Snitches

Weary, Hardesty let himself into the fifteenth-floor apartment in Crystal City, across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., in Alexandria, Virginia. The apartment had spectacular views from all rooms across the Ronald Reagan Airport runways to the national memorials and the Mall. He was happy to see that the warning light by the door wasn’t on. He needed some down time at home.

It hadn’t been his decision to move across the river. Housing was expensive, to be sure, in D.C., but he’d inherited a small fifties-style rambler in the Northwest section that had done him well for a decade. But he couldn’t argue with the view from here, which was magnificent and reminded him every morning that he worked in one of the world’s major power cities. It was a splashy apartment, which was the impression it was supposed to give and the service it was meant to provide. Two large bedrooms, each with its own bath, and a living-dining-kitchen great room sheathed on two sides by plate glass windows with an extraordinary view. He hadn’t picked out the furniture either. He’d never feel like this was home, but he was weary enough tonight--after midnight--not to care about that. It was all part of an effort to keep his life together and not lose Toby.

If the warning light had been on, he’d have known that Toby was entertaining a client and that he should find someplace else to crash. Luckily, there was an old maid of a guy, Paul, down the hall in a smaller apartment who would be happy to take him in on short notice for the night in exchange for a cuddle and a quick fuck. Paul had been a male model and kept himself in trim, so it wasn’t an onerous task--it just was milder than Hardesty turned on to.

The apartment was part of Toby’s escort service set up, with neither Hardesty nor Toby paying the whole fare. The service paid more than half the rent, but you could bet that the money came out of Toby’s earnings. Except when he was an escort, he was Todd, not Toby. That’s how Hardesty had first met him, as Todd, and it was the name under which he’d first fucked and fallen for him. He had picked him up in much the same way he’d encountered Raul earlier in the evening, but he’d kept Toby--to the extent that he could claim to have any control over the relationship. When he’d told Raul he already had his whore he gave some protection to, he was being literally truthful.

Even as Todd, though, he was Hardesty’s ideal match--still young, at twenty-four, small, blond, fun to be with, movie-star handsome, with a channel that fit Hardesty’s shaft like a glove, and fine with Hardesty’s style that could get rough when he was unleashed. The two of them had been together for nearly four years now--if both of them having a separate, active fuck life could be considered “together.” It was as close as Hardesty could demand, though, and there always was hope for something closer. Inevitably, Todd would age out of the escort business, and Hardesty hoped to be there then to begin a new phase of their relationship. He would age out of the life of a vice cop who could get whatever he wanted however he wanted in the not-too-far-distant future himself.

Hardesty went almost directly to the refrigerator for a cold beer. He applied the butt of the bottle to the back of his neck before opening it and walked around the living area, looking for someplace to light. Inevitably, a headache was coming on. Nothing in the room beckoned him, though. All of the furniture was sleek and modern--and covered with easily mopped-down leather. As usual, he wound up at the window, watching the Washington, D.C., skyline.

The city at night--that’s what he could relate to. Glittery, mysterious, the center of power--and imbued with every vice known to man. The streets were kept immaculate and bordered by parkland dotted with memorials to greatness--or audacity--while, in the alleys, the homeless were sleeping in cardboard boxes and around them others shot up with heroin or fucked prostitutes, both male and female, up against sooty walls. Reminded of what paid his bills in this city of excess, his gaze landed on the Washington Monument obelisk. A gigantic cock, overlooking the center of the city. A phallic symbol--a hugely erect one--always seemed such a natural one to him of the city in which he worked vice. Another symbol of the power of a city existing to serve desire.

The phone on the kitchen island rang. But it was Toby’s work phone. Hardesty gave it a listen as the answering service switched over. “Tomorrow’s 1:00 p.m. United flight to LaGuardia. A Brazilian, attending a meeting at the UN. Dinner at eight, clubbing afterward, and then whatever he wants. Aaron will meet you at security at the airport at eleven thirty with the packet and details. Take a tux and a sexy jock strap.”

So, Toby would be gone for the next couple of days. Hardesty would miss him. Nothing special on this weekend, so they could have done something together. Oh, well, as tired as he was, maybe it was for the best. And he had weekend duty anyway. Looking around the living room and deciding once more that it was cold in décor and not the least bit inviting to him, he retired to his bedroom, which was furnished with stuff he’d brought from his own house--stuff his parents had owned before him. So much more like home, down to the brass bed with the tired mattress and box springs.

