Finding a Niche

I found quite early in my experience—and, eventually, career—that being able to bareback in sex with a man was a means to please him to the extent that he would commit to me—financially and with favor, if not romantically. I found that it took me to higher levels of satisfaction too. So, after initially letting myself be taken that way out of naivete, I researched the issue and found a means to combine drugs and checkups to be able to offer myself that way, if I chose to do it with a particular man. It has served me well through the years and has given me my own niche.

* * * *

The glass top of the patio table in the lanai between the glass sliding doors into the house and the pool was cold on my bare butt, but that was hardly noticeable in contrast to the hard cock that was deep up inside my ass, willing me to open to it fully. Arthur Ritchey was standing between my spread thighs, his silk robe open and hanging loose at his sides as he embraced me, his arms wrapped around my torso, the fingers of his right hand buried in the hair at the back of my head, grasping the curls of my hair, arching my head back so that I was staring up at the blue wavy effect of the light reflecting off the swimming pool in the ceiling of the lanai. His left hand was palming my buttocks, holding me close into him there, and his index finger was inside me, giving added thickness to his cock.

He had his lips buried in the hollow of my throat and he was making little huffing sounds. I was filled and stretched and moaning, every nerve ending in my body focused on the hard shaft and finger inside me, working their magic. And it was magic to me. I loved having a man lost to me, needing me so badly he had to be inside me, wanting me so badly they couldn’t control themselves.

I had anticipated that this interview would come to this. I’d known when he met me at the door just wearing the silk robe and holding an open champagne bottle that there would be this last hurdle after weeks of interviewing and inspections of his various projects.

The index finger running down into my crack provided pressure and guidance, wanting me as close into his groin as possible for the greatest possible penetration. I rolled my pelvis up, giving the shaft even deeper penetration, moving my heels to the tops of his buttocks on each side, over the silk of his robe. He was taking me expertly, and I felt myself relax, going with him, opening up entirely to shaft. We got the rocking motion in synch, moving together in the fuck.

“Yes, yes, now,” I murmured, giving the final acquiescence. He was already deep inside me, throbbing, waiting for me to open fully to him. I had done so. “Give it to me,” I moaned “Release your seed. Breed me.”

His lips came up to capture mine. He was in great shape for a man of fifty—trim, hard-bodied, muscular. Handsome as the devil and commanding as a man in his business—the business I aspired to—almost had to be. Holding me firmly in his embrace, he continued moving inside me, pulling back, gliding forward, pulling back, sliding forward, pulling back, thrusting forward. I opened even more, the muscles of my passage wall shimmering, clutching at the cock, searching for and perfectly melding with the rhythm of the fuck. “Yes, yes, yes,” I murmured.

Time was suspended. There was no passage of time, just the rhythm of the fuck.

Thrusting, thrusting, thrusting. Faster, harder, deeper.

I pulled away from the kiss, arching backward.

“Do it! Do it now!”

He retained me in the embrace, but let me arch back, his lips moving down my throat to, one after the other, my nipples. Licking, sucking, nipping. And his rock-hard cock thrusting, thrusting, thrusting. I was panting and groaning. “Yes, yes, yes. Like that. Fuck me. Fuck me. FUCK ME! Give it to me!” My right hand went between us, grasping my cock and stroking. “Now. Now!”

Thrusting, thrusting, thrusting. “Oh, Shit. Oh, fuck. I’m going to come!” And then I did, up between our bellies.

“You. You too!”

Arthur continued to thrust and thrust and thrust. He wasn’t unusually thick, but he was long. And he was surprisingly hard and vigorous for a man his age. I had thought from early on that this was what he would want—and Matthew had warned me this probably would be required of me—but I had no idea that he would be this virile. That he could be this hard, that he would reach into me this deep, keep it up this long. He was fucking me in my soft, spongy core. His breathing became labored and ragged. I knew he was close.

“Yes. Now!” he exclaimed, pulled out of me, and jerked the condom off his cock. He let me slowly fall back onto the surface of the patio table, although he continued to cradle me with one arm. His other hand glided down my torso, squeezed my spent cock and my balls, and grasped his cock for the final stroking. I palmed his heaving pecs as he crouched over me, vigorously stroking his cock.

With a cry, he tensed and jerked, muttered, “I’m coming,” and arced cum on my flat belly, the cream merging with what I had already deposited there. “Yes, yes, give it to me,” I cried out, as he managed a secondary ejaculation. Spent, he came down on top of me, capturing my lips with his again.

The last hurdle. If I didn’t have a job with Ritchey Consultants of Washington, D.C., now, it was unlikely I’d ever have one. But there was one other level to go to to assure his commitment to me.

Catching his breath after coming out of that kiss, he murmured, “That was nice. Matthew’s right, you’re a sweet lay.”

“You know you can come in me . . . bareback me,” I said. “They make drugs for that now. I take them.”

“Were you disappointed?”

“Never. There are higher levels than perfection, though. I want you to bareback me next time. I want to have that experience with you—to give myself to you totally.”

He smiled at me. “Can you stay the night?”

“Whatever you want,” I responded, “You’re the boss,” hoping that that was going to be the case and wondering if he would be able to get it up again that night.

I needn’t have wondered if he would be able to fuck me again that night in his bed—or that he would bareback me. And when he had barebacked me and we both lay there, next to each other, each of us savoring his release deep inside me, I knew I had him.

* * * *

Matthew Grant was the one who started focusing me in finding my niche in the world. Until I met up with him, I was hurling through space at a purposely double step but had little idea where I was headed. I knew I wanted to get wherever I was going quickly; I just didn’t have a vision of where that was exactly. I cut through my high school years at high speed, finishing at sixteen, with honors and with credits against a year into college as well. I had no trouble with studies. A month shy of nineteen I was nearly finished with college at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, still without knowing what I wanted to do other than I liked working with management issues in companies, And I’d had some pleasant work as a male model of sports clothes and liked the loose and sassy world of men’s fashions, where many I had worked with were unapologetically gay. I admired that even though I wasn’t ready at the time to openly declare. Not declaring didn’t mean I hadn’t been laid on occasion. My mind was more on making it in the business world than being made in the commercial modeling world, though. I’d worked on some hypothetical cases in a business class at ODU and had enjoyed it.

