Easy Sunday Cities

New Orleans

He was being careful with her. Helene was bent over the foot of the king-sized bed in the bedroom alcove of her twelfth-floor Crescent City Suite at the New Orleans Marriott on Canal Street in the French Quarter, and the young male model, Gene Worth, was bent over her from behind. His hands were under her, cupping her pendulous breasts and working her nipples with their quarter-sized aureoles. Helene Havlos was proud of her large breasts and particularly liked it when Gene paid attention to them.

Her meaty thighs were parted, and Gene was inside her, pressing between her plump labia folds and slow pumping her. He wasn’t far inside her, though, and was being quite careful with the heavy-set woman who was more than three times his age and who controlled his purse strings. He was able to stay hard while fucking her not only because he was young, at twenty-two, and highly sexed, but also by thinking of other lovers entirely while he was fucking her.

He wasn’t working on bringing her to climax. He’d already done that. She’d been in the same position, bent over the bed, her arms raised over her head, her fingers rhythmically clawing at the bedspread as, crouched down behind her, in reverse, he’d had his head between her thighs. He’d worked her clit with his tongue and teeth and the folds of her labia and her cunt entrance with his tongue and the fingers of one hand while he stroked her flanks with the other hand. She had moaned deeply for him, shuddered, and then come for him—and then again and again, the climaxes rolling over her as he continued, relentlessly, to work her clit and cunt.

This subsequent act, the vaginal penetration, was for Helene too, but not to make her climax. She wanted to feel the power of making the young stud climax as well. The vaginal fuck was to assure herself that she could still make a man hard and come inside her.

Gene moved his right hand out from underneath her torso and brushed her artificially colored black, wavy hair up and away from the back of her neck. He dipped his lips to her neck and kissed her, his hips still swaying back and forth, fucking her at about half his length. She sighed and whispered his name. She also wiggled her buttocks slightly, signaling she was tiring and wanted him to release inside her. Helene took a man’s ejaculation inside her as a self-perceived testament to her continued sensual appeal. Sensual appeal was important to Helene. Helene Havlos headed the House of Havlos, a major fashion and fragrance empire. Her world was built on sexual appeal.

Gene Worth was one of the house male models. He also was Helene’s live-in boy toy.

He gave her the ejaculation she wanted, giving her another inch and groaning his release, all along imagining an entirely different partner exploding with him. He kissed her on the neck again, and she sighed. Then he patted her on her ample rump, rose off her, and padded off to his adjoining hotel room to shower and dress.

Helene turned her head and watched him walk away before she too went to her own shower. He was a beautiful young man—blond and trim of figure with enough muscling to escape being considered effeminate even though he moved like a dancer. It was his pale-blue eyes and the sunshine of his blond, nearly shoulder-length hair that arrested one’s attention first, but it was the sunshine of his smile and his open, welcoming manner that gripped you. Helene, whose family was Greek, always thought of him as a young, lithe Alexander the Great and continually envisioned him wearing a gold-leaf breast plate, sandals, with straps snaking up his shapely calves—and not much else. She had closed a fashion show with him dressed like this once, and it had made that day’s sales soar. She sighed at the sight of his plump, yet firm buttocks swaying slightly as he walked away from her.

Gene hadn’t come into Helene’s house and bed because of the allure of Helene, whether physical, financial, or a matter of ambition, although she would have said otherwise and had genuinely thought she was correct. He had done so because of her husband, now deceased, Victor Macek. Gene had been working for the House of Havlos before he met the couple and Helene had been vaguely—and favorably—aware of him before. But they had come together at a faculty-student cocktail party at Columbia University in New York City because Gene, as well as modeling and doing a bit of porn for his then-roommate, was studying creative writing at Columbia at night. Victor Macek, a political novelist and Serbian nationalist, who had been chased out of Eastern Europe and was teaching at Columbia, was, coincidentally, not only one of Gene’s professors and Helene Havlos’s husband, but also was gay and had seen Gene—under the stage name of Will Belayed—in a few of the porn films Gene had done.

Macek had already laid Gene regularly in a New York hotel outside of class before they chanced upon each other at the cocktail party. Helene had taken a shine to Gene and expressed as much to her husband of convenience and, in order to have Gene closer to home himself, unknown to Helene, Macek had proposed that Gene move in with them as an “assistant” to Macek in his writing. Gene, who wanted to write about Macek, the Serbian freedom fighter, had agreed.