He took a shower. As he was coming out of the shower, he heard the warning buzzer. They’d had that installed down in the lobby, by their mailbox. Toby--Todd now--was bringing a client up and had signaled Hardesty to disappear if he was in the apartment. Hardesty went over to his bedroom door and took a peek through the fish lens peephole that took in the full sweep of the living and dining area of the apartment. The fact that his bedroom door opened out into the living room, as the room could also be used as a study, while Toby’s was down a hallway and behind Hardesty’s room was to incorporate this feature. Toby brought clients home for sex. Part of what Hardesty did for Toby was to watch over him when he and the client were in the living area to give Toby some protection. Toby didn’t take a client back to his bedroom without the understanding that he wasn’t a crazy guy.

They had been to the theater or some other formal occasion. They were both in tuxes and both looked good. Todd, of course, always looked like a million dollars. The other guy, though, older and Oriental, also looked good. He was probably older than Hardesty, in his late forties maybe. He was elegantly dressed, though, with the flash of a huge diamond ring on the middle finger of one hand. He’d had to be wealthy or being treated by someone wealthy to afford Toby. He had black hair slicked back, and an inscrutable, slightly foxy, appearance to him. The client was tall and slender. He looked confident and experienced and like he could be cruel. Hardesty would have to keep a check on the peephole. Knowing that, Toby wouldn’t take the man into his bedroom until and unless he was sure of him.

They paused to kiss beside the kitchen island, which was just barely in Hardesty’s field of vision, and Toby must have said he’d fix drinks and then get into something more comfortable. The windowless kitchen area was off the corridor back to Toby’s room and across the hall from Hardesty’s bedroom. In Toby’s absence, the man walked around the room, swilling drink in hand, taking a good look at it, and winding up by the window. The view drew the attention of everyone who came into this apartment.

Putting his drink down on a side table, he shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair and loosened his bow tie, letting it dangle from his collar. But he didn’t stop there. He deliberately and almost ceremoniously undid the diamond-encrusted studs of his shirt, carefully pocketing them, and unbuckled and unzipped his trousers. Stepping out of them, he carefully deposited the folded trousers over his jacket. He paused, shirt hanging open, which, in the three-quarters profile he was giving Hardesty, revealed a slender but well-muscled, hairless torso. He had a gold chain around his neck, with some sort of green jade medallion nestled between his pecs. His legs were muscular. A puckered scar of a slash rose diagonally from below his navel to just below the bulge of the pectoral muscle on the opposite side of his chest. It gave him an aura of mystery and danger.

This aura and the deliberate way the man was undressing gave Hardesty unease, and he decided to remain plastered to the peephole.

The man was wearing what Hardesty recognized as expensive Ergo mini boxers, in black. They were the type of brief a rent-boy would splurge on to look sexy in. He looked sexy in them. They rode low on his hips and had a pronounced bulge at the crotch, designed to separate and project the crotch package. It took a well-hung man to wear them well. He did. His socks were black silk, knee high, held up on shapely calves by black garters just below his knees. The muscular thighs were those of a soccer player. The lean body was one of a runner. He flipped his black pumps off by toeing the heels and deftly maneuvered them to beside the chair where his jacket and trousers were folded.

He obviously knew where this evening was headed, and he also obviously wasn’t self-conscious about using what he had paid for and was an expert at it. Every move was deliberate, planned, and smooth. Cold blooded. There was no reticence or uncertainty of outcomes here or indication of time to be lost in getting his pleasure.

Toby could be in danger of a rough night here, Hardesty thought--not that he was one to talk about that.

Toby returned, wearing a red silk robe, loosely tied with a red sash, but flaring open at both the chest and thighs, showing off his perfectly formed small body. He was wearing red silk bikini briefs.

It started with the Oriental guy sitting on an ottoman in full view of and in parallel to where Hardesty was watching through his bedroom door peephole. Toby handed the client his drink and then, at a murmured request--or command--of the Oriental guy, got right to business, kneeling between the man’s spread thighs and mouthing his dick through the material of the Ergo boxers. After getting the guy’s package wet enough that even Hardesty could see the shape of the glans through the material, the client raised his hips while Toby slowly slid the boxers off and down his legs. The client was hugely erect.

