Friends, Lovers, and Masters

“So, we’re agreed that one’s friends and lovers are two entirely separate groups,” Richard Reed said, raising his beer after giving a young man at the table next to us a wink and a smile, which made the young man preen.

“Where, then, would friends with privileges fit?” Noah Goldman asked.

I could clearly see why Noah would ask about that. He was head of sales, also of gladhanding and smiling for the customers. He was a real hunk, of course, spending a lot of his time in the gym and at a hair and makeup salon—which went with the sales territory, I guessed. But I well knew that he was all about benefits for himself while being everyone’s friend, but certainly not about commitment. Not that I had ever wanted a commitment from him. I couldn’t deny that he wasn’t a great cocksman. Friends with benefits defined him well.

The four of us had adjourned to Legends, a local gay bar in the mostly sleepy and conventional town of New Bern on the Neuse River, near the Atlantic Ocean, in North Carolina. We were the department heads—of miniscule departments—of a company, Caligula, that few would realize operated out of this sleepy—one could even say puritanical—southern town. Caligula was a mail order gay male sex supplies business. We operated by Web site and mail-order catalogs, and supplied everything from condoms and lube to sex toys to sexy role-playing cloths, underwear, and swim suits to BDSM equipment. Our building was a nearly windowless warehouse in an industrial area at the corner of Airport Road and a U.S. Highway 70E border auxiliary parallel road, conveniently located from the side of New Bern’s Coastal Carolina Regional Airport that the FedEx office was located at and the U.S. Post Office toward the river on Old Cherry Point Road.

The four of us decelerating at Legends after a somewhat contentious management meeting at the office included Richard Reed, head of finance; Zack McKenzie, the fulfillment chief; Noah Goldman, the sales chief; and me, Logan Gibson, head of marketing and advertising. With the possible exception of Richard Reed, who was fairly new to the business and I hadn’t figured out yet, we were all gay. That pretty much went with the territory, considering what we provided to the world of gay men. We didn’t trumpet this in a town like New Bern, of course, but we had room here to exercise our lifestyle, if not flamboyantly.

Richard Reed had tumbled us into the question of friends and lovers by turning to me and, maybe innocently and maybe not, saying, “Oliver certainly was protective of your assistant, Michael, Logan. I thought the kid was being a little snippy about being called on the hours he keeps. So, are they friends or what? Or maybe lovers?”

He was only beginning to understand the convoluted nature of relationships in the office. Oliver Conover owned and headed up the company. Richard, who was the HR person in addition to doing the finances, had caused the explosion in the management meeting by suggesting that we let Michael go.

Knowing what sort of landmine that would set off, I had interjected myself in the discussion to forestall Oliver’s explosion. Michael was, after all, my assistant. Richard should have brought this issue to me first and I would have avoided this unpleasantness.

“Michael’s main duties are as a model for our catalogs and Web site displays,” I said. “Much of that is done at night. We can’t have just anyone representing the company’s products in displays.”

It was, after all a good point. Michael was young, a ginger, and gorgeous. We hired him for his looks as much as because he was in Oliver’s bed, and Oliver could hire whoever he pleased to. He modeled for the early twenties set and I did so for the early thirties look. I well knew I’d also been hired for my looks, and, although I felt I had the business knowledge to do the full job, I had followed the progression from Oliver’s bed onto the company payroll in my time as well. For a third model—the rough set look, we used our warehouse man, the partly African-American Jackson Davis, who was a body-builder bruiser type.

The sales chief, Noah Goldman, snorted. “Certainly not friends. Lovers, yes, but not that much friends, I don’t think. Michael lives with Oliver. No doubt Michael leads the old man around by the nose. I wouldn’t look to getting him fired, Richard.”

Having been there before myself, I knew that Oliver was quite dominant—there no one was leading him around by the nose. But it was the fulfillment chief, Zack McKenzie, who was my one close friend in this group, who brought that to the floor.

“Don’t make any mistake, guys,” he said quietly, looking off toward the bar rather than at any of us, “Oliver is a master, not to be led by anyone.” He said that in such a way that I wondered if he had direct knowledge. I did, of course. I had once been a regular in Oliver’s bed. I knew he was in charge there. I hadn’t had any inkling that Zack had any experience there. I knew he was a submissive, as I was, which was why we’d never be more than friends in this system of relationships we were discussing here at the table. But I’d never heard about anything between him and Oliver. In fact, Oliver had been keeping it out of the office other than with Michael, as far as I knew.