Gene moved in, started his research of Macek’s past, fucked Helene upon request, was, in turn, fucked by Macek, and benefited by having no housing and few food costs. It was all an adventure that Gene was contemplating using for an eventual novel of his own.

Months later, Macek had been shot dead by Helene’s French-accented hairdresser, who was discovered actually to have been Ukrainian, and who immediately turned the gun on himself and was found slumped dead over the body of Macek. The newspapers had immediately latched on the hairdresser’s political activist past as a motive for the Moscow-sponsored “assassination” of the Serbian nationalist novelist. Although being the only ones alive who knew that the hairdresser had shot Macek from sexual jealousy rather than romantic and intriguing political motives—he had found Macek in bed with Gene, a bed Macek usually occupied with the hairdresser—Helene and Gene had made a pact of misdirection: Gene had his first New York Times feature, a “the Serbian nationalist I knew” piece, under his belt; and the House of Havlos had added yet another intriguing legend to its history. Gene had found his taste of intrigue and adventure quite satisfying—and sexually arousing.

The two were now in New Orleans for an extravaganza of fashion house runway showings at the Marriott convention center in the French Quarter.

When Gene entered Helene’s suite again, she was sitting at the vanity in her bathroom, laboriously applying the makeup to her face that took twenty years off her age, a chore she kept at even though her catty detractors said that taking two decades off the mid-seventies was hardly worth the effort. He came in behind her, leaned his chin on her shoulder to give her a dutiful sunshine smile in the mirror on the wall above the vanity desk, slipped his hands into her robe, and cupped her bare breasts. He knew working her breasts was the favorite attention he could give her. She looked at him in the mirror, gave a moan and a sigh, and smiled at him.

“You are so good to me,” she murmured.

“You are better to me,” he answered. They both were fully aware of what he did for her and why.

“Are you sure you can manage on your own today?” she asked. “I’m sure that even New Orleans is dead on a Sunday morning.”

“I’ll be fine,” he answered. “Maybe I’ll just walk around and take the atmosphere in. I’ll stay out of trouble.” He had no intention of doing much of the former and the latter was an intended lie. He had a taste for adventure and danger. Macek had brought that out in him. The hunky Serb had shown him higher levels of arousal than having dipped into the porn films had.

Gene’s stint on the walkway at the fashion show had been the previous day. Only a small portion of the weekend had been allotted to men’s fashion. They had talked briefly about him sitting with Helene during today’s events, but they had both dismissed that possibilities during the runway events for reasons of their own. As much as Helene liked the thought of showing off her boy toy, she was even more sensitive to how his beauty diminished and aged whatever claim she still had to that. On Gene’s part, contrary to the impression he’d given her, he had developed very explicit plans for today. Excepted from this was the gala dinner that evening in the hotel’s ballroom.

“You’re sure,” she said, as she stood at the door, decked out in the height of fashion and looking pretty good for a hefty Eastern European woman of seventy-five.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Gene answered with a sigh of resignation as if he faced a day of boredom without her.

“You’ll remember to be back in plenty of time for the gala tonight?” she asked as she opened the door.

“Yes, I promise.”

“You brought the tux from the house’s spring collection?”

“Yes, of course.” Above all else, Gene was there to serve and show off the House of Havlos fashions. There wasn’t the least bit of misunderstanding about that.

* * * *

Gene didn’t meander when he left the hotel. He walked, swiftly, across the French Quarter, northeast on Decatur, to the other side, to Baracks Street, running northwest from the Mississippi River, one street shy of Esplanade Avenue, the boundary between the Quarter and the warehouse area of the Faubourg Marginy district. He understood, just during this walk, what Helene had meant by Sunday morning not being the best time to be exploring the French Quarter. He could tell from the party debris on the streets, the drunks sprawled in the alleys, and the absence of life otherwise that New Orleans had barely gotten to bed and didn’t intend to come out again on the day given over to the Lord. He certainly hoped the Lord was looking the other way today, but being the Lord and knowing New Orleans, he most likely was.

He wasn’t here to sightsee, although Decatur did cross over the top of Jackson Square, the heart of the Quarter as well as the city, and he slowed down here. But then he hurried on, repeating in his mind the information he had of his destination—a door just inside an alley off Baracks Street with a neon sign saying “Phillippe’s” over it, but you had to look carefully to find it. He’d been assured it would be open and serving even on a Sunday morning—if you didn’t arrive much before noon—but as Gene walked the nearly deserted, confetti-infested streets, he lost a bit of confidence in what he’d been told.

