The Philanthropist

“There’s someone I want you to meet. Just as soon as he separates from the battle-ax.”

“The battle-ax?” Kyle Kendricks asked, a bit confused. He was standing with Trent Taylor at the opening of the Rodin exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. Trent was the curator of the exhibit. He knew Kyle because both served on the board of the Rainbow Connection, a gay men’s recreation center/clinic/shelter located in the downtown warehouse district close to where the east-west 64 and north-south 95 interstates met. Trent was the board treasurer. Kyle, a young assistant professor of art, taught classes in art at the Rainbow Connection as well as dance, and he directed the Richmond Gay Men’s Chorus, which practiced there.

“Mrs. Battle-ax. It’s his wife, Margaret. That’s him there, the tall, distinguished-looking dude, Derek Colson. He’s among the highest-drawer philanthropists in this town. She’s the dowdy one standing beside him. A DuPont, of course. That’s where much of their money comes from.”

“And you want me to meet him because . . . ?”

“To help them disperse some of that money they’re building up, of course. He’s willing to give a chunk to the Connection. We just need to be friendly to him.”

“So you want me to be friendly to him?”

“You’re about the friendliest-looking board member we have. He’s a director of the Virginia National Bank. He gave a fourth of the money for this exhibit. Need I say more? Ah, I see she’s wandered off. Put on a smile and let’s get over there before that dreadful woman from the Richmond Symphony cuts in on us. Here. Take this flute of bubbly over to him. His glass is nearly empty.”

“What sort of friendly do you want me to be?”

“You know what kind of friendly. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t be coy.”

“He’s a married guy. He wouldn’t--”

“Don’t believe that for a minute. Why do you think he shows interest in the Rainbow Connection? Why do you think he gives money to us? He’s a cutthroat businessman. Don’t be so naïve as to believe he gives anything to anybody without the expectation of return on his investment.”

Trent brought Kyle together with the banker, managed smooth introductions, and wafted off. Kyle and Derek engaged in a bit of chit chat before others arrived, including the executive director of the Richmond Symphony, who was determined to monopolize the banker. Derek Colson gave Kyle a sheepish look and a wink before he turned his full attention to the woman and Kyle, wanting to avoid another man who had been dogging him throughout the opening and who was walking their way, joined the fluid group.

Kyle hadn’t been standing beside the banker long, but it had been long enough to get the impression of a big, fuzzy polar bear. He was, as Trent had said, distinguished. He also was imposing, being a full head taller than Kyle, who was on the short side and lithe, albeit well-muscled, like the gymnast he’d been in college and the ballet dancer he was with the Richmond Ballet, just one of the set of artistic talents he had. Colson definitely was a man to be noticed--large boned, tall, broad in the shoulders, and not exactly thin in the waist either, although not really fat. He had wavy gray hair of a silvery texture, bushy gray eyelashes over striking, hazel eyes, and a mustache leading down into a goatee, both of which were professionally tended. He obviously was a man who was obeyed.

When he went home to his second-floor apartment in one of the old mansions of the Fan District lining Grove Avenue, not far from the Fine Arts Museum or many of the other artistic venues in Richmond, Kyle thought back on his few moments with the banker. The man had a magnetism about him and Kyle regretted not having had longer to talk with him.

He needn’t have held regret about that, though, as the following Saturday, when the Richmond Gay Man’s Chorus gave a Christmas concert in one of the Jefferson Hotel ballrooms, Trent Taylor appeared by Kyle’s side, with Derek Colson in tow, to congratulate Kyle, the chorus’ director, on a successful concert.

“Raised a big chunk for the Connection,” he said. “Derek has written a very nice check too. He wanted to congratulate you personally.”

“Yes, it was a fine concert,” Colson said, giving Kyle what could only be described in this season as a jolly, sparkling smile.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Kyle said.

“Perhaps we could celebrate a bit after you have been properly hailed by all of your admirers,” Colson said, as Trent wafted off and other admirers were honing in on Kyle. “Would you do me the honor of meeting me in the hotel bar after you have been exhausted here? I would like to have a chance to exhaust you myself.”

Kyle felt a little chill run up his spine even though he was sure that the meaning that jumped into his mind was just his imagination. He couldn’t help being attracted to the man, who exuded a dominating, overpowering personality. “Yes, I would like that,” he answered.

