After the Kidnap

Christian woke and reached over to the other side of the bed to find it empty. Yes, right, he thought. Chuck, his bodyguard, who did far more than guard his body, would be off running the Mill Beach sands below the Pacific Ocean cliff on which Christian’s Sandy Lane Circle Brookings, Oregon, house perched. Christian was still in the position in which Chuck had left him, on his back, legs splayed and bent, and a heavy pillow under the small of his back, raising his pelvis. Chuck’s cum dribbled out of Christian’s hole. It had been over a year since they’d bothered with condoms.

When he’d turned his head, thinking he’d see a sleeping Chuck, Christian saw the glass of water and packet of sedative pills. Chuck would check to make sure Christian had taken them when he returned from the beach and either went to work out in the gym in his quarters over the garage or left for the gym over on nearby Railroad Street. Chuck was always working out and had the Mr. Universe body to show for it. At twenty-nine, he was tall, bulked up, blond, tattooed, menacing, formidable—just what you’d want in a bodyguard. In stark contrast, twenty-four-year-old concert pianist Christian Haskil, was small, albeit perfectly formed, no more than five-seven on his tippy-toes, dark, shy, sultry, docile, and easily controlled, with or without the sedatives.

When Chuck was on top of him, inside him, his thick dick working Christian’s channel deep, there was no denying the man—it was never a good idea to try to counter Chuck in anything—not that Christian would try to deny him. Christian had found, two years ago, even before the kidnapping, that he liked having a man’s dick inside him. It had come as somewhat of a revelation. Christian had never done much of his own thinking. From a New York family of billionaires who had found Christian was a child prodigy on the classical piano at the age of eight, Christian had always had someone else to do everything for him, make every decision for him. “I’ll take care of that. Just go practice your piano,” was the mantra at his house. And he had done so.

He was only really alive at two times—first, when he was on stage, with an orchestra, and at the piano, making beautiful music and, second, during those few seconds when a man was on top of him, inside him, and was jerking and releasing his seed. Christian was most alive when receiving a man’s seed. Chuck may only be the bodyguard, but he was Christian’s master. He provided what Christian wanted and needed.

Chuck was a virile man. He covered, jerked, and released his seed inside Christian at least daily. This and the continuous application of sedatives had been the answer given to Christian’s recovery from the kidnapping. It had at least kept the young man in limbo for two years and it had not gotten in the way of his stage appearances with orchestras on the piano. In any event, there was no financial impediment to continuing life this way. Or there, at least, had not been until Christian’s family back on Long Island decided he needed to be jolted out of just floating along like this.

Christian rolled over the still-warm spot Chuck had vacated and sat on the side of the bed while he took the sedative with the water. Chuck would know if he didn’t—not from the medicine still being there but from Christian’s lack of lethargy, a state he’d been in for the last two years, medicating so as not to be overwhelmed of the experience he’d had. The doctors had reached a level with him where he could function without it affecting his piano playing. It was all about his classical piano career now—and had been since his late teens. This balance was acceptable to Christian. He saw nothing better to be gained by not taking the sedatives.

He showered, dressed, and, in somewhat of a haze, floated through to the back of the house where the living-dining-kitchen area was located, the house ending in a wall of glass overlooking a gorgeous view of the Pacific Ocean and, below the cliff, interesting formations of rocks jutting up out of the surf.

His housekeeper, Lilly Wang, hired by Chuck when the bodyguard had arranged to move them out to the West Coast, out from under the doting Haskil clan in the Hamptons, and efficient, quiet, nonjudgmental, and absent most of the time, was in the kitchen area, finishing up a casserole to leave for dinner. She made toast and set out orange juice when she’d heard Christian in the shower, in the bedroom wing at the road side of the house.

Christian, barefoot and barely dressed in a loose athletic T-shirt and athletic shorts, stopped at the kitchen island long enough to down the orange juice and grab up a piece of toast and the coffee Lilly was pouring for him and padded, with a slight limp, out toward the ocean, through the sliding glass doors, and onto the deck, set right at the edge of the cliff.