I followed his line of sight over to the bar and saw that our warehouse man, Jackson Davis, a 230-pound, six-foot-four muscular hunk of thuggishness, perpetual surliness, and meanness, had come into Legend and had bellied up to the bar. What was that with Zack, I wondered. Jackson was danger. He was sore temptation for me, challenging my underlying fetish to walk on the wild side, but I was holding off on that as best I could.

“A master,” Zack repeated. Then he turned his attention to those of us at the table. “I think there’s yet another form of relationship between gay men. There’s friendship, pretty much devoid of sexual activity, other than sharing stories. And lovers, sharing it all. And, as noted, somewhere in between there’s friends with benefits, sharing stories but also an occasional roll in the hay. But there’s a strong third—masters. That would be a sexual relationship, but with one calling all of the shots. More sizzle than friendship or love.”

“And maybe a bit on the rough, forbidden side,” I couldn’t help but mutter. If the other guys heard me, though, no one picked up on it.

“There probably are even more aspects of the relationship,” Richard Reed said, standing up from the table. “But it’s past time I should be home, so I’ll have to fold my cards on this particular discussion.”

Richard was married, with children, which was the basic reason we—or at least I—hadn’t quite figured out where he fit in this highly gay sexual company.

As we were breaking up, I thought to ask if Zack still wanted me to come over the next day, Saturday, to help him paint his living room. But Zack already was up and headed toward the bar. My immediate reaction was to check where Jackson Davis was and to worry about whether Zack was headed in his direction. On the topic of masters, Jackson was, I thought, much too high octane for the likes of Zack. Zack was sensitive and easily hurt. Jackson would break him, I was afraid. I saw, though, that Jackson was at the beaded curtain-covered doorway to the back rooms, the more intimate areas, of Legends.

Before I could check on whether Zack was following Jackson, I caught the signaling coming from just inside the front entrance. Ward Helmer was standing there. Ward was an insurance broker in the offices that shared the building Caligula was in. He was signaling to me.

The other relationship we had noted but not discussed in depth at the table—that of the lover—was kicking in. I could definitely say that Ward was my lover—the relationship not being deep enough to consider being friends. It was still focused on sexual satisfaction and release and it was too complicated a relationship to be anything like a friendship. And as far as mastering, it was just too equal as yet to be that.

I didn’t expect to see Ward there. Like Richard Reed, Ward had a family—a wife and children—to go home to. That was a principal complication of our relationship.

But he was there, at the door, having entered a gay club—almost—and was gesturing to me. I could do no less than to go to him.

Friends, lovers, and masters. All very complicated.

* * * *

“I’m surprised to see you here, Ward,” I said as I left Legend—and indeed the man had slipped back out of the entrance door to the club when he knew I’d seen him and was coming to him. And I didn’t find him in front of the club. He was down the line of storefronts looking in the front window of an auto supply store. He clearly didn’t want to be connected with the club, or, more specifically, with the gay male activity going on inside the club.

“I wanted to see you, Logan,” he said. “Mandy has taken the kids and gone to her parents’ house in Norfolk. Her dad broke his arm and her mother needs help. I just called her and talked to her mother too. She’s really there.”

It was over a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Norfolk, Virginia, from here. So, we had at least two hours before Ward, who was really antsy about this arrangement, would start to hyperventilate about maybe Mandy just turning around and driving back in time to find her husband humping me. But I’m sure we wouldn’t be doing it at their house anyway, so there was less than no chance she’d catch us in the act.

“So, you want to spend the next two hours fucking,” I said. I didn’t say it loudly, but I still saw panic in his eyes, and he looked around to see if anyone was eavesdropping on us. And this was the relationship that I’d have to categorize as “lover.” There was a stark contrast in how well and fully Ward performed in bed and how much of a complex he had that he was doing it with another man and not exclusively with his wife.

Still, when we were together in bed, he couldn’t get enough of me.

Or I of him, I’d have to admit.

“We can’t go to my place.”