I also was rushing ahead on sexual maturity. Norfolk is a major naval port for the U.S. Navy. Not more than a month after my eighteenth birthday, I met a guy in the Old Dominion library who turned out to be a Navy sailor. I hadn’t known it, but I sat at a table that was a pickup spot. I was interested in guys and the sailor was squared away and talked a good line, but I had no idea where that was leading until I’d agreed to go to a nearby club with him, called The Wave, let myself get drunk, and was fucked up against a wall in dimly lit corridor at the rear of what turned out to be a gay club.

It was the first time I’d been fucked anally. Luckily, the sailor wasn’t built large, so I wasn’t turned off by first-time significant pain. It was more a feeling of filling and mutual-need possessing, and fusion of two hot bodies. Most notable was that he took me raw, and it never was quite as good after that if I didn’t take the risk to bareback. I rarely took the risk after that first night of multiple couplings, though, unless I wanted a commitment of some sort from the other man. It just was so much more satisfying when I did.

I never saw that sailor again, but later that night I was offered money by another sailor and was fucked in a nearby fleabag of a hotel again that night. He was a bit longer and thicker, while not producing pain that outstripped the pleasure and novelty of the experience. I was experiencing a favorable progression into the world of a bottom. He barebacked me too. I didn’t know any better that first day.

I had more slipped into water than leaping into the fire in initiation, being fucked by two different men in my initial anal outing. The initial encounter with the sailor I met in the library, who wasn’t much older than I was, had been a hurried, fully dressed fumble in the dark. The sailor who took me to a hotel later that night was older, more experienced, and demanded value for his money. Little did he know how inexperienced I was. He was intent on taking his pleasure, though, and gave me little thought.

That night I received and gave my first blow jobs. I got naked with another man and experienced a man’s hands and lips on me everywhere for the first time, and I learned both what a close-hold fast and furious doggie-style fuck was and that I could have my legs spread wide and high while on my back in a missionary position, and both give and take pleasure in watching my partner’s facial reactions as he fucked me slow and deep. I saw that the expression on his face was one of almost a spiritual experience when he ejaculated deep inside me.

One night and the cum of three men inside me. Quite a beginning. I was to wise to the science of it only later, but it had been established that men had a deeper connection with me when I allowed them to bareback me.

After that I started developing an appreciation for older men—at least ten years older than I was. The first fuck with a guy near my age had been awkward and fumbling. The older sailor worked my body, taking and giving pleasure with expertise. He took his time, worshipping and caressing my body that night until I was begging him for it. His ejaculation deep inside rolled on and on. Then, in contrast, he woke me up the next morning by rolling over on top of me and fucking the hell out of me. He put me on my knees and mounted me from behind and above like we were going to the races. While he fucked me, he slapped my buttocks with one hand and grasped the curls on my head with the other and arched me painfully back toward his chest. I should have hated that, but I didn’t. I would have paid him—if I’d had the money—for giving me the release and the training. Instead, I left the hotel room the next morning with $150 in my pocket I didn’t have before and a line on a way to ease my way to college graduation financially. So what if I was walking a little funny and painfully. I knew that would change, with more experience. And it did.

I didn’t know at the time that my first two were not hung studs. I was going to learn that there were such men, but not before I’d gained some experience of my own.

I didn’t mind the fucking, and, in fact, found it more exhilarating than I had thought it would be, and it released me of confusion and pressure that had been building up in me. And I had fallen into a much-needed revenue stream. I was at ODU on scholarship, but I didn’t have nearly enough support money coming in. I found that doing the rounds of the gay clubs that Navy sailors, temporarily in port, frequented allowed me to earn a couple of extra hundred bucks during the weekend and helped hone my sexual skills as well. Luckily, I had good genes—I was trim and lightly muscled without putting any effort into it, and both of my parents, now both gone in an automobile accident, had been lookers and had passed on to me a good mix of youthful features and a mop of curly auburn hair, with golden highlights, and pale hazel eyes and a half-decent “ah, gosh” smile.

It didn’t take me long to know what rubbers were for and why I’d want them used. It never was quite the same with them, though, and I found a way not to need them if I wanted more from a guy than just a casual tumble in the hay.

* * * *

When I first laid eyes on Matthew Grant, it was through a dirty picture window of a room at the Ocean Shore Motel in Virginia Beach, one of those beachfront motels from the fifties that had not yet been knocked down for a snazzy high-rise condominium. Stinger and Buddy, at least that’s the names the sailors had given me at The Garage bar that afternoon, had failed to close the curtains over the window, and Matt had been walking by and stood, transfixed for a brief moment, looking into the room and at me being fucked by two sailors, before moving on.

I was on the bed on my back. Buddy was below me, between my thighs, holding my legs raised and spread with his fists, his pelvis moving back and forth as he fucked me in the ass. Stinger was knelt on the bed, his cock in my mouth, getting it engorged for his turn with my ass. He was at such an angle that I had a view of the uncovered motel room window even with a cock in my throat. The meeting of the eyes between me and Matt was very brief, but it was enough for us both to remember it and for there to be no need for Matt to discover what I was and what I would do when we met later that afternoon.

The Navy guys were gone when I next encountered Matt. They’d checked out of the motel, and I was pausing at an open-walled café facing the beach, catching lunch and a Coke on an early Sunday afternoon before finding a bus back to the Old Dominion campus. I had my backpack on the ground beside me. I always carried the toiletry necessities, including lube and condoms now, and a change of underwear and T-shirt with me in case I got an overnighter like the previous night. Both of the sailors were muscle hunks and had given me quite a workout for the money.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

I looked up to see that it was the man—an older man, a bit pudgy, but not bad looking, and dressed pretty expensively—who had been startled seeing me on the bed through the motel room window with the two sailors.

“Yes, sure,” I said, looking around to make sure that there were other tables available, which there were. “I mean, no, I don’t mind,” I clarified. That there were other tables available told me what this probably was about. I had studying to do today. Final exams of my final year were just around the corner. But money in was money satisfying a need. He was a little heavy and had to be beyond forty-five, but he looked clean and had a good smile.

“Can I buy you a drink?” He asked.

“Sure. Another Coke, I guess.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have a beer?”

“Sure, I would. But I’m not old enough. I’m nearly nineteen, but not old enough to be buying beer.” I wanted to establish what I was legal for and what I wasn’t.

“You wouldn’t be buying the beer. I would be, and there’s no one to say I wouldn’t want two for myself.”

I said nothing, so he ordered two. When they came, he nudged one over to me. I’m sure the waiter saw, but no one said anything, so I took a swig out of the bottle and then another one. I’m sure the waiter had a good idea what was going down here, and underage drinking was a mild aspect of it. Not any of the waiter’s business, though.