“Don’t forget you have a journalist coming this afternoon,” Lilly said. That was quite an event. They didn’t get visitors here. Chuck even discouraged any of the family coming from the East Coast to check in on Christian. “I’ve prepared this casserole; in case the journalist stays for dinner. Mr. Taggert won’t be here for dinner. I’ll leave direction on the counter on how long to heat it and at what temperature.”

The young man grunted his understanding as he reached the glass doors to the deck. Lilly couldn’t be sure he would carry through with heating the meal up—she didn’t really know what the young man ate when she wasn’t here to prepare it. She liked Christian and she loved to hear him play the piano, which is just about all he did in life—there was a concert grand Steinway dominating the living area—but she was afraid if she got any more involved with this setup than she did, Taggert—Chuck—would give her the sack. It must be the sedatives, she thought, but the young man was as limp and yielding as an old pet cat. It didn’t affect his piano playing, and he seemed to live for nothing more than that.

She didn’t like the idea of the sedatives, but they had a doctor’s name on the bottles and it wasn’t her place to get more involved in this. The young man obviously was buried in his work. He probably wasn’t any more outgoing without the sedatives as he was with them. Besides, he’d been through a harrowing kidnapping a couple of years previously, with him shot and his kidnappers dead in the rescue.

Christian stood at the deck railing, drinking his coffee and looking down onto the Mill Beach, where several people were walking and running. The surf here was too rough and the seabed too rocky for anyone to be going into the water, but the beach was well populated. He didn’t have any trouble picking out Chuck jogging down the beach, though. There were several fit bare-chested men down there, but there was only one Mr. Universe type. While Christian watched, he saw Chuck stop and talk with a young man in a Speedo. This didn’t surprise Christian either. This was as usual. Chuck did as he pleased. Chuck took care of Christian’s sexual needs, but he covered other young men as well. His control over Christian was such that Christian never complained about this. Shortly after meeting up, Chuck and the young man headed up toward the beach parking lot.

Christian reentered the house, assuming he’d hear the rumbling engine of the Corvette he owned even though he didn’t drive and didn’t have a driver’s license, and went to the piano. He’d engage in multiple, highly disciplined, deeply engaged two-hour practice sessions each day. This would be the first for this day. He only left the house to meet his professional obligations. He had two concerts coming up, accompanying Dvořák’s New World Symphony with the Oregon Symphony in Portland and Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville with the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra and Opera further south, in California.

Sure enough, he hadn’t been playing long when he heard the Corvette returning. Chuck would be otherwise engaged in his apartment—a bedroom, a living room tricked out also as a gym, a kitchenette, and bath—above the garage. Christian wasn’t jealous. If anything, he was a bit relieved. He just floated along. Chuck’s role in his life was just what it was. With Chuck here, Christian wasn’t expected to make any decisions. He could just play the piano and otherwise be submissive.

Two hours later, Lilly was standing by the piano. “I’m leaving for the day now, Mr. Haskil,” she said. “The journalist you have an appointment with is here now. I left your dinner in the refrigerator and instructions on heating it up on the kitchen island.”

Christian was deep into practicing Figaro’s “Largo Al Factotum” opening aria from The Barber of Seville and didn’t respond. Lilly said it a second time before reaching over and putting a hand on Christian’s on the piano, bringing the music to a stop. The young man gave a little jerk and came out of his reverie. He wasn’t angry, though. This was a much-used method by Lilly in bringing him back into the world.

“Oh, yes. Please have him come in.”

“Mr. Saunders is already here,” she said.

A very handsome and well-put-together man of about thirty stepped forward. He was smiling. “Hello, I’m Richard Saunders,” he said. “I arranged through your parents to do an interview with you on your current life here on the West Coast, if you recall. I’m been here for several minutes, but I didn’t want to interrupt your playing. It is divine.”

“Is it?” Christian said, his voice a little vague, but his smile genuine. “Thank you. I enjoy having Rossini’s music enjoyed,” he said. “Music has become my whole world, I’m afraid.”

“Yes, your parents told me that. We must see if bringing the world to you will help bringing you back into the world.”

