Danny's Choice

[This is a completed four-chapter series of four interlocking stories that will complete posting before the send of September 2017)

Christopher’s Story

Chris Wilson became aware of a change in the pattern of the gurgling sound of the respirator across the bedroom in the king-sized bed. Knowing this signaled that Earl would be awake--and perhaps even that he was trying to get attention--Chris put his pen down and turned to look in that direction. He had been at the desk at the window overlooking the turning circle of Broadway producer Earl Youngblood’s Long Island mansion. He was reviewing what he’d written of the fiction piece he was writing--novel, novella, short story, or confessional, he didn’t know yet--for the umpteenth time. It was, he thought, the key passage in the work. He wanted to get it right.

Earl indeed did appear to be awake. He was on his back and the respirator mask was on his face, but his face was turned toward the window. Chris had no idea how long the elderly man had been watching him. A cursory inspection, though, told Chris why.

The sheet over Earl’s midsection was tented. Chris’ attentions were needed. He stood and looked out the bedroom window. There was no sign yet of Kenton Walsh’s impending arrival. The only activity that Chris could see at the front of the estate were the two gardeners, father and son, Thadeus and Jeremiah, working to smooth out the lines of the boxwood hedges in the center of the turning circle. He would like to stay at the window and watch the two black men work--they were both muscular and handsome men, although the father was a bit grizzled--but Earl’s needs always came first.

He moved over to the bed, pulling up the straight chair that backed up to the wall next to it, and placed it beside the bed. Before sitting down in the chair, Chris, pulled the mask off Earl’s face just long enough to lean over and kiss him on the lips. The hunger of Earl’s kiss, even though he had to hold his breath to engage in it, was all Chris needed to know about what Earl needed--wanted. He replaced the mask, and, while still standing, he let a hand glide under the sheet at Earl’s waist, take the elderly man’s cock in hand, and begin stroking it. No matter what else ailed Earl, he still managed to produce and sustain a hard on.

Chris sat down in the chair then, leaned over Earl’s body, brushed his pajama tops open, and began tonguing into the wispy gray matting on his chest, search for, and finding, in turn, one nipple and then the other. Earl had always liked the nipple play.

After a few minutes of this, Chris kissed down Earl’s sternum and belly, pushed the sheet off his pelvis, opened his mouth over Earl’s cock, and began the tonguing, sucking, and nipping play that Chris knew Earl wanted from him. It wasn’t long before Earl’s body jerked and he released his seed in a weak flow down Chris’ throat.

The respirator gurgled away and guttural sounds came from under the mask that Chris associated with Earl expressing thanks. Chris wiped his lips off on the sheet, pulled it over Earl’s now-flaccid cock, and returned to the desk at the window.

It had been thus with Earl Youngblood, the famous and powerful Broadway play producer for nearly three months now. This certainly wasn’t the Earl Youngblood of old. A series of strokes had taken away much of his movement and all of his speech. But he was a strong old bird. Chris firmly believed that the old man’s sex drive would be the last bodily function to desert him. Chris, at twenty-six, initially a dancer in off-Broadway productions, then a small-part actor in Broadway plays, and now nearly a full-time caretaker of his first lover, had been with Earl for over seven years, with the exception of a year and a half in the middle of the period during which Chris had gone astray.

Earl had taken him back, though.

Before sitting at the desk to look over the phrase in his story one more time, Chris went to the window and looked down into the turning circle at the entrance. Still no Jaguar. Ken told him he was driving a Jaguar now. Knowing that Earl had quietly and happily fallen asleep again and would not need Chris for at least a few hours, Chris lingered at the window, watching the gardeners work and keeping an eye out for the Jaguar sports car Ken had gushed about over the phone. He had proudly said he had picked off the last new 1957 Jaguar D-Type roadster to be produced and sent to the States to be put on display in a Manhattan car dealer’s showroom. Ken, although living in Manhattan himself and having little use for a car in the city other than having bragging rights for it, had always gone for the flashy toys and possessions. As soon as that thought entered Chris’ mind, he felt the sting of the reality of it. For a brief time, he’d been just such a possession.