There hadn’t been any trouble with the beer the previous night. Sailors drank like fish, and for some reason they all seemed to think that the rent-boys they took up with had to be drunk to take them. I didn’t get drunk, but I didn’t mind being high when a sailor was fucking me. Sailors tended to fuck rough. I’d been slapped around a bit; it always was easier to take half looped. Sailors always seemed to think they had to beat their prey into submission.

“That’s good, thanks,” I said, giving him a smile.

“There’s more where that came from,” he said.

“You trying to get me drunk?” I asked.

“Could be. Would you mind?”

“No, probably not, but I usually like to be aware of what’s happening if I am enjoying it.”

He laughed. “So, I don’t look that much like a toad and hard to take sober?”

“No, certainly not. But I do have to study for exams today,” I added.

“Exams? You finishing up high school?”

“No, college. I go to Old Dominion, over in Norfolk. I graduate this year.”

“Graduating college at eighteen? Impressive,” he said.

“I will have turned nineteen when I graduate. But I guess you could say I’m in a hurry. But maybe in a hurry to go nowhere. I’m not sure what I want to do.”

“Besides going with men?” he said, giving me a smile—establishing that he’d seen me with the sailors.

“Yes, besides going with men,” I answered, giving him a level look. “I do what I have to do to pay for school.”

“But you hate doing it?”

“No, I don’t hate doing it,” I answered. This was all part of establishing the playing field. I’d been through feeling each other out and negotiating before. “I like doing it.”

“My name is Matthew Grant,” he said. “My friends call me Matt. I know about Old Dominion University. I’m here attending a seminar there this next week. I teach at the University of Richmond—I’m a professor in the business management program there. And I mentor graduate students in finding their niche in professional life. What’s your name?”

“I’m Cory. Cory Gilbert,” I said. I don’t know why, but I gave him my real name. I didn’t usually do that with potential johns. But then potential johns didn’t usually give me the details about themselves that he was doing, assuming it was true. It sounded true. It may all be bullshit, but it was unnecessary to be giving me bullshit at this point. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that I would lay down for a man—or even two of them at once. He had a hand on my knee under the table, and I was leaving it there, although I looked down at it through the glass top of the table and then back up into his eyes so he knew I hadn’t missed the maneuver.

“How about another beer, Cory? You’ve finished that one quickly.”

“Sure, why not?” I asked.

“Have you thought about what you’d do after you graduate?” he asked when a full bottle of beer had been exchanged with the empty.

“No, not really. I’m mostly thinking about passing the exams for this one.”

“What are you majoring in?”

“Business management.”

“Perfect. Did you know that you really need an MBA to find a good professional niche in that field?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Where are you thinking of going for your MBA?”

“I haven’t thought of going for an MBA. I don’t have the money. I thought maybe I’d manage a McDonald’s or Target store for a while—if I was lucky. Maybe I’d try studying for the MBA at night.”

“Prostitution isn’t lucrative?”

“Not on the scale that I do it.” If he was going to be bald about it, so was I. Both of us knew that if he offered me enough money, I would let him cover me.

“Do you have a lover, Cory, or just a stream of anonymous johns?”

“I don’t have a lover.”

“That’s what I want, Cory, is a lover. A young lover. In exchange I could sponsor that lover through an MBA—at the University of Richmond—and could help him find a professional niche in this world. I would want an exclusive during that time.”

“You’d buy a lover without sampling the goods first?” I asked.

“I’ve seen you in action. I’d be happy to pay $200 for an audition—this afternoon. I have a room at the Ocean Shore Motel—where I saw you this morning.”

“That motel is a dive. I’d find it unbelievable that a professor at a Richmond college would stay there.”

“I don’t want to stay there. I’m staying somewhere else. I booked the room at the Ocean Shore after seeing you with those sailors. I plan to fuck you at the Ocean Shore. Where I have a room to sleep in wouldn’t be wild about me taking an eighteen-year-old boy to my room.”

“I see,” I said. And I, indeed, did see. He didn’t have to spell out his interest any more than that. That had been quite explicit—more so than most johns were, and he didn’t seem to be one of the crude ones.

“I asked you what you wanted to do in the future, and you answered me,” Grant said. “Now I’d like to know what you’d like to do—what you would do—for the next hour. Do you like it doggie style or missionary—so something more demanding? I’m more athletic than I look. We could do a cowboy if you want some control, but I mostly like to control the fuck myself.”

“Whatever. John’s choice,” I said. “Or does it turn you off to be called a john?”

“John’s fine for now. Lover could come later when and if we found a rhythm.”

“Is that what you want with a lay?” I asked. “Finding a rhythm you both like?”

“As, I said, my long-term goal is to find a lover. Do you want another beer now, or would you like to walk over to the motel with me?”

“I need to get back to school in time to do some studying tonight,” I answered, pushing myself up from the table. “So, I guess it’s the motel now.”

The sailors had fucked me. Matt made love to me. He brought to mind my first day of sex with men. The young sailor who fucked me up against the wall in the back corridor of The Wave had fucked me. The older sailor who took me to a hotel room later had made love to me that night—and he had fucked me the next morning. I fully understood now, as Matt Grant made love to me, undressing me, and kissing and caressing me all over, making me come even before the heavy sex started, the difference between lovemaking and fucking. I didn’t reject either, but I know knew the difference between the two.

When we were both naked, I asked him if he wanted me to suck him off, but he said, “Only if you are fully comfortable with it and want to. First let me feast myself on you.”

That was a good explanation of what he did, including eating my ass out before, sitting on end of the bed, he drew me to him, wrapped his arms around me, and took my cock in his mouth. His fingers were lubed up, and while he blew me, making me come in his throat, he was squeezing and spreading my butt cheeks with his hands and penetrating my hole with fingers from both hands and opening me up and spreading me. I understood why he was spending time doing that. He, surprisingly, was hung, both long and thick. As long as any man I’d had over the last ten months. Maybe the longest, I decided, when he was fully engorged. He was heavy, yes, thick around the middle, but he was so long that this would have no effect in achieving depth inside me. I began panting and moaning as soon as he was in full erection and was working me with his fingers. I writhed almost uncontrollably at first, but he was so good with his fingers that we fell into that rhythm he had talked about, me rocking on his hand. As well as heavy, he was hirsute, his chest, arms, and legs pelted with black curly hair.

