Capital Treasures

Chapter Five: Blood Diamonds

It was a long haul to Antwerp from the Baltimore-Washington international airport, necessitating crazy routes, three flights, and three long layovers, but at least Toby Drake would be traveling in business-class comfort—on the flights, at least. Since he was going on business, laid on more to have him out of Washington, D.C., for a week, the high-end male escort agency he worked for was making him work those long layovers. Airflight layover hookups with rent-boys were becoming the “new thing” for well-heeled men who wanted their pleasures to be there and gone and not lingering in the same town they lived in.

The flights themselves, or at least the first one, gave Toby plenty of time to think over why he had to take this trip and why he’d reacted to his Vice cop roommate’s grabbing of control over him in a way that was strange to him as well as anyone else.

Toby lived in a strange situation. Even he could see that. He was a high-end, young, blond, movie-star handsome male whore escorting only the richest men to events of their choice and then laying down for them and opening his legs to them—for big fees. He’d been doing that since he was nineteen. He was nearly twenty-five. In his time in the business he had taken it rough and had come to liking it that way. For the past five years, he’d been living in a high-rise Alexandria, Virginia, apartment across the National Airport Runways and the Potomac River from the monument section of Washington, D.C., the U.S. capital, with Hardesty, a Vice unit detective in the Washington, D.C., police department.

Hardesty was an anomaly in his profession because he was a captive of the rough sex gay vice he was charged to police. In doing so he protected the rent-boys he policed as much as he fought to keep vice down. What he fought to do first was to keep everyone safe in practicing their sexual vices, and in doing so he’d remained a straight-arrow, honest-broker cop, if a highly unorthodox one.

It, still, was unusual that he lived with a younger male escort in an apartment where the two were lovers, practicing rough fetish, but also an apartment that Toby Drake used as a place of business. Despite the craziness of this, it had worked for over five years. That it had worked was primarily because Hardesty tolerated Toby’s business and, while giving the younger man a modicum of protection, had left Toby to make his own decisions and to live his life as he wished.

They now had a problem. Although they had been building up to it anyway, Toby had come under threat connected with a case that Hardesty was working and Hardesty had gone all commander on Toby, telling him what he was going to do and where he was going to hide while Hardesty closed the case and took the younger man out of danger. Hardesty had been overbearing and had gone beyond their living agreement and that hadn’t set well with Toby, although Toby had given in to the older man in arrangements that included this international assignment from his escort agency.

Toby had to think about the situation and whether it was time for him to make a change in his living—and sexual privilege—arrangements with Hardesty. In connection with the assignment waiting for him in Antwerp, Belgium, he’d been offered an interview to move to a very exclusive escort agency in Paris. The interview was to be conducted after he’d finished in Antwerp. Choices were open to Toby. They were all hard and momentous choices, though. The airplane flights would give him an opportunity to mull them. He’d already started thinking about them as Hardesty drove him in the early hours of a Wednesday morning to the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. It was only after Hardesty had left him off at the departures terminal and driven away that Toby realized he had been short and distant with Hardesty on their parting.

Perhaps, he thought, he’d already started the process of separation. Five years with someone was a long time. It was almost long enough to think of it as a permanent arrangement. But they both had gone into the connection agreeing that it would not be a permanent arrangement.

The flight to Chicago on American Airlines, to make the connection to a flight to Stockholm, gave Toby plenty of time to think. He had been contemplating having much longer to think, though, and that didn’t materialize. Making the most of the money clients had to outlay for this trip, a hookup had been set up for Toby for the seven-hour layover at Chicago’s O’Hara airport.

The meet at 11:30 in the morning was at the Gaslight Club in the Hilton Chicago O’Hare Airport hotel, the only hotel inside the terminal area of the airport. They were meeting for lunch. Toby, going by his professional name, Todd, had no illusions about why they were meeting in a hotel restaurant. He wouldn’t need to be at the gate, with an hour to spare, for the SAS flight to Stockholm until 3:00 p.m.

Sten Sund, standing in the entrance doorway to the Gaslight Club, recognized Toby first in scanning the room. Toby had been looking at the entrance, expecting the client to appear, but he could be excused for letting his eyes drift right over Sund. This was an airport. Sund was wearing an SAS flight crew uniform. He was a senior airplane pilot. He recognized Toby first because he’d been shown photos of the young man via the Internet when he was setting up an encounter.

He arrested Toby’s gaze and nodded. Toby smiled, pleased enough when he realized who was the client. It was clear now why the meeting could be here in a hotel in an airport. Nifty, he thought. We’d have our fuck and then both fly out of here. No strings or entanglements.

Sund indicated to the hostess that he saw his party and came to the table. Toby stood. “I assume you are Todd?” Sund asked, giving the young, slender blond an appreciative look.

“Yes,” Toby said. He indeed was Todd for meetings like this. The man was a couple of inches taller than he was and maybe twice Toby’s age. The age sat well on him. He was solidly built, but not fat. He probably had to be in reasonable trim to be flying a commercial jetliner. He was gray haired, but this too sat on him well. He had a close-cropped beard and just the hint of a mustache. He looked quite dapper in his flight uniform.

“I’m Renard,” he said. “May I sit?”

“Certainly, please do,” Toby said, knowing the man’s name wasn’t really Renard.

“But not for long,” the airline pilot said. “May I order you a drink?”

“That would be nice.” It didn’t take much of a signal from the captain for a waitress to arrive. The senior-pilot flight suit had that effect in an airport. Toby only momentarily wondered where they were going to do this, before having thought it would be at a hotel away from the airport and thus rather quick. It was obvious now it would be right here in the airport Hilton.