After a few moments, he sat back at the desk and, with a sigh, picked up the now-tattered yellow legal pad he’d poured his heart out on, and a pen, and started yet another review of his story.

“Just settle down and stop pushing at me, Danny. I’m in now.”

He wasn’t in as far as he was going to get, I was soon to learn. The pain was excruciating, not least because it was so strange compared to anything I’d experienced before. But I’d been assured that it would lessen and that, eventually, I usually wouldn’t notice it much at all--not compared with the pleasure it would be giving me. And there was some of that already. The expectation of it; the “it’s finally happening” of it.

“Stop pushing on me. I’m in. You’re fucked already. Got your cherry. No reason to fight it. Open to me and enjoy it. You’re a dancer. Dance on the cock.”

I was on all fours on the studio couch in his office--the proverbial casting couch--and he was standing behind me, between my calves that jutted out over the end of the couch. I had twisted around and swung an arm behind me, the palm of my hand extending through his open and separated dress shirt and pushing at his muscular, hairy chest. I was bearing the weight of my twisted torso on a fist buried in the surface of the couch. He was crouched behind me, his hands gripping my hips, his dick inside me. Only a few inches, it turned out. He was going to be much deeper than that soon.

I know I was giving him a wild look. The look in his eyes was one of determination and of being a bit perturbed. I know I was crying out something, but I was trying my best that it not be a demand for him to stop. He wasn’t raping me. I’d agreed to it--I’d agreed to it months earlier, in fact. It’s just that now it was happening, it was overwhelming.

“Oh, for Christ sake,” he growled. And I felt the hands leave my hips and he was twisting around to the nearby chair that he’d hung his coat over. The hands came back with a long, cashmere neck scarf, which he whipped over my head; pulling my wrists together, causing me to collapse my chest on the surface of the couch--my tail still in the air, still skewered by his dick--and tying my wrists together with it. . . .

A car horn from beyond the window interrupted Chris’ review. He hadn’t changed a word, though. He hadn’t changed a word in the last several readings. He read it now more to connect with memories. Of course Chris never could get anything like this published. Certainly not in this era of the buttoned-down late ’50s when, as Chris well knew, there was a suppressed sexuality bubbling under the surface but a thick puritanical veneer on top. And, as he also well knew, it was whoever was on top who controlled. And, perhaps more true, it would never get published because it exposed the ways of predatory theater producers.

Outside was a Jaguar roadster convertible, just as Chris was expecting. Thadeus and Jeremiah had stopped clipping the hedge and were standing there in awe of the vehicle. It was exactly what Chris had expected Ken to be driving. And the flamboyant actor popped out of it, over the door without opening it, just as Chris would have expected from him. Chris was sure Ken saw the maneuver in some British movie and had used it himself ever since. Always the “look at me” actor. He probably was completely unaware that, as tall and broad-shouldered as he was, he looked altogether too large for the car.

But he looked good. Chris hadn’t seen him in over four years. Earl hadn’t taken Chris back to Broadway in that time. Ken was taboo around here when Earl was himself, although Earl and Ken had worked with each other, by mutual need, when Earl was in New York. Ken had always looked like the leading man, tall, well built, elegantly thin, expensively dressed, and with those killer blue eyes, flashy white teeth, beach tan, and curly auburn hair. Mr. Self-Confidence himself.

He must have sensed that Chris was watching him from a second-floor window, because he swept the beret he was wearing from his head and did a curtain-call bow to the very window Chris was standing at.

Chris opened the double window, leaned out, and called down, “I’ll be down in just a minute.”

He had a bit of an idea why Ken had come at this moment, but Chris would be damned if they would greet each other over the prone and gurgling body of Earl Youngblood. Chris could have just refused the visit, but he assumed Ken wouldn’t leave it there--that Chris would have to face this sooner or later.