“Of course not,” I agreed. “I’ll get my car and drive by here. You can wait ten minutes after I’ve driven past you and we’ll go to my place. I’ll leave the garage door open and you can stash your car in there.” It was an arrangement we’d used before. I had a bungalow on the Neuse River south of town on Johnson Point Road—the river ran through New Bern. I lived alone there. The foliage was heavy. The neighbors weren’t nosy or picky and there was little chance Ward visiting there off and on would be noticed, whether or not I had a closed garage to put his car in. But I did. That didn’t keep him from being jittery about it all. My place was a ten-minute ride from the office and seventeen minutes, tops, from Legend.

None of Ward’s wariness kept him from wanting to fuck me. Once we were inside my house, he was all over me, turning me against the wall beside the door in the kitchen after he’d entered directly from the closed garage. He backed me up against the wall and was all hands and lips, pulling at my clothes, getting to the center of his need and my desire by unzipping us and frotting our cocks together as his other hand—with the help of my hands—got us mostly undressed.

He fucked me the first time right there, on the kitchen table. We hadn’t been together for ten days and we both wanted it bad. We weren’t rough—we did it as lovers—but we didn’t shy away from doing it in unusual places or positions. We were both athletic and body beautiful, having met at the gym where we both spent a lot of our time, got good results from time spent, and were prone to admire the good work of others.

Ward had come on to me. I was a classic submissive. I’d flirt but I’d never take the lead. He didn’t tell me he was married and had kids until after the third time we’d fucked. I probably wouldn’t have gone with him the first time if he’d been straight with me—and had pretended to be straight. I knew there was something he was holding back, but I had decided that it was another guy. It shouldn’t have been any better that it was a guy than that it was a wife and kids, but it was. “Holding something back” didn’t mean that he wasn’t aggressive in the seduction or dominate in the sack, though.

He fucked me on the kitchen table, both of us still in our shirts, although both were unbuttoned and flapping open, and he still with his tie on. He put me on my back, knelt below me, and ate me out until I was begging for it, and then stood, raised and spread my legs in a V of surrender, and, as I arched my back and head and babbled to the ceiling, my fingers digging into his biceps, gave it to me hard and deep. When he was well saddled, he leaned down into me and French kissed as lovers do.

As skittish as he was about being here, he had no qualms once he was mounted about screwing me royally and totally.

The second hour we spent on my bed, with Ward on his back this time, and me moving around in various positions with his cock up my ass. He was still dominant, telling me what he wanted me to do as I fucked myself on his shaft and me doing whatever he wanted. Afterward it was me crouching over him, cleaning his shaft with my mouth and then him lying there beside me, a finger up my butt, watching me stroke myself off.

For an hour and three quarters it was just the two of us in a world of our own—lovers using what little time we had to connect as one. We murmured to each other as lovers and we moved into positions and gave and took with little need for direction, as long-term lovers will.

I was sure that Ward didn’t give any thought to his family at all while we were making love, but, looking out of the bathroom door while he was still on the bed and wasn’t aware I saw him, I caught him sitting, naked, body beautiful, on the side of the bed, with his wallet in his hand—the same wallet he’d pulled the two condoms out of that we had used—and looking, with sadness in his eyes, at a photo of his family.

I knew then that, lovers or not, I was not going to win this battle inside him of what relationships were the most important to him. I didn’t even think I wanted too. Sex with Ward was good—loving—and when we were in the saddle, we moved with each other like a well-oiled machine, relentlessly building to a mutual ejaculation, but it didn’t reach the level of thrill. It wasn’t dangerous or taxing—just good, mutually working, get your rocks off sex. I admit that being fucked on the kitchen table had been a little thrilling, though.

As much as I enjoyed having his cock inside me, I knew that we were coming to an end and that it was probably as good for me that we were as for him. I was highly sexed and, happily, I had no trouble attracting men with big cocks.

* * * *

“What is it? It’s more than falling down and blackening your eye, isn’t it?” I said. I reached over and pulled Zack McKenzie’s T-shirt off his back. “Shit, Zack. Who did that to you? Did you go off with Jackson last evening?”

