibrations coming off the lawnmower were making the glass of the windowpane shimmer and I felt close to Ev by feeling the vibrations his mower was causing. Ev revved my engines. I had fantasies of Ev driving me. His muscular ebony torso glistened in the dappled sun coming through the trees on the North Mill Street lawns—the torso of a black Adonis.

“It’s not the book, Nick. I like it. Howard likes it. The editor at Flescher loved it. He’s jumping at the chance to publish it. A historical about subsequent generations in a small New England harbor town from founding to the present and the secrets they keep. The secrets being on the relations between the men of the town, what’s not to like?”

“The gay male threads running through it? That the action is graphic?” I asked, a bit amused. I was only paying half attention to him because I was mesmerized by the graceful dance of the big, black buck across my lawn. We were just a couple of blocks over from Shepherd University, where I taught English composition, but we could have been in any small, sleepy town that was wealthy when these Victorian houses were erected at the turn of the twentieth century. This town could be just like the town of The Handyman, Shernhaven, and the male love secrets it kept.

“No, we love that, but . . . why did you submit the manuscript under a pseudonym, Nick? Why did you send it to us under the name of G. P. Hardd?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered. Ev was noticing that I was watching him from an upstairs window. I drew myself up so he could get a real good look. Smiling, he waved and turned to cut a row toward the street and away from the house. “I think I wanted it to be judged completely on its own and not on my reputation. It’s quite a departure from what I usually write.”

“Bingo. There you have it. Even you sensed that it wasn’t something that would go over well with your name attached.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I flared up, turning to the man who had shepherded my books through the Weld production process for the past five years—five years and six books. We couldn’t be any more different in looks—Parker pushing fifty; tall, trim, and elegant; wavy gray hair, patrician, with an aquiline nose and the look of a professor, and me, actually a professor, not so tall, a bit stocky, dark and, some said, sultry. Always the mischievous look. But we’d melded well as a pair. I knew I should be listening more closely to him, but I had more books in my mind like The Handyman and I wanted to get them written and published. I wanted them published as well as my other books had been.

“I don’t think you realize what you mean, Nick. You don’t have to choose between this book and your mainstream literary historicals. You can do both, although we’re running up on the first manuscript submission date for Alton’s Folly. I hope you have that in hand.”

I didn’t want to go there. All I could think of once I’d gotten the Shernhaven epic out of my system was a D.C. vice cop trapped by his own desire for young men series my brain was spinning, and the sex. I wanted to be graphic—honest, sweaty fucking. No, the full manuscript draft of Alton’s Folly was not just about ready.

“You can do both, Nick, and Weld will publish and promote both—but in different lanes. What you were acknowledging when you sent the manuscript for The Handyman in under a pen name was that your audience for Nick Hampton books wouldn’t accept a graphic gay male genre from you. You knew that yourself; you just didn’t realize you knew it. We’ll do both—just separately. Separate publisher imprints and separate author names.”

“Why do you bring this up now and here?” I asked. I looked down at the lawn. Ev would be finished mowing soon. He usually came in for a beer and a spell after doing my lawn. Parker Parnell had arrived unexpectedly. I didn’t want him here when Ev came in—and I definitely wanted Ev to come in.

“You came all the way down from New York to tell me I am two authors now, with two different publishers?”

“Not just that, although I wanted to get that settled. We’ll do separate contracts too. We can legally set it up that the copyright will be in the G. P. Hardd name for The Handyman too but that it will trace back to you—just in a very close-hold way. We don’t want to unsettle the fan base you’ve already established with your previous books. But that settled . . . it is settled, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s settled,” I answered, almost absentmindedly. Ev was taking a break. I’d forgotten that he said he was going to do the neighbor’s yard too. So, I had time with the Parker issue. He had taken a pull from a water bottle and then let the water stream down his bare chest. I involuntarily moved a hand to my crotch. I was hardening up.

“Good,” Parker said. “That’s not the only reason I came. Since you’re going to be two authors, you’ll need to be promoted as two separate men, and that’s going to be tricky. When The Handyman is in the press, which can be soon because you delivered the manuscript in great shape, Flescher wants you to do a couple of appearances as G. P. Hardd. Your genres are quite different, so we think you can pull off being two different people at a few book festivals until you get the new author established. Maybe it will be enough for you to shave off your beard and mustache. You don’t keep them long, so you can quickly establish them again when we start promoting Ashton’s Folly. Maybe you could die your hair. There’s an erotica publishers conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in May, just as The Handyman should be coming out. Flescher wants to slip you in on a panel there as G. P. Hardd. I’m here to go over how we can manage that.”

“Is that why you’re really here, Parker?” I asked, turning now to the bed, where he was stretched out on his back, in erection, stroking his cock with a hand. “It isn’t because I haven’t been up to New York in several months?”

“It’s true, I’ve missed you. Come back to bed. Enough publishing talk for now.”

“You do look like you’ve fully recovered from earlier,” I said.

Parker stretched out his free arm. “Come and ride it, Nick. Your G. P. Hardd descriptions in The Handyman manuscript made me so hard I had to take care of myself repeatedly. I don’t like doing that alone. Come back to bed and be G. P. Hardd for me.”