Beyond the door into the corridor, Chris nodded to the no-nonsense nurse who, clicking away with knitting needles, was sitting in a club chair that had been set against the wall by the door. She nodded back, stuck the needles in a ball of thread, rose, and brushed by him into the room. This had become a regular arrangement. Round-the-clock nursing service had been laid on, but when Chris was in the bedroom with Earl, the nurse took up station in the corridor, leaving the two men alone. This included the nighttime hours, because Chris still slept in the king-size bed with Earl--usually giving Earl the comfort that he still craved and holding the man in his arms and whispering to him of good times past as Earl drifted off to merciful sleep. A nurse was nearby, though, in anticipation of the day and hour she would be needed.

* * * *

“What is that?” Chris asked, indicating the two small suitcases--probably all that fit in the back of the Jaguar--Jeremiah was setting down behind Kenton Walsh in the foyer just inside the front door. Walsh was standing in front them, posing for Chris as the latter came down from the stairs.

“I heard about Earl. I have come to help you cope with his last days.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Ken,” Chris said. “These aren’t Earl’s last days. He’ll be fine. Don’t think you’ll be settling in.” No way was Chris going to let Ken know how bad Earl’s condition was.

“I must see him. Take me to him.”

“I don’t think so, Ken. I think that seeing you appear in his bedroom would be enough to kill him. I didn’t tell him you were dropping in for a visit. I wouldn’t have agreed to the visit if I’d known it involved suitcases.”

“His bedroom?” Ken asked, a hopeful look on his face.

“Our bedroom,” Chris shot back, “Earl’s and mine.” He saw that Jeremiah was standing there between the suitcases, magnificently black, but obviously out of his element inside the house. “Just leave them there, Jeremiah, thank you. You can go back to trimming the boxwood now.”

So like Ken to commandeer service to avoid lifting a finger himself, Chris thought.

Ken was smiling, though, as Jeremiah backed out of the front door, leaving the suitcases where they were. A small win for him not having them returned directly to the car, certainly, but on the path to a victory nonetheless.

Chris looked away from him, realizing that he’d made a choice by not sending the suitcases right back. Ken was still irresistible in his own way after all these years. Completely exasperating, but irresistible anyway. Chris could feel the attraction of the man in his body--he had always found Ken arousing--and he walked down the stairs and around the banister and pointed himself toward the kitchen down the hall running beside the staircase so that Ken couldn’t see the effect he’d had. This undoubtedly was why Earl had kept Walsh at arms’ length from Chris for the last four years.

“Come on through to the kitchen. I’ll put the coffee on.”

They didn’t make it to the kitchen. In the shadow of the back hall, Ken caught up with Chris, backed him into the corridor wall, and pulled in close to him, pushing his knees into the wall on either side of Chris’ thighs. He came in for a kiss before Chris could recover from the surprise of the boldness of the man.

Also because of the suddenness of the maneuver, Chris’ lips yielded to the familiarity and melting nature of Ken’s kiss. Ken grabbed Chris’ wrists and raised and pushed the younger man’s arms against the wall over his head. It was a hungry kiss from both men. But Chris recovered from the surprise, and Ken jerked his head back.

“Fuck. You bit my lip.”

“You assumed too much, Ken. It’s long over.”

“I don’t think so. I can feel you. You’re hard. You want me. You’re a slut for it.”

“Maybe I want it, but we’re beyond that now. I let you in before and you led me on and used me. I’ve made my choice.”

“The old man’s dying, Chris. Everyone says that. I’ve come to give you a second chance.”

“You already were my second chance. You said you’d take me to Hollywood. That you had a leading role contracted out there, and you’d get me in the film too. I wouldn’t have left Earl otherwise. You pulled me away from Earl, used me for over a year, and then, when you were called to Hollywood, I didn’t go with you. There were no parts for me in Hollywood.”

“You went back to Earl too soon. Earl got the better part of that deal. Got to fuck you and never let you rise above five lines of dialogue in a play. And from what I hear, he’s been comatose for what, two or three months?”

“Three months. But not comatose.”