Christian’s smile remained, but Saunders could see that there was bit of reticence—and perhaps a hint of fear—behind it. The young man was looking beyond the journalist, though, his attention first arrested by the departure of Lilly Wang, but then moving over to the French doors into a darkened study, where he could see that Chuck had positioned himself in the shadows, where he would not be noticed but where he could hear everything that was said. Chuck had not wanted this interview and had railed against what he called the interference of Christian’s father in insisting on it. But he had not done so directly to Christian’s parents. Chuck knew who paid the bills here and he didn’t want them to have any idea how much he controlled their son.

* * * *

Christian smiled as they settled for the interview, but the smile was a surface one. He was a bundle of nerves and Saunders could almost sense the shutting down of sections of the young man’s life despite this supposedly to be an opening-up exercise. This was more than just a music magazine interview of an elusive child protégé in his later, successful career. This was an effort to open Christian up—to help him recover from trauma. Christian’s concerned family a coast away from Oregon had arranged for this interview, which was as much a wellness check as fodder for a magazine feature.

Saunders couldn’t pry the young man away from his piano but he did get Christian to turn around on the piano bench. He pulled up a lounge chair to face him. He understood immediately that he had to lead with all of the questions—Christian wouldn’t volunteer information.

“First, this isn’t a feature for a specific magazine yet. We’ll have to see what we have. Several have expressed interest, including BB Music Magazine, The New Yorker, and Harper’s.” The translation was that, at this point, Saunders was working for the Haskil family in New York. Whether or not there was a feature article depended on Christian opening up, but the magazine article was an excuse for getting Saunders into the house, not necessarily the end goal here.

He went on. Christian was looking at him, not away to the stacks of scores on a small table next to the Steinway grand. That, in itself, was a small victory. Saunders knew that it was because he was a strikingly handsome and expressive man, a ginger golden redhead, with an engaging small and a well-cut body. Saunders knew Christian was gay and a naïve submissive. Christian’s parents hadn’t told him that; the family’s lawyer had. Sauders had been engaged by the lawyer, who was willing to tell him more than the parents would—or even, perhaps, that they knew. Saunders also knew the role of the bodyguard in this situation. He was not being encouraged to bring that out in any subsequent feature article, though. “As I understand it you started showing promise on the piano at age eight. True?”

There was a pause of silence. “Is that true, Christian?” Say something was what was screaming in the interviewer’s mind. Open the door.

“Yes, that’s right,” Christian said. It was almost a surprise, he was thinking, that the talent was there. His parents, filthy rich, had decided he had to have a talent in something and they threw tutors and coaches at him, searching for something. It had been a miracle that it was the piano and that he had taken to that, taking to it at the time more as an excuse to avoid everything else being thrown at him.

“And you entered in Julliard’s piano program at the age twelve, and were playing with the New York Symphony by age sixteen?”

“Yes.” Again, it had taken a huge family donation to get Julliard to take him, Christian was thinking. Imagine the surprise of all that he actually could—and did—master the program and the transition to the orchestra stage.

“And everything was going well until, and we do have to cover this in some fashion—we can’t avoid it—until two years ago—the kidnapping on Fire Island.”

Christian’s eyes flashed momentarily but then dimmed. He didn’t say anything and there was a hint in the tensing of his muscles that he was going to rise from the bench and leave, but Saunders extended a staying hand and said, gently but firmly, “No, please, stay. We won’t speak of it much, but we do have to deal with it.” Dealing with it was his entire reason for being here.

The voice of command and extended hand had its effect. Christian was conditioned to physical and mental direction and constraint. The mere mention of the kidnapping and Fire Island set off a flood of thoughts he usually sought to—and was able to—suppress.

The trip to Fire Island from New York two years previously in itself had been the catalyst and turning point. Had it only been a bit more than two years ago that he had come to grips with his sexuality? Twenty-one and still a virgin and with no idea of who he was sexually or emotionally. He had been low-hanging fruit for Xavier Rojas. Debussy’s Le Mer. That had been the three-piano concert at Carnegie Hall in a New York Philharmonic Orchestra program. Xavier, Spanish, early forties, charismatic, all touching and flirting, had been on one of the other pianists.