Climbing over him in bed, still naked—I’d been naked and had been exposing myself to Ev Jones at the window—I straddled Parker’s pelvis, reached back and positioned his cock at my hole, and sank down on him. When we’d fucked in a cowboy position when I was just Nick Hampton, I had given him a basic ride, sitting on the cock facing his head, palming his pecs, and rising and falling on him. As G. P. Hardd, I was more inventive. I slowly revolved on the cock, both facing and facing away from his head, and I moved into the position of the crab, supporting myself suspended over his body on my feet and hands and rising and falling on him in that position. He became more inventive too, lacing his legs between mine, as I stretched on top of him, and raising and spreading our legs together, putting my arms in a full Nelson, and fucking up into my passage. Both of us were much more athletic and inventive when I became G. P. Hardd.

We fucked for nearly an hour. I was afraid I’d missed Ev Jones. But I hadn’t. After Parker had showered and dressed and I was seeing him off to his room at the nearby Bavarian Inn to rest before we had dinner together there, I found that Ev had retreated to the shelter of my deep front porch after finishing the lawn and was enjoying a major proportion of a six pack I’d placed in ice in a cooler there for him.

“You still want me to come in?” he asked, as we watched Parker walk over to his Jaguar parked in my driveway.

“Of course,” I answered. “Why wouldn’t I?” He reached out and tugged at the silk robe I was wearing—all that I was wearing.

“I heard you two. You were having quite a session.”

“Come into the house, Ev,” I murmured.

He fucked me bent over one of the stools at the kitchen island. The balls of my feet barely reached the ground, and he initially wanted my arms and head dangling down the other side of the stool as he covered me and worked his massive black cock inside me. He liked to fuck me in strange places and exotic positions. His technique had been the model for several of the steamy scenes in The Handyman, a strong, muscular, big-cocked ebony body covering a smaller white one and taking its pleasure however it wanted to was, I thought, as hot on the page as it was in person.

After establishing the rhythm of the fuck, though, Ev whipped the sash from my robe over my head and onto my throat and used it as reins to arch my torso back to him and to ride me and ride me and ride me. Parker and I had been inventive. Ev was a wild man. Both types of scenes, run back to back, would fit nicely in my next gay male novel.

* * * *

I immediately sensed him there beside me at the bank of urinals in the men’s room of the Annapolis Waterfront Hotel convention center. It may have been the scent he let off, a strong, manly woody scent. It was how I’d thought of him when I looked out onto the audience in the room where I was on a panel of new authors of gay male historicals at the Annapolis Erotica Book Festival. This was one of the book fairs I’d agreed to go to with the Flescher Press. They had brought quite a display to the venue. The Handyman was hot off the presses. Presales had been good and Flescher was doing a good job of promoting the book here at the book festival.

He’d been standing in the back of the room, and my eyes kept going to him. He was solidly built and swarthy. He was both of these aspects in good terms—body-builder muscular through the chest, wearing a tight black turtle-neck knit shirt that showed every curve and a flat, muscular, if thickish waist—muscle thick, not fat thick. I had the feeling I’d seen him before and that he’d given me a jolt of arousal even then, but it wouldn’t have been in the black suit he was wearing now. He was darkly tanned, a face tending toward the thuggish, determined, in command. Part of the “in command” impression was that he was in his late thirties or early forties, looking like he’d been around the block several times and knew every crack in the sidewalk. He had a five-o’clock shadow beard and mustache, which I surmised he kept permanently close cropped. He looked like someone’s bodyguard or a narcotics cop. The broken nose screamed of “you should have seen the other guy.” When each element was considered separately, it was a little frightening, but, as a whole, the man was sexy as hell.

I’d kept looking to the back of the room at him during the panel session I shared with two other male authors, both published by Flescher Press, which was sponsoring this session. I couldn’t place where I’d seen him before. I fancied that he kept looking at me too.

I went to the men’s room at the end of the session and before going to sit at the Flescher booth to sign books, my spirits up at seeing that a line was already forming at my table. There wasn’t anything worse than sitting for a book signing with the authors on either side of you with lines and you having none. That was how my career in the mainstream had started. I didn’t face that with my historicals and mysteries in the mainstream anymore, but it would have been deflating to have to start there again with my erotica.

I was at the urinal when he came in, saddled up to the one beside me, unzipped, and pulled out a huge cock. Of course I looked, and, holy hell, was he hung. I’m gay and a submissive to a good cock. I always looked if they didn’t lean into the urinal and hide themselves. He most certainly didn’t do that. He leaned back from the porcelain at the hips and sent a strong arc of urine into the bowl. I was mesmerized and stood there, holding my cock, deciding whether I should lean back as well to give him a view of me—I had nothing to be ashamed of—or if I should make it obvious that I could see him. This “porcelain sex” foreplay, as I called it, could be dicey. You couldn’t always be sure the other guy was signaling. Sometimes the guy was totally oblivious to the possibilities and that, for some, it was a mating game.

If this guy was signaling, he was going to make it a long game, because he folded himself back in and zipped up before turning toward me, giving me a little smile—and he looked gangstery or cop-like enough to never give more than a slight smile—going to the washbasin, and then on out of the men’s room.