“You can’t go three months without a hard cock inside you, Chris. Don’t fool me. You are aching for it. I feel you hard and trembling for it. You’re going to let me fuck you, aren’t you?--and take care of you while Earl’s dying and then take you away from here, back to Hollywood, to resume what we had before.”

“There are people in the house. We can’t do this, Ken.”

Ken came in for another kiss, and this time Chris gave into it completely.

“People? What people?” Ken asked. His hands came away from holding Chris’ wrists above his head against the wall, and came down between them, unbuckling Chris’ belt, unzipping him, pushing down on the waistband of the trousers and briefs so that they puddled down to the floor.

“God you’re hard for it,” he muttered, as he briefly got the measure of Chris’ cock before palming the younger man’s buttocks and spreading them, moving his two middle fingers to the rim of Chris’ hole. “And opening right up for it. What people?”

The fingers penetrated the rim and Chris shuddered, but he didn’t try to break free.

“Earl’s nurse, the gardeners, Earl.” His response was breathy. He already was panting.

“Appears to me that the gardeners never come in the house. And Earl? Seriously. We can be quiet if you aren’t too vocal. Remember how you used to scream for it? We can chance the nurse, can’t we?”

“Yes,” Chris answered in a small voice. He brought his hands down and wrapped them around Ken’s neck. He sheltered his cheek in the hollow of Ken’s shoulder. He moaned as Ken rocked against his now-naked pelvis, showing Chris that Ken was very hard now too.

“I’m going to fuck you now,” Ken growled. “Hook your legs on my hips. Roll your ass up to me.”

“Yes,” Chris answered, complying.

“You’ll have to take it out and put it in yourself.”

Chris complied, unzipping Ken’s fly and fishing his hard cock out, trembling when he felt Ken was wearing no underwear.

Ken laughed, knowing why Chris had shuddered. “I knew you’d take me like this,” he said. “You always did.”

“Yes, I always did,” Chris whispered. But to himself he was thinking, But I left you. I left you without a second thought when Earl was willing to take me back. And I’ll be damned if I leave him again for you.

Despite his words, he placed the bulb of the cock in position and impaled himself on it. The battle then was one of working to stifle his cries of pleasure and taking as Ken moved deeper inside him, and thrust up, again and again, rubbing Chris’ back up and down on the corridor wall with the power of the thrusting. Chris took the penetration in silence. He’d be damned if he’d give Ken the pleasure of knowing just how much he melted to having Ken’s cock inside him again.

They held, but only briefly, after Ken ejaculated inside Chris, both of them panting hard, slowly cooling down. It hadn’t been lost on Ken that Chris hadn’t come. It had been agony for Chris not to do so, but he’d be damned too if he’d let Ken have that satisfaction. Chris was weak, but he could use that weakness to send a signal to Ken that Ken couldn’t ignore.

Chris pushed Ken away, jerked up his briefs and trousers, and without giving Ken a second glance, turned and headed for the kitchen again. “Do you still take both cream and sugar in your coffee?” He’d kept the modulation of his voice as steady and matter-of-fact as he was trained as an actor to accomplish.

* * * *

They didn’t meet again until dinner, where they sat miles apart from each other at the long table as a mature and jolly woman moved in and out of the kitchen and between them, serving the meal and chattering incessantly in a cheerful voice. If she discerned there was a chill in the air, she pretended not to know. The tension was like a long, drawn-out violin bowing--a bow ready to snap at any instant. A storm was raging outside, holding nothing back. That made the atmosphere in the dining room all that more apparent to the two diners.

When she was back in the kitchen, the first thing Ken, who had appeared confused and despondent during the service, said was, “You have a cook?”

“Yes, and there’s a maid too. But neither of them was in the house when you arrived.”

“Ah.” Than after a long pause, “Chris--”

“It was thoughtful of you to check in on Earl and me, Ken. But, as you can see, we are doing fine and have all of our needs taken care of.”

“All of your needs?” He gave Chris a sharp look. “I came here to give you a second chance.”