Colson was charming and dominated the conversation in the bar. They sat across from each other with a tiny, round table between them that let Colson make the most of his height and bulk. He leaned over the table, giving Kyle the impression of the big bear of a man covering him from three sides and drawing him into his embrace. Kyle found that warming and arousing. He didn’t bat an eye when Colson touched the hand he had on the table with his fingers or let the fingers move on the back of his hand. Kyle felt a shudder of pleasure when he looked down and saw that the man’s knuckles were hairy. Kyle was aroused by hirsute men.

Somehow during the conversation, Colson managed to get his middle finger under Kyle’s and two of Kyle’s fingers loosely wrapped around Colson’s. Kyle wasn’t aware of it until Colson started moving his finger slowly in and out of the loose grip. Kyle blushed and started to move his hand away, but Colson’s other hand covered his and held it there.

“Am I embarrassing you?” Colson asked. “Trent told me that you would accommodate me.”

“No, not at all,” Kyle answered. And it occurred to him that Colson’s overtures didn’t, in fact, turn him off. He looked directly into Colson’s eyes and repeated, “No, you aren’t embarrassing me at all. You’re flattering me.”

It had become quite evident that Trent had been right about the man’s interest despite him being married. It also was evident that it wasn’t so much that Trent had been throwing Kyle at Colson as that Colson had pressed Trent to get him hooked up with Kyle--and that Trent had agreed to do so.

“And I hope I am enticing you. I have a room booked upstairs. Will you come upstairs with me?” Colson asked in a low, gravelly voice.

“Yes,” Kyle answered simply.

“I am going to fuck you; you are going to be submissive to me,” Colson said, pinning his intent down, watching Kyle’s reaction closely with his eyes.

“Yes,” Kyle acquiesced, lowering his own eyes in submission.

* * * *

“Strip for me, please, and stand there and let me take you in,” Colson said. He was sitting on the end of the bed in the hotel room and Kyle was standing in the middle of the room, facing him. The command was given in a calm, low voice, but it none the less was a command. Colson had called Kyle correctly. He was a submissive. As long as he was in the arousal zone and the commands were given calmly, he would accede to them.

Their disrobing was almost a mirror play, with both of them going after the bow ties of their tuxedos simultaneously. Colson stopped, though, with his shirt and undershirt off, mesmerized at the beauty of Kyle’s dancer’s body, as Kyle continued slowly stripping down. For his part, Kyle couldn’t take his eyes off Colson’s hairy, barrel chest.

“You are a gorgeous young man,” Colson said when Kyle was naked. The older man sat down on the end of the bed. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Half my age.”

“Not from the look of you,” Kyle said.

Colson was obviously pleased by this. “You look like a dancer. I thought you taught art--and, of course, direct a choir. You could be a model.”

“I do that too,” Kyle said, pleased now himself at the compliments. “I dance with the Richmond Ballet, but I’m getting a little old for that.”

“Will you turn around for me? Does it embarrass you that I ask that?”

“Not at all,” Kyle answered, and he turned to show Colson his backside.

“Nice. Plump. You’re perfection. Would it be too much to ask you to bend over . . .” Kyle did so, “. . . and to spread your cheeks.” Kyle did that too.

Colson rose, walked to Kyle, and ran his hand down Kyle’s flank and over his rounded buttocks. Kyle flinched when Colson penetrated his ass with an index finger and held it there, both of them focused on Kyle relaxing his sphincter muscle and opening to the finger, both sighing when he did, but neither said anything. Withdrawing the finger, both of them knowing that Colson could have mounted Kyle right then and fucked him and would have been received submissively without demur, Colson went back to the bed and sat down.

“Beautiful. I hope you don’t mind my expressing my admiration for what you’ve done with your body this way.”

“No, of course not.”

“I wish to worship your body. Are you going to let me fuck you repeatedly? I’ll pay you $500 to let me cover you as often as I like tonight.”

“Yes, if you want. You don’t have to pay me anything.” The approach had been smooth, even if bald, and just right--Kyle was narcissistic. He worshipped his own body. He was lost to another man who would do so as well.

“Thank you. Will you kneel to me to start with?”

Kyle turned to see that Colson had unzipped himself and had a beefy cock out, more than half hard, and in his hand. His thighs were spread as he sat at the end of the bed. Kyle knelt between them, took the cock in his mouth, and made love to it as he opened up the tuxedo trousers at the waist, flared the trousers open, and let his fingers dig through Colson bush, finding and grasping, squeezing, and rolling the man’s balls as he sucked the cock, running his tongue over the piss slit.