The concert had been a triumph, Christian had been acclaimed, put in the spotlight as he never had been before. He was overwhelmed. Rojas was attentive and commanding. He fucked Christian for the young man’s first time in the dressing room after the last concert. He hadn’t asked Christian to go under him; he had informed Christian that was what he needed, that he needed it from Xavier, and that he knew from Christian’s responses to his flirting that Christian wanted it from him.

He had been right at least that Christian would take command from him. He put the young man under him on a studio couch, holding him close, covering his mouth with one hand, and then mounting, penetrating, and fucking. Paralyzed like a deer in the headlights, Christian didn’t resist, Xavier taking lethargy and submissiveness to command as desire and acquiescence. The Spaniard was experienced and knew what to do and how to do it. Christian accepted that, yes, it was the sexual connection he desired, and slowly but surely it melded to it and rocked with the fuck. In subsequent couplings, all Xavier had to do was to run his hands up Christian’s inner thighs, and the young man would lie back, open his legs, and take the cock deep inside.

Then he took over Christian’s life, briefly, and Christian, moving into a new life he never imagined he had but still conditioned to do as told, when he was told, let him. The trip to Fire Island and a weekend of letting their hair down in the gay community there. A gay bar, with pool tables. Christian standing near one, admiring the play of three muscular men, men who included him in their banter and pulled him into the game, one, with a particularly well-developed body hovering close over Christian as, holding the young man’s wrist in one hand and Christian’s hip with the other, he showed Christian how to hold the cue and make a shot.

Xavier still at the bar, flirting with the barkeep, not noticing when and how Christian had left the bar—with the three men.

Christian bound and gang banged in a small house with bars on the windows. Held and fucked for four days. Only later did Christian learn it was a kidnapping and that a ransom had been paid. All along he’d just thought it was a rough-sex weekend, something he was supposed to be enjoying.

“It must have been traumatic for you,” Saunders said, unaware of what was surfacing in the young man’s mind. “The two men holding you for four days, demanding ransom, the papers front-paging it because of the family fortune the Christian’s musical talent.”

“Yes, the two men,” Christian murmured. But there hadn’t been just two. There had been three. And they hadn’t just held him, bound. They’d fucked the shit out of him—repeatedly. And he’d enjoyed that part of it. It had made him feel so alive—well, less numb to life. “I didn’t know ransom had been demanded,” he said.

“These men—while they held you—it didn’t come out in the papers, and it most certainly needn’t come out in the article. But, these men, while they had you, they molested you, didn’t they?”

Christian looked away and didn’t answer. Could it be a molestation if he’d done it willingly if they’d only asked? Because he would have.

But Saunders had already figured that out.

“You didn’t say anything at the time and you can’t say anything now because on some level you enjoyed it, didn’t you? In some way it freed you. Don’t be concerned. I know how it is. I am gay, although I cover men, I’m not a submissive.”

Christian shuddered but still didn’t answer.

“It opened you up to something, enhanced your talent, didn’t it? What’s important is admitting something freed you up at this point, not what it was. For the article I don’t have to say it was because you enjoyed having a man—two men—inside you, but it will be helpful to be able to note that the kidnapping itself brought some changing, some enabling element, alive inside you. The men fucked you, didn’t they, Christian?”

“Yes,” Christian answered in a weak voice. “I had practically no experience. I thought it was just a typical rough-sex weekend for those men—that they just wanted to do me . . . again and again.”

“Both of them together.”

“Yes.” There had been three, but never in a million years would Christian admit that.

Saunders changed the questions. “Does it bother you much? I see that you are still limping a bit.”

A flash of fear race across Christian’s face, and being afraid he’d gone too far, too fast, Saunders reached out and touched the young man on his forearm. The phrase, “It could have been your hands or one of your arms” flashed through Christian’s mind along with the extension, “it still could be.” But the touch of Saunder’s fingers, brought him up several layers of consciousness and he smiled at the interviewer.