The man was very direct. “I have a room here at the Hilton in the terminal. When does your flight leave?”

“I would like to be at the gate by 3:00.” Toby wanted to have plenty of time in place before his flight left.

“It’s almost twelve. I will have you for two and a half hours, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll take cock for two hours? Your listing said you were athletic and experienced in rough sex.”

“Yes. Whatever you wish,” Toby said. The man was certainly good looking, but he didn’t look like a man who could go for two hours or would be cruel. In this, Toby was wrong.

The man took a bottle of pills out of his jacket pocket and popped three. Toby recognized the bottle. He knew that “Renard” would be rock hard within fifteen minutes and that he’d still be hard when Toby caught his flight.

“I’m paying for bareback,” the man said.

“Yes, I understand that. You have a doctor’s certificate to show me? Here’s mine.”

Sund had and showed the certificate, dated earlier in the day. They were clear for what he wanted—what he was paying for.

Athleticism and endurance were the watchwords of the next two and a half hours. “Renard’s” specialty was positions. Toby didn’t mind being balled by him—he turned out to be very fit for his age and slightly hirsute, his chest and pubic hair more Scandinavian blond than the gray on his head. He obviously was a Swede, which went with flying for SAS, and he was big boned, especially the one between his thighs and especially because that was pill enhanced.

He was strong, his muscles bulging as he fucked Toby in a position the young man knew to be called the Flying Dutchman, “Renard” standing, crouching to hold himself in balance, and Toby cantilevered out over the carpet of the hotel room in front of the man, his legs hooked on the man’s hips, streaming behind “Renard’s” body, the man grasping Toby’s wrists, arching Toby’s torso back sharply, and the man pulling the younger man on and off the cock.

Toby made sure that he was putty in the man’s hands and completely surrendered to the positions the airline pilot wanted to put him in. The man taxed his flexibility, making Toby do the splits across the foot of the bed, facing the headboard and leaning forward, supporting his weight on the palms of his hands pressed into the mattress, as “Renard” covered him from behind and fucked him.

The finale after they each had come once and “Renard” wanted them both to come again, had the man sitting on the foot of the bed, with Toby’s ankles on his shoulders, facing down, and the young man’s body streaming down to the floor, Toby’s cheek to the carpet and his palms pressed to the floor, while, gripping the young man’s hips, the airline pilot pulled his channel on and off the cock. For the final blast, though, they were in a classic missionary position, Toby on his back, his knees hooked on “Renard’s” hips and the older man hovering over him, capturing Toby’s eyes with his, and fucking him slow and deep, while Toby stroked himself off, arching his back and moaning as “Renard” released again and again deep inside his channel. The older man was hard as a rock to the end.

Professional rent-boy that Toby was, he was able to make a man forget that he was fucking a professional. Toby could act everything from the virgin to the firecracker wanton, according to the mood he sensed in the client. This one obviously wanted the long-time and athletic partner coupling.

“Renard” showered and dressed before Toby and left him a hefty tip. He obviously had enjoyed the athletic workout and Toby couldn’t say he hadn’t as well.

Their day was completely over then but it ended with “Renard” being surprised. When he and the rest of his flight crew showed up at their gate at 3:15 for the 4:00 p.m. SAS flight from Chicago to Stockholm, the flight captain saw that Toby was sitting in the waiting area, ready to take the same flight. By now Toby had pretty much figured out, from what the pilot said about his regular flying routes, that “Renard” would be flying him again for several hours—if not as intimately as he had done earlier in the afternoon.

* * * *

The sex had been exhausting for Toby even if he was used to taking a cock three or four times a day. Partly thanks to the drug he took, the airplane pilot had been able to fly him nonstop. So, he was dozing when, after they’d gotten up in the air from Chicago, a flight attendant handed him a glass of brandy. From the way she was presenting it, he knew it was the good stuff and, although drinks were free in business class, he was being served first.

“Compliments of Captain Sund,” she said, almost in a whisper, “and this note.” The note contained the name “Sten Sund, Stockholm based,” and an international telephone number. The flight attendant winked at him before moving off. So, “Renard” was really Sten Sund. And Sten Sund had enjoyed their afternoon session in the O’Hare Hilton.

“I like these too.” The voice was a rich baritone. It came from the window seat beside Toby. Toby and he had exchanged pleasantries when the man had to make Toby stand to get into his seat, but they hadn’t had a conversation. The man was gorgeous—maybe in his late thirties, Mediterranean sultry features, black, curly hair gathered in a bun at the back of his head, a closely trimmed black beard and mustache—the perpetual five-o’clock shadow look. He had hazel eyes and a tight, muscular body. His white T-shirt was gauzy enough to reveal that his hard-bodied torso was covered in tattoos. They ran down his arms, as well. He was all man, and Toby thought he recognized him from somewhere, but couldn’t place it.

“It’s very smooth. Good brandy,” Toby said, and, to be polite, added, “I’m sure she’ll be back to continue the drink orders. She must have been pulled away for something else.” Toby had been the only one served so far.

“I didn’t mean the drink. I meant this book. It fell on the floor and I picked it up.”

Toby was embarrassed. He hadn’t given much thought to the book he’d brought on board. It was gay male erotica.

“I read this author too,” the man said. “I haven’t read this one yet—the Tree of Idleness. Is it a good one? Lots of steamy sex, well written? Inventive positions?”

He was smiling. Toby didn’t think he was making fun of him. It was a melting smile. He was signaling that he was interested in gay sex too. He touched Toby’s right forearm with his fingers and when Toby didn’t move his arm away, the hand settled there.