Sighing, Colson leaned back on the mattress on his elbow and enjoyed the blow job, which was over all too soon, as he ejaculated into the back of Kyle’s throat.

“I will come quickly, I’m afraid, as I’ve just done. But I can come often,” he murmured, a statement rather than an apology. “Through the wonders of science I can maintain a hard as long as you can handle it. I want to make clear that I will tax you.”

He pulled Kyle up effortlessly--Kyle sighing at the powerful, big bear aspect of the man--and turned him onto his back on the bed. Crouching over Kyle, enveloping the young man close with his body, instinctively knowing that this aroused and kept the young man submissive, Colson forced Kyle’s legs straight up his chest and over his shoulders.

Muttering, “So flexible. Nice,” Colson took Kyle’s mouth with his, moving into an ever-yielding kiss in which the two shared the residual cum Colson had deposited in Kyle’s mouth. Colson’s fingers went to Kyle’s ass, invading and working Kyle’s channel, as, lost to the confident, overpowering man, Kyle moaned and groaned. Colson stroked Kyle’s cock with his other hand as he rocked back and forth on Kyle’s body--maintaining the pressure and stroking until Kyle had come for him.

“Please, please,” Kyle murmured. “Put it in me, please.”

Colson rolled off to the side and sat on the end of the bed for a moment, looking down into Kyle’s eyes lustfully. It was obvious they weren’t finished. Kyle looked back, his own eyes full of want and admiration. Colson was dominating him; he was doing everything right.

“Are you sure you are ready for it?” the older man ask.

“Yes, please. Shaft me.”

The banker went down on his knees between Kyle’s legs, draped over the end of the bed, grasped Kyle’s ankles and wishboned the legs straight out and up as his mouth went to Kyle’s hole. The younger man arched his back and moaned at the assault of the mouth and teeth and the penetration of the tongue. The assault was fierce and Kyle opened right up for it.

Standing up between Kyle’s legs, still holding them outstretched, Colson said in a low, commanding voice, “There next to you, that case. Open it. Do it yourself.” Kyle opened the case to find packets of condoms and a tube of lube. Showing his flexibility, he managed to raise his torso to Colson’s chest and bury his lips in the man’s chest hair, as his hands rolled a condom on Colson’s cock. He followed with lubing up his entrance and Colson’s cock, jacking up the older man’s cock to hard by stroking the shaft with the lubed hands.

Here it comes, Kyle thought, as he arched his torso back, waiting for Colson to enter him. But that wasn’t what he did just then. He pulled Kyle up from the bed, once more exhibiting his power, carried him over to the window, where there was a wide ledge running the entire length of that wall, and set Kyle down, moving his legs into the splits along the ledge.

“I want to take advantage of your flexibility,” Colson said. “Your body is magnificent. Young, pliable, flawless.”

“Just don’t make me wait for it,” Kyle murmured. He leaned forward, the palms of his hands on the cold window, a cheek there too, his eyes looking out across the treetops of the gentrified Fan District and the lightly following snow.

He winced as the thick cock worked itself into his ass, mercifully well open from the finger play to receive it and sighed as the bigger man brought his arms around, putting him into an enveloping bear hug, his hairiness making Kyle feel like he was covered in a fur coat--a fur coat with a ramrod up his ass.

Kyle opened his mouth to gasp as the cock moved up, deeper inside him.

“I love your flexibility,” the voice at his ear whispered. “I am an expert in the Kama Sutra. This is the ‘elevated splits.’ I love that you can do it. Not many can. I will pay you to allow me to put you through all of the positions.”

“You don’t have to pay me,” Kyle reiterated. He groaned as Colson fucked him in this demanding position. The term “Kama Sutra” had jumped out at him, and, yes, he wanted to explore that. He loved the thought of the variety and demand of it; he needed spice in his sex life. But more than this term, he latched onto the word “love.” He so much wanted love. Despite all of his talents and activities--maybe because of them--he felt he was held out, isolated, by others. This bear of a man had used the word “love.” Kyle already felt that he was falling in love.