He was cool and nonchalant through the subsequent blow job, raising the knee of his sock-clad left leg to Toby’s right shoulder, leaning back on the ottoman on his right elbow, and swigging from the glass held in his left hand while Toby’s mouth went down on his long, thin, hard cock. It got a little more intense toward the end, with the client putting his drink down on the floor next to the ottoman, sitting up, and guiding--to the point of forcing--a deep-throat suck with his hands on the back of Toby’s head. There was a sense of the cruel again as, when it looked like Toby might gag at trying to swallow too much of the cock, the guy held his head trapped in place until Toby did, in fact, gag. Toby did a professional job of it, though. He was a good, neat deep-throater, and Hardesty didn’t see a cum shot, so the young blond must have taken the load in his throat. It all came across as smooth and natural, and with the client getting exactly what he wanted.

What wasn’t hinted was that they were anywhere close to being finished with sex--that this was all that the client would want from Toby. Hardesty had the feeling the client would demand much more--and he was right.

They settled on a sofa with its too-low-slung back turned to Hardesty’s bedroom door with their drinks. After they’d imbibed a bit, engaged in small talk that Hardesty couldn’t hear, and, as the client recovered from the blow job, gone through a session of ever-more-intense face kissing, punctuated by Toby’s moans that indicated the client was doing something with his hands that Hardesty couldn’t see, the client’s head disappeared, obviously down into Toby’s lap. Toby stretched out his arms along the top of the sofa back and the movement of his shoulders indicated the client was taking thrusts of Toby’s cock in his mouth. With a jerk and a couple of audible groans from Toby, his body relaxed, and it was evident that he’d come.

All seemed in order for a fuck session worth what the Oriental guy would be paying for it. He’d be paying by the day, not by the ejaculation, and it looked like the guy was a strong reloader and in shape, as was Toby. Hardesty turned, finished drying his hair off with the towel, and puttered about, putting his dirty clothes in a hamper and picking out clothes for the next day. Although it had only been a few minutes, when he returned, naked, to the peephole, they had already stepped it up a notch and were going at it. This client didn’t waste any time.

Toby was draped on his belly over the back of the sofa, his arms dangling down toward the carpet. Hardesty could see his red robe puddle by the front edge of the sofa. His red briefs were draped over the top of the sofa back beside him. His client was crouched behind him, his tux shirt flared and his fists holding the ends of Toby’s sash, which was lassoed around Toby’s throat, pulling his head up. Both of their bodies were jerking to the same rhythm, so Hardesty knew that Toby was being doggie fucked. He was looking right at Hardesty, a glassy-eyed look of the professional doing his job in his eyes. There was a hint too of the client being more demanding and better equipped than most.

Toby knew the vice cop was on the other side of the bedroom door. This was a time when Hardesty gave the young blond comfort. Even as careful as the escort service was, who was to know that a client wouldn’t go too far? And it would be quite possible in this position, with the red sash around Toby’s throat, that the fuck could go too far. A knot in the rope and a tight twist at ejaculation could meet some men’s idea of paradise, and this client had an air of possibly getting off on that about him. But Hardesty was here. And he could take care of any man Toby brought back to their apartment. The client needn’t know the cop was here unless he went too far.

The client was athletic--and demanding. He raised Toby’s legs to being hooked on his shoulders, Hardesty able to see the full line of Toby’s naked body now, and raised himself up, wheelbarrow fucking Toby. The hands went to Toby’s waist, though, to keep Toby from falling forward, and the red sash had fallen to the floor behind the sofa. This was safer even if the expression on Toby’s face indicated that he was being challenged harder. Hardesty had his hand on his own cock, which was erect. Hardesty couldn’t say that he didn’t enjoy these voyeur sessions. He enjoyed fucking Toby--as Todd--more himself, but this wasn’t bad. Hardesty got off on this voyeurism.

As Hardesty shot his own load against the door panel, there was a roaring noise behind him and a flash of lights. He turned to see a plane coming in for a landing at Reagan Airport. They weren’t supposed to land this late, but of course they did. This was Congress’ airport. Congressmen’s flights landed when Congress needed and wanted them to, not by FTA agreements. No matter how long they’d lived here, Hardesty had some sort of internal radar that could be surprised by a late-landing airplane but not by busier traffic during legitimate hours.