It didn’t bring him up all of the way. The way the kidnapping had ended. The police finding the house, rushing it. The bit of gunfire that ensued. The two men found with Christian dead, but Christian wounded too. Just a flesh wound in the leg, but still causing a limp two years later. A constant reminder that it could have been his hands or one of his arms. He might never had been able to play the piano again—certainly not as well as he did now, not as he total reason for living.

“The amazing thing about the kidnapping and the reason we can’t just ignore it,” Saunders said, “Is that, as good as your performance art was before, now it is divine. All the critics say you play to perfection now. In some perverse way, that experience as made you a gleaming star. Do you feel that as well, Christian?”

A few moments of awkward silence ensued. “Christian?” Saunders asked. This was crucial. The young man was still traumatized by the kidnapping. He must be jolted—to be moved forward. But it must not cause a slip back in his performance art. It was obvious what the piano meant to Christian.

“Yes,” Christian said. Just that, no more. He’d done what he could to neutralize the experience. He’d let Chuck enter his life and take over everything but the piano. He had gotten better at the piano because there was no other avenue available to him in life—no other escape. Men had commanded and taken full possession of him—and he couldn’t help being most satisfied that way. Satisfaction came only two ways in his life—under a man, with the man’s dick up his channel, working him, and the only time when Christian had command himself—at the piano, playing classical music.

Saunders could tell that they had gone as far as they could for the moment.

“I understand you have several practice sessions a day,” he said. “Why don’t you do one now? I would love to hear you play and having done so can be included in my article. Your housekeeper told me I was to stay for dinner and she showed me what to fix and how to prepare it. You play, and I will set up our dinner.”

Christian was already turned to the piano, his mind sinking into where to start in practicing on the Dvorak, not the least bit concerned that his guest was the one who would be fixing their supper. Liking Saunders, being drawn to his good looks and self-confidence, prepared to follow his command—even wondering about the command he would take in bed.

* * * *

After clearing away the supper dishes, Richard Saunders announced, as if it was the most natural thing to do, “I think we’ll go out to a club this evening. I’ve heard of one called the Cottage Street Bar not far from here.” What he had heard was that it was a gay bar. “It’s not far from where I’m staying at the Westward Inn.”

“Out?” Christian asked dubiously, his eyes going to the piano, where he’d assumed he be practicing after the interviewer left.

“Sure, go put on something that sets off your good looks and let’s go.”

Nothing was given in the form of a question or request. The way to handle Christian was to give decisive direction. In this case it worked.

At the door to the bar, Christian paused and nearly backed out, but Saunders took a firm grip on his forearm and guided him into the building. The man was purposely taking Christian out of his element and to a gay bar to jolt him and to take him off the pathway of just lethargically floating along, but he couldn’t have known that this bar was quite similar to the one on Fire Island from which Christian had been kidnapped two years earlier.

Christian trembled as they moved to the bar and Saunders ordered drinks for them, but Saunders was moving as if everything was cool and matter-of-fact. That held the younger man in check. Christian was strikingly good-looking and sexy young man—and an obvious submissive—and the men at the bar zeroed in on him, ogling and trying to get eye contact. Christian clung to Saunders as the man of the hour for him.

Not long after they’d entered the bar, Chuck came in. He moved like he owned the place, and he obviously was well known there. If he saw Christian and Saunders at the bar, he didn’t indicate as much. He took a circuit of the room, greeting other men here and there, and went to the pool tables that were in an area off the main barroom in much the same configuration as the Fire Island bar had been in.

Saunders had no question about Chuck’s appearance. He assumed the bodyguard—the controller—had followed them to the bar. He had been aware that Chuck had been in the shadows, in another room, at the house while Saunders was interviewing and supping with Christian and that he’d been listening in on everything they’d said to each other.

After one drink, “Come, we’re leaving,” he said to Christian. He’d been standing close to the young man maintaining contact with a hand on Christian’s arm or waist, and even on Christian’s butt as a signal to other men in the room to stay away and without rejection by Christian, who had shrunk close into Saunder’s body.