“The afternoon delight,” Colson murmured, as he changed the position to where Kyle was backed to the window, the heels of his hands reversed and digging into the ledge, and his body suspended over the carpet, his knees hooked on Colson’s hips and Colson’s hands palming Kyle’s buttocks, supporting the young man’s body in midair as he fucked him deep.

After what Colson termed “bent spoons” on the bed, with Colson on his back, knees bent, and Kyle’s back on his chest, with Colson holding Kyle’s legs raised and spread wide with a hand grip under the young man’s knees, Colson’s cock pistoning Kyle’s hole, the two men both released their last ejaculations of the night.

They went to sleep with Kyle, sighing and purring, in Colson’s bear-hug, furry arms.

When Kyle woke up in the morning, he was alone in the bed--and in the room. Still purring, he stretched, the word “love” pouring forth in his mind. He had loved the inventive, demanding fucking--demanding, yet respectful; velvet-covered steel. The steel hardness of the man’s cock inside him. He loved the charisma of the big bear of a man who was Derek Colson. He loved.

When he rose from the bed, he found the twelve fifty-dollar bills on the dresser. He’d not only been paid for, but he’d been tipped, as well. Just a rent-boy, prostituted to the needs of the recreation center. That certainly took the edge off of the thought of “love.”

* * * *

The lounge areas of the Rainbow Connection recreation center had needed replacing for a couple of years. What was there was broken or the upholstery slashed and could only give someone a bad impression of the men coming there. Now, thanks to a donation from the philanthropist, Derek Colson, it all was new, replaced with highly durable furniture that should last longer than the original set had. The furnishings were dedicated in a ceremony attended by the center’s board members and any of the clients that could be mustered up on a Friday afternoon--and, of course, by the philanthropist himself, Derek Colson.

As a member of the board, Kyle Kendricks was there--trying to look calm, but trembling inside because Colson was there. It had been two weeks since Colson had fucked him royally in the Jefferson Hotel room. Kyle was aching for the man. As board treasurer, Trent Taylor gave a speech and shepherded the guest of honor around. While everyone was mingling and other board members were fawning over Colson, Trent came over to Kyle.

“He wants to talk to you before either of you leave.”

“He?”

“Derek Colson, of course. The furniture cost $20,000, by the way. We’re still beholding to him for $10,000 of that. I thought you should know.”

Why should I know, Kyle wondered. He wasn’t the money man around here. That was for Trent to worry about. But then he saw Derek ask where the men’s room was and excuse himself. As he turned, Colson gave Kyle a pointed look. It was the most attention the man had given Kyle yet that day.

Trent came back to Kyle and hissed, “Follow him. He’s made clear that he gave the money because of you.”

Right. For the good of the recreation center, Kyle thought. But, as naturally as he could seem, he followed Colson down the hall to the men’s room.

Colson was at a urinal when Kyle came in. He had his dick out and was pissing into the urinal. Kyle sidled up beside him and unzipped. He didn’t bother to pull his shaft out, though, because he knew that wasn’t what they were doing there. Colson finished peeing, gave his meaty cock a couple of shakes, cupped it, and half turned it to Kyle, making sure that Kyle saw it. It was half hard. Kyle stared at it and took a deep breath.

“I’ve meant to ask if you enjoyed this the other night at the Jefferson. I had to leave before you woke up,” Colson said in a low, but strong voice.

“Yes. Of course I enjoyed it.” It’s been two weeks; I’m in agony for it, is what Kyle wanted to say, despite making me feel like a whore. But he didn’t say that. It was embarrassing for him to be this in thrall to an older man like this. He could have almost any top going through this facility. They were always after him. It’s just that this big, hairy bear of a man pushed all of Kyle’s buttons. “But the money. You didn’t have to leave the--”

“Most flexible body I’ve ever had. Sweetest hole. I loved doing you. Worth every penny. I want to see you again. I’ll give you $500 for another session in the sack.”

Out of that, “loved” and “see you again” is what resonated with Kyle. “When? But you know you don’t have to--”

“Today. This afternoon. Now. I’ll call and get a hotel room. I want to tie you in knots, lay you out, and spike you to the floor. I’m that hot for you. Haven’t thought about anything else for days--just putting you in a complete submissive position and fucking the shit out of you.”

Kyle moaned. Colson was hard--hugely hard. Kyle was hard too. If Colson took him into one the stalls right here and fucked him over the toilet, Kyle would be happy to take the risk. Not much of a risk though. This was a gay center. Lots of guys had probably been fucked over the toilets in this john.