When he looked back into the room, the two had moved to being stretched out along the sofa cushion. The sofa was one with a low back that destroyed any chance of comfort in sitting in it. What it was according now, though, was a view of Toby’s right leg hooked on the seat back, his left leg hooked on the client’s right shoulder, their heads together in a kiss on the arm of the sofa, and the client’s well-formed buttocks--tan lines showing he was partial to string bikinis--appearing above the level of the seatback and then thrusting down. Up and down, a strong-stroke fuck.

This guy should have been charged double, Hardesty thought. Still, he knew from personal experience that Toby enjoyed it and could handle it. Toby was using the usual encouraging words that male prostitutes used with their clients. In this case, praising the prowess of the client seemed to be in order.

When they weren’t kissing, Toby’s head lolled over to the side on the sofa arm, facing Hardesty. Hardesty could tell by the flash of his eyes and the way that he was panting that this client was more demanding than most of them--that he was fucking harder and deeper than most. There was a time when the vice cop saw this reaction from Toby and thought about intervening, but now Hardesty knew it was what Toby wanted. Hardesty got off on watching it too. Indeed, it was what Hardesty gave Toby--what the young blond begged from Hardesty. Hardesty was going hard again now.

By the next evening, Toby would be describing how expert and satisfying the client was--it was the intensity of fuck that Toby lived for. If Toby didn’t have to be going to New York, the two of them might have been lying next to each other with Toby talking about this evening and both of them beating themselves off. Sometimes Hardesty thought Toby wanted rough, demanding sex more than the money lying on his back for a man brought.

Toby and his client ended in a mutual ejaculation, Toby up the client’s belly and the client standing over Toby and giving him a facial, on the ottoman, where Hardesty got the full visual of Toby on his back on the ottoman and the client standing on the floor, crouching between legs Toby had hooked on his hips, and finishing him in long strokes.

Hardesty finished again with them, splattering his side of the bedroom door with cum for a second time.

The two moved back to sitting on the sofa, with Toby going to the kitchen to refresh their drinks. Hardesty then lost interest in anything going on of a prurient nature or a physical threat to Toby, went back in the bathroom and, having made himself all sweaty and bothered watching them, took another quick shower, brushed his teeth; shaved his thighs, chest, and forearms; and trimmed his pubes and facial hair. This ritual took maybe ten or fifteen minutes, as he tended to it pretty much every day to keep in form. He came out and looked through the peephole in time to see Toby ushering the client into his bedroom.

The client must have been someone really important. He could be Chinese or Japanese for all Hardesty knew. Either could be big money. He had a good body, though, and a cock that reached for his knees. They paused at the back of the sofa for a standing deep kiss and the client stuffing much of his hand, the one with the big-rock ring on it, up Toby’s ass, with Toby hooking a leg on the client’s hip to give him deeper access with his fist. Hardesty could see Toby grimace, but he also knew Toby could take it. Hardesty himself drew the line at taking sex that far. Toby didn’t. With this escort service, you got what you paid for, and you paid a lot.

Hardesty gave up and went to his bed, turning out all of the lights. The walls between his bedroom and Toby’s weren’t so thick that Hardesty didn’t know that Toby was getting the shit fucked out of him on the bed. One thing--besides his looks--that made Toby a really good rent-boy was his stamina. He could take a dick all night long. He could take two dicks at once. He even could take a fist. And tonight it seemed like he was doing just that--taking a fist. That made Hardesty’s sphincter clench and a shudder to go down his body, but it didn’t stop him from masturbating to the sound as he drifted off to sleep.

He knew that most people wouldn’t be able to understand how he could live with a guy who sold his body like Toby did, but Hardesty had no other choice if he wanted to be with Toby, and his own sex life separate from that with Toby was pretty fucked up too--and was tolerated by Toby. So, it was what it was.

* * * *

He thought he was moving into a nice wet dream, but he was close enough into consciousness to wake to Toby lying between his legs, sucking his cock. He must have been at it for a few minutes, because Hardesty was hard.

“Toby,” he murmured.

“Hello, lover,” Toby pulled off the cock long enough to answer. But then it was back to business.