Zack was looking sheepish. I’d come over to his new apartment in downtown New Bern as I’d promised I’d do when we met at Legend with the other department heads the previous evening. I’d been shocked to find him with a black eye when I arrived, but it was more than that. He was walking around gingerly as we were applying masking tape along the baseboards to control the paint lines. Now I knew why. When I pulled his T-shirt over his head, I found his arms and wrists were bruised and, worse, he had welts on his back. I pulled his shorts down in back and I saw them on his buttocks as well.

“You’ve been bound, haven’t you?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And whipped.”

“Yes.”

“And rough fucked, I’ll bet. Was it Jackson?”

“Yes. He’s been after me. After our discussions—and the aspects of relationship between guys yesterday, mastering was mentioned. I’ve been attracted to Jackson. Just scared. I decided that it was a mastering relationship I might want.”

“And he mastered you, didn’t he?—roughly.” I knew Jackson was into that shit. When we did our advertising photos, he was entirely too familiar with the sex torture equipment and in posing with me and Michael with it. I could tell he was into that shit. And he was such a big, muscular dude that I had to admit that I had fantasized about being with him myself. But he was scary.

“And is that what you found you wanted?”

“It was different,” Zack said. “And he made me go hard and keep a hard-on. And I came more than once. It was painful, but I’ve never been turned up that high before.”

“Was the torture, though, or the control and the demanding commands good for you?” I asked. “There are more forms of master-slave sex than what Jackson did to you.” I was thinking of our boss, Oliver Conover. I’d been with him for a while. He was a master and controlling, but it wasn’t the torture crap Jackson was doing. I didn’t want to mention him, though. He had Michael Warner, my assistant at work, now. Even if he hadn’t, I well knew how complicated it was to be doing it with someone at work. That was an issue with Jackson. I wasn’t going to tell Zack he couldn’t have a master-slave fuck relationship if he wanted to. I wasn’t the boss of him, I didn’t want to lose him as a friend, and, as we both were strict submissives, I didn’t think there was anything I could do for him to satisfy him sexually. And, worst, he was Jackson’s boss at work. If we wanted to talk about complicated, how complicated would it be to be someone’s work boss but his sex slave outside work?

As it transpired, though, I was wrong about not being able to do anything to satisfy Zack sexually.

“These welts on your back look painful. And they’re on your butt too. How about your thighs?”

“Yes, there too,” Zack admitted.

“I don’t know how you’re able to move.”

“I haven’t, not very well. I called you to tell you not to come today, but I guess you haven’t checked your messages.”

“You need to do something about these welts, or they’ll get infected.”

“I have something to put on them, but I can’t reach back there.”

“Come into your bedroom. Where’s the salve? I’ll put it on. Pull out some towels to lay under you on the bed.”

“And you’ll lay on top of me on the bed?” Zack asked, and then laughed.

As it turned out, it came close to that. I greased him up, sitting close beside him on the bed. He put a hand on my thigh. I knew what he wanted. He’d wanted more than friendship and comradery from me, and I knew it. He had a hard time accepting that I wouldn’t put my dick in him—or any other guy. Yes, he was sexy, and, yes, I could get hard with him, but there just wasn’t anything we could do about it.

He showed me otherwise, though.

“You’re hard,” he said, and his hand went there. I didn’t move away. “You know I find you sexy. I think I turn you on too. We’re good-looking guys. And you can get hard with me. You’re hard now.”

“But we can’t—”

“We can get off together,” he said. He turned toward me, cupping the back of my head with one hand and bringing our lips together. The kiss was sweet and became deep. So, yes, there was something we could do. He unzipped me and pulled me out and started stroking me. So, he was right that there was something we could do.

I didn’t stop him from masturbating me. He pulled away long enough to shuck his shorts and briefs off. He was hard. He had a very nice cock.

“You can jack me too,” he whispered. “We can come together.”

I hadn’t left my position close at his side, and when he cupped my head and came in for a kiss again, I opened my lips to him. And when he grasped my cock and started stroking me off again, I did the same with his.

We came together. And then later, when we were lying side by side, he on the towels and me on the bedspread, in a sixty-nine position, we gave each other head and managed to come close together again.

So, he was right. We could have sex without penetration.

“It’s sad,” he said, when I readjusted to be stretched beside him, face to face, him on his side, facing me, to save his back, buttocks, and thigh backs.

“What’s sad?” I asked.