We weren’t the only men in there, so maybe that’s what held him back, but I was trying to tell myself that he had, indeed, signaled. He must be gay, I thought—and a top. He was too hung and had too much of a swagger to want it from another guy. He was at the session where three pretty graphic gay male novels were on the menu. And I’m the one who came into the men’s room first. He’d followed in behind me.

As I walked toward the Flescher Press booth, where the table was set for the three of us from the panel discussion to sign books, the mystery was solved of why I had recognized him. The back wall of the booth displayed oversized copies of that season’s book covers. The mystery man, stripped to the waist, and looking magnificent, was on the cover of three of the books. He was a male book cover model. A publishing industry signal of a gay male book was to have a half-dressed steamy/dreamy male or two on the cover. That’s why he was familiar. I’d seen those covers before. And that’s why he wasn’t instantaneously identifiable. This evening he was more dressed than he was on any of the covers.

That said, he, indeed, was a hunk and a half. More than that, I was working on a book about a rough-sex gay D.C. vice cop I’d named Hardesty, which I wanted to fill out into a series and get Flescher to publish, and it hit me that this guy was Hardesty. When I wrote about Hardesty now, this is the guy I would have in mind. I instantly decided I’d go back and do whatever rewriting was required to make Hardesty this guy.

And I had already known that the Hardesty I was writing about was a character I wanted to cover me and fuck me. That helped me construct the sex scenes—writing it as if I was the guy being plowed.

But I saw that the line waiting for me to gladhand readers and sign copies of my books for them was long enough that I was going to be fully occupied for the next good bit of time, after which the Flescher crew had said we’d go to a bar nearby to cap off the panel session. So, I filed the mystery hunk in the back of my mind, put on a smile, and checked to make sure pens had been supplied to the table I was settling at.

* * * *

By the time I finished signing books, which was very gratifyingly a long time—I didn’t get this much response to my mainstream books—most of the Flescher crew had gone ahead to a gay bar on South Charles Street in Annapolis. The Rowan Tree was subtle enough in atmosphere to include straights in its clientele and it wasn’t uncomfortably gay for any of those. I went over in the second wave with those who had to stay with the booth until closedown for the evening. The hunk I was focusing on was there, but at a table that already had all of its chairs occupied, so I dropped into a chair at a second, nearby table, facing the cover boy. The place was crowded and, as midnight neared, it was becoming more crowded. The interests of the clientele were switching toward the gay side, so I stayed to see how gay it would get.

“That’s Doug James,” one of the Flescher employees I queried said, identifying the cover model who was sitting at the other table. “He does this for the fun of it and for some personal advertising. He owns a men’s gym in Chelsea, in New York, and is a personal trainer. Makes good money, I hear.”

So, he probably couldn’t be bought. He’d have to be won.

I asked if Doug James was gay, but the crowd was getting too loud and we couldn’t hear each other talk, so it became just an evening of drinking, mouthing words to each other, pretending we understood what each other was saying, and giving meaningful looks around the room to anyone who was playing. I made sure to save some of my meaningful looks for Doug James at the other table, and sometimes they were met with a smile.

When he got up and headed to the john, I followed him. It was a lot more quiet in the men’s room than out in the bar, as we, once again, stood next to each other at the urinals, with our dongs hanging out. He turned his head, smiled at me, and said, “You’re really Nick Hampton, aren’t you? Just writing these books under a pen name.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Different markets.”

“Yeah, I understand that. I’m usually involved in this just for the cover art, but I read you under the other name and so I checked into why you were here. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. I like this hair color better than your other. I like your Hampton books a lot. Haven’t read any of these.”

“I could give you—” I started to say, wanting to move into something that would get us together more closely than just standing next to each other, our dicks out, and peeing into a urinal, but the door opened then, not only letting in two half-drunk guys yelling at each other because they were coming out of the crowded bar, but letting the bar noise in, as well.

Doug James zipped up and was headed back to the barroom before I could get any farther. I wanted to establish whether he was staying in the hotel the book conference was being held in, would be there that night, and maybe wanted to come to my room for company and more. He was becoming an obsession with me. I wanted him to fuck me.

I’d finished my drink before following him into the men’s room, so I went to the bar to order another drink.

“You’re G. P Hardd, aren’t you?” a rich baritone voice said from the barstool next to where I’d bellied up to the bar.

“Yes,” I admitted. I was here to gather fans, so I wouldn’t shirk my duty there.

“I read your book and liked it. I came from the same area of the coastline you wrote about—up in Massachusetts. The town you wrote about could be any number of small harbor towns I’ve been in along the Massachusetts’ coast. Cold on the outside and steamy under the surface. You really know the area well.”

I wanted to laugh. I’d pretty much made up all I written about in The Handyman.

“Thanks,” I said, though.

“Here, let me get that drink for you. What does the ‘G’ stand for in your name? I’m Stan Sinclair.”

“Thanks,” I said again. “The name is a pen name. I don’t know that we have an explanation for the ‘G’ yet. You can call me Nick.” It was only then that I focused on him. Late forties or early fifties, tall, solid, dressed expensively and casually, bald, but with a well-trimmed gray beard and mustache. Rugged, quite good looking and in great condition for his apparent age.