“Leaving?” Christian murmured, the note of relief clearly discerned in the young man’s voice.

Once in Saunder’s car, Christian didn’t question that Saunders bypassed the Mill Beach Road turn off the Oregan Coast Highway that would have led to Christian’s Sandy Lane house but drove on and parked in front of a unit of the Westward Inn motel. The young man remained sitting, somewhat in a haze, still trembling a bit from the unusual trip to the bar, while Saunders came around to the passenger door, opened it, handed Christian out, and walked the young man to the door of one of the motel room units.

Who knows what Saunders planned to happen at that point, but, in his submissiveness and expectation, Christian determined where it went while Saunders appeared to still be in full control. When they entered the motel room and Saunders was closing and locking the door, Christian moved over to the bed, stripped off his clothes, and lay down on his back at the foot of the bed. He grasped his ankles and raided and spread his thighs.

Saunders stood at the door momentarily, looking at what was on offer for him, and calculating whether this fit in with what he purposely was trying to do with and for the young man. He shrugged, slipped off his clothes, fished around in his billfold and came up with his emergency condom packet. When he was crowned, he approached the bed. He hovered over Christian, between the young man’s spread thighs. Christian held out his arms. Saunders dipped for a kiss cupping Christian’s head with his left hand and putting his cock head in position with his right hand.

“You have to say it,” Saunders whispered.

“Say what?”

“You have to tell me you want it—that you agree to it, or it will be no different from before.”

“I want it. Fuck me.”

Christian flinched, he gasped, and his eyes flashed momentarily when Saunders penetrated, and then he arched his head back, murmured, “Yes, yes, yes,” grasped Saunder’s biceps with his hands, rested his ankles on Saunder’s shoulders, and began moving his hips with the slow, languid fuck.

A little over an hour later, Saunders drove Christian back to his house. They kissed at the door and Saunders gave a time in which he would return the next day. It wasn’t clear whether Christian actually tuned in to what he was saying. The young man was off in a world of his own.

After Saunders pulled out of the driveway, Chuck, who had followed them to the Westwind Inn and waited outside while Saunders made Christian his, pulled into the driveway in the Corvette. He found Christian standing by the piano, preparing to sit and play. With no explanation, he gathered Christian up in his arms and took him up to the apartment above the garage.

The bed in Chuck’s apartment was fit with restraints at the four corners. Christian offered no resistance as Chuck stripped him and put him on his back. Nor did Christian resist as Chuck restrained the young man’s wrists at the corners of the headboard and his ankles at the corners of the footboard.

Christian did jerk and murmur opposition as Chuck, in hovering over the young man and gliding his hands over flesh paused at the bullet wound mark on Christian’s left thigh.

“No, don’t,” Christian whimpered weakly.

“Imagine if this had been in a hand or on one of your arms,” Chuck hissed. “Imagine what that would have done to your piano playing. Imagine what it still could do were something were to . . .”

Christian let out a deep sob and began to cry. Chuck mounted, penetrated, and fucked the hell out of him.

* * * *

The rumble of the Corvette leaving woke Christian up in the morning. He was back in his bed in the house. He was groggy and couldn’t be sure how much of what happened the previous night had actually happened—the visit to the bar so much like the one on Fire Island; and what so naturally and casually happened with the interviewer, Richard Saunders, afterward; and then Chuck and the binding, so reminiscent of when he was being held.

It must of all been a dream—most of it, at least, he thought, his mind too muddled to focus on much of anything. The time with Saunders was nice, though. Maybe that part of the dream was a signal of what he wanted from the man. The part about Chuck he would try to suppress . . . as always.

The glass of water and his pills were on the nightstand, but in a moment of rebellion he didn’t take them. The thoughts of the sex with Saunders ran through his mind but he couldn’t quite pin them down. He wanted to relive that. He had the urge not to be so much in the haze he normally was kept in. Bypassing the pills, he took a shower and padded out to the living area.

Lilly was in the kitchen area, doing whatever she did there, which included putting toast and juice out on the kitchen island for Christian and making fresh coffee. He exchanged the usual limited pleasant greeting with her while downing the orange juice and taking a piece of toast and mug of coffee. She gave him a peculiar look as if there was something about him that was different this morning—like he wasn’t as groggy as usual in the morning.