“My name is Sergio Casillas,” he added, reaching over with his other hand for an introductory shake. Then Toby knew who he was. He’d been a star Spanish footballer, retired from the game a couple of years previously—too early some had said. He had come out as gay and been of quite a bit of interest to the tabloids at the time. What Toby really remembered him from, though, that most of the public didn’t know was that he’d gone on to do porn flicks. He was a power top. Toby couldn’t help but reveal he recognized the man from the change in his expression. In his line of work, Toby had become familiar enough with gay porn films to be able to name most of the major stars.

“The book is set in Turkish Cyprus,” Toby said. “A mountainside town with a ruined abbey sitting beside a village square where the men gather in the evening for coffee and a chat and where the protagonist, an American novelist, goes and picks up young men to take back to his villa for the night. Very atmospheric. Beautiful young men. It indicates that all young Mediterranean men are beautiful. You’re Spanish, aren’t you?”

Casillas’s smile broadened. As they shook hands, his thumb folded under to rub Toby’s palm—a sign in the lifestyle of a top declaring himself. Toby instinctively put his hand into a sheath around the thumb, the signal of a willing bottom.

“There, I’m glad that’s established,” Casillas said. “We have an eight-hour flight ahead of us. We might as well understand each other and be comfortable. So, does that welcome brandy for you in the flight captain’s name mean he’s just been balling you?”

“Something like that,” Toby said, and they both laughed.

“Do you recognize me from somewhere?” Casillas asked. “You did a doubletake when you focused on looking at me.”

“Spanish soccer,” Toby answered, “and later in adult flicks.”

“That’s right. And you’ve—”

“Seen you naked and in action, yes. You have a beautiful body and use it magnificently.”

“So, you have no trouble with men using their bodies with other men on film?”

“Nor in real life.”

Casillas smiled again. “You yourself are a sexy one, you are. Can I hope you’re a casual player—not just a smooth talker?”

“It would seem so, but—”

“But you’re a pro, are you? There’s a fee in the way? A quite stiff one?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Toby answered, and the regret in his voice was genuine.

“Are you going to Stockholm for a particular reason? I’m going there to film a video.”

“Just to change planes. I’m headed to Antwerp—on an assignment.” Toby didn’t tell Casillas he had a six-hour layover in Stockholm. He didn’t want to be tempted.

“I don’t normally pay, but I give great cock,” Casillas said. “You should see some of my movies.”

“I don’t normally give it for free, and I’m great at taking cock,” Toby responded. “And, as I’ve indicated, I’ve seen some of your movies.”

“You should see all of my movies, back to back, with me there with you—inside you.”

They both laughed. They were enjoying the sexual banter, the teasing manner of speaking baldly while strapped into their seats in a plane in the air. It was clear that they both would like to be playing each other with their hands as well as their words and that the torture of not doing so was delicious to them both. They had both made clear that they found the other one sexually arousing.

“You could be in one of my movies,” Casillas continued. “This session in Stockholm, for instance. I’m sure they’d love to do an additional, quick shoot. I can see the title, ‘Laid During a Layover.’ It will sell very well.”

Toby laughed. “My escort agency would have to sign on. The negotiations on that would go longer than the layover time. I’m on duty.”

“But I didn’t hear a no on doing a movie with me sometime.”

“No, you didn’t hear a no.”

The two laughed, enjoying the bald repartee, even if there wasn’t much they could do about calling each other’s bluff on a crowded airplane flying high over the Atlantic. Or was there, at least Casillas was thinking.

“Are you based in Chicago?” he asked.

“No, Washington, D.C.”

“Ah, a lover of politicians, not the beautiful people.”

“Lover to the man who can pay the fee,” Toby said, turning a smile on the former soccer star.

“Does being laid by a man with political power arouse you?”

“Yes.”

“But it helps if the man is a hunk, I’m sure.”

“That’s always a plus, yes.”

“And, he, of course, gets a discount.”

“My escort agency doesn’t seem to be swayed by the client’s looks or fame—only the thickness of his wallet.”

“But, surely, with you, the thickness of a client’s cock makes a difference.”

“Only in how much I enjoy it—not in what is billed.”

“But you do enjoy taking cock from a well-endowed man, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t be in the business if I didn’t enjoy being fucked.”

“I’ve been told I’m a hunk.”

“I’m sure you have been.” And then, as a concession, Toby said, “because, yes, you are. Like I said, I’ve seen the movies.”

“You’ve seen them and wished you were in them—under me?”

“Yes.”

“Even before we met here on the plane and you discovered how charming I was?” Casillas grinned.

“Yes. I have masturbated to you fucking another man in a movie.”

“There can be no higher compliment that,” Casillas said, clearly pleased.

The dinner, such as it was—although the liquor had continued to come to Toby gratis of the flight captain and Casillas had tried to keep up in his ordering—was coming. The two men took their trays down, which gave Casillas a chance to take Toby’s hand and move it under the Spaniard’s tray, to his basket. He held the young male whore’s hand to his basket and Toby didn’t try to take it away. More than that, he traced the man’s shaft through the jeans material with his fingers.

“I’m hard,” Casillas said in a low, guttural voice.

“Yes, you are.”

“For you.”

“I’m flattered.”

“I’m told I’m very well endowed.”

That’s what obsesses every man, Toby was thinking. They are all worried about whether they are thick and long enough when they are suggesting another man have sex with them. “I can feel that. I would attest to that.” Toby was enjoying himself. Casillas was too much in heat for him to take this just as friendly bantering that could go nowhere in this situation.

“I want to fuck you,” he growled.

“I’ll give you a card for my escort agency. You could book me through them.”

“No, I’m saying I want to lay you here, now.”

“That doesn’t seem practical,” Toby answered.