“I’ve already answered that. You already were a second chance for me. You didn’t come through on your promises. I’m with Earl now--wholly.”

“You can’t go without someone to fuck you, Chris. Earl can’t do that. Didn’t what happened in the hallway this afternoon--?”

“It’s too late, Ken. We’ve had our chance--you’ve had your chance. It’s too late to send you back to Manhattan tonight in this storm--doesn’t that elegant little crate of yours even have a top you can raise on it? But tomorrow, after breakfast, you must leave. I don’t even want to see you tomorrow.”

“Chris--”

Whatever Ken was going to say, though, was drowned out by a thunderclap and a lightning strike and crashing sound very near to the house. As the sound from that was rolling away, the cook bustled back into the room with dessert. The lights flickered for a moment, but the electricity held.

After a strained silence while the two drank their coffee, Chris rose from his chair, said “goodnight” and left Ken alone at the table.

Later in the night, the storm having passed by, Ken sat, just in a dressing gown, in a Chippendale wing chair next to a fireplace set with gas logs that provided a perpetual, almost convincing fire. He was reading James Baldwin’s recently released gay novel, Giovanni’s Room, and absentmindedly playing with his cock--erect because of the subtext of what he was reading.

His door opened. Chris was in the doorway, also only in a dressing gown, which fell to the floor just inside the doorway.

Ken gasped and swallowed air. “God, your body is even more beautiful than it was before. I knew you couldn’t--”

“Don’t speak. Don’t say a word, or, I swear, I’ll be out of here in a flash.”

Ken barely had the opportunity to lay the Baldwin book on the small table next to the wing chair before Chris was above him, encircling Ken’s head with his arms, and bringing the older man’s lips down to Chris’ chest to provide nipple play. Chris positioned his hole on Ken’s erect cockhead and slid down the pole. Then rising and falling, rising and falling, as Ken groaned and sucked on a nipple.

Ken wasn’t one to give up control, though. He pushed Chris down on the thick-pile rug in front of the hearth, bringing the pillow he’d had at his back in the wing chair with him. He stuffed the pillow under the small of Chris’ back, which lifted Chris’ pelvis. Chris lay there, legs spread and bent, his feet flat on the rug, as Ken knelt between the younger man’s thighs, and entered his ass in one long, to-the-hilt slide. Chris winced at the invasion and total possession, but he fought hard not to cry out, to contain himself to groans, grunts, and low moans. No sighing, he screamed to himself in his mind, although he was totally lost to having Ken’s cock inside him again.

Chris raised his arms, clutching Ken’s biceps, and Ken grabbed Chris’ slim waist with his hands. He fucked Chris in long, slow, deep strokes, with occasional visits to Chris’ lips and nipples with his mouth. If he caught the dullness in Chris’ eyes or the quiet surrender of Chris’ body, he revealed nothing in the discovery.

With a shudder, he collapsed on top of Chris and started the series of spurts of cum deep inside Chris that the younger man remembered so well. Chris raked his fingernails over Ken’s shoulder blades and jerked each time he felt the release of seed--once, twice, thrice, four times--in the only indication that he was part of the fuck.

He knew Ken well, though--oh so well. And, sure enough, after a brief period of hand work from Ken and kisses initiated and controlled by Ken as they lay there, plastered to each other’s breasts, Ken turned Chris over on his belly, mounted his ass, and drove, harder this time, to another ejaculation.

In neither case had Chris himself come--just as in the afternoon. It had been really tough for him to hold off, but he had managed it.

At the door, as Chris was pulling the dressing gown around his shoulders again, Ken spoke for the first time.

“I knew you’d come back to me.”

“I haven’t come back to you, Ken. That was a no-regrets, no bad feelings good-bye. I still want you to leave after breakfast in the morning.”

“You need it. You can’t do without it,” Ken spat back with a vehemence that suggested he hadn’t been blind to Chris’ placidity during the fucks. “You wouldn’t have come for it tonight if you didn’t want it. And if you didn’t want it from me. It’s time for you to wake up, get off your high horse, and accept reality. Earl’s almost dead. You need to move on.”