He’d been told true, however. He did look carefully when he turned left from Decatur onto Baracks and there, sure enough, was a doorway just inside an alley entrance with a lit sign of “Phillippe’s” over it. He entered the doorway, nodding to the doorkeeper sitting on a stool just inside the door, turned to the right in the darkened space, and followed the rising cloud of smoke and the sound of a saxophone and a husky voice singing in the style of Ella Fitzgerald down a set of stairs and then, turning left, into the club room.

The room wasn’t large, and the crowd—some thirty men, sitting one or two to a small table—made it appear even smaller. The atmosphere was dark and smoky; the lights were directed at a platform in front of a small wood dance floor. The platform supported a black baby grand, with a hefty, sweating black piano player; an unoccupied drum set; a saxophonist perched on a wood stool; and a zaftig Hispanic singer in a puffy black wig, a sparkly red-sequined dress with a plunging neckline, and a husky voice that was satisfying and could almost convince you that the vocalist was female, although he wasn’t. Two couples, all four of them men—indeed all of the patrons were men—were on the dance floor, partner in close clutches with partner, swaying against each other so intimately that, if they hadn’t been clothed, they would have been having sex.

A young waiter—he and Gene probably being the youngest men in the room—guided Gene to a table just inside the edge of the area covered by the light of the spots and smiled at him. It wasn’t lost on Gene that he was given a seat where all of the other patrons could see and ogle him. The waiter glided off before Gene could order a drink, but within two minutes he was back with two drinks, a beer in a glass mug, and scotch in a glass. Gene looked up quizzically at the waiter.

“The beer is compliments of the man over there,” he said, pointing to a middle-aged white man in an expensively cut suit that almost hid his fifteen pounds too much. “And the other drink is from the divine man over there. Lucky you, doll, you got your pick between money and a wild ride.” The waiter wafted off and Gene turned his head to see who had sent him the glass of scotch.

It wasn’t really a contest unless Gene had come here for a good meal at a steak house rather than to get laid. But he came here to get laid. He smiled, stood, picked up the scotch glass, and moved to the table of the hunk.

And a hunk he was. He looked vaguely familiar, but Gene couldn’t place him. He could have been a male model, though, as Gene was. If so, he was one well into his career, though. He appeared to be at least thirty. He was dark-skinned, but his features had a European cut to them. Wavy black hair, flashing dark eyes, a self-confident smile. What kept his face from perfect was that his nose was slightly broken, which gave him a hint of thugishness, danger, and mystery. His body—or the torso Gene could see—was perfect, though. He was muscular, straining the silkiness of his sport shirt, open three buttons down, revealing that his torso, as was one arm, was heavily tattooed in colorful swirls of some unrecognizable pattern. A gold medallion on a gold chain nestled between his beefy pecs. Gene’s first impression was “gorgeous South American drug lord,” but that didn’t deter Gene. He was slumming, his need for a man having built up for the last two weeks.

“Would you have preferred bourbon?” the man asked when Gene reached the side of the table. “Sit, please. Do you want something else?” The accent was American English, but there was a hint of something else there—something foreign, something that went with the South American impression.

“No, thanks. This is perfect.”

“So are you,” the man said. “Sit with me. I’m lonely.”

“We can’t have that,” Gene answered and sat—in the chair beside and close to the man rather than across from him. The inference was that Gene wanted to face the singer, but both men knew he was signaling something more than that. The man put one arm around Gene’s shoulder along the top of his seat back and his other hand on Gene’s thigh, above his knee. Gene had come down on the chair with his legs together, but when the hand went on his leg, he instinctively widened his stance. That wasn’t lost on the man.

“I’m Nick,” he said, the voice booming out a bit because the music had just stopped and the small band was taking a break. “Sorry, I’m called Nick,” he repeated in a lower voice. “I’m visiting New Orleans. Looking for a bit of company.”

“Me too,” Gene answered. “I’m Will.”

“Will,” Nick said, and smiled. Then he gave a little laugh.

“That’s funny?” Gene asked. He took a taste of his scotch. The man had ordered the good stuff. He felt a little tingly, as Nick was touching him on the side of his neck with the tips of his fingers and the hand on his thigh had moved to the inside, applying a bit of pressure that caused Gene to widen his stance. Gene also felt himself going hard. He wanted Nick to discover that—with his hand. There was no secret that opening his stance when a man put a hand on his thigh was a signal of interest and willingness.