“But, if we could do it, you’d want to do it too?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Outside of your escort agency contract. Just the two of us making mutually satisfactory sex? Fucking each other for sheer pleasure?”

“Yes.”

Casillas gave a snort and a sigh and leaned back in his seat. Toby took his hand away and the tension was released by the arrival of their dinner trays.

“I’m living in L.A.,” Casillas said as they were finishing up their meal. “But there are planes going from L.A. to Washington several times a day.”

“Yes, there are.”

The Spaniard took a card out of his wallet and handed it to Toby. “If you’re ever coming to L.A., are curious, and want to have a good time. I could introduce you into porn films too. You’d be an instant star.”

“I’ve done some porn,” Toby admitted.

“Oh, really?” Casillas sounded excited at hearing that. “I haven’t seen any of it.”

It was Toby’s turn to take a card out of his wallet—one for his escort agency. He wrote the name “Todd,” his professional name, on it and handed it to Casillas. When their fingers met, the Spaniard held Toby’s a bit longer than necessary, gripping the young man’s middle finger.

“The films were done for a very small subscription list, but you can purchase them through my escort agency, if you wish.”

“No free samples?” Casillas persisted.

“Not unless you can figure out how to do it high in the sky.”

Casillas noticed that wasn’t a “no” and it gave him something to mull. “I could make you feel it,” he muttered.

“No doubt,” Toby agreed.

“Are you on a long delay in Stockholm? I can rearrange my movie shoot schedule—or, as I mentioned, we could fire off a video together. Maybe we could—”

“I have an assignment there that will take up all my time.”

“Shit.”

“Precisely,” Toby agreed. Casillas once again caught that that hadn’t been a “no.”

And that was that until an hour later when, bringing night to the passenger compartment while the plane hurtled east into the new day, the lights were turned off and it was nearly dark in the compartment. Casillas rose and moved across Toby to the aisle. He went to the head. When he came back, he opened the bin over their heads and took out a courtesy blanket. Returning to his seat, he draped the blanket over both of their laps.

“What?” Toby murmured, but then he saw Casillas waving a handkerchief he’d taken out of his pocket, and Toby understood.

“You didn’t say ‘no,’” the Spaniard whispered.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You said that, if I could find a way . . .”

“I don’t remember saying quite that, but . . . fuck.”

Casillas leaned into him and took his lips in a kiss. Toby didn’t resist. He flinched when Casillas’s hand went to his basket, under the blanket, unzipped him, and pulled his shaft out. Toby didn’t resist this either. In fact, he contributed to the moment by reaching over, unzipping Casillas, and freeing the man’s long, thick erection.

The two jerked each other off under the blanket. When they came close to coming, Casillas brushed Toby’s hand away but continued stroking the young man’s cock, until, with a sigh, Toby released into the handkerchief he was holding to catch the cum.

“Exchange seats with me,” Casillas whispered.

“What? Why?”

“Just do it,” the Spaniard hissed, taking command. A natural submissive, Toby moved over Casillas and into the window seat, turned toward the wall, as Casillas went into the aisle seat. The Spaniard turned toward Toby, lifted the arm between the two seats back into the stowed position, so there was no barrier between their midsections. He reached around an unbuckled Toby’s slacks and pushed them and his briefs down his thighs.

If Casillas’s cock hadn’t been a long one, he couldn’t have managed. But it was. He couldn’t fully bury himself inside Toby’s ass, but he had length to spare. He was long and thick enough to get it in and hump Toby to a completion against the fuselage wall, while Toby’s pressed his cheek to the closed window and to the frigid Mile High Club air.

The former Spanish footballer and current porn star had found a way—and Toby had given it up for him. There was no more mention of a fee for anything.

It was the supreme compliment to a john—that a high-priced male hooker would give it to him for free, and Casillas understood and appreciated that it was a unique compliment.

* * * *

The Stockholm layover client was a Scandinavian going by the name of Olof. As with Chicago, he’d received Toby’s photo via e-mail feed, so he was the one to signal when, slightly bleary-eyed, but more than slightly satisfied, Toby came out of the chute into the waiting lounge at the Stockholm Arlanda Airport. All he’d been told was that he’d be met at the plane. He hadn’t been told how Olof managed to be in the waiting lounge—and he’d never find out why.

He was several discharging passengers in front of Sergio Casillas, who was smiling and humming his successful conquest. Toby thought this was the last of the Spaniard he’d see on this trip, but he had some prospect that they had melded well enough that someday he’d see Casillas in Washington, D.C., as a paying client. Thus, he was surprised to see when he’d come to stand in front of Olof and they’d assured each other they were who the other one sought, that Olof’s eyes went to Casillas, coming out of the passageway and the two showed that they recognized each other.

Casillas almost laughed when he saw that Toby was hooking up with Olof, and he waved his cellphone. Olof waved back and reached for his cellphone. Marking possession of Toby, Olof kept one hand on the young rent-boy’s arm and put the cellphone to his ear with the other. He and Casillas talked into their phones to each other from across the waiting area.

As was the case in Chicago, the Stockholm airport terminal had a hotel directly connected, the Radisson Blu Airport Terminal Hotel, and Olof had booked a room there. He suggested that he and Toby stop in a bar on the concourse before going to the hotel, which was fine with Toby. He had a six-hour layover before catching a plane for the last, short hop over to Antwerp.

Twenty minutes later, in the bar, after very little chitchat at all while the two men sized each other up and Olof, maybe in his early thirties, a classic tall, big-boned, but rangy blond Scandinavian, cleared up knowing Sergio Casillas by saying he played professional football for Stockholm’s AIK team in the highest-flight Allsvenskan league. He would know Casillas, Toby deduced because gay European footballers were rather rare and they had to stick together. Casillas had acknowledged he was gay. Olof, even though Toby didn’t know his true name, most certainly was gay if he was paying big bucks to lay a male escort.