“Yes, I know,” he said, flashing me a mischievous smile. “Nick Hampton, isn’t it? I read your other books too. I recognized you from the jacket photo. I like your original hair color better. Let me buy you a drink and your secret is safe with me.”

Some secret, I thought. Every guy I talked to seemed to know who I really was. I needn’t have bothered to dye my hair. This was more of a concern for my publishers than for me, though, but this certainly hadn’t been the plan. He was smiling, so it wasn’t any form of a threat. But, shit, why did I bother to get a pen name for gay male books if everyone I met knew who I really was? Right now it didn’t matter, though. He was a great-looking guy and, as I scanned the room, I saw that the Flescher crew had been cut down. The cover model, Doug James, was gone.

“You say you were at the panel session that included The Handyman,” I said. So, you read gay male novels?

“Yes. There’s a table over there, where it isn’t so noisy,” Sinclair said. “Let’s take our drinks over there. Unless you—”

“No, that’s fine,” I answered. “I’m not here with anyone.”

“But you write gay men’s novels and you came to The Rowan Tree,” he said as he guided me to the table in the corner—and around a corner, which cut down the noise from the bar. “The Handyman is literary but it also is quite explicitly gay. It’s about active gay life.”

“Yes, it is. I guess you could say writing it was a release for me. It’s the first I’ve published, but I’m working on a couple of more. Are you asking if I am gay—actively gay?”

“Yes, I guess I am. I like more than your books. I like the looks of you. I took notice even from the jacket photo on your mainstream books. I was delighted to see you on the panel in this evening’s session. There’s no photo on the jacket for The Handyman, so seeing you on the panel was quite surprising.”

“Surprising and delighted. Just those emotions?” I asked, not directly answering his question yet. Nonetheless, I was flirting shamelessly. He was a real hunk for his gray-beard age. I liked older men. I had been drawn to my book editor, Parker Parnell, sexually before we hooked up to get my books published.

“Aroused too. Is it OK if I say that?” he asked.

“Are you admitting to being gay too?” I asked.

“Certainly. I’m a top. Would it be too much to hope for that you’re a submissive.”

“Versatile, but a submissive mostly,” I answered.

“Excellent.” We were sitting next to each other in a bench seat, out of view from most of the barroom. He placed a strong, workman’s hand on my knee under the table. “Is this being too forward—too soon?” he asked.

“No, I like to feel the hand there.” It went farther than that. Symbolically, a guy putting his hand on my thigh established command. I was a submissive who liked to be commanded. I wouldn’t tell him that, though . . . at least not yet. It was enough now for him to know that I took cock. We didn’t need to get into how I liked to take it until and unless this went further. I wasn’t in the mood to prevent it from spinning out, though.

“Is aroused a good expression for what you’re going for in your erotica?”

I laughed. “It’s good. If I couldn’t get a response like that from a gay male reader of The Handyman, I shouldn’t be writing books like that. So, you’re gay and a top.”

“Yes, gay and a power top.” He paused to make sure I had absorbed the “power,” which I had. I just smiled at him, assuring him that this didn’t make me lose interest. “I’m actively seeking. I live here in Annapolis. Twenty-five years in the Navy, and now I’m an instructor at the Naval Academy, which is close by. And your book arouses me, yes, but not as much as you do in person. Are you actively gay too? I don’t remember getting an answer to that. Is it good that I’m a top? Do you like a man to take control? Do you engage in casual sex?”

His hand had moved up my thigh and on the inside edge. I spread my legs wider to let him know that was fine with me.

“Yes, I’m a submissive. I want a man to be a man with me. Casual sex can be interesting.”

“Yes, it can. And you’re hard,” he said in a low, breathy voice. His hand was on my basket.

“Yes.”

“For me?”

“Yes, possibly,” I answered, “probably.” The truth was, though, that I had gone hard for the cover model, Doug James, earlier in the evening and pretty much had stayed that way. That I already was hard and panting low made it much easier for me to be so easy for this sailor, Stan Sinclair.

“I’m hard for you too,” he said. “You can feel me, if you want.” I put my hand on his crotch. He was hard and he was hung. “You’re finished for the night at the book festival, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“You don’t have to be there until sometime tomorrow?”

“I have a session to attend at 11:00 in the morning.”

“No one waiting for you in your hotel room tonight?”

“No.”

“Have you been done by a sailor before?”

“I’m looking forward to be able to write about being done by a sailor,” I answered, with a laugh.

“I have a cottage on the water a short walk from here. I live alone.”

“A cottage on the water in Annapolis? Sounds expensive. What kind of sailor did you say you were? Do you ride the waves?”

“I didn’t say. I’m the retired admiral kind of sailor, but, as I noted, I still teach at the Academy. And when I get the chance, I ride the midshipmen. I came up through the ranks. I’ve fucked at every level of the Navy over the years. I hope that isn’t—”

“That sounds lovely,” I said. “You said we could walk there?”

* * * *

He fucked me on a studio bed on a screened porch about ten feet from the water’s edge in a cove off Spa Creek, which ran into the Severn River and hence into the Chesapeake Bay.