He went out onto the deck and looked down onto Mill Beach, where he could see that Chuck had just arrived for his morning jog. He’d be gone for an hour or more. That routine rarely changed. Thoughts of Chuck and his control came into Christian’s mind but he suppressed them, trying instead to bring up images of Saunders and his lean, ginger-colored-hair dusted hard body—and his beautiful cock and what he did with it. He couldn’t quite grasp those thoughts, but maybe in time. He was nervous and felt himself trembling. Maybe he should have taken the pills. There was one way to calm down. It required shoving everything else out of his mind, but that’s what he’d been doing for two years. He’d been coping.

Drinking the last of the coffee, Christian moved back into the house and went to the piano. Today he’d work on the piano support for an aria from Rossini’s The Barber of Saville he was preparing for a Sacramento Philharmonic performance. When he began to play, what came out, though, was his part in the three-piano version of Debussy’s Le Mer. He didn’t notice.

He didn’t notice with the front door chime sounded and Lilly answered the door, either. He didn’t notice the conversation that went on in the foyer between Saunders and Lilly. He didn’t notice Lilly going to his bedroom or Saunders standing there, in the foyer, watching Christian and listening to him play until Lilly returned with two suitcases, put them down in the foyer, and then left the house.

Christian didn’t notice anything of the real world swirling around him until Saunders came over to the piano and put a hand on Christian’s hand, stopping the music.

Christian looked up, smiled, and said, “Hi,” as if it was the most natural situation, suddenly finding a man who had fucked you in a motel room the previous night standing there beside your piano.

“Hi yourself,” Saunders said. He could have then said something about their sexual encounter, which had surprised him, possibly more than it had surprised Christian. Saunders had had no idea he had become so invested in this beautiful, troubled young man. But he didn’t say anything about how they had so casually and naturally coupled or how much he had enjoyed it and had come to regard Christian and his well-being. That was it, of course, it was time to put Christian’s well-being first. Whatever else there might be would have to come later. Time was of the essence.

“There’s something we need to establish, Christian,” he said.

The young man looked up at Saunders. He smiled slightly but whatever there was to be said had to be said by Saunders.

“The reports on your kidnapping—and your comments on that, as well—have not been consistent, Christian. This is important. There was a third man involved, wasn’t there? A man who wasn’t there when you were rescued.”

“No. There wasn’t,” Christian said. It was said too quickly, though. Christian didn’t normally open up that fast to respond to a question.

Saunders leaned down and kissed Christian on the lips. Christian leaned into the kiss. When he straightened up again, Saunders said. “It’s OK, Christian. It’s going to be OK. There was a third man—the leader—the one who manhandled you the most.”

“Yes,” Christian admitted.

“It was Chuck, wasn’t it? He escaped then, but he came back for you, didn’t he?”

Flashing into Christian’s mind was the phrase, “Good thing it was your leg. It could have been your hands or one of your arms. It still could be.” He began to shake and Saunders took him into his arms.

“It’s OK, Christian. I figured it out. I’m not a journalist. I’m a private detective. Your family sent me to find out what was going on here. They’re worried about you. They want me to bring you back to New York.”

“The concerts—Portland and Sacramento.” It was always the music with Christian—the music above all else.

“We’ll get you to those concerts, and there is plenty of work for you to do on the East Coast.”

“Chuck.”

“I’ve already spoken to the police this morning. I did enough preliminary research on Chuck last night that they had no trouble understanding what happened here. They’ll be here before he gets back—but after we’re gone.”

“We’re going?”

“Yes. Lilly packed your bags. You’ll come away with me. We’ll be in California before Chuck finishes his jog and returns here. Then the concerts—and home.”

“And you?” Christian asked, looking hard into Saunder’s face, trying his hardest to clear the haze he’d been in for two years away.

“I’ll be there with you for as long as you need me,” Saunders answered. And even beyond that if you’ll let me, he added in his thoughts.