Having put what little he was learning together, Toby wasn’t all that surprised when Sergio Casillas entered the bar, greeted Olof, tersely explained that he and Toby had already met—and, yes, he knew what Toby would be doing meeting with Olof. The two men got a good laugh out of that, a hand from each of them going to one of Toby’s knees under the table.

The two men were obviously quite comfortable with each other and with Toby being there, and Toby wasn’t that surprised either, when, with a grin Casillas turned his cellphone to where Toby could see it displaying a receipt from Toby’s escort service selling Casillas two hours of Toby’s time in Stockholm. Olof had paid for two-and-a-half hours. That left Toby less than an hour of time to himself if he took the men consecutively before he had to be at the gate for his KLM flight to Antwerp. He’d been hoping he could get some sleep before he arrived in Antwerp. He groaned inwardly at how this was shaping up.

But as they were drinking their second drinks and seeing how comfortable and friendly the two men were with each other, Toby formulated a plan. When he proposed it, the two men were delighted. Casillas added to the plan and Toby agreed.

On the king-sized bed in the Radisson terminal hotel, Olof, whose big bones extended to the one between his legs, lay on his back, while Toby rode his cock in a cowboy, facing the Swede. Casillas, naked and pulling on his erection, sat off to the side and watched and filmed the fuck. The Spaniard had stopped in the Duty Free shop and bought a fancy video camera before coming up to the hotel room. He and Olof took turns filming the sex, with the agreement that Casillas would sell it to his movie contacts and they’d split the profits between the three of them, Toby getting 50 percent and Olof and Sergio splitting the rest.

When Toby was hitting high gear on rocking on the cock, Casillas came up on the bed, nestled into Toby from the back, and the time Toby had to give the two men was combined in delivering a bucking double penetration fuck, the camera set up beside the bed to capture it all. Afterward Casillas fucked Toby in a doggie position as the Swede watched and filmed. In this way, an hour and a half was sliced off what would have been two sessions, the clients were delighted, Toby readily admitted he had a good time too, and he got over an hour’s nap alone in the hotel room before he had to appear for the final flight to Antwerp.

All in a day’s work for a top-drawer international male escort. Toby assumed the rough work was yet to come. The requirement to be able to take a fist had been clearly identified in the service he’d have to provide in Belgium.

* * * *

“Courier? You brought in an escort from the States to courier something for you?”

“Partially a courier, yes,” Nicholas Peeters, an official of the Friedman Enterprises company, who had met Toby at the Antwerp International Airport in a chauffeur-driven black Mercedes said as the sedan glided toward Antwerp’s Diamantwijk diamond district. Diamonds were the business Friedman Enterprises was engaged in, Toby had already been told. It was a wealthy diamond merchant company. “And couriering diamonds will be very important, involving millions of euros. But you are also here to give pleasure on demand.”

That part Toby understood. He’d been flying or on layover for two days with little sleep but with some vigorous sexual exercise. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open—and a pudgy little middle-aged Belgian man, who identified himself as the vice-chairman of the Friedman Enterprises and who Toby had already sized up as the most arousing to service, was feeding him information, scant on the reasoning on why Toby was here.

“We need to move diamonds worth a great deal of money from a supplier in Bruges, and we wish to do so with as little attention going to the transaction as possible. One of our own people will go there on the same train to oversee the transaction, but you will be the one really carrying the treasures—money there and diamonds back.”

“I’ll be bringing diamonds from Bruges on the train in secret, and—”

“And taking the money for them there, yes. The diamonds will be concealed on your person. There will be no connection made between you and the transaction.”

“But if anyone is watching this closely, what I’m supposedly here for—”

“That’s why we’re engaging a male escort. The man you’ll be going to Bruges with will be traveling for pleasure. Hiring young male escorts to service him is one of his pleasures.”

“So, this one man—”

“You are being hired to service as many men as we wish you to. That has been made clear in the contract, and there will be other men.”

“Fine,” Toby said, sinking back into the plushy cushions of the Mercedes backseat. He wasn’t absorbing all of this, but that was because he was so tired. He looked down to see that the little Belgian man had put a pudgy hand on his thigh.

“Are you one of the men I will be servicing?” he asked. If he hadn’t been so tired, he wouldn’t have asked anything like that. He was too diplomatic and polite for that. As it was, he managed to make it sound more like a pleasant prospect than revealing how he truly thought about it.

Peeters didn’t answer directly, but Toby got the message. “The Friedman offices are in the Diamantwijk, which is located between the Zoo Antwerpen—the city’s zoo—and the Stadspark. We’re taking you now to the Radisson Park Inn hotel next to the zoo but in the diamond district. I know you must be tired after your travel from Washington. You will be given the day to rest and sleep, as you can. I will return to give you dinner in the hotel restaurant. I know you’ll still be too jetlagged to go on the town. I will give you company in the evening. Tomorrow you’ll go to the Friedman’s house in the Burcht district, across the river, where you will meet with the man going to Burges with you. Tomorrow night, Joseph Friedman will take you to a restaurant, the next day you’ll take the train to Bruges, spend the night there, and return to Antwerp the next. After that I understand you will be going on to Paris. According to your agency profile, you are a proficient tennis player. Is that correct?”

It was an itinerary, but it had been unfolded faster than Toby, in his current state, the man’s hand still resting on his thigh, had been able to fully follow. He hadn’t missed that Peeters had said he’d be with Toby this evening and a different man the next evening. And then there’d be whoever he went to Bruges with. So, servicing at least three men.