He laid me on my back, butt on a bolster pillow at the side edge of the bed with my shoulders and head propped up on the wooden wall of the house so that I could watch it all—his bald head between my thighs, my legs spread and bent, the heels of my feet pressed into the side edge of the mattress. While holding my legs spread with hands gripping under my knees, he ate me out and licked and rolled my balls in his mouth and sucked my cock. He gave me merciless attention, agreeing with me that I was going to come for him—that he would relentless work me until I did. And when I did, exhausted and moaning, he rose over me, penetrated me with a think, long erection, and grasped my knees and rowed them in and out to the rhythm of his thrusts deep inside me as he took me higher and higher toward heaven and then over the edge in a rolling gush of an ejaculation.

The man was fit and virile, in complete command, and insistent on victory and a surrender from me that I gave him then and then again in his bedroom inside the house, backed to the wall, knees on his hips and arms flung around his neck as he thrust up, deep up into my passage. And in his shower after I’d knelt in front of him and taken his cock in my mouth, followed by standing but bent over, grasping my ankles as he mounted and fucked me from behind. And then a last time, a sneak attack, waking in his bed the next morning on my belly, with him straddling my hips and riding my ass.

Stan was good—no, he was great—and I told him so. But I didn’t tell him the number of times he was inside me and pumping that my mind went to the book covers bearing the image of Doug James. I was being a slut in Annapolis, but I wasn’t usually that casual about it. I blame it on Doug James possessing my brain. I ached to be fucked; Admiral Stan Sinclair did a credible job of meeting my need that night.

Over coffee at his kitchen island the next morning he asked, “Are you going to put me in one of your books?”

“You bet,” I answered. “But I’ll make you a general—at West Point. No one but you and I will know it’s you.”

“How will I know it’s me.”

“The studio couch on the porch and what you did to me there. Memorable. The river will be the Hudson rather than the Severn, but you’ll know.”

“Will I like what you write?”

“You’ll be Superman,” I said. “I want to keep it real,” I added.

The admiral laughed. “Will you take my card for when you come to Annapolis again?”

“I’d love to.”

“And can I be there when you come in Annapolis the next time?”

“You bet.”

* * * *

“They used that model for the cover of your D.C. cop series novel, Gotta Keep Trying.”

“Yes, I know they did. The one I’m sending you now, Snitches, is part of the D.C. vice cop Hardesty series too. I want the same guy on the cover of each book in the series. Another, younger guy can be different in each book, but the cop character should be the same guy for each.” I could have said the cop guy should be Doug James each time. But I didn’t necessarily want Park Parnell, my book editor at both Weld Publishing and its erotica imprint, Flescher, to know how stuck I’d become on Doug James. They’d already used James for the cover of the first book in the series, so I was saying just continue using him without revealing my specific interest in him.

I was writing this series of D.C. cop gay male books with him directly in mind now, though. I didn’t want anyone else on the cover. God, I wished we’d hooked up in the spring at the Annapolis erotica book festival.

I was sitting on the balcony overlooking the sweep of the Shelter Cove yacht basin on Hilton Head Island. It was summer break at Shepherdstown University, and the publishing house had sent me down here to the South Carolina coast to try to get the mainstream novel, Alton’s Folly, which was set here, finished and back to them. I just about had that finished, but the gay erotica I’d started to write was playing through. I didn’t have much control over my muse. I worked on what the muse pressured me to work on.

I’d been working on the third Hardesty cop book, which I was going to title Retribution. I’d been dreaming of Doug James’s body, which wasn’t all that different from Steve Whathisname’s body, which was draped naked on the sofa facing the TV in the condo living room in back of me. I’d met Steve down in the yacht basin, where he ran a charter boat business, taking a tourist boat called Savannah’s Delight over to Savannah, Georgia, twice a day Thursdays through Mondays. He worked on boat maintenance the other two days. This was Tuesday, and he’d been upstairs here working on maintenance of me from last evening. He was stretched out, playing with himself and watching gay male porn DVDs on the TV set. He had been calling me to come in and ride his cock when Parker called from New York.

I knew what Parker was calling about, but I wanted to steal a march on him. I was close to having the Alton’s Folly manuscript finished, but I—or, rather, my muse—was pushing the erotica ones, and I wanted him to take Snitches at the same time. I also wanted to clearly establish that the guy who had become the driving force for this cop series, Doug James, would be used on the cover.

“So, you’re ready to hand in the Alton’s Folly manuscript?” Parnell asked.

“Yes, just about, but I want you to take Snitches at the same time—and the prospectus on the next one in the Hardesty series, Retribution. And I want you to pledge to get the same guy on the cover of the whole series.”

“That’s a lot of want, Nick,” Parnell said. But he laughed. “I can ask about the cover art but maybe you should come back and fight that battle with the book designers yourself. You know that publishers demand to have control on the covers. You could hand in the other manuscripts then too. But it shouldn’t be all that hard to convince them it’s good to keep the same cover guy for the series. It’s time you check in with New York anyway.”

Steve Whatshisname had pulled on athletic shorts and padded out to the balcony behind the high chair I was sitting in, the bar-top height of the chairs and table dictated by the need to get the full sweep of the harbor above the balcony wall. His hands had started on my shoulders, but they worked their way quickly down to my nipple, which he was squeezing and thrumming between thumbs and forefingers. “I’m hard for you, baby,” he whispered in my ear. “A guy is doing marvelous things with another guy on the TV. Come in and ride me and mimic what’s doing on the screen. We can scroll back to get it from the start.”