“According to our discussion yesterday, we can’t be friends anymore. True friends wouldn’t do this. And if we are lovers now, the relationship will be too sensitive and complicated for us to be friends. That sort of makes me sad. I’ve enjoyed having you as a friend.”

“We set a corollary on that, I think,” I answered. “We can be friends with privileges. I think it would be too frustrating to think of ourselves as lovers if we can’t do it all.”

“You can do it all to me if you want,” Zack said.

“Alas, this was nice, but, no, I don’t think I can do that with a guy. And this isn’t enough for you, is it?”

“Not if it’s all there is.”

“You’re still thinking of how high being mastered took you, aren’t you—despite all of the damage Jackson did?”

“I went higher, higher than ever before. I came—again and again.”

“There are forms of mastering that aren’t as extreme as Jackson,” I whispered. “Maybe you’ll have a chance to try them out.”

“Maybe,” he answered. “How about you? I’ve seen you look at Jackson before. I think that’s what made me give him a look—and make him notice me. Could you see yourself giving Jackson what he’d want from you—what I think he does want from you?”

“No, never,” I said. But that was a lie. I’ve thought about Jackson and going under him, even knowing what he wanted, all too often. But maybe if I kept saying no to myself—and then to Jackson if he ever directly approached me—the no would stick.

“Friends with privileges,” Zack murmured. “Yes, that will be nice.”

But still not that wise to do with someone you work with, I thought.

* * * *

A few days later I discovered yet another category in male-to-male relationships—acquaintances with privileges. This would be an “answering the call to need” sexual hookup when your partner isn’t really a friend. In discovering this category I also was breaching the “keep it away from work” advice.

Most of us in the Caligula company were gay, and actively so. Most of us were good-looking and had great bodies too—that was something the owner, Oliver Conover, quite evidently took into account when he hired. His previous sex partner—me—and his current one, Michael Warner, my assistant, who were the principal models for the Caligula catalogue and Web site, were probably the best looking. The other man used as a model, the half-breed Jackson McKenzie, wasn’t a handsome man. He was more of a glowering, tattooed thug. But he was body gorgeous and was of a type we wanted to convey in our advertising. He didn’t qualify as one of the beautiful people in the office, though.

Above all of the rest of us in sexy and hunky, I’d have to admit, was Noah Goldman. In office terms, that was natural. Noah was the head of sales. His job was to sell gay male sex paraphernalia to guys. He did that by sex appeal and charisma—and by handling distributors, who tended to be activity gay, just the way they liked to be handled. That the height of arrogance didn’t shave the effect of charisma was beyond me, but I guess in short-term relationships—selling it—it didn’t come out as much as it did inside the office where the rest of us had to suffer it.

So, as hunky as he was—and as much as he was an aggressive top with most everything in sexy terms favoring him—I found him insufferable.

So, why did I go with him and occasionally let him fuck me in an “acquaintance with privileges” arrangement? I guess I’d write it up to need for immediate attention—mine—and opportunity—ours. It was also a visual thing—beautiful bodies moving in intimate consort. We videoed it and I, at least, got off on it later as well as during. In terms of opportunity, both of us were fishermen. Love of river fishing had let me to settle in New Bern on the Neuse River and to buy a house on the water. It also made me lower my defenses to Noah occasionally, because he, of all the guys I came into contact with regularly, was a knowledgeable and avid fisherman.

Not more than a week after my relationship with Zack McKenzie turned from friendship to friends with privileges, albeit falling short of the anal fuck I itched for, I was out in the deep part of the Neuse River before it dumped into the Atlantic, in just an oversized rowboat with outboard motor, with Noah Goldman, working on catching the bluefish and Spanish mackerel we were told were running high out here. Noah had made it quite obvious he was randy as we were preparing the boat to push off from the dock at my Johnson Point Road bungalow—not just in looks but in innuendo he was dropping and the touching he was doing. He wasn’t the only one randy, though. I was in heat to have a man inside me.

Noah could tell I was and that only cause him to push the issue. I wasn’t attracted to anything about Noah, however, except for his hard body and talented cock, so we set out on the river with me determined to concentrate on the fishing.

I was the one who got reeled in.

“Hey, Logan, we’ve done a good catch. I say we take a break.”