“Yes. I play tennis. I would be doing that when?”

“Tomorrow afternoon at the Friedman’s house in Burcht. Ethan Friedman plays very well and he will want to get comfortable with you.”

“He’s someone I will be servicing? And you named another Friedman.”

“Yes. Joseph Friedman is the enterprise chairman. This has been his family’s business back into the middle ages. The Friedmans are among the foremost diamond merchants—they always have been. That’s what Antwerp is known for. Ethan Friedman is his son. He is the man who you’ll be going to Bruges with. As far as anyone watching is interested, you will be a boyfriend he’s taking on a weekend visit to Bruges. Bruges is a famous old town, very much a tourist attraction. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site in Flanders that goes back to the ninth century. You’ll enjoy visiting it. Oh, I see that we are almost there—at the Radisson Park Inn.”

“Good, thanks,” Toby said, addressing how happy that he, at last, was within reach of a bed to sleep in—alone until he regained his bearings. How many more than the men mentioned would he have to let fuck him, he wondered.

More than had been mentioned, it turned out.

He was able to sleep for four hours before Nicholas Peeters returned to eat dinner with him in the hotel restaurant. Toby was on a tab at the hotel at the expense of Friedman Enterprises, which he gathered was a well-respected firm in Antwerp, considering the quality of the service the hotel staff accorded him. After the dinner, Nicholas Peeters accompanied Toby to his hotel room, as Toby assumed he would, and, there, he had Toby strip and move his body to music for him as he masturbated himself erect, and then he bent Toby over onto his chest at the foot of the bed, and fucked him. It was no worse than Toby had given to a man paying for sex before. It was not too taxing, the middle-aged man could only manage one fuck, and Toby didn’t have to look at him directly.

One down—on top of those Toby had taken en route. Peeters rolled off Toby, flopped over onto one side of the bed, and was snoring almost before his head hit the pillow.

* * * *

Toby was lying on his back, legs spread and bent, held mobile in the embrace of the old man on the bed in his Radisson Park Inn hotel room in Antwerp. The man was maybe in his fifties, but he was hardbodied and strong, much bigger and heavier than Toby—and cruel, surprisingly cruel . . . and brutal. He was, ultimately, the one paying for all of this and he was taking his share of the pleasure. Toby had been told that fisting was specified, and now he knew who was going to be doing it.

Joseph Friedman, the chairman of the diamond merchant company, the fifty-plus-year-old patriarch of an ancient Jewish family had a possessing arm around Toby’s waist, holding the young male whore close into his body, one of his legs pinning Toby’s right leg, Toby’s right arm trapped under the old man’s back, and Friedman had Toby’s pelvis raised off the surface of the bed, the young man’s torso cascading down to the mattress, his weight on his shoulders, and Toby’s left arm raised above his head, grasping the headboard to hold himself steady.

Toby was huffing and panting and moaning, Friedman’s right hand was gathered into a fist and covered in a black leather glove slathered with gel. The fist was inside Toby’s channel, nearly up to the elbow, and the old man was fucking the young man with it. Pulling his left arm down, Toby reached for his cock and stroked himself off while the old man fist fucked him. When he came, Friedman pulled his hand out, rolled over on top of the smaller, younger man, thrust his hard erection up into the well-opened passage and fucked Toby hard to his own release.

Nicholas Peeters, the diamond merchant company deputy chairman, had accompanied Toby down to breakfast in the hotel that morning. He’d remained in Toby’s hotel room the previous night, snoring, on the bed, although he didn’t try sex again. For much of the night, Toby sat, dozing in a chair with a blanket wrapped around himself. His system thought it was still the previous evening.

After breakfast, the black Mercedes appeared at the hotel’s entrance again, and Toby was driven across a river and into an area of mansions and larger land holdings. The Friedman mansion was a gray stucco, solid building, with a third floor under a mansard roof. It looked like it had been built by a stuffy burgher, which it probably had been, and had been perched there in extensive grounds leading down to the riverbank since the early twentieth century, which, again, it most surely had.

Toby wasn’t permitted in the house. Peeters guided him around to the back, to a terrace with a swimming pool in it and a pool house at the opposite side of the pool from the back of the house. Here, Toby was handed tennis shorts, a jock strap, tennis shoes, and socks, all of which miraculously—or studiously—fit him, and was conducted to the other side of the pool house, where a high-fenced tennis court was located and an impossibly handsome, fit Adonis was awaiting him—or maybe a David, since the Friedmans were Jewish.

The son of the family, the man who was supposed to be traveling near, if not with, Toby in his treasure courier trip to Bruges and back, Ethan Friedman, was just a few years older than Toby, at nearly thirty. He was dark and sultry, with hints of the family’s Spanish heritage, and of having come to Belgium with the Habsburgs as their bankers and jewelers in the fifteenth century. He also was of the same stature as Toby, dark and slightly hirsute to Toby’s sunny and smooth, and was lightly muscled and handsomely fit.

Toby hadn’t been given a tennis shirt to wear and Ethan wasn’t wearing one either. They played tennis across the net from each other like dancers in a well-choreographed set. They were meant to arouse each other sexually, and that worked a charm. Both played with finesse, rather than raw power, and very well. They were evenly matched and wouldn’t have remembered ten minutes after the set was completed who had won it. They melded immediately, both as conversationalists and eventual lovers, each both attracted to and aroused by the other.

After tennis they moved to the pool, where they stripped off their shorts and jocks, dove in, cavorted with each other—and fucked. Lunch was brought out to the pool house for them, during which they were in deep conversation. After lunch they fucked again on the lounge bed in the pool house. Ethan was a proficient and attentive top and Toby thoroughly enjoyed being covered by a young man as beautiful and as accomplished as he was.