“You want me to come to New York? Now?” I asked on the phone. I didn’t directly answer Steve, but I didn’t try to push him away either. I could feel the hardness of him pressed into my back. He ran a hand down my bare chest and under the waistband of my athletic shorts, finding, grasping, and slow-stroking my cock.

“As soon as you can,” Parker answered from down the line. “Marketing wants Alton’s Folly in the Christmas section of the fall list. That’s the best sales spot. And I’m anxious to read Snitches. The first one in the series blew me away. That cop of yours is a firecracker—having a guy working the vice he’s a captive of himself is hot. And, speaking of that, there’s incentive for you to get here this weekend.”

“Oh? What?”

“I think you’re obsessed with this cover model, Doug James, you keep insisting gets used for the covers for this series. He’ll be at a party I’m giving Saturday night. If you haven’t met him already, I’ll introduce him to you.”

“And supply a bedroom?” I asked, with a laugh. It was sort of a trembly laugh, because Steve was doing wonders with his hands on my body. I’d only paid him for last night. This lingering into the next day was all his idea.

“You can stay with me—in my bed, of course, while you’re in New York.”

“Sounds good. But what I’d meant was a bedroom during the party. I can’t deny I find this James guy sexy as hell.”

“Good luck with that,” Parnell said. “So, I can expect you this weekend? You’ve got a key to the house.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll send an itinerary when I get one. Gotta go now, though. I need to get off the phone.” I clicked off. I was close to getting off otherwise. I’d slouched down into the chair and raised one ankle to the balcony railing. Steve had my shorts pulled down to below my balls, and he was working my cock hard with one hand and one of my nipples with the other. His face was buried in my throat and he was making low guttural sounds.

We fucked on the sofa, both of us looking at the TV and mimicking the fucking going on there. Steve was on his back, and I was stretched out on top of him, my toes buried in the arm of the sofa between that and the cushion edge and under his arm pits. My fists were buried in the sofa cushion beside his knees, he was holding my waist between his calloused hands, and I was raising and lowering my ass on his erection—a reverse crab position.

And I was thinking of Doug James, who had the same muscular build and thuggish look as Steve did, while I fucked myself on the tourist boat captain’s cock.

* * * *

Parker Parnell lived in a six-bedroom brownstone on West 142nd Street in Hampton Heights, North Manhattan, near the City College of New York. He hadn’t been born rich, but he had acquired a Russian oligarch boyfriend, Yevgeny “Someoneorother,” who had died and left him the Manhattan house with money to keep it up. It’s what he had recommended I do as well to free myself to write, but I hadn’t found a sickly gay Russian oligarch yet. That wasn’t fair to Yevgeny, though. It appears his terminal sickness was a garroting for trying to swindle fellow Russian oligarchs and for being under suspicion of spying for the Americans.

In any event, Parker had the bedroom space to accommodate me while I was in New York to consult with the Weld Publishers Flescher-imprint designers and to attend Parker’s Saturday night party. I came back from the Flescher offices to the party, which had started without me, on a high, as I had won my point of using Doug James—they could use the same image on every cover—on the covers of my D.C. vice cop Hardesty books. Parker met me at the door.

“There’s someone I want you to meet, up from Washington,” Parker said, in sotto voce. I wondered why he was whispering. I could hear the party going on on the second level, which was a full-house sweep of living, sitting, and dining room space.

“Doug James is here, as you promised?” I asked, as we moved to the stairs.

“No, he hasn’t arrived yet. He’s expected, but he hasn’t arrived. No, this is someone from my past. Sebastian Westgate. I’ve told him about you and he wants to meet you. Very hush hush. He’s a spy, you know?”

No, I didn’t know. I had never heard of Sebastian Westgate before. But I had no trouble picking him out of the crowd when we got to the second floor. He was standing, straight as a tree, next to the fireplace. Two young men, who I recognized as cover models Flescher used, were flanking him and chatting away. As soon as Parker and I reached the top of the stairs and entered the adjacent sitting room, though, the man’s steely gaze turned to us, and in less than an instant I was shivering from his cold, piercing stare. In just that instant, the man’s assessing stare had stripped and fucked me cruelly.

And my response was to want him to do so.

“I thought that a spy could give you some inspiration for your writing,” Parker whispered to me.

“Good thinking,” I said.

“It’s rumored that the man runs a stable of men who seduce spy targets in other countries and sucks them dry of their countries’ secrets.”

“I can feel the plotlines jumping out at me already,” I answered.

“So, you do want to meet him—and maybe go upstairs with him. He’s made clear to me that he wants to take you upstairs.”

“Yes.”

He was pushing sixty, but he was tall, ramrod straight, ruggedly handsome, and lean. He was dressed peculiarly but also leaving the impression that it was the rest of us in the series of rooms who were underdressed. He wasn’t Asian, but he was wearing a gauzy white Philippine Mandarin-collar barong Tagalog shirt that fell in a straight line down his chest and beyond his waistline. The cut of the shirt showcased the slimness of his body, but the transparency of the shirt showcased the hardness of that body and how sinewy he was. His nipples stood out and showed through the flimsy shirt material. It also showed that he had a dragon tattoo on his left pectoral that moved over his shoulder and down his left arm.