Chris didn’t respond. He just turned away and stood in the doorway for several seconds--long enough for Ken to feel the triumph of believing Chris would turn and come back to him. But then Chris was gone, racing back to his own room, needing badly to masturbate himself for relief from what had been, as he knew it would be, a really good fuck.

* * * *

Kenton Walsh’s idea of breakfast was most other people’s idea of lunch. He was surprised, but shouldn’t have been, to find himself alone in the kitchen when he appeared for his first meal of the day. He’d already made a run at getting into the master bedroom to see just how sick Earl Youngblood was, but the nurse who answered his light knock at the door could have played as a linesman on a pro football team. She obviously had been told that access to Mr. Youngblood was taboo to the overnight guest.

There were muffins on the kitchen table and coffee warming in a coffee maker. The refrigerator revealed his choice of juices. As he ate, he schemed. He had almost had Chris last night. He, of course, had realized that the young man was purposely not ejaculating--and having a hard time not to. The message wasn’t lost on Ken. But if he’d had just one more go at him, he was sure Chris would have folded. Chris had let him fuck him yesterday. He just needed to give up the fight. Ken had won him from Earl Youngblood when Youngblood was strong and vigorous. Ken could win Chris when the old man was on his death bed.

Where was Chris going to go when the old man died? Ken wanted to make sure that it was to him. He had miscalculated by not keeping the young man with him three years earlier. But Ken was four years wiser now.

After he’d finished his breakfast, he decided to find Chris. The young man had said he didn’t want to see Ken today before he left. To Ken that meant Chris was vulnerable to him and knew he was vulnerable. It had been dead easy in the shadowed hallway when he’d first arrived. Chris couldn’t be getting what he needed. Chris wouldn’t have come back to him last night if anyone else was taking care of him. If Ken could track him down, he could put him in that vulnerable position again.

When Ken stepped out onto the front portico, he saw what had been the result of the lightning strike close to the house the night before. A large, old oak tree over by the garages and other outbuildings had been struck and split right down the middle. It was likely that Chris was over in that direction, inspecting the damage if he wasn’t in the house.

Ken drew near to the tree without seeing Chris in the vicinity. But he heard him. Chris was very vocal normally during sex. There was little doubt that Chris was having sex somewhere nearby. But who in the hell with, Ken wondered as he sought the origin of the sounds of taking. He already felt deflated. He had been sure that Chris wasn’t getting any. He had been counting on that.

He saw them through the window of a garden shed--a very well-appointed one, with shelves and counters and probably everything the garden crew of a large Long Island estate needed.

Chris was naked, on the small of his back at the edge of a counter, across the room from the window Ken peered in. He was stiff-arming the palm of one hand into the surface of the wooden counter to prop his torso up and the other hand was cupping the back of the neck of the older of the black gardeners. Thadeus, bare-chested, the fly of his work pants unzipped, his torso heavily muscled and glistening with sweat, was fisting Chris’ left ankle, holding the leg of the still-limber dancer up his torso, with the ankle on Thadeus’ shoulder. He was concentrating hard, with a fist around the root of his big, hard cock, to get the shaft deeper in Chris’ channel.

Jeremiah, the son, was standing on the other side of Chris, holding Chris’ other leg up and spread wide. Jeremiah too was stripped to the waist--and further--as the open fly of his work trousers were flared wide and the trousers were riding very low on the young man’s bulbous buttocks. His torso was even more muscular than his father’s was, and the cock jutting out of his groin in an upward curve that he was holding in his hand and stroking was longer and much thicker than the father’s.

Ken had arrived in time to see the father turn in between Chris’ wide-stretched thighs, take his hand away from the root of his half-lodged cock, grab Chris by the waist, and slam the cock home to the root. Chris’ hand fell away from the back of Thadeus’ neck and he was propped up on both elbows, his back arched, his head thrown back. Thadeus’ head dipped down to Chris’ chest and his teeth latched onto a nipple. Chris roared his surrender to the cock to the ceiling of the shed while Thadeus pumped him slow and deep. Ken couldn’t take his eyes off the action.