After they’d showered and dressed, neither being able to take his eyes off the other, Ethan pronounced himself greatly pleased that they would be together on this courier assignment, and Nicholas Peeters appeared again to guide Toby back to the black Mercedes, advising him of the time the father, Joseph, would be picking him up at the hotel and telling him that what he would wear that evening would be laid out on the hotel room bed.

The clothes were expensive and sexy in a subdued way—tight black satiny trousers, with shiny black leather ankle-high boots, and a billowy white muslin shirt that was just gauzy enough to give a hint of Toby’s lightly tanned and muscled, almost boyish, smooth torso. Under it all were red, lacy bikini briefs. It was the first indication Toby got that the father was going to fuck him too.

When the man himself arrived, Toby couldn’t have been more surprised by the contrast with the son. Ethan must have gotten his form and most of his beauty from his mother’s side. Joseph was also dark, like Toby, and the hint of the Mediterranean was there, but he was a big-boned, glowering, Semitic figure, with more of a touch of the Levant than the Iberian. He was commanding to the point of overbearing. He took Toby to an expensive nearby restaurant, La Fontanella, and was terse and detached throughout in conversation, although it was quite evident that the two were of different worlds—that Joseph was an important businessman and Toby was the servile toy the man would devour.

And devour Toby he did in the hotel room afterward, going straight to the sex, with very little preparation. There was no doubt he found Toby alluring, as he was in full erection when, having just entered the room, he forced Toby to his knees, released himself, and held the young man’s head between his large, gnarled hands as he forced the rent-boy to give him suck.

Toby was to suffer the man’s large hands in short order. Joseph slapped him around a bit, tore the clothes off him that he had bought for the young man at no small expense, pinned him to the bed, fisted him, and fucked him in a vigorous missionary. One of the pleasant surprises clients had with Toby was if they found that his one tattoo, a green gecko inked to his lower belly on one side, marked an erogenous zone for the rent-boy. If a man found that and rubbed it, Toby went into overdrive in riding the cock. Joseph found the gecko and exhausted Toby in making the most of having found it. The fuck at that point was no longer just a brutal taking. The two men were riding each other hard.

After releasing his seed, Joseph became all distant formality again. He took a quick shower and then left the room, having said little to Toby all evening.

Toby lay on the bed, moaning, unsure whether he had displeased the patriarch to the extent that the trip to Bruges with Ethan Friedman was off—and realizing that he regretted the possibility that he wouldn’t be seeing or traveling or writhing under the fascinating younger Friedman again.

One thing he had learned that afternoon that had been running through his mind was that Ethan Friedman didn’t live in Antwerp. He worked at the company’s office in Paris, training up to eventually getting his turn as chairman. Paris was where Toby was contemplating moving. Now he was contemplating it even more seriously than before.

* * * *

It was back to the Friedman mansion in Burcht, across the River Scheldt, the next morning, with two more days on Toby’s contract, and this time he was let into the mansion, where, in a second-floor bedroom, Nicholas Peeters showed him the suitcase he was to take to Bruges, with nearly half a million euros in 500-euro notes lodged in the case’s false bottom, and the jacket Toby was to wear back, with a hidden compartment to carry the uncut diamonds Toby was to bring back on the evening train the night after the next.

Toby was still thinking of the opportunity he’d have to spend the next evening with Ethan Friedman who he was falling head over heels for when he went to a window that overlooked the pool area. There was a family down there, a woman and three young children, playing in the pool. Seeing that Toby was looking down at the back terrace, Peeters came over to look as well.

“Ah, Ethan’s family has arrived from Paris, I see,” he said.

“Ethan’s family?” Toby asked, his euphoria collapsing, but then he saw it was true, as Ethan came out of the pool house and joined them. Toby hadn’t thought of the need to share Ethan with a young family. The previous day Ethan had encouraged Toby to take the job in Paris so that they could easily see each other. Toby would have to think this one over.

He had a bit of time to rethink his future options during the hour-and-a-half, fifty-two mile train journey between Antwerp and Bruges, as he and Ethan were sitting well away from each other. Although, with Toby carrying nearly half a million of the Friedman Company euros in the suitcase in the bin over his head, Ethan made sure to take a seat within sight of the young American. At the train station in the picturesque medieval city of Bruges, the center of which had been suspended in time in the fifteenth century, when it was a key city of the Hanseatic mercantile league of cities, until it was obsoleted by being separated from the sea by silted-over waterways, the two took separate taxis to their separate hotels. Ethan’s taxi followed Toby’s to the Hotel De Medici on one side of the Langerei Canal before going on to his own Hotel Fevery, just on the other side of the canal.

Toby was to wait in his room, his case containing the money deposited in the hotel’s safe until his contact, who Peeters had told him would be a black Sierra Leonean, Fernando Samu, arrived for the exchange of the money for uncut diamonds. Toby was possibly not as innocent to what was going on as the Friedmans thought he was. When he’d heard the diamonds would be handed over by someone from Sierra Leone, it immediately became clear to him what all of this secrecy had been about. These would be what were known as blood diamonds, which were African-mined diamonds, mined under slave conditions, with the proceeds used to finance insurgencies across the African continent. Trade in such diamonds was illegal worldwide. That didn’t mean that it didn’t go on below the surface. That’s what was going on here, Toby realized. And he was being implicated in an illegal trade.