“I can’t stand it. Put it back for now,” he squeaked. Colson laughed and stuffed his shaft back into his fly. “No need for a hotel room,” Kyle continued. “I live just over on Grove. Alone. I can fix you dinner . . . unless you have to get home.”

“I’m not even here,” Colson said with a laugh. “I’m in New York City at this moment. Shhh, don’t tell anyone. I don’t get back to Richmond until tomorrow afternoon.”

“So, my place is OK?”

“Love it.” That “love” word again. Kyle zeroed right into that.

“You can cook too?” Colson said in surprise. “Is there anything you can’t do?”

“I don’t know. Try me.”

“Is there anything you won’t do for me?”

“No.”

Colson smiled. That had been the right answer.

* * * *

“It’s called a ‘bully’ and you’re handling it great,” Colson whispered into Kyle’s ear just inside the door to Kyle’s apartment, their clothes scattered about on the foyer floor. “I’ve been dreaming of taking you in this position for days.”

Colson was standing, crouched down a bit in the center of the foyer. Kyle was draped on the front of him, facing away, Colson’s crowned cock deep up into Kyle’s channel. Colson had Kyle in a full Nelson from behind, the palms of his hands pressed into the sides of Kyle’s head. Kyle’s legs were wrapped around Colson’s thighs, and Colson was bouncing the smaller, lighter man’s body up and down on his cock. “Love how you take the ‘bully,’” Colson muttered.

Love. It was love for Kyle too. He was becoming increasingly aware that he loved a bully--and not a sexual position with that name.

Kyle served up a steak and potatoes dinner that Colson said he loved.

For dessert, Kyle knelt on the dining room table, his torso arched back into Colson’s chest, one of his arms slung back, the hand cupping the back of Colson’s neck, his other hand jacking his cock, as Colson covered and fucked him from behind, his hands gripping Kyle’s waist. Colson said that this was ‘elevated bodyguard’ position.

They did the ‘crab’ in bed, Colson on his back and Kyle elevated over his body, looking up at the ceiling, supporting himself over Colson on the hands and feet of bent arms and legs, as Colson fucked up into his ass. It was taxing for both of them and they then slept much of the night. It was a ‘deep Impact’ wakeup the next morning, with Kyle on his back, butt at the end of the bed, his legs bent up into his body and Colson holding his feet together, while he stood at the end of the bed and mined Kyle’s ass deep to a mutual ejaculation.

“Loved it,” Colson said as he was dressing. “Next week again?”

“I loved it too,” Kyle said. What he was thinking, though, was, I love you. He just was too scared to say it out loud. “Sure anytime next week you can get away. Any time you can get away. Any time at all.”

Once more, there were twelve fifty-dollar bills on the dresser when Colson left.

Kyle put that money with the $600 he’d been given earlier without asking for it. He’d buy something nice for Derek, maybe on their month or two-month anniversary of having met. This wasn’t about the money.

* * * *

“I wanted to make sure you were here,” Trent said as he came away from the podium in welcoming the addition of a nurse practitioner position to the Rainbow Connection free clinic. He whispered that while Derek Colson was at the podium saying how honored he was to be donating the money for that.

“I’m glad I’m here too,” Kyle answered, although it was for a far different reason than he supposed. Summer was drawing to a close. Derek’s wife was in a flurry of packing and monopolizing his time before she shoved off to Paris for the fall. Kyle hadn’t seen Derek for three weeks and he was afraid that the banker’s interest in him was waning. That would break Kyle’s heart. He was smitten.

But, no such thing. When Colson was able to get close enough to Kyle to talk to him in private, he got right to the point. “It’s been too long. I’m celebrating Margret’s trip to Europe by taking some politicos out on my boat. Would you like to come along? The day Margaret leaves and the night I fuck your lights out, of course.”

“You own a boat?”

“Yeah, I keep it down in Hampton. It comes in handy in closing business deals. It would be good to have you along for the ride.”

“Sure, why not?”

“Terrific,” Colson said. As he turned away, he added, “This should cover it for all,” as he slipped $1,000 in fifties in Kyle’s pocket. But Kyle didn’t hear that and didn’t find the money until later. His initial thought on that was that he’d taken the $1,200 he’d already been given out of the case at the back of his bottom drawer and just had forgotten he’d done so. But when he got home, he forgot to put the money in the case, so he didn’t discover that the original $1,200 was still there.