“As you can see, I’m big—probably bigger than either of those sailors you were with—or both. Would you prefer to be drunk for this? I’m going to be stretching you,” he asked, obviously sensitive about his weight and physical presence, but for the attention he was giving me and the expertise he exhibited in do so, he had no reason to be concerned.

“No,” I answered. “I want to remember and savor every second of this.”

He obviously was pleased with my answer and continued giving me close, sensual attention.

“You going to use a rubber?” I asked. “Or do you want to bareback me? You can, if you want.”

“After seeing you with two sailors?” he said. “I don’t think so. I’d like to be with you naturally if and when we become lovers. But we can wait for that.”

For the first fuck, he remained seated on the end of the bed and, still squeezing my butt cheeks apart, lifted me and brought me into his lap, facing him. I wrapped my legs around him, crossing my ankles at the small of his back, and I groaned and panted hard, as he spent time positioning his bulb at my hole and them pulling me onto him.

He was sheathed with a condom, but I shuddered and felt a chill running up my spine when he murmured, as I was slowly sinking on him, “It is better raw. If you come to me in Richmond and will be exclusive, we’ll be checked out, and then we can bareback. It’s better raw. I do appreciate your offer.”

When, ultimately, I was with him in Richmond, we did bareback, and it was true, it was better raw. With his thickness and length, there were only a few times that it was better in any way with another man as it was with Matthew Grant.

When he was fully sheathed, he was deeper into the core of me than any man had been before. He held there, kissing me on the lips and throat, making love to me, and whispering endearments and inflaming words of what we would do together, until I had fully adjusted to him. He was taking his time with me. It wasn’t just a “slam, bang, thanks, good-bye” fuck. When he pulled away from the kissing, I had my turn, kissing down onto his chest, licking his nipples, making swirls with his curly chest hair with my tongue, giving him reason to pant and moan too and to engorge even further deep inside me.

For an endless time then, after I had fully opened to accommodate him, and him using the leverage of his feet and the pressure of his hands on my buttocks, he fucked me, pulling me on and off the shaft, first slowly, with an off rhythm of cadence and depth of stroke that had me groaning and shuddering and then faster and faster, deeper and deeper, setting in to a steady rhythm, until I grasped my cock and stroked myself off and he exploded inside me, and then again and again.

To me, he was old, so I assumed that was it—that the fuck was over. But that wasn’t it. There was a cooling and recharging period in which he just held me close to him and we kissed and caressed each other’s bodies with our hands, but then he put me through the paces of an evening of rolling fuck. When I felt him hard inside me again, he gently pushed my torso down toward the floor, with my arms streaming out on the carpet. He changed condoms, dropping the spent one by my face so that I could see how engorged with cum it was—how much cum he could produce—as he fucked me again. Then he pulled me on and off his cock again, with me stroking my own shaft, to another mutual ejaculation.

We showered and napped in each other’s arms. He rolled over on top of me, gently coaxing my thighs open, and fucked me again in a missionary. We showered and he took me to supper at a steak house.

We came back, and he put video on of an older black man fucking a younger white one with a cock that rivaled Matt’s, and he fucked me again to the loud moans and cries of little white guy being fucked by a black bull on the screen. He fucked me from behind in a doggie, bent over the side of the bed, my face turned toward the TV screen. Later, before we slept, he stretched out on his back and pulled me on top of him and I rode his cock in a cowboy. Still later, in the night, with me on my belly, he rolled over on top of me and rode me. In the morning, when I stumbled out of bed and headed for the toilet and shower, I picked up six used condoms, thick with cum as slugs, to keep from stepping on them.

When I came back from the shower, he was awake, on his back, grasping an erection. “Oh, you’ve already cleaned up,” he said. I could hear the disappointment in his voice.

“I can always shower again,” I said.

“Good.” And he put me on my back and took me again in the missionary position.

“Well?” I whispered as we were stretched out on the bed on Monday morning. “Weren’t you just going to fuck me once here and you were going back to your fancy hotel to sleep last night?”

“I liked it here. Come to Richmond after you’ve graduated at ODU. I’ll take care of you through a year of the MBA, and I’ll help you find your professional niche.”

So, that’s what I did, and it went fine.

* * * *

A year and a quarter later, I came back to Richmond after Arthur Ritchey, the friend Matt sent me to for a job interview after I’d completed my MBA, offered me a position in his Washington, D.C., management consultancy firm.

I met Matt at the Shagbark Restaurant in Carytown between the campus of the University of Richmond and his townhouse in the Fan District, where I had lived with Matt for my graduate school year. He hadn’t come alone.

“Cory, this is Sean, my graduate student for this year,” Matt said. And that explained everything that need be said. I wouldn’t be asked to come to Matt’s townhouse with him that night. “Arthur tells me you passed the interview with flying colors and have been offered a position.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you’ll be accepting it?” He looked a little tense, as if maybe I hadn’t and expected him to find me another job.

“Yes.”

“And it’s all that you wanted?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“You don’t sound fully enthusiastic. Is there something about the job that you don’t—?”

“I will be required to sleep with Ritchey,” I blurted out.

“Of course you will. What did you think I was training you to do? There is something about having sex with Arthur that you don’t like?” Matt asked. “Did he bareback you?”

“Yes, after the first time.”

“Well, then.” He said it like that settled everything. I was with Ritchey now.

Sean sat there, looking down at the napkin in his lap, but he didn’t react as if such arrangements were alien to him. If I had needed evidence that he had replaced me in Matt’s bed, his nonreaction was all I needed. I didn’t need to mince words.

“Yes, he’s fine that way.”

“Better than I am?” Matt asked, his voice teasing.

“No, not better than you are,” I answered. I could see the little smile of satisfaction appear on Sean’s face.

“But good enough?”

“Yes, good enough.”

“Then what’s the problem.”

“I thought at some point I wouldn’t have to prostitute myself,” I answered.

“We all have to prostitute ourselves to make it in the world, Cory,” Matt shot back. “There are just different ways people have to let others screw them to keep their positions.”

“I suppose,” I answered.

“There’s no supposition to it. I told you I’d help you find your niche in life. I’m surprised it hasn’t dawned on you yet that lying under older men is part of where you niche is. It isn’t just the management jobs, it’s also having a strong, wealthy, older man to dominate and control you. You were being fucked when I first saw you and assessed what your future could be. When I was looking for a position for you, that was an important element of what I was looking for. Part of your niche in life is to be kept and fucked by older men. I don’t think that’s an imposition for you. I think that is part of what you want and need in life.”