There wasn’t much, he didn’t think, that he could do about it without breaching his contract. He would just have to look for opportunities to back out before he was involved in handling the diamonds. There was nothing illegal thus far in carrying the money—as far as he knew. What was pulling at this was his developing relationship with Ethan Friedman, which had progressed to serious thoughts of relocating to Paris but now was being hedged by knowing Ethan had a wife and children, and realization that the Friedmans, including Ethan, were involved in illegal blood diamond trafficking.

After he’d eaten a dinner in his room, Toby retrieved the case of money from the hotel safe and took it back to his room, sitting and waiting for the exchange. After over an hour, Ethan arrived and the two of them waited, nervously, together. They both wanted to do much more with each other than sit and wait, but they certainly didn’t want the Sierra Leonean to find them in the clutches.

An hour and a half after Samu was scheduled to arrive and hadn’t, Ethan made some calls. Samu was grounded in London, his plane arriving there too late for his connecting flight that evening to the Ostend-Bruges Airport.

“Well, it will be another day,” Ethan said. He turned and gave a “not-all-that-regretful look” at Toby. “We will have to think of something else to do tonight. Why don’t you take the money case back to reception for the safe, and I will be waiting for you here?”

The sex with Ethan was as good that evening as it had been the previous evening, with Toby holding on all fours on the bed and Ethan mounted on his tail; grasping his waist, with a finger rubbing the erogenous-zone gecko tattoo with beneficial result; while sinking deep into his core; and taking it all.

Afterward, as they lay stretched against each other, cooling down before the inevitable moment that Ethan would have to roll off the bed, shower, and go back to his own hotel, Toby asked the question that had been bugging him for a couple of days.

“I don’t understand why you needed a male escort to do this courier job, Ethan. There is more to it than that, isn’t there?”

Ethan didn’t answer immediately, and Toby pressed the issue. “The man from Sierra Leone, bringing you those diamonds—he gets more out of this than just the money, doesn’t he?”

“When this was set up, I hadn’t met you, Todd,” Ethan said, still believing that Toby’s name was Todd.

“Part of the deal was that Samu gets a night with a high-drawer international male escort, doesn’t he? I’m here to give this Samu guy a night of his choice of fucking.”

“Yes.”

* * * *

This was why the willingness to and capability of being fisted had been included in the contract. It wasn’t because Joseph Friedman liked doing it; it was because this big, black bull of African bruiser, Fernando Samu, wanted to do it to a smaller, young blond.

He was big and muscular and forceful—broad-chested with tribal piercing all over his massive chest when the business-like suit was off, his Oxford Street demeanor and English accent had been discarded, and he was in his primeval nakedness. He manhandled Toby at will and, like Joseph Friedman the previous night, but so much more primitively and primordially, moved Toby into position at will, lashing the young man to the bed with leather restraints, spread-eagled, open, and vulnerable. Toby panted and groaned and strained at the bonds as Samu flogged him with a belt, fisted him, and then fucked him.

Leaving him with a big grin on his face and the case of money in his hands, Samu saluted Ethan Friedman, who had been sitting in a corner of the Hotel De Medici room, watching it all and stroking his cock, and left Ethan to untie Toby and help him to the shower in the bathroom.

Toby was a professional. He’d been used like this before, even by African and Arab princes of privilege and arrogance.

Ethan had watched Samu overpower, dominate, and ravish Toby. He had watched with openly expressed pleasure, first while counting the uncut blood diamonds the Sierra Leonean had brought, then by concealing them in the jacket that had been provided to Toby for this purpose—the jacket Toby was now, in the morning, supposed to wear back to Antwerp and hand over to Joseph Friedman—and, finally, by unzipping and handling and stroking himself as he watched the big, black, African bull riding Toby hard.

After Samu had left, Ethan was all concern and coddling. He helped Toby shower and dry off, helped him back into the bed, and held him close, eventually working Toby with his hands until the young man was moaning and sighing—and then taking his turn fucking him.

It must have been exhausting for Ethan watching what Samu did to the other young man, because he was fast asleep when Toby extricated himself from Ethan’s embrace, quietly moved out of the bed, showered again, dressed in silence, and left the room. The hotel bill was prepaid, so Toby just walked out of the hotel, flagged a taxi in the predawn hours, having seen nothing of the inviting ancient city of Bruges other than the train station and the hotel, and returned to the train station.

Before Ethan woke, Toby was on a train to Amsterdam. He had left the jacket, with the diamonds hidden in it, for Ethan to get back to Antwerp as best he could. At the station, Ethan called his escort service in Washington, D.C. It was a new day. Because of the African’s extra day layover in London, Toby’s contract had been finished the day before, which made Toby abandoning the plan for him couriering the diamonds back to Antwerp technically beyond the existing contract. Toby hadn’t touched the blood diamonds himself.

When he told the scheduler on duty at the escort agency that the Friedmans had tried to involve him in illegal diamond running and noted how he’d fulfilled every sexual demand on him during the duration of his contract, they approved him leaving the job when he did and effected the full-service billing on the Friedmans’ account. He—and they—had fulfilled the contract. His contract didn’t require him to do anything illegal other than prostitution, and prostitution wasn’t illegal in Belgium.

At Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, Toby rearranged his travel. Ethan just sitting there and getting himself off while Samu ravished Toby had been the tipping point of the decision on going to Paris. In New York, Toby got a flight to Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport with little delay. The trip back to Washington took less than half the time the convoluted route from Washington to Antwerp had required.

The airport in Alexandria’s Crystal City was only a short walk from the apartment that Toby shared with Hardesty. Weary, he dropped his suitcase just inside the apartment door. The apartment was deserted. By instinct, Toby moved to Hardesty’s bedroom rather than his own. He was home. When Hardesty returned, he’d find Toby in his bed—waiting, having realized that this was the arrangement Toby still wanted.

The End.