“Nothing really. It just when you said you were Will, my thought was ‘Will he?’”

“Do you top?” Gene asked, deciding there was no reason not to be direct. He was sure they both knew what had drawn them to this club and he already was thinking of this stud being on top of him, inside him. He already was sure the chocolate-skinned hunk was a bull. I wonder what he’d say if I told him that my porn film name was Will Belayed, he thought, and then laughed himself.

Nick laughed again, no doubt thinking Gene had done so at seeing the surprise in Nick’s face.

“Yes, of course I’m a top,” he answered.

“And you had no trouble deciding I was a submissive.”

“No, I didn’t.”

One of Gene’s hands reached over and settled on Nick’s basket. Nick gave another little laugh at Gene’s reaction when he found that the man was hard and was, indeed, a bull. Nick’s hand glided up the inside of Gene’s thigh, found the line of Gene’s cock, dressed right, and settled there. They didn’t speak for a long minute as they felt each other up. Nick was the first to break, his hand came back up to the surface of table. He picked up his glass, drained it, and caught the attention of the passing waiter.

“You want another one before we fuck?” he turned and asked Gene. Then he had to repeat himself because Gene had been sprawled out on his chair, legs parted, buttocks on the edge, a dreamy look on his face from the work Nick had been doing on his cock through the material of his linen trousers.

“Uh, no thanks. I haven’t finished this one,” he said, snapping back to the present. He took a long pull at the drink, though, which indicated it wouldn´t be long before it was finished.

“Two more of the same,” Nick said to the waiter, who registered the order and drifted away. “We are going to fuck, aren’t we?” he asked Gene in a calm, straightforward voice.

“I think so. But you don’t have to get me drunk to get me in bed,” Gene answered.

“Good to know. You play squash? You look like you’re in good shape. But not like you’re into rough work.”

“I model. I have to keep in shape for that. But I’m also going to school and I do some writing—that’s what I’m training to do.”

“Not high school I hope.”

“No. Graduate school at Columbia.”

“Columbia, as in New York City?”

“Yes.”

“I’m from New York too. You are small and look young. Had to ask about the school.”

“I understand. The size goes with the modeling.”

“That’s fine. Your body’s perfect. Well, your hips look really slim. I hope—”

“That won’t be a problem.”

“Because I’m—”

“Big. Yes, I know.”

The drinks arrived and the two men looked away from each other, suddenly showing interest in the crowd around them. The band had returned and was starting into another tune.

“Yes, I play squash,” Gene said, retreating from the direction the conversation had quickly taken.

“Do you dance?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s dance,” Nick said. They rose from the table and moved toward the floor. On his feet, Nick was no less the muscular hunk he looked on a chair behind a table, but there was one pronounced distinction. He limped pronounceably as he moved to the dance floor. Once there, though, the limp wasn’t noticeable. Once in his clutches on the dance floor, Gene could only think about how sensual a dancer Nick was—and how commanding. And sexy. They swayed against each other to the crooning slow jazz tone the drag queen was singing on the stage.

Eyes were rivetted to them, the men in the room realizing they weren’t just dancing; they were dry fucking. Gene had raised a knee to Nick’s hip, plastering their pelvises together, one of Nick’s hands was on one of Gene’s shoulder blades and the other was cupping a buttocks cheek, clutching and releasing that as their pelvises rocked against each other’s. If they had been naked, Nick would be inside Gene.

Anyone looking closely could discern they were almost there anyway. Nick had moved a hand between them, unzipped himself, and taken his cock out. He had pulled Gene up and set him down, with the long, thick, hard cock penetrating between the younger man’s thighs below his ball sack, and they were swaying against each other, Nick’s dick moving in and out between Gene’s thighs, dry fucking as they moved to the slow, sensual rhythm of the music. Nick was taller and bulkier than Gene, so the younger man, Nick having pulled him up to where he couldn’t reach the floor with his feet, had one leg wrapped around Nick’s thigh and the other one just hanging. Panting heavily, he let his arms dangle and Nick held him up with an arm around his waist.

Those watching them knew they were dry fucking. They would have been fine if the two had stripped and fucked in the raw, and the tables where there were couples had some humping going on as well. Gene would have been fine with that too, but Nick showed that he was in control—and that he wasn’t ready for it yet.