When he put it that way. . . .

And I was right. He didn’t invite me back to his house when he and Sean left. My education under him—literally—was over. But it hadn’t been over until that night when it was brought home to me just what my optimum niche in life was to be.

Before I left him and Sean at the restaurant, I was in the men’s room with Sean.

“Tell, me, Sean, is Matt barebacking you yet?”

He turned a look of surprise my way, but that changed to a tinge of smugness. “Yes, he is.”

Proof that Matt had moved on, so I should as well.

* * * *

“Cory, I would like you to meet Dieter Schwartzman. He has a sports boat-building company in Annapolis and is considering using our consultation services. You need your drink renewed, Dieter. I have to greet the Wilsons, who had just arrived. Perhaps Cory can get you a fresh drink . . . or anything else you might need or want.”

Arthur Ritchey left me with the tall man in his mid-fifties, who had movie-star looks, despite his age, stood ramrod straight, and was obviously an outdoor sportsman—wavy gray hair, but a deep tan, great musculature, manicured hands, and immaculate evening wear. He could have been a model for his age group in a catalog of very expensive men’s wear—even underwear. Even though I was meeting him for the first time face to face, I, of course, knew much more about him and I knew why Arthur had introduced him to me at this evening patio party around the pool at Ritchey’s Potomac Palisades mansion off MacArthur Boulevard.

When Arthur had told me he wanted me to attend this party he was hosting, he’d been very straightforward. “Schwartzman is gay. He’s a top and he fucks young men, Cory. We need his business. If he fancies you—and I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t—you are to let him lay you and you are to tell him he’s a god in bed.” It had been well established why Arthur had hired me for his firm, and that I’d let him lay me had made clear what I’d do for ambition.

The house sat high above the Potomac River rapids west of the Washington, D.C., downtown and of the older Georgetown that had been here before the nation’s capital was located in what once was a swamp. I was sure that the former German army officer also knew why we’d been introduced and Arthur had left us.

One of the things I knew was that the Germanic figure didn’t mince words or waste time.

“I don’t need a drink right now, but I do have a need for a men’s room—preferably somewhere private,” he said. He was looking into the house, to the well-lit and larger foyer and the sweep of the staircase to the second floor.

“Certainly. Let me show you to an upstairs bathroom,” I said.

Arthur had told me what bedroom to use—a remote one at the end of a long hallway with two turns. It wasn’t a room where anyone was likely to stumble into during the party. It had an en suite bathroom.

When Schwartzman went into the bathroom off the bedroom and went over to the toilet and unzipped himself, he left the bathroom door open. He clearly wanted me to see what he was packing. There wasn’t much peeing, because he was approaching a full erection. He stroked his cock the rest of the way to that condition as I locked the door to the corridor, stripped, and stretched out on the bed.

“I prefer the dresser,” he said when he came out of the bathroom. “Arthur told me you were athletic. He didn’t tell me that you had such a beautiful body. Stand facing the mirror for the start. Then, I think, the splits, on the bureau top, ass toward the room rolled up. I would like to see your hole.” He hadn’t zipped himself up and he was still cradling his erection with one hand. He was speaking now in clipped military command cadence—all very straightforward, straight to the point.

“Yes, Oberst, as you wish,” I said, coming off the bed and walking over to the low-topped dresser, standing there facing it, looking into the reflection of my nakedness in the mirror, as he came and stood behind me. He wrapped an arm around me and his lips went to the hollow on my neck on the left side. I heard the metallic sound of his belt being undone and the rustle of his silk trousers falling to the floor. My “yes, Oberst” wasn’t lost on him and clearly pleased him. I had been told that he’d be authoritarian. Oberst was German for colonel, which he’d been in the German army. It also signaled that I knew he would be a disciplinarian and accepted that.

I suppose I also knew that he might not just drop his belt to the floor but would double it over and give me a couple of snaps on the buttocks with it first. That made me jerk and gasp and it made him laugh.

“Do you wish to leave or do you wish to please me?” he asked, nuzzling my throat with his lips. His teeth nipped at me there, and I jerked, but held steady. He laughed.

Knowing how straightforward he would be, I murmured, “Fuck me, sir. Put me on the cock. Punish me, Oberst.” I wasn’t responded this way just because Arthur wanted me to please him. I was curious about whether I would like this form of sex with a man.

“Yes, I will,” he said. “First, give me suck.”

There was no “Please.” He turned me and pushed me to my knees. As I took his cock in my mouth, his cock perhaps being slightly longer and thicker than the average but nothing to gag on, he stripped off his jacket and threw it back onto the bed. He had diamond studs in his cufflinks, and he scraped one of them across my cheek, down from my temple to the corner of my mouth, leaving a red welt to remember him by for a week. I yelped and he laughed. It was going to be a rough fuck.

From where on the bed the jacket landed, I got the impression we wouldn’t be using the bed, not least because he had directed me to the dresser, which, mercifully was cleared. And I was right. I sucked and licked as he undid his cufflinks and stripped off his shirt, bow tie, and undershirt, tossing them back on the bed. Looping the end of his belt through the buckle, he made a noose out of it, dropped it over my head, and tightened it on my neck while I sucked his cock.

Without explanation, he pulled me up from my knees and off his cock by pulling up on the belt leash, oblivious to the fact that he was choking me and I was clawing at the leather ineffectually when he did so; turned me; and pushed me down on to surface of the dresser, pressing my cheek into the large mirror behind it. I gasped and took deep breaths when he let the noose slacken. He slapped me on the buttocks.

After pulling my head back by tugging on the belt leash and choking me—to show he could be cruel, he pulled the noose over my head and struck me several times on the buttocks, back, and thighs with the belt before going down on his knees behind me.

“Jut your ass back; give me your ass,” he growled, and I moved my feet back from the dresser and jutted my ass back, as he demanded. He proceeded to eating my ass out and pulling my cock through my legs, going from one to the other with his mouth and tongue. He dug up into my channel with his beefy fingers. I panted and moaned and sobbed for him, as I assumed he wanted me to do.

“Take me, Oberst. Do whatever you want,” I let out in a gasp to let him know I was acceding to this, assuming he cared.