He was gray-headed, the hair in a Marine-style buzz cut, and a close-cropped beard and mustache. His black trousers were impeccably pressed, and, as Parker and I entered the room adjacent to where he was, he took a hand off the hip of one of the young men he was talking to. It was obvious that young man had been quite fine with having a possessing hand from this imperial-bearing man on his hip.

“That’s him, in all his glory. Sebastian Westgate,” Parker whispered, his tone almost reverential. The man continued undressing me with his eyes, fully in command, and I melted to him.

Parker walked me to the man and then guided the two young men Westgate had been talking to away, leaving the two of us alone in a sea of partygoers.

“Ah, Nick Hampton, the author,” Westgate said in a deep baritone. “Or should I say G. P. Hardd, also the author?” He smiled at me a smile that was on the lips but didn’t make it to his eyes. The image I got was of a snake, but a very dangerous, mesmerizing one—or perhaps the wary dragon perched on his shoulder and licking at one of his puffy nipples. He put a hand on my hip and I left it there. I was his for the taking. He knew I was.

“So, you know who I am,” I said. “That’s flattering—I hope.”

“Yes, it’s meant to be. I’ve read you in both of those pen names,” Westgate said, “and I could easily believe you have other pen names producing even steamier stories. You write very well. Your graphic scenes are very arousing and show that you have considerable experience in what you write. And you look great. Parker has told me more about you.”

“So, you and Parker are old friends?” I said, a little flustered that this was moving so fast. Had I done something to signal that I was easy?

“Yes, Parker and I go way back. We share desires and information. I guess you could say we spot for each other.”

“You spot for each other?”

“Yes, he says you are one of his young men . . .”

He has a stable of young men? I wondered. I was just one of a stable for Parker?

“. . . and that you are a great lay.”

Parker is willing to pimp me?

“I want to fuck you.”

So, yes, Parker was pimping me.

“Your Hardesty character fucks rough,” Westgate continued. “You write his scenes as if he’s fucking you, the narrator. I want to fuck you rough too. I would enjoy reenacting some of the positions you describe in your books.”

Before I could respond to that, the publisher of the Flescher imprint had descended upon us. “Sorry to interrupt your conversation, but there’s a book reviewer I need for G. P. to meet. You don’t mind if I—?”

“No, not at all,” Westgate said with a tight smile. “I’ll use the young man later.”

I don’t think the publisher heard that last sentence as he guided me off toward the dining room at the back of the house. For my part, I don’t think I would have known what to say to Westgate if we hadn’t been interrupted. Embarrassingly, I knew what I would have done. I would have taken him upstairs to the bedroom I was borrowing and let him do whatever he wanted with me. His was a commanding presence, and I was a total submissive. My mind was already spinning him into a character for my books—not for a Hardesty book, though. Sebastian Westgate was a strong enough character to star in his own book series. I even was mulling a name for his unit of male prostitutes at the Agency. “The Candy Store” sounded like a good name. And not Westgate, but something close—maybe Winterberry. I wouldn’t use Westgate too closely as a model for my Candy Store unit chief. He was a real spy and looked to be formidable. I wouldn’t risk writing too close to the reality lines. I’d just try to capture the essence of his presence in a storyline.

As I was talking with the book reviewer, I saw that Doug James had arrived. He hadn’t come alone, though. A young, beautiful woman, with long, straight blond hair, and long legs, glimpsed almost to her beltline through a slit in her skirt, was standing with him, close to him, the two appearing to be intimately chatting. He looked over at me, though, as if he’d divined that I had picked him out in the crowd. He smiled, recognizing me, and I smiled back. He looked like a million dollars, all muscles and form-fitting clothes, carrying himself as the model he was.

The book reviewer asked me a question and I turned my attention on him. When I tried to locate James in the crowd again with my eyes, he was half way up the stairs to the first of two bedroom levels. Again he turned and smiled at me. I took that as a signal. It took me another ten minutes to disengage from the book reviewer and a Flescher editor who showed up to try to add glowing coals to my authorial “goodness” in the discussion. When I could gracefully pull away, I too went up the stairs to the level where the master bedroom and another large guest room facing the street were located.

They were in the guest room, on a king-sized bed. Doug James, was on top of and inside the blonde beauty. Both were naked. James was vigorously fucking the woman. He still looked magnificent—more magnificent naked than dressed. But somehow the edge of the arousal and obsession I’d been harboring for months was dimming.

Parker appeared at my side. “He’s straight, Nick. Completely straight, I believe. I knew you were obsessed with him. Better you find out this way. I hope it doesn’t tamper down the sexuality of your Hardesty books. I know you use him as an inspiration for those. I didn’t tell you over the phone because I was afraid you wouldn’t come to New York then. I’ve provided compensation.”

He turned his head and I followed the direction he was looking in. Sebastian Westgate as standing at the top of the stairs. “He’s very rich and powerful,” Parker said. He turned and walked to Westgate, gave him a nod, and then descended the stairs.