They kissed and as they came out of the kiss, Gene murmured, “Take me someplace. Take me someplace and fuck my lights out. Is there—?”

“Yes, I have a room. But I have rituals. I’m athletic. I have to blow off some steam first; work you up to begging for it. Were you shitting me about knowing how to play squash?”

“Yes, I play squash,” Gene answered.

As they walked out of the club, passing by the table only long enough for Nick to drop enough money to cover drinks, including the last round that had been delivered but not consumed, and a tip, Gene saw it again—the pronounced limp of Nick, which seemed incongruous as much in shape and as young as the man was.

Such a man of mystery, Gene thought. And before too long he’s going to be on top of me, inside of me, fucking me with that big cock of his. He shivered in pleasure and anticipation.

They passed the table of the middle-aged money man who had sent Gene a beer. He looked up and smiled at Gene but there was no animosity in his face. A young man was sitting with him, close, and had a hand between the money man’s legs. The young man looked like a pro. Money man obviously was going to get what he wanted when he’d come to Phillippe’s.

On impulse, Gene leaned over and whispered, “No offense meant. Thanks for the beer.”

“You didn’t drink the beer,” the man said, his voice and eyes showing uncertainty, like he wondered if Gene was putting him on, taunting him. To be clear, though, Gene took the man’s hand and placed it on his basket, letting the man cop a feel of a cock Nick had made hard. He leaned further down and kissed the man on the lips. “It’s the gesture that counts. It’s Sunday, I would have gone with you and I would have been happy to give you a good time.”

Then he turned and caught up with Nick at the door, leaving the man smiling and turning back to the other young man with greater confidence.

“Are you always that easy?” Nick asked in amusement.

“Only on Sunday,” Gene answered. “And on Sunday you can do anything you want with me,” he added. “I’m pretty straight laced the other days of the week.”

“Remember you said that,” Nick murmured.

* * * *

Nick showed that he, indeed, was athletic. Not only that; he showed that having a bum leg didn’t slow him down much at all. Gene was a good squash player too, fast, lithe, and flexible. He was always there, ready to flick the ball into the most difficult to return position. Nick was up to the challenge, though, impressing Gene from the start by putting a rubber ball with a yellow dot—the mark of an advanced player—into play. Where Gene shone in dexterity and reflexes, Nick won out in drive and strategy, He dominated the T just as Gene instinctively knew the older, more muscular man would dominate him. He wore Gene down and conquered him in the game just as Gene was looking forward to having it play out in bed.

Gene had thought being taken to Claude’s Gym and Spa on Mandeville Street in the nearby Faubourg Marginy section was a bit weird, but he had to admit that the squash match with Nick had him panting for the man. This was an experienced athlete. There must, Gene thought, be a story behind the limp that was connected with athletics—probably professional athletics.

The match had keyed Gene up sexually. Nick had his sports bag with him and pulled out two jocks and skimpy shorts and the two played “skins,” which gave them plenty of opportunity to build up a heat for each other. It was almost as if he knew this was where he’d be bringing whoever he picked up at Phillippe’s. And even though he’d said he was visiting from New York City as well, he had known this gym was here—and that it was a hangout for gay guys—and only gay guys.

And he knew it had an action sauna. The sauna, after a sweaty squash game and a quick cold shower, was where the action started in earnest for the two men, who were panting for each other by the time they entered the sauna. Gene stretched out on his back, a towel across his lap, on an upper bench, and Nick, naked and sitting on his towel, sat on the level below him. Nick was all muscular and colorful tattoo, with chocolate background, male beauty. The thickness and bent-over-from heaviness long cock of his that was half hard when he entered the sauna had drawn the attention of all the men and made them gasp—Gene no less than the others. He could appreciate why Nick might wonder if his narrow hips might portend a channel unable to accommodate it.

They didn’t anal fuck in the sauna, but they put on quite a show regardless.

“Turn over,” Nick had commanded, and Gene turned onto his belly, ready for Nick to mount him there and then and fuck him. Gene was fairly moaning for it.

“Yes, yes, fuck me,” he whined.

But Nick didn’t fuck him. He straddled his buttocks, pushed Gene’s towel off him, and rested the underside of his cock in Gene’s crack like he was preparing to fuck him, but, instead, he massaged Gene’s back, while the young man moaned. Other men gathered in the sauna, watching, and stroking themselves, and, as the show progressed, stroked each other.