When he was ready, and not asking me if I was, he stood, gripped my legs, and pulled them up, putting my legs into the splits. I gripped the top of the dresser with the palms of my hands and pressed my cheek into the mirror, fighting to maintain my balance as my legs were streamed along the top of the dresser from either side of my hips. With one hand on the back of my neck, holding my head to the mirror and pressing in on the small of my back with the other to roll my buttocks up for his access, he entered me with one, two, three fingers, up to the knuckles. I gasped. All four fingers, straining. I thought the knuckles would breach the sphincter and he would fuck me with his fist, but he didn’t. The hand was withdrawn, and he thrust his hard cock up inside me and began to pump. If he was wearing protection, I had no idea where the condom had come from or when he’d taken the time to put it on.

I didn’t care. I took my protective pills regularly. If he was barebacking me, that only heightened the arousal for me. I had a regular scheduled checkup at a gay man’s clinic where I paid my bill for laying down for one of the doctors.

As the fuck progressed, he gripped the hair at the back of my head and arched my head back so that I was looking straight into the mirror, watching him mounted on me from behind and fucking me and looking over my shoulder and into my eyes to watch my facial reaction to his hard, cruel pounding. The looped belt went over my head again and he tugged on the leash periodically to ride me like I was a horse and to choke me.

Before either of us had come, he turned me, facing me up toward the ceiling. I was propped over the bureau on my arms. My torso was levitating out over the carpet at the front of the dresser, and Schwartzman was standing between my thighs, fucking me, while I wrapped my legs around the tops of his thighs, and he supported me with his left hand under the small of my back. He stroked me off with his right hand. When I had come for him, arcing my jism high over my belly, he came inside me. He hadn’t worn a condom this time, and, while his cock was not extraordinary in size, the volume of jism he produced and the length of time he took to get it all released was prodigious. I panted hard, emitting a “Yes” with each spurt. He let me collapse on the carpet, pulled the noose over my head, and gave me a few more snaps of the belt on my back and rump.

The next morning at breakfast on the terrace by the pool—I had spent the night at Ritchey’s, but he didn’t call me to his bed. I assume he had someone else there—Ritchey informed me that Schwartzman had enjoyed the evening and we had won the bid to evaluate the management conditions at his company in Annapolis.

“He wants you to conduct the survey,” Ritchey said. Well, of course he does, I thought, letting the residual pain of the welts on my back and around my throat drift up into my consciousness.

“He was very impressed with your flexibility and cooperation,” Ritchey said. How wonderful, I thought.

After two weeks of going over Schwartzman’s boatworks, I easily came up with recommendations of changes that would clearly improve the procedures, mostly streamlining of paperwork the employees had to do, and the facilities, the most obvious and inexpensive one of putting in large, clear-glass skylights in the roof over the shop floor to bring in light and lift the employees’ spirits and let them actually see what they were working on. I discussed these with a cross-section of the employees and got nothing but agreement and signs of relief. It was obvious that Dieter Schwartzman wasn’t the easiest man to work with or the most sensitive to the needs of others.

From my experience with him, I wasn’t a bit surprised.

I presented the report to Schwartzman, and he smiled—to the extent that the man smiled at all—put the report to the side without even leafing through it, and told me he had a luncheon reservation for us. He also had a hotel room reservation, and he took me to the hotel room and fucked the shit out of me over and on the toilet in the bathroom, choking me as he fucked me until my eyes bugged out. It was still evident that he used a bed only for sleep, not for sex.

I went back to my home office. A week later Schwartzman invited me back to his company premises. I assumed it was to discuss the report I had assembled until he said that he wanted to take me out for a test sail on one of the most recent small yachts his company had built, so I was to come dressed for sailing. I still told myself that perhaps he was going to use the new yacht to show me how he had instituted some of the changes in my report.

When I got to the boatyard, there was no evidence that any of my recommendations had been instituted, even ones that could be established at no expense and great savings by a single word from Schwartzman.

I saw no evidence that the new yacht had benefited from any of the recommendations. Schwartzman took me out on the boat alone, motoring out into the Chesapeake Bay; putting the anchor down; securing the ship’s wheel; lashing me to the wheel, facing out; hooking my legs on his hips; and fucking the hell out of me.

After wearing me and himself out there on the wheel, he unleashed me and moved me down to the cabin, where he conveniently had located a hook in the ceiling of the middle of the space with wrist restraints hanging down from them. I remember wondering if the restraints came standard with that model of sports boat—bringing a whole new meaning to sports boat—or if it was optional equipment. He left me and started up the yacht again, moving it to another location, taking whatever time he needed to recover his libido. Then he returned, whipped me for a while with a leather hand whip, and then saddled up behind me, lifted my legs straight out from my hips, put me on the cock, and fucked me to a mutual ejaculation.

When we returned to land, I thanked him for his attention and told him how masterful he was.

“I enjoyed the day with you, Oberst,” I said, casting my eyes down in the subservient way I knew men like him wanted.

“I want you to stay with me for the night,” he said.

I answered, with regret in my voice, that I had an engagement I couldn’t change for that night, but if he cut the check for the services we’d rendered and gave it to me right then, I’d go back to my office, look at my schedule, and let him know when I might be able to come back.

When I returned to D.C., Schwartzman had already called Richey. “He wants to buy your contract, Cory. He wants to make you a manager in his company. Are you interested? I would hate to lose you, but the offer is quite lucrative for both of us.”

“I’m not interested, and really don’t want to make the move, Arthur,” I said.

“He’s too rough in sex, is he?”

I didn’t answer that. What I said was, “He hasn’t implemented anything we recommended. And I don’t want to be a manager in the company as it is.”

“Ah,” Arthurs said. He understood recommendations made by our company just being ignored by a client. “I can understand why your niche wouldn’t be with Schwartzman then.”

“And, no it’s not because of the rough sex,” I said. And it wasn’t. I had been aroused by the German’s authoritarianism and dominance. I had long thought about being taken as he did me. I appreciated that the man who did it left nothing to my decision. I felt no guilt for what I wasn’t given a choice in. He had provided that one decision point—when he said I could leave the bedroom in Arthur’s house. When I didn’t, and when I called him Oberst, I had lost all choice in the matter.

“We’ll just have to look for another project for you then,” Arthur said. “How is your calendar for tonight? I’d like you to stay for dinner, and maybe for the night.”

I stayed the night. He held me tenderly in his arms and fucked me slow and deep. He still wanted me and he hadn’t insisted on me going with Schwartzman. I had escaped a bullet there—or at least I was showing some control over the trajectory of the bullets. Weeks later, when I appeared at Schwartzman’s office door with a leather strap dangling from my hand, locked the door behind me, and smiled at Schwartzman, the Germanic authoritarian learned that he didn’t control everything in our explosive relationship—a relationship that continued for some time, just not entirely on Schwartzman’s whims.