Westgate was upon me before I could react in any way. The taking started immediately and there was no pause for permissions. He didn’t need permissions. He knew he didn’t. He gripped my throat with his right hand, pushing my back against the hall wall, and lifting me almost off the floor. Struggling for breath, I had to stand on my toes to accommodate his stretch. Just with that, I was completely in his control. His mouth came to and possessed mine. He unzipped me with his left hand, roughly pulled my cock and balls out. He squeezed my balls, making my eyes water and causing me to whimper within his muffling control of my mouth. I squirmed ineffectually in his grasp but settled down almost immediately and raised my knees to hook on his hips as his hand went to my cock and he stroked me off. I was so overpowered and keyed up that I shot my load quickly.

Pulling out of the kiss, Westgate growled, “I understand you are Parker’s guest here. Where is your bedroom?”

“Next level up,” I whimpered.

There, he pushed me over onto my belly on the bed, naked after he’d stripped me. I panted, watching him pull the belt out of my trousers and then his. He beat me on the rump with my folded belt and then used them both, one each to tie the wrists of my spread arms to the headboard of the bed. He put me on my knees on the bed, my wrists bound to the headboard, chest and cheek pressed to the bedspread, with one of his hands palming my head and holding me down. He mounted my hips in a crouch, thrust up inside me, and fucked the hell out of me.

When he was gone, leaving me moaning, groaning—and purring—I already was beginning to weave story plots of a master American spy and his cruel sexual tastes and exploits. I now had a specific name in my mind for the protagonist. I’d call him Sam Winterberry. I couldn’t very well call him Sebastian Westgate in the books. He’d be a master CIA spy, heading up a unit of prostitutes, gathering secrets the old-fashioned way—by giving the marks what they most wanted and then blackmailing them.

He’d left me, whispering in my ear, “I wish to use you occasionally in my operations. Give it thought. Think of the stories you could gather and tell. Tell Parker, if you’re interested.”

How could I not be interested?

* * * *

I lay on my back on the lounge bed next to my swimming pool in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, on the Potomac, half way between sleep and wakefulness, dreaming of all of the paces Sebastian Westgate had put me through the previous weekend, fucking me for more than two hours, in various demanding and controlled positions, strapping me with the belts more for the arousal of the snap of them than for the pain. Fucking me hard and then fucking me harder, employing many of the positions I had included in my books. My mind went to his relationship with Parker. Parker saying he was a master spy for the United States. Pulling in Parker’s house and the Russian oligarch who had willed it to him—and the questionable death of the Russian. Had the Russian known Sebastian Westgate too? Is that perhaps why the Russian died—because he had been talking with Westgate? Was Parker one of Westgate’s male whores? The possibilities for stories here were endless.

I was listening to the drone of the mower in the background, but not really fully aware of it until the sound was gone. Plots of American spying, manipulated by a man named Sam Winterberry—tall and slim, ruggedly handsome even at nearly sixty. Mesmerizing and commanding. Hung like a bull, virile, demanding, cruel. Keeping his young male agents in control with the cruelty of his cock. Other plots—of Hardesty and the D.C. cops wove in and out too, but they were receding in my mind, with the spy unit plots filtering in. Always there were the men, showing me their cocks, mounting me, fucking me—Parker and Doug James, Steve of the Shelter Cove cruises and Sebastian. And my very own black beauty, Ev Jones.

I had slipped my Speedo off and had my hips raised, stroking my cock in a half sleep as the plot lines of the Hardesty and Winterberry series wove in and out of my mind—and of cover images of the books. Doug James, certainly, for the Hardesty books. I’d already won the battle on that. But the obsession for James receding. For the Winterberry books? Winterberry would always be there, but in the background, in that series. So, for the cover a different man each time—someone who was a main character in each separate book. The first one, a black Adonis recruited by Winterberry at the Virginia training facility, The Farm.

A hand brushed mine away from my cock, a fist encircled the root. I felt the moist warmth of lips sliding down the sides of my shaft. I started to gently rock up inside the warmth of the mouth, my eyes slitting open, my hands palming the tight, black curls on his head. I moaned a, “Yes, yes, fuck me.”

“Open your thighs to me,” Ev Jones murmured as he came up onto the lounge bed on his knees between my legs. He palmed my buttocks and pulled me onto his hard cock—entering, entering, entering me. His voice was commanding, demanding. I was the total submissive. I could do no other than open my legs to him and let him take whatever he wanted.

“Yes, yes, fuck me. Take me. Do it now,” I cried out.

He did. He did all of it.

As we lay in each other’s arms afterward, panting, I asked, “Have you ever thought of posing for the cover of a book, Ev?”

For readers who like to have background information on stories they read here, note that this story poses a fictional author as the writer of several Habu works you can find posted earlier to Gaydemon: “The Handyman,” and part of the Hardesty D.C. vice cop series, “Gotta Keep Trying,” Snitches,” and “Retribution.” The image of the book cover stud of this story can be seen in the marketplace book covers of these titles (there are three further Hardesty novellas not yet published to Gaydemon). In the last part of this story, the author is formulating writing a series of stories/books based on a character named Westgate in this story. This gives inspirational background for a series of habu works, the Sam Winterberry series, on the operations of a CIA Candy Store unit. Several Sam Winterberry stories are posted to Gaydemon, the last one being “Fomenting a Coup.”