“Turn on your back,” Nick directed, moving back down to the level below Gene. Gene did as commanded, with a groan. Nick knelt below him, leaned over, and took Gene’s mouth in his in a kiss. He fisted Gene’s cock and stroked him off. Gene reached down and sheathed Nick’s cock in his hand and stroked him as well. The kissing and stroking continued as other men in the sauna watched and groaned.

Gene came first, with a shudder and a jerk of his body. Nick grasped Gene’s leg toward the front of the bench and folded the young man’s knee up into Gene’s body. “Keep it there,” he growled. His right hand glided up the other thigh and one of his fingers penetrated Gene’s passage. Gene groaned and arched his back. Nick came up on his knees, his long dick in line with Gene’s mouth, and Nick finger-fucked Gene’s passage with first one finger, and eventually, four at once, up to the knuckles.

The other men in the sauna who were watching and who Nick made sure could see his fingers penetrate Gene’s ass groaned as well.

“Good, very good,” Nick murmured. “You could take two.”

Gene turned his head, took Nick’s cock in his mouth, and sucked the older man to a facial ejaculation. Gene’s left hand had been busy stroking himself off again, and he came a second time shortly after Nick did.

The other men in the sauna were vocal about the two continuing and agreed that they wanted to watch Nick fuck Gene, but Nick vetoed that and the two went off to the showers again.

Nick did fuck Gene, over a period of more than two hours, and in several demanding positions, but that was at the room he’d rented for the day at a B&B on the nearby Burgundy Street.

Gene did have difficulty taking all of Nick’s cock—at least for the first fuck—but he was determined to do it and wanted it all inside him—and that’s what he got. After reaming his passage to the needs of his thick cock, Nick tested it further, spreading the entrance with his fingers and penetrating with his cock without removing the fingers, and, ultimately, working Gene with both his cock and a dildo simultaneously. Gene managed it all, each time welcoming the pain-pleasure of the fuck. It was with great reluctance that he decided it was too late for another go at it late in the afternoon.

“I have to go, I’m afraid. I have someplace to be tonight.”

“Me too,” Nick said, as he dried his hair with a towel, coming out of the attached bath, naked.

Gene shuddered. The man was gorgeous and he’d been magnificent in bed. Gene had never been as hard or had been filled and worked that well—or had come that frequently.

“I guess that’s it for us, then,” he said. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

“Me too,” Nick said. Gene lay there, hoping that the man would be the one to say they both lived in New York, so maybe . . . possibly . . . probably, he hoped, they could just get it on again there. But Nick didn’t say it, so maybe Gene was just a one-time lay for him. Maybe he wasn’t impressed with Gene enough to meet him in New York. And Nick thought he was named Will. He wouldn’t have a way to track him down. They hadn’t exchanged last names even.

There was nothing about today, Sunday in New Orleans, that had more than a one-day hookup vibe to it—other than that Gene melted to this chocolate god with the South American accent.

Apparently, it wasn’t the same for Nick who, after he was dressed, said, “No worry about the hotel bill. I prepaid. You were a great lay. Thanks.” And then he was gone.

* * * *

“What a marvelous day that was. Our line stood up very well. I was sure Oscar Oliphant was bringing something special this year and he does seem to have found a second wind, but all of our spies came back with comments that spoke of us favorably against this line. Have you showered yet? Yes, I think that tux shirt goes better than the other one you brought. You’ll look divine. We’ll both be perfect. I’ll be soaking in the tub. Anyone calls, just take the messages—unless it’s Oscar. He said he wanted to talk with me about something.”

Helene had begun her monologue as she entered the suite. Gene hadn’t beaten her back to the hotel and up to the rooms by more time than it had taken him to shower and start pulling his tux accessories out of the tissue paper before she had twirled into the room, clearly on cloud nine from the success of her part of the day’s runway event.

She hadn’t asked him about his day. All the way back across the French Quarter to the Marriott, the streets still Sunday subdued, he’d worked on being about to produce a plausible and benign report on what he’d done that day. He could say he’d gone to the jazz club. Telling her he’d gone to a gym or played squash would raise more questions than it would satisfy, though. His Sunday in New Orleans hadn’t been dull, but it wasn’t anything he could tell her about. And he truly liked Helene; it wasn’t all because she paid for him. But she’d returned all wrapped up in herself and her own day. He hadn’t had to explain a thing.

She lit up as soon as they entered the ballroom and she looked at her invitation card and then over to their assigned table. “He’s there. They have us sitting with Oscar Oliphant. And who is that divine man with him?”