I had been taking a bluefish off my line in the stern of the boat and looked up. Noah was lying back into the bow of the boat, legs spread. We both were shirtless. He had unzipped and flared his shorts and had his cock, hard, out in his hand and was stroking. God he was a god, was my thought. And so sure of himself and cocky, which was the only barrier to my going down on my knees between his spread thighs and taking me into my mouth.

“Knock it off, Noah. I didn’t come out here for that.”

“Yes, you did. You’ve been antsy for me since I arrived at your place. You were only quick to take up my suggestion we go fishing today because you wanted my cock.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Come here. Take this in your mouth and work me up. Then I’ll give you what we both know you want.”

“Shit. Fuck,” I muttered, but it came out as a plaintive groan as I went to him, went down on my belly in the hull of the boat between his knees, and took his cock in my mouth.

Shortly afterward, we’d exchanged places, me wedged into the bow, my back reclining into it and my ankles on Noah’s shoulders after he’d sucked me off and eaten out my ass, grasped and squeezed my butt cheeks open, mounted and penetrated me, and started the deep-channel fuck. With me groaning and digging my fingernails into his biceps as he dipped his face down to mine, captured my lips with his, and made me his slave, Noah fucked me hard and deep.

I hated the man. I hated that I gave in to him so easily. I loved what he was doing to me with his shaft.

Yet another form of relationship between men: an acquaintance with privileges.

* * * *

We were filming for the Web site store and the fall catalog in the back warehouse room that was set up as a sexual torture chamber after hours some days later. Michael Warner and I had been modeling some clothes and James Hummel, who worked distribution under Jack McKenzie and also did our camera work, had finished with those photos. We expected Jackson Davis to come in to do some posing with us on the machinery.

I was nervous and quite antsy, because Jackson and Noah Goldman, in charge of sales, had come to me with a proposition that afternoon. They’d picked their time right, as I had gotten bad news on my truck from the garage the day before. It was time for a new truck, but my finances didn’t agree. Jackson and Noah had relief to offer. I had suspected something like this was going on—at least by Jackson—but I hadn’t really given thought to what I would say if they came to me with an offer.

Michael was taking more photos with Jackson on the equipment that we were using for the Web site and the catalog. Jackson and Noah had a private subscription Web site going where Jackson and Michael, and occasionally Noah and guys he brought in, used the equipment in acts that went well beyond simulation. James videoed them.

Noah wanted me to do some sex videos. They would pay well. I needed the money.

And it wasn’t just the money that was attracting me to this now. It was the mastering. We had discussed this sometime before. I had gotten the lover relationship without full satisfaction and had seen friendship turn into friendship with privileges with Zack without being full satiated. Although acquaintances with privileges that I had with Noah had gotten me off, it left a sour taste in my mouth of needing sex from a guy I didn’t particularly even like. Ever since I’d had to help put Zack back together after a mastery session with Jackson, I’d fantasized about a mastery relationship—and about Jackson, in particular. I was sturdier stuff than Zack was. I was sure I could go further with Jackson.

The guys were giving me a chance to try that out—and they were going to pay me as well. The offer had come right when I needed extra cash. The decision wasn’t too hard to make.

Noah arrived after the catalog shoot and he was filmed with Michael first. As the shoot moved into sex acts using the equipment, we all put on Mardi Gras-type fancy and colorful masks. Otherwise, we were naked. But most using the video service wouldn’t know who we really were.

We had a piece of equipment called a banc de prière, a prayer bench, where one knelt before a wooden frame to support the forearms while in prolonged prayer. The sexual device version of this had stocks on the top edge of the frame. Michael’s head and wrists were trapped in the stocks and his knees were lashed in place to the frame. For the filming, Noah used a riding crop and pencil-like device with a circle of spikes that rolled at the tip that he rolled around Michael’s body between short sessions of flicking the riding crop on him to work Michael up. Then Noah mounted him, like Michael was a mare, and rode his ass, continuing to strike him on the flanks with the riding crop. The shape of Michael’s mask resembled the head of a horse.

When Noah had fucked Michael, Jackson, who had left the room, reentered. He came back in all leathered up, as he had left. Tight leather pants, with an ultralow rise and a codpiece. He wore black leather boots, a black leather harness on his massive, swarthy chest, and a black leather bicker’s hat. His mask was that of a devil. I didn’t have to be told he’d be a devil.