The cock head came to the surface of the hole, Thadeus jerked and grunted, and his white cum creamed Chris’ crack and dribbled down the young man’s thighs. The cock went back in for several more strokes, and then the father was relinquishing position to the son.

Thadeus dropped back a couple of steps, and Jeremiah moved into position, taking Chris’ legs and running them up his muscular chest. Chris lay his torso prone on the countertop, an arm thrown over his face, and moaned deeply. The bigger, thicker cock slid in through the added lubricant Thadeus’ prodigious cum had provided. The big black set his muscular legs, encircled Chris’ slim waist with his bulging arms, and started pistoning Chris’ channel hard and fast in long, strong, deep strokes.

Chris’ body was bouncing up and down on the table with the strength of the thrusts. His arms went over his head, grabbing for anything that would steady him against the assault. His eyes were slitted and had a wild aspect to them. Ken realized that Chris was looking directly at him.

Chris knew he was there--he possibly even had assumed that Ken would be there and wanted Ken to see what was happening in the garden shed.

There went Ken’s theory. Chris wasn’t being deprived of sex. The black gardeners were probably servicing the little slut twice a day.

He didn’t wait for Jeremiah’s finish. He’d read the trashy novels on the black stereotype. The father had spouted like Niagara Falls. The larger, more virile son, probably had the reserves of Victoria Falls in his nuts. Ken did know how much Chris liked to be filled to the brim with cum.

Quietly and resigned to at least temporary defeat, Ken returned to the house, packed his bags, and got on the road.

* * * *

The movie producer, Ted Atkins, was laying on his back in the center of the bed in the master bedroom of the Long Island estate, his head resting on one arm bent behind him, and smoking a cigarette with the other one. Straddling his hips, facing him, palms of his hands on Atkins’ pecs, Chris was slowly riding Atkins’ cock.

To Atkins this was just one of many auditions he gave. But he did like the way the young man rode him and he really liked the look of the man who once had been a lithe dancer and who had only improved his looks as he grew older with added mass. He was uncommonly handsome in the classic blond sense. Atkins was sure he could use him in one of several movie parts.

He was pleased enough with the sample that he stubbed out his cigarette in an ash tray on the night stand, pushed Chris over onto his side on the bed, lifted the young man’s upper leg, zeroed in on the exposed puckered hole with his cock, and thrust inside. With a cry of welcome, Chris arched his back. Atkins’ free arm snaked around Chris’ neck, arching Chris back and pulling the young man’s head close into Atkins’ face. Atkins tongue fucked inside Chris’ ear before latching on to an earlobe with his teeth, as, down below, he was thrusting, thrusting, thrusting.

Chris was sitting on the side of the bed, leaning over, and cleaning Atkins’ cock with his mouth when he heard the honk of the car horn from the gravel drive of the turning circle below the windows of the bedroom.

“Expecting company?” Atkins asked, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and blowing a couple of very satisfied smoke rings toward the ceiling.

“No. I’m sure it’s Kenton Walsh. But he wasn’t invited.” He rose from the bed and went to the window. “Yes, it’s him.” Ken’s Jaguar was parked beside--and being overshadowed--by Atkins’ red 1956 Cadillac Eldorado convertible. Ken was cantilevering his body out of his roadster without opening the door. He had turned and was examining the Eldorado, apparently trying to locate its owner in his mind. It wasn’t really Earl Youngblood’s style.

“I’ll get rid of him.”

“Quickly, please. I’m not finished with you.” Atkins was playing with his cock which appeared to be on the rise again.

Atkins had come to Earl’s funeral at Forest Lawn. So had Ken, but Ken had backed off when he saw Atkins take Chris in tow at the graveside after the ceremony.