Who indeed? Gene thought. Standing with Oliphant, heavenly decked out in a tuxedo, stood Nick. Gene did a doubletake. It occurred to him then, though, that Nick didn’t seem a bit surprised—just amused.

“Oscar, it looks like they have us seated together this evening,” Helene said as they approached the table. She was all bubbly. Oliphant was a handsome man. He was in his fifties, but he’d taken good care of himself. He was tall and slim and, naturally, elegantly and expensively dressed. Everything was cut close, sexy, though, and Gene was able even to discern the line of his left-dressed cock, which was long and thick. His salt-and-pepper hair was wavy and the material of his dress shirt was so thin that Gene could see the pattern of his chest hair and the puffiness of his nipples. He wondered if Helene saw him as such or whether Nick had Gene so tight up with sexual thoughts that he was seeing more in the dress designer than was there.

Oliphant was eyeing him with great interest.

“I’m glad they have put us together,” he was saying. He was speaking to Helene but looking at Gene. “I have the request I said I wanted to make of you. We can discuss it.”

“This is one of my models, Gene Worth,” Helene said in introducing Gene.

“And this is the manager of my models, Ricardo Faria,” Oliphant said, introducing the man Gene had been told was named Nick. And now, hearing that name, it clicked. Ricardo Faria had been a star soccer player for Brazil. But a leg injury had knocked him out of professional football. It all clicked into place, including Nick—Ricardo—not being surprised to see him here. As the head of Oliphant’s models, Faria would know the models of the other New York houses. And he didn’t have to propose they could meet in New York. Faria apparently knew where to find him in New York. Gene thought back to who had told him about the jazz club, Phillippe’s. As he remembered it had been one of the fashion photographers—someone who worked with Oliphant’s house as well as Helene’s. Oliphant confirmed that the softening-up encounter with Faria quite possibly had been a setup, as he continued to speak to Helene.

“I have a small male line coming out in a few weeks and I know your male line season is over now. I need a few models. Ricardo has been going through the books, and he thinks your Mr. Worth here is just who we need. Do you think—?”

“We certainly could discuss it,” Helene said. “It would depend, of course, on what Gene would like to do. He has studies too. He’s in a graduate writing program at Columbia.”

“Is he?” Faria asked, with a smile. “How interesting.”

Gene wanted to belt him one for the amused smile.

“Perhaps we could borrow him for a couple of hours after the banquet to tell him what is involved,” Oliphant said, as he pulled a chair out for Helene to sit in.

“Perhaps, if he wants to,” she said as she sank her bulk into the chair.

As she did so, Oliphant turned to Gene. Faria was standing behind Gene with his hands holding Gene’s hips possessively.

“I understand you go by the name Will in some situations,” the designer murmured to Gene, his eyes sparkling with the smile.

“Sometimes,” Gene responded.

“Will you . . . for me?” Oliphant asked, reaching out in a way that they could not be observed and stroking Gene’s basket with long, slender fingers.

Gene showed that he “will,” that he would, and that he did.

The three of them were standing, naked on the carpet in the center of Oscar Oliphant’s suite at the Marriott New Orleans. Gene was bent over at the waist, grasping his ankles with his hands. Ricardo was behind him, hands grasping the young model’s waist, his cock slowly plowing Gene’s ass. Oliphant was standing in front of Gene.

Oliphant ran the long, slender fingers of one hand into Gene’s hair, gripped his hair, and lifted his head up, bringing Gene’s mouth into position to open to his cock. After a few minutes of working Gene this way, Oliphant waved a bottle of poppers under Gene’s nose a couple of times and pulled his dick out of Gene’s mouth. He leaned down and kissed Gene on the mouth. Ricardo continued pumping him from behind.

Dropping the bottle of poppers on the carpet, Oliphant signaled to Ricardo, who leaned back, arching Gene’s body back with him. He reached down and gripped Gene’s thighs and raised and spread them. Oliphant moved in between Gene’s spread legs, positioned his cock head at Gene’s passage entrance above the root of Ricardo’s already-buried cock, and started to work his cock in above Ricardo’s. Gene moaned and groaned at the testing, but he took them both. He now knew why the man he’d known as Nick had wanted to test his channel with his cock and a dildo together earlier in the day.

Across the room, a grandfather’s clock struck the half hour. It was 11:30 p.m.—still Sunday New Orleans.