But I knew he’d be a master, and that’s what I’d been telling myself I needed—that I had to try out to know how it fit in as a relationship and whether it was something I wanted, something that would give me more satisfaction than I was now getting.

My mask was more in keeping with Mardi Gras than the others—a grinning face with green and white and purple swirls, with feathers. Noah and Michael left the room. As Michael was breezing by, he paused at where I was standing, nervous, not being sure of doing this. He whispered in my ear, “Zack’s a friend of yours. Tell him I know what he’s doing . . . what he’s doing with Oliver. I know and I’ll make life hell for him if he doesn’t leave Oliver alone.” Then he was gone.

I wanted to laugh. Oliver had displaced me with Oliver, the company’s owner—a real master in sex, but just in a forceful, not a rough, way. I didn’t care if Zack displaced Michael with Oliver. I was just glad that Zack had found a master—a master who wasn’t Jackson. Zack was too delicate and sensitive to be mastered in the way Jackson did it.

The question was whether I was too weak to be mastered in the way Jackson did it.

And then Jackson did it.

Noah returned to the room, without Michael, as Noah was hooking me up to another apparatus. The cameraman, James, loaded up two video cameras and gave one to Noah.

The apparatus was basically just two leads suspended from the ceiling with wrist constraints that stretched my two arms out. There was a padded bar at belly height that pressed into my belly. There were restraints at either end of the bar, but those didn’t come into use until later in the session. I was standing in a crouch, belly over this bar, and my arms stretched out, when the cameras started and Jackson came in behind me, his codpiece flapping open and his erection showing. I was naked other than the mask.

I trembled and jerked a bit when he was swishing the thongs of the black leather hand whip he had on my back, buttock, and thighs. He was giving me time to build up apprehension of what was to come. I half believed it would be nothing painful, that it would all be to fool the camera. I started to pant and bit and let out a moan when the swishing became flicking.

Then the pain became real. I cried out at the initial strike, more in surprise than pain, with the knowledge Jackson was actually going to whip me. And then, crying out and jerking and writhing, the pain came, pain mixed, to my surprise and slight embarrassment, but pleasure too and arousal. I went hard. Jackson struck me again and again and again, as James and Noah moved around me, keeping each other out of camera angle, but showing me being beaten from various positions. They made sure that they got shots of my erection, proof of acquiescence to this.

Jackson dropped the hand whip and I felt my legs being lifted now at each side and restrained at the end of the bar. He came close in behind me, moving his hands around to palm my belly on either side. And then I was panting and writhing and groaning again as he worked his thick, long cock inside me from the rear and fucked me.

As the fucking continued, he grasped my cock in one hand and stroked me off. We came close together, all of it caught on tape as Noah and James moved around us and the cameras whirred.

And, so that was what the male-to-male relationship of mastery in the extreme was.

When I had been freed and was able, I fled the room and the building as fast as I could, barely taking the time to pull my clothes on. I said nothing to either Jackson or Noah. Noah was acting like nothing had happened. Jackson just stood there, hands on hips, dripping cock swinging from his open codpiece and saying, “Gotcha at last.”

* * * *

“Was it Jackson?”

“Yes.”

I was stretched on my belly on my bed in my bungalow on the river, and Zack McKenzie, sitting beside me, was applying salve to the welts on my back, butt, and legs. They hurt more now than they did while Jackson was whipping me. But then, there was arousal and a form of pleasure and satisfaction then that there wasn’t now, although I already was planning how this was going to segue into a mutual jack-off session.

“He bound you and whipped you and fucked you?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t want to do that again.”

“No,” I answered, knowing even when I said it that it was a lie. Of all of the male-on-male relationships I’d discussed with the guys or added in my own thoughts, the one of mastery—Jackson’s form of rough-handling master-slave relationship, was the one that had aroused me the most and had given me the most sexual satisfaction. I could say I wouldn’t do it again, but Jackson had established himself as my master. If he summoned me, I’d go to him again.

“Tell me, Zack. When you went to him and he mastered you, did he have you make a film with him too—to put on a subscription Web site?”

“Yes. He was so commanding that I didn’t say no, even for that,” Zack said. “I’ll never to do that again, though—not the filming.”

I knew I would. That was exciting and quite satisfying too.