* * * *

“Was it today you were coming? James Trumball, is it?”

He looked harried and not the least bit pleased to see me, and we were being interrupted left and right. I could tell that all was chaos at Kevin LaCross’s men’s fashion house in Baltimore, overlooking the Baltimore Harbor.

“No, I’m not James Trumball. I’m Cory Gilbert. But I’m from Ritchey Consultants in Washington, D.C. James couldn’t make it. He skied down the wrong hill out at Aspen last weekend and is still in a hospital out there with his leg immobilized.”

“Pity that,” LaCross said, “but as you can see, we’re overwhelmed here. We have a show coming up in a week and it’s not in hand—it’s definitely not in hand. Maybe we could reschedule a reviewing for some time—”

“Actually, this would be the best of times for me to be doing reviewing, Mr. LaCross. You’re considering hiring us precisely because you are in chaos like this. If it’s OK with you, I’ll just sit over here at the side and take some notes. I can give you some ideas when you have a few moments.”

“That might not be until 2022 when the business has gone down the chutes,” LaCross said. But then he gave me a little smile—other than being up to his neck in frustration, he was a handsome, enticing guy of thirty-one, I knew, with a model’s face and physique, curly black hair, and a sexy French accent and smile. I knew him to be a French Canadian with a flair for designing men’s wear. I also knew he was actively gay and a top.

I was here because Jim Trumball had messed his leg up. When we had an office meeting in the wake of that, Arthur had to redirect Jim’s files. It was clear he wouldn’t be back on track for a while. I went through them and picked out the one on LaCross Men’s Fashions.

“Why that one?” Arthur asked. “He hasn’t shown an interest in what you specialize in.”

“The men’s fashion angle,” I said. “I did some male modeling in high school and college. The fashion industry interests me and I did some looking into it.”

“The case is yours then,” Arthur had said. “It should be a vacation from what you usually are doing.”

It wasn’t, though—thank god.

“I don’t think there’s anywhere that’s out of the way on the cutting floor,” LaCross said, with exasperation. He looked like he was about to explode, but then he stopped, gave me a wan smile, and said, “But you’re right. I obviously need help. And I called your company for help. My office area is over there in the corner. And I’ve got the company books open on the desk there. Why don’t you settle in at that desk? You can watch the action from there and also look through the books. Any help you guys can give me in getting all of this straightened out is to the good. We can discuss this over dinner unless you have another engagement—although I have no idea when I can get to dinner.”

“Dinner would be good, if it works out. A chance for us to introduce ourselves to each other. If not, no problem. I can pick something up at the hotel later. Don’t worry about me; just do what you have to do here.”

I got out of his hair and went over to his desk. In truth, this proved to be the very best conditions in which to do my work. I watched him all afternoon. It was obvious that he wasn’t delegating enough authority. I also wondered why he was preparing a show for here in Baltimore. The best buyers were in New York. And I could see, with just a little bit of checking, that his show was set for the same day and time as a Louis Vuitton runaway show in New York. I also could see that his employees were devoted to him and that there wasn’t any job going on out there on the cutting room floor that was below him. By the end of his day, which wasn’t until 9:00 p.m., and it became obvious that he’d be the last one to leave, I was smitten by this handsome, graceful man and determined to help him make a go of his failing business.

It wasn’t until I saw him kiss one of his male models and palm his basket as the young man was leaving that I had any hope of having anything with Kevin beyond business.

“So, is there hope for me?” LaCross said as we settled into our late-night meal at the Explorers Restaurant in my Baltimore Harbor waterside hotel, the Royal Sonesta Harbor Court.

“There’s always hope for a business like yours,” I answered. He had chosen to sit beside me rather than across from me, and we were both facing a view of the inner-city harbor. It might have been just my imagination—but I thought not—that he was calm now and was being very attentive to me.

“Of course you’re right. There’s always hope for a business that has a solid product. But it wasn’t really the hope I was referring to,” he said, laying a hand on my forearm as I had the menu open in front of me. I had noticed from the way he floated around the cutting room that he was quite the touchy feelie guy. I also noticed how many of his employees were good-looking, young men and that he was as touchy feelie with them as with the women. “You know you’re a very attractive young man. You carry yourself like a model.”

“I have done some modeling,” I said.

“You have walked the catwalk?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Then you obviously are the right fit for this consultancy—and perhaps for me personally, as well.” His hand went to the top of my thigh under the surface of the table. “Am I embarrassing you? Arthur Ritchey told me that you were gay—actively gay—and that you lay under men.”

I’ll just bet he did, I thought. “No, not embarrassing me at all. I’m flattered,” I answered.

“But are you attracted.”

“You have your hand on my thigh. I haven’t moved to remove it.” I moved my hand to lay on top of his.

“Or maybe I’m rushing you? I’m sorry, days like this make me tense, and I have my favorite ways of releasing tension. Am I upsetting you?”

“More surprising me, I think. You may put that hand somewhere else if you like and are curious.”

He did, and he found that I was hard. He left it there and, again, I made no move to remove it. His fingers traced me through the material.

“Speaking of that, of the catwalk,” I said, purposely changing topics as his forwardness was a complete surprise to me, although certainly not unwelcome—but it wasn’t what I was here for, “I saw the brochure for your coming show. Is there a reason you’re having it in Baltimore and at the same time as the Louis Vuitton show up in New York City?”

“I have to compete with that fashion house, don’t I?”

“Not directly, I wouldn’t think. The raw truth is that Vuitton is firmly established and you’re not. You have to compete, but not directly, not as a direct challenge to Vuitton. I would think your best bet would be to show in New York City as Vuitton is, but to ride on its coattails. Have your show near enough to Vuitton’s in place and time for buyers to attend both. Build up your reputation using Vuitton rather than fighting against him or directly challenging him.”

“That’s an interesting idea,” LaCross said, giving me a smile. “I’ll be all ears on other suggestions you have. The waiter approaches, though. Are we ready to order? Do you know what you want to have?”

“Yes, I’ve chosen. Do you know what you fancy?”

He turned his smile on me again. “I know who I fancy. When I have a tense day like this, I tend to make snap decisions and take risks.”

“And do you have success with that? Do you find you are happy with such decisions the next morning?”

“I rarely have a problem with a quick decision on what I want,” he answered.

“It just might be on the menu here,” I said.

“One can always hope,” he countered. “Are you going to let me fuck you, Cory, or are you just teasing me here?”