“It’s dark, dark. What the fuck time is it?” Hardesty looked over at the nightstand. It was pushing 4:00 a.m. “What the fuck? I’ve got to be up at six.”

“And you weren’t keyed up enough by Mr. Wang to want this?”

“I always want this, Toby, but--”

“Yes you do. That’s why I keep you around. I can’t get enough of cock. Yours in particular.”

“After earlier, I wouldn’t have thought--”

“Ah, so you were watching. Quite the cocksman, wasn’t he, my Mr. Wang?” Toby moved up to straddle Hardesty’s pelvis with his knees. He was facing Hardesty and put a hand behind him to keep Hardesty’s cock inside his buttock crack. He was rising and falling on it. The older man groaned.

“Was? Is he gone now?”

“Yes, he left happy.”

“And with his cock deflated and worn out, I hope. He really called Wang? He had one hell of a one.”

“He did, didn’t he? Opened me up for my lover. I don’t know if his name was Wang or not. I called him Sydney. That was the name on the form. Someone big here is entertaining him, though. I recognize him from the papers. A Hong Kong financier.”

Toby was good about scrutinizing faces in the papers. It often saved him from making gaffes with clients he wasn’t supposed to know.

“You watched us, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You got off on it, didn’t you?”

“Twice, but It’s late, Toby. I’ve had a day and face a back-to-back shift. Looks like you’ve had quite a day too.”

“You’re hard for me.”

“That’s beside the point. We’re both worn out, and did you check your voice mail? You’re off to New York tomorrow.”

“Today. It’s today already. Yes, I’ve caught the voice mail. I should be gone for two days. I know who the Brazilian is. He’ll give me a workout. But you being hard--me always being randy. That’s the point. That’s the only point here.”

No, it wasn’t the only point, Hardesty thought. It wasn’t the only point in this strange relationship that needed to be examined and worked out. But, god, the delicious little piece was sexy and enticing. The images of the Wang guy pounding Toby in an athletic fuck--two toned bodies, two very different but equally sexy bodies fucking up a storm. He groaned as Toby went up on his knees, knowing what inevitably was coming next, being too tired for it, but aching for it.

“Toby, I know you’ve had a challenging day.”

“And I know I want you. If you don’t want me, it’s OK, I understand.”

“I want you,” Hardesty croaked. Oh how I want you. Oh how many ways and how deeply I want you, he thought. He groaned again as, reversing himself on Hardesty’s pelvis and drawing Hardesty’s legs up into a bent position, Toby reached down, held Hardesty’s cock in position, and sank on it.

“You. Do it. Fuck me,” Toby cried out, raising a bit on his knees, coming up on the cock. Using the leverage of his feet, flat on the bed, Hardesty grabbed Toby’s waist and started a counterpoint of thrusting his cock up into the channel and pulling Toby down on the cock. Toby grasped Hardesty’s knees and started mouthing off. “Yes, yes, Christ I’ve wanted you all day. Fuck it. Getitgetitgetit.”

The two of them had a secret. Toby had a tattoo on his lower belly at the side, of a gecko, a gecko whose long, thin red tongue went down to the base of Toby’s cock and wrapped itself around the root. Men found the tattoo interesting and amusing. Hardesty knew it was more than that. Toby had an erogenous point that sent him into the stratosphere sexually. The tattoo had been inked on that point.

Involuntarily, almost without being aware of it, Hardesty did what he usually did to push the two lovers into an overdrive that made them the best match in sex that either promiscuous stud had with any other man. One of his hands went around to Toby’s lower belly and rubbed the gecko tattoo.

“Oh, fuck! Shit, shit, shit, YES!” Toby cried out, and he took over the fuck, kicking up into overdrive, slamming himself up and down on Hardesty’s cock.

And then the sounds started, the sounds that Hardesty loved to hear during his lovemaking, the reason he’d kept his parent’s old brass bed. Toby was grasping the rungs of the footboard, cantilevered out over Hardesty’s legs, pistoning his channel, which was conditioned to fit Hardesty like a glove, and the bed was shuddering, the springs groaning, the brass headboard doing a tattoo of rhythmic grinding against the bedroom wall.

The music Hardesty loved to hear. All telling Hardesty that, once again, he was getting the fuck of his life.