Maybe Kyle should have thought harder before saying “why not?” The three guys Colson was taking out beyond the three-mile limit to fish were all members of the Virginia House of Delegates. They were on the fence in a bill Colson was interested in spiking. It was a real party, with far more drinking and drugging than any attempt to fish. All five men pranced around the boat--which was more of a small yacht than what Kyle had imagined--in Speedos. Kyle looked great in his. Colson and one of the delegates, an early-thirties well-gymed guy looked fine. The two older, rather tubby politicians shouldn’t have made the attempt.

They were all there for the fun, though, they all were closet randy tops knowing exactly what ride they were being bribed to go on, and all enjoyed having Kyle along. They started with the beer, with Kyle keeping up with them on that. He was the first one to start to fade when the hard liquor came out. Colson kept him on the side of consciousness, though, by monitoring his intake. That didn’t mean that Kyle, half blotto, didn’t try out a joint for the first time--or, eventually, a line of coke when that came out.

The ceiling was spinning when Kyle, on his back on one of the bunks below, realized there was a cock in his ass and a fat man between his legs, huffing and puffing, as he pumped Kyle. It took the penetration of the second one for Kyle to fully realize that neither one of them was Colson. The younger, gymed guy was more athletic, vigorous, and longer lasting in his fuck, but Kyle was mostly gone by then and let himself be manipulated like a rag doll. He had no idea if Colson had fucked him or not.

His head throbbing and his world still spinning a bit, Kyle was silent and sullen on the drive back to Richmond late that night. Colson did notice that there was frost in the air and that Kyle was upset about something, but Colson saw no reason to care. The whore had been well paid. Colson was doing a happy dance. He--or maybe Kyle--had managed to get all three votes in his pocket.

Kyle had no complaint to give. He’d been paid $1,000 for the outing. The whore didn’t have any reason to have his nose out of joint.

“I might as well give the check to you,” he said as the limousine cruised west on I-64. He held an envelope out to Kyle. Kyle opened it; it contained a check for $30,000.

“The check?” Kyle asked, his face wincing at the effort to speak with the hammers beating on his head.

“The donation for the nurse practitioner, yeah. That’s for the center. You got $1,000 already. You did very good, Kyle. I loved how you took care of us. You and me in the sling. That was heaven. You’ve got a great ass.”

Kyle groaned. He’d seen the sling below in the yacht. He had no memory of having been in it.

“Has Trent talked to you about the party next Saturday?” Colson asked.

“No. What party?”

“I said I’d build a shelter addition if he supplied the men for a party I’m having Saturday night. He said that you and he would take care of it. You’ll be there, of course. You did A-1 work with the politicians.”

“Of course,” Kyle said, turning his face toward the forest they were driving through so that Derek couldn’t see the shock he couldn’t hide.

* * * *

“He’s not a philanthropist; he’s a john soliciting men to fuck. He thinks I’m a whore.”

“He’s a high-paying john, Kyle. And, where he’s concerned, you are a whore and have been. He’s paid you and paid you well to let him fuck you. He’s told me what he paid you. We’re making a whole lot of money off him. It works out for everyone.”

Yeah, right. Everyone. Everyone but me, Kyle wanted to scream. He wanted to cry out that he’d thought he loved the big lug--that they were in a relationship. It turned out, though, that he was just the guy’s whore.

“But I was just the guy’s whore, Trent.”

“You were his high-priced whore,” Trent repeated. “You let men fuck you before I introduced you to this the gold mine that is Derek Colson. You gave it away for free before. You were underselling yourself. Colson pays you well and pays the center even better. Now, do you want to help me recruit other guys from those coming to the shelter to be at the party, or don’t you?”

“I’ll get back to you on that,” Kyle said. Of course he didn’t plan on doing that, but he didn’t know what was what here yet. Somebody was going to have to pay for this, but he wasn’t sure who or how. Until then he best keep his powder dry. “Are all the guys going to be there to be fucked by Derek’s guests?”

“He wants us to provide the caterers and servers too. Again, guys from the rec center. They’ll be paid--and well. Look how you’ve been paid if you include his donations to the center--$10,000 a fuck. All to a good cause. This isn’t the first party we’ve done for him. We have a squad I call ‘don’t see; don’t hear; don’t talk.’ They get paid and they get to watch. But they get to keep their mouths shut.”