“Perhaps.” I answered.

He gave me a wry smile. “Which?”

“Both,” I answered. “The meal first, though. We have to feed our energy levels.”

During the meal, we talked around the issue of being actively gay. We started off talking around that, but he was relentless about getting to that point. I didn’t resist very much or for very long. He was a god in both personality and body. Once I knew he was pursuing me, I was lost. This hadn’t been part of this particular contract, but it was all the more enticing for not having been a given. Once I’d said he could fuck me, all tension was out of our interaction. He became more free and intimate with his touches, limited only by where we were and who was around us. He was taking liberties with even that, though. It would be assumed by those watching us that we were lovers—a thought that made me laugh when he next spoke.

Over coffee he asked, “Do you mind me asking if you have a lover?”

“No, I don’t. Not anyone special I care about.” Arthur didn’t count. I enjoyed having him inside me, but I felt no commitment to him. I didn’t get the impression that he felt a commitment to me either. Schwartzman, who was still manhandling me on occasion at that point, was just an athletic “walk on the wild side” indulgence. We had already reached the understanding that LaCross was a top and I was a bottom.

“Are you experienced? And do you engage in casual sex? Are you promiscuous?”

“Those are pretty intrusive questions,” I said.

“Yes, they are. I like to know all that is on offer before I indulge, though.”

“Are you wanting to know if you can risk barebacking me?”

“Yes. Arthur tells me you take the drugs that permit that. I want to hear you pledge it.”

“You want to bareback me? That’s important to you?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Yes, I take care of that.”

“You want me to bareback you?”

I was pleased that he bothered to check what I wanted. “Yes. What else do you want to know.”

“Nothing else, I guess. I have said that when I’ve had a tense day, I tend to go directly for what I want. I have no complexes. I can survive a ‘no.’ There are clubs near here that I can go to for second best.”

“You think it would be second best? Foregoing having a bareback go at me and going to a club for relief and release?”

“I’m sure of it,” he answered, giving me a level look. He wasn’t going to back down. I sensed that he would banter like this for much longer.

“Well, then, my responses are yes, yes, and yes.”

He put his coffee cup down, decisively enough to let me know that the meal was at an end. “I’ve not been in any of the rooms in this hotel before,” he said. “Do you have a nice one?” Both of us knew what he was cutting to the calisthenics on the bed phase.

“Yes, it’s very nice. It has a full view of the harbor. It’s like the bed floats over it.”

“I would like to see that.”

“You certainly can, if you like. I’ll take you up there and show you the room.”

“I’d like to experience the sensation of floating on the bed over the harbor,” he said. “I also like the feel of flesh on flesh, raw penetration, breeding.”

“Yes, I understood what you were asking. You may do that as well.”

“This isn’t just casual. I wanted to bed you, Cory. I wanted to make love to you, to be one with you, inside you. Raw, flesh on flesh, both of us experiencing and savoring the release. I was thrilled when Arthur told me you’d take it without a condom. I’ve been straight with you. I was going to lay someone tonight. I suggested having dinner with you because I wanted it to be you. If it wasn’t going to be you, I needed to get on with the hunt. This is my town. I know where to find what I need.”

“But you couldn’t count on being able to safely bareback someone else tonight.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“So, it’s going to be me.”

“Yes, it’s going to be you.” We were well beyond the “will he or won’t he” phase, but we were savoring the mutual seduction.

“You knew when you invited me to dinner that you wanted to fuck me—to bareback me?”

“Yes. You got me hard when you walked into the office. My body makes quick decisions. I wanted to fuck you then. You were part of what became a tense day for me. I want to fuck you now. What does your body tell you? Are we going to have a great fuck?”

“Yes,” I answered. “That’s what I want too.”

And fuck me he did. And he fucked me totally. He was every inch—over eight inches—the god I had imagined he would be. We did everything in foreplay with each other that two male lovers would do and then he laid me on my back, my face looking out over the harbor, hovered over me, and entered me strongly and deep—raw, flesh rubbing flesh. I raised my pelvis to him, rolling it up to take him at a straight shot deep inside the core of me, opening quickly and completely to him. I surrendered to him in a way that let him know I was completely open and vulnerable to him, and he used his talented cock to completely conquer and totally use me. As he had said he wanted, we became one, fused together in one rocking, fucking machine, until, after I had ejaculated, he released inside me again and again and again, as I jerked and rocked against him, exclaiming the “Again!” to the ceiling on each release. “Yes! Breed me! Flood me!”

He did, and he did it quite nicely. I’d never been one like this—totally fucked, supremely loved and vanquished—with another man this totally. I couldn’t hope that he felt the same, but then he indicated that he did.

“Can you stay here in Baltimore through the show—moved to New York, if I can, but here if I can’t—and help me bring order into the chaos?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, my scheduling racing through my mind, wondering what I could cancel or switch, but realizing that there was no question that I would do that.

“And I can save the hotel fees. I have an apartment nearby. You could stay with me.”

“Yes, that would be good,” I answered.

“With me, in my bed.” He sounded unsure of what I might say. “With no condoms in reach,” he added.

“Of course, I would love that,” I said.

“Oh, God, I love fucking you,” he cried out. And then he fucked me again.

He managed to get his show changed to New York City at a venue near to that of the Louis Vuitton show and for the afternoon after the evening Vuitton show. Several Vuitton buyers stayed over to see the LaCross show.

The only glitch, which didn’t prove to be one, is that one of his male models took sick right before the show and I stepped in to walk the catwalk for him. Thank the gods, I didn’t screw up and Kevin covered me with kisses and praise.

“I couldn’t have done this without you,” he declared. “It wasn’t just your substituting for Jacques. You have given me so much help on this in the past two weeks, taking many burdens off me.”

“This might be a good time for me to give you one of my other consultancy recommendations, then,” I said. “You need a partner. You’re trying to do too much. You need someone else to share the burden with. We could assemble a list of possible partners for you, if you . . . why are you looking at me like that, Kevin?”

“Why would I look any further than you for an ideal partner—both for the fashion house and for me?” he asked, flashing me that smile that always disarmed me completely.

I called Arthur Ritchey and said he’d be receiving a check for the services the consultancy had rendered for the LaCross fashion house and that he could keep my share of that to cover for canceling out my contract with him. I had found my ideal niche in life.

“You let him bareback you, didn’t you?” Ritchey said.

“Of course I did,” I answered.

Ritchey laughed.