Chris had wasted no time in asking for a part in one of the producer’s coming films. He wanted to go to Hollywood. He grieved over Earl, of course, but there had been months of preparing for the inevitable. And the best he could do, he thought, was to forge ahead on setting up work. It wasn’t really about ambition to become a movie star, he told himself.

Atkins had wasted even less time in telling Chris what he could do to be put in consideration for a Hollywood film.

“When can we arrange to meet?” Chris asked.

“I can come out to Long Island tomorrow,” Atkins had said. Earl had just been buried. He’d been dead less than a week. But how often do chances to be in a Hollywood movie come along?

Chris met Ken at the front door. All he was wearing was a sashed robe. The shock of seeing him thus took Ken aback. But he looked around and spied the black gardeners at work mowing the vast front lawn in the distance. So, he hadn’t interrupted anything between Chris and them.

“Yes, Ken? What do you want? We’re in mourning here. Not receiving visitors.”

“I thought you would need consolation.”

“What I need is a bath. I was about to have one.” He, in fact, did feel like he needed a shower. Atkins’ cum was dribbling down his leg.

“Can I come in?”

“No, Ken. I’m mourning Earl. Perhaps we’ll see each other in New York. But maybe not; I’m contemplating making another go at Hollywood.”

“Ah,” he said, now remembering where he’d seen the red Eldorado. At the funeral yesterday. He hadn’t stayed around to see, but he bet Ted Atkins was the one who got into the car. Bastard couldn’t even wait a day before zeroing in on Chris. It didn’t occur to Ken, of course, that he hadn’t waited any longer than that either.

“Where will you go now, though? Can you afford to get out to Hollywood on your own? I would take you.”

“You told me that once before and didn’t do it. And I’m quite well fixed to take care of myself now, thank you. Earl left everything to me. He had no natural heirs. He formally adopted me when I went back to him.”

“I don’t think you are doing that much mourning for him. I saw those two black studs working you over in that garden shed. You found a diversion even while Earl was on his death bed.”

“Earl provided those two black studs,” Chris said, his voice full of ice. “When he knew he was on the way out, he brought in Thadeus and Jeremiah to keep me satisfied. And I, in turn, kept Earl satisfied to the end. We cared for each other and took care of each other--something that you’re incapable of doing. You have only taken care of yourself.”

“Is Ted Atkins upstairs? Was he fucking you when I drove up.”

“Yes, Ken. Ted Atkins was fucking me, and now I want to go back to bed so he can fuck me some more and so he’ll give me parts in his movies. You had your chance. There are no second chances for you. I want to be in the movies. In getting that done a movie producer trumps a fading actor in every respect.”

Chris turned and slammed the front door behind him.

Resigned again--if only temporarily again--Ken climbed back into his Jaguar and drove off. Ted Atkins fucked them and left them more often than not, he was thinking. He’d hang around. He’d get a second chance at Chris one of these days.

Chris returned to the bedroom to find Atkins, naked, sitting at the desk by the window. He was reading Chris’ manuscript--the crumpled yellow, lined legal pads Chris was reviewing over and over again, tentatively titled Danny’s Choice. No way he’d let the story be identified close enough to himself to be called Christopher’s Choice.

“Hey, this stuff isn’t half bad. In fact, it’s real good,” Atkins said. “It’s about time to try an underground film like this. Time to rip society open on homosexuality. I might be able to film this, given the right investors. Might take a few years. Did you write this?”

Chris’ heart was racing so much that he could do no more than mumble a “Yes, I wrote it.” A second chance at Hollywood. Maybe this was his unexpected second chance at Hollywood.

“Come here,” Atkins said with a low growl. Chris stepped over to him, and Atkins pulled the sash off the young man’s robe and spread the robe apart. “Nice, very nice,” he said. “I think we need to get you out to Hollywood.”

“I would like that,” Chris whispered.

“We’ll get back to that,” Atkins said in a gravelly voice. “Now, go down on your knees between my thighs. Finish cleaning my cock with your mouth. Then show me you can give a great blow job.”