“Who’s on the squad?” Kyle asked.

Trent told him.

“You’ll be hearing from me,” Kyle said. He went back to his office at the nearby Virginia Commonwealth University and tried to calm himself. He’d been such a fool. He had thought he loved the big lug and that Colson maybe loved him in return. He’d just been a whore to Colson. He was just a whore to the rec center too.

Maybe it was time to leave Richmond. There was that offer from San Francisco. He sifted through the papers on his desk. Yes, the offer was still good. He sat and thought and thought and thought. The first thing he had to do was to erase from his mind this fantasy he had built about loving Derek Colson and being loved in return. It was all business--solicitation and pimping. That done, he was free to think more on what to do about it.

He’d have to erase from his mind too that Trent was his friend and looked out for his welfare. That was an easier thought to give up.

At length, he called Trent back and in a hard voice said, “OK, I’ll play.”

* * * *

“So, Eddie,” Kyle said, coming out of the shower room in the gym at Rainbow Connection with just a towel around his waist and calling out to the towel attendant. “I hear you are going to be a waiter at a party this Saturday night.”

“Yeah, for the rich dude, Colson,” Eddie said, giving Kyle the eye. Both of them knew that Eddie had been hard for Kyle for months. “You going to be there?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah, Colson wants to have guys who will give his guests blow jobs and good fucks. You going to be doing any of that?”

“I doubt that. I’ll be busy waitering, and the guests at those parties are usually just tops. I’m a top too.”

“Ooo, you are? I didn’t know that. Interesting,” Kyle said as if this was totally news to him and made a difference in how he’d been playing hard to get for Eddie. He came up to Eddie and reached down and rubbed his crotch with a hand. “Good thing I’m in the mood for a top right now.” He let his towel drop, took Eddie’s hand, and put it where Eddie had been wanting to put it for some time.

Kyle let Eddie fuck him in the shower, up against the tiles. When they were done, Kyle told Eddie what a good cocksman he was and that he’d like to have Eddie again--but maybe Eddie could do something for him if they were going to get it on again.

Of course Eddie would do something for him.

The party went just as Derek Colson would want it to, and much of the time he and Kyle were upstairs on Derek’s bed or up against his bureau or on his floor or just doing a standing fuck in the middle of the room.

The next morning, Kyle called on Colson at the bank--the first time he’d visited him there. Colson wasn’t too delighted to see him, but he did. Kyle took along his laptop and showed Colson the great videos Eddie had taken for him at the party the previous night.

“Your receptionist was good enough to give me the address where your wife is staying in Paris,” Kyle said. “I’ll bet she’d like to see coverage of your party last night.”

“You wouldn’t,” Colson said, his voice quite strained. An attempt to stare Kyle down, though, convinced him otherwise.

“I’m going to give you a chance to be a philanthropist for real, Derek. You don’t know what you had in me. I wasn’t letting you fuck me for money. You could have had me for free. I told you repeatedly that you didn’t have to pay for it. Now I want you to pay for not having it. I’d like you to make a check out for $100,000 and then I just won’t show these videos to anyone.”

“Make it out to you, I suppose.”

“No, not to me. And not to Rainbow Connection either. I don’t want you writing another check to Trent Taylor. I want you to cut him off and influence your friends to do so to until they replace him on the board there. No, I want you to make the check out to the women’s shelter out on the West End. I want to help you to be a real philanthropist. There are no strings attached to real philanthropy, Derek.”

“Done,” Colson said. “But you know, Trent told me you went with the deal. The money isn’t anything to me. You are. I’ve never had anyone as flexible as you to fuck. I loved every minute of it.”

That is the trouble, Kyle thought. You loved the act; you didn’t love the guy you were doing it with. And to you I was just a whore. But, dumb as I was, I loved you.

“Can we go back to square one, you and me, Kyle?”

Kyle hesitated, but then he said, “Sure, we can try it again.”

“Wednesday night? I can come to your place? About 8:00 p.m.?”

“Sure, that’s fine,” Kyle said breezily. “I’ll take that check on out to the women’s shelter now, if you don’t mind. Until Wednesday. It will cost you $500, though.”

Colson agreed instantly and made out another check for Kyle.

Wednesday would be just fine with Kyle. He was getting on a plane to move to San Francisco on Monday.